06-12-2010, 12:23 PM
Today's Guardian Wikileaks "live updates". Visit their webpage to get operational links.
Here in Blighty, the big Wikileaks story today is on publication of "key infrastructure" list, with Malcolm Rifkind MP spouting off about what a travesty this is - although Assange counters this by saying exact locations have not been given. The general feeling is that any terrorist organization worth its salt would already have access to a similar list anyway.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/blog/2010...intcmp=239
Here in Blighty, the big Wikileaks story today is on publication of "key infrastructure" list, with Malcolm Rifkind MP spouting off about what a travesty this is - although Assange counters this by saying exact locations have not been given. The general feeling is that any terrorist organization worth its salt would already have access to a similar list anyway.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/blog/2010...intcmp=239
Quote:WikiLeaks US embassy cables: live updates
• Cables reveal key infrastructure and potential terror targets
• Qatar accused of using al-Jazeera as tool of diplomacy
• Saudi Arabia seen as cash machine for terror
• Full coverage of the WikiLeaks cables
This page will update automatically every minute: On | Off
WikiLeaks has been blocked from being accessed by federal employees of the US, because the files are still seen as classified. Photograph: Thomas Coex/AFP/Getty Images
11.09am: The Yemeni government faces some awkward questions later this week about why it lied about US attacks against al-Qaida.
"We'll continue saying the bombs are ours, not yours," Yemen's president Ali Abdullah Saleh told David Petraeus in a now infamous cable in January this year.
Yemen's parliament will question the deputy prime minister over the cables, MPs told Reuters.
Rashad al-Alimi, Deputy Prime Minister for Security and Defence Affairs, has been asked to attend parliament on Wednesday to discuss the content of the secret U.S. documents, several MPs confirmed.
A government official told Reuters Alimi would go to parliament to answer parliamentarians' questions, but said the information in the leaked documents were inaccurate.
"Of course this (information in the cables) is not true. Everyone in the world is complaining about the inaccuracies of these documents," he said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
10.36am:Vancouver police have been asked by a lawyer to investigate whether a former aide to the Canadian prime minister broke the law when he called for the assassination of Julian Assange.
Last week Tom Flanagan, called for a contract killing against the WikiLeaks founder in a live TV discussion. He later said he regretted the remark.
Gail Davidson, a co-founder of the group Lawyers Against the War, has made a formal complaint to the police in Canada, according to the Vancover Sun.
In his online chat with Guardian readers last Friday Assange said those who called for his killing should be charged with incitement to murder.
10.23am: This is a useful - a search engine for all the hundreds of cables already published by WikiLeaks. You can use it to see what everyone else is searching for too.
9.58am: While US students have been told to that reading the cables could harm their careers, students in Indian are being told the opposite. Trainee diplomats at India's Foreign Services Institute (FSI) to emulate the prose style displayed by the diplomats in the cables.
"The Ministry of External Affairs is asking its youngsters to read them [the cables] and get a hang of the brevity with which thoughts and facts have been expressed," the Indian Express reports.
I'd recommend cables written by former US ambassador in Moscow William Burns, especially this one about a drunken wedding in Dagestan.
The cable is described as an "insightful, literate, and wry field report" by Reuel Marc Gerecht in the New Republic. He also likes the cables by Tatinian Gfoeller, the ambassador to Kyrgystan who reported on Prince Andrew's rudeness.
9.39am: The Guardian took a weekend break from live blogging the cables, but The Nation didn't. They work harder in America. Here's Greg Mitchell's round up of Sunday's WikiLeaks news.
My colleague Peter Walker is working on a summary of the WikiLeak revelations from today and over the weekend. While we wait for that, the respected analyst, Juan Cole, has a round-up of the weekend's top 10 disclosures about the Middle East.
9.21am: More evidence that the release of the cable about the key infrastructure sites is being used as stick to beat WikiLeaks.
Here's a tweet from Times columnist David Aaronovitch.
I don't see how the strategic sites cable fits into J Assange's heroic rubric of disclosure. It looks more like like vandalism. #wikileaks
8.59am: The broadcaster Al-Jazeera has denied that it being used as a tool of Qatari diplomacy, as one of the cables claims.
In a statement it said:
"This is the US embassy's assessment, and it is very far from the truth. Despite all the pressure Al Jazeera has been subjected to by regional and international governments, it has never changed its bold editorial policies which remain guided by the principles of a free press."
8.49am: Much of the media continues to portray Julian Assange as a Bond villain holding the world to ransom.
Here's today's Daily Mail:
Julian Assange has distributed to fellow hackers an encrypted 'poison pill' of damaging secrets, thought to include details on BP and Guantanamo Bay.
He believes the file is his 'insurance' in case he is killed, arrested or the whistleblowing website is removed permanently from the internet.
The release of the "terror targets" plays into that view.
8.24am: The Today programme presenter Jim Naughtie is in all sorts of trouble after substituting a crucial letter in the surname of culture secretary Jeremy Hunt, and then corpsing his way through the headlines.
Before the gaffe Naughtie sneered at the Guardian's WikiLeaks coverage. In a review of the papers at 6.12am he sarcastically described today's Guardian's splash as "another story that will make us all fall off our chairs with astonishment".
8.06am: A new edition of the weekly German magazine Der Spiegel is published today with a slew of new stories from the cables.
The magazine, one of the five media organisations - including the Guardian - to have had early sight of the cables, focuses on what they reveal about the conflict in Iraq.
The Americans allowed themselves to get entangled in the Sunni-Shia conflict while being systematically outmaneuvered by the Iranians, according to 5,500 about the war and its aftermath.
It also looks at what the cables say about Xi Jingping, China's probable future leader and the inner workings of the Chinese Politburo.
In interview with the magazine, Prince Turki bin Faisal of Saudi Arabia, says US "credibility and honesty" has been damaged by the leaks. He describes the cables as "a hodgepodge of selectivity, inaccuracy, agenda pursuit, and downright disinformation."
7.45am: A second working week of WikiLeaking kicks off with yet more controversy. WikiLeaks has published a list of "critical infrastructure and key resources" across the world. The Times dubs it a "targets for terror" list.
The BBC's diplomatic correspondent Jonathan Marcus also sees it as a potential hit list:
"If the US sees itself as waging a 'global war on terror' then this represents a global directory of the key installations and facilities - many of them medical or industrial - that are seen as being of vital importance to Washington," he writes.
He describes the cable as "probably the most controversial document yet from the Wikileaks".
Meanwhile, WikiLeaks continues to make ripples across the world. The Daily Beast tracks the personnel changes forced on the US diplomatic service by disclosures.
The Obama administration is planning a major reshuffling of diplomats, military officers, and intelligence operatives at US embassies around the world out of concern that WikiLeaks has made it impossible – if not dangerous – for many of the Americans to remain in their current posts, writes Philip Shenon.
"In the short run, we're almost out of business," a senior US diplomat told the Reuters news agency, according to a follow-up of the Daily Beast article in the Independent.
The fate of WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange, continues to attract much attention. The New York Times reports that hundreds of WikiLeaks mirror sites have sprung up to prevent efforts to censor its disclosures. Similarly the Guardian reports on an online backlash to shut the site down.
Australia's attorney general, Robert McCelland, said that Australia would provide consular assistance to Assange if he returned to Australia. But at the same time he said his country was providing ''every assistance'' to US authorities in their investigation against WikiLeaks.
Here are the headlines from the Guardian's latest trawl through the cables:
• Al-Jazeera changed coverage to suit Qatari foreign policy
• Cables portray Saudi Arabia as a cash machine for terrorists
• Lebanon told allies of Hezbollah's secret network
• Brazil denied existence of Islamist militants
• WikiLeaks cables blame Chinese government for Google hacking
You can follow all of last week's disclosures and reaction on our live blogs on the cables. And for full coverage go to our US embassy cables page or follow our US embassy cable Twitter feed @GdnCables.
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
Carl Jung - Aion (1951). CW 9, Part II: P.14