Arnon Grunberg

Hand

Agenda

Anshel Pfeffer on WikiLeaks in Haaretz:

‘Over the last week or so, though, WikiLeaks has enjoyed what appeared to be two major coups to put it back in the public eye. One was the publication, last Friday, of 61,000 diplomatic cables from Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry (out of allegedly half a million that have been lifted from its archives). The other, earlier this week, concerned details of covert surveillance carried out by the NSA against the French president, François Hollande, and his two predecessors, Nicolas Sarkozy and Jacques Chirac. In both cases, these do not seem like anonymous leaks passed onto WikiLeaks’ website.
The Saudi cables are not the original files stored in the ministry’s computers in Riyadh, but photocopies that were only later – most likely by WikiLeaks or its collaborators – scanned using optical character recognition (OCR) software to make them searchable.
The revelations in the Saudi cables were interesting, though hardly surprising. Many of the documents detailed how Saudi diplomats were prepared to use money – in some cases millions of dollars in bribes and secret payments – to further their country’s interests and to corrupt journalists in various countries. Naturally, it was embarrassing for the Saudis, but nothing that others in the Middle East hadn’t already suspected.
Again, the “media partner” was Al Akhbar. And while WikiLeaks never identifies its source, there had been statements by the Saudis last month acknowledging that their computer networks had been breached by the “Yemen Cyber Army.” The similarity in name to a similar Syrian organization, allegedly working for the Assad regime; the presence of Hezbollah-backing Al Akhbar; and the fact that Hezbollah’s patron, Iran, is in intense regional rivalry with the Saudis – a rivalry that’s currently focused on the civil wars in Syria and Yemen, where both sides are backing rival Sunni and Shia groups, and actively involved with military advisers (Iran in Syria) and airstrikes (Saudis in Yemen) – makes it hard not to see Iran’s hand somewhere in the leak, with WikiLeaks acting as a convenient conduit.’

Read the article here.

WikiLeaks as a convenient conduit? Who knows. It would have been naïve to believe that WikiLeaks has no other interest than enlightening the world. This doesn’t mean that we should discredit WikiLeaks, it’s just good to remember that those who stand up against the powerful are often supported by powerful actors themselves.

Who doesn’t have a hidden agenda?

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