How America sees the World (Wikileaks)

[freestyler]

Wikileaks is going to release in conjunction with El Pais, Le Monde, Speigel, Guardian & NYT many "sensitive" US embassy cables tonight.

Reportedly this documents will "embarrass the US". A little teaser from tomorrow's Der Spiegel.

“Obama prefers to look East than West.”
“Obama has no emotion towards Europe.”
“The US sees the world as a confrontation between 2 superpowers. The EU plays a secondary role.”
“Europe is not so important for the US.”

From the cover, we read that Ahmadinejad “is Hitler”, Sarkozy is “an emperor without clothes”, Karzai is “driven by paranoia”.

From the inside articles, scanned by Symor Jenkins, we learn that the US have a snitch inside the German government, a member of the liberal FDP party. German chancellor Angela Merkel is described as “rarely creative and risk-averse”. Revelations about the German government go into so much details that Spiegel writes that

“The US is better informed about the secrets of German politics than German politicians themselves.”

This shouldn't have any major implications other than the possible expulsion of US diplomats from foreign postings, but it's interesting nonetheless.

More here.

Update:
The Guardian coverage: US embassy cables leak sparks global diplomacy crisis | World news | guardian.co.uk

Update 2: Now all over the web.

[supertom]

"Claims of inappropriate behaviour by a member of the British royal family." Now that one i want to know about

[Curtis2011]

The thing people need to realize is that every country has classified documents with stuff like this in it.

There just seem to be a lot more people in the world who hate America than other countries, so everybody targets the US with their emotional attacks.

Personally I think it is quite selfish of Julian Assange and his team at wikileaks to release classified documents like this. He is just doing it to be a "revolutionary" while not considering the actual damage he is doing to innocent Americans or people of other countries that were not involved with any politicians' "evil doings".


His actions come across sort of like the Joker in Batman: He is causing trouble just because "he wants to see the world burn".

[st33med]

I don't see any of this news as surprising. I knew before this was even leaked that Saudi Arabia saw Iran as a potential threat and even purchased $90 billion in military supplies and equipment from the US.

As for not caring much for the European side, there's not much economic activity right now in it. Matter of fact, socialist economies are slumping in Europe with France, Germany, and even the model of socialistic economies, Sweden switching to austere measures, which is why Angela Merkel is said to be not a risk taker. We may see that in the US soon depending on when conservatives will take over Congress.

And since when was the 'espionage' network new? The CIA does that on big leaders of the world. I'm thankful that the countries suppressed names so that nothing would come of the information leak except supposed 'embarrassment'.

Russia's Vladimir Putin is right to be called the 'alpha-dog'. He's a total badass and the whole country loves him! Search his name on Wikipedia and tell me you aren't impressed by his success.

Not sure about the Nazi comparisons in Germany though.

[Brutha]

Matter of fact, socialist economies are slumping in Europe with France, Germany, and even the model of socialistic economies, Sweden switching to austere measures, which is why Angela Merkel is said to be not a risk taker.

No, it's more about her personality than about her role as being the German chancellor.

And since when was the 'espionage' network new? The CIA does that on big leaders of the world.

The point was that officials who aren't in the CIA but who are diplomats do the same thing.

Personally I think it is quite selfish of Julian Assange and his team at wikileaks to release classified documents like this. He is just doing it to be a "revolutionary" while not considering the actual damage he is doing to innocent Americans or people of other countries that were not involved with any politicians' "evil doings".

When you buy a product at walmart then one can say that you ignore the actual damage you are doing to people who work in factories as slaves.

When Obama order the CIA to throw bombs that kill civilians on Yemen he's aware of the fact that innocent people die.
When Julian Assange releases document he's also aware that a few innocent people might get harmed.
Saying that either one acts because they want to be perceived as 'revolutionary' is a bit silly, the just make a calculated judgement and are okay with the collateral damage of their actions.

This release isn't only about blaming the US either.

If knowledge but the secrets of German politicians was gathered by the CIA that knowledge helps Germans to evaluate their politicians better.

The cables contain thousands small issues.

There just seem to be a lot more people in the world who hate America than other countries, so everybody targets the US with their emotional attacks.

The American government kills more citizens of other countries than any other country on the world. Maybe even as much as all other combined if you only count governments and don't count non states. I think it's quite natural that some people think that America should be opposed.

I don't see any of this news as surprising. I knew before this was even leaked that Saudi Arabia saw Iran as a potential threat and even purchased $90 billion in military supplies and equipment from the US.

For me it was interesting to know that Saudi leadership not only wants a war but also thinks that a war with Iran is inevitable.

[Curtis2011]

Originally Posted by Brutha

The American government kills more citizens of other countries than any other country on the world. Maybe even as much as all other combined if you only count governments and don't count non states. I think it's quite natural that some people think that America should be opposed.

And where did you get this statistic? Personally I think this sounds like BS. There are numerous dictatorships around the world where the governments are killing their own people. I read somewhere that Saddam Hussein killed more of his own civilians while he was dictator of Iraq than the number of civilians killed during the US invasion of Iraq. How's that for America being evil?