I Have the Power

"Oh no! There was no Fly Report yesterday! Is The Fly okay? I hope posting resumes soon!"

These are all things that would have been nice to read, but no dice. Anyway, I woke up at 0415 Tuesday without electricity. It's tough to do much of anything in the morning without electricity, although I had a shirt and trousers that were presentable, and I was able to take a shower by candlelight (I'm assuming that one's better when you have a partner). So, it's been an interesting couple of days, but I'm back. I'm going to post the post I'd intended for yesterday in its entirety, and then post a few more stories in the same format.

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Happy Tuesday, folks. I spent part of the evening cooking, and it was a long day in general, so I'm going to throw a bunch of links at you to update you on a few stories that I'm keeping close tabs on. If you just read the links, you're updated; if you actually read the articles, you're more updated.

Mauritania:

African Union to suspend Mauritania (BBC)

Coup leader could run in polls (BBC)

Mauritania PM released (BBC, AP)

President Abdallahi is still being detained, and no one has seen nor heard from him since Wednesday of last week.

Georgia:

'Russians have cut country in half' (Jerusalem Post)

Georgia to withdraw all of its troops from Iraq (AFP)

Russian troops enter Abkhazia (BBC)

Russian aircraft continue to bombard targets throughout Georgia, and have reportedly sunk a Georgian missile cruiser on the Black Sea. Russian troops have taken a strategic town that straddles the country's only major east-west highway, effectively cutting the country in half. The Russian decision to enter Abkhazia is especially troubling, as the dispute has thus far centered entirely on South Ossetia - there's really no justification for entering Abkhazia at all. The Georgians have called for peace, they've signed a ceasefire agreement floated by the European Union, and the Russians appear to be ignoring it altogether, along with any and all statements from the international community. The proportionality of the Russian response to the alleged Georgian crimes is completely beyond any reckoning. In fact, Prime Minister Putin (who appears to be the public face of this action) has gone so far as to criticize President Bush for helping two thousand Georgian troops to leave Iraq in order to defend their country. It's plain and simple: nothing good is going to come of this, it's a big ugly mess that nobody seems to be interested in stopping.

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And now, today's updates to these stories.

Mauritania:

Freed PM opposes Mauritania coup (BBC)

Georgia:

[Georgian] Iraq veterans jump from frying pan into the fire (Times)

Georgian online infrastructure under attack [from Russia?] (Wired, Wired, Times)

Assuming the online attacks are Russian in origin*, this would be the first time that I know of in which digital warfare has been employed in conjunction with a logical attack in the real world, at least on an international scale. That in and of itself is big news. The Russians have halted their attack against Georgia, and now it's up to the world to wait and see what the fallout will be. Excuse my language, but this is going to be a big fucking mess. It's one thing when a coalition of nations, after international debate, invades a dictatorship that sponsors international terrorism. It's quite another for one ostensibly free country (Russia) to completely ignore the sovereignty of a legitimately free nation (Georgia) in the name of "peacekeeping", and completely exceed the proportionality of the original grievance in the process. What may be most upsetting is that, with the exception of online support for Georgia's computer network from countries like Estonia and companies like Google, and an American airlift of Georgian troops from Iraq back to Tbilisi, the international community stood by and did nothing - literally, nothing. What's just as upsetting is the fact that this whole thing probably could have been prevented if the French and the Germans hadn't prevented Georgia from joining NATO in April. This is very, very frustrating.

Moving away from the Caucasus region, there have been a couple of bombings worth noting. There are sporadic bombings every few months against government targets in Algeria, and there was one this weekend. The really interesting situation with respect to bombings, though, has been in Xinjiang Province in China. A number of attacks, including a couple of possible bus attacks, have occurred in recent weeks. Everyone paid a lot of attention to the actions of the Chinese with respect to protests in Tibet earlier this year. What few people have paid much attention to is the Muslim Uighar/Uighur community in Xinjiang province, in Western China. Have a look at some of the recent developments.

Chinese border assault kills 16 (BBC)

China's Uighur rebels switch to suicide bombs (Times

New violence in China's west kills 11 (Jerusalem Post)

Bombing spree exposes ethnic divisions in China (Jerusalem Post)

Renewed violence [stabbings] in west China (BBC)

It will be very, very interesting to see if this situation develops further. Xinjiang borders Tibet, and while Tibetan Buddhists are dedicated to pacifism by their very philosophy, Islamic philosophy is generally more predisposed to the use of force. For one reason or another, China has been content to sit back and ignore the Islamist threat, and may have even directly or indirectly supplied some weapons to Jihadis. A Uighar insurgency in China? Very, very interesting.

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Alright, folks, tomorrow will be my second attempt at Election Thursday. Have a great day, and stay tuned.

* I loathe the terms "cyber-warfare" and "cyber-terrorism", they're just bullshit buzz words from people who want to scare gullible politicians into spending money. I'm not saying that a threat doesn't exist; Estonia proved that. What I'm saying is that the rhetoric is stupid and cheesy, and we should expect better.