Robot Pirate Ninja

I’ve just started reading through some of the summaries and stories on the recent Wikileaks release of over 250,000 diplomatic cables and I must say,  this stuff is awesome…for international politics geeks.

Most of the world might get interesting in a few tidbits here or there (like Ghaddafi’s Amazonian guard) or some juicy bits of partisan chatter, but for those of us who like to watch the politics and policies unfold on the grand scale, this is an amazing resource of insider information.

There is going to be fallout from this release for years, if not a permanent change in the ways some of this information is handled (if it has happened once, it will happen again). 

Then NYT has a great intro article here.   There’s also going to be parsing and pawing at what one news source or another pulls out of the quarter-million cables.

But in reality is just tons and tons and tons of background on and inside info of what gets done, how it gets done, a very little on why.  

Regardless, for someone like me, watching all this stuff from the outside and guessing here and there on what is going on the inside, having a full and open view of what is going on the onside is like Christmas in late November.

It’s going to be the same for our friends and enemies as well, as there are more than a few major world figures who get the “here’s my full, honest opinion” treatment, which is always dangerous (try it with your boss some time).