Wikileaks: a parallax view

• (+++MID-AFTERNOON UPDATE: Julian Assange makes bail at the City of Westminster Magistrates' Court at 3.25pm. Release pending the raising of surety and Swedish prosecutors leave to appeal...+++)
• (+++LATE AFTERNOON UPDATE: ABC says Sweden will not contest bail conditions, 4.55pm...+++)
• (+++FURTHER UPDATE: ABC gets it wrong: Assange is going back to Wandsworth. Sweden will appeal bail in High Court within 48 hours, says BBC, 5.26pm...+++)

Wikileaks really does have it all.

It is not even bombastic anymore to say that this is an era-defining affair: the news story that brings together so many ingredients of our millennial society; its technology, its weltpolitik, its anxieties, its deeply held suspicions and all of it  played out against a global backdrop of instant communication and uncertainty.

And there are thriller elements aplenty: persecuted/discredited whistleblowers; encrypted 'life insurance' files; cyber terrorists; covert web addresses (reminiscent of Cold War dead-letter drops) and naturally, big scary governments who don’t want you to know ‘the truth’. It’s like 'The Matrix' meets 'The Third Man'.

Since its inception in 2006, but more particularly over the past three weeks, the Wikileaks phenomenon has managed to transform the (oft-derided as paranoid) argot of conspiracy theory into the glib, common currency of broadsheet journalism.

Worldly cynics that we are down here in SE8, TRWS has a couple of niggling problems with the foregoing. The biggest probably being, we already knew as a matter of well-documented fact that the US government, in pursuit of foreign (and domestic) policy, will show few scruples about how it achieves its objectives and unless one plans to really follow through, such information is merely a catalogue of confirmation.

That proposition of realpolitik is no less true of the Chinese, the Russians, or on down the food-chain to the UK and beyond. I’m not at all surprised at how little esteem we are held in by our rulers and their lackeys. I don’t need the news to tell me that governments are mis-behaving; I just rely on precedent, well documented and incontrovertible precedent and the safe assumption that it will be followed.

We might be completely missing the point here but it seems to us that there have been whistleblowers before and doubtless, there will be again. Now certainly, Wikileaks director Julian Assange has gained an automatic pass to that particular Hall of Fame/Notoriety but...is that all there is? Well no, not by a long way.

Most importantly, we should not lose sight of the quality of Wikileaks’ work prior to the cable leak story going viral. International recognition for its fearless exposés (such as the extra-judicial killings in Kenya), from reputable organisations like The Economist and Amnesty International, gives Wikileaks some pretty bulletproof credentials.

Therein lies another reason that the Assange Affair is causing such a feeding frenzy. The very subject matter is meat and drink to a self-regarding media.


This is very much a journalist’s story; it’s the one that makes jaded hacks remember why they wanted to be reporters in the first place. There’s certainly a reverential tone to some of the coverage of this affair and one should always, as a matter of course, be sceptical of such hagiography and blatantly over-excited wish-fulfillment.

But even outside the established media (which is still trying to figure just how they digest this mass of information); the hornet’s nest that Wikileaks is stirring up only serves to underline the belief that it’s hitting the target. When one gets Republican heavyweights like Newt Gingrich going on the record to suggest that  Julian Assange be treated as hostile enemy combatant, one really has to assume that the right cages are being rattled.

'Enemy combatant' Assange

We seem to have to come to a pretty pass however where a man, who’s essentially done nothing more than publish information, can be the subject of open calls for his assassination from elected representatives. But then, if you were of a conspiracy-oriented bent; rather than open assassination, you might even point to a transnational strategy of discrediting Mr Assange....

Serious questions have certainly been raised about Assange’s credibility and more pruriently, about his sexual conduct. He is currently on remand in HMP Wandsworth’s VP wing with vulnerable prisoners and convicted sex offenders on the foot of Swedish sexual assualt allegations contained in an Interpol warrant. At the time of writing, Assange was awaiting a bail hearing this morning. 
(+++MID-AFTERNOON UPDATE: Assange makes bail in Court Number one at the City of Westminster Magistrates' Court at 3.25pm. Release pending Swedish prosecutors leave to appeal...+++)
(+++LATE AFTERNOON UPDATE: ABC says Sweden will not contest bail conditions, 4.55pm...+++)
(+++FURTHER UPDATE: ABC gets it wrong: Sweden will appeal bail in High Court within 48 hours, says BBC, 5.26pm...+++)

Doubtless, there are many people out there who would be curious as to what prompted the Swedish Prosecutor to re-open the file in September, having apparently declined to proceed in August. For the record, Assange maintains that the encounters at issue were entirely consensual.

Then of course, there are the meta-conspiracy commentators who would suggest that Wikileaks is nothing more than a CIA conduit. And to be fair, in this improbable world of smoke and mirror websites, that proposition is no less implausible than any of the preceding....We don't necessarily subscribe to that view here at TRWS but in this publicly conducted looking-glass war,  it seems that everyone's got something to hide.  

Welcome to the Parallax view...