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WikiLeaks Archive — Cables Uncloak U.S. Diplomacy

nytimes.com

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Re: WikiLeaks Archive — Cables Uncloak U.S. Diplomacy

#11

Post by mbateman »

philwelch wrote: post #6

Earlier WikiLeaks releases seemed to expose atrocities and human rights abuses by the US military and government, which represents at least a partial justification. What end does this release serve?

I'm a WikiLeaks skeptic so I can't say I really support this. But I am also a diplomacy skeptic. I'm very suspicious of the effectiveness of our foreign policy and the honesty of our leaders in engaging in it. I'd even go so far as to say that the diplomatic aspect of our foreign policy is equally or more damaging and deserving of criticism than the military aspect. So I'll be interested to see what the more frank, non-public side, as opposed to the endless bullshitty platitudes we get officially.

Re: WikiLeaks Archive — Cables Uncloak U.S. Diplomacy

#13

Post by moondowner »

d2viant wrote: post #5

Perhaps off topic, but what is a cable? Is it just an email? Or is it some other form of communication specific to the State Department?

As I understood by reading the articles, they have their own "Internet" through which they communicate via cables, and every cable has it's own strict structure.

Re: WikiLeaks Archive — Cables Uncloak U.S. Diplomacy

#15

Post by anigbrowl »

d2viant wrote: post #5

Perhaps off topic, but what is a cable? Is it just an email? Or is it some other form of communication specific to the State Department?

Dates back to when messages were transmitted by telegraph - transmission via cable was for really urgent stuff that couldn't wait for the diplomatic bag.

Re: WikiLeaks Archive — Cables Uncloak U.S. Diplomacy

#16

Post by lukeschlather »

philwelch wrote: post #6

Earlier WikiLeaks releases seemed to expose atrocities and human rights abuses by the US military and government, which represents at least a partial justification. What end does this release serve?

> Slovenia was told to take a prisoner if it wanted to meet with President Obama, while the island nation of Kiribati was offered incentives worth millions of dollars to take in Chinese Muslim detainees, cables from diplomats recounted.

It's a little hard to tell from the wording, but that might be explicit evidence that the Obama administration is continuing the Bush administration's practice of extraordinary rendition. That or it's just banal, and the Obama administration is trying to find places to take our prisoners we can't release because of bureaucracy and fearmongering.

Re: WikiLeaks Archive — Cables Uncloak U.S. Diplomacy

#17

Post by tmsh »

philwelch wrote: post #6

Earlier WikiLeaks releases seemed to expose atrocities and human rights abuses by the US military and government, which represents at least a partial justification. What end does this release serve?

Perhaps it all comes down to whether you have faith in the American diplomatic corps. If you do, this doesn't make sense. If you don't, it does.

Re: WikiLeaks Archive — Cables Uncloak U.S. Diplomacy

#18

Post by trotsky »

d2viant wrote: post #5

Perhaps off topic, but what is a cable? Is it just an email? Or is it some other form of communication specific to the State Department?

I'm under the impression that a cable is something of a formalized document format - like when an enterprise has a formal template for a memo. Link wise, I'm pretty sure embassies use a combination of leased lines and satellites, with link layer hardware encryption and one time pads for messages deemed sufficiently sensitive. They may well get delivered using smtp but every email wouldn't get called a cable, and definitely not over public networks. The name cable obviously just stuck from historical use.

Re: WikiLeaks Archive — Cables Uncloak U.S. Diplomacy

#20

Post by rospaya »

nostrademons wrote: post #19

Is there a torrent anywhere with the actual text of the cables? Wikileaks itself is being DDOSed, and none of the news sites are reprinting anything but summaries.

"Assange made them available to the Guardian and four other newspapers: the New York Times, Der Spiegel in Germany, Le Monde in France and El País in Spain. All five plan to publish extracts from the most significant cables, but have decided neither to "dump" the entire dataset into the public domain, nor to publish names that would endanger innocent individuals. WikiLeaks says that, contrary to the state department's fears, it also initially intends to post only limited cable extracts, and to redact identities."

From The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/28/us-embassy-cable...

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