Wikileaks – The Diplomatic Cables

It already has been dubbed by the media – Cablegate. I hate this name with a passion, and will not be using it. I’m sorry news media, but Watergate happened in the 70s, and was the name of a hotel. This does not give you free licence to add -gate to the end of any event that embarrasses the US government. (Correction: I have been informed it was Wikileaks who dubbed the release as such, not the media. This does not make me hate it’s use any less, however.)

Here’s what happened. A website called Wikileaks, well known for leaking information that shows corruption in government and generally takes a stance against all material deemed ‘Classified’ without a damn good reason, have released 251,287 US diplomatic ‘cables’. As far as I can tell, these cables are (or rather were) secure communications between members of the US Govt, mainly to and from diplomats. Also released were 8000 State Department ‘directives’, which in my mind more or less equate to marching orders. About half of the material was unclassified, with only 6% being marked ‘secret’. Some of them are embarrasing, not only to the US but to other nations as well. The information was released to 5 major media outlets, and unlike most of their previous leaks is not available on their website (yet). However The Guardian has released the information to date  en masse and apparently verbatim, and can be found here.

What we have so far is the tip of the iceberg – it appears that Wikileaks are releasing the information over a period of a week, essentially drip feeding it to the greedy maws of the selected media outlets. Given what we have seen so far, I am eager to see the rest – I will do an update of this post later this week when some more of the new material is out.

There are many revelations, most of which I don’t care about, but here are a few that I found interesting;

-King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has actively and repeatedly urged the US to attack Iran and destroy their nuclear weapons programme, apparently quoted as saying that they must ‘cut off the head of the snake’ before it is too late.

-Since 2007, the US have tried and failed to remove nuclear material from research facilities in Pakistan out of fear the material might make its way into the hands of terrorists. Keep in mind that the US and Pakistan are supposedly allies.

-Private Saudi donors are the primary source of Al Qaeda’s money, as well as other terrorist groups. Interesting that they seem to be following the money, but aren’t able to find the source, or remove it if they have.

-Foreign nations such as Slovenia and Kiribati were ‘highly incentivized’  – basically bribed – into taking Guantanamo Bay prisoners after that site came under scrutiny. Bribing other countries so they you can continue to torture prisoners – bloody good show USA, bloody good show.

-The attack on Google not so long ago was at the direction of China’s government (this was long suspected, but apparently this is proof). China has also broken into US government computers as well as the Dalai Lama’s computer and a multitude of  American businesses since at least 2002.

And that is just one day. There is still the better part of a week to go, and this just stands to get better and better from a gleeful US-bashing perspective. And while I do love a good US bashing, I am actually not sure what my opinion of these leaks are.

This isn’t a whistle-blowing incident. There is very little corruption shows in these files. Theres not much wrongdoing at all. It is the governmental equivalent of hacking someones email account and posting all of their private opinions on an open forum. Julian Assange (founder of Wikileaks) has been quoted as saying that the cables show the “US spying on its allies and the UN; turning a blind eye to corruption and human rights abuse in ‘client states’, which is perfectly true – but is anyone really surprised? Most nation spy on most other nations – this is just a fact of the world. And we have already had Guantanamo Bay to prove the latter (though having details to continue that particular debacle is interesting). Was it really necessary to release all of this information?

On the whole, I find myself agreeing with the release. It does highlight to the public in general exactly what the US has been up to. Who knows, maybe it will lead to real change among US leadership (yeah, right). The depth of treachery that a few of the missives show is nessecary to put out in the public domain. But I take issue with all the rest, the material that was released merely because they could. Going back to the email analogy, it is like uploading a zip of the entire contents of the email account, rather than just posting the juicy embarrasing bits. It is overkill, and not in a good way – it strikes me with malice.

On the whole, Wikileaks is still doing the right thing in my opinion, but let me say that I am beginning to doubt their true motives.

The Korean Situation

So. We have the rabid, slobbering dog called Korea to the north, and a saner, better fed and generally much better treated dog to the south, also called Korea.

For anyone who isn’t really aware of the situation, here is how it stands as I understand it. The two Koreas do not get along. Not one bit. There have been a few skirmishes in the past year between the two, and the North did some kind of nuclear testing not so long ago. Nobody really seems sure how far along they are, but they really, really want nukes. They may already have them. We don’t really know.

On Tuesday, the North fired some artillery on a small island owned by the South by the name of Yeonpyeong, killing two military personnel and two civilians, and destroying a bunch of shit. When I read the news, it knocked my socks off – this could possibly, just possibly, be the beginning of World War Three. It may be a long shot, but this is the most likely candidate we have had for a while.

South Korea is backed by the USA. North Korea is backed by China – or at least, China see they have a vested interest in keeping a united Korea out of US influence, which is what would happen if the South consumes the North. This isn’t just about a divided country. This involves arguably the two most powerful nations on earth. And neither particularly wants to tangle with the other.

As it stands, both Koreas are doing ‘military exercises’ on their shared border. It doesn’t take a genius to see through the doublespeak and see both sides shoring up their defenses, posturing and generally doing what large groups of men with guns do. Needless to say, things are tense. And now, the US is sending a carrier group into the Yellow Sea to join in ‘military exercises’ with the South Korean Navy. A carrier group is not a small force. To put it bluntly, the US is joining in the dick-waving contest. And the Chinese don’t like it.

I don’t know where this is going. I am no journalist, no military expert. But I’m not stupid either, and it isn’t hard to see what could go wrong here.

I firmly believe that North Korea is a major threat to the world as a whole, or at the very least want to be. At best, they are dangerously unpredictable, and an uncomfortable neighbor for South Korea. They need to be dealt with. Eventually, it will probably come to war. I hate war. But in this case, it seems like grim necessity. North Korea is already dirt poor and does not trade with other nations – trade sanctions will do even less than they usually do. At some point, a strong force, probably the US, will go in their and stomp them. Hell, look what they did to Afganistan and Iraq. I wouldn’t be surprised if the only thing keeping the US from doing so before now was the possibility of nukes.

But all else aside, it is one hell of a tense situation. What could possibly go wrong? Oh, you know, just EVERYTHING.

UPDATE: Upwards of 20,000 North Koreas are returning home, quite possibly for military action.

It just gets better and better. More than 20k North Koreans working in Russia (under tight control by NK government handlers) seem to have begun returning to North Korea, people just dropping their jobs en masse and leaving. According to the report I am reading (found here), known North Korea secret service personnel are also leaving.

It seems almost certain that this action has been decided by the NK government. What is less certain is the purpose, though that isn’t a hard guess either – war preparations. Those are quite possibly 20,000 soldiers and other support staff that will be fighting in the war that looks more likely with every new piece of news.

I’m not trying to fear monger here – there are plenty of ways that this situation might defuse with no major conflict at all. But at this point…well. To me the question has shifted from ‘Will there be further hostilities?’ to ‘What scope will these hostilities take?’. WWIII still seems unlikely, but more and more it seems a war is coming to the region.

A Grand Move

Okay. So. I was sick to death of Blogspot. I just didn’t feel like I can requiste control over my blog, particuarly a few of the design aspects. So, here I am. Old posts will be left on blogspot for legacy and can be found here.

For any of you new here:

This is where I posts random shit that interests me. I rage here, I muse here, I get bored and post random crap here. Feel free to lurk and comment and disagree. This is my outlet. Another unimportant blog in a sea of unimportant blogs.

Enjoy~