It's been a while-the implications of several new Wikileaks revelations.

The more the big_taxxxes of the world go to the trouble to say "nothing to see here! um, YAWN!!" the more I'll start reading the stuff in detail.

Where there's troll smoke...

 

Scrolling through the leaks is fun --but man is Julian Assange a sleazy dude.

 

In TIME it said that Wikileaks have a huge batch of information that is really incriminating that will only be released if Wikileaks itself is shut down or their members arrested (I mean to the extreme, not the current level of persecution). So they probably have more 'good stuff' it's just they are using it as leverage against even more attacks.

And personally, I think what Wikileaks is doing is justified (Chinese government, don't hunt me down!). Even if the information isn't taken up by the general public, it's still better that the information is out there, rather than being kept hidden or filed away. Unfortunately what one previous poster said was also right, even if it embarrasses people, it will just mean another line of corrupt officials take the place of existing ones.

 

lol seriously, I was just wondering if big_texx is going to yawn through a quarter of a million cables in every single thread/post.

 

I know so little about the topics the cables are covering that the cables don't really mean a whole lot to me, but its hard to not put the "viva la revolution" hat on after reading some of the annotations. I don't really see how some of this stuff doesn't upset people.

 

apathy

Rocket River

 

Like giving away a list of places that are vital to US security? You believe that Wikileaks is justified in providing that to the world?

Give me a break

A lot jealous America haters out there that just want to "stick it to the man", regardless of what the negative externalities might be...

 

I am still of a mixed mind regarding the Wikileaks material. I agree this is some damning stuff but at the same time it isn't something that I find unexpected. I am a cynic enough to say that I both knew and expected the US to be involved with some dirty dealing and no surprise that countries like India are too.

At the same time almost everything released in this latest batch has to be considered in context. For example we know that Tajikistan is corrupt but at the same time do we not deal with them and make things even harder for us in Afghanistan? Also we know that human rights abuses are rampant in Ethiopia so then what should we do about it? Invade?

This is the problem with any big release of raw info is how do you act on it.

 

I don't think it is nearly that simple. What we don't know now is how Wikileaks will change how diplomacy is conducted. Discretion is a valuable asset and when that can't be guaranteed things are going to get problematic.

Consider a historical example. During the Cuban Missile Crisis the JFK admin. struck a deal with Soviet Union publicly it was withdrawing the missiles from Cuba for the US ending the blockade. What wasn't know at the time was that JFK also pledged to remove NATO missiles from Turkey. What if discretion couldn't be guaranteed and JFK couldn't make that offer since removing missiles from Turkey would be opposed by US allies if they found out and JFK couldn't have made that deal?

I don't know what will come out of Wikileaks but I don't think you can say that overall it is better to have everything out in the open. In some cases the failure of being discreet can make things much more difficult.

 

It's all about what you believe.

In an ideal world, I wouldn't want politicians to lie. However, the truth is that if you (anyone) want to maintain your standard of living, it is an absolute necessity.

For example, I knew that American companies were pursuing illegal oil, but the fact that the American government knew really would piss me off if I were American right? Especially since the illegal nature of it puts it off limits to a lot of people who would want to pursue that business - essentially making it an oligopoly for those who are just bigger and have more political clout.

Ofcourse, for all we know, the US did get involved and stop it. But it makes you wonder if some of the crazy theories are true - that the US people are actually represented by a government who would (for example) lie to them for a chunk of illegal profit. The wider the gap between the principles of a governor and its people, the closer the country is to implosion IMO.

I don't want to see the US implode or explode because I like what the US constitution stands for, and I'm not at all sure that there's another country in the world who would be more beneficial to my people if they were the top super power. So for me, it pisses me off when I see there are people who would let that go down the sewer.

Therefore to me, the more those rats get exposed, the better. If the cost is losing a battle here or there in Afghanistan, then that saddens me for the people who are involved, but in a realistic sense, the US is better off in the long term when its leaders are on their toes because of something like this.

 

Not much needs to be said. Wikileaks is performing an amazing service.

 

Israel preparing for 'large scale war': cable

Israel's army chief told a US Congress delegation in late 2009 he was preparing for a large war in the Middle East, probably against Hamas or Hezbollah, leaked US diplomatic cables showed on Sunday.

"I am preparing the Israeli army for a large scale war, since it is easier to scale down to a smaller operation than to do the opposite," Lieutenant General Gabi Ashkenazi was quoted as saying in a cable from the US embassy in Tel Aviv...................

However, in the cable leaked Sunday Ashkenazi is quoted saying Israel next time will not accept "any restrictions on warfare in populated areas," and insisted the army had never intentionally attacked civilian targets.



http://beta.ca.news.yahoo.com/israel-preparing-large-scale-war-cable-20110102-062011-150.html

 

One implication is to question whether new leaks are intended to be leaked rather than being a real secret.

Showing a hawkish Israel boosts their negotiating position and brings them further away from the table.

 

interested to hear what info Wikileaks has about a 'major US bank' BOA seems to be shatting their pants.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40885548/ns/business-the_new_york_times

 

Wikileaks: US Tax Dollars Fund Dyncorp Child Sex Slavery in Afghanistan

Update: In a statement, DynCorp vice president of communications Ashley Vanarsdall Burke confirmed that contractors had hired a 17-year-old boy to perform at an employee’s going away party, but denied that drugs or alcohol were involved.

(Raw) US State Dept. called ownership of Afghan ‘dancing boys’ a ‘culturally sanctioned form of male rape’

The Afghanistan interior minister was so concerned about an incident where DynCorp, a US contractor charged with training Afghan police, bought drugs and paid for young “dancing boys” that he asked the US embassy to work to “quash” the story, a secret US diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks indicates.

In Afghan society, “dancing boys” are little boys dressed as girls, commonly abused and kept by some men as possessions.

As Joel Brinkley reported forSFGate.com, many Afghan Pashtun tribal men take boys age 9 to 15 as lovers. The US State Department recently called “dancing boys” a “widespread, culturally sanctioned form of male rape.”

Sociologists and anthropologists say the problem results from perverse interpretation of Islamic law. Women are simply unapproachable. Afghan men cannot talk to an unrelated woman until after proposing marriage. Before then, they can’t even look at a woman, except perhaps her feet. Otherwise she is covered, head to ankle.

“How can you fall in love if you can’t see her face,” 29-year-old Mohammed Daud told reporters. “We can see the boys, so we can tell which are beautiful.”
“Some research suggests that half the Pashtun tribal members in Kandahar and other southern towns are bacha baz, the term for an older man with a boy lover,” wrote Brinkley. “Literally it means ‘boy player.’ The men like to boast about it.”

“Everyone tries to have the best, most handsome and good-looking boy,” a former mujahideen commander told Reuters in 2007. “Sometimes we gather and make our boys dance and whoever wins, his boy will be the best boy.”

Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai is Pashtun. Brinkley’s sources say that one or two members of Karzai’s family had taken boy lovers, but that was unconfirmed.

According to the newly leaked cable, the then-Ministor of Interior Hanif Atmar worried that if the story became public then lives would be in danger. Atmar also warned that a video of the incident might be released by the media,

“On the Kunduz Regional Training Center (RTC) DynCorp event of April 11 (reftel), Atmar reiterated his insistence that the U.S. try to quash any news article on the incident or circulation of a video connected with it,” the cable said.

“Atmar said he insisted the journalist be told that publication would endanger lives. His request was that the U.S. quash the article and release of the video,” the cable continued. “Amb Mussomeli responded that going to the journalist would give her the sense that there is a more terrible story to report.”

Atmar then disclosed the arrest of two Afghan National Police (ANP) and nine other Afghans (including RTC language assistants) as part of an MoI investigation into Afghan “facilitators” of the event. The crime he was pursuing was “purchasing a service from a child,” which in Afghanistan is illegal under both Sharia law and the civil code, and against the ANP Code of Conduct for police officers who might be involved. He said he would use the civil code and that, in this case, the institution of the ANP will be protected, but he worried about the image of foreign mentors.
A July 2009 article by The Washington Post mentioned the incident but appeared to minimize the nature of such a practice.

“One effort to train Afghan civilian police has drawn attention from the State Department’s inspector general following incidents of questionable management oversight, including one instance in which expatriate DynCorp employees in Afghanistan hired a teenage boy to perform a tribal dance at a company farewell party and videotaped the event,” the Post‘s Ellen Nakashima wrote.

The cable also said that the interior minister had requested that the US military take over the control over the training centers that DynCorp was managing, but he was informed that such an arrangement was legally impossible.

“Atmar said that President Karzai had told him that his (Atmar’s) ‘prestige’ was in play in management of the Kunduz DynCorp matter and another recent event in which Blackwater contractors mistakenly killed several Afghan citizens. The President had asked him ‘Where is the justice?’” the cable reported.

This YouTube video shows an example of a Pashtun boy forced to dance in a girl’s dress. Some Afghan girls have actually found a greater sense of freedom by dressing up as boys.

Atmar “understood that within DynCorp there were many ‘wonderful’ people working hard, and he was keen to see proper action taken to protect them; but, these contractor companies do not have many friends.”

In June of this year, Atmar resigned as Minister of Interior.

In August, Karzai surprised the US Embassy in Kabul by announcing that he was banning foreign security contractors.

“[T]he [US] officials say that Karzai gave no advance notice to the embassy or other U.S. officials that he would attempt to address the problem with the radical step of trying to outlaw such contractors with the stroke of a pen,” Newsweek reported.

While the decision left some contractors panicked, many humanitarian aid workers havepraised Karzai.

“To the extent that it [the ban] helps to de-militarize the environment and to the extent that it reinforces the government’s monopoly on the use of force, I think ultimately it would be a positive thing,” Nic Lee, director of ANSO, a non-profit humanitarian project, said.

The ban was scheduled to begin Dec. 17 but in late October, Karzai delayed it by two months.

“Whether the ban ever takes place now remains to be seen, but it seems clear that it will have minimal impact on the contractor industry if it does,” Jason Ditz wrote for Antiwar.com.

http://infowar.co/featured/wikileaks-us-tax-dollars-fund-dyncorp-child-sex-slavery-in-afghanistan/