WikiLeaks: Let The Spin Begin

The job of the media is not to protect the powerful from embarrassment. It is for governments, not for journalists to guard public secrets, and there is no national jeopardy in the WikiLeaks US diplomatic cable dump revelations.

Anything said or done in the name of a democracy is prima facie, of public interest. When that democracy purports to be from the self appointed “world policeman” – an assumption that runs ghostlike through these cables, that interest has to be global.

The contradictions between the US’s public persona and what it says behind closed doors is finally being exposed and that’s what they don’t want to be made public, the duplicity, double dealings and hypocrisy.

The leaders of America's client states in the Gulf & Middle East, should also be taken to task for some of the venomous statements they have made, some of the key findings so far have been:

• US trying to steal Pakistani nuclear fuel in secret.
• Arab leaders want to attack Iran. Their people don't.
• US involved in Iranian post election unrest.
• US Spying on British politicians.
• Israel planning an attack on Iranian Nuclear facilities.
• US contempt for British politicians and royal family.

As you may have seen or heard, the well paid securitocracy have been out in force in the media, attacking wikileaks and repeating their well worn mantras.

These leaks will claim innocent lives and will damage national security. They will encourage Islamic terrorism. Government secrecy is essential to keep us all safe. In fact, this action by Wikileaks is so cataclysmic, I shall be astonished if we are not all killed in our beds tonight.

However, we heard exactly the same things months ago, when Wikileaks released the Iraq war documents and then the Afghan war documents. Nobody has been able to point to a concrete example of any of these blood curdling consequences.

There are those who argue that Wikileaks are wrong, believe that we should entrust the government with sole control of what the people can and cannot know of what is done in their name.

It is precisely this attitude that led to the “dodgy dossier” of lies about the non existent, Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Those who pontificate over the potential loss of life from wikileaks's activities, need to set against any such risk, the millions of actual dead and those affected by the foreign policies of the US and its co-conspirators during the past decade.