Anne Applebaum has written a piece for Slate arguing that the WikiLeaks cable-dump isn't the guarantor of government transparency that Julian Assange advertises. I'm inclined to agree.

In fact, the world's real secrets—the secrets of regimes where there is no free speech and tight control on all information—have yet to be revealed. This stuff is awkward and embarrassing, but it doesn't fundamentally change very much. How about a leak of Chinese diplomatic documents? Or Russian military cables? How about some stuff we don't actually know, like Iranian discussion of Iranian nuclear weapons, or North Korean plans for invasion of South Korea Korea? If WikiLeaks' founder Julian Assange is serious about his pursuit of "Internet openness"—and if his goal isn't, in fact, embarrassing the United States—that's where he'll look next. Somehow, I won't be surprised if he doesn't.

As I've noted, there are some genuinely interesting items contained in these embassy cables, but Applebaum is correct that Assange is reaping a pretty measly harvest for the price of increased secrecy among those governments that do grant freedom of speech. Her conclusion:

Very soon, only authoritarian leaders will be able to speak frankly with one another. A Russian official can keep a politically incorrect statement out of the newspapers. A Chinese general would never speak to a journalist anyway. Low-level officials in Iran don't leak sensitive information to WikiLeaks because the regime would kill them and torture their families. By contrast, the soldier who apparently leaked these diplomatic cables will probably live to a ripe old age.

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Finish what you start.


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As far as I can tell, this news appears to refute the smug consensus that such terms as "Axis of Evil" are for stooges and cowboys. It might also indicate that the endlessly-advertised strategy of "containment" is at the very least ineffective.

Perhaps one can take solace in the hope that Kim Jong-Il might drag his feet this time around just as he did with Saddam last time.

A few of the details from the UN report resurface in the latest WikiLeaks dump. One needn't be an admirer of Mr. Assange to draw from the content of the leaks. Information is information (is information).
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I apologize to all of you who have supported this Mule in its infancy (I've been floored by the viewing figures); for the past few days I have been caught up in a completely irrelevant engagement known as "life." My sleep patterns have almost fully adjusted to those of the common fruit bat, which has turned days into nights and sober work into frantic scribbling. It's also prevented me from jumping into this site as intensely as I wished. So we start now. It's gonna be booming.

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 Tom Reinman said on December 2, 2010 at 4:41 AM  

"That's what I like about you"

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This is an easy second post. The Oxford Alligator has just published my little piece on Kosovo's most important opposition movement.

While I'm in touch with a few of Vetevendosje's leaders, I regret not being able to interview them for the piece due to their scrambling in preparation for upcoming elections (though Albin Kurti had enough time to sit down with a certain friend of mine for her business). I would've liked to clarify some of the rhetoric about One Albania—nothing has been misrepresented, I hope.

I know that Kurti has favored the idea for a long time, but to the best of my knowledge this is a notable shift in Vetevendosje's public expression concerning relations with Albania. There is nothing about unification in their literature, and there was no mention of the concept when I visited them in Pristina, aside from the innuendo on their t-shirts.


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 CuriousSerb said on July 19, 2011 at 1:17 PM  

I stumbled upon your blog from the Hitchens website. Read a couple of articles, laughed and enjoyed myself. I then found out your views on Kosovo and Greater Albania. I am curious, if you care to share, how you formed your views of Serbs/Balkans/Yugoslavia. I would love to hear your story from a personal perspective. Like the first time you heard about Yugoslavia, what news sources, what books, films, etc. I love Hitchens and was always perplexed when he would go into anti-Serbian mode. I see that you share many of his views and you are British as well from what I can see, so I would love to know how you came to your views. :)

 Brendan James said on July 21, 2011 at 2:44 PM  

Hello there,

First of all let me thank you for reading some of my material. I'm glad to hear it was of interest to you, or, at the very least, comprehensible.
And as it happens, I'm actually American, but have been living in England for a year.

As to my Balkan connection: Two years ago during my freshman year of college I spent about three months traveling in the former Yugoslavia on a scholarship. I have many friends there from each of the former republics, including Serbia, and I continue to write about and study the place, and visit when I can. It is one of my favorite places on Earth, and it produced many exciting days and nights for me (not the least of which the time I bumped into Milo Djukanovic and his entourage at a hot, sweaty club in Podgorica).

Having actually discussed this issue with Mr. Hitchens, I can assure you that neither he nor I hold anti-Serb views on the wars of the 1990s, or the conflicts since. Though it's true he and I have similar positions, I'll speak for myself (and briefly): from my own conversations with politicians/lawyers/artists/citizens in region, along with the works of Noel Malcolm, Mark Almond, Isa Blumi, Shoup & Burg, I find the historical record to be decisively against Serbia under Milosevic—which wielded the federal army and sanctioned ethnic cleansing in the name of "national security" for Serbs. It is clear to me that "Yugoslavia" under that regime meant a Greater Serbia with Montenegro tagging along.

In the course of the carnage, which I do accept to have been led by Serbia, Serbs themselves ended up as victims in numerous ways. I do not eulogize the other nations, let alone leaders such as Tudjman or Thaci, and I am not ignorant of the pogroms against Serbs that occurred across Kosovo in the years after the intervention or the ethnic cleansing carried out by Croat forces against both Serbs and Bosniaks in the first war. There were "atrocities committed on all sides." None of this, however, erases the overriding policy of the Milosevic regime, which guaranteed all of it.

You could crudely describe me as a "hawk," so yes, I approve of the international intervention in Kosovo, as clumsy as it was. The diplomacy of the West in the Bosnian War was even more embarrassing, and in my view will lead to the Republika Srpska joining Serbia in the future. I support Kosovo's independence as well, though I admit the problems that plague it worry me often. And as you must have read in my Alligator piece, I believe Albin Kurti's taste for a united Albania to be quite mistaken.

I hope I haven't droned on for too long. Please let me know if I've skated around your question, or if you'd like to pursue it further.

 CuriousSerb said on July 22, 2011 at 4:40 AM  

Thank you for the reply. I am not much of a historian and I generally dislike debating world power plays and wars with the results of conversations from political leaders, lawyers, artists, and even reporters. I hold four degrees two bachelor degrees one in economics and one in math, and two master degrees in economics and computer science from top US universities. I worked from places like the US state department and contract work for a medium sized hedge fund on wall street to a director of economic strategy for a large Russian energy power company and flown on charter jets with top Russians government officials in Putin's party. I always ask the question cui bono. After Tito died Yugoslavia was up for grabs. The worst outcome for all the huge power players was that another Tito emerges and Yugoslavia coasts through history much like a country such as Switzerland. The best outcome is to bring to power people that will destabilize and maybe even use those huge Yugoslav army weapons reserves. Of course the best possible result occurred, a capitalists wet dream, excuse my language, the little Balkan tribes rallied to their stupid century old prides and set the whole region on fire. When the fire went out the bidding wars commence. I watched Yugoslav factories, roads, banks, telecommunication infrastructure, land, hotels, islands, the list goes, on sold for pennies on the dollar. In return each republic got to put their flag up and have their national anthem, and that is all they got from the deal. I wish I had more capital back then, I would be a rich man now. Unlike my paranoid Yugo friends I don't blame the vatican, germany, britain, usa, new world order, CIA, KGB, or aliens, I blame all of us for being so naive to let people that had the advantage of looking at us on a map through sniper scopes, prey on those Balkan sensibilities that seem almost comical now.

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I expect that this page, if it is to be viewed by anyone, will be viewed initially by those close to me. This thought is both comforting and unnerving: I can, unlike most writers who have ever existed, feel secure in my possession of an immediate audience; however, if that audience dwindles during the coming weeks, I will know that I didn't just bore a crowd of fickle outsiders but my very own friends and family. That would leave a sour taste.

The motive for starting this enterprise is entirely selfish: I want a daily vehicle for exercising my capacity to write. I am no genius, and every non-genius must admit that one's only hope to become even competent in a craft is to constantly rehearse. To exercise. That is the final cause of this blog—it would be enhanced by a readership, but it is not contingent upon one.

All the same, I urge you to read it, friend or foe. (Particularly the latter, since I'm thrilled to welcome dissenting comments on any post and the resulting dialectic.)

I will write about smoke-filled rooms. I will write about states of conflict and conflicted states.  I will write about philosophy of right. I will try to write about literature. I will write from Britain, from the Continent and from Asia. I will write about Richard Pryor, Kingsley Amis, General Zia, and Tom Waits (who inspired the name for this page). These subjects need not be segregated and I hope that their potential for collision provides a reason for people to visit this page, even if they couldn't give a fig about matters of statecraft or philosophy.

You, dear reader, are in all likelihood a member of the immediate audience that I'm so hastily taking for granted. I ask you to join the experiment and bookmark this site. (If you are indeed a friend I'll only bore you about it in person, anyway.)

So this is my wish: that this blog will allow me to sharpen my claws while all of you find some amusement as the sparks fly upward.
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 Anonymous said on November 26, 2010 at 12:44 AM  

"Thy Friendship oft has made my heart to ake
Do be my enemy for Friendships sake." -Blake

 Brendan James said on November 26, 2010 at 1:59 AM  

Cryptic but welcome.

 Anonymous said on November 28, 2010 at 11:43 PM  

I see that bio pic with that smoky cig and remember a particular picture of you just a few years ago trying to get another feisty smoker to sit on your lap. She had a big smile on her face, and I hope you do too as you pursue your dreams share your adventures. Be safe. Much love. mfred.

 Brendan James said on November 29, 2010 at 4:18 AM  

Explicit but welcome.

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