WikiLeaks releases list of facilities vital to US security

 The WikiLeaks whistleblower website has published a secret list of key facilities around the globe that US State Department describes as vital to US national security.

The list includes scores of pipelines, undersea cables and factories across the world that would cause most damage to US interests if destroyed.

Several Russian sites are also listed, including the Druzhba oil pipeline, an export terminal in Novorossiysk and the Nadym gas pipeline junction in western Siberia.

The last massive portion of documents made public by notorious whistleblower WikiLeaks has a chance to shake the world much harder than before. “The Cable Disaster” grabs much more attention than secret military reports from the battle fields of Iraq and Afghanistan, and may lead to some serious changes in world diplomacy. 

This time Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, obtained a quarter-million pack of confidential American diplomatic cables. The release started on November 28, when Assange leaked the first cache of documents via selected media sources, despite the announced Distributed Denial-Of-Service attack on WikiLeaks.  The list of trusted media for the first time included Russian magazine Russian Reporter, while The Wall Street Journal, again – for the first time declined the offer to sign a confidentiality agreement.

Despite the fact that not all the documents have a top-secret status, their disclosure offers an extremely harsh look at the world of modern diplomacy. The bargaining of the diplomats, merciless and sometimes rude assessments of  foreign leaders, harsh criticism of corrupt local governments, and sober opinions on nuclear and terrorist threats – “The Cable Disaster” has it all. Following the release of the cables, the US Government took steps to forbid all unauthorized federal government employees from accessing classified documents publicly available on WikiLeaks. Despite this measure, in the first week after publication WikiLeaks remained the top search item in America according to trusted Google service – Google Insights.

It is not surprising that the Obama Administration decided that the publication of the classified materials posed a serious danger to the lives of American diplomats, embassy personnel and military officers. The problem may look really significant considering the fact that the authors of the cables were identified by name and title in WikiLeaks publications.  It’s interesting to mention that on November 26 Assange’s lawyer Jennifer Robinson wrote a letter to the US Department of State, asking for information on people who could be placed at “significant risk of harm by the publication of classified diplomatic cables”. But Harold Koh – the Legal Adviser of the Department of State declined the offer. "We will not engage in a negotiation regarding the further release or dissemination of illegally obtained U.S. Government classified materials” stated the government official.

While the Secretary Of State Hillary Clinton declared that WikiLeaks publications put the lives of American diplomats in jeopardy, Assange denied the accusation. “This sort of nonsense about lives being put in jeopardy is trotted out every time a big military or intelligence organization is exposed by the press. It's nothing new, and it's not an exclusively American phenomenon by any means.” – said the founder of WikiLeaks in his interview to Time Magazine. However, the White House already has serious plans for major reassignment of diplomats and intelligence operatives at US embassies around the world. “We’re going to have to pull out some of our best people,” stated a senior U.S. national-security official, “because they dared to report back the truth about the nations in which they serve.”       The Obama Administration admits that “The Cable disaster” may deal a serious blow to the American foreign policy, affecting the “best of the best” of government specialists – highly trained diplomats, representing the USA in  foreign countries.  The US Administration officials stated that some foreign governments have already expressed their discontent over the disclosed cables. Among them are France, Italy, Russia, China, Saudi Arabia and others. At the same time there have been no official attempts made by the named governments to force the identified US representatives out of their countries. But, according to US officials, it may be just a matter of time.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the next two weeks plans to phone up world leaders to express her regret over the embarrassing publication of the classified documents. She has already spoken with 12 heads of state, including presidents of Afghanistan and Pakistan. According to US officials, both presidents stressed the importance of these countries’ friendship with the US. The founder of WikiLeaks denies all accusations of civil disobedience. “We are an organization that tries to make the world more civil and act against abusive organizations that are pushing it in the opposite direction” – declared Assange in his interview to Time Magazine - “As for the law, we have now in our four-year history had over 100 legal attacks of various kinds and have been victorious in all of those matters.

N Korea deploys surface-to-air missiles near borders

The Korean Peninsula seems to be on the brink of war as reports indicate North Korea has deployed surface-to-air missiles near its disputed Yellow Sea border with the South.

Referring to the Yellow Sea border, a South Korean official said on condition of anonymity "The missiles appear to be targeting our fighter jets that fly near the Northern Limit Line (NLL)."

According to AFP quoting the report, the North has deployed the Soviet-designed SA-2 missiles that have a range of between 13 and 30 kilometers.

The South Korean sources also report that the North has deployed Samlet and surface-to-surface Silkworm missiles as well on its western coast with ranges of up to 95 km.

The situation has grown more tense after South Korea began long-planned joint naval exercises with the US in the region that include the participation of nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS George Washington.

The US and South Korea on Sunday began new, pre-arranged military exercises in the Yellow Sea, about 125km (77 miles) south of the disputed maritime border between the two Koreas.

The aircraft carrier the USS George Washington and four other US navy vessels are being joined by South Korean destroyers, patrol vessels, frigates, support ships and anti-submarine aircraft.

Shortly after the exercises began, North Korea again vowed to hit back if its waters were violated.

"We will deliver a brutal military blow on any provocation which violates our territorial waters," the North's state-controlled KCNA news agency said.

Yonhap reported that Pyongyang had placed surface-to-surface missiles on launch pads in the Yellow Sea and had also moved surface-to-air missiles to frontline areas, but the South's defence ministry could not confirm the deployment.

Residents of Yeonpyeong were ordered to shelter in bunkers when artillery fire was heard on Sunday, but the order was lifted 40 minutes later. Only about 20 of the 1,700 residents remain on the island.

The South Korean defence ministry has also now instructed journalists to leave by the end of Sunday as it cannot guarantee their safety.

"At this stage, it is unpredictable what kind of a provocative action North Korea will take using the South Korean-US joint drills as a justification," the ministry said.

Yonhap also reported that South Korean troops on Sunday accidentally fired an artillery round into the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) that divides the nations. Seoul quickly sent the North a message saying it was an accident, the news agency said.

Earlier, Mr Dai had told President Lee that Beijing would try to prevent the situation deteriorating any further.

Mr Lee had urged China to take what he called a more fair and responsible position on the relationship between the two Koreas.

The chairman of North Korea's parliament, an official known to be a close confidant of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, has been invited to visit Beijing next week.

Laying blame…

In one of his recent speeches President Obama acknowledged that his advisers had underestimated the seriousness of the crisis that hit the American economy. The consequences of the crisis, he said, had proved far more serious than expected. As midterm elections draw nearer, the issue that comes to the fore is not Iraq or Afghanistan, as was the case just recently, but poverty among the Americans, which is assuming threatening proportions. According to the Federal Statistics Agency, every seventh American is facing poverty or living beyond the poverty line, a record figure in the past sixteen years.

A report by the Department of Agriculture specifies that seventeen million households, or 50 million people, can’t afford everyday essentials. This makes fifteen percent of all US families. The report says nothing about expenses other than those serving everyday needs. But the picture is gloomy enough without them. It cannot but shock those who were assured by American propaganda that America is a paradise and most Americans live in prosperity.

President Obama has picked the right time for talking about the country’s economic crisis. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton writes in the latest edition of “The Economist” that economic issues will become key in the midterm elections in November, as one of the consequences of the economic crisis is a dramatic increase in unemployment.

The share of the country’s unemployed is now close to a startling ten percent. This, alongside other economic tribulations, is being used by the Republicans, who disgracefully lost to the Democrats two years ago, as the central point in their forthcoming election campaign.

Policy makers are often dirty-handed. What we are witnessing now is how Republican leaders, including those from George Bush’s entourage, candidates for Congress and candidates for state governors  are trying, as the Russian saying much loved by Ronald Reagan goes, “to lay the blame at someone else’s doorstep” (literally: to pass the headache to another person). Philippics addressed to President Obama make no mention of the fact that after inheriting a deficit-free budget in 2000 the Bush administration resumed an arms race and launched a campaign in Iraq that left its successors a deficit of nearly half a trillion dollars, and that the Republicans left a state debt of ten trillion dollars, which means every American, children and elderly included, owes a total of 42 thousand dollars.

The Republican leaders also keep silent on the fact that what pulled the trigger on the current economic crunch was the collapse of America’s major banks and financial companies, such as the Enron Corporation, the president of which, Kenneth Lay, a close friend and business associate of George Bush, found himself behind bars on charges of fraud and theft. Financial machinations in Wall Street banks became possible in the absence of legal regulations and with the connivance of officials from the Bush administration.

Critics of the current administration among the Republicans hope that ordinary voters are largely uninformed about the fabrics of big city politics and will cast their votes proceeding from their own problems which they blame on the incumbent “chiefs”.

But election bickering can do nothing to feed the hungry or provide the unemployed with jobs. Firing volley after volley of criticism at their Democratic rivals, the Republicans are unable to offer anything of their own, apparently, because they have nothing to offer.

The elections will pass, the problems will remain. And since these problems are crying for resolution, they will have to be settled anyway.

Tags:
Commentary, World, Politics, US Congress , US

'More poor' in India than 26 African Nations

Bad news for India in the form of an index that claims eight Indian states have more poor people than the 26 poorest African countries combined.

The Multidimensional Poverty Index is meant to provide a “multidimensional picture” of the populations living in poverty across the world. It is in addition to the Human Poverty Index, which was included for the first time in the annual Human Development Reports of the United Nation in 1997.

The MPI was prepared by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative, which is supported by the United Nations Development Program. The new measure of global poverty will be a part of the upcoming 20th anniversary edition of the UNDP Human Development Index report in late October.

The findings under this new measure were made public Monday in London as well as online on websites of OPHI and the UNDP Human Development Report.

The analysis says that eight Indian States – Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal – have 421 million poor people which is more 11 million than the 26 poorest African countries combined. Factors such as education, health outcomes, assets and services are measured as “deprivations” in each of the households to draw the complete picture of acute poverty at regional, national and global levels.

In an earlier estimate, released last year, an expert group had reported that “every third Indian is living below poverty line” in India. Among the states housing the most number of poor were Orissa and Bihar while in Nagaland, Delhi and Jammu and Kashmir, the number of poor is the least.

That estimate was carried out by a team headed by Suresh Tendulkar, ex-chairman of the Prime Minister's Economic Council.

Tendulkar had mentioned in his report that about 41.8 per cent of rural Indians were forced to survive on about $10 a month, which they need to spend on necessities like food, clothes, footwear, electricity and fuel. The situation is slightly better in the urban scenario, where the poor have to survive on a monthly per capita expenditure of about $12.

Tags: advice, poverty, social issue, people, human interest, World