Nigeria will file charges against former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney and officials from five foreign companies including Halliburton Co. over a $180 million bribery scandal, a prosecutor at the anti-graft agency said.

The cables portray Mr. Putin as enjoying supremacy over all other Russian public figures, yet undermined by the very nature of the post-Soviet country he helped build.

Even a man with his formidable will and intellect is shown beholden to intractable larger forces, including an inefficient economy and an unmanageable bureaucracy that often ignores his edicts.

In language candid and bald, the cables reveal an assessment of Mr. Putin’s Russia as highly centralized, occasionally brutal and all but irretrievably cynical and corrupt. The Kremlin, by this description, lies at the center of a constellation of official and quasi-official rackets.

UK operations in Afghanistan are criticised in US State Department files released by the Wikileaks website, according to the Guardian.

The paper is one of several around the world carrying the latest data to be published by the whistle-blowing site.

It includes criticism of David Cameron and inappropriate remarks by the Duke of York about a law enforcement agency and foreign country, it says.

Publishing the files risks national security, the Foreign Office says.

However, former British ambassador to the United States Sir Christopher Meyer said the leaks were merely embarrassing and would not "make any difference at all" in political terms.

picture by Andy Leonisky

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange had a reputation for being suspicious and paranoid even before everyone was out to get him.

Everyone, in this case, is the US - where government lawyers are hoping to prosecute on espionage charges - and the European Union, where he is wanted for questioning in connection with a Swedish rape investigation.

When one declares that his robes are the most beautiful, made of the finest silk, so glorious that they compete with the sun - sometimes a little blond-haired boy with a most serious look about him declares that it seems to him that the Emperor has no clothes! And we see, slowly at first, then an unstoppable surge of laughter and finger-pointing by the common people who, for all their ignorance and all their flaws, know enough to put on clothes before going out in public.

Red faces in Washington? Well yes, almost certainly, and probably in a significant number of other capitals too, not least in the Middle East where a series of leaders and senior figures in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Abu Dhabi are quoted as urging Washington to bomb Iran's nuclear programme.

This avalanche of cables from the internal, supposedly secure e-mail switching system linking US embassies abroad with the state department and Pentagon in Washington is a nightmare for US diplomacy.

from Crikey .....

Electricity privatisation: Keneally piloting death star that is Labor

Candace Sutton, a former NSW government media adviser, writes:

The doors to a previously hidden world of diplomatic intrigue and insults were dramatically thrown open last night as the whistle-blowing website Wikileaks published its vast tranche of secret American diplomatic communiqués. The release of hundreds of thousands of secret messages from staff at US embassies revealed how Washington has struggled to confront the geopolitical realities of a post-9/11 world.

It also exposed the often less than diplomatic language used by State Department insiders to describe some of the planet's most powerful leaders.

Even for the humble among us who try to avoid jingoistic outbursts, some national achievements are so grand that they merit a moment of pride & celebration.

The Soviet Union couldn't win in Afghanistan & now the US is about to have something in common with that futile campaign: nine years, 50 days.

On Friday, the US-led coalition will have been fighting in this South Asian country for as long as the Soviets did in their humbling attempt to build up a socialist state.

Gay prostitutes the world over have been thrilled by the Pope's decision to allow them to use condoms to prevent the spread of AIDS.

''It's a dream come true,'' said Trent, 21, a strapping blond guardsman and part-time rent boy in London's St James's Park. ''It's the last thing I expected from the Vatican.''

Jai, 24, who works for a male escort agency in Sydney's Kings Cross, agreed. ''As a devout practising Catholic, I've worried both about AIDS and the sin of wearing a rubber. This OK from the Pope means I can see my Catholic clients without fear of either disease or damnation.''

A poll shows Labor's core support base is evaporating just five days out from the Victorian election, with Ted Baillieu gaining ground.

The Herald Sun says the private Galaxy poll shows Premier John Brumby will cling onto power, but only with Greens preferences.

The poll shows a collapse in Labor's primary vote, putting at least 18 government-held seats in jeopardy.

On a two-party preferred basis Labor is leading 51-49 but the poll shows the opposition leader has not only secured his own supporter base but is eating into Labor's support in key outer suburbs and regional centres.

When Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu addressed the General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America recently, he was relaxed, charming and at his deluded best. For Jewish audiences which don't want to know the truth of history, there's nobody who can deliver Zionism's propaganda lines and lies more effectively than him. (Though he didn't say so, he was obviously delighted that President Obama had taken a hammering in the mid-term elections).

I could take issue with Netanyahu on many of his mad assertions but on this occasion I will settle for challenging just one of them.