Chaos Rears its Ugly Head
I'm not sure who's been following the news out of Belarus. They held an election earlier this week in which the reigning dictator, one of the world's last holdovers from the days of the Soviet Union, won by a landslide. This sparked protests comparable to Ukraine's Orange Revolution of last year. Police have broken up the protests and carted the protestors away. The United States and the European Union are imposing sanctions on Belarus. This kind of thing (a disputed election, followed by protests) has happened several times recently, most notably in Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan. There's a great Filibuster Cartoon about it. The point is that you should be aware that it's happening.
Some of you may have heard that Australia was hit by the massive Cyclone Larry (the Pacific Ocean equivalent of a hurricane) this week. Peter Cosgrove, the retired Australian general who's in charge of the rebuilding effort, has stated that no artificial timelines can be set for the rebuilding effort. Why do I post this story? Because it'll be interesting to see if Australian hippies start flipping out for no good reason about the Howard government's response to Cyclone Larry like American critics of the Bush Administration have gone livid about the response to Hurricane Katrina. Natural disasters happen, and sometimes they're so huge that even the best plans are tough to implement. That's how the world works, and that's why they're called disasters, not impositions.
Muammar Qaddafi, in that aforementioned teleconference at Columbia University about democracy, has claimed that Libya is the world's only democracy, begging the question: "When has Libya ever had elections?" However, he also called the rest of the Arab world "backward", which is a good thing. Qaddafi's always good for a sound byte, as some folks may remember from this post in which he took credit for President Bush's 2004 reelection. Colonel Qaddafi has to be the world's greatest dictator, because he's been pretty much harmless since Spring of 2003, and the things he says are so entertaining... Unlike that total whack job Kim Jong-Il.
Oh, and Somalia's still a God-forsaken war zone.
UPDATE: A Pentagon report released today indicates that the Russian ambassador to Iraq gave intel to the Iraqi government preceding the U.S. invasion regarding the movements and strategy of coalition forces. Apparently this played out to our advantage, though they're not sure whether it was by accident or on purpose on the part of the Russians. Very interesting.
Some of you may have heard that Australia was hit by the massive Cyclone Larry (the Pacific Ocean equivalent of a hurricane) this week. Peter Cosgrove, the retired Australian general who's in charge of the rebuilding effort, has stated that no artificial timelines can be set for the rebuilding effort. Why do I post this story? Because it'll be interesting to see if Australian hippies start flipping out for no good reason about the Howard government's response to Cyclone Larry like American critics of the Bush Administration have gone livid about the response to Hurricane Katrina. Natural disasters happen, and sometimes they're so huge that even the best plans are tough to implement. That's how the world works, and that's why they're called disasters, not impositions.
Muammar Qaddafi, in that aforementioned teleconference at Columbia University about democracy, has claimed that Libya is the world's only democracy, begging the question: "When has Libya ever had elections?" However, he also called the rest of the Arab world "backward", which is a good thing. Qaddafi's always good for a sound byte, as some folks may remember from this post in which he took credit for President Bush's 2004 reelection. Colonel Qaddafi has to be the world's greatest dictator, because he's been pretty much harmless since Spring of 2003, and the things he says are so entertaining... Unlike that total whack job Kim Jong-Il.
Oh, and Somalia's still a God-forsaken war zone.
UPDATE: A Pentagon report released today indicates that the Russian ambassador to Iraq gave intel to the Iraqi government preceding the U.S. invasion regarding the movements and strategy of coalition forces. Apparently this played out to our advantage, though they're not sure whether it was by accident or on purpose on the part of the Russians. Very interesting.
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