Harsh and Immediate

As Assange fights the Swedish honeytrappers his associates keep releasing classified cables, including a revelation today that Colonel Quaddafy threatened "harsh and immediate action" if the Pan Am 103 bomber died in prison in Scotland. Guess the Brits really wanted that BP deal because surely the empire isn't now afraid of some rough treatment of their diplomats.

Interesting too that the UK didn't fear harsh and immediate action from Washington as a result of bowing before that dopey tinpot, unless one considers feigned outrage to be harsh and immediate.

It's clearly a case of realpolitik, but as a result the victims now viewing the bus's exhaust pipe are not other politicians or governments, but the family members and survivors of terrorist attacks. It really seems like the impact of Pearl Harbor Day is decreasing more with each passing year.

MORE 12/7/10

After reading Charlie Martin's piece on the nuts and bolts of classification and whether there was a "second spy", the Gareth Williams spy case pops to memory:

Mr Williams, a computing and maths prodigy whose funeral on Friday was attended by Sir John Sawers, the head of MI6, had made regular trips to the United States, where he worked on secondment to the US National Security Agency (NSA) in Fort Meade, Maryland, helping to create defences against cyberattack on banking and infrastructure systems.

He was found dead inside a bag with a padlock on the outside.

Mr Williams is understood to have been a key member of a joint team assembled by MI6, GCHQ and the NSA at Fort Meade, where he was helping create defences for both Britain and the US against cyber attack by hostile countries.

His disappearance occurred sometime in mid-late August; the WikiLeak leak on Afghanistan dumped out on July 25, 2010. Perhaps he was working on mitigation under the premise that more leaks were coming. When the British Independent reported on this in late August they also simultaneously reported on a think tank piece about the need for less secrecy in government to prevent conspiracy theories from running rampant, which WikiLeaks was designed to counter. The article itself contains dozens of comments about 9/11 being a conspiracy.

Speaking of the NSA, a story recently surfaced about a possible mole at Ft Meade, although no indication was given of any linkage to WikiLeaks or Williams. They do mention the Russian spies fingered last summer--late June to be precise--and the story also highlights the defection of the Russian official who supposedly did the fingering. Shall we forget that business about the FBI having them under surveillance for 10 years?

Irony of ironies, one of those spies was using a British passport and just this past Monday a Russian spy was uncovered working for a liberal MP in the UK's House of Parliament. Dots all over the place.

One thing these stories tend to show--that the tone of the leaks regarding Moscow is pretty accurate. Or in other words, while the hammer and sickle may be gone from Red Square the Russians are still a force to be reckoned with around the world, especially when they're 28 and red-headed. Qudaffy better do a background check on that Ukrainian 'nurse' real soon. And is it any wonder Hillary wants to reset retire?