A painting of me

Cablegate: On Persians

   29 November 2010, early morning

WikiLeaks has released 250,000 classified US diplomatic cables. I haven’t looked at them all, but I am guessing this is the best one:

PERHAPS THE SINGLE DOMINANT ASPECT OF THE PERSIAN
PSYCHE IS AN OVERRIDING EGOISM. ITS ANTECEDENTS LIE
IN THE LONG IRANIAN HISTORY OF INSTABILITY AND INSECURITY
WHICH PUT A PREMIUM ON SELF-PRESERVATION. THE PRACTICAL
EFFECT OF IT IS AN ALMOST TOTAL PERSIAN PREOCCUPATION
WITH SELF AND LEAVES LITTLE ROOM FOR UNDERSTANDING POINTS
OF VIEW OTHER THAN ONE’S OWN.

— By Victor L. Tomseth, from the Tehran Embassy, Cable 79TEHRAN8980, NEGOTIATIONS.

This was written/sent a few months before the hostage crisis. He was one of the top three ranking people captured when the students took over the embassy. He is on LinkedIn, which is both strange and interesting.

Update: This was originally just a link-post.

 

Comments

  1. Reading this one right now about a wedding in Dagestan.

    by mk on November 28 2010, 11:51 pm   #

  2. I also like how the locals and the DEA found $52 million in cash on Ahmed Zia Massoud when he visted the UAE. That’s a good one.

    by mk on November 29 2010, 4:04 pm   #

  3. This one was also interesting:

    From the small mountain of diplomatic cables that WikiLeaks is now slowly putting up at their website, one significant historical document has so far gotten only scant mention. It’s dated February 6, 2007 and directed to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. It reflects a meeting between John M. Koenig, the senior career diplomat at the U.S. Embassy in Berlin, and Rolf Nikel, the deputy national security advisor for Germany. The subject was the criminal investigation into the kidnapping and torture of Khaled El-Masri, a German greengrocer from the town of Neu-Ulm, seized in a case of mistaken identity. Koenig, aware that German prosecutors had issued arrest warrants against thirteen U.S. government agents who were involved in El-Masri’s abduction and torture, and that an effort would shortly be made to enforce them internationally, was pressing the German government to block this effort.

    — Scott Horton on Harpers

    by ramanan on November 30 2010, 9:20 am   #

  4. A good round up on Cablegate by Waxy.

    by ramanan on December 2 2010, 1:32 pm   #

  5. The Guardian sub-site is where I usually go for stories about the cables, particularly their live blog.

    The NY Times also has a sub-site, but it doesn’t seem as comprehensive. The Lede is their equivalent to the Guardian’s News Blog.

    Foreign Policy created a blog just for WikiLeaks.

    Der Spiegel is also a WikiLeaks media partner, and they have their own site too.

    There is of course lots of commentary from the many international affairs blogs.

    by mk on December 5 2010, 3:36 pm   #

  7. Assange has an editorial in the Australian.

    by ramanan on December 7 2010, 3:52 pm   #

  8. If they keep releasing cables at their current rate (1027 in 10 days), this thing’s going to go on for about 7 years.

    by mk on December 7 2010, 6:40 pm   #

  9. It was weird to come across Julian Assange’s port scanner in a book I was reading yesterday.

    by mk on December 7 2010, 11:12 pm   #

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