UPDATED: December 3, 2010 12:33pm
The WikiLeaks website is under attack and is rotating between different servers around the world. We’ll put the current link to the Embassy Cables at the bottom of the article, but if our readers find it has changed, please issue an update in the comments.
Are the FBI files mentioned?
Unless you’ve been living in an information vacuum for the past few days, you are aware Wikileaks is in the process of publishing 251,287 stolen United States embassy cables. But if you think that those cables couldn’t possibly impact little old Barbados, you are in for a surprise.
Today, Barbados Free Press learned that our country is mentioned in 261 of those still to be released cables.
What will they say? The cables go back to 1966, and like you, we can probably guess at some of the subjects. Here’s what we think, what we’ve learned and how you can examine the documents yourself…
Some guesses as to what could be in the cables
Will the cables reveal the infamous FBI files that Prime Ministers Owen Arthur and David Thompson slid under the rug? Will they talk about the American-supported terrorists who murdered 73 people on Cubana Flight 455 off Bridgetown? How about the rumours surrounding the death of Prime Minister Tom Adams or the bribes that VECO provided to politicians around the world? Is Gerald Bull’s HARP project or his assassination mentioned?
We have mixed feelings about Wikileaks but we have no control over what has been done, so we might as well make it a learning experience.
At the time we’re writing this, Wikileaks has released only 603 of 251,287 US Embassy cables. There is a chart showing the number of cables by country, and Barbados is mentioned in 261 cables.
We understand that Barbados has only appeared once in a minor way in the 603 already released cables, so the remaining 260 cables about Barbados are yet to come over the next few months.
You can check for yourself as new documents are posted at WikiLeaks “cablegate” website (link at the bottom of our story).
As we said, we’re of two minds about this. People like Ezra Lavant correctly point out that these WikiLeaks documents are stolen, and that good people will die, and probably have died because WikiLeaks President Julian Assange and others made the documents public.
Assange published the names of Afghan human rights activists and others who have co-operated with the U.S. — giving out names of villages and GPS coordinates.
That’s not journalism. That’s not whistleblowing. That’s setting up “deadly revenge attacks,” says Reporters Without Borders.
Zabihullah Mujahid is grateful. He’s a Taliban spokesman who says “we know how to punish them.”
Assange published details about technology used to stop improvised explosive devices (IEDs) from being detonated. WikiLeaks calls roadside bombs a “rebel investment,” proudly pointing out for every dollar spent by the terrorists, the U.S. and Canada have to spend a thousand to defend against them. So Assange published those anti-IED details online.
from the Ottawa Sun article WikiLeaks boss living on borrowed time
On the other hand, the cables show that many of the world’s leaders are lying scum who betray their people and their country’s principles every day. How many people have died for their lies?
Once again the bottom line for us is this: we have no control over what has been done, so we might as well make it a learning experience. It may take a few more months, but unless something drastic happens to WikiLeaks, the truth will out about the 261 US Embassy cables that mention Barbados.
Here’s what WikiLeaks has to say…
WikiLeaks Cablegate
Wikileaks began on Sunday November 28th publishing 251,287 leaked United States embassy cables, the largest set of confidential documents ever to be released into the public domain. The documents will give people around the world an unprecedented insight into US Government foreign activities.
The cables, which date from 1966 up until the end of February this year, contain confidential communications between 274 embassies in countries throughout the world and the State Department in Washington DC. 15,652 of the cables are classified Secret.
The embassy cables will be released in stages over the next few months. The subject matter of these cables is of such importance, and the geographical spread so broad, that to do otherwise would not do this material justice.
The cables show the extent of US spying on its allies and the UN; turning a blind eye to corruption and human rights abuse in “client states”; backroom deals with supposedly neutral countries; lobbying for US corporations; and the measures US diplomats take to advance those who have access to them.
This document release reveals the contradictions between the US’s public persona and what it says behind closed doors – and shows that if citizens in a democracy want their governments to reflect their wishes, they should ask to see what’s going on behind the scenes.
Every American schoolchild is taught that George Washington – the country’s first President – could not tell a lie. If the administrations of his successors lived up to the same principle, today’s document flood would be a mere embarrassment. Instead, the US Government has been warning governments — even the most corrupt — around the world about the coming leaks and is bracing itself for the exposures.
The full set consists of 251,287 documents, comprising 261,276,536 words (seven times the size of “The Iraq War Logs”, the world’s previously largest classified information release).
The cables cover from 28th December 1966 to 28th February 2010 and originate from 274 embassies, consulates and diplomatic missions.
… continue reading this statement and see the stolen US Embassy documents at Wikileaks
UPDATED: December 3, 2010 12:33pm
The WikiLeaks website is under attack and is rotating between different servers around the world. We’ll put the current link at the bottom of the article, but if our readers find it has changed, please issue an update in the comments.
We’ve found that the WikiLeaks page at Wikipedia is a good place to find the latest link if ours goes dead.
Barbados Free Press 
I read the one cable coming from the Barbados Embassy and I have major reservations about Wikileaks. Is it really in the public’s interest to publish people’s passport information? This particular cable has the passport numbers and expiration dates of two guys, one of whom is said to have Top Secret clearance (His passport has since expired).
Seems to me that Wikileaks is just releasing data in an ad hoc manner that will just end up hurting innocents.
If one is innocent, Harvey, then one has nothing to fear. Unless, however, in a corrupt society justice will not prevail, and the innocent will be punished.
Why does Jesus spring to mind!? He suffered the ultimate penalty for all of us. God bless.
Just like the FBI files never being revealed, nothing will happen here. The leaks will likely be stopped quickly.
Barbados is a tax treaty country and too many people and companies who use it that have influence and dirt cannot allow these files to be disseminated. There will be no learning experience and there will be more cover up.
The truth will always come out. If not by Assange by someone else. I’m glad that someone had the balls to expose some of the things that are happening.
And if he(assange)is arrested on those (false?)rape charges I don’t think it would end with him.
@Bajan kidd
So whatever the truth. What good is it it if it in turns destroy innocent lives!
AC:
Maybe the double standards and duplicity prevalent in the intellectual level of diplomatic correspondence revealed by these servants’ emails will save lives of poor unsuspecting recipients of a drone down their chimney, due entirely to the sayso of a donating crony to a party allied to global terrorism.
Rant over.
@Straight Talk
I don’t think so. Intelligence would be stepped more which would impact what people say on the internet . So be careful straight talk that can include you!
Hard to put a PR spin on a wikileak.
Pingback: Barbados: What’s in Wikileaks? · Global Voices
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101204/ap_on_hi_te/wikileaks
Never attack the food chain
Verily I say unto you …
Is there no truth to the belief that my people are responsible …?
Does this cherry picking of stories not ultimately serve my interests around the world…?
Do you not know that no impropriety on my people’s behalf will ever be exposed through this medium ..?
@Harvey; @AC
I’m having a difficult time understanding what you can possibly be referring to when you use the term “innocent.” Are you describing ‘American duplicity’ as an innocent personal trait?
Silence is a fence around wisdom
‘Western Civilization Has Shed Its Values’
by Paul Craig Roberts (former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administrations and an Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal).
“The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth becomes the greatest enemy of the State.” — Dr. Joseph Goebbels
Western Civilization no longer upholds the values it proclaims, so what is the basis for its claim to virtue?
For example, the US print and TV media and the US government have made it completely clear that they have no regard for the First Amendment. Consider CNN’s Wolf Blitzer’s reaction to the leaked diplomatic cables that reveal how the US government uses deceptions, bribes, and threats to control other governments and to deceive the American and other publics. Blitzer is outraged that information revealing the US government’s improprieties reached the people, or some of them. As Alexander Cockburn wrote, Blitzer demanded that the US government take the necessary steps to make certain that journalists and the American people never again find out what their government is up to.
The disregard for the First Amendment is well established in the US media, which functions as a propaganda ministry for the government. Remember the NSA leak given to the New York Times that the George W. Bush regime was violating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and spying on Americans without obtaining warrants from the FISA court? The New York Times spiked the story for one year and did not release it until after Bush’s reelection. By then, the Bush regime had fabricated a legal doctrine that “authorized” Bush to violate US law.
Glenn Greenwald writing in Salon has exposed the absence of moral standards among WikiLeaks’ critics. A number of American politicians have called for the US government to murder Julian Assange, as have journalists such as neoconservative propagandist Jonah Goldberg, who wrote: “Why wasn’t Assange garroted in his hotel room years ago?”
WikiLeaks’ critics could not make it clearer that they do not believe in accountable government. And to make certain that the government is not held accountable, WikiLeaks’ critics are calling for every possible police state measure, including extra-judicial murder, to stamp out anyone who makes information available that enables the citizenry to hold government accountable.
More at: http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=22269