Confidential US governmental information: Putin "cheats" in elections

I have previously looked at a few stories that highlight the trend that the US government is simply too fond of stamping information confidential. Another striking example of this emerged yesterday, and did not even concern the US the slightest bit. No, it in fact concerned Russia and the tendency that Russian governments cheat. This is hardly unknown to anyone,

The document, titled 07MOSCOW5598, concerns the 2007 Duma election in Russia. In the cable, the US Ambassador to the country argues that "three-fourths of the national television coverage and over half of the national print media coverage has gone to United Russia and Putin," and that this is caused by "Kremlin influence and media self-censorship."

Everything else the cable contains is simply references to research done by Russian polling agencies and references to comments on the situation made by other Russians. These names remain uncensored in the leaked WikiLeaks cable, which should indicate that whatever media station redacted it, did not view it as particularly threatening to that individual.

Since the information in this cable is so trivial, the only reason it was classified must have been that the US was afraid that publishing it would lead to increased difficulties in cooperating with the Russians. Looking at the wording of the cable, however, it is quite apparent that the cable hardly would be interpreted as anything serious, since the Russians unquestionably would have known that the US knew everything in the cable, and since the two countries do occasionally use strong words to describe the other.

This is not the only example of the absurd practice of stamping cables that contain what amount to reasonably trivial information.

Mike Huckabee: The Egypt protests threaten the... whole world!

Mike Huckabee recently commented on the recent Egypt protests. Here is what he had to say:

"[T]he events of the past few days in Egypt have created a very tenuous situation, not just for Egypt, not just for the Middle East, but for the entire world, and the destabilization of that nation has the potential of cascading across the globe."

It seems as if Huckabee is here arguing that the ongoing protests in Egypt is a bad idea. It is quite remarkable that Mike Huckabee seems to oppose these protest, but it is hardly remarkable since a number of other American politicians have made similar statements in the past few days.

I am a political scientist, but I cannot claim that this field is one where I hold any form of vast expertise in. That means that whenever someone makes an argument on the issue, I try very hard to understand their argument to see if they may actually have a point.

On this issue, I cannot say that I do -- for a number of reasons:

1) If a pro-democracy movement would actually spread across the world, that cannot be a bad thing at all. What does Huckabee fear? That the Chinese folks will finally stand up to their regime? That the Saudis will grow tired of their monarchy? Or that the Iranians would pick up their gloves and start protesting again? Can someone please explain to me real slowly why this is bad?

2) Even if this would spread, it seems overly dramatic to suggest that these protests could be "cascading across the globe". What does Huckabee think? That the people of France or the Canada may suddenly roam the streets to protest the leadership in their country? No, this will not even spread to Zimbabwe or Burma. It can spread to some countries across the region, but once more, is it a bad thing that people in Yemen may get to abort the corrupt regime there?

The easiest explanation for this claim is that Huckabee is afraid that a new regime may become more hostile to Israel. This is easily also true. In a poll made in 2006, 92 percent of Egyptians declared that they saw Israel as an enemy. Huckabee and other American politicians are thus worried that this would lead to greater threats to Israel. They thus prefer a dictatorship that is friendly with Israel rather than one that is democratically elected since such a regime most likely would become more opposed to Israel.

At least we know that Huckabee isn't necessarily all that positive to democratization.

Twitter declares, 'The tweets must flow'

Of all the major, new social media companies, Twitter seems like the one that is the primary defender of the need for freedom of speech and freedom of communication. In a recent manifesto published on the website's blog, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone and the company's General Counsel Alexander Macgillivray highlighted this, by calling for the need for free expression and transparency.

Social network tools have proven to be effective threats against dictators around the world. Twitter recognizes that services like Twitter only serve as "the tools that foster these discussions," but that hardly makes them less necessary in todays world. In the manifesto, Twitter argues that the "open exchange of information can have a positive global impact", something that we may have seen evidence of recently in Tunisia and Egypt.

The regime in Egypt has recently attempted to block internet traffic in Egypt now (as the image below shows). This means that accessing information is very difficult for people in the country. What a regime cannot do, however, is to block information that has already spread. Twitter's ability to partake in these developments may thus have been quite important to spread the recent protests.

Egypt censors Al Jazeera

Al Jazeera on Sunday denounced the shutdown of its operations in Egypt by the Cairo authorities. "Al Jazeera sees this as an act designed to stifle and repress the freedom of reporting by the network and its journalists," the Qatar-based satellite channel said in a statement.

Al Jazeera said: "In this time of deep turmoil and unrest in Egyptian society, it is imperative that voices from all sides be heard."

"The closing of our bureau by the Egyptian government is aimed at censoring and silencing the voices of the Egyptian people," it added.

As someone who has followed Al Jazeera's coverage of the current affairs in Egypt the latest days, I can testify that their coverage of the ongoing protests down there must be quite revolutionary itself. The channel upholds feeds of live images from the different cities in Egypt and constantly show live images of the latest, while also noting what they don't know, introducing views from people in the region, foreigners and political analysts.

The English version of Al Jazeera appears to be running as well as it has the last few days. You can watch the channel for free here.