The U.S. government has justifiably taken a lot of heat for its relative silence regarding -- and occasional complicity in -- the human rights abuses committed by Hosni Mubarak's regime in Egypt. But it's worth highlighting an exception in a recently WikiLeaked November 2008 cable from the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, signed by Amb. Margaret Scobey, in which American diplomats did the right thing -- while Silicon Valley played it safe.

The cable concerns an Egyptian blogger whose name is redacted in the document, but who CNET thinks is most likely Wael Abbas, a celebrated dissident journalist whose efforts to distribute videos of human rights abuses by Egyptian authorities have in one case led to convictions of the perpetrators (and who, incidentally, was arrested on Friday in Cairo, though according to his Twitter feed he's since been released):

Prominent Egyptian blogger XXXXXXXXXXXXX, contacted us November 17 to report that YouTube removed from his website two videos exposing police abuses -- one of Sinai bedouin allegedly shot by police and thrown in a garbage dump during the past week's violence (ref A), and the other of a woman being tortured in a police station.  XXXXXXXXXXXXX told us that YouTube is also preventing XXXXXXXXXXXX from posting new videos, and asked us for assistance in urging YouTube to re-post his removed videos and reinstate his access to uploading new material.  XXXXXXXXXXXXX said XXXXXXXXXXXXXX has tried to contact Google, but has not received a response.

The cable notes that the same thing happened to the blogger the previous year -- which again suggests that the blogger in question is Abbas, who had his YouTube access restored in December 2007 after getting kicked off for posting videos of Egyptian police brutality. At the time, YouTube explained in a statement that the company's general policy banned videos depicting graphic violence, but that "Having reviewed the case, we have restored the account of Egyptian blogger Wael Abbas -- and if he chooses to upload the video again with sufficient context so that users can understand his important message we will of course leave it on the site."

While the incident was widely reported at the time, there was no mention of any involvement of the State Department in YouTube's decision. But the 2008 cable notes:

In December 2007, DRL [State's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor] and Embassy Cairo worked to convince Google [which owns YouTube] to restore XXXXXXXXXXXXX' YouTube access after a similar incident. We believe that a similar Department intervention with Google representatives could help in restoring XXXXXXXXXXXXX' access again. XXXXXXXXXXXXis an influential blogger and human rights activist, and we want to do everything we can to assist him in exposing police abuse.

A YouTube spokeswoman wouldn't confirm or deny the cable's account of the two incidents, saying in an emailed statement that "In order to protect the privacy of our users, we do not comment on actions taken on individual videos or accounts."

THE CABLES

AMERICAS

Diplomats say corruption is "a way of life" in Cuba, and name names.

MIDDLE EAST

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak thought George W. Bush was "naive, controlled by subordinates, and completely unprepared for dealing with post-Saddam Iraq."

Inside the U.S. military's $1.3 billion-a-year relationship with Egypt.

When Hillary met Hosni.

The Egyptian military's Plan B in the event of a regime change.

THE NEWS

WikiLeaks rival OpenLeaks is launched. And leaked.

New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller details the Times' complicated relationship with Julian Assange. (Juicy bits here.)

The U.S. military hasn't turned up any evidence of collaboration between Assange and Pfc. Bradley Manning.

Manning's supervisors warned the U.S. Army not to deploy him to Iraq.

Police in Britain bust alleged Anonymous hackers. The FBI is going after them, too.

Der Spiegel's tick-tock on the lead-up to Cablegate. (Assange: "We have to survive this leak.")

When American newspapers aren't bashing Julian Assange, they're imitating him.

WikiLeaks: the next generation.

Assange wants more media partners.

Is anyone not publishing an instant book about WikiLeaks?

THE BIG PICTURE

Reading WikiLeaks as literature.

Is Manning Capt. James Yee all over again?

Is Algeria next?

Why the Palestine Papers aren't the next WikiLeaks.

WikiLeaks has done more for Arab democracy than decades of U.S. diplomacy.

For Egypt watchers, thrilled as they no doubt were to read Hosni Mubarak's private ruminations on Iran or his advisors' insistence that Egyptian diplomacy is still a force for peace in the Middle East, we're just now getting to the good stuff.

WikiLeaks has released a fresh batch of cables from the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, and these make for much more interesting reading.

Many of them deal with the very sensitive question of whether Gamal Mubarak, the president's son, will succeed his father (one particularly frank cable calls this issue "the elephant in the room of Egyptian politics"), and there are some revealing nuggets on that score.

In one cable, Hosni regales Frank Ricciardone, then the U.S. ambassador, and a visiting congressman with some rare fatherly insights on Gamal -- whom he describes as a perfectionist:

"As a schoolboy, if I gave him a notebook with one line that was not straight, he would throw a fit and demand a new one," Mubarak laughed. Furthermore, Gamal is "idealistic" and "punctual." Mubarak added, "If he (Gamal) says, 'meet me for lunch at 2:00,' he means 2:00. Set your watch by it."

Presidential material! In the same cable, Hosni says he exercises each afternoon when he's in Cairo, but when he retreats to his beach house in Sharm el-Sheikh, on the Sinai coast, "I just relax -- no exercise." He also misremembers Gamal's age at one point. Here's the best bit, tagged as sensitive/no foreign:

Throughout the meeting, Mubarak was expansive and in fine humor. He rose easily from his seat several times to point out activity on the golf course and to be photographed with his visitors. He engaged the visitors extensively on the topic of food, stressing that his favorite fare is Egyptian popular breakfast dishes, such as tamiya (felafel) and foul (beans). He ordered up a huge tray of freshly made tamiya sandwiches for lunch, and lustily consumed several.

(I had always heard that Hosni was big on shrimp while he was in Sharm, but I guess he's got to keep it real.)

Other Cairo cables are more analytical, delving into various succession scenarios, comparing Mubarak to his predecessor Anwar Sadat, and evaluating the Egyptian military, which unnamed Egyptian interlocutors portray as "in intellectual and social decline," albeit still deeply enmeshed in the economy.

But the question of what happens when "pharaoh" dies hangs over all.

Read on