Last Brit WWI Vet Shuns Holiday

Today is Veteran's Day, or Remembrance Day as it is known in the British part of the world. The British are marking the day with a special air of solemnity since in the past year they lost their last three surviving veterans of World War One, the final one being the "Last Tommy", Harry Patch who passed away this past August.

There is technically one British vet left, 108-year old Claude Choules, a Royal Navy veteran now living in Australia. Choules lied about his age to join the Royal Navy at 14, he transferred to the Australian Navy in 1926 and was still serving when the Second World War broke out.

Even though Mr. Choules is said by his family to be "holding up well" for 108, he will not be attending any Remembrance Day services, saying that, in his opinion, the memorials only serve to "glorify war."

Berlin Wall and Bad History

Today is the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. By now you've probably heard Ronald Reagan's famous "tear down this wall!" speech on the news a few dozen times. What you might not know, and what author Will Bunch explains in his book/deconstruction of the Reagan years, "Tear Down This Myth", was that Reagan's Wall speech was aimed less at "Mr. Gorbachev" and more at his conservative critics at home who feared the Gipper had gone soft on the Reds, you know, negotiating nuclear arms reduction treaties with them and all that...

Expect to hear a fair bit of misinterpreted history over the next few days as every news magazine, paper and cable outlet does their own Berlin Wall recap. I stumbled across this piece by George Packer in the New Yorker: "Communism Collapsed, Is Iran Next?", where Mr. Packer talks about Communism being consigned to the "ash heap of history" - something which must come as news to the 1.3 billion Chinese currently living under a Communist government. In fact Beijing just commemorated the 60th anniversary of Communist rule with great fanfare, and despite the free market trappings and luxury cars in the streets of Shanghai, China is still very much a centrally-ruled country, just as the Soviet Union once was.

Meanwhile, Mr. Gorbachev used the anniversary to plead with world leaders to tear down a wall of a different sort, Gorbachev said that the governments of the world must unite now to take on climate change. He draws a parallel between the global security threat the world faced 20 years ago and the one posed by a changing climate today. And just as few thought 20 years ago that the Wall would ever come down, he argues meaningful progress can be made in tackling the causes of climate change and addressing the gap between the world's rich and poor if people and governments are willing to commit to taking action.

Finally, for a personal view of the time surrounding the fall of the Berlin Wall, and an excellent movie to boot, check out the film "Goodbye Lenin!"

A New Look At An Old War

A new book is prompting a re-examination of a controversial figure from South American history and is dredging up some hard feelings between two neighboring countries.

Eliza Lynch has been painted as a former Irish prostitute who became the unofficial "Queen of Paraguay" that led her country into a disastrous war with Brazil. Now a new book, The Lives of Eliza Lynch: Scandal and Courage, by Michael Lillis, a former diplomat, and Ronan Fanning, a historian is taking a new view of Lynch. Rather than a bloodthirsty wanna-be Queen, they say Lynch was a loyal wife to dictator Francisco Solano López, and the authors say that that López, not Lynch, was the one who pushed for the ill-fated war against the "Triple Alliance" of Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay in 1864.

The war was an utter disaster for Paraguay - Brazilian forces would rampage throughout the country, leaving 90% of Paraguay's men dead. In addition to trying to rehabilitate the image of Lynch, the authors also say that the Brazilians bear responsibility for what they call a "near genocide" during the final two years of the six year war as Brazil's Emperor Dom Pedro II tried to wipe out every last remnant of Paraguay's military.

With their portrayal of Francisco Solano López and Emperor Dom Pedro II, authors Lillis and Fanning have managed to anger people in both Paraguay and Brazil - they have received death threats from Paraguayan nationalists upset at their treatment of López, while the Brazilians have bristled at charges of genocide, who note that it was Paraguay who started the war in the first place.

Meanwhile in modern-day South America, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez told his military on Sunday to "prepare" for war with Colombia. Chavez has accused Colombia of being a puppet of the United States and has said that the US is negotiating a ten-year lease for a Colombian military base to use it as a stepping stone for an eventual US-led invasion of Venezuela. Relations between Venezuela and Colombia have been getting steadily worse, on Thursday Venezuela sent 15,000 soldiers to the Colombian border, supposedly to fight drug trafficking.

Moscow Holds A Parade For A Parade

They held a big military parade in Moscow on Saturday, technically it was a parade to commemorate another parade - the 1941 Red Army march through the streets of Moscow (which itself was meant to mark the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917...). The 1941 parade (pictured) was noteworthy because the troops went from a display march directly to the front lines to fight off a desperate German attempt to take Moscow before the winter set in. Honored guests at yesterday's parade included 45 survivors from the 1941 parade, and subsequent battle, along with two World War II-vintage T-34 tanks. Several thousand others also participated in the parade, some in replica WWII uniforms.

The Anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution on November 7 was one of the biggest holidays in the Soviet calendar, but was abolished by Vladimir Putin several years ago (no reason to celebrate all those old Soviet holidays in the new Russia it was thought). But old habits die hard, many Russians - particularly the Communists who held their own November 7 rally - still mark the day.

Bird Foils Big Bang

Ok, this is a little scary - the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland, the multi-billion dollar science experiment that is suppose to simulate the conditions of the Big Bang was brought to a screeching halt this week by a bird, specifically a bird that dropped "a bit of baguette" into the works.

According to officials at the LHC, a bird snacking on a piece of bread at one of the machine's capacitors caused a temperature spike that caused the LHC to shut down. The LHC uses 16 miles of supercooled tubing to accelerate hydrogen atoms to nearly the speed of light before smashing them into each other in an attempt to create sub-atomic particles.

I guess it's a good thing that the machine shut itself down when it detected a problem, it is a little scary though to think such a huge, complex thing could be knocked out by a snacking bird.

Saudis Battling Rebels Along Yemeni Border

For the past several days Saudi Arabia has engaged in a series of fierce clashes along their southern border with Yemen.

That the Saudi military is actually fighting somebody could be news in itself - an apocryphal story from the first Gulf War was that if Saddam Hussein ever invaded Saudi Arabia, US forces were ordered not to fire at the first troops they saw coming from the border since those would be the Saudis abandoning their posts. This time, the Saudis have taken the offensive against Yemeni rebels from the Zaidi Shiite sect. Yemen's government has accused the Zaidis of trying to overthrow them to restore a religious imamate that overthrew an earlier Yemeni elected government back in 1962, sparking a civil war in the process.

The Yemeni government has fought the rebels for the past five years along the rugged border with Saudi Arabia. Recent cross-border raids by the Zaidis prompted the Saudis to act. The Saudi military has used both aircraft and artillery in a series of intense strikes against the rebels, which began on Tuesday. Details on casualties and even where the fighting is exactly occurring are sketchy - the rebels say the Saudis have attacked inside Yemen, while the Saudis say the military strikes have been limited to their side of the border.

In either case though the Saudis have the support of the Yemeni government, which supports their actions against the rebels. And looming large over the whole situation is Al-Qaeda. Twice in the past three months, Saudi Arabia claims to have foiled terror attacks by a Yemen-based Al-Qaeda affiliate, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (or AQAP). According to analysts, the Yemeni government's battle against the Zaidi rebels has left them with little ability or initiative to fight groups like AQAP. In turn, veteran jihadis from Iraq and Afghanistan are said to be moving to Yemen, which along with the largely lawless Somalia, are being viewed by Al-Qaeda as the most likely places to establish a new base of operations.

The Domain That Refused To Die

My latest bit of writing over at The Mantle - nearly two decades after the end of the Soviet Union, one piece of the old empire persists: the Internet domain ".su", despite all the best efforts to delete it. In my post I take a look at the ."su" domain, who uses it and what the future holds for the last vestige of the old Soviet empire.

Last Thoughts On The Afghan Election

There's a lot happening in the world, but I wanted to share a few last links about the Afghan election debacle. The first is an editorial by Peter Galbraith, who was the UN official who sounded the alarm about the massive fraud in the Afghan election in the first place. I'd say those credentials alone make his editorial worth reading, but Galbraith also debunks a major claim making the rounds, namely that President Hamid Karzai would have won the election anyway, fraud or not.

This bit of "wisdom" is being offered up as a justification for continuing Western support of the thoroughly corrupt Karzai regime. But Galbraith argues that it's a big assumption to make. An audit of the votes cast in the August 20th election dropped Karzai below the 50% threshold needed to trigger a run-off, once officials hit that target though, they stopped examining the votes. Galbraith claims that his sources indicate if all the votes were examined and all the bad ones tossed, the results would have been Karzai 41% / Abdullah 34%. A seven-percent deficit certainly isn't insurmountable in a run-off election - if the second round was run fairly - so this notion that Karzai would have won regardless is a pretty big assumption to make.

Germany's Der Spiegel, meanwhile, offers a round-up of opinions from the German media about the elections in Afghanistan. The take-away is that they pretty much all view Karzai's "victory" as a fraud and most question the ongoing purpose of the Afghan mission.

And finally Fox News of all places offers up an editorial by analyst KT McFarland who says that in the wake of Karzai's stealing the election the US should "pull the plug" on our Afghanistan mission. Now I ripped KT a couple of weeks ago for an utter lack of knowledge on current events in Russia, but this time I think she makes a good argument - the real security/terrorism problem lies in Pakistan so why should the US continue to spend lives and money propping up a corrupt government in Kabul?

Clinton Gets A Statue, Bolt Gets A Cheetah

So if you're the fastest man in the world, what animal to you choose as a pet? A cheetah, of course... Well, Olympic Champion Usain Bolt didn't exactly buy a cheetah as a pet, but he did adopt one at a refuge in Kenya, which he named "Lightning Bolt". Bolt, Usain Bolt that is, was visiting Kenya to help launch "The Long Run", an ecology campaign sponsored by a German charity, the Zeitz Foundation. Bolt was also made an honorary Masai Warrior during his visit.

But if you're looking for honors, it's hard to beat the one that Kosovo bestowed upon former President Bill Clinton. Officials in Pristina unveiled a gold-covered 10-foot tall likeness of the former president, whom many in Kosovo honor as the man responsible for ending their conflict with Serbia and ultimately paving the way for Kosovo's independence. Bill Clinton himself was on hand for the unveiling, along with at least one young Kosovar named "Klinton" in his honor. For the record, the Kosovars also have similar warm feelings for George W. Bush as well, though Bush only has a street named after him in the capital, no giant gold-plated statue.

In his speech, Clinton called upon the Kosovars to forge a multi-ethnic society. So far ethnic relations in Kosovo have focused on keeping the peace between the Albanian majority and the Serbian minority. But there are other smaller ethnic groups in Kosovo as well who say that they are being shoved to the margins of society. The London Telegraph recently ran this story about Kosovo's Ashkali minority, who claim that in efforts to build bridges between the Serbs and Albanians, their plight is being ignored. Like the Roma (Gypsies), the Ashkali have a murky ethnic lineage that stretches back to Central Asia, and like the Roma, the Ashkali often find themselves excluded from society. The Ashkali interviewed by the Telegraph say they have an almost 100% unemployment rate, their children can't go to school and that the Kosovo government largely ignores them, focusing solely on the Serbian minority.

It's something for the Kosovars to keep in mind as they listen to the words of Bill Clinton.

Karzai Finally Steals Afghan Election

The Afghan election debacle came to an end this morning when Dr. Abdullah Abdullah officially dropped out of the planned run-off against President Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan's Independent Election Commission (IEC) took the opportunity to then proclaim Karzai the president for another five year term.

"Whew! I'm glad we didn't have to go through with rigging another election," said Azizullah Ludin, the chairman of the IEC, "you know how hard stuffing ballot boxes can be? And we were worried that we wouldn't have time to get the ballots with votes pre-printed for Karzai finished in time."

Ok, Ludin didn't really say that, at least not as far as I know, but in Abdullah's opinion, he might as well have. Dr. Abdullah was calling for the removal of Ludin from his position at the IEC since that organization oversaw the fraud-riddled first round of the election. Abdullah also protested the opening of more polling stations in the southern part of the country - a Karzai stronghold, but also the region where the Taliban is the most active. Because of the shaky security situation many polling stations in the south never opened for the August 20 round of voting, yet still turned in ballot boxes filled with votes for Karzai - many of the ballots that were later thrown out. More polling stations there seem like just more chances for fraud.

Rather than face a second rigged vote, Abdullah bailed out of the election. While some media outlets like The Guardian are suggesting that this latest turn of events further undermines the legitimacy of the Karzai presidency, the international community is already rallying to Karzai's side. Hillary Clinton said the Obama administration would back Karzai's new term in office, and the UN's Secretary General Ban Ki-moon flew to Kabul to lend the UN's support.

Of course the international community was more than willing to look the other way on the fraudulent first round of the vote until the UN's number two man in Kabul, Peter Galbraith raised enough of a stink about the vote-rigging force the global community into pressuring Karzai to accept a run-off election (Galbraith lost his UN job in the process). The global community valued the "stability" of the corrupt Karzai regime over the "chaos" of an actual fair election - ignoring the fact that it has been the corruption and incompetence of the Karzai government that led to the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan in the first place.

I can't think of any clearer indication of how screwed up the situation in Afghanistan has become. Unfortunately the international community is showing a lack of will to take any real steps to make things better.