wikileaks State Cables: Quick Hits 4

"AARGH! SWEDISH PIRATES SET SAIL FOR BRUSSELS." So says the US Department of State.

09KHARTOUM249 suggests that the United States may have conducted a drone or airplane strike in Sudan. The cable neither confirms nor denies the allegation.

10ALGIERS39 shows that Algeria was upset with its placement on President Obama’s TSA enhanced screening list, asserting that the President had contradicted the Muslim-outreach sentiments expressed in his Cairo speech.

10BAKU98 recounts that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had apparently decided that his censorship of the populace has gone too far, observing that “people feel suffocated.” Startlingly, the cable reveals that Ahmadienjad’s admonition outraged Mohammed Jafari – Chief of Staff of the Revolutionary Guards – who then slapped Ahmadinejad in the face and blamed him for domestic strife in Iran.

08MOSCOW531 describes the Russian prison system.  Take note of the second sentence.

08NAPLES37 and 08NAPLES38 show the State Department’s (partial) take on organized crime in Italy.

08MADRID211 shows that the United States was directing how Spain should write its copyright law.  After this cable was disclosed by wikileaks, the Spanish Congress, effectively killed the provisions being pushed by the USG.

09STOCKHOLM355 calls the Pirate Party the “big winners” of the 2009 European Parliamentary Elections in Sweden for winning a “whopping” 7.1 percent of the votes.  Pirate Party voters, the cable claims, were “angry over the guilty verdict in the Pirate Bay trial, the unpopular EU Ipred directive, and new national laws criminalizing file sharing and authorizing monitoring of emails.”  And the diplomat-author makes an “AARGH!” reference.

And 09RPODUBAI235 declares soccer booster Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to be the  “The George Steinbrenner of Iran.”