The WikiWeek: September 2, 2011

THE CABLES They’re all here now. AFRICA U.N. peacekeepers traded food for sex with underage girls in Ivory Coast. Rwanda’s police defend extra-judicial killings. Private oilfield security companies in Sudan are "essentially a militia controlled by the government." The miserable lives of children in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s mining industry. Nigeria’s oil-drenched Niger ...

550102_wikileaks12.jpg
550102_wikileaks12.jpg

THE CABLES

THE CABLES

They’re all here now.

AFRICA

U.N. peacekeepers traded food for sex with underage girls in Ivory Coast.

Rwanda’s police defend extra-judicial killings.

Private oilfield security companies in Sudan are "essentially a militia controlled by the government."

The miserable lives of children in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s mining industry.

Nigeria’s oil-drenched Niger River Delta is even worse than you thought.

AMERICAS

Imprisoned U.S. government contractor Alan P. Gross is not doing well in Havana.

Oh great, the world is running out of helium, too.

ASIA

Former U.S. Ambassador (and current presidential hopeful) John Huntsman: China’s one-child policy causes instability and sex-trafficking.

The politics of Wal-Mart’s trade unions in China.

EUROPE

U.S. embassy staff in Belarus are accused of espionage by the state media.

Bad blood in the European aerospace business.

Why Greeks don’t like the United States.

MIDDLE EAST

The U.N. says U.S. soldiers executed children in Iraq in 2006 (a story that had been reported inconclusively at the time). The Iraqi government is now investigating.

Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu told U.S. Ambassador James Cunningham in November 2008, "I can deliver two thirds of the Israeli right-wing on anything we agree with the Palestinians, whether on process or interim agreements."

Armenian President Robert Kocharian in a letter to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan: "[W]e both must work to find ways to live together in harmony."

Are telecom providers in the United Arab Emirates installing spyware on BlackBerries?

A Syrian governor invited Shakira and Chicago Mayor Richard Daley to a hot-air balloon competition.

 

THE NEWS

The deluge. WikiLeaks blames (and sues) the Guardian. The Guardian blames WikiLeaks. The U.S. State Department calls the action "irresponsible, reckless, and frankly dangerous." Der Spiegel explains what exactly happened.

Julian Assange could face arrest in Australia for outing intelligence officials in the new batch of unredacted cables.

 

THE BIG PICTURE

How WikiLeaks learned the value of secrecy the hard way.

Is WikiLeaks desperate for attention, looking for a scapegoat, or just falling apart? Is this the end of Assange?

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

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