/feb

Pepe Escobar : Gaddafi goes Tiananmen
►http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MB24Ak05.html

Blame it on that self-immolation in Tunisia. The great 2011 Arab revolt is very much like 1848 - the people’s spring that in a few months took Europe by storm and turned the political system of the Congress of Vienna upside down. The problem is the “domino” revolutions of the time, from the Sicily of the Bourbons to the Paris of Louis Philippe, failed. But still - what a pleasure today to reread Karl Marx as a journalist and editor of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, expanding on revolution and counter-revolution. His ultra-sharp analyses still apply.

Would Marx be facebooking and tweeting today he would see Arabs, everywhere, fighting for their dignity and self-expression. He would see how the young protester in Tahrir Square in Cairo, the Shi’ite lawyer in the Pearl roundabout in Bahrain or the anti-Gaddafi teacher fighting for his life in Benghazi have erased the caricature of the bearded terrorist - which now only exists in Gaddafi’s imagination (and the nightmares of US neo-conservatives).

No religious fanaticism; no single-minded nationalism. Just like the Europeans in 1848, the Europeans in the 1940s fighting fascism, the Europeans of 1989 getting rid of the Berlin Wall. And Marx would probably predict how those poor conscripts in Libya - just like in Egypt - would rather join their compatriots than smash them with a Tiananmen option.

Arg c’est archi-mauvais. Je ne sais pas ce que c’est que cette campagne que lance le Guardian contre Wikileaks, m’enfin c’est mauvais.

Le type nous ressort le poncif : y’a rien dedans qu’on ne savait déjà, et en plus y’a rien dedans qu’on ne savait déjà. (En précisant que, vraiment, ça ne nous apprend rien qu’on ne savait déjà, hein.)

Ah si, un argument (débilissime) supplémentaire :

Other scholars lament the effect WikiLeaks will have on future generations of historians. Most obviously, anything of a sensitive nature – such as the Saudis saying they will switch off their radars if Israel bombs Iran – will be passed on by word of mouth or on the telephone. Unless Julian Assange stations lip-readers in Washington’s Mall or St James’s Park, and hires people capable of intercepting encrypted satellite phone calls, historians will be bereft of that type of information for all time, for it will not be written down.

Donc y’a rien dans les cablegate, mais désormais, à cause d’eux, les diplomates vont cesser d’écrire des choses inintéressantes par écrit, de peur que ce qu’ils écrivent d’inintéressant et de non compromettant ne sorte dans la presse.

Mine de rien, c’est un historien qui décide aujourd’hui des documents qui seront utiles ou non les historiens de demain.

Je parlerais pas de campagne — ils publient différents points de vue ►http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/feb/05/traditional-papers-wikileaks-arianna-huffington — mais eux mêmes évoquent une « froideur » :

“The froideur between Assange and the Guardian is disappointing because, in so many ways, the collaboration over the leaked war logs and embassy cables was a model of what traditional media and the new breed of digital subversive can achieve together. Assange brought a trove of raw data and a considerable degree of savviness about how to work with vast, complex databases – and, not insignificantly, the ability to publish outside the reach of any individual jurisdiction. The Guardian and other media partners brought the old-fashioned journalistic skills and deep expertise required to figure out what mattered – and the resources (some 40 Guardian reporters worked on the cables alone) and commitment to deal with highly sensitive material responsibly.”

►http://seenthis.net/messages/8314