A fun read on post?? colonial politics in Africa. (if you can read German)
The short of it:
Ukraine sold weapons to Kenya who were going to hand them over to the South Sudan rebels (SPLA). Then Somali pirates captured the ship and the whole deal became pretty public. Then the Obama administration put pressure on Kenya to stop the deal (they threatened to sanction Kenya). Kenya complained that in the past, the US (under Bush) was informed and even approved of such deals. Also, why would US sanction Kenya when the US is giving aid to the same rebel group directly? In the end, nothing came out of it and presumably the tanks (after the Somali pirates were paid $3.2 million) are rolling through Sudan right now.
And unlike he newspaper, I'll put up a link to the actual cable.
One more remark: considering what PayPal, Mastercard, Amazon, and VISA have done, Europeans (anyone outside the US really) should consider how much of their daily life depends on US companies obviously under the thumb of right wing senators like Lieberman. Might it be useful to develop parallel business solutions in Europe? If it's worth to put European (and Russian) GPS satellites in orbit, maybe it could be useful to start a credit card company, an anonymous internet pay service, or cloud computing capacity, too.
ETA: Another analysis of the charges brought by one of the women against Assange (in Swedish). In particular, a very good job on tracking back twitter and blog entries by the plaintiff and her failed attempts to erase them from the internet. Her tweets (before and after the alleged assaults) depict her basically as a groupie. And yes, it's the 'after' tweets she tried to get rid of (and failed miserably). Google cache can be a biatch sometimes.
ETA 2: The rumor mill has it that this woman also has been working with an ex CIA agent/mass murderer/terrorist and been expelled by Cuba once.
The short of it:
Ukraine sold weapons to Kenya who were going to hand them over to the South Sudan rebels (SPLA). Then Somali pirates captured the ship and the whole deal became pretty public. Then the Obama administration put pressure on Kenya to stop the deal (they threatened to sanction Kenya). Kenya complained that in the past, the US (under Bush) was informed and even approved of such deals. Also, why would US sanction Kenya when the US is giving aid to the same rebel group directly? In the end, nothing came out of it and presumably the tanks (after the Somali pirates were paid $3.2 million) are rolling through Sudan right now.
And unlike he newspaper, I'll put up a link to the actual cable.
One more remark: considering what PayPal, Mastercard, Amazon, and VISA have done, Europeans (anyone outside the US really) should consider how much of their daily life depends on US companies obviously under the thumb of right wing senators like Lieberman. Might it be useful to develop parallel business solutions in Europe? If it's worth to put European (and Russian) GPS satellites in orbit, maybe it could be useful to start a credit card company, an anonymous internet pay service, or cloud computing capacity, too.
ETA: Another analysis of the charges brought by one of the women against Assange (in Swedish). In particular, a very good job on tracking back twitter and blog entries by the plaintiff and her failed attempts to erase them from the internet. Her tweets (before and after the alleged assaults) depict her basically as a groupie. And yes, it's the 'after' tweets she tried to get rid of (and failed miserably). Google cache can be a biatch sometimes.
ETA 2: The rumor mill has it that this woman also has been working with an ex CIA agent/mass murderer/terrorist and been expelled by Cuba once.