Under The File “Old News”
link WikiLeaks cables reveal how US manipulated climate accord | Environment | The Guardian.
Setting aside the indignation and embarrassment of the Wikileaks ‘cables’ into the public space, are there really any revealing tidbits from this avalanche of ‘top secret’ documents? While no one wants to have their dirty laundry exposed in public, some of the earthshaking revelations are hardly shockers unless your birthday happened to be last week. Let’s assess some of the ‘shocking’ exposees…
“U.S. manipulated climate accord”. What!!?? Do you mean to say that the merits of proposed climate change policies weren’t immediately obvious to all participants? They had to be bribed and cajoled to agree to them? Weren’t photos of Polar Bears with suntans enough evidence?
“Saudi Arabia a cash machine for Terrorists”. Whoda thunkit? Hmm, let’s see, Bin Laden is from there…the dysfunctional Saudi Royal family of 5000 princes have unlimited access to capital…bombs and rocket launchers cost money….it’s either Cuba or Saudi Arabia…hmmm…
“China Leaders order hacking on Google”. Well given that the Chinese hack into every other industrial process, why would tinkering with a few bits of code be out of the realm of possibility?
“Meddling by neighbors adds to Iraq’s woes”. Like any domestic squabble, the in-laws and friends are bound to take sides and stir up the pot. In this case, where a political vacuum appears to exist, everyone wants to get a seat at the controls.
“U.S. embarrassing assessment of foreign leaders” Like Berlusconi who’s proud to be a non- gay man? Like rabbit ears Sarkozy whose most frequent utterance is, “who said that??” Like always bad Ahmedinejad? Like David “lightweight” Cameron of Britain? That the U.S. thinks lots of world leaders are schmucks? Well, there goes all the diplomatic leverage.
As the police chief in the classic movie, Casablanca, exclaimed, “I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!”
The disclosures of names of those who have been siding with the U.S. is the real tragedy of course. What the world calls diplomacy is essentially lying through your teeth to orchestrate a desired outcome from other countries. Or, as someone famously remarked, it’s the art of saying “good dog” until you can find a big enough stick to hit him with. The only big mystery is how such an enormous cache of ‘sensitive’ information could have been accessed by Wikileaks. From watching enough spy movies, we are led to believe that governments, especially the U.S. government, has the use of all sorts of high tech and mystical tools for security and espionage. The big shock for everyone is that this is false. That would be the real scandal.