WikiLeaks Begins Releasing Leaked Saudi Arabia Cables
time.com
time.com
> 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.
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.
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.
"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."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.
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?
https://wikileaks.org/wiki/Category:Countries
Wikileaks has released a number of Syrian leaks in particular, both before and during the current situation.
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)