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 Morales is stepping up, though--he rescinded the price hike, which is expected to curtail the cost of food production.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.

Festive Roundup: Wikileaks, DADT, Canada's probably selling its water, and other people than me actually like bees

In the spirit of festive days off, I'm lumping all the posting I would normally be doing today into one, easy-to-access/ignore update before I run off to consume heroic volumes of martini with my extended family. Happy Holidays!

Bradley Manning talks about his detention, via proxy friend of his. Unsurprisingly, if he's to be believed, the Pentagon isn't telling the truth!
"But that's impossible!", you may say, if you've been living under a current events rock for the last ten years.

Examples:

The Pentagon says... Manning gets TV time and is not restricted in what he views.
Manning says...except for international TV, and only between 7-8pm when there's no news on. No newspapers allowed. In fact, when it was mentioned to him that the Pentagon said he was allowed the paper, he laughed.

The Pentagon says...he gets outside activity without restraint!
Manning says...he hasn't been outside in four weeks.

The Pentagon says...bedding of "adequate, soft, non-shreddable material".

Manning says...bedding with the weight of a lead x-ray apron and the texture of carpeting that gives him burns at night if he moves, because they take all his clothes from him. Lights on all night so they can watch him. Sure sounds comfy.

The Pentagon says...exercise may include running, calisthenics, basketball, etc.
Manning says...he gets exercise insofar as walking in chains is exercise.

There are some questions about the in/famous Lamo, as someone speculates that the timeline around him turning Manning in doesn't make much sense. I can see it being spurious. I can also imagine circumstances where it's actually quite straightforward and easily explained. As per often, I have no idea.

Despite not being able to do much of anything except sit around and be quietly brutalized, Manning's kind enough to wish everyone a happy holidays, including the guys at Quantico who will be guarding him instead of hanging with their families. Also, dear Santa: I think I want Bradley Manning for christmas.

The US Army is looking into its internal security after the wikileaks....leaks.....just like they did after that guy shot up Fort Hood.

Wikileaks is legitimizing, including actually paying its staff. Rad. Probably still won't be classed as a journalistic organization, despite the overwhelming amount of journalistic functions they serve. Once again, any register of shock and you haven't been reading this blog.


In non-leak-related news:

The most awesome thing to ever happen in the convergence of education and science happened in the UK, when a group of school kids got their paper on bees peer-reviewed and published. They're the youngest ever authors of a peer-reviewed paper. Also, I love them, as this early engagement with science and doing hard things will probably be the first step in them developing cold fusion or something. Bonus: they also like bees, and I tend to like people who can side with the useful underdog.

You might not know this (because I was working, and not here to scream and celebrate about it), but the US Senate voted through the takedown of the Military's Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy, finally putting one tiny, Lady GaGa-protested piece of their operations in line with the constitution. Despite how many decades overdue this is, how much LGBTQ rights have (understandably) been in the media recently, and despite my sass, this is awesome. I can see no reasonable downside to this. I was so excited I went through the work to make myself a celebratory cosmopolitan. On a tuesday. Big news.


And as the scariest piece of news in this update, Rabble.ca reports that the EU and Canada are in the middle of negotiating a trade agreement (CETA) that would put the rights to our fresh water up for privatization and sale. Maude Barlow from the Council of Canadians is angrily calling shenanigans--if this goes through, it would be the first time ever that our drinking water would be fully covered under a trade treaty. Suddenly that novel I'm inevitably writing about the dystopian water wars sounds much less....novel.


Also, for your holiday pleasure, I found this little slice of excellence:

Happy Holidays, I'm off to get mildly drunk.