Government Questions Eurovision Voters

And you thought there were controversies with the voting on American Idol...

News last week out of Azerbaijan is that officers from their national security ministry have questioned several dozen Azeris over their votes in the recent Eurovision song contest. In case you don't know, Eurovision is a pan-European (and Israel) song competition where each nation sends an act though a series of competitions that are voted on by viewers across the continent all to select the Eurovision champion. The winning act's home country then has the honor of hosting the following year's final.

The Azerbaijan officials though are questioning several dozen of their countrymen for apparently voting not for the Azeri act, but instead for the entry from neighboring Armenia instead. After the Soviet Union dissolved Azerbaijan and Armenia fought a war in the early 1990s over the ethnic Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, which is fully within Azerbaijan. More than a decade later, the two nations still have not come to a deal over Nagorno-Karabakh, a very tense and fragile peace remains.

So relations between the two nations aren't great, but investigating people over their Eurovision votes? Apparently the folks in Azerbaijan were serious about this - one official told the BBC that the wayward Eurovision enthusiasts were merely 'invited to explain' their votes, but some of those interrogated said that the questioning was more serious than that, including allegations that they "weren't patriotic."

And, just to make things more complex, some of those questioned said that the Armenian entry sounded "more Azeri" anyway, and that Azerbaijan's entry, a duet, included a singer who wasn't even Azeri, one person even said they voted against Azerbaijan in protest.

Canada To Do Some Far North Muscle-Flexing

In another indication that global warming is changing more than the climate, Canada today is starting a large-scale military exercise in their Arctic region.

Actually, Canada is referring to Operation Nanook as a "sovereignty operation" - in other words, to show that Canada is in full control over their Arctic Sea coastline and the dozens of Canadian islands that stretch up towards the North Pole. This is one of the least densely populated parts of the globe, one that had been home mostly to scattered Inuit villages that eeked out a subsistence living from the sea. But as warmer temperatures have melted sea ice, natural gas deposits in the Far North are becoming economically viable.

So too is the fabled Northwestern Passage - the sea lane between Europe and Asia across the top of the North American continent, a route that could cut weeks off the current trip. To make the trip, a ship would have to weave between islands in the Arctic Sea. Those islands belong to Canada, so the Canadians say they control the Northwestern Passage and can decide who can and can't use it. The United States feels differently, that the Northwestern Passage is an international sea lane open to all nations. When the Arctic Sea was choked with ice this was an academic argument, now that the ice is melting, well you get the idea.

Operation Nanook is meant then to show that Canada is firmly in control of its northern coastline; Prime Minister Stephen Harper is expected to drop in on the military exercises later in the week. And his government has pledged to build a new deep water port on the Arctic Sea as well as a new icebreaker to serve as the flagship of the Arctic fleet. But military analysts argue that Canada does not have a large enough military (even with PM Harper's proposed projects) to protect their northern interests full-time.

Wrapping Up Hillary's Trip To Africa

You would think that the Secretary of State’s arguably most important trip to date - Hillary Clinton’s seven-nation tour of Africa - would have gotten a little better news coverage given Africa’s growing role in US foreign policy. Keep in mind that the US now gets about as much oil from Western Africa as we do from the Persian Gulf, and that by the middle of the next decade, Africa should be our biggest supplier; and there’s always the threat of terrorism, recent intelligence indicates that al-Qaeda is hoping to make the Horn of Africa their new base of operations.

But Clinton had a hard time breaking through the wall-to-wall coverage of the health care debate (there’s some irony there, given that as First Lady Hillary tried to lead the Clinton Administration’s attempt at reforming that beast), so here’s a brief recap of her trip.

The big theme from her tour was one that echoed President Obama’s speech in Ghana back in July: that African governments need to be more responsible and transparent in their operations, and that Africans need to hold their elected leaders accountable, not just accept corruption and incompetence as the normal way of doing business. It was a theme she hit on a number of stops – in Kenya, where a power-sharing agreement has led to a year and a half of political stagnation; Nigeria, regarded as one of Africa’s most-corrupt states; and Angola, where there haven’t been presidential elections since 1992. She capped off her trip, like Obama did, by granting a state visit to one of Africa’s smaller, but best run states, the tiny island nation of Cape Verde – the clear message being that well-run places in Africa will get the benefit of America’s friendship.

Clinton also made a couple of other important stops – in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Hillary made a point of visiting women who were the victims of brutal crimes against them as part of the decade of warfare that has engulfed one of Africa’s largest countries (in the Congo rape is often used as a tool of war). Millions have been killed amid fighting between several neighboring countries, insurgents, tribal militias and the Congolese army in what’s sometimes called ‘Africa’s world war’. She also stopped off in Liberia, where another brutal civil war ended only a few years ago and where Africa’s first female president, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, is facing calls to step down over support years ago for a Liberian warlord, despite her leading her country to several years of growth and peace.

It was good to see Sec. Clinton throw US support behind bringing people to justice for the horrible crimes being committed in the Congo and in backing Pres. Sirleaf in Liberia. The stopover in Cape Verde was a nice touch, to visit an often-overlooked part of Africa, promoting it as a model other countries will hopefully follow. It’s also nice to see Clinton continue the Obama message of good governance to Africa – lecturing not only those in power, but also telling African citizens they need to demand better of their leaders. What remains to be seen is how well those leaders listen. Kenya’s Raila Odinga and South Africa’s Jacob Zuma both seemed a little put off by her call to do a better job leading. And then there’s the China factor in Africa – while the US is calling for good government reforms, the message being that the US could withhold aid or trade agreements with faltering states, China doesn’t particularly care about how African leaders run their countries and has been throwing a lot of money in aid and trade around the continent.

Two More Perspectives On Africa

While the TV outlets did a generally poor job of following Secretary Clinton's African trip (see above), there has been some good reporting from the news weeklies, including these two stories:

Before her trip began, Time magazine ran this piece about "blood computers", a play off the term "blood diamonds" - illegally-mined / illegally-sold rocks that helped fund the bloody, decades-long civil wars in Sierra Leone and Liberia. Now, according to Time, there's a new illicit trade in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (one of Sec. Clinton's stops) in rare minerals used in the manufacture of all the electronic goods we think we can't live without (cell phones, laptops, etc.). Building these devices requires some extremely rare minerals (found in big deposits in the DRC), so illegal mining operations of them are very lucrative, and an underlying cause of the fighting that has wracked the Congo for the past decade.

Meanwhile, Newsweek asked if South Africa had gone from a beacon of democracy to a 'rogue state'. Their story centered on the actions of President Jacob Zuma - his support for the oppressive regime of Robert Mugabe in neighboring Zimbabwe along with weapons sales to a host of questionable governments around the world. Newsweek goes on to ask if the US should really continue to seek a close relationship with South Africa, so long as Zuma seems to stray further and further from the path of respect for democracy and human rights laid down by former President Nelson Mandela.

Russian Air Show Disaster

You might have heard over the weekend that two Russian Air Force Su-27 jets collided while practicing for an upcoming air show outside of Moscow. The planes belonged to the “Russian Knights” acrobatics team – basically Russia’s version of the USAF’s Thunderbirds. Two pilots ejected safely from the wrecked aircraft, but a third crewmember did not and was killed; four people on the ground were also badly injured when one jet crashed into a house and sparked a major fire.

EnglishRussia.com has a collection of photos of the accident (including some amazing ones of the pilots ejecting), along with speculation that the crash might have occurred after one of the jets was struck by a bird.

Russian Ship Found But Mystery Remains

The drama surrounding the Arctic Sea – the cargo ship with the Russian crew that went missing two weeks ago in the Atlantic – is over, even though the mystery is not.

Russia’s Defense Minister announced earlier today that the Arctic Sea had been found 300 miles off the Cape Verde islands in the Atlantic more than 1,000 miles away from the port it was suppose to arrive at on August 4th, Bejala, Algeria. The 15-member crew was transferred to a Russian Navy ship and are said to be in good condition.

So the question still remains about just what the heck happened to them during these past two weeks. Over the weekend, the Arctic Sea’s owners in Finland reported they received a ransom demand for the ship and crew, but they couldn’t confirm if the demand was legitimate or not. The ship’s crew reported that they were boarded by armed men claiming to be police shortly after leaving port, and according to some reports the ship may have been boarded a second time off the coast of Portugal. Russian officials said they are talking with the crew about the events of the last two weeks, but had no further comment. Speculation has ranged from the ship being in the middle of a bare-knuckles business dispute to it being the target of a pirate attack.

Battle Shows There Are Worse Things Than Hamas

Big news this weekend out of the Gaza Strip. Hamas, the ruling government of Gaza, got into a day-long gun battle with Jund Ansar Allah (which translates into: "Warriors of the Companions of God") an al-Qaeda-inspired militant organization, that left more than 20 people dead.

The fighting started when Jund Ansar Allah's leader, Sheikh Abdel-Latif Moussa used Friday's prayer services in the Gazan city of Rafah to declare the "the birth of an Islamic emirate" in the city, basically seceding from Gaza and pledging his loyalty to Osama bin Laden. That was enough for Hamas, which sent in their troops and fought a pitched battle against Jund Ansar Allah in and around the Rafah Mosque they used as their headquarters. In the end, Jund Ansar Allah was defeated after a long gun fight, its leader Sheikh Moussa was dead, according to some reports from Hamas, after blowing himself up with a suicide bomb vest, killing a Hamas negotiator in the process.

Much of the coverage of the Hamas/Jund Ansar Allah battle focused on two things: one, speculation that Hamas is losing control over Gaza following last January's three-week battle with Israel, and that extremist groups are growing in popularity among Palestinians; and two, that Hamas' crackdown against Jund Ansar Allah shows that the group is unwilling to accept any challenges to their authority in the Gaza Strip.

But I think the story points to something else - that there are worse alternatives than having Gaza run by Hamas. Israel is dead set against having any part of the Palestinian Territories run by Hamas and they've opposed any attempts to form a coalition government between Hamas and Fatah, the Palestinian faction that runs the West Bank. So far the international community (namely the US) hasn't pushed for a Hamas/Fatah unity government either. And there's no denying that Hamas has launched terrorist attacks against Israel (notably the crude, ineffective rockets their forces fired into Southern Israel by the dozens, prompting last January's conflict with Israel). Hamas claims these are all acts against an enemy occupying their lands that they are, in effect, 'freedom fighters'.

By contrast, the folks allied with Jund Ansar Allah are hardcore Islamic Jihadists; sharing the same 12th-century worldview as their spiritual head, bin Laden. Sheikh Moussa's goal was to see Gaza put under sharia law, many of his followers sported the long beards and headdresses you see on Taliban jihadis in Afghanistan, and, according to Hamas, Jund Ansar Allah were behind a series of recent attacks in Gaza against music shops and a wedding party - all things they deemed "un-Islamic" (not to mention attempting to launch a suicide bomb attack on horseback against Israel a few months ago).

In that light, it seems like it would be much better to deal with Hamas, a group with a clear goal behind their actions - a Palestinian homeland - than it would be to deal with groups like Jund Ansar Allah, who are nothing more than nihilists seeking the destruction of everything they deem "against Islam". In fact, two weeks ago Hamas' leader, Khaled Meshal announced his group would accept a Palestinian State based on the borders as they existed in 1967, before the Six Day War that led to Israel's occupying the West Bank and Gaza.

Green Methods = Better Coffee

Thought I'd start the day with a little coffee, well a story about coffee at least. Growers in Ethiopia are finding that environmentally-friendly methods are producing better beans for farmers, beans that can be sold as premium, thus fetching higher prices for the growers. The big difference is in letting the beans grow among native trees - this makes for a more labor-intensive harvest than clear-cut fields, but allowing the coffee beans to grow in the shade of trees produces less-bitter, higher-quality beans and uses less water. And better prices have led to better lives for the farmers, think about that over your morning cuppa joe.

Cyxymu - Sound and Fury Over Nothing?

Yesterday I decided to check out the blog of Cyxymu. 'Cyxymu' is the handle of Georgian blogger Georgy Jakhaia, even if you've never heard of him, you're probably aware of his existence - a massive denial-of-service attack on his various social media accounts brought Twitter, Facebook and other sites to a screeching halt last week, an event Wired breathlessly called the "Twitpocalypse" (seriously, I think the headline writers over at Wired.com need to get out more). With that in mind I surfed over to his Livejournal page (Livejournal is one of the most popular Russian-language blogging platforms).

So what's the site of the world's most notorious blogger like? In a lot of ways, probably a lot like your own Facebook page - there are photos of Tbilisi in summertime, talk about his upcoming vacation plans, links to articles about Georgian cooking and slang, and then among all that some commentary on last year's Russian-Georgian war and its aftermath.

Being a Georgian, it's not surprising then that Cyxymu's take on recent events are basically pro-Georgian/anti-Russian. He in one post refers to Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as 'liliputin', a common play on his name among his critics; a few stories about Georgian refugees driven from the disputed Abkhazia region; stories about Russian aircraft shot down by their own troops during the war; and some speculation that Russia is trying to goad Georgia into a second conflict this summer. Many of the stories are taken from Georgian/Russian news sites, and most are things I've read before, sometimes many months ago like in the case of the Russian Air Force friendly-fire incident.

In short, Cyxymu is offering a mildly-interesting, though fairly-partisan view of a year-old conflict. So why all the fuss? He's certainly not some Iranian blogger huddled over his computer in a basement in Tehran, dodging the Basiji militias, trying to get out the unknown stories of the recent pro-democracy protests. Had it not been for the massive DOS attack against his accounts, much of the blogosphere would be blissfully unaware of his existence (one report I read said pre-DOS attack, his Livejournal page had a little over 50 followers). So again, you have to ask, why all the fuss?

Most likely he was the target of a handful of pro-Russian hackers who (for some reason) were annoyed by his posts and rather than just ignore them, decided to engage in some cyber-harassment. Because their efforts shut down the latest infatuation of journalists - Twitter - suddenly this bit of cyber-activism became an important story. It is also possible that the Kremlin ordered the cyber-hit on Cyxymu, yes it's like using a hand grenade to get rid of a mosquito, but Moscow has done that sort of thing in the past - like interfering in elections their candidate was sure to win anyway (Cyxymu has called on Russia to launch an investigation into the attacks on his sites). Of course it's also possible, indulge my conspiracy theories for a moment, that the Georgian government launched the attack themselves as a way of garnering more support for their side at a time when it seems to be waning amid ever-growing evidence that it was the actions of Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili that sparked last year's war in the first place.

Really, the takeaway from the Cyxymu affair should be to put things in perspective in the world of new media. Georgy Jakhaia runs a few sorta interesting, fairly partisan sites, nothing more; and there are worse things in the world than the occasional Twitter/Facebook crash.

Should Women Be Allowed To Vote In Afghanistan?

Got your attention with that headline, didn't I? The reality of the situation though is that Afghanistan is holding a presidential election next week, one that is all but certain to be a fraud, and the role of women is a big part of the reason.

Election officials are reporting "suspiciously high" numbers of women registering to vote in Paktia, Khost and Logar, some of Afghanistan's most rural, most conservative provinces. Actually in many cases it's the male head of the household coming in to register his 10 or 15 wives to vote, saying that they can't come in themselves of course since it's inappropriate for them to talk with men outside their families...You have to wonder then if they'll be allowed to vote, or if hubby will just show up on election day expecting to vote 10 or 15 times 'for his wives'. And even if they do show up, will the women be allowed to vote for the candidate of their choice, or will they have to vote as their told by their husband? Or will the women who show up even be the women who are registered (or even be women for that matter)? Anyone could be beneath a burka, including a man's underage sons.

Paktia, Khost and Logar happen to be predominantly Pashtun areas - the same tribe as the current Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, and thanks to recent Taliban attacks, they're also places that are expected to have the fewest vote monitors, all in all a situation ripe for voter fraud.

And that's ok with the US and international monitors, at least up to a point. If there's anything more disturbing about the Afghani election than the likely wholesale disenfranchisement of women, it's how accepting the international community is about the prospect of wide-spread voter fraud. Yes, Afghanistan is a mess and holding an election will be difficult, but that shouldn't mean its alright to have a sham election. Jandad Spinghar, the executive director of the Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan, the country's top independent election monitoring group said "if the level of corruption or violation is under 10 percent, it will be acceptable for me." Really? In a nation where 17 million people are registered to vote, that works out to a whopping 1.7 million bogus votes being "okay" in the minds of the election monitors.

Right now President Karzai is deeply unpopular and is facing a surprisingly strong challenge from his former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah. The worst outcome for Afghanistan is one where Karzai wins, but no one believes the validity of the vote - but that looks just like the scenario we're heading for.