in response to

Julian Assange and the slow stupefaction of the state

Jonathan Holmes is one of the few commentators able to grasp at what Assange is attempting. But I would add a few caveats:
1. Just as a degree of secrecy and confidentiality is essential for diplomats to do their work, it is also essential that organisations like WikiLeaks challenge and disrupt that secrecy and confidentiality from time to time: once you form a closed circle of information (a conspiracy) a group-think tends to occur that favours repetition of the the kind of information already known and acceptable to the conspirators. Also, challenges to that conspiracy hold the conspirators accountable to people (citizens) outside the conspiracy.
2. The traditional media, far from challenging official flows of information, have more and more of become gatekeepers and mouthpieces for official propaganda. WikiLeaks pushes the traditional media back towards their historical role as a challenge to authority.
3. WikiLeaks emerges at a time when the Internet is making information harder and harder to control, and even questions the idea that the kind of loose conspiracies that have formed the basis of of diplomatic work in the past are even possible anymore. Here the "problem" is not Assange or even WikiLeaks, but the ineluctable march of the Internet. This is the story just keeps on giving - just look at the developing conjunction of WikiLeaks with Peer-to-Peer networking