Get in line!

In today's Australian (online edition), the MCS(tm) steps up to join a number of outraged countries in their protest about the release of classified embassy cables by WikiLeaks. "The Vatican has hit back[...]" the article begins, and those few words alone made my keyboard duck behind the screen, because of the danger of coffee impact.

Hit back. Yeah, right. They condemn the fact that it was published that senior officials of the church obviously blabbed their dismay at the formation of the Murphy Commission, which was to investigate the sexual abuse by members of the MCS in Ireland. Of course, all the cables mentioning any involvement in the church's attempts to brush matters under the carpet, are "unreliable" and "not exact quotations of Vatican officials". These are not literal quotes, but this is what their statements claim.

Some of the statements are attributed to Tarcisio Bertone (picture), the 'Secretary of State' of MCS City. He was also the guy trying to get the Irish government (and the independent Murphy Commission) to talk to diplomatic channels instead of to other politicians or even - gasp! - the press! Perish the thought, the public might become involved, and there might be people deciding that they want to (finally) cancel their MCS(tm) membership because of that! (A good idea, by the way, highly recommended).

And now that the cat is out of the bag in so many more ways, the Catholic Church sees itself as being allowed the same measure of 'righteous' anger as other, real, countries...

Obviously, not a lot of working grey matter is left in the heads of the so-called 'officials' of MCS City. If I knew anything less about their moronic workings in past centuries, I'd say, now they've gone completely, utterly, totally fuck-nuts.

Alas, it's once again typical.

The pope expresses regret when he hears about another sex scandal, he voices concern when hundreds of people accuse the representatives (officials? Nah! Never!) of the church of molestation, beatings, and sexual abuse, and he promises to take steps so that it will not happen again. Keep in mind that it took a lot of public pressure until he came out with these wise-ass whinie stupid statements!

Hey, fuckers! How about actually taking action and punishing the bastard members of your MCS instead of just blowing out stale warm air?

Just as an example: imagine your 10 year old daughter (or son) gets raped and beaten up by the neighbor, and when presented with evidence, the rapist's family expresses regret and promises to ensure it won't happen again. And when you decide to go public with proof to disclose the vile crime, they express their outrage and call your statements unreliable (despite proof).

Unfortunately, the pope is so far up many (or most) of the world leader's asses, that they don't seem to see enough of him to actually prosecute. On the other hand, there is so much more that WikiLeaks and Julian Assange have done wrong - yeah, let's prosecute that guy instead! That will detract the world from the content of the damning proof documents!

No fucking way!!! Let's not forget: even if Assange is in prison, more cables are released every day. I've taken to reading more of the cables, and less of the news coverage about his legal fight. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to see the guy incarcerated (if he's innocent of rape!), but the important thing is the stuff he published!

That cat is definitely out of the bag! And it will continue roaming for a long time yet.

It might even shit on Razzi's and Bertone's lawn again. One can hope!

Yes! I knew it!

The Moronic Clusterfuck Society(tm) must really be having an 'Oh, crap!' moment now. Our self-declared Mr. "Tolerance and World Peace" caught red-handed, meddling in affairs he and his MCS should rather stay away from, because they know fuck-all about the real world.

He blabbed about not wanting Turkey in the EU because it was a Muslim state, and promptly someone wrote it down. (For the record: I don't want Turkey in the EU, either, simply on the grounds of it being a near-bankrupt state, and the EU already has enough of them...)

Now that wikileaks is getting in full swing to release more and more classified or secret or unclassified cables, I had the suspicion that sooner or later some juicy morsels about my favorite enemy would surface.

And boy, have I been proven right again! Ratzi's been trying for years to push the Catholic Church into a fundamental role for the EU, not taking into account that reformation took place in Europe hundreds of years ago and was quite successful. Apparently, part of this effort was to nudge politicians in the direction of refusing EU membership to Muslim countries on the grounds of their religious beliefs.

He obviously hasn't gotten it through his thick fucking skull yet that religion and politics should be further apart than Earth and the core of Andromeda!

Here's a quote from the acting Foreign Minister of the Vatican (from the above article): "One great fear is that Turkey could enter the EU without having made the necessary advances in religious freedom."

Oh yeah. Religious freedom. As in "if I want to keep my Muslim beliefs, I'm free to do so"? Or rather as in "You're free to believe in a Christian God. Whether you want it or not."

Would it be blasphemous, if an atheist like me says "I'm praying for more wikileaks cables on the MCS(tm)?"

Nah, just kidding. I'm not praying. But I'm hoping!

Quote Unquote

A quote from this lady, with respect to wikileaks:

"There is nothing laudable about endangering innocent people and there is nothing brave about sabotaging the peaceful relations between nations." (Hillary Clinton, US Secretary of State).

I rest my fucking case!

Brainleaks

What could prompt me to write again, after two years of silence? It would take some considerable commotion around the world, or a particularly stupid feat of the MCS(tm) to break lose with another gust of cold vocal air.

Enter wikileaks.

To be honest, the leaks themselves wouldn't have warranted a post in this blog (although some of them are really funny!), but what really blew (and is continuing to blow) my top, is the reaction of those in power, the affected ones, or rather those, who want to make us believe they're among the victims.

Just imagine: you're a country, and every day, you receive dozens, maybe hundreds of reports from your embassies all over the world, and some of the reports are quite juicy, obviously written by ambassadors (or embassy personnel) with a sense of humour, others are merely interesting, yet others downright boring and inconsequential. You file all these reports away (For later use? For release, maybe? To document history? To cover your ass?), intending to keep them secret for the time being, and you store them in a big fat computer system, which is

• designed and protected by obvious dilettantes
• operated and used by disgruntled morons.

And now, for the $1'000'000 question: What is going to happen?

I'm not going to bore you with what the possible answers include, but it's quite clear that none of the idiots in charge picked the right answer. If you set up a disaster-waiting-to-happen, then eventually, a disaster is going to happen. Murphy's Law.

Suddenly, every one is running around like headless chickens: the German media is going bananas about what the cables call their chancellor and their foreign minister, the Italians have a laugh about the terms attributed to Berlusconi (all of them well-deserved), Sarkozy goes into his usual right-wing frenzy, Sweden issues red list notes to Interpol and asks for arrest (for more than dubious reasons), and so on and so on. It's only a question of time, until the Catholic Church has its say... Brace for that! Yuck!

If the European, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Canadian, and Australian officials (and most of the media) would only shut the fuck up, then the US government would be the only whining institution left. And rightly so, they should be.

Get this: the US government is the ONLY part of the world looking bad because of cablegate.

They're the morons who were unable to protect their seemingly sensitive data. Someone fucked up bad, left the security of that computer system to chance, and, hence, should be fired. Someone stole the readily available data, taking advantage of the gaping security hole (memory sticks and all outside connections were severed, but hey, why block a CD drive? CD-ROM = Read Only Memory, so this is safe, right? Duh!). This someone took his sweet time, too: it took months to copy all that data and to smuggle it outside.

If you want to blame someone, blame these two - the one who opened the barn door, and the one who drove the tractor through it!

Stop calling Assange a 'traitor' or a 'thief' or a 'killer', because he neither betrayed, nor stole from, nor killed anyone!

Lieberman, Clinton, Rice, and even Obama (him most of all!) should bite their tongues, turn around, fix what they did wrong, and fucking move on! It's not the end of the world, you know? It's not the end of diplomacy! It's not even the bloody end of diplomacy as we know it! It's going to continue exactly the same way! Does anyone really think this is going to change the way they work? Nope. The only difference now is that the public knows how they work, and they'll have to try even harder to convince us in the future that they're not lying to us. They'll succeed, mind you, but they'll have to work harder for it. (And they should be working bloody hard, for all the power and money they get!)

Summary? 'USG' is the only affected party. Current USG is not even to blame for 5% of the crappy cables, but they're now taking the stored-up heat of a couple of decades. Tough luck. Find the real culprits, and if you're so insistent on it, do something bad to them.

But leave the messenger alone.