• How were my Predictions last year?

    Time to check out how I did with the predictions I made on New Year’s Day 2024.

    1  General Election in UK – Labour landslide. PM – Sir Keir Starmer. (No great change in policies from the Tory government that Labour will replace).

    Yes – fulfilled in every way.

    2  US politics will continue to be dominated by Donald Trump

    Yes

    3  In the US Presidential election in November there will be victory for the Republican Party.

    Yes

    4  AI/Deepfakes have a significant effect in electoral politics.

    Not really – AI/Deepfakes are present but there’s no real evidence that they swung any particular election

    5  Conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine unresolved by end of 2024.

    Alas Yes

    6  No progress for those wanting marriage equality in the Church of England.

    Alas Yes

    7  Twitter goes bust or is sold or both.

    Not quite. Twitter feels pretty wounded but still Xists.

    8  The world will be warmer in 2024 than ever before.

    Yes

    9  Another country will join Nato.

    Yes, Sweden in March.

    A new agreement is reached between the UK and Greece on the Elgin/Parthenon Marbles that opens the door for at least some of them to be displayed in Athens.

    Close but no cigar.

     

    Not a bad year – 7 direct hits with a few misses.

2 responses to “Wikileaks and the Guardian”

  1. richard Avatar
    richard

    I don’t think there is a clear answer to that but one might take a guess. The Guardian might argue that what they are reporting is “honest comment” from a known source. Admittedly that is based on a recent Supreme Court judgment about defamation but the judges acnowledged a need for the law to evolve to meet modern media communications. National security arguments are a safer legal bet; ie interdict. That would open up a delicious can of worms for media types. The bully boy tactics of indiscriminate pressure being placed on commercial entities without a consistent
    legal approach suggests a reluctance by authorities to enter a Kafka-esque nightmare. Enter the tactics of personal discreditation. Mr Putin made some interesting observations today about current democracy and double standards.

  2. Hermano David |Brother Dah•veed Avatar
    Hermano David |Brother Dah•veed

    To me, the original sin is the collusion between WikiLeaks and the disgruntled US soldier stationed in Afghanistan. What periodicals around the globe are now doing is perusing the published documents and bringing to light their contents, something any one of us with the time could certainly now do for ourselves.

    The pressure by governments to make WikiLeaks exposition more difficult is the question of did these businesses, internet data farms, domain name venders and financial institutions, look the other way and allow violations to their own policies and standards in support of WikiLeaks, another form of collusion? Were these policies and standards to which other clients are stringently held?

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