WikiLeaks Releases Secret Saudi Documents

Sunday, 21 June 2015

WikiLeaks Releases Secret Saudi Documents

by Stephen Lendman

The more we learn about the secret workings of despotic regimes and faux democracies like America, Britain and Israel among others, the better we understand how they extrajudicially serve powerful monied interests at the expense of popular ones.

On Friday, WikiLeaks began releasing around half a million Saudi documents - including Foreign Ministry communiques and top secret intelligence and interior ministry reports.

An initial 70,000 documents were released with much more to come. The organization said information learned shows how Riyadh "managed its alliances and consolidated its position as a regional Middle East superpower (because of its immense oil wealth), including through bribing and co-opting key individuals and institutions."

Bureaucracy is "highly centralized" with senior officials involved in most everything. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said:

Documents obtained "lift the lid on an increasingly erratic and secretive dictatorship that has not only celebrated its 100th beheading this year, but which has also become a menace to its neighbors and itself."

A regime this vile one day will go the way of all others like it before. No nation this corrupt and abhorrent can survive forever. Its day of reckoning awaits - maybe by mass internal revolt too powerful to crush.

It's one of the world's most egregious human rights abusers. Fundamental freedoms don't exist - including the right to express views freely.

Criticizing monarchal policies assures imprisonment, whippings and at times beheading. A family dictatorship gets away with virtually every imaginable human rights abuse because its massive oil reserves are highly valued by Western and other countries.

It uses its oil wealth to buy influence, attack its neighbors, repress its population and support regional terrorist groups serving its interests - including the Islamic State, Al Qaeda and other takfiris.

It's one of the world's largest weapons purchasers - hugely benefitting US and other Western arms suppliers. WikiLeaks began publishing documents obtained by a group calling itself the Yemeni Cyber Army. It hacked thousands of Saudi Foreign, Defense and Interior Ministry computers.

It released a small portion of what it obtained. WikiLeaks has access to a treasure trove of documents it intends publishing a tranche at a time.

Separately, Britain's Ministry of Defense admitted aiding US-orchestrated, Saudi-led terror bombing of Yemen - by providing technical support and weapons at the same time it keeps cutting vital social services.

It outrageously claims its complicity with mass murder and destruction complies with international law.

It compounds its disgraceful behavior saying its precision guided weapons and other destructive sophisticated ones "will be used in compliance with international law."

Campaign Against the Arms Trade's Andrew Smith said "Saudi (terror) bombing has created a humanitarian catastrophe and now we know UK weapons have contributed to it."

"These weapons have not just given military support to the bombardment, they have also provided a strong political support and underlined the closeness between the UK and Saudi governments." One rogue state supports another.

"With the destruction of Yemen and the intensifying crackdown on dissent in Saudi Arabia, the UK government is sending the message that human rights and democracy are less important than arms sales," Smith added.

Saudi-led aggression on Yemen kills and injures scores daily - mostly noncombatant men, women and children. Numbers killed conservatively top 5,000 in almost three months of terror bombing.

Numbers injured are more than double this amount. Over a million Yemenis were displaced, many more daily. Around 80% of the population endures humanitarian crisis conditions.

Unknown numbers perish daily from lack of enough food, clean water and medical care to treat illness and wounds.

Western nations support this carnage. Yemen is being raped and destroyed in plain sight - another horrendous war crime on Obama's rap sheet.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. His new book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III."

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com. Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network. It airs three times weekly: live on Sundays at 1PM Central time plus two prerecorded archived programs. posted by Steve Lendman @ 11:18 AM

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