The Second Time as Farce

When Thatcher compared herself with Churchill and invaded the Malvinas, it was, as James Maxton said of Ramsey Macdonald, 'a bloody tragedy'. When William Hague compares his faltering party with Lady Finchley over a phantom fuel strike, it's a farce.

The crumbling Church of England already revealed that the vicar's trousers have fallen down. Now all we need is the au pair in the cupboard: at last a role for Sarkozy.

wikileaks

How much more is there to add? The US State Department says Wikileaks is 'putting lives at risk', but I don't recall Assange invading Iraq or placing a standing army in Afghanistan. Columnists calling for his asassination are acting illegally and might be incarcerated in a different society. Like anti-abortionists committing murder, the lack of a sense of irony permits all sorts of horrors. Meanwhile the US prepares to host World Press Freedom Day while pressuring eBay and Amazon to stop hosting Wikileaks and the credit card monopolists and their only competitor (established on the principle that monopolies would always permit exactly this kind of abuse) PayPal (now property of eBay) to stop handling donations.

The sad thing is that this isn't going to stop anything. Quite apart from the denial of service attacks on mastercard etc, the hacker community is preparimg for distributed serving. Far less easy to stop. But also far less obviously reliable. Now anyone hosting a bunch of files can potentially get in and alter a name or a date or a place. The capacity for massive and this time really destructive (dis)information is huge. OIf they manage to lock up the wind, they will release the whirlwind. It is not only shameful, it is stupid.