Saturday, November 10, 2012

What the World has been Up To Lately

At Foreign Policy there's a good summary of significant recent world events (still with a U.S. spin): in Syria 32,000 have been killed since the uprising began in March 2011, and Islamic fundamentalists are trying to hijack the opposition; in China Xi Jinping is taking control, it seems, from Hu Jintao (Xi, by the way, has doctorate degrees in chemical engineering and political science, his extended family may have billions, and his daughter attends Harvard -- imagine the fallout if one of Obama's daughters attended college in China!); the European Union is still having problems with employment at 11.5 percent and Britain talking about leaving;  in Mali Islamic extremists have seized an area the size of France, are imposing sharia, and 300,000 have fled; and in Yemen the U.S. is very aggressively using drones with the blessing of Yemen's president; in Israel elections will be held soon but Netanyahu has merged Likud with an ultra-nationalist, pro-settlement party, which looks really bad for peace; in North Korea Kim Jong Un, benevolent leader and gift from God, may have executed one or more military leaders by having mortars rounds fired directly into them at close range; in Bahrain, an ally of the U.S. and the liberal corner of Arabia, political protests have been banned; in Russia, which I want to mention has one hell of a national anthem, Putin may or may not be ailing and there's been a crackdown on opposition groups and two members of Pussy Riot have been sent to brutal prison camps; and in Cuba a new open door policy of accepting expatriots back has been implemented. 

See also Harper's Weekly Review.

No comments: