Another WikiLeaks sensational disclosure that may matter to the religious muslim fundamentalists.
Saudi Arabia might be an ultra-strict Islamic society , but princes’ mansions in Jeddah hide a buzzing party scene replete with alcohol, drugs and sex.
“Behind the facade of Wahabi conservatism in the streets, the underground nightlife for Jeddah’s elite youth is thriving and throbbing ,” said the November 2009 cable, released by the WikiLeaks website. “The full range of worldly temptations and vices are available — alcohol, drugs, sex — but strictly behind closed doors”. “This freedom to indulge carnal pursuits is possible merely because the religious police keep their distance when parties include the presence or patronage of a Saudi royal and his circle of loyal attendants.”
The truth is out for the world and in particular to those who hide behind the ‘veil’ of religious propriety.
Muslim religion bans a number of vices, which the Western world these days treats as acceptable behavior. So if they are doing things behind the veil, who is to be blamed for their behavior?
Is it not time that religion relaxes some of its strict principles, for the common person?
The man behind the source of WikiLeaks – Bradley Manning.
In his Army dress greens, Pvt. Bradley Manning looks like most of his fellow soldiers; but beneath the uniform, many suspect, is a man who may be responsible for the leaking of over 90,000 secret military reports to the whistleblower website WikiLeaks.
This undated photo obtained by The Associated Press shows Bradley Manning. Manning has told of leaking classified diplomatic reports, along with this secret video, to the whistleblower website Wikileaks.org.
Manning was stationed at a base 40 miles east of Baghdad, at Forward Operating Base Hammer. Manning, who enlisted in the Army in 2007, was working as an Army intelligence analyst, pouring through classified information. What he saw with his clearance level, it is believed, left him disillusioned with U.S. foreign policy.
The twenty-two year old Manning went online to find someone who would listen. He tracked down a former computer hacker in Sacramento, California named Adrian Lamo. Manning read an article in Wired, a magazine on the technology world, that featured Lamo and thought he would be a kindred spirit.
Access to Classified Networks
Manning allegedly asked Lamo, “If you had unprecedented access to classified networks 14 hours a day, seven days a week for eight plus months, what would you do?”
Authorities believe Manning had already done plenty.
In online chats and e-mail conversations, Manning allegedly took credit for leaking video of a 2007 Army helicopter strike in Baghdad to Wikileaks. The strike resulted in the death of innocent civilians including two Reuters employees and an unarmed Baghdad man. The video’s release in April caused a media storm.
Manning allegedly said that he had discovered “incredible, awful things that belonged in the public domain and not on some server stored in a dark room in Washington, D.C.”
Lip-Synching to Lady Gaga
The young soldier wrote of how he downloaded the classified information.
“I would come in with music on a CD-RW labeled with something like ‘Lady Gaga’,” he told Lamo.
While pretending to sing along to Lady Gaga’s hit “Telephone,” Manning would actually be erasing the music from the CD and recording intelligence onto it instead.
Lamo says weak computer security let the disgruntled soldier copy confidential military reports that would soon be part of one of the greatest leaks of government information in 40 years.
During all of this, Manning also wrote to Lamo of feeling socially isolated and at times, getting in trouble with his supervisors as he questioned the course of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Lamo said he grew increasingly alarmed. When Manning claimed to have a quarter million classified embassy cables, Lamo went to the FBI fearing that the soldier’s leaks could put lives at risk.
“Had I not acted, I would have always wondered, had I gotten someone killed,” Lamo said.
