The Tunisian dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali may try to cling on, but his regime now has a fin de siècle air about it. He came to power in 1987 by declaring President Bourguiba unfit for office. It's probably just a matter of time before someone else delivers that same message to Ben Ali.
In its four years of existence, WikiLeaks has whipped up a controversy or two, but it took Ms EA to uncover what may be the biggest scandal of all. On a trip Down Under, she happened to find this document which, strangely enough, has not appeared on WikiLeaks website.
Click to enlarge the "smoking gun", or rather "smoking book", from the past of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange:
That's right. The devious Julian strolled into the University of Melbourne in 2004, picked up Introduction to Non-Classical Logic by Graham Priest --- no doubt to confound the media interviewers who would try to trip him up six years later --- and never returned the book.
The Melbourne Library Police note, "Despite many attempts by staff he was unable to be contacted." I can help them out a bit if they wish, but I have a feeling they may have to take their place in a queue waiting to have words with Mr Assange....
Last week Glenn Greenwald wrote this article for Salon. On Tuesday, Bradley Manning's lawyer David Coombs wrote, "The defense has raised the conditions of confinement...on multiple occasions with the Quantico confinement facility and the Army Staff Judge Advocate’s (SJA) Office assigned to handle this case. Our efforts, unfortunately, have not resulted any in positive results."
On Wednesday, the office of the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Manfred Nowak, confirmed that the case is being investigated.
(Cartoon by Ape Man at Boing Boing; Video by Rooster Teeth)
From a practical point of view, the idea that the CIA could simply move in and recruit informers in British communities is far-fetched. It also would be extremely bad form for the intelligence relationship between Britain and America. Nevertheless, I have been told of Americans, representing “private interests”, turning up at UK events and expressing interest about the radicalisation of British Muslims.
The likely scenario is one with echoes of the Cold War in which US Government money is being routed through numerous channels to address the perceived UK security threat.
Thursday, December 23, 2010 at 5:53 | Scott Lucas in EA USA, EA WikiLeaks, Political Humour, US Politics 
On the heels of forming its new WikiLeaks Task Force (WTF), the CIA said it was establishing a new division called Stop Terrorists From Uniting (STFU).
CIA director Leon Panetta spoke about the agency's plans for both WTF and STFU at the CIA's new headquarters, the Langley Operations Location (LOL).
"Last Tuesday, SIPA’s Office of Career Services received a call from a former student currently employed by the U.S. Department of State who pointed out that the U.S. government documents released during the past few months through WikiLeaks are still considered classified. The caller suggested that students who will be applying for federal jobs that require background checks avoid posting links to these documents or making comments about them on social media sites such as Facebook or through Twitter."
The events of 22 Bahman (11 February 2010) were a significant disappointment for the Iranian opposition. In the weeks before the anniversary of the 1979 Revolution, there was an excitement that protests against the Government and regime --- which had continued despite repression and made a notable impact in the Ashura demonstrations of 27 December --- would build, possibly to a critical point.
On the day, the opposition was unable to mount a co-ordinated public protest while the regime was able to mobilise support for its official ceremonies.
In that light, the cable below from the Iran Watchers" post at the US Embassy in Baku in Azerbaijan is telling: the Embassy's sources were all predicting a significant opposition turnout on 22 Bahman to challenge a fracturing regime: "Iran Can't Go On Like This".
UPDATE 13 DECEMBER: Amazon says a hardware failure, rather than an attack, took down its European sites for about 45 minutes on Sunday night.
UPDATE 2145 GMT: All Amazon sites in Europe are back on-line.
UPDATE 2140 GMT: Amazon is now reporting "Performance Issues" with Amazon Simple Notification Service (Ireland) and Amazon Simple Queue Service (Ireland).
UPDATE 2120 GMT: It is reported that the outage is because Amazon Data Services for Europe, based in Dublin, is down.
Friday, December 10, 2010 at 13:11 | Scott Lucas in Europe and Russia, Journalism and Media, Middle East and Iran Analyses
1. An EA exclusive on Afghanistan: "US Embassy Protects Contractor Over Hiring of Child Prostitutes"
2. We take apart dramatic headlines to evaluate, "Does Shell Really Have a Grip on Nigeria's Government?"
2. Josh Mull carries out a reality check: "Journalism is Not an Attack, WikiLeaks is Not Warfare"
Features and Documents
1. How the release of the documents turned into a CyberWar: "Now MasterCard's A Casualty" and "Visa, MasterCard Sites Still Offline"
3. One of our favourite strange-but-true moments: "Iran: The Regime's Ninja Assassins?"
4. A look at one of the more unusual diplomatic incidents in the cables: "Europe, Ahmadinejad, and the Worst Inauguration Protest Ever"
Audio
Scott Lucas offers an introduction to WikiLeaks and the issues over the documents in an interview with BBC West Midlands.
Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, MasterCard, Nigeria, Shell, Visa, Wikileaks 
