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1. 

   Elemenope
   Moderator

   First, I found this kalidescopic roundup of politicians, press personalities, and academics reacting to WikiLeaks, collected by Alexis Madrigal of The Altantic, to be remarkably full of insight.

   Second, as a fun way to waste time, this utility called CableGateRoulette allows you to surf through random US diplomatic cables. So far I've learned more than I ever wanted to know about how internet savvy Azerbaijani youth are, the several difficulties of running a bowling alley in Turkmenistan, and organized criminal activities against the Catholic Church in Nicaragua.

   Posted 2 years ago #
2. 

   elivent
   Member

   I just stumbled across this, and I'm having a fantastic time reading the random cables. This is fascinating - thanks for posting it.

   Posted 2 years ago #
3. 

   Nox
   Member

   Overall cable gate was pretty disappointing. Some fun trivia, but it takes the joy out of reading classified information when it's exactly the same as the unclassified information.

   Two details that did strike me as interesting:

   The government of China pressuring the Obama administration to cancel a meeting with the Dalai Lama. When this originally happened, most people speculated China's involvement, but for anyone who cares it is now documented. Fun fact, they also tried to get the U.S. to completely deny Dalai a visa.

   The government of Saudi Arabia attempting to pressure Robert Gates into invading Iran. In a cable to the french foreign minister we get this excellent quote from Gates. "The Saudis always want to fight Iranians to the last American". Not as interesting as when he admitted U.S. support for the mujahadeen in Afghanistan started 6 months before the soviet invasion. But still kind of catchy.

   Posted 2 years ago #

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