First Wednesday: WikiLeaks - The US embassy cables
Uploaded on Dec 03, 2010 / 25608 views / 143963 impressions / 3 comments
Description
Following the release this weekend of 251,287 confidential United States embassy cables, this month's First Wednesday debate will focus on the revelations of this latest leak from whistle-blower website WikiLeaks. We will be joined by:WikiLeaks...
Following the release this weekend of 251,287 confidential United States embassy cables, this month's First Wednesday debate will focus on the revelations of this latest leak from whistle-blower website WikiLeaks. We will be joined by:WikiLeaks spokesperson Kristinn Hrafnsson;Professor Colleen Graffy, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy, US State Department and law professor, Pepperdine University;James Ball a data journalist who has been working with WikiLeaks;Sir Richard Dalton, associate fellow of the Middle East and North Africa programme at Chatham House;The discussion will be chaired by author and broadcaster Tom Fenton.
3 comments
deryntia
The whole political ploy of western governance depends upon sentimentalizing post-Holocaust Israel, in order to justify in the interference of Middle East societies for their oil wealth. This is the "malfeasance" at stake for the American people if not also the whole western affected world. They have been lied to everyday by the whole political apparatus.
ICEAV
surely there is a difference between the openness Professor Colleen Graffy talks about being the first to have a Twitter account, embassy blogs and the suppression of Apache Gunship footage using children, innocent civilians and Reuters journalists. Governments and powers have always only portrayed what they want the masses to know and the use of phrases. It certainly demonstrates that having an involvement in social media is simply the public face of a deadly and secretive Governments.
alt
As the woman repeatedly asks "Why is it ok to just have a data dump? Why don't you reveal information about some specific problem? Why all of these cables?". No one on the panel answers this question clearly.
The proper answer should have been an invite asking the govt to help. They should have said, "We have the information. We would like to purge it of sensitive names and we would like the govts input for that (which has so far been ignored). Similarly, the govt can work with us and help by pointing which pieces of information are important enough to release. We can use this feedback in tandem with inputs from newspapers and other sources."