Beware of US media (incl. NY Times)

Do not believe you are getting balanced coverage of the Wikileaks diplomatic cables from the NY Times. It turns out the paper clears reporting of the cables with the White House first.

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/11/30/wikileaks/index.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-hart/nyt-oversells-wikileaksir_b_789307.html

The Guardian seems to have the most complete coverage, but, of course, this may be an illusion.

Based on my experience in Bangladesh, I guess it is better to have a small corrupt upperclass in a relatively well organised society than weak people in power and a completely corrupt society in chaos.

Sander Voerman

Sounds fair enough.

Corruption

Usually the little people are a little corrupt and the big ones very corrupt, but if you try enough you can become big too.
The cook takes a steak home, the banker one million dollar, at least in Belgium.

@ Arnon , Girard

Even terugkomen op Girard. Inmiddels heb ik Marek's Weininger gelezen. Inderdaad de mythe als vervolgingstekst. W. vlucht ervoor. Is die begrijpelijke vlucht niet dat wat joden intens blijft verbinden? Voor een mythe, die vooral bestaat uit geruchten, ook geruchten over schuldig zijn. Helaas is er niets zo besmettelijk als geruchten! Vluchten - intern of extern - gaat dan halsoverkop. Ieder kiest zijn eigen weg en mensen worden zo op een eigen, soms extreme manier van elkaar weggerukt. Binding en scheiding tegelijkertijd door hetzelfde proces.
Sonja Pos promoveerde in 2007 aan de UvA over de werking van dit soort mythen in het werk van W.F.Hermans. [Dorbeck is alles! , Vossiuspress]. Toen H. Pos las , schreef hij aan een vriend dat P. zijn eigen werk zo dicht benaderde dat hij er bang van werd (De Groene Amsterdammer 1 juli 2010).

Thin Line

There's a thin line here I think
Remembering myself as a little child, saying to my friend:
"If I give you my sweets, do you want to play with me?"
Corruption can be something to despise, but if it is imbedded in a culture to a certain degree (and to be honoust, in which culture it isn't ?), who are we to judge.
Do we want to establish a perfect society elswhere, not being perfect ourselves.
Although it's a funny contradiction at first glance, my opinion is that the one does't exclude the other.
And maybe this man was good at his job because he was corrupt?
(of course I don't know where he crossed the line)

Have you read Rory Stewart's "The places inbetween" ?
An interesting account on the subject of Afghanistan and still applicable though written some years ago.

Carlos

On November 28 the NY Times itself wrote:

“After its own redactions, The Times sent Obama administration officials the cables it planned to post and invited them to challenge publication of any information that, in the official view, would harm the national interest. After reviewing the cables, the officials — while making clear they condemn the publication of secret material — suggested additional redactions. The Times agreed to some, but not all. The Times is forwarding the administration’s concerns to other news organizations and, at the suggestion of the State Department, to WikiLeaks itself. In all, The Times plans to post on its Web site the text of about 100 cables — some edited, some in full — that illuminate aspects of American foreign policy.”

See: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/29/world/29editornote.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=wikileaks%20note%20from%20the%20editor&st=cse

Arnon

People say: "Never meet your heroes".
Do you have heroes? Have you met them?

Arnon

This makes things better?

I understand the sensitive predicament the NY Times is in. But failing to report that the Russians strongly disagree with US diplomats' belief that Iran has North Korean missiles is bad journalism at best.

I enjoyed David Samuels' piece in The Atlantic. In which he writes (only half jokingly, no doubt):
"It is dispiriting and upsetting for anyone who cares about the American tradition of a free press to see Eric Holder, Hillary Clinton and Robert Gibbs turn into H.R. Haldeman, John Erlichman and John Dean. We can only pray that we won't soon be hit with secret White House tapes of Obama drinking scotch and slurring his words while calling Assange bad names."

"http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2010/12/the-shameful-attacks-on-julian-assange/67440/"

But perhaps there is a little Nixon in everybody...