From the Beeb, we learn that WL has embarrassed another couple of thugs.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/...
Governments 'sought US wiretapping help'
Publishing the secret cables, the New York Times said governments wanted information on political adversaries.
Panama and Paraguay are two of the nations cited.
Panama's government says President Ricardo Martinelli's request on wiretaps had been "misinterpreted" by the US envoy.
In a cable from August 2009, President Martinelli is reported to have "sent the ambassador a cryptic Blackberry message that said: 'I need help with tapping phones'".
(Rachel Maddow has used that term 'underbelly', and I've always chuckled when I heard it. Many times, she has zeroed right in on that soft part of the corruption ooze, and 'underbelly' sounds perfect to describe the story, in a cute way. And heck, maybe she even covered this exact story and used that term [I don't listen to her show enough to know]. So I admit, I stole that word to describe this story.)
But as for Cryptic, I think "I need help tapping phones" is quite clear. It's not in Cuneiform, there's nothing Cryptic or Coptic or copacetic about it.
"and he clearly made no distinction between legitimate security targets and political enemies"
Well duh .. no kidding!
Does the US State Department think that leaders of foreign countries are going to bother to make that distinction, when US history has shown time and again how we dealt with our political enemies? They are just following the example set by Nixon, Kissinger and the goons that have followed them on forward, that international rule of law is a total joke, that the rights of the political opposition are to be shat upon. Dirty tricks, spying, lying, simply a collection of great American traditions that others try to emulate.
Of course, these leaders of small countries want to be able to wiretap and intrude upon anyone that they deem is dangerous to them politically.
Today, this crap continues under different guises: Hillary Clinton wants to get biometric data, passwords and phone records of UN diplomats. Anything goes, in the 'war on Terra'.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/...
The intelligence gathering directives were sent from the intelligence operations office within the state department's bureau of intelligence and research ..
Biographic reporting is defined in the cables as including "credit card account numbers, frequent flyer account numbers" as well as "compendia of contact information".
New cables released tonight reveal that US diplomats at the embassy in Asunción, the capital of Paraguay, were ordered to obtain dates, times and telephone numbers of calls received and placed by foreign diplomats from China, Iran and the Latin American socialist states of Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia. Washington also wanted the foreign diplomats' internet user account details and passwords, and the same depth of information for some local government and military leaders and "criminal entities or their surrogates", according to a US cable sent in 2008.
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But of all the 'underbelly' that is being revealed, it's how the drugs and arms smuggling trades infest governments worldwide that is perhaps the most significant. These operations have been going on for decades, and have had direct links right into the WH and leaders of Political Parties in times past.
http://www.gwu.edu/...
So when the Beeb reports this, I could not help it as I roared in laughter.
In another cable from October 2009, Mexican Defence Secretary Gen Guillermo Galvan is quoted as saying he does not trust other Mexican law enforcement agencies in anti-drugs work because of leaks and corruption.
A number of cables reveal the extent of the involvement of senior officials in the drug trade in some countries.
In one cable dated March 2008, US diplomats in Guinea report that a supposed incineration of drugs was faked.
The cable says: "The event was a real eye-opener and a facade. The incineration was a ridiculous attempt by the [government of Guinea] to prove that a law enforcement campaign against narcotics exists. If anything was proven, it was that the traffickers' influence has reached the highest levels of the government."
These little examples of two bit dictators and fake 'democrats' are nothing, compared to massive corruption of our own political system, which has been overflowing with money from drugs, weapons and human trafficking for decade after decade, crimes that we can only begin to imagine. The crimes of people like Ollie North and John Poindexter did not magically stop when Clinton took office. The 'reforms' inside the CIA, DIA and NSC continue to provide cover to a worldwide criminal network which sees itself above any law, because of 'American Exceptionalism'.
These leaked diplomatic cables reveal just a tiny little bit of that 'underbelly'.
Yes, it's nice to have some transparency inside the Obama WH: but I'd really like to know how much are we being allowed to see, and how much of what use to pass as "business as usual" in the Nixon, Reagan and Bush White Houses still goes on today in different forms?
Take the heroin trade in Afghanistan, for instance.