Wikileaks Rd3

PolitiSUCK
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["]Exclusive: Corruption charges to feature in WikiLeaks release](http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6AN5HL20101124?pageNumber=1[/URL)

Among the countries whose politicians feature in the reports are Russia, Afghanistan and former Soviet republics in Central Asia. But other reports also detail potentially embarrassing allegations reported to Washington from U.S. diplomats in other regions including East Asia and Europe, one of the sources familiar with the WikiLeaks holdings said

a very different kind of leak… one of the comments struck a chord with me as being true and something that didnt occur to me.

I’ve been on board with Assange up until now, but this is starting to worry me. I guess it’s hard to know where to draw the line. Information that embarrasses the U.S. Government because the U.S. Government has been lying to the American people is one thing. Simply exposing communications because doing so creates embarrassment doesn’t seem quite so justified.

I guess it depends on what is in the materials though. Face value may not amount to much for wikileaks during a review, but when the information goes live it will be interesting to see how it can be applied or to what end… if it ends up being productive then i’m okay with it.

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latest…

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http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6AP06Z20101128

This stuff is incredible:

Among the revelations in Britain’s Guardian newspaper, which also received an advance look at the documents, King Abdullah is reported to have “frequently exhorted the U.S. to attack Iran to put an end to its nuclear weapons program.”

“Cut off the head of the snake,” the Saudi ambassador to Washington, Adel al-Jubeir, quotes the king as saying, according to a report on Abdullah’s meeting with General David Petraeus in April 2008.

The leaked documents, the majority of which are from the last three years, also disclose U.S. allegations that China’s Politburo directed an intrusion into Google’s computer systems, part of a broader coordinated campaign of computer sabotage carried out by Chinese government operatives, private security experts and Internet outlaws, the Times reported.

The newspaper also said documents report that Saudi donors remain chief financiers of Sunni militant groups like al Qaeda, and that the tiny Persian Gulf state of Qatar, a generous host to the U.S. military for years, was the “worst in the region” in counter-terrorism efforts, according to a State Department cable last December.

---------- Post added at 06:52 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:42 PM ----------

Letter from the State Dept. to Julian Assange and his lawyer:

Dear Ms. Robinson and Mr. Assange:

I am writing in response to your 26 November 2010 letter to U.S. Ambassador Louis B. Susman regarding your intention to again publish on your WikiLeaks site what you claim to be classified U.S. Government documents.

As you know, if any of the materials you intend to publish were provided by any government officials, or any intermediary without proper authorization, they were provided in violation of U.S. law and without regard for the grave consequences of this action. As long as WikiLeaks holds such material, the violation of the law is ongoing.

It is our understanding from conversations with representatives from The New York Times, The Guardian and Der Spiegel, that WikiLeaks also has provided approximately 250,000 documents to each of them for publication, furthering the illegal dissemination of classified documents.

Publication of documents of this nature at a minimum would:

  • Place at risk the lives of countless innocent individuals – from journalists to human rights activists and bloggers to soldiers to individuals providing information to further peace and security;

  • Place at risk on-going military operations, including operations to stop terrorists, traffickers in human beings and illicit arms, violent criminal enterprises and other actors that threaten global security; and,

  • Place at risk on-going cooperation between countries - partners, allies and common stakeholders – to confront common challenges from terrorism to pandemic diseases to nuclear proliferation that threaten global stability.

In your letter, you say you want – consistent with your goal of “maximum disclosure” – information regarding individuals who may be “at significant risk of harm” because of your actions.

Despite your stated desire to protect those lives, you have done the opposite and endangered the lives of countless individuals. You have undermined your stated objective by disseminating this material widely, without redaction, and without regard to the security and sanctity of the lives your actions endanger. We will not engage in a negotiation regarding the further release or dissemination of illegally obtained U.S. Government classified materials. If you are genuinely interested in seeking to stop the damage from your actions, you should: 1) ensure WikiLeaks ceases publishing any and all such materials; 2) ensure WikiLeaks returns any and all classified U.S. Government material in its possession; and 3) remove and destroy all records of this material from WikiLeaks’ databases.

Sincerely,

(The letter is signed by Harold Hongju Koh, legal adviser to the State Department)

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some of this is repeated from above:

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6AR32L20101129

– China’s Politburo directed the intrusion into Google’s computer systems in that country, a Chinese contact told the U.S. Embassy in January, as part of a computer sabotage campaign carried out by government operatives, private experts and Internet outlaws recruited by the Chinese government. They have broken into U.S. government computers and those of Western allies, the Dalai Lama and American businesses since 2002, cables said.

– King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has repeatedly urged the United States to attack Iran to destroy its nuclear program and is reported to have advised Washington to “cut off the head of the snake” while there was still time.

– U.S. and South Korean officials discussed the prospects for a unified Korea should the North’s economic troubles and political transition lead the state to implode. The South Koreans considered commercial inducements to China to “help salve” Chinese concerns about living with a reunified Korea that is in a “benign alliance” with Washington, according to the American ambassador to Seoul.

– Since 2007, the United States has mounted a secret and so far unsuccessful effort to remove highly enriched uranium from a Pakistani research reactor out of fear it could be diverted for use in an illicit nuclear device.

– Iran has obtained sophisticated missiles from North Korea capable of hitting western Europe, and the United States is concerned Iran is using those rockets as “building blocks” to build longer-range missiles. The advanced missiles are much more powerful than anything U.S. officials have publicly acknowledged Iran has in its arsenal.

– When Afghanistan’s vice president, Ahmed Zia Massoud, visited the United Arab Emirates last year, local authorities working with the Drug Enforcement Administration discovered he was carrying $52 million in cash that a cable from the American Embassy in Kabul said he “was ultimately allowed to keep without revealing the money’s origin or destination.” He denied taking the money out of Afghanistan.

– American diplomats have bargained with other countries to help empty the Guantanamo Bay prison by resettling detainees. Slovenia was told to take a prisoner if it wanted to meet with President Barack Obama, and Kiribati was offered incentives worth millions of dollars to take in Chinese Muslim detainees. In another case, accepting more prisoners was described as “a low-cost way for Belgium to attain prominence in Europe,” a cable said.

– Saudi donors remain the chief financiers of Sunni militant groups like Al Qaeda, and the tiny Persian Gulf state of Qatar was the “worst in the region” in counterterrorism efforts, according to a State Department cable last December. Qatar’s security service was “hesitant to act against known terrorists out of concern for appearing to be aligned with the U.S. and provoking reprisals,” the cable said.

– The United States has failed to prevent Syria from supplying arms to Hezbollah in Lebanon, which has amassed a huge stockpile since its 2006 war with Israel, the cables said. One week after Syrian President Bashar al-Assad promised a top State Department official he would not send “new” arms to Hezbollah, the United States complained it had information that Syria was giving the group increasingly sophisticated weapons.

– Yemen has helped cover up the American role in missile strikes against the local branch of Al Qaeda. According to a cable, Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh in January told General David H. Petraeus, then the American commander in the Middle East: “We’ll continue saying the bombs are ours, not yours.” This prompted Yemen’s deputy prime minister to joke that he had just “lied” by telling Parliament that Yemeni forces had carried out the strikes

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Nothing too earth shattering, though I suppose hard evidence for what everyone already suspects has its value.

But wikileaks sure seems to be toeing the line between whistleblower and instigator now that they’re trying to blow up diplomatic relations. It’s almost like Assange isn’t so much serving a just cause as he is just getting his name in lights riding a wave of populist anger. That couldn’t be though. He’s a noble crusader for truth and justice.

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i agree on the surface of things that this is crossing the line just as you say, i think a lot of people are thinking that. It was on a debate on CBC National last night… and Canadian news is far more impartial than US news.

i remain hopeful that good will come of the leaked info. Israel is happy because it acknowledges their concerns and Iran is calling it a US propoganda initiative which is interesting.

Wikileak’s next big leak is looking awesome as well.

Reuters

The founder of whistle-blower website WikiLeaks plans to release tens of thousands of internal documents from a major U.S. bank early next year, Forbes Magazine reported on Monday.

Julian Assange declined in an interview with Forbes to identify the bank, but he said that he expected that the disclosures, which follow his group’s release of U.S. military and diplomatic documents, would lead to investigations.

“We have one related to a bank coming up, that’s a megaleak. It’s not as big a scale as the Iraq material, but it’s either tens or hundreds of thousands of documents depending on how you define it,” Assange said in the interview posted on the Forbes website.

He declined to identify the bank, describing it only as a major U.S. bank that is still in existence.

Asked what he wanted to be the result of the disclosure, he replied: “I’m not sure. It will give a true and representative insight into how banks behave at the executive level in a way that will stimulate investigations and reforms, I presume.”

and they also state they have stuff on Russia, Pharmaceutical companies and more…

this is way more than bradely manning… this is a systemtic issue of lack of faith in the government amongst it’s own employees and the exact same sentiment amongst people in various industries… looking forward to the Monsanto leaks.

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lol ahmed is more impartial than us news.

I think I’m going to hate a bank leak. That kind of thing seems like it would provide so much fodder for our politicians to distract the general public from real issues…

Monsanto leak? That’d be interesting. I don’t think most people have a clue just how corrupt and federally controlled our food system is. A couple of big companies making us less healthy every day…

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i just saw food inc. on CBC sunday night… it was meh…

i didnt realize that i had already seen most of it in bits and pieces over the internets

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okay, clearly this shit is about to get real.

Interpol puts Assange on their most wanted list for sketchy sex charges.

Bank of America is said to be the bank the next release will target.

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fry, how is the leak about the bank executive policies an unecessary distraction to the american public? id think thatd be something americans should be educating themselves on given what happened to financial institutions in the past couple years. i cant think of a ‘realer’ issue.

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i wonder if Assange is as good at hide and seek as Osama is?

i say he turns himself in within the week

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Because the “finance industry” is a fundamentally confused “industry” (I put industry in quotes because finance doesn’t actually produce a tangible good so it’s not actually an industry) so our media will undoubtedly spin the leaks to support whatever nonsensical belief they see fit.

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BofA is super sketchy. I imagine it will be another confirmation of what everyone already suspects is being said behind closed doors.

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It still matters. confirmation is complimentary to speculation.

Assange appealed the interpol warrant… we’ll see how it goes.

I have a feeling this whole episode in history will end up being as significant as watergate or the Oil Crisis as far as a “where were you when the wikileaks founder was set up?”

A story for the kiddies

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I doubt it will be that significant. I don’t think any news story can have that kind of impact nowadays unless a bunch of people lose their lives. But I don’t know how visible this stuff is in American media right now so I could be wrong. I imagine this story gets covered as if wikileaks is just some marginalized fringe source.

I do think some of that content is interesting though. Particularly the part about dismantling guantanamo. That issue has been used to smear the Obama administration in the past and this kind of confirms everyones suspicion that there’s really no intention of abandoning the project, it’ll just be relocated to a less visible site.

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i see it slightly differently. they are actively trying to get prisoners out of G-bay and into prisons elsewhere. Problem is that they are using unethical political leverage to do it.

only time will tell but this is the most interesting news story in several years as far as i am concerned.

CNN and Reuters are dedicating A LOT of time and space to it… it’s been the number one thing for a couple weeks, if not months.

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http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/11/29/f-database-wikileaks-canada-cables.html

CBC created a search tool to search the wikileaks database for canadian content and is reporting on tag cloud data…lol

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Where are the good leaks like revealing government alien cover ups.

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TED talk interview with Julian Assange.

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Canadian Sites listed at vital to US Interests:

•Hibernia Atlantic undersea cable landing Halifax.
•James Bay power project, Quebec: monumental hydroelectric power development.
•Mica Dam, British Columbia: failure would impact the Columbia River Basin.
•Hydro Quebec: Critical irreplaceable source of power to portions of Northeast United States.
•Robert Moses/Robert H. Saunders Power, Ontario: Part of the St. Lawrence Power Project, between Barnhart Island, N.Y., and Cornwall, Ont.
•Seven Mile Dam, British Columbia: concrete gravity dam between two other hydropower dams along the Pend d’Oreille River.
•Pickering Nuclear Power Plant, Ontario and the Chalk River Nuclear Facility, Ontario (largest supplier of medical radioisotopes in the world).
•Hydrofluoric acid production facility, Amherstburg, Ont.
•Enbridge Pipeline.
•Alliance Pipeline: natural gas transmission from Canada.
•Maritime and Northeast Pipeline: natural gas transmission from Canada.
•Transcanada Gas: natural gas transmission from Canada.
•Alexandria Bay Point of Entry (POE) Ontario: border crossing.
•Ambassador Bridge POE, Ontario: border crossing.
•Blaine, Wash., POE, British Columbia: border crossing.
•Blaine, Wash., rail crossing, British Columbia.
•Blue Water Bridge POE, Ontario: border crossing.
•Champlain POE, Quebec: border crossing.
•CPR tunnel rail crossing, Ontario.
•International bridge rail crossing, Fort Erie, Ont.
•Lewiston-Queenstown POE, Ontario: border crossing.
•Peace Bridge POE, Ontario: border crossing.
•Pembina POE, Manitoba: border crossing.
•North portal rail crossing, Saskatchewan.
•St. Claire tunnel rail crossing, Ontario.
•Waneta Dam, British Columbia: Earthfill/concrete hydropower dam.
•Darlington nuclear power plant, Ontario.
•E-ONE Moli Energy, Maple Ridge, B.C.: critical to production of various military application electronics.
•General Dynamics Land Systems, London, Ont.: Critical to the production of the Stryker/USMC LAV vehicle integration.
•Raytheon Systems Canada Ltd. ELCAN optical technologies division, Midland, Ont.: critical to the production of the AGM-130 Missile.
•Thales Optronique Canada, Inc., Montreal: critical optical systems for ground combat vehicles.
•Germanium mine [no location listed].
•Graphite mine [no location listed].
•Iron ore mine [no location listed].
•Nickel mine [no location listed].
•Niobec Mine, Quebec: niobium.
•Cangene, Winnipeg: plasma.
•Sanofi Pasteur Ltd., Toronto: polio virus vaccine.
•GlaxoSmithKile Biologicals, Quebec City, Que.: pre-pandemic influenza vaccines.