Unlimited Wikileaks Shenanigans

[Cain]

Oh man, Cain, you must be LOVING this!

I am....but I really want the original texts.  As in, I am willing to kill slightly inconvenience someone for them.

In fact, I have a friend whose brother is the deputy foreign editor of a UK national newspaper...I might have to apply some pressure and see if he can acquire me the originals... I'll even settle for highly edited versions of them.

[Cain]

Actually, you know....looking over the headlines of this, nothing of real importance has been leaked.  Sure, this is an embarassment, a slap in the face for the USA....but what really have we learnt?  The CIA has kidnap squads in Europe?  Known that since 2007.  That Kim Jong-il isn't in great health?  Dude never looked healthy in the first place.  That the USA and UK spied on the UN?   A GCHQ whistleblower revealed that in 2003, after the Iraq War got underway.  Most of this could've been cribbed from the international pages of any major daily newspaper.

For all the scrambling and honest panic on the faces of the State Department stooges, I was hoping something on a par with the Pentagon Papers was going to be released.  But apparently not.

The strategic implications of this are rather interesting, but I'll save those for once I get back from school.

[Requia ☣]

I was going to say that nothing here is really a surprise.  At best it'd be nice to have the documents so I could have them when I'm asked for a citation, instead of trying to find newspaper articles on sites that move things every few weeks.

[Triple Zero]

I'm mostly giggling at the stories of diplomatic embarrassments

"pants down" is what I keep thinking

Daniel Ellsberg seems to agree with you, Cain:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-06-11/daniel-ellsberg-wikileaks-julian-assange-in-danger/

... any serious risk to that national security is extremely low. There may be 260,000 diplomatic cables. It's very hard to think of any of that which could be plausibly described as a national security risk. Will it embarrass diplomatic relationships? Sure, very likely—all to the good of our democratic functioning ... [Wikileaks] has not yet put out anything that hurt anybody's national security.

... having read a hell of a lot of diplomatic cables, I would confidently make the judgment that very little, less than one percent, one percent perhaps, can honestly be said to endanger national security. That's distinct [from the percentage that could cause] embarrassment—very serious embarrassment, [if people] realize that we are aware of highly murderous and corrupt operations by people and that we are supporting them. It is very seriously embarrassing..If the choice is between putting none of them out, as the State Department would like, and putting all of them out, I definitely feel our national security would be improved if they were put out. Between those two choices, I would rather see them all of them out. It would help understand our own foreign policy and give us the chance to improve it democratically. I hope they are out, I hope we get to see them.

This guy is somewhat more pissed off, according to Al Jazeera:

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2010/11/20101128211347486244.html

This is pretty devastating. The essence of our foreign policy is our ability to talk straight and honest with our foreign counterparts and to keep those conversations out of the public domain. This massive leak puts that most basic of diplomatic requirements at risk in the future.

Think of relations with Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Afghanistan, governments who we need to work with us in defeating al-Qaeda. Their performance has been uneven in the past, for a variety of reasons, but this kind of leak will seriously hinder our ability to persuade these governments to support our counterterrorism priorities in the future.

Whoever was behind this leak should be shot and I would volunteer to pull the trigger.

I think what's most important may not be whether the facts are new, but also that they are reappearing worldwide again as short summary paragraphs of "horrible/bad stuff the USA has done" [not implying they're the only one BTW] on newspaper frontpages worldwide. As opposed to spread over several months/years as dense notes from which it's hard to draw connections or determine the significance of on the international pages of newspapers.

So, maybe not so much news (yet) for you, Cain, but for the general public it's a good reminder of stuff that hasn't generally got much place in journalistic discourse so far.

Maybe it's kind of comparable to the recent thing with the FireSheep extension. It did something simple (network sniffing) that the tech crowd had been aware of for at least 10 years, yet everybody kept ignoring the elephant in the room. Then this dude made a Firefox extension so every highschool kid of starbux hipster could grab all Twitter and Facebook accounts floating in any wireless-enabled air, and unsurprisingly everybody started shitting their pance. ... Except then the media attention died down and nobody did much of anything and it's still up to uses to not log into any website while on an unsecured wireless connection--but I digress.

[Triple Zero]

Okay, not all of it is embarassing, at least some of it is also fucking AWESOME:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/28/american-escape-iran-horse-turkey/print

Embassy cable tells of elderly American's escape from Iran

Man, 75, rode horse over freezing mountain range into Turkey after officials confiscated his passport

When Hossein Ghanbarzadeh Vahedi, a 75-year-old American of Iranian descent, decided to visit relatives in Tehran in May 2008, he took a flight from Los Angeles in the normal way. When he returned home, his means of transport was somewhat less orthodox.

After seven months in which he was prevented from leaving Iran, had his passport confiscated and saw his appeals ignored by the revolutionary courts, Vahedi took matters into his own hands. In a daring escape, he mounted a horse, hired two guides, and began a perilous 14-hour overnight climb across the freezing mountains of north-western Iran into eastern Turkey. After that he took a bus.

On 9 January 2009, Vahedi turned up at the consular section of the US embassy in Ankara and asked for assistance. To the evident astonishment of American diplomats, Vahedi appeared in good health, but for "a few aches and pains" caused by a fall.

Vahedi's previously untold ordeal, and its happy conclusion, is related in a confidential diplomatic cable from the Ankara embassy seen by the Guardian. In it Vahedi, who left Iran during the 1979 Islamic revolution, tells how his sojourn to his parents' graves and ancestral home turned into a nightmare. His passport was confiscated at Tehran airport as he was about to fly home and the Iranian authorities repeatedly refused to return it, he said. There appeared to be two reasons. One was "simple extortion": it was made clear, he said, that $150,000 (£92,000) would facilitate his departure.

Second, Vahedi said, Iranian government officials told him that he should tell his LA-based sons to stop promoting concerts in the Gulf by Persian pop singers that were considered "anti-regime". He replied that his sons were typical "strong, independent" Americans who would do no such thing.

Of the four commonly used illegal escape routes, he opted for the mountain trail into Turkey. "At one point during the 14-hour ride, the escorts had to physically hug him to keep him warm," the cable recounted. "As an inexperienced rider, hours into the climb, Vahedi lost his concentration and fell off the horse, tumbling into the woods. He told [diplomats] that at this point he really believed he was going to die by freezing to death on a mountainside."

Even when he reached the other side of the border, Vahedi's ordeal was not over. Turkish officials declared him an illegal immigrant and ordered his deportation back to Iran. Luckily for him, US embassy officials had a quiet word with the Turkish foreign ministry – and he was allowed to fly home.

[Adjective Noun]

Relevant to this thread - WIKILEAKS was last night accused of putting lives at risk after destroying an Afghan village with an unmanned drone

[Disco Pickle]

Relevant to this thread - WIKILEAKS was last night accused of putting lives at risk after destroying an Afghan village with an unmanned drone

that entire article is 

[Prince Glittersnatch III]

Actually, you know....looking over the headlines of this, nothing of real importance has been leaked.  Sure, this is an embarassment, a slap in the face for the USA....but what really have we learnt?  The CIA has kidnap squads in Europe?  Known that since 2007.  That Kim Jong-il isn't in great health?  Dude never looked healthy in the first place.  That the USA and UK spied on the UN?   A GCHQ whistleblower revealed that in 2003, after the Iraq War got underway.  Most of this could've been cribbed from the international pages of any major daily newspaper.

For all the scrambling and honest panic on the faces of the State Department stooges, I was hoping something on a par with the Pentagon Papers was going to be released.  But apparently not.

The strategic implications of this are rather interesting, but I'll save those for once I get back from school.

As I said before only a fraction of the files have been released. Most people think hes saving the more shocking stuff for later.
Then there is also the insurance file which he claims contains incriminating evidence.

[Jasper]

If it does, why isn't he publishing it?  Isn't incrimination of guilty parties his goal?

[Requia ☣]

I could be personally incriminating, rather than professionally.  After all, knowing that a politician ordered an assassination or orchestrated a terrorist bombing won't hurt them as much as if its revealed they had an affair, and revealing affairs isn't the wikileaks goal.

[Jasper]

Don't you mean... er...

Actually, you might be right.

[Remington]

[Prince Glittersnatch III]

Wikileaks to release info on Bank Executives in early 2011.

http://blogs.forbes.com/andygreenberg/2010/11/29/exclusive-wikileaks-will-unveil-major-bank-scandal/?boxes=Homepagechannels

Sweet merciful fuck January cannot come soon enough.

[Prince Glittersnatch III]

http://cablegate.wikileaks.org/reldate/2010-11-29_0.html

New leaks.

Of particular interest:

http://cablegate.wikileaks.org/cable/2010/01/10SHENYANG5.html

^North Korea and china relations.

[Telarus]

http://world-news.newsvine.com/_question/2010/11/29/5544128-rep-peter-king-has-called-for-wikileaks-to-be-designated-a-terrorist-organization-what-do-you-think


POLL