The naked emperor by Pepe Escobar

[Jefferson23]

Dec. 1, 2010

President Bush: Frank, please consider filling a post I'm creating. It may mean long hours and dangerous nights, surrounded by some of the scummiest elements in our society.

Frank: You want me to be in your cabinet?
- The Naked Gun 2 ฝ, starring Leslie Nielsen

Whatever the spin, the fact is that 1.6 gigabytes of text files on a memory stick spanning 251,287 leaked United States State Department cables from more than 250 embassies and consulates are not exactly bound to provoke "a political meltdown" - as German magazine Der Spiegel has put it - concerning the foreign policy of the world's declining hyperpower.

Behind the multiple, hypocritical layers of spin served to the
frantic 24/7 news cycle, politics is mostly a tacky reality show. And that's what the latest WikiLeaks show graphically lays bare. A Muammar Gaddafi that applies botox and just can't get enough of his sexy Ukrainian nurse belongs to the realm of Big Brother.

Although it would all make for great TV, it's hardly a scoop that for US diplomats Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad is "Hitler", Afghan President Hamid Karzai is "paranoid", French President Nicolas Sarkozy is an "emperor with no clothes", "vain and feckless" Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is fond of "wild parties", German Chancellor Angela Merkel is "rarely creative", Russian President Dmitry Medvedev "plays Robin to Putin's Batman" or North Korea's Dear Leader Kim Jong-il is a "flabby old chap" suffering from "physical and psychological trauma".

But to believe, as US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton does, that these disclosures constitute "an attack not only on American foreign policy interests but on the international community"; or that WikiLeaks, as President Barack Obama has put it, committed a serious crime, is to display nothing but tacky imperial arrogance. As if the world didn't have the right to gorge itself on the kind of political junk food served to a few consumers inside the Washington palaces of power.

in full: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/LL01Ak01.html

[bemildred]

1. K&R for Pepe. nt