Hugo Chavez is not going to be very happy when he sees this graph (click on it to see it larger) showing the relative unimportance of Venezuela in terms of material in the wikileaks files taken from US Embassy cables. The dark blue bar shows the number of messages relating to Venezuela, a quarter of those from Iran. In fact, the juiciest stuff so far comes not from the US, but from France as French diplomat Levitte calls Hugo crazy and suggesting Chavez is turning Venezuela into Zimbabwe. I wonder if Levitte knows Zimbabwe does not have oil.
There is also some stuff about Palestinian connections to Chavez and Venezuela, but nothing major. Hugo will be mighty mad that he ranks so low on importance on the US’ radar. Maybe he will pick a fight with France now.
The Devil's Excrement 
May 24, 2011 at 9:50 pm
[…] Venezuela and Chavez rank low on wikileak files « The Devil&#… […]
December 1, 2010 at 3:08 am
I agree reading about Kirchner’s mental issues and Venezuela’s health institutions and opinions on Berlusconi, Putin and accounts about prince Andrew are useless.
But: do you think the US would have investigated the helicopter incident unless caught very clearly? How many civilans have been killed in actions that go well beyond “bomb fell a bit farther away than expected”?
December 1, 2010 at 1:37 am
New Zealand found out what can happen if you mess with France. Wilipedia Rainbow Warrior.
November 30, 2010 at 10:55 pm
Jefe, Assange is a bigot. do you believe what the two women claim or are they working indirectly for the purpose of setting him up? What timing… two with the same story coming forward in such a short span. I think he’s a very complicated person.
November 30, 2010 at 10:49 pm
I’m not really concerned… this is all going to blow over. USG is not an evil empire and this will prove that. Furthermore, the world will witness real democracy in action as USG deals with fallout. Of more concern to the smart Bolivarians should be another milestone event that occured this month: the realization that Israel government was not alone in Stuxnet and that the gringos have the capability to penetrate anything the Chavistas have. The Chavistas now know they cannot trust the security products they buy. Not a big deal since the most sensitive (i.e. incriminating) matters are always discussed in person. That’s why all the travel and couriers.
November 30, 2010 at 9:23 pm
My problem with Assange is that, unlike Woodward and Bernstein or Daniel Ellsberg, many of these documents have no real validity other than to embarrass the United States. Whether or not the U.S. doubted Cristina Kirchner’s sanity or whether they believe Silvio Berlusconi is a narcissist is not a matter of civic interest. Assange appears to be releasing documents just to prove that he can, whether or not the documents serve a greater public interest or not. His release of the 2007 helicopter gunship attack that killed Iraqi civilians was war porn at its worst. The media KNEW the U.S. had accidentally killed Iraqi civilians, and the investigation was already underway. The video released on wikileaks was the voyeuristic, sensationalist cherry on the cake. I don’t like Assange because it seems to me that he like to pander more to his own ego than to any sense of public service or free speech.
November 30, 2010 at 6:48 pm
this is all mute point. Amazon is hosting the data. One problem is the newness…there is no precedent. We’re dealing with Constitutional challenges, National Security challenges, Crisis of Confidence challenges, etc. Assange is rewriting the book.
November 30, 2010 at 5:42 pm
But what I am saying is that Assange is NOT a Swedish citizen. And if Sweden were not keeping the server, the guy would put the information somewhere else. He could be shifting it easily and anyway loads of people could get the data from any place in a matter of seconds. This is not the point.
It seems some people have a problem when one links to Wikipedia even for the most matter-of-fact statements.
November 30, 2010 at 4:50 pm
Sorry I forgot to label source as Wikipedia.
November 30, 2010 at 4:47 pm
WikiLeaks is hosted by PRQ, a Sweden-based company providing “highly secure, no-questions-asked hosting services.” The servers are spread around the world with the central server located in Sweden.[55] Julian Assange has said that the servers are located in Sweden (and the other countries) “specifically because those nations offer legal protection to the disclosures made on the site”. He talks about the Swedish constitution, which gives the information providers total legal protection.
I think Sweden has a big problem.
November 30, 2010 at 2:20 pm
Sweden? Assange is Australian.
Here, you can see a map of Australia here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia.
Anyway: as far as I know, the US should firstly have an arrest warrant and send a message to Interpol. Has it done it?
What do I see?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assange#Swedish_investigation_and_arrest_warrant
Oops…Sweden already requested it for rape.
Australia is starting it up. So: what do you expect? Should the USA bomb Sweden already?
November 30, 2010 at 12:28 pm
Let me get this straight.
Hundreds of thousands of U.S. Government documents are stolen and then published for the whole world to see.
Sweden is protecting and even condoning its citizens right to do this.
Couldn’t that be construed as an act of war.
I would think they would have enough respect for the state secrets of the largest trading partner on the planet to do something…..anything.
November 30, 2010 at 10:04 am
treason for the ones in the US that enabled Manning… espionage for Julian. The Shannon vs Valenzuela fight already started:
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/11/29/104459/clinton-probed-argentine-leaders.html
November 30, 2010 at 9:49 am
But it is not treason, you can only be a traitor against your own country.
November 30, 2010 at 9:47 am
Julian and his enablers will get charged with something… the Manning kid was setup. They manipulated and trained him. They provided him with the know-how to receive and transmit the data. They encouraged him. This prior knowledge makes them complicit and accessory to the crimes.
November 30, 2010 at 8:23 am
Treason would be by the U.S. soldier who downloaded everything and handed it over to Assange, and possibly U.S. media that publish the material. http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/11/cablegate :
The “Cablegate” release has been anticipated since the arrest last spring, first reported by Threat Level, of Army intelligence analyst Bradley Manning. In online chats with the ex-hacker who ultimately turned him in, Manning, now 23, described providing WikiLeaks with a cache of 260,000 diplomatic cables, which he smuggled out of a secure facility on CD-RW labled “Lady Gaga.”
The case on the former is a slam dunk, and I suspect someone somewhere is trying to figure out how to press the latter. I won’t venture to guess if they succeed or not. One rolling head certainly doesn’t seem like enough.
November 29, 2010 at 10:59 pm
Not so much a “potential denialist” as rather sketchy on law. How can an Icelandic citizen living in Australia be committing treason for releasing documents from the United States?
November 29, 2010 at 6:41 pm
Ah! M_astera is a potential denialist! From here on I shall ignore you heavily.
🙂
November 29, 2010 at 3:41 pm
Wikileaks is a limited hangout, a fully-owned propaganda organization. Every paper “leaked” has been carefully selected and allowed, except perhaps for the junk filler. Anyone who watches more than CNNBCBS etc or reads sources other than the mainstream media is well aware of this. The easiest way to see who is running wikileaks is to look for what and who are either not mentioned or are found to be faultless.
The release of that many classified documents is treason of the highest order and will cost many lives, yet it has been allowed, even promoted in the press as a big deal. So how does Assange get to fly around and do TV interviews? Does anyone really believe that the spooks couldn’t have their hands on him in a hot second? Please.
Worth noting that the NYT refused to publish the leaked emails about the IPCC and East Anglia data manipulation last fall because they were “illegally obtained”. Those morals seem to have mysteriously disappeared when it comes to real secret information that will damage many people.
Wikileaks is a fully controlled and owned propaganda operation.
November 29, 2010 at 3:39 pm
[…] “so far” needs to be emphasized. The Devil’s Excrement (an anti-Chavez Venezuelan site) takes glee in the fact that Venezuela merits less attention than […]
November 29, 2010 at 1:25 pm
Hugo apparently goes faster than Mugabe ever did in ruining his own country. Maybe Levitte is keener than we think, and can already intuit the kind of harm done to a country with little in the way of institutions, by such easy money (from oil). Maybe he bets that Zimbabwe will come out more or less like Venezuela and viceversa. Surely, he can bet safely that Zimbabwe will recover faster after it is over.
Probably Venezuela is now in the radar as part of Latin America. Likely reason, the President is a picturesque, “revolutionary”, outrageous clown misgoverning a resource rich country, giving freebies to anybody he likes, consorting with terrorists and other dictators and maybe helping them. The kind of notoriety a guy like Idi Amin Dada or Muammar Qaddafi could crave. Until, respectively, the events of Entebbe, Kampala, 1976 and on the skies over Tripoli, 1986.
November 29, 2010 at 12:12 pm
well get more in time,don’t worry.
it would be difficult to broswe is all files were released at once.The mantequilla is yet to be released.
November 29, 2010 at 11:29 am
Be nice, Gweh. Copy them here.
November 29, 2010 at 11:01 am
Nothing new about his craziness and his relationship with the worst governs of the world…
November 29, 2010 at 10:17 am
keep checking
November 29, 2010 at 10:02 am
Gweh,
Please, give us the link.
I checked out in the morning and noon (Berlin time) both in The Guardian and Spiegel. I did not see much.
The biggest thing I saw was that there was an informant for the US among the FDP (German Liberal) young guys, which is as surprising as saying Petare is dangerous at night. OK, as I said, that guy is toast because the amount of “young FDP” in the negotiations for government coalitions must be rather small.
The hot nurse Khadaffi has is Ukranian. What is shocking?
That the head of state of Pakistan is an issue? That Afghani officials steal?
That Israelis and the Saudis want the US Americans to do Iran? What Setty said about fundamentalists in the Three-Country corner?
That Jewish-French politician Levitte said what he said about Chávez? I would say exactly the same thing. Actually, millions of Venezuelans are saying that: que Chávez está loco…and some also say Brazil is having a hard time supporting Chávez any longer.
I do not see anything more. Merkel is this, Putin is that?
November 29, 2010 at 9:08 am
Kepler, see the guardian google docs
November 29, 2010 at 8:59 am
but let me warn you, there’s also damaging info that has never been disclosed about the bad guys so don’t rush out to celebrate just yet.
November 29, 2010 at 8:56 am
Eva Golinger must be very excited about this. Based on her previous body of work, there’s enough material here for 20 more chavez-code books. Honey, congratulations.
November 29, 2010 at 8:52 am
Wikileaks preview: the stuff on Chavez is fascinating and there’s tons of it. Shannon always comes out looking great, Valenzuela on the other hand…
November 29, 2010 at 8:47 am
I know Setty, but if you hear Hugo speak, it would seem the US obsesses with him, not “equal rank” with Colombia, to him that’s like an insult.
November 29, 2010 at 2:44 am
Well, quite honestly, these leaks should not be such a sensation, at least what we got so far.
Setty, I have seen quite some interest from “common” US Americans about terrorists in Paraguay already. There is a big concentration of
Arabs in the area mentioned in the depeche, in the Tres Fronteras.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/spanish/specials/newsid_4294000/4294241.stm
I am puzzled some people didn’t believe the US (and a lot of other countries, for that matter) are puting a lot of embassy personnel and other connections to use in intelligence gathering that is beyond kosher/halal/catholic. The US, like China and Russia and Israel and others, are involved in something we could safely call industrial spionage even of those they claim to be their partners (Spiegel, for instance, has reported a bit on how it went for some Boeing/Airbus competitions).
I found the most revealing things so far the little “Hola like” gossips like about Khaddafi or the ones that will make heads roll like the mentioning of an young FDP member who was passing them information on the FDP/CDU talks. If they get the guy and chances are they will, he is toast.
I liked quite how the German public (state) press dealt with the issue yesterday.
November 29, 2010 at 2:06 am
I hear what you’re saying but I also note that Venezuela is second only to Colombia in mentions among Latin American countries. I think Latam generally has been off the radar for the last few years. I wrote yesterday about how the newly posted Paraguay memo from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is more about Venezuela and Iran than about Paraguay.
November 28, 2010 at 11:53 pm
… and there are 3.435 documents