- Julian Assange dropped another steaming document dump, consisting of “diplomatic cables” that are actually rather embarrassing and not even remotely diplomatic. Aside from revealing that U.S. diplomats are constantly saying rude things about foreign dignitaries, these cables also document how Hillary Clinton ordered her State Department minions to “spy” on basically everyone. Rep. Steve King, the incoming chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, says Wikileaks should be designated as a terrorist organization/the twentieth 9/11 hijacker. (Erick Erickson rightly points out that the United States government usually sends Julian Assange angry letters whenever we are angry at him, instead of just murdering him.) Apparently these cables are going to ruin international relations forever, so the United States might actually have to apologize for once. But not to Julian Assange! Kill him! [BBC]
- John McCain lusts for “regime change” in North Korea. What a horrible old man. [MSNBC]
- Meanwhile, “assailants on motorcycles” (but probably “the Mossad, on motorcycles”) strapped bombs to the cars of two Iranian nuclear scientists as they were driving to work in Tehran. One scientist died, the other was wounded. So it goes. [AP]
{ 151 comments }
John McCain lusts for a lot of things but much like him landing a jet in one piece or not acting like an opportunistic asshole this ain't going to happen.
Seriously, it would be so much more productive of him to sail out into the Pacific, get hisself all codpieced up and hop in an F-17 to give the NoKos what fer. And there's always the possibility that wherever he ends up ditching the plane, it'll crash into something of strategic importance, like the Warehouse containing Kim Jong Il's stash of Abba records. Though given his prior record the likelihood is admittedly slim.
he'd end up sinking the geo. wash'ton by mistake.
And then the North Koreans will take him hostage for FIVE AND A HALF YEARS.
He'll leave Cindy for a younger prettier richer lady. Kim Kardashian?
John McCain lusts for a change of his Depends. And so does Cindy.
Oh, please. Diplomats have been spying and talking shit on each other from time immemorial.
Yes, but always politely and in well-measured tones.
True…a great diplomat can tell you how to go to hell in such a way that you look forward to the trip.
In public. In private, they've always been just as catty and gossipy as the rest of humanity.
As a former diplobrat, I can say that "talking shit on each other" is kind of the whole job description. But with impeccable table manners.
I believe regime is just a fancy word for Depends.
JohnMcCain only changes his Depends when he's fixing to fling them at the President.
The entire wingnutty wingnut right wing should be designated as a terrorist organization.
This is just like in Mean Girls when the Burn Book gets out!
I still mourn for the passing of Mean Girls era, pre-heroin Lindsay's breasts.
"North Korea made out with a hot dog?" Oh that was one time!
C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION PARIS 000001
NOPORN
DIPSHIT
STATE FOR EUR.
TAGS: FROGS
SUBJECT: AN INSIGHT INTO DEVELOPMENTS IN FRANCE
CLASSIFIED BY: A. Merlock, Ambassador, U.S. Embassy Paris,
Department of State.
Reasons: 1 or 2
We ate dinner last night at La Tour d’Argent, where the waiters were arrogant and the prices ridiculous. We were informed by ……………… that the sole was not fresh and chose the calf’s liver instead. For wine, …………. recommended a Château d’Eau 1998, which turned out to be watery and costly. We heard from …………. that president Sarkozy wants to join his wife on stage and is leaning how to play bass. Perhaps we can offer him a Fender if he agrees to take a few Gitmo detainees. Desert was OK. Cognac excellent. Went to see Mimi afterwards.
Gah! Our worst secrets revealed! How did you acquire this highly sensitive "cable*"?
—-
And WTF is up with this "cable" shit? The State Department sends email, just like everybody else, although theirs are supposedly sent securely. Calling State's digital maundering "cables" is their way of exhibiting how pretentious they are, how great is their self regard, how little they actually accomplish in an age where one national leader can just call another.
You mean info no longer comes across the Telex and Mojo Wire?
It's a trope they use to invoke a more romantic, more glorious time in human history, like when the world decided to dig a bunch of trenches so that dumbfucks from all over Europe could show up at the appointed time and shoot the crap out of each other. Until some dipshit figured out that poisoning everybody with gas would be the cheapest and quickest way out, and the world was left to recoil in horror at how unsporting it all was. And then the world finished it's demitasse and banged a couple of can-can dancers to help it forget.
The problem with poison gas was that it killed enlisted swine and Etonian subalterns indiscriminately. Not the way war should be done, old chap. Quite unsporting.
ever since the french got kicked out of algeria, their deserts have been no more than ok. long gone are the days of beau geste and the cruel sahara, which everyone agrees were most excellent.
Thanks. Now I have "The Ballad of the Sin Eater" stuck in my head.
"…recommended a Château d’Eau 1998, which turned out to be watery…"
I saw what you did there.
Nothing about the Alaska gonorrhea outbreak that corresponded with the rise of the snowbilly grifter? I haz a morning sad.
What? Is Bristol back home?
http://ameslevinelist.com/gonorrhea-follows-sarah...
This leads you to the Anchorage Daily News and a host of Wonkette-worthy comments!
I think the Rethuglican Party should be designated a "terrorist organization". They scare the fuck out of me. Doesn't that count?
OK, can someone clue me in as to why we should give a rats ass what John McCain thinks about North Korea? I mean… if he has something novel to say then fine… but if all he's got to say is "Gee, wouldn't it be nice if there were 'regime change' in North korea" then the correct response to McCain's comments is "No shit, Sherlock, but he question is: 'How?' After all, the North has hundreds if not thousands of conventional artillery batteries ready to flatten the city of Seul at a moment's notice. So unless you've developed a beam weapon capable of shooting down artillery shells before they reach their tagets, then STFU, please, because you're not helping." instead what we've got are long newspaper stories about John McCain's novel idea that's so ingenious and a wonder no one thought about it before he did, or had the courage to speak out publicly.
We don't care. But like teevee's beloved Chucks (Shumer and Hegel), WALNUTS! is always available to give an opinion. Media likey.
Part of the Chuck-Industrial Complex, obviously. I still cannot figure how C. Todd got screwed out of Li'l Russ's old seat at MTP, though.
Of course, being able to smell Savannah Guthrie's farts on The Daily Grind* is nice consolation.
*At some point, I remembered it's 'Rundown', not 'Grind', but I started calling it the latter & like that better, so I'll stick with it.
The grind part for me is trying to watch without throwing something at that douchebag Todd's face.
Oh and Savannah does it for me inbetween times when she's being hacky.
I can think of a good time for her to be hacking… I mean, hacky. Hacky, that's what I mean.
Chuck Shumer's voice gives me a girl boner.
For whatever reason, the media has decided that McCain and Lieberman are the twin greatest authorities on foreign policy, even though their recommendations for every single dispute is "Boom! Explosions!" Maybe it's because explosions make for good ratings?
The Rowan and Martin, or Abbott & Costello, of foreign policy:
McCain: "Asians? Bomb 'em!"
Lieberman: "Muslins? Bomb 'em!"
How long is this make-pretend bullshit going to go on? We devalue our currency, which means we deliberately decide to devalue China's enormous investment in our national debt, and look hey, like a warning shot across our bow, North Korea shells South Korea, sending Wall Street into a tailspin. How convenient, for China, to have a maniacal lunatic "Ally" in North Korea, why, its almost like when there's this good cop, he's a nice guy, would never mistreat someone, but boy, his partner, he's crazy loco, and the good cop can't control him, you never know what that bad cop is gonna do. So now we're begging China to control the lunatic before he starts a war that will kill the world economy, hey now, and what is China asking for in return, you think? Maybe that dollar-value thingy?
So you're saying China is Danny Glover and North Korea is Mel Gibson?
China is just one week away from retirement, dammit.
Regime change because that's how Panamanian strong men roll. Juan McCain for Generalisimo bitches!
"We have a policy in favor of regime change" is doublespeak for "we are gonna bomb your cities and exult in the rivers of blood that will run in your streets from the dead women and children."
You say that like you think it's a bad thing.
USA! USA!
Also, there's this:
The Arizona Republican added: "[China] could bring the North Korean economy to its knees if they wanted to."
How much worse can it get in N. Korea? Does McCain want the N. Koreans to start eating each other? They they have no economy now, they're starving to death as it is.
I think Our Wonkette should have some kind of contest, or a running tally, or something: Vote for the Biggest Republican Asshole of the Day. There won't be a shortage of candidates, that's for sure.
The Department of Unnecessary Redundancies is flagging your phrase ‘Republican Asshole”.
That is all.
DUOR
TOP SECRET
No Foreign Dissemination Except US/UK
Excluded from automatic downgrading and declassification
271545Z NOV 10
The Department of Required Emphasis nonconcurs with the Department of Unnecessary Redundancies on this matter and hereby issues a reclama.
TOP SECRET
No Foreign Dissemination Except US/UK
Excluded from automatic downgrading and declassification
Hmmm, V272625694 notwithstanding, you may be on to something here. We could make it a post at the end of every day headlined, "Republican of the Day," asshole implied. As a bonus, it would give us late-night and Western Wonketteers something to play with.
Shorter McCain; HEY North Korea! Get OFF my lawn!
…and (from Wikileaks) that the US and South Korea have been planning for the fall of North Korea, talking about what a unified Korea might look like, how to handle the Chinese, etc, is not exactly a surprise. North Korea probably has planned what to do just in case South Korea tosses in the towel on capitalism and decides to eat bark in the dark like their comrades to the north.
Tonight at the Majestic Theater:
Bark in the Dark
I'm a poet and don't know it.
The US and South Korea are registered at Macy's, Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics for the Reunification Nuptials. Well-wishing nations may see which items have already been gifted at wikileaks.org.
That's easy. If you print John McCain's ramblings while the nurse empties his drool cup, there's a chance he might invite you to his ranch for a beer and a turn on his swing.
I never NEVER want to imagine what "a turn on John McCain's swing" might be like.
While we can't shoot artillery shells out of the air, we do have "counter-battery" radars that can compute the reverse trajectory of the first incoming shell, and aim our guns to put a few rounds on the source before the unfortunate shooters can reload. Cool, huh? It's one of the reasons we're so successful in the first 3 or 4 days of every war these days.
Them must be some pretty adroit assailant/Mossads, to be able to strap bombs from motorcycles on to cars while they are being driven to work by their nerdy Persian nuclear scientist drivers.
The Teheran rush-hour gridlocks are famous throughout the Middle East.
It's how Syriana started.
No, seriously… That was a documentary, right?
Given my experiences driving over there, I'd guess you are correct on that. I guess them scientist guys must have had their car stereos with the windshield-vibrating thumping bass turned up to 11 so they weren't able hear the guys strapping bombs to their cars.
The British had "sticky bombs" during WW2, which were to be applied to the sides of German tanks in a similar manner. These were to have been used in case of a German invasion. They were considered unreliable at the time, but with 60+ years development reliability should have improved.
Velcro.
They must be watching Sons of Anarchy on al Jazeera.
John McCain lusts for “regime change” in North Korea. Wait, isn't North Korea our ally?
It's like double or triple Mavericky to avow our defense of DPRK on Beck's show, then pivot & say we must bomb. Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb bomb… Pyongyang?
Yeah. Whatever works.
Julian Ass-ange is going to be getting a rude cable strapped to his car on the way to work when Steve King takes over.
Fortunately, Steve King is too dumb to pull that off. Unfortunately, people who are really, really hate Julian Assange. I'm not normally one to join the tinfoil hat brigade but seriously, if that dude survives 2011, he is officially the new badass Bond/Bourne/Bristow.
Let's discuss a regime change in Arizona.
(Beaten to the punch by Freakishlywrong!) My week, my life, ruined. Again.
Perk up Puck! It's only Monday and seeing that the lame, lame duck session is starting up there will be room for plenty of foolishness and despair.
There are spooky spies in our embassies? OMFG!!! Who knew?!?! Does Hilz know about this?!?! Has she told Barry?????
John McCain may lust, but at his age finishing the deal would require a pill that would likely give him a heart attack, so I recommend that the creep should go for it.
Maybe someone could hire assailants on motorcycles to strap John McCain to the fender of a car. That would be sort of funny.
Dunno about the hiring of assailants. Should be able to find some volunteers, though.
I love how we need a regime change in all of these countries. Does McCain even fawking think about how we would pay for this shit? It's not like Amurika has an Amex Black like he does.
Clearly, America should marry a beer heiress.
Obviously, borrow more money from China!
Rep. Steve King has come unstuck in time.
Meh, Wikileaks is like one big intervention for a alcoholics drunk on global power. It's like reality TV but on PDF and…er…real.
Oh, and not to be an asshole, but the story says it's Peter King, the asshole from NY. Steve King is the asshole from Iowa.
It's getting more and more difficult to keep these assholes straight. Although in fairness, Steve King, the Iowa guy, is more of a hemorrhoid.
So many Republican Assholes, hard to keep them straight (heehee).
Julian Assange should definitely steer clear of sushi restaurants which stir polonium-210 into the wasabi. That's my advice. Take it or leave it, bub.
He should probably also stear clear of attractive women who come on to him in bars, seduce him, and then charge him with rape, as part of an intelligence operation to discredit him. He should avoid them, too.
I was also going to say steer clear of men with poison-tipped umbrellas, who want to try shoving one up his ass, which is a thing spies do!, but …..how the hell does Julian Assange manage to continue to walk around, unmolested? Is it like that scene from the Peter Sellers movie, where all the assassins comically kill each other at Oktoberfest, while Clouseau walks around from one attraction to the next?
Its just possible, just barely possible, that even the CIA can figure out that killing him would be a little on the obvious side, whereas, somehow label him a kiddie-raper, and he will be shunned. Ad-hominem is now the only form of valid argument, in public policy, anyway; all statements are judged as true or false based on the identity of the person making the statement.
Julian Assange looks uncannily like Tom Wolfe.
How do we know this isn't just some Rightist subversion of a new (centre) left regime in the U.S., then?
All diplomatic snark made public! The horror, the horror.
I wish there was a Google Voice setting for sending Republican representatives' voices directly to virtual voicemail every time they come on the news. When that bastard takes over in January, I may stop watching the teevee because he annoys me so.
In the steaming dump it appears that masters of many Arab states are neocons who wanted Uncle Sam to play wack-a-mole with Iranian nuke sites.. The Saudi Wahhabi lobby don't want them Persian Shia shitskis with a bomb when the Sunnis ain't got no nuclear wasabi.
Even more astonishing is the evidence that actual honest to gosh US government officials were actually aware that al-queada is a Saudi group funded and led by Saudis, whose ideology is deeply Saudi, and that the Saudis own us, apparently, because they are the only country on earth that can bomb our cities and we thank them, and then triple the price we pay them for their oil, in gratitude for fucking us.
Wahhabi lobby. My new fave meme.
Needz less banal, moar anal.
well Julian Assange may be doing god's work, but he strikes me as a total tool.
John Brown was nobody's sweetheart either, one imagines.
Maybe, but the hair! John Brown is the epitome of righteous prophetic wrath. Assange looks like a guy who didn't make the final cut for Sprockets.
Really. Who would follow a prophet with bad hair?
He's the Mark Zuckerberg of foreign relations.
If you want confirmation for his toolness, go over to Wikipedia where it recounts his strange childhood.. Methinks the schmo has issues. Then go to the discussion page where Prince Julian is all upset because someone used an unflattering picture of him.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_assange
Spy vs. Spy LIVE!
One delightful aspect of the Wikileaks leaks is that they were acquired by tapping a system devised to allow various branches of gummint to communicate outside their beloved "stovepipes," one of the perceived failures that led to 9/11. This should put a stop to that.
I came…
to Tehran…
to give you a message…
Jew spies on motorcycles!
Coulda been Saudi Wahhabist Vespa desperadoes posing as Mossadi Moped marauders posing as CIA Harley hooligans. The ol' Spy v. Spy v. Spy thingie.
Also: as long as this anti-Iran effort by the Mossad involves Eric Bana, I'm down.
He's dreamy.
Fair warning: he's probably circumcised.
You do have to admit that attacking North Korea for being China's bill-collector is at least consistent, in the idiocy and mendacity department, with attacking Iraq in retaliation for the Saudi attack on the US on 9-11.
Exactly so! Instead of kicking little Kim, we should be nuking Taiwan for addling the American brain with silicon soma.
Diplomats will now know how I felt when I accidentally hit "Reply All" on a work email.
Hoekstra just tweeted. He wants his meme back.
Nothing that wasn't commonly known or suspected. I hope Assange has better followup to this weak opening act. Geez China hijacked practically the whole internet for like 15 minutes back in April. Plus my line of work is based on internet traffic and security, not a week goes by that China or former Soviet republics and parts of Africa tries full on assaults on US internet infrastructure. I'm no spook but i always knew it was government based when the attacks came out of China. Those guys have every route there on lock down and sniffed no cheeseball script kiddie can do that without the Chinese authorities gulagging the kid.
I wouldn't over-estimate the amount of organization or foresight in China.
I just like the idea of some nameless Sheikh coaching William Kristol in the green room 5 minutes before he goes "on air."
…and the Sheikh is thinking to himself "Dance, puppet, dance"
Has anybody in the lamestream media even asked $arah Palin what she thinks about this yet?
Or Willow?
Didn't you see Willow's quote in El Pais, in the Madrid paper of record's account of how it came to possess these files?
"Julian Assange es puro puto, cabron", segun dijo Willow Palin, it said.
Willow is just embarrassed by the wikileaked diplomatic cable in which she told Canadian Prime Minister "Your a fuckin faggot". They also leaked another exchange where she colorfully described Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon as "fuckin faggots."
Trigggh?
Is there really anything interesting in the Wikileaks document dump? According to the media the most embarassing things in there are memos admitting that Karzai is corrupt, Qadaffi is a weirdo, Mededev is a Putin toady and Angela Merkel is boring. Well, duh.
Yeah, but just because everybody knows something doesn't mean you can say it out loud.
You know, like "Trig is a retard."
You know, like "Trig is Levi's baby by Sarah Palin".
FIXE.
LOL, I just noticed the "sticky note" graphic above. That's one I did way back when commenters could post pictures on Wonkette…. ah, good times. Good times.
We all miss your Photoshopping excellence.
Thank you. You are so kind.
There were giants in the earth, in those days.
Maybe the Wonkette staff could give you special privleges. Just don't accept any strings attached like having to comb out Jim's neck beard or serving as Riley's wing man on the weekends.
I think Newell is genetically incapable of growing a fitting neck-beard. Ken does seem to have a nice Rick Rubin going, though.
I miss the old morning news round-ups, the ones with more than three bullet points. I liked living under the illusion that I had read an overview of the news each day. It allowed me to be lazy and still feel "informed." Do I have to start reading "real" news on my own now? Sheesh.
The only big news this round-up missed was Leslie Nielsen's death; otherwise you already are informed.
Yeah, holiday weekend. And sadly, no shoppers were trampled to death in the Black Friday festivities this year.
But you can spray-paint the gravel green, and then it's almost like a lawn.
This is not a lie, non-Arizonans. Some people actually do this here in Sandandgravelstan. (It's rare up here in the cold and lovely mountain country, but elsewhere in our politically blighted state, painting the dirt is an acceptable white-trashy thing to do.)
My family never tried such nonsense, but I've certainly seen my fair share of that. And it always was a strangely blue shade of green that doesn't look remotely grass-colored, so I was baffled. Did the home owners choose that paint color? Why? Or does the paint discolor with exposure to the elements? THESE ARE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS.
I agree. Excellent, even crucial questions. I have also lived in East Texas, where the river-bottom country folk stick colored bottles on tree limbs. Why? (Only later did the natives trend toward plywood cutouts picturing chubby women with bloomers showing under their dresses, ostensibly bending over to tend their flower beds.)
I think anthropologists spend too much time in exotic places and not enough time right here in This Great Land of Ours, examining the crude mores of the gormless American Rube.
The biggest secret hasn't been released yet, how George Soros is really behind all of these events described in wikileaks. Glenn Beck still controls the "real" secrets…
WIKILEAKS: STOP SNITCHIN
Carmelo Anthony has agreed to meet with Assange to address this.
"Today is just another day. That you'll never forget.
Wikileaks. Now on iTunes."
Glennzilla has a thing on the motorcycle-murderfest. I mean, it's mainly a thing pointing out that someone else points out that this is a thing that we'd totally call "terrorism" if the civilians being murdered weren't Iranian.
Then again, Erick the Red wants to murder Australian civilians with motorcycle bombs, also, so honestly the only real take-away is that murdering civilians, with bombs, is the sort of thing that only counts as terrorism if you're not American, or if you are American, brown, also, too.
All the way to the end just to read Mumbly Joe steal my thunder. I am depressed. Oh well, moar anal!
Joke's on you, Palestinians! Your Arab Brethren pretend your struggles are the biggest problem in the Mideast, while secretly coordinating foreign policies with Israel. Oh, if only US diplomacy was more "balanced" in the region!
Palestinians have been betrayed by other Arab governments so often, this can't be a surprise.
"The opinions expressed in diplomatic cables are not necessarily official policy of the United States or any of its affiliiates."
The reason these cables are classified should be blazingly clear by now. We want our people to report back with what they really think is going on where they are. Their opinions are not official policy, which is what the salacious press coverage is trying to imply. If these reports went away, we'd be fucking blind.
And yes, I'd like to buy something not made in China, but the best I can do is get tamales from the little old Mexican lady who lives across the street since I can't buy a Predator drone, an Arleigh Burke class destroyer or nuclear weapons.
On the other hand, the NYT had an editor's note justifying their own role in publishing the leaks, and there was one line that really did stand out- Americans do deserve to have some idea of what is being done in their names/what exactly we're spending tax dollars on. Even if this stuff is relatively banal, compared to the likes of the secret torture prisons we've become accustomed to, a little bit of daylight doesn't really hurt. And by "hurt", I mean hurt, not "potentially embarrass the State Department and/or allies". Let's be serious about what is and isn't actually a threat to national security, for once.
And I also think it is important to know what the countries in the Middle East really think and do behind the scenes, vs. what they say publicly to keep a lid on their people. Everybody likes to dump on Israel because they're supposedly the last colonial outpost in the region, but could it be that the enemy of Iran is their friend?
Peter King, lifelong supporter of the IRA, knows terrorists when he sees them.
Hey now, let's remember that white people, by definition, can't be terrorists. They are freedom fighters…. even if they blow up a federal building in Oklahoma City and kill a bunch of kids in its daycare center.
And nasty old loony white males obsessed with fetuses who stalk and kill abortion providers – they are most certainly NOT domestic terrorists!!!! They're doing Jeebus work fighting for fetal freedums!!!11 Also! Why do the abortionists hate Amurika???? Hennggghhh?
The words "lusts" and "John McCain" used together made my vagina pucker up , as if it had just eaten a lemon
How about declaring Steve King a terrorist? Or the whole of Congress?
In reply to the cable wherein Paris called Washington fat, there was a demarche telling Paris to "STFU you faggot! We're successful because we're hard-ass workers!!"
Miley Cyrus perhaps? She just turned 18.
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