World News Roundup: Post-Populist-Revolution Edition!

So I woke up to a really impressive populist-democratic-revolution-hangover, and realized that me and the collected staff of Al Jazeera English have been under a current events rock with the Egyptian flag on it for the past two weeks.

So now that I can stop worrying about democratic protesters being killed, and start worrying about the substantially-less-bloody and substantially-more-harrowing matter of practical nation building in Egypt, I'm feeling a wee bit afeared that I no longer have any idea what the pants is happening in this world of mine.

And like a beacon in the night, Foreign Policy has anticipated my need.

Some highlights from the excellent ''What Else Happened This Week?" by Josh E. Keating:

"Excuse us. Please keep your hands off
the murdering dignitary. Excuse us."

-Innnteresting: did anyone else know that a US consulate official (and former Special Forces soldier) in Pakistan is in prison, accused of murdering two men? The Pakistani Taliban are (unsurprisingly) calling for his head, but it looks like everyday folks in Lahore are also right pissed--the police report reads more like an execution than an act of self-defense. The official's diplomatic immunity is a big sore spot, and it's straining the already-tense interactions between Pakistan and the US, who appear to be walking less softly than they should be while carrying their big stick. The House Armed Services Committee has already played the "we'll take your aid away if you don't let him go" card. Keep it classy, americuh.

-The suspects in the Moscow airport bombsplosion a few weeks ago are from Ingushetia, an embattled, largely Muslim region of the Caucasus looking for a sovereignty close to what the Chechens are after. The suspects are also a family of kids under 21, rumoured to have blown up the airport as revenge for law enforcement killing their brother in law in a raid. Situations like this, where everyone's a bad guy with a tragic story justifying what they do, are entirely too common around the former Soviet republics. This is the sound of me moping and grumbling.

-My boy Evo Morales is takin' heat from his population, with people taking to the Bolivian streets, angry about rising food prices and the cuts to subsidies he made. Unfortunately, I can see why--a 73% increase in the price of gas would make me block a highway to make my point, too. Morales is stepping up, though--he rescinded the price hike, which is expected to curtail the cost of food production. Those Bolivians, though, they're marvellously scrappy, so watch this space.

Gbagbo. Blargh.

-To my great shame, I've failed to stay on top of fairly important West African politics. To make up for that, I spent a few hours looking into Cote D'Ivoire's current massive election-and-regime-upfuckery. The Coles-notes version: Laurent Gbagbo, long-embattled Ivorian-civil-war-president, was voted out of office in early December 2010, after great hubbub and flummoxing of any electoral sensibility. Not one to let not being elected stop him, he closed all the borders and ports, shut off communications and foreign news, set up the army, crossed his arms, and told all the foreign powers demanding his abdication "I'm STILL president." The UN has recognized his opponent, Alassane Ouattara, as the legitimate head of state, but running a shadow government from a hotel is a difficult task regardless of how many UN peacekeepers are watching your back, so despite the endorsement, it could be going better for him.
Gbagbo's dug his heels in, kicked out the peacekeepers, thumbed his nose at each progressively more "serious" urging to step down, and even threatened to issue new currency so that no one could use economic measures to get him to leave. Ouattara offered him a unity government, which he declined. So now the African Union is trying to broker a deal in this crazy situation that doesn't leave the country a smoking crater. Cote D'Ivoire, meanwhile, is quickly degrading into a deeply factioned, messy, "lawless" African stereotype, and Ouattara's prime minister says it's in for another civil war. Which is exactly what the area needs, really. Bah.
In other news, the Ivory Coast is where the majority of the world's cacao is exported from--so if you're not eating fair trade chocolate, you're probably implicated in Ivorian slave labour. Happy Valentine's Day!

-South Sudan's almost ready to cede from the country after a vote 99.57% in favour of going out on their own, but they've got substantial problems to kick through first:  someone shot their minister of rural development in his office, and a splinter militia is attacking the South Sudanese miltiary in Jonglei state with civilians being killed in the process.

-Fairly out of left-field, Thailand and Cambodia are fighting over some land, and kind of beating up the 11th century UNESCO heritage site temple on it in the process. People are displaced, UN peacekeepers are deployed. Lame. Also, did you know that Thai politics is generally considered to be colour-coded? I sure didn't.

-Less out of left field, the state media in Burma publishes that the venerable awesome Aung San Suu Kyi and co. will "meet their tragic end" if they keep up with this actual democracy and West-friendly-business. Subtle work, brutal military dictatorship. They'll never know it was you.

-And finally--I love my country, I really do, but sometimes Canada is just so damn -stupid-. The government of my fair province of Ontario suspended the ambitious and interesting Lake Ontario offshore wind turbine project because of the "wind turbines will hurt my children" lobby and the science being "too green". Then I read that our leader for the Great and Powerful 51st State Stephen Harper (and crony Peter McKay of the Defense Ministry) is highly complicit in the torture of hundreds of Afghanis, and could actually be prosecuted for war crimes. Which hopefully would invoke some state accountability, and get them out of my government. Fingers crossed.

Extra credit: the New Yorker followed up their much-buzzed "Wtf, Scientology?" essay with an equally interesting but much more topical "Wtf, Corruption In Afghanistan?" expose. It's here in its entirety, and I'd recommend it if you've got time to kill and illusions about the west's role in the mid east.

Okay. We're totally not caught up, but we're almost close.

In Other News

So I've been so glued to AJE tensely watching Egypt that I definitely forgot the rest of the world existed.
Believe it or not, Ash, things are still happening in places that aren't Cairo.

Let's look at some, shall we?

-Australia--you're falling apart! First brutal flooding, then no-longer-cyclone Yasi hits the flooded areas, and now an area near Perth is a disaster zone because of wildfires? I know you're a scrappy people, and these things happen every year, but... do they happen this bad?
And if so...can no one take a hint and move to somewhere that ISN'T totally insane? You're starting to look like California.

-Speaking of Australia, oh hey, remember Julian Assange? His Swedish extradition hearing is happening right now. The Guardian's liveblogging it, as they do--or you could follow the amazing in-court Tweeting journalists direct!

-Speaking of countries completely bent over by the elements, Greeks take to the streets to protest the austerity measures enacted to try and dig them out of the scariest economic clusterf*ck in recent memory. Which is really saying something lately.

-here in North America, the snowpocalypse happened. With apologies to those in Dallas having heart attacks, everyone up here in Canada was vaguely disappointed when it failed to meet the hype on our end. I, however, was thrilled to hear gems like 'snowmageddon', 'icetastrophe', and 'SnowMG' coming from the good ol' mainstream media. Because now I have proof that everyone is as lame as I am, and institutions care nothing about the sanctity of the English language. My plan is working perfectly.

-Here in Canada specifically, some jerkoffs summarily executed a hundred sled dogs in Whistler. The only good to come of this is a serious look at the seriously outdated and undertoothed Canadian animal cruelty laws, so this nonsense doesn't happen again.

-Also the collective petitioning and small-business-WTF?!-ing got the CRTC internet cap reversed. Phew!

-The new 'elected' president of Burma is.....a high-ranking member of the brutal and ridiculous ruling Junta. No way!

this is what bad news looks like.

-In an outstandingly awkward paparazzi moment, someone took photos of an "uncontacted tribe" of the Amazon rainforest. Naturally, because these people have been trying to avoid the involvement of Western society, they're all over the internet. Funny how much coverage is necessary for a movement that's trying to get people to leave them alone.
In related Amazon news, the climate-crisis-triggered drought in 2010 has people legitimately worried that large swathes of the rainforest are dying off at an alarming rate. I'd really love it if that didn't happen.

-In Haiti, they tossed out the provisional (and highly contested) election results, and are setting up a likely-more-legitimate runoff sans Celestin. They're also prepping for Presidential Problems 4: Return of Aristide.

-The Guardian is trying to convince people that the world is taking the African Union Summit seriously. I hope they're right, but considering how seriously some world powers are taking other big things that are happening in Africa right now, I have my doubts.

come on guys. that's lame. let him down.

-The South Sudanese secession referendum is over, and it looks overwhelmingly like we're gonna have a new country down there. Even head-jerk himself, President Omar Al Bashir, agrees. Time for another new map of Africa, I'm afraid. South Sudanese Independence Day July 9th, mark your calendars.

-A while ago, some jerk in Russia hooked a donkey up to parasail and sat back to see what happens. The donkey died. I hope he feels terrible. Donkeys are not for flying.

Wikileaks Roundup: catch-up edition

Non-internet life prevented me from getting at the things that are totally happening, but now I've got a sec, and boy, have I got news for you. Helpfully divided into a few of the many-armed-Vishnu-esque wikileaks-related fronts, for greater general benefit of internet topicality etc.

The Men
Let's get Assange out of the way: he's in Vaughan Smith's manor, and says that his life and the lives of his staffers are at risk. Some of his lawyers and supporters, meanwhile, are upset that the Guardian leaked the allegations against him, claiming that it was selectively released to discredit Assange.  No word on what Assange thinks about any of it, except that he still asserts his innocence. All's fair in transparency, guys--more information is better, and wikileaks does not equal its founder....

Bradley Manning's lawyer confirms some of the details of his absurd treatment in Quantico. He's been in there for seven months without trial or conviction. I boil in anger.

The Reaction

Joe Biden, American King of Foot in Mouth, likens Assange to a "high-tech terrorist" on ABC's Meet the Press. That's the strongest wording we've heard from anyone that hasn't called for his death, and the irritation might be coming from his claims that international leaders are now asking his staff to leave meetings. "It makes things more cumbersome, so it has done damage". Oh no, not mildly awkward inconvenience! My only fatal weakness!

 He also maintains the difference between what (he hopes) happened with Wikileaks and what happens when journalists scoop classified information. We'll see, sir Joe.

Meanwhile, the New York Times technology writers say that the greatest casualties in prosecuting Julian Assange would be American--technology firms, journalists, and the reputation of America being a champion of free speech. I think he's right. And late. 

Meanwhile-meanwhile, Glenn Greenwald calls out the ever-expanding wall of secrecy the US gov maintains about its activities. He also brings in the burgeoning surveillance state the US is developing, saying they're in direct opposition to the fundamental principles of running a democracy. I could write a whole other post on this, and a whole other post on the awesomeness of Glenn Greenwald.

Montreal marched in defence of Wikileaks on Saturday. I tip my hat to the whole city.

Someone in the Wikileaks forums has suggested a WikiTerms of Service, holding service providers to a standard of service for their customers that includes not throwing wrenches in free speech.

The Cables

Remember when Obama promised to secure the whole world's nuclear stocks in four years, so we could all stop worrying about nuclear terrorism?
Turns out nukes are still friggin everywhere. In wicker baskets in Burundi, in some guy's car in Georgia, and rumoured to be all over the place elsewhere. The DRC is pit-mining uranium (which totally wins at safety) and is implicated in smuggling of nuclear material--plus, their nuclear research centre in Kinshasa barely has a fence around it. And Russia is just as sketchy, with former military members trying to sell uranium in Portugal, and next to no security in the former Russian republics.

The US appears to have a half-decent response policy in place that they call their "Second line of defense". Every time radiation detectors go off at a border crossing or radioactive material is found on somebody,  the "First line of defense" has already been messed about--someone managed to get the material, in a world where sources are fairly (and rightfully) fanatically regulated. So every time the first line goes down, the "Second line"--namely the US diplomats--get called in. I have no idea what they do then, but at the very least, they report it--and apparently, over 500 reports of this "second line" activation have been called in during the last 15 years.

In good nuclear news (or, at least, better than "zomg we all might die"), Egypt was offered Soveit nukes off the black market, and turned them down.

Foreign Policy's Elizabeth Dickinson gives us a breakdown of failed states in the cables that goes beyond the usual "Somalia and Afghanistan, end of list". The article gives us background information in context, interesting stuff emerging from the cables, and interesting/unexpected things coming out as well. In the list is North Korea, Eritrea, Somalia, Burma, Pakistan, Zimbabwe, Sudan, Cote D'Ivoire, Kenya (really?), and Nigeria (whaa...)

The UK's BAE arms company is trying to bend Tanzania over on the sale of a radar system, and nobody wants to prosecute them. Sneaky and brutal.

Omar al-Bashir, genocidal general president of Sudan, has a pantsload of stolen Sudanese oil money in UK banks. Awesome.

Former UN secretary general Kofi Annan grasped at straws trying to help Zimbabwe, and tried to get Robert Mugabe out of the way by offering him cushy retirement overseas. Proving yet again that when a situation sucks more than is humanly conceivable, even the best options for fixing it will -also- suck.

Wining, dining, ladykilling Italian PM Berlusconi thought about doing more for the international development community in order to not look bad to Bono. On the one hand, this is a surprising piece of proof that someone actually listens to Bono's loudmouthing. On the other, the fact that Bono wields more influence than common sense, empathy, or decades of development research makes me want to put a gun in my mouth.

The super-important cable you've all been waiting for: a cursory mention of Tom Cruise and scientology. Also, I was recently amused/appalled to discover the book store I work for shelves Dianetics in the self-help section. Yes, the whole world is crazy.

For more cableiciousness, the often-rad Guardian has a browsable database by country in a handy little map!


Attendant Hilarity
Rap news 6 breaks it down to the right in a surprisingly eloquent bit of white Australian hip hawp.

Cablegate Roundup, now with 80% more Cables!

allianceforwaterefficiency.org

What's shaken out today from the actual wikileaks diplomatic cables?

*cracks whip* Roundup!

-The first use of the cables as a propaganda medium goes to.... Pakistan! And because of this, I wasn't the only person to put their foot in their mouth on the internet last night.

-Pfizer, everyone's favourite BigPharma boogeyman, espionages Nigerian politician for blowing the whistle on risky pharma testing on kids with meningitis!

-Ratko Mladic, Bosnian-Serb miilitary dude, Srebrenica genocide mastermind, and sort of overall asshole, is thought to have been assisted in his evasion of justice by Russia.

-China's losing patience with Burma's resistance to reform. Pot calls kettle, schedules colour-related press conference. Burma also may or may not be building nuclear sites?

Plus: 

-US troops are being threatened with court-martial if they use removable media. That's CDs, DVDs, and thumb drives. Soon, pens and human memory will also be disallowed. Messages will be passed one letter at a time using a coded system of lights and possibly DHS-vetted carrier pigeons.

-Rallies in Sydney in support of Wikileaks: some people are still brave enough to leave their house and physically protest instead of making presences known online. Coming from a place where the cops aren't particularly trustworthy lately, I salute you.

-Brazil's former President "Twelve-Names" da Silva comes out in support of Wikileaks.

-Also, Spain hearts Cablegate. Me too, Espagna. Me too.