Leak some secrets

Oh Jason Linkins, you are so huge, and so good!   He has survived battle with the almighty blogging gods, and has the nerve, the vivacity, the very life-force to walk away unscathed enough to use media to tell the media that they are suffering from WikiLeaks denial.

My blunt-force trauma takeaway from the most recent WikiLeaks document dump of diplomatic cables is that our diplomats seem to be very sharp and candid and detailed in their reporting, and that people of great stature seem to have mean things to say about other people of great stature when their backs are turned. The latter phenomenon is not alien to anyone who had the misfortune of attending an American high school, circa 1919-present, but because the people involved in the WikiLeaks dump are all ranking members of the global aristocracy, Julian Assange must obviously be hunted down and gutted with all deliberate haste!

Or as Glenn Greenwald critqued the media, or those who are allowed to speak as media with no definable credentials, definitely isn’t finished.

Those who demand that the U.S. Government take people’s lives with no oversight or due process as though they’re advocating changes in tax policy or mid-level personnel moves — eradicate him!, they bellow from their seats in the Colosseum — are just morally deranged barbarians. There’s just no other accurate way to put it. These are usually the same people, of course, who brand themselves “pro-life” and Crusaders for the Sanctity of Human Life and/or who deride Islamic extremists for their disregard for human life.  And the fact that this mindset is so widespread and mainstream is quite a reflection of how degraded America’s political culture is.

Frankly, I’m not terribly concerned over who called who ineffective, or a sissy.  I’m sure that some of these people who report on diplomacy never studied international relations as they marched through the wonderful ranks of American schools.  That’s okay, I found international relations less than fascinating, and view it as an unsatisfying career choice thanks to frequent changes of administration.  But maybe, just maybe, some of these people who write all day long about affairs should realize (I hope they already have) that diplomacy works through backhanded comments and interpretations (or perceptions) of the other player.

As I said, I’m not concerned that these comments leaked out.  These aren’t the only comments we’ll hear about the incompetence of foreign leaders; there’s a lot more to come.  There’s also going to be lots on banks – and, like most of the other information, with the exception of name-calling, that was leaked, is already known information (but information that the traditional media has conveniently forgotten to comment on) – mostly dreadfully exciting information like whether a CEO knows what a derivative is, or which bank director was calling which other bank director a sissy.  But we’ll see.

But what of the exciting, non-Jason Linkins types, who are hired to report information to us, a desiring public?  “Simply put, there are few countries in the world with citizenries and especially media outlets more devoted to serving, protecting and venerating government authorities than the U.S….as usual, for authoritarian minds, those who expose secrets are far more hated than those in power who commit heinous acts using secrecy as their principal weapon,” according to a member of the blogging (and hence non-traditional) media, Greenwald. Those “authoritarian” minds aren’t Korean, or Iranian, or whoever else is left in the Axis of Evil; the authoritarians are Sarah Palin, Sarah Palin again, John Hawkins, Marc Thiessen, Seth Lipsky, Jeffrey Goldberg, Jonah Goldberg, Rep. Pete King, The Wall Street Journal, and others

Thanks to Greenwald for the sources, and for this; “after a decade’s worth of American invasions, bombings, occupations, checkpoint shootings, drone attacks, assassinations and civilian slaughter, the notion that the U.S. Government can and should murder whomever it wants is more frequent and unrestrained than ever, ” and that includes stateless and non-governmental organizations such as WikiLeaks, whose primary goal is part of America’s First Amendment, Free Speech.

In fact, what should be a scathing of US policy has turned into a castigation of the US media.  And only the media can be blamed for this, for they grovel as if they had no idea that policy and communique were occurring while they reported news.

And they deserve it.