A Meaningless Title

So, which is the most terrifying part of this story? A, Nuclear-armed Burma full stop, B, Nuclear-armed Burma leading to a greater SE-Asian Arms Race, or C, That Burma's government has apparently looked at North Korea and said "Yes! That's what we should be more like!"

Unrelated - why is the American media the only western news source that refers to Burma purely as Myanmar? Everyone else either refuses to accept the name change, or always refers to the country as 'Myanmar, formerly Burma" or some variant...

So, is there any reason Obama shouldn't be labeled a genocide denier? Or is he not that bad, because he doesn't actually believe there wasn't an Armenian Genocide, he just cynically suppresses recognition of it for political reasons?

Nauru has become the fourth country to recognise the Republic of Abkhazia, and is apparently considering extending recognition to South Ossetia.

Presumably Nauru is hoping to get some sort of benifit from Russia in exchange for recognising the ex-Georgian republics - though I suspect any goodwill from Russia will be canceled out by Nauru's previous recognition of Kosovo.

Nauru is also one of the few countries to recognise Taiwan as the Republic of China over the People's Republic, so maybe they just like recognising largely unrecognised states.

So, hey, remember back before the Iraq invasion how British intelligance was claiming that Iraq had WMDs that could be launched within fourty-five minutes? Well, it's now come out where they got that nugget of information from:



Well, a taxi driver! Who could be skeptical of such a reliable source as that? As we all know, taxi drivers are the most trusted sources of information in modern society, renowned for their reliabilty and accuracy! One can assume other valuable intel that somehow didn't make it into MI6's report included evidence that immigrants should all go back where they came from, and a list of 'shortcuts' to every major landmark that inexplicably take longer than the normal route. The humanitarian case for the invasion was presumably also bolsterd by this MI6's source's long explanation of "You know what the problem with this country is, mate?"

Really, how could they have possibly known a taxi driver's second hand information could be unreliable? Who could have guessed?

Glad to see al-Qaida moderating their message somewhat, from "Death to the West!" to "Death to the West... except Kiel!"

Also nice to see one of their spokesmen deciding to abandon the boring old robes and Islamic banner motif in favor of a natty suit and red curtain.

Anyone got any idea what the significance of Kiel is?

So, things seem to have gotten very interesting in the last few days. It seems to me either the government has realised just how much they miscalculated – or, more likely, that the Guardian Council was never entirely sold on rigging the election in the first place. If they’d really wanted to keep Mousavi from winning, they’d have blocked him from running months ago – the sheer sloppiness of the official election results strongly implies the decision to alter the results was a last minute decision, one I think they’re clearly regretting now… of course, at this point, a recount isn’t going to have any more legitimacy than the original results.

On the plus side, at least they seem to have started to try to dig themselves out of the hole they made for themselves rather than just sending in the army, and the protesters don’t seem likely to give in any time soon. Let’s hope they’ll be able to swallow their pride and announce a new run-off election or something, rather than trying to stand by an Ahmadinejad victory – if not, this could get uglier…

Interesting that Ahmadinejad is in Russia now – just trying to make it look like things have returned to normal, or did someone with a little common sense realise he’s really not a voice of reason or likely to calm things down and decided it’d be best if he left the country for a little while?

One thing that annoys me about all this is that I may be forced to reconsider my strongly held belief that Twitter is an utterly useless technology…

Good luck again to the people of Iran, and let’s all hope this ends without any further bloodshed.

So, hey, how about that Iranian election? No, seriously, what’s going on? The news here doesn’t seem to consider it a particularly big story – I mean, hey, it’s not an American election or anything – and I’m not finding many good sources on what’s going on.

The reported total of sixty-three percent for Ahmadinejad seems… unlikely to be legitimate. If it had gone to a run-off and he’d won a slight majority then, I might have bought it, but all the previous polls had indicated, if not a defeat for the incumbent, at the very least a very close election. Why are regimes that fake election results so bad at producing plausible fake results?

EDIT: And is it just me, or has the international community's response been... well, calling it tepid would be probably overstating its strength. Granted, I understand that the US or other countries openly supporting the opposition will probably not help things - but it's not like any one's ever been particularly slow to condemn the Iranian government before...

Good on the Iranians protesting in Tehran and elsewhere, and good luck. Let's hope this doesn't end in bloodshed...

It looks like the worst of the situation is over; Georgia has withdrawn from South Ossetia, and the Russian government is apparently agreeing to EU mediation and have halted their advance. I imagine we’ll see something of a return to the status quo, with Georgia being forced to agree not to intervene in Ossetia or Abkhazia again, but with nether region gaining official independence. Meanwhile, the western media seems to have actually managed to work out what’s going on, and a few sources have actually realised the conflict might merit a higher level of attention than the Olympics…

It is interesting to notice that the Georgian government is clearly much more media-savvy than the Russians. President Saakashvili has been pretty clearly playing to the western media since the conflict started, making constant speeches in English in which he paints Georgia as a freedom loving democracy, claims that Georgia is under attack because the Russians hate their freedom, argues that the Russians won’t stop at Georgia, they’ll go after the rest of Europe unless they’re stopped, that the line must be drawn here, etc, etc. Even when he’s touring the front lines, he’s still speaking English; pretty much all of his statements have as their intended audience westerners, and specifically Americans. Note also how often Saakashvili is shown speaking in front of a backdrop of Georgian and EU flags; never mind that Georgia isn’t part of the EU, isn’t even close to gaining EU membership – he wants people to make a subconscious connection, encouraging people unfamiliar with the area or the situation to believe that Russia has invaded the EU itself…

In contrast, the Russian government has made very little effort to engage foreign audiences. In part, I suspect this is because unlike Saakashvili, none of the senior members of the Russian government are particularly fluent in English, so that puts them at a media disadvantage in the west. But also it’s cultural – the Russian government sees itself as a global power that doesn’t need the approval of foreigners to justify their actions. I imagine that the Russian government is making great efforts to sell the intervention in South Ossetia to the public – but all their statements are directed at an internal audience, at the Russian people themselves. This is not a specific criticism of the Russian government – how often does the US bother to justify its actions to, say, European audiences?

The big question, of course, is just what the hell was Saakashvili thinking? Was he expecting the threat of western and NATO intervention would stay the Russians hand? Or did he just think the Georgian army would be able to occupy South Ossetia fast enough that the Russians would be unable to quickly dislodge them? Obviously, he thought that the west would prove more supportive – probably one of the few good things to come out of this mess is that it will kill all possibility of Georgia joining NATO. Hint to the US – countries with long term secessionist movements and border disputes may not be the sort of partners you want in your alliance… especially if you’re not willing to back them in those areas…

But I think there’s a deeper cultural issue that led Saakashvili to think the western powers would support him. See, Georgians tend think of Georgia as an integral part of Europe. The problem is western Europeans tend not to agree. So I imagine that at the back of Saaksahvili’s mind, he puts Georgia in the same category as Poland or Germany or France, and assumes that NATO would respond to a Russian incursion in Georgia the same way they would to Russian incursions in any other European nation. The problem, which I imagine he was consciously aware of but never really subconsciously believed, is that western Europeans don’t put Georgia in that category – they lump it in with Azerbaijan or Kazakhstan or Afghanistan – not that important, not that close, and not really Our Sort of People. Even with his public relations offensive, and even with a lazy media taking his interpretation as gospel – it’s still not really close enough to home for western audiences to really get too worked up about.