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Israelis can't be blamed for mistrusting Arabs, according to remarks by the ruler of the Arab state of Qatar released by the WikiLeaks group in the latest of a string of surprising revelations. Qatar's Emir, Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, made the comments in a meeting with U.S. Senator John Kerry on February 23. A report of their discussions, obtained by the WikiLeaks group, was filed by America's Ambassador to Qatar Joseph LeBaron.

United Nations official says US order to diplomats to glean intelligence on UN leadership may breach international law The senior American diplomat at the UN tonight defended her team after WikiLeaks disclosed a US spying operation targeting the UN's secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, and members of the security council. Susan Rice, the US ambassador appointed to the UN by Barack Obama last year, appeared uncomfortable and, at times, exasperated as she took questions from the media at the UN today. She denied US diplomats were engaged in spying. "Let me be very clear: our diplomats are just that," she said. "They...

It strikes me a bit odd that some of the original Wikileaks memos/cables at the WikiLeaks site have some names replaced with "XXXXXXXXXXXX", while the same memo when printed in the msm have the real names in them. How could this be? Why would Assange try to hide certain names on the originals, while providing them to the media? Or, did the media make up the missing names somehow? For example, this is in the news: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-embassy-cables-documents/204917 The Wikileaks version is here: http://cablegate.wikileaks.org/cable/2009/04/09BEIJING1176.html The Wikileaks version has as the subject: XXXXXXXXXXXXDISCUSSES G-20, DPRK, IRAN, AF/PAK, UNSC REFORM, TAIWAN, TIBET WITH...

Something else which has come out of the WikiLeaks dump is that when President Obama met with King Abdullah last year, he scored himself a tirade for having spent all his time bloviating about the importance of the Arab/Israeli conflict when what Abdullah really cared about was Iran and their nukes. That, again, isn’t exactly news. It does, however, indicate that the people in charge of our foreign policy are informed by left-wing pontification rather than reality. You mean the Saudis are backstabbing liars, play a double game and want others to do their dirty work for them? Quel surprise!...

Once again, Wikileaks had done a HUGH bombshell of a number a large trove of diplomatic information online. The names of individuals and nations was not only very shocking, but very embarrassing as well, and in the end, very damaging in respects to international relations.

Duke railed against France, British anti-corruption investigations into BAE and American ignorance, leaked dispatches reveal Prince Andrew launched a scathing attack on British anti-corruption investigators, journalists and the French during an "astonishingly candid" performance at an official engagement that shocked a US diplomat. Tatiana Gfoeller, Washington's ambassador to Kyrgyzstan, recorded in a secret cable that Andrew spoke "cockily" at the brunch with British and Canadian business people, leading a discussion that "verged on the rude".

An American politician has called for WikiLeaks to be designated a terrorist organisation following the release of the latest batch of leaked documents. New York Republican Peter King said the organisation was a "clear and present danger" to the US. "WikiLeaks presents a clear and present danger to the national security of the United States," he said. "I strongly urge you (Foreign Secretary Hillary Clinton) to work within the Administration to use every offensive capability of the US government to prevent further damaging releases by WikiLeaks." The Foreign Office said the actions of WikiLeaks risked British lives and security. "We...

A cache of a quarter-million confidential American diplomatic cables, most of them from the past three years, provides an unprecedented look at backroom bargaining by embassies around the world, brutally candid views of foreign leaders and frank assessments of nuclear and terrorist threats. ome of the cables, made available to The New York Times and several other news organizations, were written as recently as late February, revealing the Obama administration’s exchanges over crises and conflicts. The material was originally obtained by WikiLeaks, an organization devoted to revealing secret documents. WikiLeaks intends to make the archive public on its Web site...

Classified U.S. diplomatic cables reporting corruption allegations against foreign governments and leaders are expected in official documents that WikiLeaks plans to release soon, sources said Wednesday. The whistle-blowing website said on its Twitter feed this week its next release would be seven times larger than the collection of roughly 400,000 Pentagon reports related to the Iraq war which it made public in October. Three sources familiar with the State Department cables held by WikiLeaks say the corruption allegations in them are major enough to cause serious embarrassment for foreign governments and politicians named in them. They said the release was...

Iran has been able to smuggle advanced technological equipment to its uranium enrichment plant in Natanz via a complex smuggling route based in Dubai, the Sunday Telegraph reported on Sunday. According to the report, an Iranian company has purchased control systems from one of Germany's leading electronic manufacturers. The deal was negotiated with a Dubai trading company, which in turn sold Iran a range of electronic equipment for use at its enrichment facility, the British website reported. The report comes amid growing concerns that though Iran claims its nuclear program has only peaceful aims, Tehran is in fact working toward...

(04-09) 16:37 PDT SAN JOSE -- Vandals cut fiber-optic cable lines belonging to AT&T at two locations early today, knocking out phones and access to 911 emergency services to thousands of residential customers and businesses in southern Santa Clara County, in Santa Cruz and San Benito counties and along the Peninsula, authorities said. Four AT&T fiber-optic cables in an underground vault were severed shortly before 1:30 a.m. along Monterey Highway north of Blossom Hill Road in south San Jose, police Sgt. Ronnie Lopez said. Four more underground cables, at least two of which belong to AT&T, were cut about two...

Tech Central: er, something's happening Millions of people across the Middle East and Asia have lost access to the internet after two undersea cables in the Mediterranean suffered severe damage. Huge numbers in Egypt and India were left struggling to get online as a result of the outage, when the major internet pipeline between Egypt and Italy was cut. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) throughout the region, including those in United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, also reported problems. International telephone calls, which have also been affected, are being rerouted to work around the problem. Industry experts told The Times...

DOHA (AFP) - Damage to several undersea telecom cables that caused outages across the Middle East and Asia could have been an act of sabotage, the International Telecommunication Union said on Monday. "We do not want to preempt the results of ongoing investigations, but we do not rule out that a deliberate act of sabotage caused the damage to the undersea cables over two weeks ago," the UN agency's head of development, Sami al-Murshed, told AFP.

MUMBAI, Feb 10 (Reuters) - Services on two of three broken undersea cables providing Internet services to parts of the Middle East and Asia have been restored after both cables were repaired, an Indian-owned cable operator said on Sunday. FLAG Telecom, a subsidiary of India's No. 2 mobile operator Reliance Communications (RLCM.BO: Quote, Profile, Research), said in a statement the breaks in its FLAG Europe-Asia (FEA) and FALCON cables had been repaired and services routed back through these cables. Web access in south Asia and parts of the Middle East was disrupted after breaks occurred in segments of two cables...

Of cables and conspiracies Feb 7th 2008 The Economist An online frenzy that seems way out of line WHEN two undersea cables were damaged, apparently by ships' anchors, five miles north of Alexandria on January 30th, it seemed like a reminder of the fragility of the internet. The cables—one owned by FLAG Telecom, a subsidiary of India's Reliance Group, the other (SEA-ME-WE 4) by a consortium of 16 telecoms firms—carry almost 90% of the data traffic that goes through the Suez canal. When the connections failed, they took with them almost all internet links between Europe and the Gulf and...

From our "eyes open" and be ready for the ME to go hot, not only are sources in Israel reporting that unofficially folks are being told to ready their safe rooms, but we now see that telecommunications cable breaks servicing that part of the world are now up to 5! "A total of five cables being operated by two submarine cable operators have been damaged with a fault in each. These are SeaMeWe-4 (South East Asia-Middle East-Western Europe-4) near Penang, Malaysia, the FLAG Europe-Asia near Alexandria, FLAG near the Dubai coast, FALCON near Bandar Abbas in Iran and SeaMeWe-4, also...

Is the U.S. Failing in Afghanistan? It was malice in wonderland at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday as Bush Administration envoys insisted things are getting better in Afghanistan, while angry lawmakers from both parties cited facts and figures showing just the opposite. Even the senior Republican on the panel, Senator Richard Lugar, found the Administration's claims wanting. "I'm not sure that we have a plan for Afghanistan," he said. Long seen as the "forgotten war" eclipsed by Iraq in U.S. priorities, Afghanistan is in the Washington spotlight this week with the release of three independent reports concluding...

Ships are not responsible for damaging undersea internet cables in the Mediterranean, Egypt's Government says. Two cables were damaged earlier this week in the Mediterranean sea and another off the coast of Dubai, causing widespread disruption to internet and international telephone services in Egypt, Gulf Arab states and South Asia. A fourth cable linking Qatar to the United Arab Emirates was damaged on Sunday causing yet more disruptions, telecommunication provider Qtel said. Egypt's transport ministry said footage recorded by onshore video cameras of the location of the cables showed no maritime traffic in the area when the cables were damaged....

Internet outages disrupted business and personal usage across a wide swathe of the Middle East on Wednesday after two undersea cables in the Mediterranean were damaged, government officials and Internet service providers said. In Cairo, the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology said the cut of the international communications cables Flag and Seamewe 4 had led to a partial disruption of Internet services and other telecommunications across much of Egypt. Emergency teams were quickly trying to find alternative routes, including satellite connections, to end the disruptions, Minister Tariq Kamel said. A telecommunications expert at the Egyptian communications ministry, Rafaat Hindy,...

Our rant about those $7,250 Pear Anjou speaker cables found its way to the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF), and Randi offered $1 million to anyone who can prove those cables are any better than ordinary (and also overpriced) Monster Cables. Pointing out the absurd review by audiophile Dave Clark, who called the cables "danceable," Randi called it "hilarious and preposterous." He added that if the cables could do what their makers claimed, "they would be paranormal." We see that the Pear Cable company is advertising a pair of 12-foot "Anjou" audio cables for $7,250; that's $302 a foot! And,...