The Falcon and the Showman (with apologies to Timothy Hutton et al)

One of the more intriguing WikiLeaks was the one containing the thoughts of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia on Guantanamo inmates. The King suggests that the prisoners be implanted “with an electronic chip containing information about them and allowing their movements to be tracked with Bluetooth”, he explains that “this was done with horses and falcons” and was pretty good.

The rest of the leaks so far reveal that little known 'fact' that politicians lie, whether in public or in private. They certainly present a different face to the public than to each other. Switching between a dozen or so news channels last night the most extreme reaction was on the Fox network, although it has to be said not from Fox itself but from the politicians, both Republican and Democrats, who were all in agreement that this was in itself a dagger to the heart of democracy.

Democracy in the west means letting the little people feel they are important whilst telling them they are not important enough to know what the Government does on their behalf. People were queuing up to comment on a lot of rumours, accusations and falsehoods that appear to be mostly straight from the school playground, the infants school playground at that. There are however some more serious 'leaks' than those of the Shirley doesn't like Amanda variety that seem to have occupied the minds of the politician's when the news first broke. Some of the information leaked is so specific in its content that I suspect anybody who has access to google and a few hours to waste could identify some of the non-politicians who have been mentioned, by proxy, in the leaks and let's be honest here, not everybody is as rational and coolheaded as I am.

It does of course re-open the whole, "what is a secret?" debate. For most of us the denial of access to Government documents is an inconvenience rather than an obstruction, we like to be informed but recognise that the minutiae of Government (at all levels) is as dull as ditchwater. For politicians the non-disclosure of certain facts has little or nothing to do with national security but more to do with the human reaction of not wanting to appear a complete tit. You would hope that the really big decisions i.e defence, counter-terrorism etc were not transmitted around the globe by e-mail and that some form of secure communication system was being used, but then again who really knows?

As I am off work due to a back injury at present I have been reading some of the leaked documents and I have to say that many of them read like Frederick Forsyth or Graham Greene novels and are a little on the scary side when you sit back and actually ponder what you are reading.

The whole concept of freedom of speech is being re-written everyday in this easy to access media age in which we live. The reaction to such leaks is interesting, not just that of the Democrat Senator for Wiseass, Wisconsin but the covert reaction of Government agencies around the world. Is it just me but if you were Julian Assange would you really put yourself in a situation where, having installed some of the most complex systems of concealment in current IT technology, you put yourself in a position to apparently rape two women in Sweden?

As somebody once said, "The truth is out there."