WikiLeaks: The Empire Is Naked And Governments Are In Damage Control

On Monday, governments worldwide scrambled to salvage the little dignity they have left however they could, after being exposed by Julian Assange’s Wikileaks. Government representatives voiced an overwhelming, and almost universal condemnation of the release of the US State Department secret communication files  in France, Britain, Iran, Germany, Saudi Arabia etc.

The leaked diplomatic documents revealed secret details on some of the world’s most tense crisis, they also paint most world leaders in very unflattering and undiplomatic terms. More seriously, the documents expose the State Department as a giant intelligence gathering structure where the diplomatic mission has taken a back sit to the spying one.Some of the highlight of the cables include a call by Saudi King Abdullah for the US to “cut off the head of the Iranian snake”, and a Chinese government  attempt to hack into Google.

The more than 250,000 cables from the State Department were given to journalists from five major international publications a few weeks ago, and are being release to the public in stages over the coming weeks by Weakileaks. The Obama administration and many governments worldwide are bracing for the worst.

In Britain, the government of Prime Minister Cameron said it would continue to work closely with the United States despite the unflattering US memos about David Cameron. British newspaper The Guardian, one of the five newspapers selected by Assange with The New-York Times, Le Monde , Der Speigel and El Pais , said that upcoming memos give embarrassing views of Cameron and describe former PM Gordon Brown as “weak”.

In France, despite the fact that President Sarkozy was called by cables of the US State Department “touchy, authoritarian, and an unpredictable emperor with no clothes”, the Sarkozy administration called the revelations “irresponsible and a threat to democratic authority”.

“We stand united with the US administration on the desire to avoid that which not only damages states’ authority, the quality of their services, but puts men and women who have worked in the service of the country in danger,” said Francois Baroin, the French government spokesperson, in an interview with Europe 1 radio station.

WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange: The  Champion of Global Transparency Will Target A Big US Bank Next

Despite a cyber attack that took down its main website on Sunday( Pentagon, State Department, CIA ?), Weakileaks started publishing 251,287 cables- including 15,652 categorized as “classified secret”- from 274 US embassies around the world. Wikileaks founder, Julian Assange, described the release of the documents as a “diplomatic history of the United States covering every major issues.” Wikileaks says that the diplomatic communications, which date from 1966 up until the end of February 2010, will be released in stages over the next few months.

“The cables show the extent of US spying on its allies and the United Nations; turning a blind eye to corruption and human rights abuse in “client states”; backroom deal with supposedly neutral countries; lobbying for US corporations; and the measures US diplomats take to advance those who have access to them. This document release reveals the contradiction between the US’s public persona and what it says behind closed doors-and show that if citizens in a democracy want their governments to reflect their wishes, they should ask to see what is going on behind the scenes,” says Wikileaks Cable Gate page.

What is next for the champion of global transparency to expose? A big US bank. On Monday, Forbes magazine published an interview  of Assange (see photo above) that was conducted in London by Andy Greenberg earlier this month. Assange told Greenberg that after the release of the Pentagon and State Department documents, he is planning to target a major US bank. The files should be coming up early next year. When asked by Greenberg what he was expecting from the release of the documents Assange said:

“It will give a true and representative insight into how banks behave at the executive level in a way that will stimulate investigations and reforms, I presume. For this, there is only one example: It is like the Enron emails,” Assange told Greenberg in the interview.

On Tuesday, Noam Chomsky told Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman that cable gate reveals “America’s profound hatred of democracy”.

“What that reveals is the profound hatred for democracy on the part of our political leadership and of course the Israeli political leadership,” said Chomsky in his interview with Goodman.