#wikileaks #cablegate The WikiWeek: December 17, 2010

Posted By Charles Homans Friday, December 17, 2010 - 7:18 PM

THE CABLES

AFRICA

Zimbabwe's first lady is suing a local newspaper over its reporting on a WikiLeaks cable detailing her involvement in the black-market diamond trade. (And apparently doesn't read FP.)

When FP wrote about Africa's failed states this summer, we didn't know the half of it.

Pretty much everyone involved in last week's cable about bribery in the Ugandan oil business denies bribing anyone in the Ugandan oil business.

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir allegedly has $9 billion in oil money stashed in Britain.

AMERICAS

American diplomats at the United Nations don't like to talk much about human rights anymore.

The Cuban government misjudges the WikiLeaks cables, which show the U.S. government misjudging the Cuban government.

Joking about Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, or even above Venezuela, is ill-advised.

How Brazil got pharmaceutical companies to hand over cheap HIV/AIDS drugs.

Diverticulitis may have nearly done in the Castro regime, but Cuba's political dissidents probably can't.

ANTARCTICA

WikiLeaks is banned there.

ASIA

The Red Cross reported extensive torture of Kashmiris at Indian detention centers in Kashmir to the U.S. embassy in New Delhi in 2005.

Singapore's government owes an apology to basically every major country in Asia.

The Dalai Lama says fighting climate change is more important for Tibet than political independence.

The heir to the Gandhi family political dynasty thinks Hindu extremists are a bigger threat to India than Muslim ones.

Turkmen strongman Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov doesn't like people who are smarter than him.

A former Thai prime minister says Thailand's queen had a hand in the country's 2006 coup. The country's leaders also have their doubts about the crown prince.

Eric Clapton's weirdly persistent influence on North Korean politics.

EUROPE/CAUCASUS

Sweden told the State Department in 2008 that the country didn't have to worry about terrorism. They're probably not saying that now.

Silvio Berlusconi for the win?

The German government is still not digging L. Ron Hubbard.

The Stockholm embassy discusses Sweden's WikiLeaks-enabling Pirate Party in a particularly meta cable.

The Azeri first lady's plastic surgery creates confusion among U.S. diplomats in Baku.

Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko is "bizarre" and "disturbed."

MIDDLE EAST

Do Arab leaders actually care about the Palestinians?

Hosni Mubarak thinks his son is a perfectionist.

Is the Egyptian military in "intellectual and social decline"?

The Arab League doesn't like Steven Spielberg.

THE NEWS

Julian Assange is released on bail after a media-circus-attracting hearing, but not before Michael Moore manages to get involved. Now that he's out of jail, Assange is pretty chatty -- as is Vaughan Smith, the journalist and WikiLeaks supporter who's hosting him until his next court date.

Things are not going nearly so well for alleged Assange document source Bradley Manning.

Australian police determine WikiLeaks hasn't broken any laws in the country, but Assange's lawyer says a grand jury in the United States is considering indicting him.

WikiLeaks is already inspiring imitators around the world, and counterfeit cables are turning up in Russia -- because, you know, that worked so well in Pakistan.

FP's WikiLeaked is too hot for the U.S. Air Force.

Someone posts a manifesto on behalf of Anonymous, the ad-hoc group of hackers that has cyber-attacked an array of targets in solidarity with WikiLeaks over the past two weeks. The manifesto quotes KISS bassist Gene Simmons. A Greek web designer is arrested for it.

Governments may be scared of WikiLeaks, but the Pakistani feminine hygiene industry isn't.

THE BIG PICTURE

A lot of people think Assange should have been Time's 2010 person of the year. Richard Stengel, the magazine's managing editor, isn't one of them.

Portrait of the hacker as a young man: Julian Assange during his couch-surfing and email-stalking days.

Would Henry David Thoreau join Anonymous?

Congress considers WikiLeaks.

Mark Prendergast, ombudsman for the U.S. military's official Stars and Stripes newspaper, argues that military personnel should be allowed to read the cables.

If WikiLeaks doesn't get things rolling a little faster, we'll be writing this blog for another 7.6 years.

ADRIAN DENNIS/AFP/Getty Images

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