Ho! Ho! Ho! WikiLeaks.....

Now we read about so called "red faces" of Singaporean diplomats for being discovered in saying unethical things about their counterparts or about certain personalities of 4 or 5 countries in the Asian region. Thus, it was mentioned that India was "half in and half out" of ASEAN. [Come to think why would Asean invite India to its grouping when it's not even part of ASEAN. Its like inviting Saudi Arabia to be in EURO].

That Thaksin Shinawatra was responsible for clearing the gambling debts of the Crown Prince of Thailand, that Malaysia was a confused nation run by incompetent politicians, that Mahathir was "throwing stones" at Abdullah Badawi when the latter was PM, that the real possibility of Malaysian Chinese fleeing to Singapore in such great numbers as to overwhelm the island [in this respect, I am all for it - the more they leave and stay out of the country, the better it is for me].

In fact, Singaporean diplomats need not be embarassed by what they said for they were all too true. The diplomats were simply saying what they think of the personalities of the countries but the only difference was that, what they said, was in writing and for the benefits of third parties, meaning they were all "leakable". God knows what more they have said in conversation to third parties.

As for me, over the years I must have said some unpleasant things about the people that were close to me viz. about my wife, or children, or about my friends, or about my compatriots at work and so on and then forget about them for what were said were never in writing and therefore "unleakable". There were times when I had the urge to slap the wife or the children for being in "disagreements" with me, but then, of course, I never did express my feeling in writing.

So why should Foreign Ministry of a country castigate the foreign Embassies in its country over some faux pas remarks made by diplomats when the remarks were actually "for your eyes only" ? The Foreign Ministry should be mature enough to take things in its stride and to let the matter be forgotten or rather filed for future use, otherwise when these diplomats start making comments again, they would do so in codes, thus denying the Foreign Ministry any information at all.

WikiLeaks is a good thing ...

To me, WikiLeaks is a phenomenon waiting to happen. Julian Assange, the founder, should be hailed as god sent, for without him, we will never ever know what transpired between countries and between leaders of the governments of those countries whose secrets get somehow "leaked" out for the ordinary people to read.

Take for instance the video leak showing a US helicopter gunning and killing civilians in Iraq. If those Iraqis had complained about the incident, US officials would be quick to reply that the incident was merely rumours, or at best, they were incidents committed in error, or that the pilots were provoked by Iraqi insurgents disguised as civilians. Now, everyone knows what actually happened !

There are going to be many, many more incidents, diplomatic cables, memos, etc that will be exposed to the world. Leaders of the US and many other countries are now shaking and squirming in their shoes that all their dirty secrets on their friends or foes will be exposed.

Back home, it was leaked out that the charges on Anwar Ibrahim for being involved in the recent sodomy, were true after all. It was leaked out that diplomatic exchanges between Singapore and Australia stated that Anwar was really involved with the sodomy of Saiful based on Singapore's "technical findings" and that Lee Kuan Yew himself belief in the veracity of the charges. This might explain the reason why Hillary Clinton was discouraged from meeting Anwar when she last visited Malaysia about a month ago. US administration did not want to be embarrassed to be in support of Anwar Ibrahim if he were to be found guilty in court, and worse, the charges were all true after all - that he did commit sodomy on his aide.