Cablegate highlights geo-political hypocrisy

Michael Rennie and Benno Hansen deserve a big thank-you for trawling through the Wikileaks Cablegate website for information on climate change geo-politics.

Michael is posting on Think About It and Benno’s document collection can be found at Scribd.

With DOS attacks being more frequently reported by Wikileaks during the last week and Amazon terminating its hosting service to the website, it may be that second party reports such as these will eventually become the blogosphere’s primary source on this subject.

While website connection problems drag on, Wikileaks’ Twitter account continues to offer intriguing hints on other international issue such as:

WikiLeaks reveals US Nuclear Weapons in the Netherlands http://cablegate.wikileaks.org/cable/2009/11/09BERLIN1433.html 1:43 PM Nov 29th via web

The Index of Censorship (of which Mark Stephens of Finers Stephens Innocent, who represents Julian Assange in the UK, is a trustee) also posted this pre-cable release correspondence:

26 November
Julian Assange, Editor in Chief, WikiLeaks
to
US Ambassador to London, Louis Susman

Subject to the general objective of ensuring maximum disclosure of information in the public interest, WikiLeaks would be grateful for the United States Government to privately nominate any specific instances (record numbers or names) where it considers the publication of information would put individual persons at significant risk of harm that has not already been addressed. PDF

27 November
Harold Hongju Koh, Legal Adviser, United States Department of State
to
Julian Assange, Editor in Chief, WikiLeaks

We will not engage in a negotiation regarding the further release or dissemination of illegally obtained U.S. Government classified materials. PDF

28 November
Julian Assange, Editor in Chief, WikiLeaks
to
US Ambassador to London, Louis Susman

I understand that the United States government would prefer not to have the information that will be published in the public domain and is not in favour of openness. That said, either there is a risk or there is not. You have chosen to respond in a manner which leads me to conclude that the supposed risks are entirely fanciful and you are instead concerned to suppress evidence of human rights abuse and other criminal behaviour. PDF

It is interesting to note that in this exchange a U.S. Government (increasingly careless of international law and human rights) asserted that release of the diplomatic cables would:

Place at risk the lives of countless innocent individuals – from journalists to human rights activists and bloggers to soldiers to individuals providing information to further peace
and security.....