si vis pacem para pactum (12. 536)

As if Trump’s low turn-out, low-energy birthday parade was not already overshadowed by the poor juxtaposition of the crack down on protests in Los Angeles and the ongoing conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine, with no boots on the ground though America can hardly claim it’s not deeply entrenched, the politically motivated assassination of a Minnesota state legislator by a crazed MAGA evangelist still at large and with a kill-list of other politicians, the surprise from Israel on Iran gave some in the administration a chance to try to have it both ways. Like the false claims last month of brokering a cease fire between India and Pakistan over Kashmir, despite vehement disavowal of having anything to do with the strikes on Iranian cities and infrastructure, Trump is insisting that peace is contingent upon Iran settling the nuclear deal—talks scheduled to continue in Oman next week—as if Israeli incursions were leverage in the negotiations, if anything possibly a provocation to draw the US into the situation. The last time Washington DC hosted a military parade of comparable scale was in 1991 as a premature victory celebration for the hundred-day Persian Gulf War, what became a multipart quagmire squandering many lives and much treasure, the US resuming its push to remove Saddam Hussein after premised on the untrue narratives of Baghdad involvement with the 9/11 terror attacks and Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction. America should have lost global trust and confidence back then. Now, with Iran having been only five years away from producing a ballistic nuclear missile for the past thirty years (and surely have been capable of making an arsenal but chose not to despite decades of conflicts with neighbours including Iraq and Israel), the Trump administration and his negotiators are using the WMD playbook once again and this time, the world is far more skeptical of their motives to stoke forever wars.

synchronoptica

one year ago: the Dutch roll (with synchronoptica) plus assorted links worth revisiting

seven years ago: more links to enjoy, Trump’s migrant detention centres, fear of palindromes plus Stephen Hawking interred with honours

eight years ago: Ford’s soybean car plus the feast of Corpus Christi

nine years ago: the UK’s proposed withdrawal from the EU, even more links, machine dreams plus the long-s

ten years ago: a visit to Gemünden am Main, the internet of trolls plus a church that resembles the courthouse from Back to the Future

operation red dawn (11. 187)

Codenamed after the 1984 World War III invasion scenario of the US by a coalition of the Warsaw Pact and Latin American countries—starring Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze as resistance-fighters—a task force of American soldiers apprehended deposed Iraqi president Saddam Hussein on this day in 2003, having disappeared and gone into hiding shortly after the US invasion, discovered in his hometown of ad-Dawr near Tikrik, holed up in a foxhole or spider-whole with guns and three-quarters of a million dollars in cash. The site where Hussein was captured, Wolverine 2, is also a reference to the teenaged band of guerrilla fighters of the movie. Put before a special tribunal called by the provisional authority and interim government (which many characterised as a creature of American jurisdiction and a show trial not representative of an independent Iraq) six months later and found guilty of crimes against humanity for genocidal campaigns against the Kurdish and Shiite populations during the war with Iran and subsequently executed at the trial’s conclusion and having exhausted appeals in November of 2006.

casus belli (10. 624)

In a late night address from the Oval Office on this day in 2003, US president George W Bush, without mentioning the pretext of “weapons of mass destruction” whose rhetoric had already been established in the weeks leading up to this announcement after issuing a forty-eight hour ultimatum, committed America and allied partners to a decade of bloody and violent conflict, dearly bought with the lives of over a quarter-million Iraqi civilians, over five thousand allied combatants at a cost exceeding two-trillion dollars, causing permanent economic and credibility losses with only the military-industrial complex profiting from the violence. The preoccupation and extension of the “War on Terror” moreover significantly contributed to the loss of the fragile uni-polar world order and led to the ascendance of China as a world power and the undelivered democratic reforms of the Russian Federation due to the years of focus spared for this crusade. After the “shock and awe” and following his cabinet’s over-confidence that this adventure would be decisive and over in “five days or five weeks or five months” as defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Bush would appear in military fatigues (very much the image of his nemesis, Saddam Hussein) less than a scant two months later on the deck of an aircraft carrier to deliver his “Mission Accomplished” speech. The allied Iraqi army was disbanded, fuelling a counter-insurgency that made the ultimate US withdrawal a protracted one, resulting in civil war and a would-be caliphate unleashing more terror and displacement regionally and globally.

coalition of the drilling

In the first State of the Union Address to the American people since the 9/11 terror attacks some five months hence, delivered on this day in 2002, George W Bush minted the coinage “axis of evil”—a portmanteau of Ronald Reagan’s characterisation of the Soviet Union as the Evil Empire and the Axis powers of World War II, Germany, Italy and Japan. Originally levied against Iran, the Baath party of Iraq and North Korea as sponsors of terrorism, net exporters and actively seeking weapons of mass destruction to define a common enemy and threat to US and its allies, other politicians and commentators expanded the term to include Syria, Cuba, Libya, Belarus, Zimbabwe and Myanmar.

cyrus charter

Though in possession of the British Museum, the ancient clay cylinder bearing the declaration of king Cyrus the Great, outlining his genealogy and conquest of Babylonia as favourite of the god Marduk and documentation of the end of exile of the Jewish people and allowing them to resettle within the empire was loaned to Tehran on this day in 1971 for a period of sixteen days for the gala celebration of the two-thousand-five-hundredth anniversary of the founding of Persia—see previously, beginning mid-month ten days later. The artefact recovered in 1829 (in Mesopotamia, in modern day Iraq) is considered by many historians as the pioneering attempt to administer and multicultural state with universal human rights and was made the official symbol of Iran in absentia.

resolution 678

On this day in 1991 Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz and US Secretary of State James Baker held a conference in Geneva lasting some seven hours to try to negotiate a peaceful resolution to the invasion and annexation of Kuwait (August 1990).
Though the dialogue was overshadowed by the respective parties’ messaging, that George H W Bush was willing to continue talks and privileged peace and regional stability over any exercise of power—and that Saddam Hussain would not agree to an unconditional withdrawal, arguing that the region was put in turmoil over Palestine issue well before the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait and targeting their advances with the backing of the UN and the US-backed coalition was hypocrisy and an injustice. Both sides lost their leverage and no progress was made in finding a mutually acceptable solution, and the failure of the Geneva Peace Conference precipitated Operation Desert Storm (17 January 1991 – 28 February 1991) to expel Iraqi forces from Kuwait.

one dimensional chess

Though it is far too generous and naïve on all of our parts to hope that Trump, an impeached president ordering the assassination of foreign military leaders in contradiction to the Geneva Conventions and without informing much less consulting Congress and quite possibly his own military intelligence and senior leadership, might have a follow-on strategy that would de-escalate the situation and privilege the standing of America and its allies in the region, even the most satirical or cynical among us would not have summoned up a such a blathering, insipid response.
A day after urging protestors storming the US Green Zone and embassy compound in Baghdad in anger over US airstrikes against the Iranian-backed Kata’ib Hezbollah militia to disperse, a drone, at the direction of Donald Trump, destroyed the vehicle convoy transporting Major General and elite Quds Forces commander Qasem Soleimani and Popular Mobilisation Forces commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis at the capital’s airport—barely any time elapsing since the signal to stop rallying had been issued to gauge whether the protestors were under the control of the Iranian military in the first place, as the Trump administration suggestion—absent any evidence or intention, or than a provocative missive since deleted by Trump’s son foreshadowing the drone strike. This brash, unilateral behaviour once again demonstrates to the world America’s untrustworthiness as an international partner and its penchant for betrayal rather than dialogue when relationships become strained. Undoubtedly this is a case of the tail wagging the dog and a distraction from the focus on Trump’s impeachment but I’d be willing to bet, coming from this conman and carnival-barker and his following of grifters, that there’s wrapped into that diversionary tactic (those are the only stratagem this scoundrel takes truck in—self-preservation at all costs) is something more to put on the table: offering the more hawkish elements of those that have left the Trump cabinet the war that they’ve always wanted in exchange for their continued silence.

do ut des

Continuing to charaterise the impeachment proceedings as a coup d’etát and in the wake of particularly compelling testimony by a seasoned career diplomat whose work was undercut by Trump’s backchannel, a group of thirty of Trump’s staunchest supporters stormed closed-door meeting being held in secure chambers to disrupt the testimony of another witness with Ukraine connections, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence.
By bringing cell phones into a classified environment, members—with a distinct lack of collegiality—compromised security and caused the witness’ accounting to be delayed for several hours. Grown weary of playing the apologist though too cowardly to cross him, Republicans refused to give anything but the thinnest, tacit support for Trump’s call to hold the next G7 summit at his tacky resort which prompted Trump more than the self-dealing Ukraine (or Kurdish concessions inter alia) and how that affair is unwinding to accuse his party of not fighting for him. Loyalist responded to this lament by barging in to the hearing room, again characterised as a star chamber despite how the scandal under investigation makes Nixon’s subversion of the democratic process seem rather adorable, and ordering pizza. After five hours, the witness was allowed to give her statement in private.

jahrgang xxmviii

As this year draws to a close, we again take time to reflect on a selection of things that took place in 2018. Thanks as always for visiting. We've made it through another wild year together.

january: Turkey enters the Syrian conflict in attempts to wrest control in the north from Kurdish rebels.  The US government experiences a partial shutdown over a lapse in funding due to a stand-off regarding the status of immigrants that were brought to the US as children by their parents.  We had to say goodbye to science-fiction and fantasy writer Ursula Le Guin.

february: There are further advances in private-sector rocketry that seem primed to usher in a new age of exploration.  Another school shooting in America fails to get the country to open up to a dialogue on gun-control. The US Federal Communications Commission repeals net neutrality consumer protections.

march: A former Russian double-agent and his daughter are poisoned in Salisbury, England.  In China, term limits for the office of president and general secretary of the Communist party are eliminated.  In the US, a nation-wide school walk-out occurs to protest gun-violence and weak gun-control laws.  Vladimir Putin is re-elected to a fourth consecutive term as president of Russia.  We bid farewell to scientist Stephen Hawking.

april: France, the UK, and the US launch airstrikes on Syria bases following a government sanctioned chemical weapons attack that killed over seventy civilians.

may: The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation goes into effect in an attempt to wrest back some modicum of control over individuals’ digital dossiers. Donald Trump precipitates a trade war by imposing punitive steel tariff on exporters with other countries responding in kind.

june: At the G-7 summit in Toronto Donald Trump pushes for the reinstatement of Russia before embarking to meet with the leader of North Korea in Singapore for talks on denuclearisation. 

july: A series of climate-change driven heat-waves devastate North America and Europe, causing many deaths and torrents of forest fires.  A boys’ football team and their coach are rescued from a cave in Thailand after a harrow, seventeen-day ordeal.  Researchers confirm the existence of a subglacial lake of liquid water on Mars.  

august: The market value of Apple surpasses one trillion dollars.  The US reimposes sanctions on Iran over its nuclear programme (having announced its intention to withdraw from the deal in May) while maintaining support to Saudi Arabia in its retaliatory attack on the Yemen.

september: The National Museum of Brazil in Rio de Janeiro is engulfed in flames.  The Supreme Court of India decriminalises homosexuality.  Following a contentious hearing, a controversial justice is appointed to the US Supreme Court, altering its composition.

october: A dissident journalist is kidnapped, murdered and spirited away in pieces at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Canada legalises cannabis possession and use nation-wide.  Trump deploys soldiers to the Mexican border to fend off an approaching caravan of asylum-seekers. While visiting his native China, the chief of INTERPOL goes missing and presumed assassinated. The US signals its intent to leave the International Postal Union and shutters its diplomatic outreach offices for Palestine.

november: Democrats take control of the US House of Representative with Republicans retaining control of the Senate.  The InSight probe lands on Mars, beginning a mission to pierce the surface of the Red Planet. We had to bid farewell to SpongeBob SquarePants creator Stephen Hillenburg and social justice warrior Harry Leslie Smith.  US ex-president George Herbert Walker Bush passed away, rejoining Barbara Bush, his life partner of seventy-three years, who died in April.

december: The shambles of Brexit and the investigation into the Trump campaign and administration to Russia are ongoing.  US forces withdraw from Syria with plans to also do so for Afghanistan and the country’s defence secretary resigns in protest.  We had to bid farewell to actor and director Penny Marshall.   The US government enters another partial shutdown over Border Wall funding. 

vacancy announcement

Learning that the social media accounts of the newly elected Iraqi prime minister were absolutely inundated with over thirty thousand applications by those who wanted to join the government after taking to the medium to solicit for appointees, we were reminded of the concept of sortation—rule by lottery—we explored last week. Wanting to disburden himself from a fraught political past of sectarian tensions, corruption and nepotism, Adil Abd al-Mahdi was overwhelmed and heartened by the depth and range of independent applicants interested in cabinet positions, willing to work to rebuild the country.

assignment baghdad

Geoff Manaugh, author of the always intriguing and philosophically indulgent BLDGBlog, contributes a rather cloak and dagger tale to the Daily Beast about a graduate class of aspiring architects who may have unwittingly enabled the precision and sustained bombing campaign during Operation Desert Storm (the Persian Gulf War)—rather than preserving Iraqi buildings that might fall victim to the imminent invasion.
The students gathered blue-prints and layouts of every structure in the city, granting military planners the details to put a missile down a chimney or fire a rocket through a window. One wonders how often intelligence and academic research might intersect—especially counter to the sentiments and the motivations of the researchers. Manaugh also offers in the accompanying blog post an interesting exploration of the history of keeping building plans out of enemy hands and the lengths one would go to in order to keep them secret. What do you think? One would always trust an architect with one’s potential vulnerabilities without arousing suspicion.

the great game or rules of engagement

Just for those who might have harboured a kernel of doubt about Russia’s meddling in Western elections, Jason Kottke directs our attention to a 1997 publication by Duma-advisor and noted fascist and eschatologist Aleksandr Gelyevich Dugin, which is essentially an Orwellian play-by-play script for the destabilisation and subterfuge that we are experiencing presently.
The geopolitical book sets forth that the struggle for world dominance for Russia did not end with the dissolution of the Soviet Union and that the country remains the venue for the new anti-American revolution, with a Eurasian Empire united against a common enemy. Across different theatres of influence, sophisticated instructions are given to ensure absolute and enduring Russian victory—including the suggestion that Germany should be the dominant power over western and central Europe, the United Kingdom ought to be cut off from the continent, Ukraine should be annexed. For the Middle East, Dugin advocates supports that the Iranians, Kurds and the Armenians ought to be supported—especially insofar as they could create chaos in Turkey. China poses a serious threat to Russia and should be dismantled and encouraged to focus it’s only expansion towards Indonesia, the Philippines and Australia. Moreover, Russia should cede the disputed Kuril Islands to Japan to as a way to weaken their allegiance with the Americans. For the USA, Dugin prescribes that special forces be used to provoke instability with racial and social strife, blackmail and undermine internal political processes. With Brexit, Dear Leader, proxy wars, Crimea and fake news, it’s chilling how many chapters have already become headlines and scary to speculate how much further this manual might be carried out.

tonkin ghosts or mess-o'-potamia

Finally released seven years after the beginning of the investigation and five years after its conclusion, with publication delayed several times, the Chilcot Report (or the Iraq Inquiry) brought back a surge of memories and is confirmation of what many if not most of us suspected:
diplomatic solutions had not been exhausted, Iraq presented little imminent threat beyond its neighbours and the actions of the US and the UK undermined the United Nations’ authority through the unilateral determination, the case for war of their leaders. Legality and thus the ability to indict or exonerate anyone of war crimes was outside of the scope of the investigation, and thirteen years on it is difficult to conceive how a world with or without Hussein might be. The forces that rushed in to occupy that void in power does seem rather like a hydra instead of any improvement, and prosecuting regime-change under once dubious and now patently false fears and scaremongering seems beyond regrettable.  Sadly, this publication will not vindicate the suffering of Iraqis or service members that have been pained by this pretext, and I wonder if the political fall-out will be momentous and haunting enough to ensure that such adventures are not embarked upon again.  The world’s threshold and memory sometimes seems woefully inadequate.

asia-minor or turkish delight

The middle of next month (16 May 2016) marks the centenary of the signing secret pact known as the Sykes-Picot Agreement that carved up the Middle East in an arbitrary fashion, drawing the modern borders of Iran, Iraq, Syria and Palestine. Covert negotiations went on for the previous five months, in anticipation of the defeat of the Ottoman Empire by the Triple Entente, Britain, France and the assenting third party, Imperial Russia, but pivotal battles of the Great War were yet to be fought.
The outcome on the fields of Amiens, Ancre, Marne and Megiddo did not negatively diminish the apportioned claims of the UK for Jordan, Palestine and strategic points along the Mediterranean and for France, the Levant, represented by the eponymous ambassadors—however, Imperial Russia, who had been promised Constantinople, the straits of the Bosporus and Armenia (but consulted in matters as much as the Arabs or the Persians were) lost their territory due to the intervening destabilising of the Bolshevik Revolution that transpired in November of the following year. This forfeiture allowed the other powers to proceed with a second wave of colonialism and though the resulting architecture has fuelled overwhelming sectarian strife but did also engender a framework of protections, tolerance for minorities in the region. This imperfect and shaky geopolitical architecture endured as a legacy for nearly a century and though the formal lines in the sand still exist, what precious little about the Agreement that was sheltering and steadying was dismantled with violence and prejudice by the Cosplay Caliphate. The Agreement only came to light thanks to a leak from the Bolshevik brokers to the newspaper Pravda, in retaliation for having their claim denied, and later picked up by the Manchester Guardian. The revelation led to massive uprisings in the Middle East as World War I itself drew to a close, which was countered with damage-control measures that were not more flattering than the secret partitioning , the buzzards circling, to begin with.

zeugma or void-fraction

Stars and Stripes’ article reporting on the border that Turkey shares with the Levant is described with the same characteristic fright as many outlets are reserving for the situation at the US border with Mexico. Western officials are very concerned about this NATO march’s ability to secure a border designated as porous, as it has been used as a point of entry (and egress) for militants to join in arms the insurrection against the governments of Syria and Iraq. The border itself is described as a thousand kilometer expanse of rugged wilderness—with a few population centres straddling the shallow basin of the River Euphrates that marks the boundary. This area at the crossroads of several trade routes has held a pivotal position and hosted a variety of people throughout history, and one of those population centres is the ancient city of Gaziantep, which has over a million residents from all sorts of backgrounds and confessions and also hosts an outpost of the US military and a missile battery.

In antiquity, Gaziantep (Antep) was also the site at Zeugma (literally a yoke, as in a yoked ox) of the famed bridge of boats that spanned the river. Crossing here allows certain elements to enter the Mideast without detection, and according to some estimates, ten-thousand foreign volunteers have defected in this way. With an aside of humility, NATO leaders seem to be slowly recognising that sectarian strife is not a matter to be settled by Western meddling, though staunching the current of insurgents and materiel is important. That hint of humbleness becomes a bit more feigned in the next breath, with criticisms volleyed at the Turkish government for tolerating “jihadists” and generally provoking unrest in Syria. Tensions between Turkey and Syria presently stem from Turkey’s European aspirations, secular government and NATO-membership (which it once invoked against Syrian aggressions, threatening the bring the wrath of the whole organisation down on its neighbour) but the discord has older roots—significantly, Syrian rancor over the self-annexation of the Republic of Hatay (from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade) coinciding with the outbreak of WWII. The former sanjak seceded from French occupied Syria, proclaimed independence and voted to accede to Turkey, because of a greater ethnic kinship to that country. That vignette is told with a similar parallel construction to another current event. The concern, which is slowly garnering more attention as the border region is surreptitiously fortified and drones are on the beat, is over the so-called “returnees,” the veterans (gazi) of these battles coming back via the same route to Europe. Regardless of success or failure in establishing a Caliphate, Western leaders fear that the violence will spread, coming home to roost. What do you think? Has NATO been too neglectful of this front and possible breach?

culture vulture

Although the destruction of the cultural hertitage of Afghanistan, like the unique Greco-Buddhist statues at Bamiyan was commissioned because they were deemed idolatrous, rather than being spared due to liquidity like museum treasures that can be pawned off to a string of private collectors, the West at that time failed to heed an important warning and bought wholesale into a contrived fable.
Such a revisionist history is taking place for a second time in just the span of a few years in Iraq, as ISIS is storming through the land. Already many places holy to the Shi'ites have been obliterated and again Iraq's curators are seeing their galleries occupied by minions awaiting orders whether the graven images ought to be smashed or offered to the highest-bidder. Either way, the loss is terrible to contemplate, but the greater objective, which was already achieved in making the West believe that Afghanistan or any selected population is monolithic and was always so, is to rewrite history and to eliminate any stray fact that does not fulfill this prophesy. No nation is completely frank about its past and history never goes without bias, but to become completely intolerant of the formative and ancient past is an open invitation for repetition.

paved with good intentions

As the tenth anni- versary—and a decade on, it’s getting a little hard to remember that there was a time without unending struggle let alone envisioning it will come to an end but I think no one who was beating those drums wanted or expected the consequences wrought, of the US invasion of Iraq, author and former diplomat Peter van Buren is sharing his experiences and assessment of how the fronts and the genuine aspirations of Pax Americana demonstrated (gradually, reluctantly and still in denial for many) that the cavalry, the crusaders were themselves the greatest sources of strife and ruin for the region and beyond.
From potemkin humanitarian gestures that were detached from reality and insult to the basic needs of a war-torn population, stark disregard or ignorance of the counter-balances of power being sloppily removed, to squandered opportunities for promoting real concord—not to mention all the death and destruction in vain and demonizing a culture and religion to the whole of the Western civilization, van Buren tries to illustrate how the best intentions rang hollow, if not naïvely so.
One can argue that simple swagger and hectoring cannot account for all the misadventures and when things stop making sense, one ought to follow the money. That is an important consideration and I am sure there’s more than a kernel of greed behind a lot of the US overtures for freedom and democracy, but I do not believe it was ever the objective (well-meaning or not, which I tend to think on the levels that made the decisions) to fold the punished and enfeebled hand of the US out of the round of chaos they created. The entanglement—probably with roots reaching back several decades, is too big to bow out of gracefully and I am afraid that the withdrawal will be painfully stubborn for all involved.

year end fall-in or out with the old

It's hard to believe that Aught-Twelve is nearly upon us. 2011 was a wild ride globally and 2012 surely is successor to the these upheavals and redefined envelopes of comfort, with a few cushions for the more jarring happenstances, and will undoubtedly have surprising and serendipitous developments of its own.
The archivists and historians are tasked with giving a thoughtful and complete recollection of the year’s file, and here are a few events (by no means complete or exhaustive) that I thought were particularly noteworthy, from the vantage point of the calendar:

January – The revolutionary movement that would become known as the "Arab Spring" began in earnest with escalating civil unrest in Tunisia that lead to the abdication of the country’s long-time ruler. The movement grew and more tyrants were toppled—including Egypt and Libya, like the cavalcade of caricatures from Phil Collins' Land of Confusion music-video, making deposits, regional and elsewhere nervous—on either extreme, either charitable or more prone to crack-down on insurrection, and squarely saddling the freedom fighters with the responsibilities of democratic governance.

February – Suriname becomes the first country to formally recognize the state of Palestine, which is later in the year admitted as a member of UNESCO, causing the US to withhold its dues to the UN fund in protest. The Wikileaks diplomatic cables dump alleged accomplice, Bradley Manning, was found to have been held in solitary confinement for over seven months at the time, without being charged or provided with the opportunity to seek counsel--a development that was roundly criticized. IBM’s artificial intelligence Watson competed on the American quiz show Jeopardy! against some of the game’s top human contestants.

March – Japan's north east is decimated by a strong tsunami, driven by an equally strong and devastating earthquake. Damage and disruptions subsequently led to partial melt-downs of coastal nuclear reactor units. Sympathy and hysteria spread all over the world, and fears of radioactive poisoning and for the security of power-plants in general cause many people to reevaluate their nuclear programmes. Germany, as a result, brought many reactors off-line immediately and will execute a complete moratorium within the next two decades.

April – A monstrous storm system battered extensive parts of the US south and mid-west—all as part of the year that seemingly broke the weather, extensive flooding follows. The American military is deployed to the border with Mexico, partially in response to increased incidents of gang violence seeping into the US. NATO forces aid Libyan rebels in overthrowing Qaddhafi, cornering him and supporters to a few strongholds.

May – A team of US Special Forces locate and kill Osama bin Laden in a compound in Pakistan. The US dollar continues to lose value against global currencies as the repercussions of the burst housing market are still being realized. The EU, amid ongoing financial coming-clean and protests against austerity measures from Spain, Greece and Italy, approved a prophylactic bailout loan for Portugal, to staunch the panic. Drought conditions not seen in two decades cause widespread famine throughout Africa.  Queen Elizabeth II makes the first official visit of the monarchy to the Republic of Ireland since independence was declared. The latest in a series of predicted raptures did not occur.

June – Tension grows stemming from street protests in the UK, Spain and Greece over proposed economic austerity measures, including cuts in social services and raising the retirement age, meant to balance national budgets. Hundreds of extrasolar planets are being discovered, piquing the imagination and broadening scientific horizons. Unemployment and stagnant business growth continue to haunt the United States, as insults are swapped as aspirants are preparing for the presidential election session.

July – NASA and the US government retire the Space Shuttle programme, hoping that, laissez faire, private industry will close the science chasm that has left Russia and ESA scrambling to service. Norway was visited by a horrific domestic terrorist attack. There were bouts of courage and bravery in this tragedy, which was not perpetrated by the usual suspects, religious radicals that fit the profile of our stereotypes, but rather by a lone individual trying to punctuate his conservative and xenophobic ideas. Europe’s lurching towards more socially conservative platforms became a much discussed topic, in response to the earlier best-seller status of a tract assaulting integration by Thilo Sarrazin, the pronouncement by Angela Merkel herself that "multi-culti" has failed, and the killing spree by a band of neo-nazis that went under the radar and all but unnoticed for months among other emerging trends.

October – The UN announced that the world’s population has just surpassed seven billion people. Credit rating agencies continue their reign of terror, nudging markets this way and that with their verdicts on credit-worthiness. Italian Wikipedia shuts down in response to proposed changes in national copyright and fair-use laws that would severely curtail how the site could operate—prescient of a similar maneuver later in the US to denude the internet. The UK is gently sidling away from EU participation over fear-mongering of German overlordship, and this creep will express itself later with more heated exchanges and a repairing towards nationalism and protectionism.

November – Greece and Italy get new leadership over failed stewardship of their economies. Before resigning, Silvio Berlusconi releases a record album of himself crooning love songs. Thousands of students descend on London, angered over tuition hikes. Other Britons shudder over the first steps in privatization of public health care schemes. Police in New York forcibly clear Occupy Wall Street protesters after months of rallies, but the movement has spread to urban-centres world wide. Doctors and engineers develop a 3-D bone scaffold printer to help patients with broken bones in emergency situations.

December – After more than eight years of conflict, spilt blood and squandered treasure to no clear end, America quietly withdrew its last remaining troops (though their presence will be subsumed by a huge, enduring diplomatic corps and army of rent-a-cops) from Iraq, without fanfare or too much arrogance but also without lessons learnt. Under the toxic advisement of figures like Curveball, dissidents to tell the US government what it wanted to hear and Hussein exaggerating his complement of arms to appear tough in a tough neighbourhood, and general designs for empire, the coalition splintered and American spent its borrowed capital, and now is attempting to stare down the Iranians in the same way. Given all the past manipulation that the regimes of Iran have undergone at the hands of American and British interference and that there is no conclusive evidence that the country is on a war-footing, possibly just talk and posteuring, it seems like maybe 2012 will also have some re-runs.

ad lib

The situation in North Africa and the Mid-East is still explosive, and despite progress won there is a distinct and present risk of recidivist tyrannies and back-sliding into chaos. Some protesters’ honeymoons have lost their sheen as police are doing their job of civil policing and concessions, sometimes meaningful, betimes empty, are being offered by leaders of a whole range of vested and divested authority.

People have been inspired towards revolution, though no oppression is exercised in quite the same way—Libya is a very different place than Egypt or Tunisia or Algeria or Jordan or Iran or Iraq or Yemen or Saudi Arabia—and though steady-state strife, disenfranchisement or even civil war is influenced by macroeconomic factors and policy-decisions that have left a younger population disaffected and without many opportunities for a commensurate career, aside from daily staples and small freedoms. Many observers seemed spooked by talk of civil war and the subsequent disruption to oil supplies and overall destabilization that would make it more difficult for carpetbagger corporations to operate there.

I hope that outsiders are not just wishing this away, support tepid at best, to keep cheap oil pumping and promote continued expansion opportunities to export Western luxuries and fast food franchises and to ensure that the standard of living stays low and not too much of the treasure and resources are retained and used in these places. Just like it is billed as a rarity to witness a revolt that was not under the ægis of the forces that spread freedom and democracy in the world, it is likewise billed as unusual to see a civil war starting, as most assume such regional conflicts have always been, some warring tribes in lands with borders jimmied out arbitrarily when the colonial powers moved on to pure mercantilism—and what of that blood and treasure in a decade not so well invested in Iraq as protests begin in Baghdad. Years of war and occupation have left the people with precious little left to loose, and makes the chance ripe to regain and reclaim what was once theirs without meddling, direct or tangential.

al Kaboom

The last US military combat brigade left Iraqi territory for Kuwait, primed to hand over security to native forces.  It seems strange how this day was recorded and perhaps how it will be remembered.  There was mention but secondary and no plays made for symbolism, though I am sure that there were plenty of regrets and remorse for those, both Iraqis and soldiers that were not able to see this day and for whom some measure of reconciliation came too late.  There was no walking back of protests, neither relief, jubulation nor latent anger expressed.  I don't know what the mood and sentiment was really when America withdrew from Vietnam or Korea but do not suspect that the day, symbolic or otherwise, passed with no recognition.  Following the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime, US bankster types helped redesign the dinar, which had been worth the equivalent of four US dollars prior to Iraq-Attacky I, and had been amazed since then that the Tower of Babel was portrayed on their money.  I am glad to have since learned that it is the Great Mosque of Samarra represented there, which was all but turned with skirmishes and US soldiers using the vantage point as an observation post.  Of course, I was convinced also that the elusive weapons of mass destruction absolutely had to be the Ark of the Covenant or the Leviathan.  I hope the people of Iraq can prosper because of or despite of the seven years of war and occupation.  Regardless of the spin and kangaroo court of the US, it was Iraqis that found Hussein and turned him over to authorities, wihout even broaching the question of whether it all was a legitimate aggression since even the claims later recanted could be attributed to everyone's want and need to appear tough and secure and collected to his neighbours and to his meddlers.  It wasn't the US involvement in Cambodia that affected change.  Rather, it was their surrender from Vietnam that allowed Vietnam to press for reform and offer assistance.