Now that Wikileaks has leaked all the shocking surprise stuff (the Saudis are duplicitous snakes! Berlusconi has an eye for the ladies! the Pope is Catholic!) they’re really scraping the bottom of the barrel. The other day I myself turned up in their latest hold-the-foot-of-page-37 stunning revelation. In a cable to the State Department from the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa, some diplomat named Jacobson explains Canada’s free speech battles. Sample paragraph:
2. (U) In 2003, Ontario attorney Richard Warman had filed separate human rights complaints against white supremacist Marc Lemire, journalist Mark Steyn, and Maclean,s magazine with CHRC, the Ontario Human Rights Commission, and the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal for the dissemination of allegedly anti-Semitic and anti-gay hate speech in an article published by Maclean,s and on postings to Lemire,s websites. At the provincial level, the cases were ultimately dismissed — in Ontario, for lack of jurisdiction, and, in British Columbia, for failure to meet the standard of hate speech (reftels).
Even if (unlike yours truly) you’ve no interest in the subject of the cable, it’s a fascinating glimpse of the level of expertise you get from America’s handsomely remunerated foreign service. Almost every single fact in that paragraph is wrong: Richard Warman has never filed complaints against me or Maclean’s. He has never filed complaints before the Ontario “Human Rights” Commission or the British Columbia “Human Rights” Tribunal. The Maclean’s article was accused not of anti-Semitic and anti-gay hate speech but of “Islamophobia.’ The British Columbia case was not dismissed: It went to trial, and the troika of judges eventually found us not guilty. Etc.
Assuming that anyone in the State Department is remotely interested in the topic, almost everything they took away from this embassy cable would be wrong. What’s the point of paying some lavishly tenured over-pensioned striped-pants deadbeat to sit around the chancery all day cutting bits out of newspapers if you’ve got more chance of getting an accurate picture of what’s going on from plucking a random unpaid blogger out of a 12-second Google search? Or are you entirely confident that when it comes to, say, the Iranian nuclear program or jihadist sympathies in the Pakistani military that the level of expertise will be any greater than in Canadian “human rights” analysis?
As a U.S. taxpayer, I’m naturally revolted at having to pay for the above “briefing.” The tragedy of America’s impending collapse is that, by any rational measure, at least three-quarters of its spendaholic binge has been entirely wasted. That embassy cable is a small but telling example.
Bureaucrats and pols aren't exactly the "elites" we are led to believe, huh?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhat? No mention of your singing abilities? Obviously, these wizards of intelligence are asleep at the switch!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhat was it Tom Daschle said? If you want to professionaalize, you have to federalize.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseBut the good news is that if we reduce the Fed's share of GNP to say, 10%, we really won't be missing anything.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAlways fun to read about yourself in the gossip columns brought to you at taxpayer expense eh Mark?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI'd like someone to quickly explain to me why Mark Steyn isn't on the roster for the NR 2011 Caribbean Cruise.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseJust what is it that we pay the State Department to do - other than undertake self-initiated investigations for the sole purpose of demonizing Republican presidents?
What a waste of taxpayer money.
Perhaps the US should instead employ The Enquirer to do whatever it is the State Department does. At least then some of their reports would actually be factual.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIf the majority of the dumbed-down American populace had a clue how the wool has been pulled over their eyes by their own government, there would be a blood-letting of unprecedented proportions. Please continue, Mr. Steyn, to educate and illuminate for the sheeple.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseJust think! by 2024, this will be the guy in charge of your kidney transplant at Barack Memorial Federal Hospital!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe problem with America's elites is, they're not!
Steyn, you're really getting up in the world..."mentioned in dispatches". Actually, from what you tell us, why would anyone be seeking intelligence (of any kind) in Canada, to begin with?
I missed you so much! Please tell me you won't be going away again. Please?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHmmmm. I wonder. Would "some diplomat named Jacobson" have been the ambassador himself, David Jacobson? (An Obama appointee, and Chicago lawyer, need it be said.)
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIt's not easy cabling from the wartime location of.....Ottawa.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseMark Steyn......the thinking woman's Julian Assange.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseMark
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIt was a "lavishly tenured over-pensioned striped-pants deadbeat" CANADIAN diplomat that wrote/sent that cable, by your own description (TO Foggy Bottom, FROM Ottawa).
I hate to defend our home-grown, USA, LT,O-P,S-P,D diplomats, but there's no evidence that they "took away" ANYTHING from this cable, much less that they paid any of your, my, or anyone's money for the "briefing."
Did I miss something?
Imagine what our unemployment rate would be if we fired even half of the government employees who are incompetent.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseMark,
I wouldn't view the quoted paragraph as indicative of incompetence.
The complaint you faced was Islamaphobia. That's not something that gets the politically correct echelons in America particularly exercised, not yet at least. It's still a relatively marginal curse, though growing by leaps and bounds.
But you're sandwiched in there, rather ambiguously, with "white supremacist," "anti-semitic," and "anti-gay." Those are three fastballs thrown directly at your head.
I don't know what the final disposition or impact of such a cable is, but it strikes me as straightforward disinformation and slander. Rumors behind future news. Yes, there is a certain tone of incompetence to it, but it's overall organization strikes me as deliberate.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIt's this kind of toxic sludge, an amalgam of left wing bias, laziness and incompetence that keeps dragging the USA toward the socialist precipice 24/7. It's not interrupted by nominally Republican administrations nor reeled back sufficiently, just slowed somewhat. Even Reagan didn't overcome the drip drip drip of leftist poison by the little people, the Democrat bureaucrats who hire only their own kind. Conservatives would have to be the same busy little beavers as the lefties to take back the entire political infrastructure starting with local school boards most critically. Conservatives who think mere voting in federal elections will bring about change are deluded. We have been asleep at the switch too long.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseDavid E. M. Thompson,
You seem to have little grasp of how diplomatic missions work. Where do you get the idea that a citizen of the host nation would be sending a cable from the US (i.e. "United States") embassy to Foggy Bottom ?
On the information presented, the cable's author MUST be a US citizen and CANNOT be Canadian (though the text of the cable may perhaps have been drafted by an LES).
On the more general point, has no-one read "Our Man in Havana" recently ? Tells you pretty much all you need to know about low-level diplomatic grunt work :)
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse@David E.M. Thompson,
One must be more careful with such sloppy corrections.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseMr. Drei
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYes: from the US Embassy in Ottawa. I should have read it again, by dawn's early light, before commenting.
My apologies, Mark.
David