Mzgraciev: Stratfor the memories

Kos exploded around lunchtime yesterday with news from the WikiLeaks dump of internal mails from the global strategies espionage firm/paranoid travel magazine Stratfor, and the revelation that Israel had destroyed all of Iran's putative nuclear weapons facilities sometime late last year. It was wonderful watching how the wisdom of crowds works—by the time I was done with lunch just about the whole mob of us had come to realize that the story was just idle gossip and [jump]
that anybody who is paying that firm for their special client subscription reports is what P.T. Barnum referred to in terms of "there's one born every minute."

I do like the Christian Science Monitor 's take:

an initial survey of the e-mails published so far on WikiLeaks's own website reveals not so much a corporate Central Intelligence Agency as a geopolitical version of the comedy “The Office,” complete with lunch theft, ribald interoffice accusations, jokes about interns, and unsubstantiated blather about world politics.

Or maybe like the National Review Online staff. The lunch was a frozen container of Amy's tortellini with pesto.

One of their clients, the strategic and tech consulting firm Booz Allen, pays them around $20,000 a year for their subscription.

But their most notable writers, Fred Burton and Scott Stewart—the only staffers with any actual intelligence experience, having worked as special agents in the state department's diplomatic security division—allow you to get a look at much of their writing for free, at sites like:

World: Today’s News/Christian Views
Zimbio (blog)
Future Brief (ex-magazine and semi-active website)
Constructive Society World News Review

Their reading list is at a similar level of sophistication; one of their best minds, Marko Papic, gets his hot ideas from reading Forbes Magazine.

As for Fred Burton, he may have a pretty active fantasy life; one of his flights is about a long chat with Penny Pritzker, who supposedly told him in November how disappointed she was with President Obama

over Obama's "weakness and wimpyness" towards China ("Fred, they only understand strength") and Obama's failure to meet with the Dhali Lama. The fundraiser stated he/she [we learn that it is "Mrs. P." later in the exchange] was personally disappointed ("betrayed") for helping Obama get into The White House and does not intend to support Obama next election, absent a drastic turn-around.

(It's that confidential "Fred, they only understand strength," that makes me certain the interview never took place.)

Burton also claims that Pritzker was a major funder of Acorn, which means that he himself must be a pretty avid reader of birther websites like Citizen Wells News, because you can't find that story anywhere else (not that there was every anything wrong with funding Acorn, just that she didn't happen to be doing it, because if she had it would be reported in some respectable venue; and because it isn't what I'd her imagine her style to be, just like it wouldn't be her style to drape her arm around Fred Burton's shoulder and tell him how she likes to deal with the Chinese*).

Dear heroes of the environmental movement—may all your enemies be this inept!

*If Penny Pritzker ever did come face to face with Fred Burton it would undoubtedly be on an occasion where she was paying for his drinks along with those of hundreds of other people, so she would courteously hope he is having a good time and then spot somebody she's desperate to catch up with, at the other end of the room—"So nice to meet you, Frank—is it Frank?"