Wikileaks/Cablegate: Hillary has an explanation for Cristina

Wouldn’t you have loved to be a fly on the wall when this little chit-chat was going down?

The US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, made a phone call today to the president of Argentina, Cristina Fernández, having to do with the confidential documents made public by Wikileaks, according to diplomatic sources.

The state news agency, Telam, reported that Fernández was “surprised” by Clinton’s midday call, in which the latter offered “explanations” over the diplomatic telegrams referring to Argentina.

The Argentine minister of external affairs, Héctor Timerman, also spoke last night with the State Department’s Undersecretary of Political Affairs, William Burns, according to the agency.

The first leaked documents revealed that the US State Department sought information via its embassy in Buenos Aires over the mental state and spirits of president Cristina Fernández.

The telegrams also revealed links between a high-level functionary with corruption and narcotrafficking, and that the Argentine president had promised to “co-operate with the Government of the United States in Bolivia” to improve the relationship between the two countries.

Translation mine.

That last little bit sounds rather encouraging, considering how ex-ambassador Goldilocks—Dubya’s man–fucked things up between Bolivia and the US by hanging out with putschists. It also speaks to something else: Cristina has been one of Evo’s most outspoken friends. And she is very critical of US imperialism. Apparently the State Dept. got that message loud and clear, although it also made demeaning reference to her mental health. As though one couldn’t be an anti-imperialist and sane at the same time. (Actually, the opposite is true–you’d have to be insane to support imperialism!)

The big story here, of course, is that the State Dept. has been badly embarrassed by the revelation of its spooky business, and by the confirmation that all these uppity LatAm democrats have, in fact, NOT been talking out their tinfoil hats whenever they condemned the US for supporting this fascist faction or that. Not only has an undersecretary spoken to the Argentine foreign minister, but the fact that Hill herself has had to call Cristina, well…that’s bigbigBIG. It means there’s gonna be an awful lot of fence-mending. That’s good. Let’s hope it goes beyond the superficial. It’s no use apologizing and saying “it won’t happen again”…only to let it happen again, this time with more secrecy. It’s not the secrecy that needs to change, it’s the behavior that’s being hushed up.

And here’s a word to whomever at the State Dept. is reading me: If you’re smart, you’ll knock off the interfering, quit financing fake democrats, and learn to do business honorably. Yes, that’s right: negotiate with the actual elected leaders upfront, in good faith. No more Wilsonian carrot-and-stick bullshit; manipulation and bullying are out. These people aren’t idiots. They elect their own leaders now; you don’t get to pick and choose those for them. They might even quit yelling “Yankee go home” if the Yanks would only learn how to behave. And how to behave is simple: QUIT ACTING LIKE YOU OWN THE PLACE!!!

Now, I wonder who that corrupt, narco-connected “high-level functionary” is, and what country s/he is from; the article wasn’t at all precise about that. (I can only translate what I see, after all.) Spidey-sense tells me it’s someone with the CIA.