I wonder if foreign diplomats and leaders will take as soft a view of what has been revealed in the WikiLeaks as westerners do. Much of the conversation surrounding the leaks has argued that foreign leaders should understand, or that everyone realizes these types of comments are made; we just aren’t used to seeing them published. I cannot help but wonder if that is an overly western view to take. In the West we are notoriously pragmatic about such things. We will begrudgingly brush off an insult in order to keep good political relations; not all cultures are so charitable. I find myself wondering what impact these leaks will have in nations where shame is a stronger motivator and where saving face is an important part of public life. If something embarrassing is revealed about a leader in a country like that it is possible that the ramifications will be much greater than what we would predict in a North American or European nation; where shame and saving face are much less important.

I really wonder if all those involved in sanctioning, leaking and publishing this material realize the enormity of the damage they've caused to modern day civilization. If those involved really ascribe to total openness in government, where is the equivalent volume of "leaked reports" from Iran, North Korea, Myanmar and other regimes with despicable human rights record? Yes, it's obvious if someone leaked reports in North Korea, everyone who even could possibly have been involved would be tortured, executed or imprisoned. Sponsoring and publishing these leaks has diplomatically put every open society at a disadvantage to closed tyranical regimes. This should have been obvious from the start to Mr. Assange and his friends, if they weren't so at home with their deviant self-righteous narcicism. Have no doubt about it -- these leaks will cause a significant diplomatic setback in open regimes ability to pressure closed tyrannical into reform, resulting directly in the suffering of millions of oppressed people. Great work Wikileaks and inane US traitors.

WikiLeaks is not one of the world's problems. It's actually our savior, and that's why it's powered nearly exclusively by heroes and the brave.

It's basically the issue of secrecy, exposing those things that go on behind closed doors. The world still has too many closed doors...it's still just like the cold war but only less intense--or is it? (North Korea?)

Some countries, the U.S.A. not excluded, are worried that these leaks will make diplomatic communications more complicated. That depends on how you look at it or your approach (imagine making John Lennon your ambassador?), but within the way of doing things currently it's true practically.

However, WikiLeaks is bigger than you because it's a globalist cause, and if you don't like it, I don't care who you are or what country you represent; you're on the wrong side. Fortunately all you can do is sit back and complain about it.. and if you do anymore I'll be by your side and it won't be as a friend.

Now here's a joke, because I'm not all hard apples.
If Hillary is allowed to say all that stuff is it true what they say about her being the man of the house?

Scenario: Country X is a large tyrannical dictatorship with a formidable military and strong and repressive internal security services; Country Y is a small constitutional democracy with a good human rights record on Country X's border. Country Y tries to maintain neutrality in public statements/press releases because they do not want to incurr the formidable wrath of Country X. Country Y meets in confidence with US ambassador assigned to Country Y and tells him Country Y shares US aspirations for freedom and democracy and shares US concerns against the awful human rights situation in Country X. Along comes Julian Assange and friends to save the day by leaking confidences!!! Country Y is annihilated the next day and incorporated into the repressive Country X. Tens of thousands of good people lose their lives and a progressive government, which took generations to build, is washed away in a day. But Mr. Assange and his supporters have a victory for this innane concept of openness; tens of thousands of lives lost in the process are a small price for stroking someone's idealistic ego. If openness is such a great concept, why don't Mr. Assange's supporters start in the home -- publish their financial information include pass codes on their website -- or maybe they're NOT really that sincere.

Country USA is a large constitutional democracy with a good human rights record. Country Iraq is a tyrannical dictatorship. Country Iraq is annihilated and tens of thousands of good people lose their lives.

This is fact. Is it preferable to your country X and country Y fiction?

Given the wide (I've heard figures as high as three million people within the U.S. government) distribution of these memos, my first question would be whether it's really the case that various foreign intelligence services didn't have copies of these already, anyway. That's not to deny the main point of this article, of course, which is that, as with anything else they could use in their favour, other countries are probably going to milk this for all it's worth.

Even Robert Gates appears to admit that this may be the case: "Every other government in the world knows the United States government leaks like a sieve" (http://wikileaks.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/12/01/robert_gates_gets_the_last_word_on_wikileaks).

As for whether other foreign diplomats and leaders will "take as soft a view," it may well be the Americans that are the ones taking the harshest view of this; Joshua Kucera's, in "U.S. Diplomats Aren't Stupid After All" (http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/12/01/the_state_department_i_never_knew) says:

So why can't the Americans just sit down with the Kazakhs and say, "OK, you're crude and corrupt, and we're oafish neoimperialists. But you have things we want, and we have things you want. So let's do business." Why wouldn't that work?

My theory: It would work fine with the Kazakhs, but it's the American people who would flinch at it.

If anything clearly bad has come out of this whole thing, at least so far, it's probably that abandoning rational thought to indulge in indignation, that cocaine of American popular news and political culture, appears to be spreading to other countries now, too. We've recently had a Canadian, on national news, suggest with a straight face that extra-judicial murder of Assange was a reasonable option.