Wikileaks - not the uber--swank political pastry. Date 10/12/2010 Member rating 4.6/5 It tittilates the political groupies but otherwise does not matter much. Henry ... the article linked here is by the clever Italian writer Umberto Eco ('Name of the Rose', Sean Connery, Christian Bale, a cavalcade of glorious European actors) and concerns the activities of the naughty Julian Assange late of these distant shores. Young Julian is alleged to have been home schooled at Byron Bay or raised on a hippie commune on Magnetic Island and has brought himself to the attention of half the governments of the world by merrily dispensing a quarter of a million US cables belonging to the US State Department. All very naughty and close to espionage I suspect. La Gillard has fulminated against our Julian as a criminal but has neglected to tell us which precise law he has broken ... detail is not a Gillard specialty.   Is any of this important? People are embarrassed but does that matter? Eco seems to delight in the embarrassment of Clinton and Obama and I can imagine the views on the USA held by Mr. Assange if he did actually have a raising in Byron Bay or Magnetic Island. I fully expect the Australian Greens to nominate him for a Senate seat which he would win without working up a sweat. They could do this if he finds himself in a foreign jail. How embarrassing for a foreign government to be holding an Australian Senator in stir on some preposterous trumped up charge. No, Henry, the Swedish rape fantasy charge now directed at Assange is too louche to even need mentioning.   What is of interest in this whole Wikileaks affair for Australians is the outing of Senator Arbib (Labor NSW) as a spy for the American Embassy. This will come as news to many people and will give boundless joy to the Senator's legion of enemies. (My list number is 2263664). It won't worry La Gillard because it means that Arbib will not be able to move against her to replace her with ??? who, Henry? I've heard Senator Wong's name in recent days. I kid you not. Clearly the Bruvvers have taken to smoking peyote in their Caucus meetings. No, Senator Arbib will survive this outing (this is, after all, Australia ... we are not yet a serious people) but he will be ruined nevertheless. He will not be able to take part in any plot without his colleagues wondering whether or not the strange looking Mark Arbib has been put up to it by the American Ambassador ... or 'boss' as Mark calls him.   On a broader scale the Wikileaks matter is a good thing. It exposes the inner workings of government at some middle-ish low level to the fascinated gaze of the 10% of the Western world who are interested in this sort of thing. But it is not of any driving interest to the mass of proles who make up our glorious Commonwealth; indeed Oprah Winfrey's arrival in Sydney and her immediate denial that she is a lesbian is of more newspaper worth than anything in Wikileaks ... what in God's name did they tell Oprah about Sydney before she got here!?!?!?   The real secrets are still safe. Is Osama bin Laden dead or alive? Wikileaks won't tell us. Why were all of the Bin Laden family rushed out from the USA on the evening of 9/11? Wikileaks won't tell us. Did George Bush really believe Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction? Wikileaks won't tell us.   These real secrets and a thousand others of their level will not leak. What we have is a quarter of a million lamingtons ... the real quality cakes from the uber-swank political patisseries are not available to us, never have been and never will be.   I have not been able to lay out a trail that leads from the State Department to my computer for all these cables. One can rationally think, momentarily, that this is an entirely American orchestrated action along the lines of one of those hilarious plots developed by the CIA in Vietnam in the 50s and 60s. Or maybe Rudd is right and the number of people in the American system who handle these cables is so absurdly numerous that any sort of disgruntled American clerk could be getting back at some boss who passed him/her over for promotion one too many times and is now being hung out to dry.   Henry, in another life and millenium when I worked for a group attached somehow to some army overseas I was advised that 99 times out of 100 the painful problem is caused by a cock-up NOT a brilliant conspiracy unfolding. A disgruntled clerk is categorised as a cock-up. (Rule 8 ... always tell your staff you love them and work to get them promotions and more pay; they will die for you when you do this for them.)   Eco makes a final point in his article, first published in the French Comm rag 'Liberation', that now it is impossible to keep secret anything that is put on the net. We will now see the rise and return of the diplomatic courier who carries truly secret stuff in the Louis Vuitton hand luggage that he keeps in his lap in the First Class seat he is occupying as he flies between his far distant embassy and the home base in Washington or Canberra or wherever. What does this mean?   Buy airline shares.   Sir Wellington Boote.