
WikiLeaks Begins Releasing Leaked Saudi Arabia Cables - adamnemecek
http://time.com/3928584/wikileaks-saudi-arabia-cables/
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discardorama
Saudi Arabia is at the center of a lot of stuff going on in the middle east
right now (their support for ISIS, their involvement in Yemen, the chess game
with Iran, etc. etc.). It would be interesting to see what these cables turn
up, once translated.

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themeekforgotpw
ISIL is used as a proxy force by all powers that can effectively manipulate
them, but they are also a force of their own.

The US heavily invests in using video games for propaganda and ISIL and Sunni-
insurgent forces have been exposed to a number of anti-Assad video games.
Hamas is unlikely to be the progenitor of anti-Assad video themed video games.
It's speculative, but it makes a lot of sense that the US would do what it can
to direct ire at Assad.

What's not speculative is that Turkey and the US were running guns to groups
that became ISIL factions in Syria.

There's lots of influence to be had all over. The larger powers are trying to
manage the situation to achieve their ends. That means funding insurgent
groups where it benefits them and bombing the same groups from the air where
they are challenged.

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boreas
Can you provide a source for US "gun running" to ISIL factions in Syria? It is
well known that Turkey's intelligence agency is doing this, but I've never
heard the same accusation leveled at the US.

Also I would love to see these anti-Assad video games, even though it seems
like American involvement is your own analysis.

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smitherfield
Yeah, it's not exactly like the US is the only place in which video games can
be created, especially since they almost certainly aren't exactly AAA stuff.
(More like a _Counter-Strike_ mod at best, I would imagine).

~~~
themeekforgotpw
This is true, I would expect a number of countries to be able to pull it off
if they were inclined to. Iran, Russia, China, Syria, US, Turkey, Iraq, Saudi
Arabia. Those are the choices. Palestine is very unlikely - though they have
used video games in the past. Since the target is Syria it rules out China and
Russia and Syria. Iraq is in essence a provincial government and isn't do that
on its own accord. Iran could, but they aren't in the video game making
business. Neither is Saudi Arabia. Given the DoD's investment in expanding
propaganda operations to new media including video games, the US makes a lot
of sense - though it would make some sense too if it was joint with Turkey.

No smoking gun and not strong enough evidence to assume it, but it's not a
crazy speculation.

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contingencies
[https://wikileaks.org/saudi-cables/press](https://wikileaks.org/saudi-
cables/press) is a better link? Actual cables in Arabic at
[https://wikileaks.org/saudi-cables/search](https://wikileaks.org/saudi-
cables/search)

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albenali
this is laughable. WikiLeaks claims that "A document listing the subscriptions
that needed renewal by 1 January 2010 details a series of contributory sums
meant for two dozen publications in Damascus, Abu Dhabi, Beirut, Kuwait, Amman
and Nouakchott. The sums range from $500 to 9,750 Kuwaiti Dinars ($33,000)".
The actual document shows that a Saudi ministry is buying subscriptions to
newspapers. The "9,750" is actually 9 dinars and 750 fils - an amount
equivalent to $35!

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dogma1138
Not really laughable commas and periods have a different meaning in math, and
well accounting in many countries.

For example if you have a 2340 dollars and 87 cents then in the US it will be
written like 2,345.87 in mainland Europe it will be 2.345,87.

If you remove the cents than to an American person 2,340 is 2000 and 345
dollars, to a say French person it will be 2 dollars and 34 cents.

On top of that the Kuwaiti Dinar is the only currency in the world (that i
know off) that its main unit is divided into thousands and not hundreds which
complicates this even further since for most people this makes it even look
less like a "decimal" sign used in currency but a simple comma which is used
to separate thousands.

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Raed667
This is one of a very few times, where I feel privileged that I know Arabic.

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caminante
I found it notable that this leak didn't directly flow from Bradley or
Snowden:

    
    
      "The group did not attribute the documents to a source directly. The press 
      release did note that the Saudi Foreign Ministry acknowledged a computer 
      network breach in May, and a group called the Yemeni Cyber Army afterward 
      began releasing “sample” classified material to various websites."

~~~
navait
Yeah, somehow I suspect Manning and Snowden didn't have access to the Saudi
Foreign Ministry.

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coldcode
Sadly I can't read Arabic, hopefully there will be some translations. This can
only be interesting reads.

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skeuomorf
Well, I read all the documents in the first page here
[https://wikileaks.org/saudi-cables/search](https://wikileaks.org/saudi-
cables/search) and sadly didn't find anything interesting but there are
thousands of documents so, hopefully someone will parse them and report on the
interesting ones.

Aside - might be interesting to some: The OCR on these documents is completely
botched, I found a couple of words that were right but that's it.

~~~
anigbrowl
Thanks for noticing that. I cut and pasted the Arabic text in google translate
and the results were just complete nonsense. I suppose much less effort has
been spent on optimizing OCR for non-Latin chracter sets.

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anigbrowl
Aside of the content, interesting things to do with both these and the state
department cables would be to study patterns in the metadata like transmission
date/time vs geographic location. Wikileaks has them sorted by various
criteria, is anyone aware of a good platform for wrangling this to visualize
it different ways? Most of the offerings at
[http://infosthetics.com/archives/2010/11/wikileaks_us_embass...](http://infosthetics.com/archives/2010/11/wikileaks_us_embassy_cables_the_visualizations.html)
are deprecated or dead.

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acd
Is there some machine learning program that can make sense from a lot of text?

What could read several thousand research articles about food intake and make
common sense out of it? What could read Wikileaks and make sense of all that
text?

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bizkeep2
This is laundering FSB intelligence.

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foxhedgehog
It certainly is never Russia or its allies that is leaked by WikiLeaks

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bizkeep2
Have Wikileaks ever dox'd an ally to Russia?

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istvan__
Do they have anything? Russia was relatively ok in the last 20 years (except
the wars against Georgia, Chechen wars). They never really hide their actions,
like annexing Crimea was communicated way in advance to the NATO, like in
years. The western media barely mentions it. There was an earlier agreement
between the NATO and Russia that we are not expanding to the east direction in
the EU and we do not interfere with Russian interests in ex-soviet countries.
Anyways it would be good to see more information from WL on these, I am really
curious what went down exactly.

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afarrell
> annexing Crimea was communicated way in advance to the NATO

Wait it was? I am genuinely interested. Can you please link to something more
about this in either English or Russian?

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istvan__
This was the discussion:

[http://www.military.com/daily-news/2013/10/22/rasmussen-
no-n...](http://www.military.com/daily-news/2013/10/22/rasmussen-no-nato-
membership-for-ukraine-georgia.html)

At this stage the NATO and allies knew that Russia is not happy with their
plans on eastern expansion. I am trying to find a proof that they were aware
of the annexation plans.

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snogglethorpe
Russia's general feelings were always reasonably clear, but there's an
enormous gulf between "want to annex and complain a lot about the current
situation" (lots of states have such positions on disputed territories) and
"actually sending in tanks tomorrow"...

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istvan__
That is very clear. Putin gain massive support in Russia with these moves, of
course this is melting away after the embargo kicked in. The problem with that
is two fold. The embargo directly hurts EU's economy (look at the Mistral
class ship deal with France) and the lower oil price triggered a massive
buying up operation in China making them even stronger than before. Basically
USA's (and more broadly the Western world's) influence hurting their allies
and enabling the other parties (China) to gain even more power. This sort of
play is not good for us in the long run.

