Manning is the McGuffin

by Don Miguel Posted on December 7, 2010

Whatever else it may have been, the disclosure of 250,000 State Department cables by WikiLeaks promises to provide material to the punditariat for weeks or months.

The revelations themselves were not all that surprising. The real news is — as with the Climategate files last year — that many of the most cynical explanations of what was happening turned out to be true:

–Charlie Martin

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Latest on Sun, 02:13 pm
miguel cervantes: Btw, the Boadicea of the Borealis, is back.
miguel cervantes: Interesting, however that doesn't explain the full spectrum nature of PRISM, or any of the other programs,
miguel cervantes: http://www.stoa.org/diotima/anthology/artemisia.shtml
miguel cervantes: Well following Greenwald down the rabbit hole, always seemed a dodgy exercise, Le Carre's at the end of the Singularity,
CK MacLeod: Tried to like the latest Die Hard. Wasn't all that easy. It sorta passed the time, but the scenario was so contrived it required clumsy exposition that still didn't really explain things. Will be easily one of the best films of the year though for those whose main cinematic interest is trucks and helicopters crashing and exploding. Also very sentimentally into "dad" issues so a good Father's Day movie even beyond the normal "guy movie" aspect.
miguel cervantes: They threw in a mcGuffin like they did in Die Hard with the Army major, who was Colonel Stuart, (the Oliver North manque) which sort of subverted the point of the story.

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- Government by Other Means (3)
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    Thanks, Robert – very thoughtful and articulate comment. First, I’d say that elements of the critique ought to apply to anarchism and left-libertarianism, but some might...
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Last Five
What We Find Interesting: Reply to Noah Millman on Obsolete IR Realism
If any serious attempt to define the American national interest leads us to an overdetermining or geographically, political-economically, and ideologically mutually conditioning internationalism or transnational impetus, borne out in the great events and ideas and seemingly inexorable material processes of the last two centuries, resulting in the state of the world as we know it, then nation-state Realism in relationship to America turns itself inside out or upside down.→
Re-Statement on the World State of States, in Seven Theses, in Relation to International Relations Realism
The United State of America, by process of geographical and historical election, and by related ideological pre-disposition, plays a unique role in the administration of the global state interest, a role seemingly little understood by many whose occupations and pre-occupations are explaining, arguing about, and, in some places, denying it.→
Government by Other Means
In the libertarian imagination or, as Professor Hanley prefers, the libertarian psyche, the reduction in the power of government (or "government") means an increase in power for each libertarian or for the individual, which latter, as individuality, is presented as an ideal, but which each individual knows exclusively and therefore universally only through and as him- or herself. The libertarians do not recognize popularly sovereign liberal-democratic government as an extension of themselves, or, put more precisely, of this self. They may exploit or even admire democratic impulses and particular constitutional traditions, but their views are in this sense profoundly anti-democratic and constitutionally anti-constitutional.→
Syria and the Neo-Imperial Interest
What may be "unreasonable" is any belief that in the final analysis hard and fast distinctions along Isquith's lines – between a human rights regime and a neo-imperial regime – can ever remain very hard or fast, or sustainable at all. Put differently, "Responsibility to Protect" may be inherently and objectively imperialistic or neo-imperialistic, may pre-suppose a global state and global guardian of its interests, but saying so may confirm that the neo-imperial interest, which most of us may embrace more or less unconsciously, includes values, goals, and norms that we consider universal and as a matter of irrevocable and foundational commitment.→
No wonder is thogh that he were astoned
Precisely because you are deafened, however, you cannot hear anyone explaining the fact to you, or trying to direct you to shelter: Philosophy says to you, "You can't hear me - let's go somewhere quiet," but you of course cannot make out the words, nor will you read its lips (perhaps you are also blinded by the lightning flashes).→