29 November 2010

How impartial is Wikileaks?

As interesting as it is for Wikileaks to publish stolen communications from US diplomatic sources, are there not similar communications being made available for Wikileaks to publish from countries that are not Western liberal democracies?

Will it receive such uncritical coverage if it publishes British diplomatic communications regarding strategy with the European Union? How about New Zealand's diplomatic communications on trade access issues?  How about South Korea's diplomatic communications about north Korea defectors?

Would it not be at least as interesting, and indeed more valuable if Wikileaks also gained access to material from Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, Syria, Zimbabwe, Burma, Cuba etc?

After all, what has happened so far has undermined confidence in US diplomatic communications, but not that of others.  

Not that Wikileaks has an agenda, no.  Surely not.  I hope not.  Maybe it is more a factor that Wikileaks is anglo-centric?

4 comments:

mike250 said...

They have released information on China that China is quite pissed about. Also I believe they plan on releasing some stuff on Russia as well. The rest I cannot say, but those places its obviously much harder to get info from as well. Remember they get their info from volunteers

Libertyscott said...

Interesting, I can't wait to see this of course. It would be far more incendiary for secrets of more authoritarian regimes to be released, but the language barrier is no doubt a problem.

Anonymous said...

Well said. I read a comment that pointed out that if like material from Russia was released that Assange chap would pretty quickly get some unpleasant visitors.

It's not so dangerous embarrassing those 'evil' Western democracies.

StephenR said...

There were leaks on an oil corruption scandal in Peru and a nuclear accident in Iran as well.