memeorandum: Around the World, Distress Over Iran (New York Times)

9:35 AM ET, November 29, 2010

Top Items:

Cables Obtained by WikiLeaks Shine Light Into Secret Diplomatic Channels — WASHINGTON — A cache of a quarter-million confidential American diplomatic cables, most of them from the past three years, provides an unprecedented look at backroom bargaining by embassies around the world …

Discussion: ThinkProgress, Washington Monthly, CBS News, BBC, CNN, CNET News, The Indian Express, Raw Story, The Wire, Confederate Yankee, And So it Goes in Shreveport, Commentary, The Huffington Post, A Chequer-Board of Nights …, Democracy in America, Spiegel Online, Firedoglake, JOSHUAPUNDIT, Swampland, The Daily Beast, Bark Bark Woof Woof, Gizmodo, Daniel W. Drezner, The Mahablog, The Harvard Crimson, TechCrunch, Wizbang, The Reality-Based Community, The Other McCain, The Daily Dish, The Gateway Pundit, ParaPundit, Daily Kos, Associated Press, Wake up America, The Politico, Le·gal In·sur·rec· tion, Gawker, Engadget, Boing Boing, Top of the Ticket, Outside the Beltway, Crooks and Liars, Wall Street Journal, Threat Level, Danger Room, Right Wing News, The Atlantic Online, FP Passport, Politics Daily, The Agonist, NO QUARTER, Hullabaloo, Mediaite, The Daily Caller, Weasel Zippers, TalkLeft, Philly.com, Booman Tribune and BLACKFIVE, more at Techmeme »

Spiegel Online:

A Superpower's View of the World — 251,000 State Department documents, many of them secret embassy reports from around the world, show how the US seeks to safeguard its influence around the world. It is nothing short of a political meltdown for US foreign policy.

Discussion: No Sheeples Here, Danger Room, The Daily Beast, The Gateway Pundit, Washington Post, Weekly Standard, The Wire, ReadWriteWeb and Hullabaloo

Michael Calderone / Yahoo! News:

Guardian editor says they gave cables to the NY Times — New York Times editors said Sunday that although the paper's reporters had been digging through WikiLeaks trove of 250,000 State Department cables for “several weeks,” the online whistleblower wasn't the source of the documents.

Discussion: The Independent, Outside the Beltway, McClatchy Washington Bureau, MiamiHerald.com, Balloon Juice, Guardian, The Nation, Associated Press, msnbc.com, TechCrunch and The Gateway Pundit, more at Mediagazer »

Pvictorwins / CBS New York:

King: WikiLeaks Release ‘Worse Than Military Attack’ — WASHINGTON (AP/1010 WINS/WCBS 880) — Hundreds of thousands of State Department documents leaked Sunday revealed a hidden world of backstage international diplomacy, divulging candid comments from world leaders and detailing occasional …

Discussion: The Hill, Politics Daily, Bloomberg, LewRockwell.com Blog and Raw Story

David Leigh / Guardian:

How 250,000 US embassy cables were leaked — From a fake Lady Gaga CD to a thumb drive that is a pocket-sized bombshell - the biggest intelligence leak in history — An innocuous-looking memory stick, no longer than a couple of fingernails, came into the hands of a Guardian reporter earlier this year.

Discussion: The Daily Beast, Hot Air, Gizmodo, Washington Post, Weasel Zippers and Associated Press

Walter Shapiro / Politics Daily:

WikiLeaks, Secret Cables and the Downside of America's Security Mania … The embarrassing release of more than a quarter million confidential U.S. diplomatic cables Sunday by WikiLeaks is certain to spawn a hand-wringing national debate over why America cannot keep its secrets.

Discussion: Connecting.the.Dots, Hullabaloo, Washington Post and The BRAD BLOG

David Leigh / Guardian:
US cables leak sparks global diplomatic crisis

Scott / Power Line:
The Times then and now — The New York Times is participating …

Discussion: Right Wing News, EU Referendum and Reuters

New York Times:
A Note to Readers: The Decision to Publish Diplomatic Documents

Nick Allen / Telegraph:
Bradley Manning: The prime suspect of giving files to WikiLeaks

Discussion: Daily Mail, Swampland, TalkLeft and The Reaction

Chris Fenn / Guardian:
US embassy cables: browse the database

Discussion: War Is A Crime .org and Mondoweiss, more at Techmeme »

Haaretz:
WikiLeaks exposé: Barak warned strike on Iran was viable until end of 2010

Discussion: Yourish.com, The Beirut Spring … and Guardian

Allahpundit / Hot Air:
Wikileaks servers under DOS attack ahead of diplomatic document dump …

Discussion: Danger Room, Michelle Malkin, New York Times, Ben Smith's Blog, Guardian, BBC, msnbc.com, Right Wing News, Human Events, TigerHawk, Moe Lane, Associated Press, The League of Ordinary …, The Atlantic Online, Liberty Pundits Blog, Marathon Pundit and Instapundit, more at Techmeme »

Simon Jenkins / Guardian:
WikiLeaks: The job of the media is not to protect the powerful from embarrassment

Discussion: AMERICAblog News and The Staggers, more at Mediagazer »

Anita Gates / New York Times:

Leslie Nielsen, Actor, Dies at 84 — Leslie Nielsen, the Canadian-born actor who in middle age tossed aside three decades of credibility in dramatic and romantic roles to make a new, far more successful career as a comic actor in films like “Airplane!” and the “Naked Gun” series, died on Sunday in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. He was 84.

Discussion: skippy the bush kangaroo, TBogg, Scared Monkeys, Gawker, Boing Boing and Balloon Juice

Kimberly Nordyke / Hollywood Reporter:

Leslie Nielsen Dies at Age 84 — Leslie Nielsen in “Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad” … UPDATED — Leslie Nielsen, the actor best known for starring in such comedies as Airplane! and the Naked Gun film franchise, died Sunday of complications from pneumonia at a hospital near his home in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. He was 84.

Discussion: Pharyngula and Tuned In

Dan Snierson / EW.com:
Leslie Nielsen, ‘Airplane!’ and ‘Naked Gun’ star, dies at 84

Discussion: Rumproast

Associated Press:
Leslie Nielsen, Actor, Dies at 84

Discussion: theblogprof, Michelle Malkin, The New Republic and freerepublic.com

Omri Ceren / Mere Rhetoric:

Wikileaks - Anti-Israel Foreign Policy Experts Got Saudi Arabia, Other Arab Countries 100% Backward On Iran Attack — By — It didn't get nearly as much play as it should have, but Obama's June 2009 meeting with Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah ended with the monarch flying into a tirade …

Discussion: Israellycool, The Atlantic Online, Guardian, RubinReports, Elder of Ziyon, Daily Pundit, The Volokh Conspiracy and Doug Ross

New York Times:
Around the World, Distress Over Iran

Discussion: TPMMuckraker, Big Journalism, Guardian, Commentary, The Daily Dish, The Atlantic Online, Washington Post, The Gateway Pundit, YID With LID, msnbc.com, Outside the Beltway and Israpundit, more at Techmeme »

Borzou Daragahi / Los Angeles Times:
Blasts target Iranian nuclear scientists

Discussion: The Gateway Pundit, iOwnTheWorld.com and Daily Pundit

Stuart Tomlinson / Oregonian:

Portland bomb plot suspect felt betrayed by family, thought living in U.S. was sin — Mohamed Osman Mohamud was angry at his parents for keeping him from jihad and had thought about carrying out an operation, “something like Mumbai,” since he was 17. On the two-year anniversary of the shooting …

Discussion: TalkLeft and ABCNEWS

Los Angeles Times:
Mixed portraits of Oregon terrorism suspect

Discussion: Power Line and Oregonian

Associated Press:
Fire set at mosque where terror suspect worshipped

Discussion: Power Line, Alan Colmes' Liberaland and Weasel Zippers

Lukas I. Alpert / NY Daily News:
Neighbors say wannabe Christmas bomber Mohamed Mohamud embraced …

Discussion: Atlas Shrugs, Scared Monkeys, Jihad Watch, Oregonian and Weasel Zippers

Kevin Conlon / CNN:

Leaked cable suggests American diplomats told to gather intelligence — (CNN) — A 2009 cable sent from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to American U.N. missions and embassies around the world ostensibly directed American diplomats to engage in intelligence-gathering.

Discussion: CANNONFIRE

Mark Mazzetti / New York Times:
U.S. Expands Role of Diplomats in Spying

Discussion: Guardian and War Is A Crime .org

David Carr / New York Times:

A Media False Alarm Over the T.S.A. — If a squadron of mad scientists surrounded by supercomputers gathered in a laboratory to try to conjure a single news topic that would blow up large, they could not touch the T.S.A. pat-down story. — It began with a Drudge Report link to a video …

Discussion: Outside the Beltway and Le·gal In·sur·rec· tion, more at Mediagazer »

Mark Kirk / Chicago Tribune:

First priority? Control federal spending — Today is my first day in the U.S. Senate. With this honor comes a tremendous responsibility to accomplish much for our nation. — My top priority is turning our economy around. In Congress, we had a vigorous debate about the trillion-dollar stimulus.

Discussion: CNN and The Politico

Richard Wolffe / Los Angeles Times:

Obama could learn from Bush — The president could solve his communications problem by studying how his predecessor did it. — The day before his party's shellacking in this month's elections, President Obama sat down with his economic team to examine the single most important issue for voters across the country: jobs.

Discussion: Hullabaloo, Economist's View, Grasping Reality … and Betsy's Page

New York Post:
How the nanny president sees himself — and us

Discussion: Erick's blog, Pundit & Pundette and Tim Blair

Paul Krugman / New York Times:

The Spanish Prisoner — The best thing about the Irish right now is that there are so few of them. By itself, Ireland can't do all that much damage to Europe's prospects. The same can be said of Greece and of Portugal, which is widely regarded as the next potential domino. — But then there's Spain.

Discussion: Daily Kos and Prairie Weather

David A. Lieb / Associated Press:

Talent, Steelman eyeing 2012 Senate bid — Fewer than 50,000 votes separated Democratic challenger Claire McCaskill and Republican incumbent Jim Talent in Missouri's 2006 U.S. Senate race — a difference of only about a dozen votes from each precinct. McCaskill won.

Discussion: The Fix and The Hill