Today, Friday 19th June at 1pm GMT, WikiLeaks began publishing The Saudi Cables: more than half a million cables and other documents from the Saudi Foreign Ministry that contain secret communications from various Saudi Embassies around the world. The publication includes “Top Secret” reports from other Saudi State institutions, including the Ministry of Interior and the Kingdom’s General Intelligence Services. The massive cache of data also contains a large number of email communications between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and foreign entities. The Saudi Cables are being published in tranches of tens of thousands of documents at a time over the coming weeks. Today WikiLeaks is releasing around 70,000 documents from the trove as the first tranche.
That’s pretty much the objective of the organization. I find Assange theories on conspiracy fascinating. Basically, that secrecy at high government and financial levels breeds conspiracy. Not a conscious conspiracy, but an unconscious collective one (because of the secrecy and the contacts those positions are associated with, you can get by doing deals that benefit you and those like you -other people at the same level- without letting the people have a say).
The goal of wikileaks is to wipe away secrecy so conspiracy can’t exist. Spilling the beans on everybody. I think the focus on the USA is because those were the better leaks they got at the time.
Well i think the main concern is about the Democratic process, as in what ‘Democracy’ actually means in most of our societies, and the role of corruption in all that. So in a way Russia and China would be pretty easy, and unsurprising, targets for wikileaks perhaps?
And maybe they are picking on the Saudi’s now as they are our Allies in an (obviously) growing extreme Islamic world, but for certain, Saudi is pretty much run as a dictatorship (well ok Royal controlled realm) and we all have lots of ‘interesting’ business links with them?
Right. What’s the point of proving that Russia and China are authoritarian and/or corrupt? Everyone already knows that. Wikileaks’ mission is to bring to light the problems with supposedly free and above board nations. The House of Saud’s ties to the west, and to the US especially, are what will make this info dump interesting. Nothing about their internal policies will (or can) shock me.
I actually posted pretty much this exact thing and then lost it. :)
If I found out that China ground up orphans for fertilizer I’d just nod my head at this point. If the Chinese people found out some things I’m sure it might matter, but that’s not going to happen.
I’m sure Wikileaks would publish Russian and/or Chinese docs if someone leaked them. Certainly their messaging has been about constraining the behaviour of dictatorships as much as about preventing conspiracies in democracies.
I’d really like to get the inside scoop on Crimea and the Spratlys. These are live issues and having the agendas of Russia and China out in the open instead of behind diplomatic shell games would be at the very least entertaining.
As this is the latest wikileaks thread i’ll stick it here. Japan is the next nation revealed to have been spied on by the usa:
Wikileaks: US ‘spied on Japan government and companies’:
The US has been spying on Japanese cabinet officials, banks and companies, including the Mitsubishi conglomerate, whistleblowing website Wikileaks says.
Documents released by Wikileaks list 35 telephone numbers targeted for interception by the US National Security Agency (NSA).
The surveillance extends back at least eight years, Wikileaks said.
Wikileaks has previously released files showing the US spied on Germany, France and Brazil - like Japan, all allies.
There has been no comment from Japan on the latest claims.
‘No comment’, but i could swear i heard the sounds of thousands of katana being sharpened last night.
Maybe I’m just jaded, but I have always operated under the impression that everyone spied on everyone else as much as they could safely manage (and occasionally not so safely).
