The prime minister openly admitted the incongruity between his private support for the sanctions and his public statements in opposition. If his political adversaries knew [he] secretly supported the sanctions, deeply unpopular with Zimbabweans, they would have a powerful weapon to attack and discredit the democratic reformer.
Later that day, the U.S. embassy in Zimbabwe dutifully reported the details of the meeting to Washington in a confidential U.S. State Department diplomatic cable. And slightly less than one year later, WikiLeaks released it to the world.
The reaction in Zimbabwe was swift. Zimbabwe’s Mugabe-appointed attorney general announced he was investigating the Prime Minister on treason charges based exclusively on the contents of the leaked cable.
There will always be government secrets that the public needs to know. And we will always depend on the bravery of the people who work for the government to blow the whistle and face the consequences. But releasing a whole cache of documents, without regard to their purpose or the potential damage of what secrets they contain, leads to stuff like this. (And also it leads to stuff like Julian Assange hooking up with the hott Swedish laaaaaaadies who suddenly love him. And then him being gross and weird.)
Would Julian Assange prefer Robert Mugabe to be in power, rather than a democratic leader who embodies the liberal values like those WikiLeaks seems to be about? Hmm. Tough question. His brain may not like tyrants, but his dick sure acts like one. [Atlantic]
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Yes, if Mugabe remains President for another five, ten, fifteen years — & I doubt it will be that long, since he's fairly old, now — it's all because Julian Assange subverted the pro-democracy forces in Harare.
& the Kims & Castros have whom, to thank, exactly?
Bingo.
Jack, when did you get hired as the Obama administration's Useful Idiot?
Wait, that's a paid position?
In the Wikileaks spirit of Christmas, I hereby present Mr. Assange with the gift of one pre-measured disposable douche.
I think he already is one. And the sooner the disposition the better. Him, not wikileaks.
Some of the best quarterbacks are rapists. Damn it.
If only this one document hadn't been released! I'm sure the west in its entirety was just about to bring down Mugabe. Any day now. Yup, anytime.
Maybe Julian Assange will some day release the details on how our own democracy was subverted by the Supreme Court back in the year 2000.
Wait…
I am shocked — shocked! — that Morgan Tsvangirai, who Mugabe almost killed in a staged head-on car crash, and who has been working within a system that is completely fixed against him, is trying to get Robert Mugabe out of power. When will this terrible gusher of confirmations of things we already knew come to an end? If it doesn't stop soon, we might find out that our previous president authorized torture, or that his VP released the name of an undercover operative to the media in the hopes of discrediting her husband. And the repercussions of that would just be enormous.
We are through the rabbit hole people.
Why won't he tell us who killed Vincent Foster?
Julian's no dummy — Bob Novak was all over that story and look what happened to him.
Man, Julian must be connected like a mofo to get that old guy to dart in front of Novak's corvette.
deit: Mugabe did it with Tsvangirai, QED. My bad.
Uh… Vincent Foster?
See?! The Clintonistas were successful! He's largely been forgotten by the lamestream media! THIS IS AN OUTRAGE.
(V.F. committed suicide in Fort Marcy Park in 1993; he was closely associated with Bubba and Hillary, having dealings with them well into their Arkansas years. His suicide was considered by conspiracy advocates to be a professional hit, because in their opinion, Foster intended to turncoat, since he knew where a bunch of damning bodies were buried with regard to Whitewater, Travelgate, and Bill sexing everyone except his wife.
(Always remember that if the rational can't explain things, the irrational can. Vince Foster was shut up by bullets, and that short-form birth certificate will never say a fucking thing.)
Would Julian Assange prefer Robert Mugabe to be in power than a democratic leader who embodies the liberal values like those WikiLeaks seems to be about?
Liberal values such as lying to your people and secretly supporting useless policies that further impoverish an already very poor country. But hey, at least he didn't compromise on a tax bill because that would just be pure evil.
Maybe Bristol can sell her place in Phoenix and use the profits to rise up from her ashes doing lip sync and all those sexytime DWTS moves with Bobby Mugabe, the Salisbury Doughboy, and the Cecil Rhodes Trio?
Yes, it's all Wikileaks fault that we* haven't bothered to push an evil, murderous dictator out of power like we should've done 5 years ago and now that same dictator is trying to off his only credible threat to power. Totally Wikileaks fault. Damn you, Wikileaks, for enabling a murderous dictator to murder.
*"we" being the US, South Africa, the EU, the West…hell, the Salvation Army could kick Zimbabwe's ass at this point.
the Salvation Army could kick Zimbabwe's ass at this point.
Beat 'em like a drum?
I don't understand why everyone is so upset about this Julian fellow. Remember the Patriot Act is nothing to worry about unless you are a terrorist. The Fourth Amendment is subject to the whims of the police because only criminals have something to hide. Poker is more fun if everyone shows their cards before betting. And buying a used car is so much easier if you tell the salesman how much you are willing to pay.
Even my toddler understands, at this point in her fairly limited social development, that there are some times where telling "The Truth" is not an Unmitigated Good. Telling Aunt Sally that the present she got is a) the most repulsive piece of cheap Chinese crap that's ever been belched out of the Guangzhou Province, and b) she already has three, anyway, isn't going to get her a better present. It won't do anything but make Aunt Sally feel bad.
Based on the personal correspondence of Mr. Assange leaked to date, it does not surprise me that, unlike my toddler, he appears to be utterly incapable of grasping this basic fact of human interaction. It is just sad that when Mr. Assange vomits out "The Truth" without regard to its effects, it's not just Aunt Sally's feelings that get hurt.
I'm glad that your toddler understands that lesson.
I also hope that if Aunt Sally starts wailing on your nieces and nephews or launching missile assaults on the neighbours that she can tell Aunt Sally what an unhinged violent psycho bitch she is.
Sure. As I said (or at least implied), there's a time when truth telling is good. There's a time when it's a bloody necessity. But just because the truth is sometimes vital doesn't mean the truth is always vital, or that the truth always does more good than harm.
Disclosure of perpetrators of violent missile attacks? Good. Disclosure of locations of dissidents to bloodthirsty security goons? Not good.
The problem with Wikileaks, as Jack so aptly illustrates, is that no one is manning the filter trying to figure out which kernel of Truth falls into which category. That's a Bad Thing.
And you can take away all my pees for telling that truth.
But the leaks are not indiscriminate:
http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/news.aspx?id=...
and are being conducted with the collaboration of the worlds largest newspapers and with their guidance.
So how about sharing the blame of exposing dissidents with the anti-democratic forces at the Guardian, NY Times et al?
Give it up, Jack. We know people/websites that fall outside the jurisdiction of Sarah Palin don't ever have to be held accountable and/or take responsibility for shit.
Perhaps Aunt Sally should feel bad if she is giving crap. Even more so if the toddler tells her so. The truth, sometimes painful, is a better basis for interaction than lies and deceit. If this is how you bring up your child you are teaching her to be disingenuous.
Robert Mugabe is in power because of the gutlessness of the Western democracies, and the perception of black Africans that a black African can do no wrong. Africa is riddled with despotism and corruption to which the West turns a blind eye. I'm sure if Zimbabwean had oil George W Bush and Haliburton would have been "in like a shot". Attributing Robert Mugabe's continued tenure to one leaked diplomatic cable is shallow journalism at its finest.
The new reality is that anything a person commits to paper or internet may appear anywhere at any time…it will take years and years to regain any privacy, if such a thing is possible…Mr. Assange's love-life being an example.
You move to the right and you lose the funny. I'm not sure what scientific principal that is, but it's true, every time.
The Dennis Miller Curve?
The Marginal Propensity to Be Mean. ie the more right wing you swing the meaner you will be. Can't have one without the other.
"releasing a whole cache of documents, without regard to their purpose or the potential damage of what secrets they contain" <– Sorry, Jack, but you've been duped. Please read Glenzilla before railing on Assange.
Excuse my non-snark, but I happen to think this is the most politically significant thing going on right now.
*cries*
I'm hearing what an irresponsible asshole, pervert, subversive, pasty, douchebag Assange is. What I'm not hearing is: UNTRUE! BTW: Mugabe should turn green and die screaming for milk, but then, so should Mubarek, the Saudi Family and about a hundred other tinpot dictators our Government calls "strategic allies".
"His brain may not like tyrants, but his dick sure acts like one."
The old dikbrain conundrum, so apt in any year end wrap-up for the last five millenniums.
When you expose a "lie of control", the org making that controlling lie then has to shut down and recompartmentalize that information, thusly paralyzing it. That is the goal.
As usual, the weakest link in a secure system is the human one.
Oh fuck! This is almost as bad as the cable that caused Mugabe to kill a million people in Iraq and Afghanistan!
Sigh. Today we are all experts on the internal political machinations of a medium-sized landlocked African countries.
I love how Wikileaks shows the difference between the pros and the activists in comments.
It's probably because Assange is a megalomaniac with a martyr-complex posing as a journalist, who doesn't seem to care about the consequences of dumping hundreds of thousands of classified documents without actually examining them.
Like, say, the Afghani citizens who secretly worked with the US during the war, and are now going to be executed by the Taliban because their names were revealed in the dump and the Taliban figured out how to use computers. Whoops! His colleagues at Wikileaks thought that might have been irresponsible, but Assange didn't seem to mind because it's all about Assange at this point.
merhaps starving a country because you dont like its leadership is a bad idea??? 0_o
This whole column is based on a lie.
Wikileaks didn't release those cables to the public. It released them to a handful of well-respected news organizations. It has published some of those cables AFTER they have been disclosed by these news organizations and AFTER making the redactions that these news organizations suggested.
So if anyone did Robert Mugabe "a solid" it was The New York Times, The Guardian, Der Speigel, El Pais or Le Monde. Which one published the article you are referring to?
You are entitled to your own opinions, Jack, but neither you nor the Atlantic are to your own facts. If you had a shred of professionalism, you would issue a correction and a retraction.
Wikileaks never disclose ho-hum non-secrets already obvious to all with pulse, brainwaves. Wikileaks in no way a big geopolitical mindfuck. Assange command gorgeous unicorn-mounted truth-telling nymphtastic army of towering strength, has delicious-tasting dick, will save world. Nonsupporters just haters with rank-tasting genitals, no mind-blowing disclosure armies. Haters all driven by right-wing ideological leanings, not belief that Julian is personality-disordered nihilist. Love nasty foul secrecy, hate the sun. Are literally Gollum.
Steuf, you dumb shit, what the fuck is wrong with you? Are you channeling Sarah Palin or Joe Lieberthing??? Since when does Wonkette carry Obama's water? HFS.
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