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Andy P asked: 'By the way -- has anyone yet made the parallel to Trotsky's publishing of the Allies' secret diplomatic treaties?' Yes, my erstwhile ganzer macher and today's Spiked supremo Frank Füredi, who made the comparison between Trotsky and Assange expressly to denigrate the latter and the Wikileaks endeavour as nothing other but egotistic posturing. Those broadcasting personal information -- as if diplomatic cables are personal letters amongst friends and family! -- are no better than the purveyors of voyeuristic reality telly shows. He also claimed that Wikileaks-style operations make it hard for professors like himself to comment fairly amongst themselves about their students because there is no guarantee that anything can stay confidential anymore. This kind of stuff shows that the former Marxist internationalist cares not one jot about the wealth of information broadcast to the general public via Wikileaks about the sordid reality behind US diplomatic niceties around the world, the attitude of China towards North Korea, the relationship between Saudi Arabia and Islamicist extremism, and all the rest, and that all he's concerned about is slotting this important episode -- the first mass public displaying of state papers in most of our lifetimes -- into his feeble theoretical hobby-horses, promoting his banal contrarianism, and defending the student marking system in his college. His condemnation of the public displaying of state confidential papers also jars somewhat with Spiked's noisy campaign for Internet freedom. Füredi's article can be found at < http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/9953/ >. Incidentally, on the telly the other evening was Jacqui 'Jackboot' Smith, one of New Labour's most authoritarian Home Secretaries, condemning this scandalous releasing of confidential state papers. How ironic, as she (along with many other British politicians and public figures) has been a firm advocate of the line that state surveillance must be acceptable to the public on the basis that if you have done nothing wrong, there's nothing to be worried about the state observing you. Now, surely if our diplomats, military men and politicians are doing nothing wrong, then they can have no reason to complain if we can do the same to them and look at what they're doing. Paul F ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
