New Wikileaks Dump is Unconscionable

I find it interesting that so many here focus on the leaks that deal with the US and not other nations as if the embarrassment lies only with the US. What about Saudi Arabia and the following:


"The preliminary review of the cables by New York Times and the Guardian reveals the duplicity of many Arab nations on foreign policy -- especially in the case of Iran. For example, in the past few years, Arab nations have publicly countered Israeli propaganda that Iran is a bigger threat to the world, than the resolution of the Palestinian issue, with claims that the failure to bring a just solution to the Palestinians was the number one issue for Arabs and Muslims. But apparently, privately these same nations have been parroting Bibi Netanyahu's mantra to the U.S., repeatedly asking the US to bomb Iran and even invade it with ground troops.

The Saudis refer to Iran -- a fellow "Islamic nation" -- as "evil", and have asked the U.S. to "cut off the head of the snake". The same cables also reveal that even now the main financiers of al Qaeda are Saudi donors. American presidents George W. Bush and Barack H. Obama have identified al Qaeda as the biggest threat to the U.S., and yet they collude with the nation whose citizens are its biggest financiers. Why don't the Saudis cut off the head of the real snake by arresting and imprisoning al Qaeda's financiers? Most Americans know that fifteen of the nineteen terrorists that attacked the US on September 11, 2001, were Saudis. None were Iranians. A significant number of foreign fighters who joined al Qaeda in Iraq were Saudis. This is a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black.
(Do not interpret my criticism of Saudi Arabia as support for Iran. Its current leaders are a bunch of thugs who stole governance from their own people by force and made a mockery out of the idea of an Islamic democracy.)

It seems that on key issues Arab foreign policy is the same as Israel. Except Israel is open, and Arab states are not. In the future, if we wish to understand Arab foreign policy, all we have to do is take Israeli foreign policy and add hypocrisy (nifaaq) to it; voila."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/muqte...es-muslim-governments-hypocrisy_b_788963.html


What about the covering up US drone attacks?

"The Yemeni government covered up US drone strikes against al-Qaeda there and claimed the bombs were its own, according to the WikiLeaks documents."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...iLeaks-Yemen-covered-up-US-drone-strikes.html


What about the cables indicating the corruption of the Afghan government?
If anything the cables show international government complicity not a single nations attempt to pull the wool over the eyes of the public.

It seems that muslim nations in the middle east don't smell any better than the christian ones in the West.

I bet the Israeli's are pissing themselves with laughter over this one.
 
I doubt that they're laughing. Israelis need their backroom dictator friends around the region, not only for oil but also to keep the popular consensus on Israel from finding legitimate footing, and mobilizing.

Rising Shi'a-majority solidarity and confidence along the Sunni-controlled Western shores of the Gulf are prone to a dangerous cascade of instability if US meddling continues like a bull in a china-shop, and if US clout and logistical reserves continue to break down.

And US implications in WL are of paramount concern to Israel, because as the US empire and economy lose footing, so goes Israel's artificial economy, propped up by US payouts and bullying in Israel's stead.

Also generally, the problem with US corruption is more a global issue than (for instance) corruption in the Kuwaiti government. Because Arab states are not invading and occupying foreign lands, straight comparisons of which governments (US or Arab) are the least accountable don't apply equally. Kuwait is accountable to Kuwaitis; Yemen to Yemenis; but the USA is accountable to the world, wherever we interject our self-proclaimed authority. Just as US public opinion is largely absent from government policy, so it is in the Mideast. However, there are many highly-strategic but unstable regimes in the Mideast, far more vulnerable than the US government.

I don't think that there is a lot of laughing going on in Israel about WikiLeaks. Although there may be some filtering in what "cablegate" messages involving Israel are discussed in major media, we have already seen that there is Israeli dirty laundry in the mix, and likely more to come.
 
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hypewaders said:
I don't think that there is a lot of laughing going on in Israel about WikiLeaks. Although there may be some filtering in what "cablegate" messages involving Israel are discussed in major media, we have already seen that there is Israeli dirty laundry in the mix, and likely more to come.
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Some more Israeli dirty laundry:
Netanyahu has been very careful to keep his positions on Israel's future borders very close to the vest.

The Feb. 26, 2009 cable, dated two weeks after the Israeli leader was elected, says "Netanyahu expressed support for the concept of land swaps, and emphasized that he did not want to govern the West Bank and Gaza but rather to stop attacks from being launched from there."
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If that's all true, it sounds like Netanyahu is far more of a realist and a peacenik in private than he's sounded in public. Must be under a lot of internal pressure from the radical right, I wonder what effect this leak will have on the situation (from what I've read, Netanyahu is actually quite pleased with what WikiLeaks is doing, or at least how it affects his own situation. He said politicians should always say in public what they say in private, and for several years they've conducted their business and diplomacy on the assumption that these documents would leak sooner or later down the road).
 
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That statement was vague on exactly what territory Netanhayu meant (he has never advocated 1967 borders). Keeping Palestinians without military protection has always been his consistent condition. The peace that Netanyahu seeks has always and consistently been complete domination of the non-Jews in the OTs.
 
Treason
2. a violation of allegiance to one's sovereign or to one's state.

3. the betrayal of a trust or confidence; breach of faith; treachery.

4. sedition mean disloyalty or treachery to one's country or its government.
 
hypewaders said:
That statement was vague on exactly what territory Netanhayu meant (he has never advocated 1967 borders). Keeping Palestinians without military protection has always been his consistent condition. The peace that Netanyahu seeks has always and consistently been complete domination of the non-Jews in the OTs.
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There are more details and cables on this theme, talking about Netanyahu's plans to rapidly beef up the Palestinian economy and thus speed up their transition to statehood. The article I pointed to suggests the "land swaps" in question involve something such that the Palestinians would receive compensatory land of equal size and value in exchange for anything Israel annexes from post-1967. And he explicitly says to the Americans that he doesn't wish to govern the West Bank or Gaza, only to stop the attacks there, so I don't think that implies domination (West Bank has been quiet for a while now). I'll go digging for some more materials, defense minister Ehud Barak has also made several statements outlining the plans for the 2-state solution.

By all the sounds of it, the Sunni Arabs and Israel are looking to hammer out a deal and just get it done with once and for all, this would be a great time to draw a border and finalize the arrangement so they can both focus on the threat from the Ayatollahs and other radicals.
 
Thanks CptBork- do you have a link? This would be quite a change of heart, or secret life for Bibi. I'll take a look- maybe we should take it to the Israel-Palestine thread (hmmm, I think I recall closing it). :eek:

Anyway, it would be appropriate to take it to a thread like that. There will likely be a lot of spin-offs from WL ahead.
 
Lucysnow said:
Do not interpret my criticism of Saudi Arabia as support for Iran. Its current leaders are a bunch of thugs who stole governance from their own people by force and made a mockery out of the idea of an Islamic democracy.
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Democracy in any country is only allowed so long as it broadly supports the status quo.

A military coup was a possibility in 1970s Britain.
Harold Wilson, the then Prime Minister, believed he was being plotted against, and resigned.

It's a conspiracy theory, which will only be verified or discounted when the documents from the time are all made public (or wikileaked)
Read the wikipedia article and see if you think the theory is far fetched.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Wilson_conspiracy_theories

It is off topic, so you may have the final word.
 
Mod Note (a general one, not just to Captain Kremmen):

There is no need to halt good conversations when they stray off topic. In such situations, please consider inviting those interested to continue the discussion in an apropos thread. The most considerate/convenient invitations include a link.
 
3 cheers for big dumps on counter-democratic coverups.

Now 3 jeers:

Hip-Hip: Columbia University
From: "Office of Career Services" <sipa_ocs@columbia.edu>

Date: November 30, 2010 15:26:53 ESTTo:

Hi students,

We received a call today from a SIPA alumnus who is working at the State Department. He asked us to pass along the following information to anyone who will be applying for jobs in the federal government, since all would require a background investigation and in some instances a security clearance.

The documents released during the past few months through Wikileaks are still considered classified documents. He recommends that you DO NOT post links to these documents nor make comments on social media sites such as Facebook or through Twitter. Engaging in these activities would call into question your ability to deal with confidential information, which is part of most positions with the federal government.

Regards,
Office of Career Services
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"Boooooooo!" (there's the email address above- thell them what you think!)

Paypal- hip-hip: "Booooooooooooooo!" (don't use PayPal)

Amazon! "Boooooooooo!" (no Christmas cheer through Amazon)

If we take this sort of corporate manipulation quietly, it will not stop until there is truly oppressive control over free speech and informed consent in the USA and around the world.

And for people of conscience considering future or continued government work in a police state, there's an old Country song (with apology to Englebert Humperdink) to comfort your sad hearts:

Please, debrief me
Let me go-
For I
Don't want the Need To Know...
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Lucysnow said:
Do you hold the same opinion of Daniel Ellsberg who released the Pentagon papers during the Vietnam war? How about Woodward and Bernstein in the Watergate affair? Because all of them disclosed 'secret' and 'confidential' government information in the interest of government transparency.
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I would think that there's a difference between the situations. One was showing that the government was lying and decieving the public while today they are disclosing a great deal more including people that could be in mortal danger and lose their lives because of some of this information. That's the big difference to me.
 
Mortal jeopardy is greatly increased by present democratically and morally unsupportable US foreign policy. The disconnects between reality and civic accountability in the USA require more today than a few obscure revelations. Anything less than spectacular and highly-numerous disclosures will be suppressed and ignored. We are bombarded in the USA with pressure to trust in deceptive state and corporate masters. When we have more responsible and accountable leadership in place, we can get to establishing the appropriate timing in responsible full disclosure of all government actions in a democracy. WikiLeaks has done much better diligence in protecting private individuals from backlash throughout "cablegate", than have the US agencies and politicians being exposed in deceit and war crime.
 
hypewaders said:
Thanks CptBork- do you have a link? This would be quite a change of heart, or secret life for Bibi. I'll take a look- maybe we should take it to the Israel-Palestine thread (hmmm, I think I recall closing it). :eek:

Anyway, it would be appropriate to take it to a thread like that. There will likely be a lot of spin-offs from WL ahead.
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Well I don't want to get all cheery and hopeful just yet, I can only tell you I'm crossing my fingers on this one. As we've seen, not everything reported about the leaks has been thorough and complete (i.e. BM-25 claims, although I think the Shehabs and their upgrades are dangerous enough as is). I was reading through one cable where Barak was talking about some of the plans for getting the two-state solution off the ground, but of course Barak is only a small (but very important) piece of their government, he's been talking about two states for decades (and occasionally warns about Israel going in the same direction as apartheid South Africa).

Anyhow, I'll try to do some digging and Googling today and see what I can come up with. I remember being surprised at some of the comments about Netanyahu and his positions (as well as all the secret diplomacy, have you seen the new leaks on Lebanon?). In the meantime, I highly recommend debka.com, I've been checking there from time to time for the last few years... No one knows exactly who their sources are (they call it an "open source" news site, so there are many different sources), but it's an Israeli website that seems to act kind of like a "WikiLeaks Lite", leaking info that sometimes isn't accurate but is often said to come straight from agencies like Mossad, info they want to leak to the public.

Now it could easily be pure Israeli propaganda they post, so you have to be very careful, but for a history buff like me, the content is very well-presented and analyzed. They have fascinating, intricate takes and analyses on what goes on behind the scenes all over the M.E., and it does often seem like many things I read there pop up in the mainstream news a week later. I remember a case where a terror alert was issued in NYC roughly a couple years ago, it was based on a debka article warning about a terror plot their sources had uncovered from certain Islamist/Al-Qaeda internet chat rooms (plus more specific info passed directly on to the NYPD), so at least the NYPD takes them very seriously.

Well Wikipedia's article on DebkaFile is pretty short, so I'll just quote the whole thing:
DEBKAfile (Hebrew: תיק דבקה‎) is a Jerusalem-based English language Israeli open source military intelligence website with commentary and analyses on terrorism, intelligence, security, and military and political affairs in the Middle East. The word "Debka" refers to an Arab folk dance.[1]

The site started in the summer of 2000, and is operated from the Jerusalem home of veteran journalists Giora Shamis and Diane Shalem.[1] It has been awarded Forbes' Best of the Web award.[2] Forbes identifies the best part of the website as being its archives, but decries the fact that "most of the information is attributed to unidentified sources."

Wired.com's Noah Shachtman wrote in 2001 that the site "clearly reports with a point of view; the site is unabashedly in the hawkish camp of Israeli politics," adding that Debka had partnered with the right-wing news site WorldNetDaily for a weekly subscription product.[3] Yediot Achronot investigative reporter Ronen Bergman states that the site relies on information from sources with an agenda, such as neo-conservative elements of the US Republican Party, "whose worldview is that the situation is bad and is only going to get worse," and that Israeli intelligence officials do not consider even 10 percent of the site's content to be reliable.[1] Cornell Law professor Michael C. Dorf calls Debka his "favorite alarmist Israeli website trading in rumors."[4]

The site's operators, in contrast, state that 80 percent of what Debka reports turns out to be true, and point to its year 2000 prediction that al-Qaeda would again strike the World Trade Center, and that it had warned well before the 2006 war in Lebanon that Hezbollah had amassed 12,000 Katyusha rockets pointed at northern Israel.[1]
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I'm considering getting a subscription so I can go through their vast archives and also get access to the special reports (they like to dangle a few free articles here and there to attract subscriptions). If nothing else, it hints at the viewpoint from Israel's intelligence community as well as their contacts.

But back to WikiLeaks, I will go around looking for some sources to see if I can get more info on Israel and 2-state/settlement stuff, and I'll get back to you with whatever interesting info I can find.

Edit: I posted a couple of weeks ago what Debka said about the alleged F-35 bribe and how Netanyahu supposedly invented those promises in order to gain support from his cabinet, thus leading to their demands of a written letter guaranteeing those promises and America's refusal to provide such a guarantee. Notice that it's been something like a month now, if not more, and still no written guarantee, still "close to an agreement but haggling on the details". In fact, it almost looks like the deal's off altogether now at this point, although the US might still throw Netanyahu a bone if he actually gets majority consent from his cabinet.
 
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Thanks CptBork, I know it's not simple to clarify true intentions from effusive sources like Netanyahu and Debka- Not to say that the effort is not worthwhile.

I think we should move any extended discussions of particular issues raised by WL exposés to appropriate current threads- To a thread focusing on Israel in this case.
 
hypewaders said:
Thanks CptBork, I know it's not simple to clarify true intentions from effusive sources like Netanyahu and Debka- Not to say that the effort is not worthwhile.

I think we should move any extended discussions of particular issues raised by WL exposés to appropriate current threads- To a thread focusing on Israel in this case.
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Sounds like a great idea to me, if you want to start such a thread I'd be happy to contribute whatever I find on the topic (or at least let's make a WikiLeaks M.E. thread since almost anything on the M.E. will tie into Israel anyhow).
 
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