University of Ottawa law professor Errol Mendes is in the loop among the diplomats who populate upscale Rockliffe and its mansion-packed neighbourhoods in Ottawa, so as the WikiLeaks avalanche of diplomatic cables began, much of it was not news to him or the elite circle where he mingles.



But when Julian Assange, or those who work for him at WikiLeaks, posted a U.S. Secretary of State cable listing every vital critical infrastructure site in the world, including more than 40 in Canada, he snapped.



Until then, much of it was just a laugh, Mendes says, for those who know what really transpires behind the scenes in global intelligence and realpolitik.



“The substantive stuff that is coming, that is causing embarrassment, everyone knew, at least those in the elites knew, but then this list comes out, this is where I part company, and I think something terrible has happened here,” says Mendes, who otherwise regularly takes on the political and military establishment in Ottawa, notably over secrets the government keeps about the war in Afghanistan.



“There was no justification for that whatsoever,” says Mendes. “He (Assange) has lost any iota of sympathy I had for him, with that list, that list, it has been said, is a mandate for terrorists, and there is no justification for that and it is hugely serious, it implicates all countries who were on that list, including Canada of course.”



Up to that point, Mendes eyed the leaks, thousands of cables from U.S. posts all over the world, a handful from the U.S. embassy in Ottawa, few in number but in some cases embarrassing for the Conservative government, like pretty much everyone else in the capital. He, and most opposition MPs, basically shrugged.



There was no flurry of questions in the House of Commons, and Liberal and NDP MPs said the U.S. reaction, a virtual declaration of war against Assange, was over the top.



Mendes, who specializes in human rights, was more prone to side with the freedom-of-speech and liberty of information forces. The list, to date the most significant cable that referred to Canada directly, put him on the side of Wesley Wark, a high-profile intelligence hawk and full professor at the Munk School of Global Affairs in Toronto, whose opposition to the leaks is on a much broader scale.



“I definitely think it’s very irresponsible for this material to have made its way to WikiLeaks and for WikiLeaks to have published it,” Wark tells Yahoo Canada! News.



The worldwide list contains hundreds of critical infrastructure sites the U.S. and other countries have identified, in most cases jointly, under the auspices of the Department of Homeland Security and the National Infrastructure Protection Plan.



Everything on the sheet, which runs thousands of words and covers undersea cable ports, oil and electric resources, drug and military production facilities, mines, even precious metal production in China and a host of strategic land or ocean passages around the globe, has been designated as vital for the defence and integrity of the United States at home as well as its global supply chain abroad.



If anything in the WikiLeaks documents paints a picture of how the tentacles of the U.S. empire stretch everywhere, the notorious list does.



The overarching goal of the plan, the cable says, is to “prevent, deter, neutralize or mitigate the effects of deliberate efforts by terrorists to destroy, incapacitate or exploit” critical infrastructure and key resources around the globe.



Another underlying purpose is to strengthen preparedness and “rapid recovery in the event of an attack, natural disaster or other emergency” anywhere.



Unlike many of the other cables, this one is more than just a titillating glimpse into the intriguing and sometimes ironic and humorous world of secrets behind foreign relations, including a U.S. diplomats view from Ottawa that Canadians are gripped by an “almost inherent inferiority complex” when it comes to relations with the U.S., and a lengthy, painfully detailed message home that the CBC’s Little Mosque on the Prairie and other programs have stereotyped U.S. border guards.



Oddly, compared to Mendes, Wark plays down the implications of the identification of dozens of infrastructure sites in Canada, including pharmaceutical plants identified by cities, locations where U.S. military supply manufacturing takes place, and undersea cables that no Jihadist in the Middle East would likely have even heard of until WikiLeaks furnished the means to identify them.



Wark says the leak doesn’t threaten Canada’s security “directly.”



“Not in the sense that because those revelations have been made, that we can expect terrorists will necessarily study that list and decide to target those particular sites,” he says.



“What it does threaten is the prospect of confidential discussions between Canada and the United States about joint approaches to protecting critical infrastructure, and this has been part of the Canadian approach to security and indeed part of the American approach to security since the 9/11 attacks.”



Comforting words, perhaps.



But, before WikiLeaks, most folks in Midland, Ont., population 16,300, were likely, and likely happily, unaware that a local optical systems company was manufacturing something the list describes as “critical to the production of the AGM-130 Missile.”















































































