Glintingly glamorous ... a suit of armour in the Grand Master's Palace in Malta. Photograph: Philippe Renault/Hemis/Corbis The artist Willem de Kooning once said oil painting was invented in order to portray flesh. He might just as well have said it was created to convey the metallic gleam of armour.
Men regularly wore metal in the 15th century, when oil painting first came into its own, and some of the greatest European painters were fascinated by the strange sartorial splendour of the battlefield and tournament.
Piero della Francesca's Brera altarpiece includes a portrait of the man who commissioned it, the cultured mercenary Federico da Montefeltro, kneeling in full plate armour that is as clearly reflective as a mirror. He looks as if he were wearing glass – the polished metal suggests his purity, his piety. Federico's reflective shine is that of a perfect knight. He looks like he could win the holy grail.
By contrast, in Giorgione's enigmatic painting of a young man in armour in the National Gallery of Scotland, the metal glints darkly, its burnished shadows sinister. A similar effect is used by Titian to convey both masculine power and inner anxiety in his portrait of Francesco Maria della Rovere in the Uffizi. Here, Titian uses the hardness of the battle gear to mirror the soul.
You don't have to content yourself with looking at paintings of armour, of course; wonderful examples survive. There is a sumptuous display of it in the V&A's new Medieval and Renaissance galleries. Other great places include the Wallace Collection and Tower of London in the capital, the Royal Armouries in Leeds, and the majestic armour galleries at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.
War is hell. But armour can be heavenly.
Jonathan Jones

Un article dans the Guardian écrit par Alan Travis :

John Stonehouse on his way to court to face 21 charges, including fraud, in 1975. Photograph: Ken Towner / Evening News / Rex Margaret Thatcher agreed to a cover-up when information from a Czech defector confirmed in 1980 that John Stonehouse, the former Labour minister who "did a Reggie Perrin", had been a spy.
At a Downing Street meeting on 6 October 1980 with her home secretary, William Whitelaw, and attorney-general Sir Michael Havers, Thatcher agreed that Stonehouse should not be confronted with the new information nor prosecuted.
The decision to keep secret Stonehouse's espionage followed hard on the heels of the exposure in 1979 of Sir Anthony Blunt, the surveyor of the Queen's pictures, as a Soviet spy.
The confirmation that Stonehouse was a paid spy for the Czechs also makes him the only British politician to have acted as a foreign agent while a minister.
He served in Harold Wilson's government in the 1960s. In 1974, faced with serious business problems, he abandoned his wife, faked suicide by leaving his clothes on a beach and disappeared with his mistress to Australia.
The Stonehouse affair coincided with the first television series of Reggie Perrin, who also disappeared by running into the sea, and helped the phrase "doing a Reggie Perrin" into the language. Stonehouse was later tracked down and sentenced to seven years for theft and fraud.
Downing Street papers show that Havers told Thatcher that "he was sure that Mr Stonehouse had been a spy for the Czechoslovaks but he had no evidence which he could put before the jury".
He said Stonehouse had twice denied the allegations when they were put to him in the late 1960s and had since then served his prison sentence and had undergone open heart surgery. "If he was interviewed again and confronted with further evidence, it was quite likely he would make a public fuss and claim that he was being persecuted by the government," said Havers, adding that MI5 did not think there was anything to gain by confronting him.
A confidential minute from the cabinet secretary, Sir Robert Armstrong, said the Czech defector claimed to have been Stonehouse's controller in the late 1960s. The defector said a Czech security file stated that Stonehouse was a "conscious paid agent from about 1962" and had "after taking office in 1964 provided information about government plans and policies and about technological subjects including aircraft, and had been paid over the years about £5,000 in all".
This goes further than recent disclosures about Stonehouse, an aviation minister and postmaster general, which suggested that he was useful to the Czechs only as a backbench MP.
In the Downing Street meeting, Armstrong told Thatcher that the case for confronting Stonehouse turned on the possibility of a leak from the unnamed defector who was then in the United States "and of subsequent accusations against the government that there had been another cover-up to save people in high places. Just as there had been in the Blunt case. It would obviously helpful to be able to say that Stonehouse had been confronted with the new information in an attempt to get him to confess."
Armstrong conceded that, unlike the Blunt case, there was no question of offering Stonehouse immunity from prosecution and, if the story leaked, the government would have to say there wasn't sufficient evidence to prosecute him.
The Downing Street file records that Thatcher said that since the defector had not provided information which could be used as evidence, she agreed he could not be prosecuted. "Moreover, the balance of argument was against interviewing him and confronting him with the new information. Matters should therefore be left as they were." Stonehouse died on 14 April 1988 without the spy rumours being publicly confirmed.

Très intéressante émission sur la BBC radio 4 concernant un explorateur britannique, Wilfred Thesiger.


This year is the centenary of photographer and traveller Wilfred Thesiger, whose 38000 photographs of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula are celebrated in a new exhibition at Oxford's Pitt Rivers Museum. BBC Security correspondent Frank Gardner, who was encouraged by Thesiger to learn Arabic, looks back on his fascinating life and reflects how it is through Thesiger's work that we currently have such an understanding of the North African and Arab world. Thesiger lived among the marsh Arabs of southern Iraq, and he also became famous for crossing the Rub' al Khali, the "Empty Quarter" of Saudi Arabia, surviving on less than a pint of water a day.
Gardner talks to Christopher Morton of the Pitt Rivers about Thesiger's work, and what it reveals of past ways of life, and he also speaks to the curator of the exhibition, Philip N Grover about ways of interpreting the graphic imagery of the photographs. Thesiger's biographer Alexander Maitland tells the story of his wartime service with the SAS and SOE, and explorer Benedict Allen assesses the importance of Thesiger's travels and writing. Despite Thesiger's keen appreciation of desert peoples and their way of life, he hated modern society. The only modern invention he valued was the camera. We hear his voice in historic broadcasts from the 1940s and 50s, his elegant prose recalling his travels in what is now a lost age.
From Wikipedia :

Après la guerre, Wilfred Thesiger prend conscience que le monde barbare et splendide des nomades, qu'il admire tant, va disparaître, et décide de consacrer entièrement sa vie à sauver leur mémoire de l'oubli. Pendant cinq ans, il va parcourir le désert du sud de l'Arabie saoudite en compagnie des Bédouins et va rapporter cette expérience dans son premier livre Le Désert des Déserts.
Il part ensuite pour l'Irak découvrir le mode de vie immémorial des Arabes des marais, tribus vivant dans le sud du pays, dans les immenses marais entre les fleuves Tigre et l'Euphrate. Parallèlement, il effectue aussi plusieurs voyages dans les montagnes d'Asie centrale, où il en profite pour chasser l'ours et le mouflon. Il sillonne des régions alors inconnues comme le Kurdistan, le Chitral, l'Hazaradjat et le Nouristan, connues aujourd'hui sous le terme de « zones tribales » du Pakistan.
Wilfred Thesiger s'intéresse moins aux paysages qu'aux tribus qui ont conservé leurs mœurs et pratiques originelles. Ni ethnologue, ni sociologue professionnel, il se contente souvent seulement d'observer et de rapporter, mais surtout savoure le plaisir d'être un des premiers et peut-être un des derniers à côtoyer un univers millénaire mais qu'il sait menacé. Il accompagne ses écrits de nombreuses cartes et de nombreuses photos en noir et blanc, lesquelles constituent autant de témoignages uniques et exceptionnels, tels les voyageurs Kirghizes à dos de yack, les villageois du Nouristan ou les bergers Tadjiks sur les sentiers d'Asie centrale.
Il a « toujours été attiré par les montagnes », mais « cherche la voie la plus facile pour les franchir ou pour les contourner, afin de voir ce qu'il y a de l'autre côté ». et ne s'encombre pas de matériel sophistiqué : « ... quelques vêtements de rechange, deux couvertures pour le cas où nous dormirions à la belle étoile, une poignée de médicaments, un livre ou deux, un appareil photographique et ma carabine 275 Rigby ». Il considère chaque jour de voyage passé dans une automobile comme une journée de perdue, et en quelques mois de voyage au Kurdistan irakien, en 1950 et 1951, il dit avoir visité ainsi à peu près tous les villages et gravi à peu près toutes les montagnes.
Dès la fin des années 1950, il se sait rattrapé par le monde moderne, lorsqu'il croise sur son chemin un mollah afghan à Chitrâl ou un marchand mongol en route pour Kashgar. Avec le recul, il reconnaît qu'il « aurait donné cher » pour les accompagner, mais peu à peu les frontières, jusqu'alors, libres, se ferment même pour lui, et son dernier voyage au Nouristan en 1965, semble comme un nostalgique adieu à un monde qui disparaît et qu'il a tant aimé : « Mais les temps avaient changé, et les frontières de notre monde s'étaient fermées. (...) À présent la grand-route est construite, les camions grondent dans les deux sens; les caravanes de chameaux ont disparu, leurs clochettes se sont tues pour toujours. »
Il revint s'installer en Angleterre dans les années 1990 et fut élevé à la dignité de Chevalier en 1995. Il a légué sa vaste collection de 25 000 négatifs au Pitt Rivers Museum d'Oxford. Wilfred Thesiger n'aimait pas trop la culture américaine et a dit à son sujet : "L'effet à long terme de la culture américaine telle qu'elle s'insinue dans le moindre recoin de tous les déserts, vallées et montagnes du monde sera la fin des civilisations. Notre avarice extraordinaire pour les possessions matérielles, les manières dont nous nourrissons cette avarice, le manque d'équilibre de nos vies, et notre arrogance culturelle amènera à notre perte d'ici un siècle à moins que nous apprenions à nous arrêter et à penser. Mais peut-être est-il déjà trop tard ?"

Ian Black

Muammar Gaddafi, the veteran Libyan leader, is a "mercurial and eccentric" figure who suffers from severe phobias, enjoys flamenco dancing and horse-racing, acts on his whims and irritates friends and enemies alike, according to US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks.
Gaddafi has often been ridiculed in the west, but he is regarded with fear and mistrust in parts of Africa, with leaders and officials expressing anger about his plans for a United States of Africa, the documents show. President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda even worried about a possible Libyan attack on his aircraft.
Perhaps more than most world figures, Gaddafi appears to be the object of both political and personal fascination, not least because of the Lockerbie affair and his past support for terrorism. Now 68, and in power since 1969, he has an intense dislike or fear of staying on upper floors, and prefers not to fly over water, the US ambassador to Tripoli reported before Gaddafi made a controversial visit to the UN in New York in September 2009.
Protocol staff initially balked at supplying the regulation size photograph for his visa application for the trip, "noting that his photo was displayed throughout the city [Tripoli] and that any one of hundreds of billboards could be photographed and shrunken to fit the criteria".
Libyan officials also tried to find accommodation with room to pitch Gaddafi's Bedouin tent, his preferred location for receiving visitors and conducting meetings "as it offers him a non-verbal way of communicating that he is a man close to his cultural roots". Seeking to iron out complications before the trip, a Libyan diplomat was described in a cable as being "painfully aware that Gaddafi's personal whims could scuttle the ministry of foreign affairs' efforts".
Gene Cretz, the US envoy, found him "almost obsessively dependent on a small core of trusted personnel", including a senior aide who speaks to him on a special red phone. He also cited "Gaddafi's well-known predilection for changing his mind".
Visitors should be prepared for surprises, Cretz warned Hillary Clinton before she flew to Tripoli in August 2008. "Muammar al-Gaddafi is notoriously mercurial. He often avoids making eye contact during the initial portion of meetings, and there may be long, uncomfortable periods of silence. Alternatively, he can be an engaging and charming interlocutor … a self-styled intellectual and philosopher, he has been eagerly anticipating for several years the opportunity to share with you his views on global affairs.
"Intellectually curious and a voracious consumer of news - trusted advisers are tasked with summarising in Arabic important books and articles printed in other languages."
Writing about last year's celebrations of the 40th anniversary of the Libyan revolution, the envoy focused on Gaddafi's preferences for dancing and cultural performances. He had "appeared particularly enthralled by Tuareg horse racing … clapping and smiling throughout. Flamenco dancers appeared to spark a similar interest." Gaddafi planned to stop in Seville on his way to Libya from Venezuela to attend a flamenco performance.
A US embassy informant spoke of an unflashy lifestyle in "modest quarters, with prefabricated walls and floors that creak. The walls are white and do not feature any artwork."
Another report described how his Bab al-Azizia compound in central Tripoli has facilities for banquets and other public events, "but is not lavish in any way compared with the ostentation of the Gulf oil state families or [the] Hariri clan [in Lebanon]."
House staff dress in street clothes rather than uniforms, while Gaddafi normally wears jogging suits to meet one regular guest, a consultant who described the leader as "paranoid about those around him, including his interpreters". He apparently did not even have his own bank account.
Gaddafi was reportedly pleased with his performance at the UN general assembly in 2009, when he spoke for 96 minutes instead of the allotted 15. The leader had "kept many things bottled up" for 30 years and was able to express them on the world stage, the embassy recorded. Gaddafi "felt he needed to speak his mind and express his frustration with issues that had been weighing on him – including his thoughts on the assassination of President John F Kennedy".
The informant called his attitude to the US "childlike", quoting him asking: "How much of New York … will I get to see?" and "Is Washington far from New York? Do you think I might have time to visit?"
US diplomats report extensively on Gaddafi's family, especially his sons Saif al-Islam and Muatassim. But, one cable notes, "since the family keeps a tight control on the media and most of the Gaddafi children's spending excesses take place outside Libya, there is not much public reaction to the coffers of Gaddafi Inc".
Family issues came to the fore when another son, Hannibal, became embroiled in a huge row over claims about allegedly beating a servant during a visit to Switzerland, triggering a severe diplomatic crisis between Tripoli and Berne whose resolution depended on whether the "notoriously ill-behaved and capricious first family changes its mind". No claim was ever pursued by the Swiss.
Reports from US embassies elsewhere in Africa provide copious evidence of high levels of mistrust. In addition to worrying about having his plane shot down, Uganda's Museveni complained of Libyan approaches to other leaders. "Gaddafi is trying to buy them off or intimidate them by destabilising their countries unless they agree with union," he said.
Press and independent sources reported that during a visit to the Guinean capital Conakry, Gaddafi gave a bulletproof Nissan vehicle to President Moussa Dadis Camara. A "sensitive source" told the US embassy that he also gave the president a large sum of cash.
On the subject of the African Union a Swazi diplomat mentioned his amusement at receiving a diplomatic note with Gaddafi's new title as "King of Culture".
Still, the US cables do show evidence of Gaddafi's mellowing over the years. "Every time we put out a fire in Africa, another one breaks out," he told the visiting US General William Ward of the US Africa Command. "We used to say this was a US conspiracy, but not anymore."
For the American ambassador to Tripoli, the conclusion about where US interests lie was clear: "While it is tempting to dismiss his many eccentricities as signs of instability, Gaddafi is a complicated individual who has managed to stay in power for 40 years through a skilful balancing of interests and realpolitik methods. Continued engagement with Gaddafi and his inner circle is important."

Julian Assange's lawyers have confirmed their client is behind bars in Wandsworth Prison.

Wandsworth Prison

John Hooper in Rome


Police and protesters tonight clashed violently outside La Scala, as the conductor Daniel Barenboim also took advantage of the Milan opera house's gala first night to protest against cuts in Italy's culture budget.
At least 10 police officers and an unknown number of demonstrators were taken to hospital after the skirmishes in which two home-made bombs were detonated. Smoke bombs and teargas were used during the clash.
Police in riot gear charged about 100 protesters – some wearing helmets, others Santa Claus hats – after they tried to break through crowd barriers penning them into different parts of the square outside Milan's most celebrated theatre.
The first night of La Scala's season of operas and ballets is often accompanied by demonstrations that have nothing to do with the arts. But on this occasion many protesters were demonstrating against cuts in culture spending in the 2011 budget drawn up by Silvio Berlusconi's government, which was being voted on in Rome as the premiere got under way.
Drama students joined opera-house workers from all around Italy to protest against a planned 37% reduction in performing arts subsidies.
Other demonstrators were protesting at a university reform bill that reduces student grants and cuts spending on research, but which the government has defended as promoting meritocratic values in higher eduction.
Barenboim was made principal guest conductor of La Scala four years ago, with the title of maestro scaligero. Before raising his baton at the start of Richard Wagner's Die Walküre (The Valkyrie), the Israeli conductor turned to Italy's president, Giorgio Napolitano, who was in the audience, and said: "For that title, and also in the names of the colleagues who play, sing, dance and work, not only here but in all theatres, I am here to tell you we are deeply worried for the future of culture in the country and in Europe."
He then read out the ninth article of the Italian constitution, which says that the republic promotes "the development of culture and scientific and technical research". The same article also promises that governments will safeguard the country's "historical and artistic heritage". The audience broke into applause, with Napolitano joining in.
The production, staged by the Belgian director Guy Cassiers, uses video – an innovation that has reportedly upset some of the singers. Cassiers said his aim was to bring all disciplines and technologies together "to create a universe". Die Walküre stars soprano Nina Stemme, mezzo-soprano Waltraud Meier and tenor Simon O'Neill.

John Naughton

Screen shot of a browser showing WikiLeaks' home page and Julian Assange after the move to a Swiss host. REUTERS/Valentin Flauraud 'Never waste a good crisis" used to be the catchphrase of the Obama team in the runup to the presidential election. In that spirit, let us see what we can learn from official reactions to the WikiLeaks revelations.
The most obvious lesson is that it represents the first really sustained confrontation between the established order and the culture of the internet. There have been skirmishes before, but this is the real thing.
And as the backlash unfolds – first with deniable attacks on internet service providers hosting WikiLeaks, later with companies like Amazon and eBay and PayPal suddenly "discovering" that their terms and conditions preclude them from offering services to WikiLeaks, and then with the US government attempting to intimidate Columbia students posting updates about WikiLeaks on Facebook – the intolerance of the old order is emerging from the rosy mist in which it has hitherto been obscured. The response has been vicious, co-ordinated and potentially comprehensive, and it contains hard lessons for everyone who cares about democracy and about the future of the net.
There is a delicious irony in the fact that it is now the so-called liberal democracies that are clamouring to shut WikiLeaks down.
Consider, for instance, how the views of the US administration have changed in just a year. On 21 January, secretary of state Hillary Clinton made a landmark speech about internet freedom, in Washington DC, which many people welcomed and most interpreted as a rebuke to China for its alleged cyberattack on Google. "Information has never been so free," declared Clinton. "Even in authoritarian countries, information networks are helping people discover new facts and making governments more accountable."
She went on to relate how, during his visit to China in November 2009, Barack Obama had "defended the right of people to freely access information, and said that the more freely information flows the stronger societies become. He spoke about how access to information helps citizens to hold their governments accountable, generates new ideas, and encourages creativity." Given what we now know, that Clinton speech reads like a satirical masterpiece.
One thing that might explain the official hysteria about the revelations is the way they expose how political elites in western democracies have been deceiving their electorates.
The leaks make it abundantly clear not just that the US-Anglo-European adventure in Afghanistan is doomed but, more important, that the American, British and other Nato governments privately admit that too.
The problem is that they cannot face their electorates – who also happen to be the taxpayers funding this folly – and tell them this. The leaked dispatches from the US ambassador to Afghanistan provide vivid confirmation that the Karzai regime is as corrupt and incompetent as the South Vietnamese regime in Saigon was when the US was propping it up in the 1970s. And they also make it clear that the US is as much a captive of that regime as it was in Vietnam.
The WikiLeaks revelations expose the extent to which the US and its allies see no real prospect of turning Afghanistan into a viable state, let alone a functioning democracy. They show that there is no light at the end of this tunnel. But the political establishments in Washington, London and Brussels cannot bring themselves to admit this.
Afghanistan is, in that sense, a quagmire in the same way that Vietnam was. The only differences are that the war is now being fought by non-conscripted troops and we are not carpet-bombing civilians.
The attack of WikiLeaks also ought to be a wake-up call for anyone who has rosy fantasies about whose side cloud computing providers are on. These are firms like Google, Flickr, Facebook, Myspace and Amazon which host your blog or store your data on their servers somewhere on the internet, or which enable you to rent "virtual" computers – again located somewhere on the net. The terms and conditions under which they provide both "free" and paid-for services will always give them grounds for dropping your content if they deem it in their interests to do so. The moral is that you should not put your faith in cloud computing – one day it will rain on your parade.
Look at the case of Amazon, which dropped WikiLeaks from its Elastic Compute Cloud the moment the going got rough. It seems that Joe Lieberman, a US senator who suffers from a terminal case of hubris, harassed the company over the matter. Later Lieberman declared grandly that he would be "asking Amazon about the extent of its relationship with WikiLeaks and what it and other web service providers will do in the future to ensure that their services are not used to distribute stolen, classified information". This led the New Yorker's Amy Davidson to ask whether "Lieberman feels that he, or any senator, can call in the company running the New Yorker's printing presses when we are preparing a story that includes leaked classified material, and tell it to stop us".
What WikiLeaks is really exposing is the extent to which the western democratic system has been hollowed out. In the last decade its political elites have been shown to be incompetent (Ireland, the US and UK in not regulating banks); corrupt (all governments in relation to the arms trade); or recklessly militaristic (the US and UK in Iraq). And yet nowhere have they been called to account in any effective way. Instead they have obfuscated, lied or blustered their way through. And when, finally, the veil of secrecy is lifted, their reflex reaction is to kill the messenger.
As Simon Jenkins put it recently in the Guardian, "Disclosure is messy and tests moral and legal boundaries. It is often irresponsible and usually embarrassing. But it is all that is left when regulation does nothing, politicians are cowed, lawyers fall silent and audit is polluted. Accountability can only default to disclosure." What we are hearing from the enraged officialdom of our democracies is mostly the petulant screaming of emperors whose clothes have been shredded by the net.
Which brings us back to the larger significance of this controversy. The political elites of western democracies have discovered that the internet can be a thorn not just in the side of authoritarian regimes, but in their sides too. It has been comical watching them and their agencies stomp about the net like maddened, half-blind giants trying to whack a mole. It has been deeply worrying to watch terrified internet companies – with the exception of Twitter, so far – bending to their will.
But politicians now face an agonising dilemma. The old, mole-whacking approach won't work. WikiLeaks does not depend only on web technology. Thousands of copies of those secret cables – and probably of much else besides – are out there, distributed by peer-to-peer technologies like BitTorrent. Our rulers have a choice to make: either they learn to live in a WikiLeakable world, with all that implies in terms of their future behaviour; or they shut down the internet. Over to them.

un autre câble diplomatique :

Friday, 15 January 2010, 12:43
C O N F I D E N T I A L SOFIA 000031
SIPDIS
ISN/CATR FOR MARGARET MITCHELL
EO 12958 DECL: 01/11/2020
TAGS ETTC, MCAP, MOPS, PARM, PINR, PREL, PTER, MASS, YM
SUBJECT: BULGARIA ENHANCES END-USE MONITORING MECHANISMS
FOR YEMEN ARMS DEAL
Classified By: CDA Susan Sutton for reasons 1.4 (b) and (d).
1. (C) SUMMARY: Bulgaria has decided to approve the sale of arms from a private Bulgarian firm to the Government of Yemen. The deal, funded by the UAE and worth approximately USD 55 million, will send small arms, explosives, ammunition, and other weaponry to Yemen in the first half of 2010. In light of the increasingly unstable situation in Yemen, and in response to our proposal for greater end-use monitoring, the Bulgarian Export Commission agreed to take extra steps to ensure proper delivery, storage, and accountability for the shipments, which began on January 5. The Export Commission passed on identification numbers for all items and stated that Bulgaria will comply with a USG proposal for additional monitoring, as well as coordinated efforts with their embassy in Yemen to heighten safeguards for proper delivery. Although not mandatory, Bulgaria continues to consult with us on an informal basis on arms deals involving potentially controversial destinations. END SUMMARY.
2. (C) Bulgaria's Export Commission notified us on November 7 that it was considering approval of a deal, financed by the UAE that would send over 30,000 assault rifles, 100,000 high-explosive charges, RPGs, and ammunition to Yemen from the Bulgarian consignee XXXXXXXXXXXX in the first part of 2010. At that time, we expressed our reservations about the deal, given the unstable situation in Yemen and the potential for proliferation of small arms. Although it accepted our concerns, the Export Commission decided to go ahead with the deal, noting that the difficult economic situation made the offer extremely attractive to domestic arms producers. Anticipating this, we proposed a set of measures to enhance end-use monitoring. The MOEE agreed to reduce the quantity of assualt rifles by 25 per cent and provide serial numbers, lot numbers, and production years for nearly all of the items. The Ministry of Energy and Economy also received a statement of compliance from the GoY regarding delivery, description of goods, and storage requirements. XXXXXXXXXXXX provided us with delivery schedule documents, including flight information for the XXXXXXXXXXXX scheduled air shipments between XXXXXXXXXXXX . This information was passed through intel channels. XXXXXXXXXXXX also gave us a CD containing lot numbers and serial numbers. Noting their good contacts on the ground in Yemen, XXXXXXXXXXXX informed us that Bulgaria's Commercial Attache is expected to be present for all deliveries.
3. (C) COMMENT: The Bulgarian government continues to work closely with us to prevent arms proliferation. As a rule, they seek our advice on potentially controversial cases, even when our consultation is not mandatory. In the past, the GoB has denied arms deals to countries of concern, such as Eritrea, based on our objections. In this instance, the financial incentive was too great for them to refuse. But, they are committed to working with us on all possible end-use monitoring steps. Copies of the E.U.C. and the lot and serial numbers have been sent by SIPRnet to ISN/CATR Margaret Mitchell. SUTTON

c'est drôle de voir  comment se présente un câble diplomatique :

Tuesday, 13 May 2008, 15:28
S E C R E T STATE 050524
NOFORN
EO 12958 DECL: 05/05/2018
TAGS PARM, PREL
SUBJECT: CHINA CONVENTIONAL ARMS TRANSFERS TO IRAN
REF: A. STATE 162318 B. STATE 109649 C. BEIJING 5237 D. STATE 071143 E. STATE 073601 F. BEIJING 5754 G. STATE 72896 H. BEIJING 5361 I. STATE 148514 J. BEIJING 6848 K. STATE 159388 L. BEIJING 7212 M. BEIJING 7387
Classified By: CLASSIFIED BY ISN ACTING DAS ELIOT KANG FOR REASONS 1.4 (B) AND (D).
1. (U) This is an action request. Embassy Beijing, please see paragraph 2.
--------------
ACTION REQUEST
--------------
2. (S/NF) Post is requested to draw on the points in para 4 below and to provide photographs in a demarche to the Government of China (GOC) on the issue of transfers of advanced conventional weapons such as MANPADS to Iran. NOTE THAT THE POINTS FLAGGED AS PROVIDED BY THE IC MUST BE USED VERBATIM.
----------
BACKGROUND
----------
3. (S/NF) In April 2008, Coalition forces recovered from a cache in Basra, Iraq at least two Chinese-produced Iranian-supplied QW-1 MANPADS that we assess were provided by Iran to Iraqi Shia militants. The date of production for the recovered QW-1 systems is 2003, but it is not known when these particular launchers were transferred by China to Iran or when the launchers entered Iraq. We have demarched China repeatedly on its conventional arms transfers to Iran, urging Beijing to stop these transfers due to unacceptably high risk that such weapons would be diverted to militants and terrorists in Iraq and elsewhere. Beijing has typically responded by asserting that its sales are in accordance with international law, that it requires end-users to sign agreements pledging not to retransfer the weapons, or -- disingenuously in the judgment of USG technical experts -- that it cannot confirm that the weapons recovered by Coalition forces in Iraq are actually Chinese in origin. This latest recovery of Chinese-origin weapons in Iraq gives us yet another opportunity to present the Chinese government with concrete evidence that Iran is illicitly diverting Chinese-origin weapons and to urge Beijing to take concrete steps to halt future diversions and investigate past transfers to Tehran.
--------------
TALKING POINTS
--------------
4. (S/REL CHINA) BEGIN TALKING POINTS:
TRANSFERS OF MANPADS TO IRAN
-----------------------------
-- We have repeatedly raised with you our concerns regarding Iran,s retransfer of Chinese-produced weapons to extremists and terrorists in Iraq and elsewhere.
-- We understand that you have provided Iran with QW-1 MANPADS in the past, and Iran has publicly asserted that it produces the Misagh-1, which is based on the Chinese QW-1.
-- We previously raised with you the recovery in Iraq in 2004 of an Iranian-origin Misagh-1 MANPAD that had been fired at a civilian airliner.
-- We have recently acquired additional information about Iranian diversions of Chinese-origin MANPADS that we would like to share with you.
BEGIN IC POINTS THAT MUST BE USED VERBATIM:
-- Coalition forces recovered at least two Chinese QW-1 MANPADS missiles from a militant cache in Basra, Iraq in April 2008. The missiles had 2003 production markings, had not been fired, and were still intact in their launch tubes.
-- We assess that these missiles were provided to Iraqi Shia militants by Iran.
END IC POINTS THAT MUST BE USED VERBATIM.
MANPADS TRANSFERS TO STATE SPONSORS OF TERRORISM
--------------------------------------------- ---
-- Iran is the world's most active state sponsor of terrorism. We know that Iran has provided Chinese weapons to extremist groups in Iraq and Afghanistan that are using these weapons to kill Americans and Iraqis, something we take very seriously.
-- Iran is not a responsible purchaser of military equipment. There is an unacceptably high risk that any military equipment sold to Iran, especially weapons like MANPADS, that are highly sought-after by terrorists, will be diverted to non-state actors who threaten U.S. and Coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as civilians across the region.
-- It is for that reason UNSCR 1747 calls on states to exercise vigilance and restraint in the transfer of systems contained in the UN Register of Conventional Arms, such as MANPADS. Likewise, the United Nations General Assembly passed resolution A/62/391 encouraging state members to ban the transfer of MANPADS to non-state actors.
-- We strongly urge you to:
terminate all weapons-related, including further MANPADS-related transfers and technical assistance to Iran, in accordance with UNSCR 1747;
insist that Iran cease any weapons-production related activities based on or including Chinese technology, to include MANPADS technology;
insist that Iran stop illicit retransfers of Chinese-origin weapons, or Iranian-produced weapons based on Chinese designs, to non-state actors;
insist that Iran provide an accounting of all Chinese-origin weapons; and institute thorough, regular inspections of Chinese-origin weapons already in Iranian stocks to determine how many may have been diverted and to prevent future diversions.
-- We ask that you share with us the results of your investigations into this matter.
SERIAL NUMBERS OF WEAPONS SOLD TO IRAQ:
------------------------------------------
-- We have provided you with information on specific Chinese weapons systems that we have recovered in Iraq.
-- Further information you can provide to us on your sales of these systems to Iran would help our investigators on the ground distinguish between weapons newly transferred to Shia militants and those transferred prior to the commencement of armed conflict in 2003. Serial numbers of equipment sold to Iran would be most helpful in this regard.
END TALKING POINTS. RICE
NNNN
End Cable Text

un article du 1 décembre dans le Guardian, écrit par Luke Harding

Alleged Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout is flanked by Thai police. US diplomats allege Russia bribed witnesses to block his extradition to the US, according to WikiLeaks cables Photograph: KeystoneUSA-ZUMA / Rex Features Russia tried to block the extradition of the suspected international arms trafficker Viktor Bout from Thailand to America by bribing key witnesses, the US claims.
Diplomats in Bangkok alleged in cables released by WikiLeaks that Bout's "Russian supporters" had paid witnesses to give false testimony during his extradition hearing.
Dubbed the "merchant of death", Bout was seized by the Thai authorities in March 2008 but only extradited to the US on 16 November this year. The US accuses him of conspiring to sell millions of dollars of weapons to Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) rebels to kill Americans. The Kremlin strongly opposed his extradition.
The Russian businessman, accused of running arms-trafficking networks around the world, maintains he is innocent in a case that turned into an undignified tug-of-war between Washington and Moscow.
In a cable written on 13 February 2009, US diplomats said that in the year after Bout's arrest, extradition proceedings in Thailand were "going in the way we want" – albeit at a "painfully slow" pace.
More recently, however, the case had taken a worryingly wrong turn: "There have been disturbing indications that Bout's ... and Russian supporters have been using money and influence in an attempt to block extradition," the diplomats reported.
Bout's claim was that he had flown to Thailand on official government business. American agents posing as Farc rebels arrested him in a sting operation in a Bangkok hotel after he allegedly agreed to sell them millions of dollars of weapons.
On 12 February 2009, the US ambassador in Bangkok, Eric John, raised his concerns about the case in a meeting with Thailand's prime minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva. He warned that the extraditions proceedings had become "tainted as a result of the efforts by Bout's associates to bribe Thai officials".
John said the Americans had uncovered several examples of influence and corruption. These included the false testimony by a witness, an attempt to procure the personal secretary of the crown prince of Thailand to testify on Bout's behalf, and "evidence of bribery schemes gathered throughout the world".
Abhisit gave a noncommittal response, promising to examine any irregularities. In August 2009, the judge ruled Bout could not be extradited in a stunning setback to the US embassy and its "Bout team".
The ruling – appealed against by the US – prompted John to write a cable urging US President Barack Obama to telephone Abhisit and initiate "a serious discussion of our concerns over the implications of the Bout verdict".
"We believe Potus [president of the US] involvement on Bout would have a significant effect here," he pleaded.
The ambassador suggested a gambit to shame Moscow if Bout was freed to go back to Russia. "We should consider asking the Russians to prosecute Bout if, in the end, he walks here in Thailand. At the very least perhaps we could force the Russians to publicly refuse to do so."
Other cables reveal that Bout's fleet of aircraft – allegedly used to deliver arms to Sierra Leone, Liberia and Congo – are currently rusting at an airstrip in the United Arab Emirates. On 7 January 2010, the US consulate reported several of his Soviet cargo planes were stuck at the "sleepy" Ras al-Khaimah (RAK) airport.
"The airport is also working to distance itself from its reputation as a transport facilitator for clients such as international arms trafficker Viktor Bout, who used the RAK airport as a base of operations. The Wing Air aircraft once linked to Viktor Bout are grounded and effectively abandoned," it said.
Another cable chronicled the unstoppable rise in Russia's international arms sales – up from $6.7bn (£4.3m) in 2006 to at least $8bn in 2007. It said Moscow exported large quantities of weapons to, among others, Iran, Syria and Venezuela, and was prepared to entertain the "grandiose regional visions" of Venezuela's president, Hugo Chávez.
The then US ambassador in Moscow, William Burns, admitted that Russia was unwilling to establish "an expert-level dialogue on arms sales" with Washington and was "deeply cynical" about any US attempts to curb Russian arms exports.
"Russia attaches importance to the volume of the arms export trade, to the diplomatic doors that weapon sales open, to the ill-gotten gains that these sales reap for corrupt senior officials and to the lever it provides the Russian government in stymieing American interests."
On this topic the US had few instruments of persuasion, Burns added: "Russian officialdom and the public have little, if any, moral compunction about the arms trade, seeing it instead as a welcome symbol of Russia's resurgent power and strength in the world."

John H Coatsworth, dean of Columbia university's school of international and public affairs (Sipa), today sent a note to students affirming that freedom of information and expression was at the core of the school's beliefs.The school's office had sent out a warning from a state department official that their future job prospects could be jeopardised if they look at the leaked cables, which remain officially classified.Coatsworth said: "Sipa's position is that students have a right to discuss and debate any information in the public arena that they deem relevant to their studies or to their roles as global citizens, and to do so without fear of adverse consequences. The WikiLeaks documents are accessible to Sipa students (and everyone else) from a wide variety of respected sources, as are multiple means of discussion and debate both in and outside of the classroom."
(from The Guardian)

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange wrote this Op-Ed for The Australian today:
Key lines:
* WikiLeaks is fearlessly publishing facts that need to be made public.
* The dark days of corruption in the Queensland government before the Fitzgerald inquiry are testimony to what happens when the politicians gag the media from reporting the truth.
* (My idea is) to use internet technologies in new ways to report the truth.
* People have said I am anti-war: for the record, I am not. Sometimes nations need to go to war, and there are just wars.
* The Gillard government (Australia) is trying to shoot the messenger because it doesn’t want the truth revealed.
Text follows:
IN 1958 a young Rupert Murdoch, then owner and editor of Adelaide’s The News, wrote: “In the race between secrecy and truth, it seems inevitable that truth will always win.”
His observation perhaps reflected his father Keith Murdoch’s expose that Australian troops were being needlessly sacrificed by incompetent British commanders on the shores of Gallipoli. The British tried to shut him up but Keith Murdoch would not be silenced and his efforts led to the termination of the disastrous Gallipoli campaign.
Nearly a century later, WikiLeaks is also fearlessly publishing facts that need to be made public.
I grew up in a Queensland country town where people spoke their minds bluntly. They distrusted big government as something that could be corrupted if not watched carefully. The dark days of corruption in the Queensland government before the Fitzgerald inquiry are testimony to what happens when the politicians gag the media from reporting the truth.
These things have stayed with me. WikiLeaks was created around these core values. The idea, conceived in Australia , was to use internet technologies in new ways to report the truth.
WikiLeaks coined a new type of journalism: scientific journalism. We work with other media outlets to bring people the news, but also to prove it is true. Scientific journalism allows you to read a news story, then to click online to see the original document it is based on. That way you can judge for yourself: Is the story true? Did the journalist report it accurately?
Democratic societies need a strong media and WikiLeaks is part of that media. The media helps keep government honest. WikiLeaks has revealed some hard truths about the Iraq and Afghan wars, and broken stories about corporate corruption.
People have said I am anti-war: for the record, I am not. Sometimes nations need to go to war, and there are just wars. But there is nothing more wrong than a government lying to its people about those wars, then asking these same citizens to put their lives and their taxes on the line for those lies. If a war is justified, then tell the truth and the people will decide whether to support it.
If you have read any of the Afghan or Iraq war logs, any of the US embassy cables or any of the stories about the things WikiLeaks has reported, consider how important it is for all media to be able to report these things freely.
WikiLeaks is not the only publisher of the US embassy cables. Other media outlets, including Britain ‘s The Guardian, The New York Times, El Pais in Spain and Der Spiegel in Germany have published the same redacted cables.
Yet it is WikiLeaks, as the co-ordinator of these other groups, that has copped the most vicious attacks and accusations from the US government and its acolytes. I have been accused of treason, even though I am an Australian, not a US, citizen. There have been dozens of serious calls in the US for me to be “taken out” by US special forces. Sarah Palin says I should be “hunted down like Osama bin Laden”, a Republican bill sits before the US Senate seeking to have me declared a “transnational threat” and disposed of accordingly. An adviser to the Canadian Prime Minister’s office has called on national television for me to be assassinated. An American blogger has called for my 20-year-old son, here in Australia, to be kidnapped and harmed for no other reason than to get at me.
And Australians should observe with no pride the disgraceful pandering to these sentiments by Prime Minister Gillard and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have not had a word of criticism for the other media organisations. That is because The Guardian, The New York Times and Der Spiegel are old and large, while WikiLeaks is as yet young and small.
We are the underdogs. The Gillard government is trying to shoot the messenger because it doesn’t want the truth revealed, including information about its own diplomatic and political dealings.
Has there been any response from the Australian government to the numerous public threats of violence against me and other WikiLeaks personnel? One might have thought an Australian prime minister would be defending her citizens against such things, but there have only been wholly unsubstantiated claims of illegality. The Prime Minister and especially the Attorney-General are meant to carry out their duties with dignity and above the fray. Rest assured, these two mean to save their own skins. They will not.
Every time WikiLeaks publishes the truth about abuses committed by US agencies, Australian politicians chant a provably false chorus with the State Department: “You’ll risk lives! National security! You’ll endanger troops!” Then they say there is nothing of importance in what WikiLeaks publishes. It can’t be both. Which is it?
It is neither. WikiLeaks has a four-year publishing history. During that time we have changed whole governments, but not a single person, as far as anyone is aware, has been harmed. But the US , with Australian government connivance, has killed thousands in the past few months alone.
US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates admitted in a letter to the US congress that no sensitive intelligence sources or methods had been compromised by the Afghan war logs disclosure. The Pentagon stated there was no evidence the WikiLeaks reports had led to anyone being harmed in Afghanistan . NATO in Kabul told CNN it couldn’t find a single person who needed protecting. The Australian Department of Defence said the same. No Australian troops or sources have been hurt by anything we have published.
But our publications have been far from unimportant. The US diplomatic cables reveal some startling facts:
The US asked its diplomats to steal personal human material and information from UN officials and human rights groups, including DNA, fingerprints, iris scans, credit card numbers, internet passwords and ID photos, in violation of international treaties. Presumably Australian UN diplomats may be targeted, too.
King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia asked the US Officials in Jordan and Bahrain want Iran ‘s nuclear program stopped by any means available.
Britain’s Iraq inquiry was fixed to protect “US interests”.
Sweden is a covert member of NATO and US intelligence sharing is kept from parliament.
The US is playing hardball to get other countries to take freed detainees from Guantanamo Bay . Barack Obama agreed to meet the Slovenian President only if Slovenia took a prisoner. Our Pacific neighbour Kiribati was offered millions of dollars to accept detainees.
In its landmark ruling in the Pentagon Papers case, the US Supreme Court said “only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government”. The swirling storm around WikiLeaks today reinforces the need to defend the right of all media to reveal the truth.
Julian Assange is the editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks.

 

Lebanese communications minister Marwan Hamadeh told the US that the network covered Palestinian camps, Hezbollah training camps and penetrated deep into Christian areas. Photograph: Wael Hamzeh/EPA Lebanon's western-backed government warned its friends that "Iran telecom" was taking over the country two years ago when it uncovered a secret communications network across the country used by Hezbollah, according to a US state department cable.
The discovery in April 2008 came against a background of mounting tensions between the Beirut government and the Iranian-backed Shia organisation, which escalated into street fighting in the capital just weeks later.
The US document, classified secret/noforn (not for foreign eyes) exposes deep regional and international concerns about the volatile situation in Lebanon amid fears of a new clash with Israel following the 2006 war.
Information on the Hezbollah fibre optics network, allegedly financed by Iran, was immediately passed to the US, Saudi Arabia and others by Lebanese ministers. The French president, Nicolas Sarkozy was "stunned" by the discovery, the US embassy reported.
The Lebanese are bound to assume that the information also went to Israel, for whom Hezbollah is a significant enemy and priority intelligence target.
The US cable is one of several that have been published in Beirut by the leftwing al-Akhbar newspaper which has apparently been leaked as part of the WikiLeaks cache obtained by the Guardian, the New York Times and three continental European publications.
Al-Akhbar has highlighted contacts between the March 14 movement led by the current prime minister Saad al-Hariri, the US and the Saudis, prompting denials or defensive reactions from those named.
Marwan Hamadeh, the Lebanese minister of communications, warned the US charge d'affaires of the risks involved after Hezbollah indicated it would see any action against the telecoms network as "equal to an Israeli act of aggression".
Hamadeh also reported interference with Lebanese mobile communications by Syria and Israel.
The discovery of the telecoms system was linked to the demand, anchored in UN resolution 1701 but never implemented, that Hezbollah disarm after the 2006 war with Israel. Hezbollah told Lebanese intelligence that the communications network was "a key part of its arsenal".
Hamadeh told the Americans that the network ran from Beirut, into the south below the Litani river and back up through the Bekaa valley to the far north, covering Palestinian camps, Hezbollah training camps and penetrating deep into Christian areas. He cited the Iranian Fund for the Reconstruction of Lebanon as the source of the funding. This group had been rebuilding roads and bridges since the 2006 war and had been accused of installing telecommunications lines in parallel with new roads.
Other leaked US cables underline the nervousness of the Lebanese government over the fibre-optics affair: "A … public accusation against Hezbollah would beg the same question as to why the government of Lebanon did not remove Hezbollah's tanks, and entailed military risks for the government," the embassy reported later.
"Hamadeh highlights the system as a strategic victory for Iran since it creates an important Iranian outpost in Lebanon, bypassing Syria," Washington was told. "He sees the value for the Iranians as strategic, rather than technical or economic. The value for Hizballah is the final step in creating a nation state. Hizballah now has an army and weapons; a television station; an education system; hospitals; social services; a financial system; and a telecommunications system."
Hamadeh has described the US cable quoting him as "a story full of slanders and fabrications" and declined to comment further to Lebanese media.
Lebanon's defence minister, Elias Murr – reported in other leaked documents as telling US officials that the army would not involve itself in a future Israeli attack on Lebanon – said the allegations sought to cause unrest. "The information posted by WikiLeaks is not complete and is not accurate," said an aide, George Soulage. "The aim behind this is to sow discord in Lebanon."
Ian Black guardian.co.uk, Sunday 5 December 2010

WikiLeaks cables claim al-Jazeera changed coverage to suit Qatari foreign policy

US embassy memos contradict Arabic satellite channel's insistence that it is editorially independent despite being heavily subsidised by Gulf state

Robert Booth 

The Qatari prime minister, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani, offered a deal which was not agreed with Egypt over al-Jazeera, US embassy cables claim. Photograph: Getty

 

 

Qatar is using the Arabic news channel al-Jazeera as a bargaining chip in foreign policy negotiations by adapting its coverage to suit other foreign leaders and offering to cease critical transmissions in exchange for major concessions, US embassy cables released by WikiLeaks claim. The memos flatly contradict al-Jazeera's insistence that it is editorially independent despite being heavily subsidised by the Gulf state. They will also be intensely embarrassing to Qatar, which last week controversially won the right to host the 2022 World Cup after presenting itself as the most open and modern Middle Eastern state. In the past, the emir of Qatar has publicly refused US requests to use his influence to temper al-Jazeera's reporting. But a cable written in November 2009 predicted that the station could be used "as a bargaining tool to repair relationships with other countries, particularly those soured by al-Jazeera's broadcasts, including the United States" over the next three years. Doha-based al-Jazeera was launched in 1996 and has become the most watched satellite television station in the Middle East. It has been seen by many as relatively free and open in its coverage of the region, but government control over its reporting appears to US diplomats to be so direct that they said the channel's output had become "part of our bilateral discussions – as it has been to favourable effect between Qatar and Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and other countries". In February, the US embassy reported to Washington how "relations [between Qatar and Saudi Arabia] are generally improving after Qatar toned down criticism of the Saudi royal family on al-Jazeera". In July 2009, the US embassy said the channel "has proved itself a useful tool for the station's political masters". In one despatch the US ambassador, Joseph LeBaron, reported that the Qatari prime minister Hamad Bin Jassim Al Thani had joked in an interview that Al-Jazeera had caused the Gulf state such headaches that it might be better to sell it. But the ambassador remarked: "Such statements must not be taken at face value." Although Le Baron noted that the station's coverage of events in the Middle East was "relatively free and open" he concluded: "Despite GOQ protestations to the contrary, Al Jazeera remains one of Qatar's most valuable political and diplomatic tools." However, US allegations of manipulation of al-Jazeera's content for political ends appear to contradict the Qatari stance of supporting a free press. "The Qatari government claims to champion press freedom elsewhere, but generally does not tolerate it at home," the US embassy said after the French director of the Doha Centre for Media Freedom resigned in June 2009, citing restrictions on the centre's freedom to operate. In a clear example of the regional news channel being exploited for political ends, the Doha embassy claimed Qatar's PM, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani (HBJ), told the US senator John Kerry that he had proposed a bargain with the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, which involved stopping broadcasts in Egypt in exchange for a change in Cairo's position on Israel-Palestinian negotiations. "HBJ had told Mubarak 'we would stop al-Jazeera for a year' if he agreed in that span of time to deliver a lasting settlement for the Palestinians," according to a confidential cable from the US embassy in Doha in February. "Mubarak said nothing in response, according to HBJ." The US has benefitted, too. "Anecdotal evidence suggests, and former al-Jazeera board members have affirmed, that the United States has been portrayed more positively since the advent of the Obama administration," a cable in November 2009 said. "We expect that trend to continue and to further develop as US-Qatari relations improve." In 2001 the emir, Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, refused a US request to stop al-Jazeera giving so much airtime to Osama bin Laden and other anti-American figures, saying: "Parliamentary life requires you to have a free and credible media, and that is what we are trying to do. "Al-Jazeera is one of the most widely watched [TV stations] in the Arab world because of its editorial independence." The Gulf state has frequently held up al-Jazeera as evidence of its relative openness. The embassy of Qatar in London declined to comment on the story tonight. Attempts to reach al-Jazeera for comment failed.

Un autre article provenant  du Guardian écrit par Damian Carrington avec des informations fournies par wikileaks  :

A Greenpeace activist in a hot air ballon ahead of the current UN climate summit in Cancún. WikiLeaks cables expose US use of espionage before the 2009 Copenhagen summit. Photograph: Luis Perez/AFP/Getty Images Hidden behind the save-the-world rhetoric of the global climate change negotiations lies the mucky realpolitik: money and threats buy political support; spying and cyberwarfare are used to seek out leverage.
The US diplomatic cables reveal how the US seeks dirt on nations opposed to its approach to tackling global warming; how financial and other aid is used by countries to gain political backing; how distrust, broken promises and creative accounting dog negotiations; and how the US mounted a secret global diplomatic offensive to overwhelm opposition to the controversial "Copenhagen accord", the unofficial document that emerged from the ruins of the Copenhagen climate change summit in 2009.
Negotiating a climate treaty is a high-stakes game, not just because of the danger warming poses to civilisation but also because re-engineering the global economy to a low-carbon model will see the flow of billions of dollars redirected.
Seeking negotiating chips, the US state department sent a secret cable on 31 July 2009 seeking human intelligence from UN diplomats across a range of issues, including climate change. The request originated with the CIA. As well as countries' negotiating positions for Copenhagen, diplomats were asked to provide evidence of UN environmental "treaty circumvention" and deals between nations.
But intelligence gathering was not just one way. On 19 June 2009, the state department sent a cable detailing a "spear phishing" attack on the office of the US climate change envoy, Todd Stern, while talks with China on emissions took place in Beijing. Five people received emails, personalised to look as though they came from the National Journal. An attached file contained malicious code that would give complete control of the recipient's computer to a hacker. While the attack was unsuccessful, the department's cyber threat analysis division noted: "It is probable intrusion attempts such as this will persist."
The Beijing talks failed to lead to a global deal at Copenhagen. But the US, the world's biggest historical polluter and long isolated as a climate pariah, had something to cling to. The Copenhagen accord, hammered out in the dying hours but not adopted into the UN process, offered to solve many of the US's problems.
The accord turns the UN's top-down, unanimous approach upside down, with each nation choosing palatable targets for greenhouse gas cuts. It presents a far easier way to bind in China and other rapidly growing countries than the UN process. But the accord cannot guarantee the global greenhouse gas cuts needed to avoid dangerous warming. Furthermore, it threatens to circumvent the UN's negotiations on extending the Kyoto protocol, in which rich nations have binding obligations. Those objections have led many countries – particularly the poorest and most vulnerable – to vehemently oppose the accord.
Getting as many countries as possible to associate themselves with the accord strongly served US interests, by boosting the likelihood it would be officially adopted. A diplomatic offensive was launched. Diplomatic cables flew thick and fast between the end of Copenhagen in December 2009 and late February 2010, when the leaked cables end.
Some countries needed little persuading. The accord promised $30bn (£19bn) in aid for the poorest nations hit by global warming they had not caused. Within two weeks of Copenhagen, the Maldives foreign minister, Ahmed Shaheed, wrote to the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, expressing eagerness to back it.
By 23 February 2010, the Maldives' ambassador-designate to the US, Abdul Ghafoor Mohamed, told the US deputy climate change envoy, Jonathan Pershing, his country wanted "tangible assistance", saying other nations would then realise "the advantages to be gained by compliance" with the accord.
A diplomatic dance ensued. "Ghafoor referred to several projects costing approximately $50m (£30m). Pershing encouraged him to provide concrete examples and costs in order to increase the likelihood of bilateral assistance."
The Maldives were unusual among developing countries in embracing the accord so wholeheartedly, but other small island nations were secretly seen as vulnerable to financial pressure. Any linking of the billions of dollars of aid to political support is extremely controversial – nations most threatened by climate change see the aid as a right, not a reward, and such a link as heretical. But on 11 February, Pershing met the EU climate action commissioner, Connie Hedegaard, in Brussels, where she told him, according to a cable, "the Aosis [Alliance of Small Island States] countries 'could be our best allies' given their need for financing".
The pair were concerned at how the $30bn was to be raised and Hedegaard raised another toxic subject – whether the US aid would be all cash. She asked if the US would need to do any "creative accounting", noting some countries such as Japan and the UK wanted loan guarantees, not grants alone, included, a tactic she opposed. Pershing said "donors have to balance the political need to provide real financing with the practical constraints of tight budgets", reported the cable.
Along with finance, another treacherous issue in the global climate negotiations, currently continuing in Cancún, Mexico, is trust that countries will keep their word. Hedegaard asks why the US did not agree with China and India on what she saw as acceptable measures to police future emissions cuts. "The question is whether they will honour that language," the cable quotes Pershing as saying.
Trust is in short supply on both sides of the developed-developing nation divide. On 2 February 2009, a cable from Addis Ababa reports a meeting between the US undersecretary of state Maria Otero and the Ethiopian prime minister, Meles Zenawi, who leads the African Union's climate change negotiations.
The confidential cable records a blunt US threat to Zenawi: sign the accord or discussion ends now. Zenawi responds that Ethiopia will support the accord, but has a concern of his own: that a personal assurance from Barack Obama on delivering the promised aid finance is not being honoured.
US determination to seek allies against its most powerful adversaries – the rising economic giants of Brazil, South Africa, India, China (Basic) – is set out in another cable from Brussels on 17 February reporting a meeting between the deputy national security adviser, Michael Froman, Hedegaard and other EU officials.
Froman said the EU needed to learn from Basic's skill at impeding US and EU initiatives and playing them off against each in order "to better handle third country obstructionism and avoid future train wrecks on climate".
Hedegaard is keen to reassure Froman of EU support, revealing a difference between public and private statements. "She hoped the US noted the EU was muting its criticism of the US, to be constructive," the cable said. Hedegaard and Froman discuss the need to "neutralise, co-opt or marginalise unhelpful countries including Venezuela and Bolivia", before Hedegaard again links financial aid to support for the accord, noting "the irony that the EU is a big donor to these countries". Later, in April, the US cut aid to Bolivia and Ecuador, citing opposition to the accord.
Any irony is clearly lost on the Bolivian president, Evo Morales, according to a 9 February cable from La Paz. The Danish ambassador to Bolivia, Morten Elkjaer, tells a US diplomat that, at the Copenhagen summit, "Danish prime minister Rasmussen spent an unpleasant 30 minutes with Morales, during which Morales thanked him for [$30m a year in] bilateral aid, but refused to engage on climate change issues."
After the Copenhagen summit, further linking of finance and aid with political support appears. Dutch officials, initially rejecting US overtures to back the accord, make a startling statement on 25 January. According to a cable, the Dutch climate negotiator Sanne Kaasjager "has drafted messages for embassies in capitals receiving Dutch development assistance to solicit support [for the accord]. This is an unprecedented move for the Dutch government, which traditionally recoils at any suggestion to use aid money as political leverage." Later, however, Kaasjager rows back a little, saying: "The Netherlands would find it difficult to make association with the accord a condition to receive climate financing."
Perhaps the most audacious appeal for funds revealed in the cables is from Saudi Arabia, the world's second biggest oil producer and one of the 25 richest countries in the world. A secret cable sent on 12 February records a meeting between US embassy officials and lead climate change negotiator Mohammad al-Sabban. "The kingdom will need time to diversify its economy away from petroleum, [Sabban] said, noting a US commitment to help Saudi Arabia with its economic diversification efforts would 'take the pressure off climate change negotiations'."
The Saudis did not like the accord, but were worried they had missed a trick. The assistant petroleum minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman told US officials that he had told his minister Ali al-Naimi that Saudi Arabia had "missed a real opportunity to submit 'something clever', like India or China, that was not legally binding but indicated some goodwill towards the process without compromising key economic interests".
The cables obtained by WikiLeaks finish at the end of February 2010. Today, 116 countries have associated themselves with the accord. Another 26 say they intend to associate. That total, of 140, is at the upper end of a 100-150 country target revealed by Pershing in his meeting with Hedegaard on 11 February.
The 140 nations represent almost 75% of the 193 countries that are parties to the UN climate change convention and, accord supporters like to point out, are responsible for well over 80% of current global greenhouse gas emissions.
At the mid-point of the major UN climate change negotiations in Cancún, Mexico, there have already been flare-ups over how funding for climate adaptation is delivered. The biggest shock has been Japan's announcement that it will not support an extension of the existing Kyoto climate treaty. That gives a huge boost to the accord. US diplomatic wheeling and dealing may, it seems, be bearing fruit.

Josh Halliday in The Guardian :

WikiLeaks has been fighting to stay online since releasing a cache of sensitive diplomatic cables to five international media organisations. Photograph: WikiLeaks WikiLeaks received a boost tonight when Switzerland rejected growing international calls to force the site off the internet.
The whistleblowers site, which has been publishing leaked US embassy cables, was forced to switch domain names to WikiLeaks.ch yesterday after the US host of its main website, WikiLeaks.org, pulled the plug following mounting political pressure.
The site's new Swiss host, Switch, today said there was "no reason" why it should be forced offline, despite demands from France and the US. Switch is a non-profit registrar set up by the Swiss government for all 1.5 million Swiss .ch domain names.
The reassurances come just hours after eBay-owned PayPal, the primary donation channel to WikiLeaks, terminated its links with the site, citing "illegal activity". France yesterday added to US calls for all companies and organisations to terminate their relationship with WikiLeaks following the release of 250,000 secret US diplomatic cables.
The Swiss Pirate Party, which registered the WikiLeaks.ch domain name earlier this year on behalf of the site, said Switch had reassured the party that it would not block the site.
An email sent by Denis Simonet, president of the Swiss Pirate Party, to international members of the liberal political group said: "Some minutes ago I got good news: Switch, the registrar for .ch domains, told us that there is no reason to block wikileaks.ch."
Laurence Kaye, leader of the UK-based Pirate Party, tonight told the Guardian: "International Pirate Parties now have an integral role in allowing access to WikiLeaks. I wish some of our other politicians had the same guts.
"We support the WikiLeaks project as access to information is the prerequisite for an informed and engaged democracy."
WikiLeaks has been fighting to stay online since releasing a cache of sensitive diplomatic cables to the Guardian and four other international media organisations. Amazon, the world's largest online retailer, dropped the site from its servers on Thursday after being contacted by staff of Joe Lieberman, chairman of the US Senate's homeland security committee.
Everydns.net, the site's US hosting provider, yesterday forced the site offline for the third time in under a week. A series of "distributed denial of attacks" by unknown online activists still bring the site intermittently to its knees.
WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, described the decision as "privatisation of state censorship" in the US. Everydns.net said the attacks – which have been going on all week – threatened "the stability of the EveryDNS.net infrastructure, which enables access to almost 500,000 other websites".

Toujours dans le Guardian, l'article de Ewen MacAskill :
China's "newly pugnacious" foreign policy is "losing friends worldwide", the US ambassador to Beijing argued in a cable last February.
European diplomats were "most vocal", although Indian and Japanese counterparts voiced similar complaints, Jon Huntsman wrote. In other dispatches US diplomats quote unhappy African officials.
In his cable, entitled "Stomp around and carry a small stick: China's new 'global assertiveness' raises hackles, but has more form than substance", he accused Beijing of "muscle-flexing, triumphalism and assertiveness", but added that some observers saw it as rhetoric designed to appeal to Chinese public opinion. "Numerous third-country diplomats have complained to us that dealing with China has become more difficult in the past year," Huntsman reported. His examples included:
■ A British diplomat saying that Chinese officials' behaviour at the Copenhagen climate change summit was "shocking" and so rude and arrogant that the UK and French complained formally.
■ The Indian ambassador to Beijing requesting closer co-operation with the US because of "China's more aggressive approach".
■ Japanese diplomats complaining that officials were "aggressive and difficult" during summit preparations.
■ Another Japanese official describing rising tensions in the East China Sea, saying that "the increased aggressiveness of Chinese 'coastguard' and naval units… had provoked 'many dangerous encounters' with Japanese civilian and self-defence force ships".
The official said Japan had not reported all the incidents. The issue became public in the autumn when Japan arrested the captain of a Chinese fishing boat for ramming a coastguard vessel near disputed islands.
The cable refers to another dispute that later broke into the open. A Norwegian diplomat said Oslo was unhappy with the trend of bilateral relations, citing the lack of progress in human rights discussions and referring to the jailing of writer Liu Xiaobo. China reacted angrily when Norway's Nobel committee gave the peace prize to Liu recently.
The main tensions appear to be with China's neighbours or established western powers. In several cables US diplomats note China's growing influence in Latin America and Africa. One cable notes the Kenyan ambassador stressing the benefits of China's role on the continent and saying Africa has nothing to gain if the US and China co-operate.
Juliu Ole Sunkuli "claimed that Africa was better off thanks to China's practical, bilateral approach to development assistance and was concerned that this would be changed by 'western' interference… Sunkuli said Africans were frustrated by western insistence on capacity building, which translated, in his eyes, into conferences and seminars. They instead preferred China's focus on infrastructure and tangible projects."
Other cables suggested some African diplomats felt "a degree of suspicion and resentment" about China's role. A Nigerian official suggested poorer countries were "coerced" into aid-for-resources deals. Elsewhere a Moroccan diplomat commented: "China will never play the role of a global leader if it treats its trade partners so poorly."
Assessing US-China relations at the start of 2009, the then US ambassador to China, Clark Randt, saw growing similarities in relations with the rest of the world. "By the end of the next 30 years China should no longer be able to portray itself as the representative of lesser developed countries. This does not mean that it will necessarily identify with the more developed, mainly western countries; it well might choose to pursue some uniquely Chinese path… Even so, China's growing position as a nation increasingly distinct from the less developed world may expand our common interests." It was possible China "will come to be identified by the average citizen in less developed countries not as 'one of us' but as 'one of them'."

Je suis tellement déçue de l'attitude d'Amazon et maintenant de la compagnie PayPal dans l'affaire Wikileaks.

"The backlash against WikiLeaks intensifed today after payments site PayPal revealed it had frozen WikiLeaks' account, saying it was being used to "encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal activity".
The company, owned by auction website eBay, revealed it had cut access for donations to WikiLeaks amid unsubstantiated speculation that the decision may have been inspired by heavy political pressure. Last week Amazon.com stopped hosting WikiLeaks only 24 hours after being contacted by the staff of Joe Lieberman, chairman of the Senate's committee on homeland security.
The latest action is likely to harm Wikileaks because PayPal is an important avenue for donations and arguably the most secure and convenient way to support the organisation.
Paypal's decision comes a day after Swedish authorities, who want to question WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, 39, over sex offence allegations, issued a fresh arrest warrant to British police. However, amid speculation Assange is about to be picked up, his lawyer said it could be weeks before the Australian, who is understood to be in south-east England, is arrested.
Mark Stephens said British police were still assessing the Swedish warrant and were in a position to contact Assange. "The new warrant has to go to Interpol and to Scotland Yard. Anything quicker than 10 days and you've got to think that Julian Assange is getting special attention.
He also said that if the latest Swedish arrest warrant was not valid – the first was rejected last week for being incomplete – he would get the "court to quash it".
Stephens said: "In these circumstances there is every likelihood of that occurring. Given the deficiencies in the process, it is going to be difficult for them to produce a warrant which is valid under international law. The process has been so comprehensively unfair. The police won't get in touch with me until they get a warrant they think they can get through."
He said Scotland Yard had been aware of Assange's whereabouts since September when he arrived from Sweden after the allegations against him surfaced in August. Since then, Assange has repeatedly attempted to contact the Swedish prosecutors, even offering to meet at the Swedish embassy in London to discuss the allegations against him.
"When I spoke to the police I think they were pretty surprised with the problems we had getting in touch them [Swedish prosecutors]. I told the chief inspector that my client been trying to get in touch with the prosecutor since August. Usually people are running in the opposite direction".
Stephens said that on a wider point it was important to remember that WikiLeaks was not a "one man show" and that despite the mounting attacks against the site it had a large team dedicated to its survival."
( article from The Guardian )