Wikileaks is a sensation, providing an unprecedented view of backroom bargaining by embassies all over the world, harsh assessments of foreign leaders and insider views of nuclear and terrorist threats. Like its predecessors the Obama administration says the diplomacy must remain secret. Wikileaks says all governments abuse secrecy by hiding facts and negotiations that should be made public. Here are a few examples:
• American and South Korean officials have discussed the formation of a United Korea should North Korea's economic and political troubles cause the North to implode.
• The US has offered political and large financial incentives to many countries to persuade them to take some of the prisoners now held in Guantanamo Bay Jail, untried and therefore unconvicted.
• When Afghanistan's vice president visited the United Arab Emirates this year, local authorities discovered he was carrying $52 million in cash. Perhaps for a drug deal?
• China's Politburo directed the invasion into Google's computer systems in China. Other cables said that China has broken into US government computers, those of US allies, the Dalai Lama and American businesses.
• American officials sharply warned Germany in 2007 not to enforce arrest warrants for CIA officers involved in a bungled operation in which an innocent German citizen with the same name as a suspected militant was mistakenly kidnapped and held for months in Afghanistan.
The drama in the Wikileaks cables often comes from diplomats' stories of meetings with foreign figures, as well as games of diplomatic poker, the raw use of US power, and US assets spent profusely on legal and illegal strategies.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
You know Jerome, The vast majority of that we have been hearing leaked and denied for years. Like me most of the leaders laughed at what was said of them. The diatribe seemed standard behind closed doors banter.
I can supply the link for this if needed. but this stuff is neveer mentioned and we do owe him thanks for this!
According to another leaked cable, dockworkers and foreign businessmen have seen evidence of alleged secret nuclear and missiles weapons sites being built deep in the Myanmar jungle.
“The North Koreans, aided by Burmese workers, are constructing a concrete-reinforced underground facility that is ‘500ft from the top of the cave to the top of the hill above’,” according to the cable, published by the British daily The Guardian. The cable from the US embassy in Rangoon quoted a Myanmar officer who said he had witnessed the North Korean technicians helping the construction work.
One foreign businessman told the embassy that he had seen reinforced steel bar, larger than for just a factory project, being shipped on a barge. While dockworkers also told of seeing suspicious cargo.
A cable dating from August 2004 revealed information from a Myanmar officer in an engineering unit who said surface-to-air missiles were being built at a site in a town called Minbu in west-central Myanmar.
He said some 300 North Koreans were working at the site, although the US cable noted this was improbably high, The Guardian said.
Mozambique has become a leading drug trafficking centre in Africa, with high-level government officials receiving bribes to turn a blind eye to the trade, according to another leaked cable.
Post a Comment