The great US Embassy cables leak has started to be distributed through 5 media outlets in the USA, UK, Spain, France and Germany. This much information will take a while to work through but the first revelations are that King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has repeatedly urged the USA to attack Iran to destroy its nuclear programme and officials in Jordan and Bahrain have also openly called for Iran's nuclear programme to be stopped by any means, including military.
It has also been revealed that Washington is running a secret intelligence campaign targeted at the leadership of the United Nations, including the secretary general, Ban Ki-moon and the permanent security council representatives from China, Russia, France and the UK. The document signed by Hillary Clinton asked for credit card numbers, email addresses, phone, fax and pager numbers and biographic and biometric information on UN Security Council permanent representatives to be collected.
World leaders to be bad mouthed include:
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev who plays Robin to Putin's Batman.
Kim Jong-il of North Korea is called a flabby old chap who suffered from physical and psychological trauma.
Thin-skinned and with an authoritarian personal style is the description of French
President Nicholas Sarkozy.
Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi is feckless, vain, and ineffective as a modern European leader with a penchant for partying.
Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, is an extremely weak man who did not listen to facts and is easily swayed by even the most bizarre stories.
Yemen President, Ali Abdullah Saleh is dismissive, bored and impatient.
Robert Mugabe, President of Zimbabwe, is the crazy old man.
Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader, is strange.
Israel's prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu never keeps his promises.
German Foreign Minister, Guido Westerwelle, is incompetent, vain and critical of America.
Spying and collecting personal information on senior UN Members, being urged to attack Iran and insulting World leaders and this is only the first day. It is going to be a long week for the American leadership.
11 comments:
I'll have a good read of the Guardian later on, but all of those descriptions of foreign leaders seems to come under the heading of 'things we already knew'.
The fact of the US spying on the UN prior in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq was also well-known, from years back.
I guess we didn't know for sure about the Saudis wanting to bomb Iran but, knowing their leadership as we do (they're like the political wing of OPEC, with added brutality and misogyny), it's no surprise.
I made the same comment about it being all things we knew anyway (maybe not about Saudi and Iran) when i was reading the Guardian website last night. I guess now we know for sure rather than it just being strong speculation.
I did enjoy reading the descriptions of the world leaders though but i was really looking for Blair, Brown or Cameron but i will settle for Berlusconi being called vain and ineffective for now.
Lucy, it will be interesting to see whether of not the American MSM actually carry the leaks story and, if it does, whether the average American will react to the Machiavellian Imperialism of their country and its deceit and corruption.
The American internet is alive with articles about the leaks but the average American relies on Fox News for their daily diet of lies, indoctrination and fear.
Wow... people are saying mean things about other people... just unbelievable... You know, just for what they said about Berlusconi, I'm going to join some anti-American protest and cause all sorts of trouble by burning effigies of American diplomats on computers sending emails. That'll show'em!
If there's one thing in the world that truly offends me, it's someone showing me something I already know about someone else.
-Nog
There are some diamonds emerging in the rough now... That the respected head of the Bank of England thinks (or at least 'thought') that the current Chancellor and the Prime Minister are lightweights who are ill-equipped to deal with the deficit is a pretty good one.
Another one I'm keeping my eye on is this '360 rotational fire' issue.
I don't think the MSM have broken the story yet but the whisper is that the instances where an IED has gone off in Iraq or Afganistan, and soldiers have reacted by spraying fire all around the street (effectively targeting everyone who happens to be standing within range), is not a matter of a few 'loose cannons' but is actually the policy.
This is of interest, of course, because the intentional killing of civilians is a war crime.
It's a shame that Big Brother has taken down the WikiLeaks site, or I'd check this now...
I'm starting to change my mind about the value of a lot of this... The more I read, the more obvious it is that some of it's gold.
e.g. I just read that Netanyahu told a US Congressional delegation last year that "a Palestinian state must be demilitarised, without control of its airspace and electro-magnetic field [sic], and without the power to enter into treaties or control its border".
Wow. That's only the Israeli PM totally putting the mockers on the two-state solution that everybody - including the US - says that they want... Fairly big news, that one!
I am growing disheartened by the leaks, not as juicy as i imagined and not enough knocking the Labour or condem Governments.
That Netanyahu is a real card isn't he. Make outrageous demands and when the Palestinians say no he can turn around and say he has no-one reasonable to deal with. They can't control their electro magnetic field??
Don't be too disheartened yet, Lucy. There's over a quarter of a million new documents, so it'll take the Guardian time to read them all! (and then string them out for maximum commercial benefit)...
I see this morning's is all US diplomats opinion of Russia as a 'corrupt autocratic kleptocracy centred on the leadership of Vladimir Putin, in which officials, oligarchs and organised crime are bound together to create a "virtual mafia state",'...
Couldn't have said it better myself! And nicely timed to help England's World Cup bid (you'd hope).
Lucy, the cables only substantiate what informed people already knew.
America, like Israel, no longer hides its warts. It just doesn't care what the world thinks of its imperialism, genocide, torture, etc.
It has a mission: to control the world for its own exclusive benefit. Anyone who gets in its road will be crushed or put in cages and that includes so-called Allies.
Wake up, world. The anti-Christ is here waving a Stars and Stripes flag!
"America, like Israel, no longer hides its warts."
Really. Then why has (WikiLeaks' host) Amazon just been pressured by Joe Lieberman's office into taking down the website?
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