- Was hat das sagen?
What is it about leaks, eh? You wait all day for one, then a whole load of them come along at once.
That’s right, WikiLeaks, the kings of leaking appear to have been beaten at their own game today as the cover of German newspaper Der Spiegel (and some of its contents) has begun circulating on the Internet hours before the co-ordinated release of sensitive American State Department cables was due to take place in the press.
Earlier today a Twitter user bought a copy of Der Spiegel in Basel, Switzerland on a newsstand which had apparently gone on sale too early … the result, within minutes, the cover and the story was doing the rounds.
The front page of the paper (left) contains pictures of various world readers accompanied by descriptions of the premieres by US officials.
Amongst others, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is likened to Hitler, French President Nikola Sarkozy is called ‘an emperor without clothes’ and Afghan President Hamid Karzai is described as ‘driven by paranoia.’
According to Tweets from German speaking social networkers who have seen the document as well as a French based blog OWNI, much of the coverage centres around less than positive descriptions of many world leaders, but also President Obama’s view of global politics.
They claim ‘Obama has no emotional relationship with Europe’ and he ’ prefers to look East than West,’ and ‘The US sees the world as a confrontation between 2 superpowers. The EU plays a secondary role.’
Apparently the German Chancellor Angela Merkel ’avoids risk and is rarely creative’ and the German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle is repeatedly criticised.
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s ‘wild parties’ are also apparently mentioned.
Further revelations are expected to emerge later this evening when a selection of newspapers around the world begin publishing selected details of the WikiLeaks files, including the Guardian in the UK and the New York Times in America.
Earlier in the day, WikiLeaks reported that their site was under attack from hackers, but said that leaked newspaper stories would go ahead regardless. At the time of writing the WikiLeaks site is still down.
