The WikiWeek: December 31, 2010

THE CABLES AFRICA The last days of a Guinean strongman and his allegedly drug-trafficking son — and a curious cocaine bust bait-and-switch. Another day, another cable about alleged central-African multi-million-dollar embezzlement — this time in Gabon.   AMERICAS The Obama administration dispatches a Florida senator to urge Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon not to pursue a ...

Carl Court/AFP/Getty Images
Carl Court/AFP/Getty Images
Carl Court/AFP/Getty Images

THE CABLES

AFRICA

The last days of a Guinean strongman and his allegedly drug-trafficking son — and a curious cocaine bust bait-and-switch.

Another day, another cable about alleged central-African multi-million-dollar embezzlement — this time in Gabon.

 

AMERICAS

The Obama administration dispatches a Florida senator to urge Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon not to pursue a torture case against Bush administration officials.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency quietly evolves into an international intelligence agency.

How a Brazilian who once kidnapped a U.S. ambassador managed to get into the United States.

McDonald’s tries to muck up a free trade agreement in El Salvador.

The Jamaican government warned U.S. officials that extraditing a local drug lord would lead to trouble.

 

ASIA/PACIFIC

Britain trains a “government death squad” in Bangladesh.

Did Britain try to cheat Mauritius out of an island chain?

 

EUROPE/CAUCASUS

Inside Russia’s awful prisons.

Shell thinks that Ireland could become a booming offshore gas supplier — or not.

 

MIDDLE EAST

More U.S. complaints about Egypt’s lackluster military.

Behind the scenes of an assassination in Dubai.

 

THE NEWS

Julian Assange claims (dubiously) to have the names of CIA moles in Arab governments.

Assange signs a memoir deal worth an estimated $1.7 million — but his estranged former spokesman Daniel Domscheit-Berg (who spoke at a hacker conference this week) will be on bookshelves first.

The FBI pays back “Operation Payback” over PayPal attack.

The Cuban government is translating and publishing the Cuba-related WikiLeaked cables — will it translate all of them?

77 percent of Americans disapprove of WikiLeaks’ cable release.

Did WikiLeaks dash Zimbabwe’s hopes for democracy?

Hackers claim to have brought down Zimbabwean government websites in retaliation for a WikiLeaks-related lawsuit against a Harare newspaper.

Assange falls out with his longtime confidants at the Guardian. Bianca Jagger is somehow involved.

 

THE BIG PICTURE

Daniel Ellsberg lawyer Floyd Abrams says Assange is no Daniel Ellsberg.

Salon‘s Glenn Greenwald goes to war with Wired over chat logs from Assange source Bradley Manning. (More here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and basically everywhere else on the Internet.)

HaikuLeaks adds to the proliferating genre of WikiLeaks-related verse. (English poetry buffs: this domain is still available.)

Charles Homans is a special correspondent for the New Republic and the former features editor of Foreign Policy.

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