{"id":3483,"date":"2010-11-29T00:57:27","date_gmt":"2010-11-29T08:57:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=3483"},"modified":"2010-11-29T01:08:21","modified_gmt":"2010-11-29T09:08:21","slug":"wikidrips","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2010\/11\/29\/wikidrips\/","title":{"rendered":"WikiDrips"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have to say that I find that what I have seen from the latest WikiLeaks dump, does not rise to the claims that they threaten national security.\u00a0 I trust that as more material reaches my attention, I will find it of interest, but for now, there is little there that I had not already speculated.\u00a0 Here\u2019s a summary of highlights.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"29wikileaks\"…Here is a look at some of the main substantive revelations in the cables, published by the New York Times:<\/p>\n

\u2013 China\u2019s Politburo directed the intrusion into Google\u2019s computer systems in that country<\/strong>, 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<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\u2013 King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has repeatedly urged the United States to attack Iran<\/strong> to destroy its nuclear program and is reported to have advised Washington to \u201ccut off the head of the snake\u201d while there was still time.<\/p>\n

\u2013 U.S. and South Korean officials discussed the prospects for a unified Korea should the North\u2019s economic troubles and political transition lead the state to implode. The South Koreans considered commercial inducements to China to \u201chelp salve\u201d Chinese concerns about living with a reunified Korea that is in a \u201cbenign alliance\u201d with Washington, according to the American ambassador to Seoul.<\/p>\n

\u2013 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.<\/p>\n

\u2013 Iran has obtained sophisticated missiles from North Korea capable of hitting Western Europe<\/strong>, and the United States is concerned Iran is using those rockets as \u201cbuilding blocks\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

\u2013 American diplomats in Rome reported in 2009 on what their Italian contacts described as an extraordinarily close relationship between Vladimir Putin, the Russian prime minister, and Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister and business magnate, including \u201clavish gifts,\u201d lucrative energy contracts and a \u201cshadowy\u201d Russian-speaking Italian go-between. They wrote that Mr. Berlusconi \u201cappears increasingly to be the mouthpiece of Putin\u201d in Europe.<\/p>\n

\u2013 When Afghanistan\u2019s 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 \u201cwas ultimately allowed to keep without revealing the money\u2019s origin or destination.\u201d<\/strong> He denied taking the money out of Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

\u2013 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 \u201ca low-cost way for Belgium to attain prominence in Europe,\u201d a cable said.<\/p>\n

\u2013 Saudi donors remain the chief financiers of Sunni militant groups such as al-Qaeda<\/strong>, and the tiny Persian Gulf state of Qatar was the \u201cworst in the region\u201d in counterterrorism efforts, according to a State Department cable last December. Qatar\u2019s security service was \u201chesitant to act against known terrorists out of concern for appearing to be aligned with the U.S. and provoking reprisals,\u201d the cable said.<\/p>\n

\u2013 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 \u201cnew\u201d arms to Hezbollah, the United States complained it had information that Syria was giving the group increasingly sophisticated weapons. [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n

Inserted from <The Globe and Mail<\/a>><\/p>\n

Is anyone actually surprised by any of this?<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have to say that I find that what I have seen from the latest WikiLeaks dump, does not rise to the claims that they threaten national security.\u00a0 I trust that as more material reaches my attention, I will find it of interest, but for now, there is little there that I had not already […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3483"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3483\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}