Well, I read all the documents in the first page here https://wikileaks.org/saudi-cables/search and sadly didn't find anything interesting but there are thousands of documents so, hopefully someone will parse them and report on the interesting ones.
Aside - might be interesting to some: The OCR on these documents is completely botched, I found a couple of words that were right but that's it.
Thanks for noticing that. I cut and pasted the Arabic text in google translate and the results were just complete nonsense. I suppose much less effort has been spent on optimizing OCR for non-Latin chracter sets.
I found it notable that this leak didn't directly flow from Bradley or Snowden:
"The group did not attribute the documents to a source directly. The press
release did note that the Saudi Foreign Ministry acknowledged a computer
network breach in May, and a group called the Yemeni Cyber Army afterward
began releasing “sample” classified material to various websites."
This is a joke, right? Assange himself admitted to telling Snowden to flee to Russia in particular, not just as a waypoint to Havana...
But yes, since 2010 or so Wikileaks has been co-opted by Russia. In October 2010 Assange had crowed that "The Kremlin had better brace itself for a coming wave of WikiLeaks disclosures about Russia" and within a month [1] was meekly "revising" his comment to state instead that "we have material on many businesses and governments, including in Russia. It's not right to say there's going to be a particular focus on Russia". And indeed, the world still has yet to figure out what Assange was talking about in October 2010.
In fact Assange has been quite close with states intertwined with Russia since then, e.g. http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-staggers/2012/03/belar... (what really boggles the mind about this article, which pre-dates Snowden, is the idea of Assange railing against "his enemies at the Guardian").
>This is a joke, right? Assange himself admitted to telling Snowden to flee to Russia in particular, not just as a waypoint to Havana...
How does this mean WikiLeaks/Assange is allied with Russia? It seems to me that it is equally (or more) plausible that Russia is powerful enough to stonewall extradition requests for American citizens in this pseudo cold war of information, and Assange may have banked on that (smaller countries may have the desire but not the political power to make it happen).
And yet not as close as they used to be. It's not coincidental that the U.S. DoD has just recently signed agreements with India on exporting carrier technology and know-how, among other defense cooperation projects.
Russia has supplied many of India's defense needs for some time, but that's less from any special Indian affinity for Russia than because the U.S. had kind of forced their hand decades ago by aligning with Pakistan, which wasn't helped when the U.S. later sanctioned India in 1998 due to its nuclear weapons testing.
Russia, The US, India, Pakistan, and China have a full on orgy of various alliances against various combinations of counter alliances, that whole region if completely fucked up everyone is sleeping with everyone while trying to fuck everyone else, now days it's getting even more complicated with the EU trying to get a foothold in the Caspian sea to bypass Russia for better energy independence which kinda messed up the wired but some what stable status quo that region had.
If people think that the middle east is complicated they really have no idea whats going on just north east of it :P
Do they have anything? Russia was relatively ok in the last 20 years (except the wars against Georgia, Chechen wars). They never really hide their actions, like annexing Crimea was communicated way in advance to the NATO, like in years. The western media barely mentions it. There was an earlier agreement between the NATO and Russia that we are not expanding to the east direction in the EU and we do not interfere with Russian interests in ex-soviet countries. Anyways it would be good to see more information from WL on these, I am really curious what went down exactly.
The funny thing is, I was reading about this and discussed with our friends but I cannot find any reference in Google about it anymore. It feakin' weird because I am 100% it happened. Right now it is happening again btw:
At this stage the NATO and allies knew that Russia is not happy with their plans on eastern expansion. I am trying to find a proof that they were aware of the annexation plans.
Russia's general feelings were always reasonably clear, but there's an enormous gulf between "want to annex and complain a lot about the current situation" (lots of states have such positions on disputed territories) and "actually sending in tanks tomorrow"...
That is very clear. Putin gain massive support in Russia with these moves, of course this is melting away after the embargo kicked in. The problem with that is two fold. The embargo directly hurts EU's economy (look at the Mistral class ship deal with France) and the lower oil price triggered a massive buying up operation in China making them even stronger than before. Basically USA's (and more broadly the Western world's) influence hurting their allies and enabling the other parties (China) to gain even more power. This sort of play is not good for us in the long run.
I must be living in a parallel universe, I cannot explain otherwise having a memory of all i said...
I only found the one below about the negotiations between NATO and Russia of not expanding to the east, no article on the warns prior annexing parts of Ukraine. Putyin's reason for the annexation was to "save" Russians from the international interference with legitimate government in Ukraine. This is all available on this side of the internet now.
One has to note that NATO is not "expanding to the east".
None of the new members were lured into NATO. To the contrary, those are all sovereign countries who wanted to join NATO and escape Russia's bullying. No formerly occupied country wants the Russians back.
I am not sure what you are talking about when you say lured. This game is very complex. What happens if some secret services decide to infiltrate a government or create political situation that pushes to country towards wanting to join the NATO. Would that qualify for lured? The amount of false flag ops happening I would not be surprised that some of these things were planned in Ukraine.
Russia is not bullying here. What do you think the USA would do if China was deploying ballistic weapons to North Mexico? This is exactly the same situation. The west and the east could live together for almost 20 years with very low friction. Any expansion on any of the sides would leave to imbalance and more friction. And for your information, the country I am from, would be pretty damn happy to get back Russia. See http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/30/us-russia-europe-h...
Almost 50% of the country is pro-russia. There is lots of populism going on and it is so easy to get nostalgic about an era you can barely remember but the beer & bread was cheaper than now.
I think the the NATO should just stay in countries where they were before and not to play with this very dangerous situation. Just a reminder that USA would use nuclear force if the society would not stop it. That would lead to an absolute devastating demolition of entire countries and (worst case) long term nuclear pollution.
Wikileaks claimed they had leaks that would offend the Kremlin itself, back in October 2010. Then the FSB made very public threats, and all of sudden Wikileaks was in no particular rush to leak anything regarding to Russia.
Assange later aligned himself with the Belarussian state (Belarus being, of course, still very close to Russia), the process for which apparently led to a great deal of relative upheaval in Wikileaks after 2010, until the new political alliances within Wikileaks settled out.
There was not "an earlier agreement between the NATO and Russia that we are not expanding to the east direction in the EU and we do not interfere with Russian interests in ex-soviet countries."
First, you are confusing NATO policy with EU policy. Agreements between NATO and Russia are binding on NATO, not the EU. Likewise, agreements between the EU and Russia are binding on the EU but not NATO, and agreements between Russia and individual states are binding on those states, not NATO or EU.
NATO-Russian relations are broadly defined by the Founding Act(1995)[0]. This calls for cooperation to achieve peace and security, and calls for respect for the territorial integrity and sovereignty of "all states." Both sides are alleged to have violated this over the years, NATO in the Balkans(Serbia-Kosovo), and Russia in the Caucasus.
EU relations are based on the PCAs[1], but these are generally based on deals with individual countries and do not deal with Russia on the basis of a presumed sphere of influence.
However, the relations between Russia and the West specifically regarding Ukraine are strained by the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances[2]. Western countries claim Russia violated this agreement by not respecting existing borders (annexation of Crimea) and by the threat/use of force. The agreement also specifies that that economic influence should not be used to influence Ukrainian politics. Western countries believe Russian economic influence affected the decision by Yanukovych to pull away from the EU in November 2013. You could counter that EU influence has affected Ukrainian politics, but the memorandum was an agreement between US, UK, Ukraine, and Russia, so there was no guarantee against EU influence.
>NATO-Russian relations are broadly defined by the Founding Act(1995)[0]. This calls for cooperation to achieve peace and security, and calls for respect for the territorial integrity and sovereignty of "all states." Both sides are alleged to have violated this over the years, NATO in the Balkans(Serbia-Kosovo), and Russia in the Caucasus.
As far as I'm aware the only thing Russia's done recently in the Caucasus was in Georgia. While Abhkhazia may be regarded as part of Georgia by the US/EU/West it has not been governed from Tblisi at any point since the fall of the Soviet Union. Another entirely accurate interpretation of the Georgian war was that Georgia took approving noises about it joining NATO from the US far too seriously, invaded Abhkhazia and was completely crushed by Russia.
Just goes to show you can't count on the US, like when Russia, the US and UK all agreed to guarantee Ukraine's sovereignty in exchange for it giving up its nuclear weapons to Russia when the Soviet Union dissolved.
> Just goes to show you can't count on the US, like when Russia, the US and UK all agreed to guarantee Ukraine's sovereignty in exchange for it giving up its nuclear weapons to Russia when the Soviet Union dissolved.
Not just US, UK was also part of that agreement, and they also have done nothing to help Ukraine. This is really disheartening because it just shows how much you can trust in these multinational agreements. Why should any other country ever trust US or UK ever again?
> Not just US, UK was also part of that agreement, and they also have done nothing to help Ukraine.
Which 'Ukraine'? The government which was democratically elected (and deposed by protests) or the new government. Let's for a second imagine that the "Occupy *" movement was cozy with the Russians, and managed to topple the US administration of the time. Which America is NATO obliged to protect?
Regardless of legitimacy of the current government in Ukraine, which was democratically elected by now, even ignoring that, the actual agreed upon border of Ukraine has been breached by a foreign nation without provocation or aggression on the part of Ukraine. It's hard to argue that regardless of the current state of Ukrainian politics, this deserves action under that original agreement.
Think about it, after this, who would ever be stupid enough to give up nuclear weapons on the promise of US or UK?
Saudi Arabia is at the center of a lot of stuff going on in the middle east right now (their support for ISIS, their involvement in Yemen, the chess game with Iran, etc. etc.). It would be interesting to see what these cables turn up, once translated.
> Although Saudi donors and other private contributors were believed to be the most significant funding source for the original forerunner to ISIS, the importance of such donations has been marginalized by the group's independent sources of income. This income, which is now estimated to overwhelmingly exceed private donations, is generated by activities such as smuggling (of oil, weapons, antiquities), extortion (e.g., the group levies around $8 million per month in "taxes" on local businesses), and other crimes (e.g., robberies, counterfeiting). The group's June 11 seizure of Mosul's central bank alone netted tens of millions of dollars (though U.S. officials note that the $400 million figure often cited in connection with the heist is not accurate).
To me this doesn't read as government support, but support by private interests within the country. The population of KSA is generally more conservative than the government (though the government is hardly progressive). ISIS is a threat to the stability of KSA and they're definitely not interested in supporting them.
Well, for starters, this doesn't say anywhere that the Saudi government supports ISIS. I keep seeing variations of this reiterated mostly by western political analysts but this only goes to represent to their ignorance of middle-eastern geopolitics, as a matter of fact, if anybody knows two shits about the middle-east, he/she wouldn't say something like that. To clarify, ISIS is in itself a threat to most forces that are currently in power in the middle-east. By ideology, ISIS considers most arabic governments to be infidels "Kuffar" and allies of the west "Dar al Harb".
Regarding private contributors, this is undoubtedly true but as clarified in the linked article, it's not the large sum currently. Why are there private contributors you ask? Because morons "Sunni" governments fund morons -like ISIS- to fight other morons "Shia" governmets e.g. Iran which in its own right funds some morons -Hezbollah and its ilk- to fight the original morons, in dreams of having a moronic sectarian consolidated power dream.
[Edit]: I originally put the phrases "Sunni" and "Shia" in quotes because they're usually misrepresented by non-muslims. There are different branches of Shia and different branches of Sunna "Sunni". There are newer terms like Wahabism and Ahmadiyya. Each of these terms can be interpreted in a number of ways, the "academic" distinction is quite clear but the reality is quite complicated -in short, several groups, members with different ideologies claim one of the aforementioned terms to be the one that identifies them and that they fit the most accurate description of that term-. Note that this is a gross oversimplification.
> this doesn't say anywhere that the Saudi government supports ISIS.... if anybody knows two shits about the middle-east, he/she wouldn't say something like that.
KSA is a totalitarian regime. Do you think the people would be able to fund ISIS against the wishes of the government? This is a government that doesn't even let women drive and lashes bloggers for mild criticism. And yet you claim they didn't know/approve of people funding the ISIS? I'm afraid it's you who a little ignorant about the middle east.
The Saudis may not fund the ISIS now; but they did heavily fund it it and helped set it up. The aim was to destabilize and topple Assad. Just like they did with OBL and Al Qaida; and, predictably, got similar results.
ISIL is used as a proxy force by all powers that can effectively manipulate them, but they are also a force of their own.
The US heavily invests in using video games for propaganda and ISIL and Sunni-insurgent forces have been exposed to a number of anti-Assad video games. Hamas is unlikely to be the progenitor of anti-Assad video themed video games. It's speculative, but it makes a lot of sense that the US would do what it can to direct ire at Assad.
What's not speculative is that Turkey and the US were running guns to groups that became ISIL factions in Syria.
There's lots of influence to be had all over. The larger powers are trying to manage the situation to achieve their ends. That means funding insurgent groups where it benefits them and bombing the same groups from the air where they are challenged.
Can you provide a source for US "gun running" to ISIL factions in Syria? It is well known that Turkey's intelligence agency is doing this, but I've never heard the same accusation leveled at the US.
Also I would love to see these anti-Assad video games, even though it seems like American involvement is your own analysis.
Remember Christopher Stevens, the US ambassador to Libya who got murdered in Benghazi? When he was killed, he was working to secure the stockpiles of weapons in Libya after the US helped al-Qaeda oust Gaddafi. The article, which was written in 2012 identifies Abdulhakim Belhadj as the guy who was telling the Americans which groups they could trust and give arms to.
According to this article from March of this year, he's now the head of ISIL/ISIS in Libya:
Back in 2004, the CIA and MI6 captured him and his wife and secretly flew them to Libya so that Gadaffi could torture him for information. He was "chained to a window, deprived of sleep, beaten, hung from the walls and kept in solitary confinement" with British intelligence providing the questions for the interrogation.
I don't know what would be worse: that the Obama administration deliberately armed ISIS/ISIL or that it was stupid enough to give weapons to a guy the CIA had tortured. I guess the leaks will tell us which.
Yeah, it's not exactly like the US is the only place in which video games can be created, especially since they almost certainly aren't exactly AAA stuff. (More like a Counter-Strike mod at best, I would imagine).
This is true, I would expect a number of countries to be able to pull it off if they were inclined to. Iran, Russia, China, Syria, US, Turkey, Iraq, Saudi Arabia. Those are the choices. Palestine is very unlikely - though they have used video games in the past. Since the target is Syria it rules out China and Russia and Syria. Iraq is in essence a provincial government and isn't do that on its own accord. Iran could, but they aren't in the video game making business. Neither is Saudi Arabia. Given the DoD's investment in expanding propaganda operations to new media including video games, the US makes a lot of sense - though it would make some sense too if it was joint with Turkey.
No smoking gun and not strong enough evidence to assume it, but it's not a crazy speculation.
I believe he is referencing the fact that a few years back the US armed a militant group that later became ISIL, as at that point they were fighting regimes the US was against. It's a big part of why calls to "arm the anti-ISIL rebels!" Are so cringe worthy.
Smokybourbon below is hellbanned, but his example is spot on. There were also rumours that the Russians helped upset the plan in Benghazi because of their support for Assad.
Long (rumoured) story short was that the CIA were gun running for the anti-Assad groups. Russia blocks it using local Libyans. us uses propaganda to rename the CIA compound 'a consulate'.
Again this is all rumour. Can anyone add any real proof?
"The West, Gulf Countries, and Turkey support the opposition; while Russia, China and Iran support the regime."
"If the situation unravels there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared salafist principality in Eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the shia expanison (Iraq and Iran)."
Released during a FOIA lawsuit (on special forces work in Syria). ["JW v Defense State 00812 court order"].
Won't quote because its worth reading the whole thing for context. Associated facts (e.g. Turkey, US's equal partner, was caught running guns, Manning had [admittedly old] docs with CIA running guns to Syria) lend weight to the what was thought on Capitol Hill at the time.
But broadly the US and allies support Salafist elements as they are, and can be encouraged to be, opposed to Assad.
Search "Syria propaganda", "Syria video game propaganda" and if you want technical stuff "strategic communication video game". The past ten years or so of DoD propaganda planning has involved elements of and investments in video games (they already match Hollywood for industry size and are projected to grow; they are also great for propaganda - one NSA assessment was leaked by the journalists working with Snowden).
This one is a speculation. All of the pieces are there. The technology and tactics are right, PSYOPs is now mainstream with conventional warfare (it's included in an umbrella term called 'hybrid warfare': IO and Conventional that includes the gambit of information warfare including electronic, espionage and psychological), Psychological Operations work in Syria has been disclosed by many channels - it's not really a secret. Jordan and Egypt are on that list but the document I saw was only about Twitter campaigns.
Anyway I've ranted. It's speculative. It's just not absurd or a leap at all.
Aside of the content, interesting things to do with both these and the state department cables would be to study patterns in the metadata like transmission date/time vs geographic location. Wikileaks has them sorted by various criteria, is anyone aware of a good platform for wrangling this to visualize it different ways? Most of the offerings at http://infosthetics.com/archives/2010/11/wikileaks_us_embass... are deprecated or dead.
Is there some machine learning program that can make sense
from a lot of text?
What could read several thousand research articles about food intake and make common sense out of it? What could read Wikileaks and make sense of all that text?
this is laughable. WikiLeaks claims that "A document listing the subscriptions that needed renewal by 1 January 2010 details a series of contributory sums meant for two dozen publications in Damascus, Abu Dhabi, Beirut, Kuwait, Amman and Nouakchott. The sums range from $500 to 9,750 Kuwaiti Dinars ($33,000)". The actual document shows that a Saudi ministry is buying subscriptions to newspapers. The "9,750" is actually 9 dinars and 750 fils - an amount equivalent to $35!
Not really laughable commas and periods have a different meaning in math, and well accounting in many countries.
For example if you have a 2340 dollars and 87 cents then in the US it will be written like 2,345.87 in mainland Europe it will be 2.345,87.
If you remove the cents than to an American person 2,340 is 2000 and 345 dollars, to a say French person it will be 2 dollars and 34 cents.
On top of that the Kuwaiti Dinar is the only currency in the world (that i know off) that its main unit is divided into thousands and not hundreds which complicates this even further since for most people this makes it even look less like a "decimal" sign used in currency but a simple comma which is used to separate thousands.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 135 ms ] threadAside - might be interesting to some: The OCR on these documents is completely botched, I found a couple of words that were right but that's it.
https://wikileaks.org/wiki/Category:Countries
Wikileaks has released a number of Syrian leaks in particular, both before and during the current situation.
https://wikileaks.org/syria-files/
But yes, since 2010 or so Wikileaks has been co-opted by Russia. In October 2010 Assange had crowed that "The Kremlin had better brace itself for a coming wave of WikiLeaks disclosures about Russia" and within a month [1] was meekly "revising" his comment to state instead that "we have material on many businesses and governments, including in Russia. It's not right to say there's going to be a particular focus on Russia". And indeed, the world still has yet to figure out what Assange was talking about in October 2010.
In fact Assange has been quite close with states intertwined with Russia since then, e.g. http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-staggers/2012/03/belar... (what really boggles the mind about this article, which pre-dates Snowden, is the idea of Assange railing against "his enemies at the Guardian").
[1] http://www.russiaprofile.org/international/a1288285095.html <-- Want to know what changed Assange's mind?
How does this mean WikiLeaks/Assange is allied with Russia? It seems to me that it is equally (or more) plausible that Russia is powerful enough to stonewall extradition requests for American citizens in this pseudo cold war of information, and Assange may have banked on that (smaller countries may have the desire but not the political power to make it happen).
Russia has supplied many of India's defense needs for some time, but that's less from any special Indian affinity for Russia than because the U.S. had kind of forced their hand decades ago by aligning with Pakistan, which wasn't helped when the U.S. later sanctioned India in 1998 due to its nuclear weapons testing.
If people think that the middle east is complicated they really have no idea whats going on just north east of it :P
Others have to EARN dollars to buy OPEC Oil;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrocurrency#Currencies_used_...
Wait it was? I am genuinely interested. Can you please link to something more about this in either English or Russian?
http://rt.com/politics/russia-ukraine-europe-pressure-440/
The funny thing is, I was reading about this and discussed with our friends but I cannot find any reference in Google about it anymore. It feakin' weird because I am 100% it happened. Right now it is happening again btw:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/russia-warns-...
They did the same thing with Ukraine situation. I am still digging. I can't read Russian anymore though. :)
http://www.military.com/daily-news/2013/10/22/rasmussen-no-n...
At this stage the NATO and allies knew that Russia is not happy with their plans on eastern expansion. I am trying to find a proof that they were aware of the annexation plans.
I only found the one below about the negotiations between NATO and Russia of not expanding to the east, no article on the warns prior annexing parts of Ukraine. Putyin's reason for the annexation was to "save" Russians from the international interference with legitimate government in Ukraine. This is all available on this side of the internet now.
(-3 points from RT, how lovely!)
Russia is not bullying here. What do you think the USA would do if China was deploying ballistic weapons to North Mexico? This is exactly the same situation. The west and the east could live together for almost 20 years with very low friction. Any expansion on any of the sides would leave to imbalance and more friction. And for your information, the country I am from, would be pretty damn happy to get back Russia. See http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/30/us-russia-europe-h...
Almost 50% of the country is pro-russia. There is lots of populism going on and it is so easy to get nostalgic about an era you can barely remember but the beer & bread was cheaper than now.
I think the the NATO should just stay in countries where they were before and not to play with this very dangerous situation. Just a reminder that USA would use nuclear force if the society would not stop it. That would lead to an absolute devastating demolition of entire countries and (worst case) long term nuclear pollution.
Plan of using nuclear weapons by USA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTxaGzm_v8Q&feature=youtu.be...
Wikileaks claimed they had leaks that would offend the Kremlin itself, back in October 2010. Then the FSB made very public threats, and all of sudden Wikileaks was in no particular rush to leak anything regarding to Russia.
Assange later aligned himself with the Belarussian state (Belarus being, of course, still very close to Russia), the process for which apparently led to a great deal of relative upheaval in Wikileaks after 2010, until the new political alliances within Wikileaks settled out.
First, you are confusing NATO policy with EU policy. Agreements between NATO and Russia are binding on NATO, not the EU. Likewise, agreements between the EU and Russia are binding on the EU but not NATO, and agreements between Russia and individual states are binding on those states, not NATO or EU.
NATO-Russian relations are broadly defined by the Founding Act(1995)[0]. This calls for cooperation to achieve peace and security, and calls for respect for the territorial integrity and sovereignty of "all states." Both sides are alleged to have violated this over the years, NATO in the Balkans(Serbia-Kosovo), and Russia in the Caucasus.
EU relations are based on the PCAs[1], but these are generally based on deals with individual countries and do not deal with Russia on the basis of a presumed sphere of influence.
However, the relations between Russia and the West specifically regarding Ukraine are strained by the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances[2]. Western countries claim Russia violated this agreement by not respecting existing borders (annexation of Crimea) and by the threat/use of force. The agreement also specifies that that economic influence should not be used to influence Ukrainian politics. Western countries believe Russian economic influence affected the decision by Yanukovych to pull away from the EU in November 2013. You could counter that EU influence has affected Ukrainian politics, but the memorandum was an agreement between US, UK, Ukraine, and Russia, so there was no guarantee against EU influence.
[0] http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/official_texts_25468.htm [1] http://europa.eu/legislation_summaries/external_relations/re... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Budapest_Memorandum_on_Secur...
As far as I'm aware the only thing Russia's done recently in the Caucasus was in Georgia. While Abhkhazia may be regarded as part of Georgia by the US/EU/West it has not been governed from Tblisi at any point since the fall of the Soviet Union. Another entirely accurate interpretation of the Georgian war was that Georgia took approving noises about it joining NATO from the US far too seriously, invaded Abhkhazia and was completely crushed by Russia.
Just goes to show you can't count on the US, like when Russia, the US and UK all agreed to guarantee Ukraine's sovereignty in exchange for it giving up its nuclear weapons to Russia when the Soviet Union dissolved.
Not just US, UK was also part of that agreement, and they also have done nothing to help Ukraine. This is really disheartening because it just shows how much you can trust in these multinational agreements. Why should any other country ever trust US or UK ever again?
> Not just US, UK was also part of that agreement, and they also have done nothing to help Ukraine.
Which 'Ukraine'? The government which was democratically elected (and deposed by protests) or the new government. Let's for a second imagine that the "Occupy *" movement was cozy with the Russians, and managed to topple the US administration of the time. Which America is NATO obliged to protect?
Think about it, after this, who would ever be stupid enough to give up nuclear weapons on the promise of US or UK?
("interests" decided by Russia)
> Although Saudi donors and other private contributors were believed to be the most significant funding source for the original forerunner to ISIS, the importance of such donations has been marginalized by the group's independent sources of income. This income, which is now estimated to overwhelmingly exceed private donations, is generated by activities such as smuggling (of oil, weapons, antiquities), extortion (e.g., the group levies around $8 million per month in "taxes" on local businesses), and other crimes (e.g., robberies, counterfeiting). The group's June 11 seizure of Mosul's central bank alone netted tens of millions of dollars (though U.S. officials note that the $400 million figure often cited in connection with the heist is not accurate).
Regarding private contributors, this is undoubtedly true but as clarified in the linked article, it's not the large sum currently. Why are there private contributors you ask? Because morons "Sunni" governments fund morons -like ISIS- to fight other morons "Shia" governmets e.g. Iran which in its own right funds some morons -Hezbollah and its ilk- to fight the original morons, in dreams of having a moronic sectarian consolidated power dream.
[Edit]: I originally put the phrases "Sunni" and "Shia" in quotes because they're usually misrepresented by non-muslims. There are different branches of Shia and different branches of Sunna "Sunni". There are newer terms like Wahabism and Ahmadiyya. Each of these terms can be interpreted in a number of ways, the "academic" distinction is quite clear but the reality is quite complicated -in short, several groups, members with different ideologies claim one of the aforementioned terms to be the one that identifies them and that they fit the most accurate description of that term-. Note that this is a gross oversimplification.
KSA is a totalitarian regime. Do you think the people would be able to fund ISIS against the wishes of the government? This is a government that doesn't even let women drive and lashes bloggers for mild criticism. And yet you claim they didn't know/approve of people funding the ISIS? I'm afraid it's you who a little ignorant about the middle east.
The Saudis may not fund the ISIS now; but they did heavily fund it it and helped set it up. The aim was to destabilize and topple Assad. Just like they did with OBL and Al Qaida; and, predictably, got similar results.
The US heavily invests in using video games for propaganda and ISIL and Sunni-insurgent forces have been exposed to a number of anti-Assad video games. Hamas is unlikely to be the progenitor of anti-Assad video themed video games. It's speculative, but it makes a lot of sense that the US would do what it can to direct ire at Assad.
What's not speculative is that Turkey and the US were running guns to groups that became ISIL factions in Syria.
There's lots of influence to be had all over. The larger powers are trying to manage the situation to achieve their ends. That means funding insurgent groups where it benefits them and bombing the same groups from the air where they are challenged.
Also I would love to see these anti-Assad video games, even though it seems like American involvement is your own analysis.
http://www.examiner.com/article/did-cia-and-state-department...
Remember Christopher Stevens, the US ambassador to Libya who got murdered in Benghazi? When he was killed, he was working to secure the stockpiles of weapons in Libya after the US helped al-Qaeda oust Gaddafi. The article, which was written in 2012 identifies Abdulhakim Belhadj as the guy who was telling the Americans which groups they could trust and give arms to.
According to this article from March of this year, he's now the head of ISIL/ISIS in Libya:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/mar/3/frank-gaffney...
Back in 2004, the CIA and MI6 captured him and his wife and secretly flew them to Libya so that Gadaffi could torture him for information. He was "chained to a window, deprived of sleep, beaten, hung from the walls and kept in solitary confinement" with British intelligence providing the questions for the interrogation.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/30/abdel-hakim-bel...
I don't know what would be worse: that the Obama administration deliberately armed ISIS/ISIL or that it was stupid enough to give weapons to a guy the CIA had tortured. I guess the leaks will tell us which.
No smoking gun and not strong enough evidence to assume it, but it's not a crazy speculation.
Long (rumoured) story short was that the CIA were gun running for the anti-Assad groups. Russia blocks it using local Libyans. us uses propaganda to rename the CIA compound 'a consulate'.
Again this is all rumour. Can anyone add any real proof?
"The West, Gulf Countries, and Turkey support the opposition; while Russia, China and Iran support the regime."
"If the situation unravels there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared salafist principality in Eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the shia expanison (Iraq and Iran)."
Released during a FOIA lawsuit (on special forces work in Syria). ["JW v Defense State 00812 court order"].
http://www.judicialwatch.org/press-room/press-releases/judic...
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Judicial_Watch
http://thelead.blogs.cnn.com/2013/08/01/exclusive-dozens-of-...
Won't quote because its worth reading the whole thing for context. Associated facts (e.g. Turkey, US's equal partner, was caught running guns, Manning had [admittedly old] docs with CIA running guns to Syria) lend weight to the what was thought on Capitol Hill at the time.
But broadly the US and allies support Salafist elements as they are, and can be encouraged to be, opposed to Assad.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/27/us-airdrops-ant...
Search "Syria propaganda", "Syria video game propaganda" and if you want technical stuff "strategic communication video game". The past ten years or so of DoD propaganda planning has involved elements of and investments in video games (they already match Hollywood for industry size and are projected to grow; they are also great for propaganda - one NSA assessment was leaked by the journalists working with Snowden).
This one is a speculation. All of the pieces are there. The technology and tactics are right, PSYOPs is now mainstream with conventional warfare (it's included in an umbrella term called 'hybrid warfare': IO and Conventional that includes the gambit of information warfare including electronic, espionage and psychological), Psychological Operations work in Syria has been disclosed by many channels - it's not really a secret. Jordan and Egypt are on that list but the document I saw was only about Twitter campaigns.
Anyway I've ranted. It's speculative. It's just not absurd or a leap at all.
What could read several thousand research articles about food intake and make common sense out of it? What could read Wikileaks and make sense of all that text?
For example if you have a 2340 dollars and 87 cents then in the US it will be written like 2,345.87 in mainland Europe it will be 2.345,87.
If you remove the cents than to an American person 2,340 is 2000 and 345 dollars, to a say French person it will be 2 dollars and 34 cents.
On top of that the Kuwaiti Dinar is the only currency in the world (that i know off) that its main unit is divided into thousands and not hundreds which complicates this even further since for most people this makes it even look less like a "decimal" sign used in currency but a simple comma which is used to separate thousands.