This is just collection of summaries of the WikiLeaks cables I've randomly stumbled into. For a full explanation of what "WikiLeaks cables" are, go here:
2008/09/08ANKARA1643 : A Turkish trade minister meets with London investors, tells them to ditch their stock in a Turkish media company that has been criticizing elected officials. Minister claims that the company will be gone soon. Too soon to tell, but smells like insider trading.
2008/10/08STATE116392 : Condie's "What we'd like to know about Palestine" Christmas list. Includes requests for Internet handles, credit card numbers, and frequent flyer account numbers for prominent and influential Palestinians. Also looking for military readiness, opinions on the peace process, etc. If you have any such information, please forward it to cia.gov.
2009/11/09MANAMA642 : This is just silly. Bahrain lobbies Gen. Petraeus to encourage Americans to participate in the Bahrain air show. A more relevant tidbit: Bahrain's King Hasam supports stopping Iran's nuclear program "by any means necessary."
2009/03/09TELAVIV654 : Qatar, UAE concerned about Iran, pushing for progress on Israel-Palestine peace process. Point out that it would make things easier on Israel diplomatically.
1972/02/72TEHRAN1164 : This tastes a bit stale. The Shah of Iran would like a squadron of F4-E's ASAP. I guess this one got lost in a filing cabinet somewhere. :)
1979/08/79TEHRAN8980 : PERHAPS THE SINGLE DOMINANT ASPECT OF THE PERSIAN PSYCHE IS AN OVERRIDING EGOISM. [...] THE PRACTICAL EFFECT OF IT IS AN ALMOST TOTAL PERSIAN PREOCCUPATION WITH SELF AND LEAVES LITTLE ROOM FOR UNDERSTANDING POINTS OF VIEW OTHER THAN ONE'S OWN. [...] COUPLED WITH THESE PSYCHOLOGICAL LIMITATIONS IS A
GENERAL INCOMPREHENSION OF CASUALITY.
No worries. It was okay to be racist back in 1979, right? I wonder what they would have to say about the "psychological limitations" of the Americans who (a few short years earlier) thought they had a right to decide who ran their country.
Five down, over 200 to go, and that's just the first batch. There will be a quarter million documents in this puppy when all is said and done. Most of the documents are fairly uninteresting, and it's going to take a lot of eyeballs to find the most relevant stuff. Go to cablegate.wikileaks.org, and hope they can build some better tools for interacting with the data.
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