Tuesday, December 14, 2010

LowyLeaks

Forget WikiLeaks. Too raw. Too unfiltered. Bad for your health, actually. If you really want to know what's going on, try LowyLeaks, aka The Lowy Institute, and allow their (always) senior policy analysts to tell you what only they think you need to know:

"Foreign policy expert Rory Medcalf has called for a considered debate on the impact of the ongoing publishing of classified diplomatic cables by WikiLeaks. Mr Medcalf, a senior policy analyst at the Lowy Institute, argues the release of the cables would hurt western diplomacies more than authoritarian nations such as Russia or China. The website is bad for diplomacy and encourages voyeurism, Mr Medcalf said. 'My focus is very much on the consequences', Mr Medcalf told AAP on Tuesday... In an earlier blog posting, he attacked the media for focusing so heavily on the continued publishing of cables, suggesting newspapers were doing it for commercial reasons... If the public really needs to know, then there's... no reason we should not see the original documents." (Consequences of leaks will be bad: expert, Peter Veness, AAP, 14/12/10)

Sorry to be such a voyeur, Rory old chap, but I'm a member of the great unwashed who really, really needs to know - original documents only, of course - what Frank Lowy's "Israeli charities" are, OK?

As in, "The Lowys deny wrongdoing and avoiding tax. They say the funds in the Liechtenstein account were distributed to Israeli charities in 2001 and not to any Lowy family member." (Lowy blasts US tax authorities, Leonie Wood, Sydney Morning Herald, 29/11/10)

2 comments:

brian said...

'argues the release of the cables would hurt western diplomacies more than authoritarian nations such as Russia or China. The website is bad for diplomacy '

'diplomacies'?

so we have open and free diplomacies, and they have closed and authoritian dictatorships? Wikileaks is exposing that the truth is more nearly the opposite...that we live in closed authoritian dictatorships disguised cunningly as open democracies. Thata what the Lowys and the Obamas/et al fear.

Tell the truth and hurt 'western diplomacies'? Lowy is worried that what the leaked material is doing is making it harder for these 'diplmacies' to be carried out covertly out of sight of the citizens of the 'democracies'...

brian said...

'In an earlier blog posting, he attacked the media for focusing so heavily on the continued publishing of cables, suggesting newspapers were doing it for commercial reasons'

hmmm...commercial reasons? is that all american virtue of enterprise now a crime?

you cant please some people...He'd criticise communist 'dictatorships' for lack of commercial opportunism! yet when it happens in the west...or at least where it is not supposed to happen...

freedom...democracy..opportunity...are yankee slogan words...