Things have totally been happening. I, however, have been too busy mooning about to write about it.
This stops now. Sorry about that.
COMPENSATIONAL HUGE-ASS NEWS ROUNDUP!!!1!
Aristide!
Haiti:Aristide's coming back, and as with most things related to Haiti, it makes the US nervous. The former-priest-turned-first democratically-elected-President of Haiti won office by 67%--in a field of 12 candidates--in 1990, but the left-wingy policies that put him in office turned out to be too spooky for US Republicans, and various machinations and a coup later, he was in exile in South Africa. Now that he's back during yet another bout of electoral unrest in Haiti, rumours fly of more violence to come--to yet again be blamed on Aristide. Personally, if shit does hit the fan, I'd blame it on his new bodyguard Danny Glover. Yes, that Danny Glover.
Sierra Leone: War-crimes-missing-hands-and-blood-diamonds-fame Charles Taylor's 3-year trial closed March 11, to let the Hague decide what to do with him. If convicted, he'd be in lockup in the US.
Indonesia: Jakarta's evacuating people on the slopes of its most active volcano, rising alerts to the highest level they can, proving that the Ring of Fire is on a roll jerking around the human race. Look out California.
Japan: You probably have heard by now that exactly a week ago, one of the most brutal earthquakes in human history hit one of the most densely populated islands on the planet. You probably also know that it was swiftly followed by a substantial tsunami along the North East coast, and a huge string of nuclear plant failures making an unbelievably bad, bad humanitarian disaster into a humanitarian disaster with panic, apocalyptic overtones and carcinogenic fallout. There's so much information on this particular continuing disaster that it's more useful for me to list some good stuff for you than it is to try and summarize it all, so:
One thing to remember about Japan: the nuclear angle is the scariest, but the humanitarian disaster angle is by far the most destructive. Two things to remember about Japan: if you want to donate, do it wisely.
Good morning, my little sunspots! It's Friday! That makes it Pray-Then-Protest day in the Middle East--and I've got a couple hours in Toronto to burn, so let's catch up, shall we?
Yemen: after a few weeks of fairly regular protests, current president Ali Abdullah Saleh offered a unity government with the Joint Meeting Parties and the rest of the opposition (who? These guys). To which they said "HA." and promptly kept protesting. Today, the opposition groups counter-offered with an exit strategy. To which the protesters said "HA." and promptly demanded he leave now. Understandable, considering the reports of military firing on protesters in the North. Despots of the Middle East, please stop killing people and just talk already.
One cannot simply rock out of Mordor.
Libya: In Libyan diplomatic (wow, oxymoron) news, a mediator between Gaddafi and the rest of the universe has come to the table in the form of everyone's favourite guitarron-playing Venezuelan egoist, Hugo Chavez! It's completely unclear what sort of mediation could possibly make anything the crazypants dictator is doing even remotely okay, but Gaddafi's apparently cool with it. The rest of the world is mostly ignoring the proposal, looking instead at all the bombing and terrible atrocities happening all over the country. Huh. Go figure. Meanwhile, people in Libya are getting scared to protest--surprise--and there are rumours that the Crazypants Militia is preventing people from leaving via Tunisia. They're also killing their own. Graphic, brutal, and really, really making me want to radicalize, march over there, and do something foolish to that asshole in the mumu.
Tunisia: is busily announcing a new government. This is cool, but significantly less cool once you remember that they've had three interim governments since the revolution. Apparently it's still quite unstable. Understandable.
Egypt: Remember them? They recently ousted the prime minister that Mubarak appointed, slowly whittling down the old regime piece by piece. Next target: dissolving the entire National Democratic Party and the State Security Agency.
In Which Ash Recovers from Dropping the Ball on the Protest Movement, Rounds That Collective Craziness Up and Tries to Achieve Some Sense of Scale of the thing.
So I took a little vacation for a few days and travelled haphazardly around central Ontario, and when I finally came to rest in the fine nation's capital and decided I might need to check my email, I checked the news in the Middle East.
Silly Ash, being MIA during the middle of a burgeoning regional revolution.
Suffice it to say that shit's going down. Wanna hear about it? (Note to the Geographically Spooked: If you feel like you've never heard of any of these countries, that's fine--the clickable wonder of wikipedia in each header will help with that. Go do some map-learnin! We live in interesting times!)
Algeria
Protests started early and strong in Algiers, and the 19th's demonstration came up against 30,000 riot cops. They stopped them from marching, but it's unlikely they'll stop protesting. If this is surprising to you, you haven't been paying attention.
Jordan
For the last seven weeks, Friday has been "quick!-flood-the-square" day in Jordan, but the demonstrations against the absolute monarchy aren't quite at the same level of cohesion as some of the other places on this illustrious list. They also appear to be getting more violent, slowly. Lame.
Libya
After Four days of crazy, there are loads dead. The Guardian says that "talk of massacres is not exaggerated"--the army keeps firing on protestersin Benghazi. Media's not blacked out, although reports fly that they're trying. You may remember their president from his cablegate-publicized botox and hot nurse: after 42 years in power, Muammar al-Qaddafi's still a big jerk. Protests have spread to Tripoli, and are not slowing down.
Once again, AJE makes my week with this feature on the fantabulous women of Tahrir Square. No swimsuit competition, no irrelevant talent component, only the excellence of inspirational and ballsy Arab women, knockin it out the park.
If you've been within eyeshot of a major media outlet in the last two weeks, you probably have clued in that big things are happening in Egypt. If you've been reading this blog, or basically any news anywhere, you probably have also clued in that a) a peaceful, populist democratic revolution has ousted an authoritarian president that has been seated for 30 years, and b) this is unabashedly awesome.
What you might not totally get is why. And that's completely understandable. So Why the Hell Is This So Important?
The reasons that the success of the Egyptian revolution has everyone atwitter (haha. ha. Ash you're lame.) can be clumsily classed into the following three categories: Egypt leads the way.
Being the most populous Arab nation, geopolitically centrally located, and generally containing a little bit of everything important about the region, Egypt tends to lead the way in the Middle East. Things they do tend to set standards and precedents on an international level--and they also tend to trend.
The fact that they just overthrew their US-propped-dictator added such crazy burgeoning momentum to the regime-toppling force released by the Tunisian revolution that protests intensified in Yemen, Jordan, Algeria, and the Gabon. It's resulted in a lot of speculation about whether or not this practice of insisting on responsible government was going to keep up--and which world leaders are in trouble if it does.
Democratic Egypt = Irritating Cracks in US Imperialism
Also, it's problematic that the majority of the Western world was seen hmming and hawing about the protests, being diplomatic and shaking fingers without actually coming to the support of the most popular revolution since at least the 70's. This is a problem for two reasons: 1) the aforementioned 1.3 billion in military aid meant that the power that Mubarak had--and abused--for so long was a direct result of the US giving it to him; and 2) the US has spent trillions of dollars and thousands of lives trying to INSTALL democracy in the middle East, so anything less than an unequivocal joygasm of unqualified support for such an overwhelmingly popular democratic movement seems patently spurious to me.
And finally, A Peaceful Democratic Revolution Just Happened. And that's kind of a miracle.
In Tahrir Square, a functional, unified community sprang up out of the craziness of sectarian violence and a divided population, because of a shared vision for a better Egypt. Within days, the protesters had clinics, sleeping areas, food and water stations, phone and computer charging access, and media screens broadcasting AJE for anyone who needed them. Twentysomethings spontaneously organized the sexy revolutionary duties of trash pickup every morning. When "pro-Mubarak" thugs stormed the square, they set up checkpoints to screen for weapons and welcome people to the demonstrations. They organized local musician and artist showcases. They organized football tournaments in the square for kids. They held Christian mass in the Square, just as they protected each other during Muslim prayers. They protected foreign journalists from angry police during media crackdowns.
They did all of this without central leadership.
That is the most fundamentally inspirational thing about the Egyptian Revolution to me--the fact that I just watched democracy -happen-, in such an unadulterated, people-first way that Western powers barely recognized it as democracy, springing from the grassroots alone.
This matters because it reaffirms, in the eyes of the entire world, that stuff of this incredible calibre CAN ACTUALLY STILL HAPPEN.
Egypt reminded me that the struggle against power is neither futile nor unreasonable.
And that is absolutely invaluable.
The protests that started on the heels of Tunisia's regime-overthrow are still raging, and they're not looking like they're going to stop. Suez, Giza, Cairo, North Sinai--they're all crammed with people vowing not to stop demonstrations until they get responsible government.
They're also crammed with police in the middle of an insane, brutalist crackdown on demonstrators. As of Wednesday, 800 people had been detained. Tear gas is flying all over the place, and police are trying everything they can think of to prevent marching.
Apparently, this is the way Egyptian police
deal with permitless marches
Wide reports are surfacing that the government (or someone) has shut down internet and text message services across the entire country--something that's never happened before, ever.
Human Rights Watch is nervously watching, because they're worried that the police will open fire on the crowd. Which would be terrible.
Meanwhile, Yemen is brewing some protests of its own: tens of thousands of folks in the capital, calling for the disposition of President Ali Abdullah Saleh. The difference here is that the president appears to have his own chunk of supporters running counter-marches.
Yemen also has people serious enough about getting rid of the government that they're self-immolating.
To all you brave folks out there demanding what's right from your government: you're inspirational and excellent.
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.
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 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.
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.
On Dec 17th 2009, an alleged Al Qaeda training camp in Yemen was hit by cruise missiles. 41 people were killed, including 14 women and 21 children, and 14 people alleged to be Al Qaeda fighters. Another strike hit a Yemeni village a week later. Amnesty International had photos showing US cluster munitions and Tomahawks (including the one shown here), but the Pentagon wouldn't comment. The Yemeni government released a statement taking credit for the strikes.
Pakistan: Remember the CIA-contractor jerkoff that killed two Lahore motorcyclists in January execution-style? The CIA guy, a one Mr. Raymond Davis formerly of Blackwater, was investigating the radical Pakistani Islamist group Lashkar when the shit went down and inflamed angry discussion about how far diplomatic immunity actually goes. Now he's out of prison, everyone's still pissed about it, and the families of the men killed were paid $2.3 million dollars. For context, the average suggested pay to families of innocents killed in US ops hovers around $5,000.
America: The Foo Fighters recorded their latest album in Dave Grohl's garage, did a documentary about it for SXSW, and are doing a tour of concerts in peoples' garages. That you can maybe have in YOUR garage. After a day of bad news, how effin' cool is that?
