Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Your Morning News 6.25.08
Posted by Josh in Afghanistan, Dancing, Iraq, Justice Department, Tom Friedman, zimbabwe
Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.
Sometimes the Morning News gets me a little down and I worry that I am bumming people out with tales of death and destruction. Because of that, I thought I would preface today’s news with this video because as Jeff put it, “as fucked up as the world may seem, you can still go to the DMZ and dance like a goofball.”
While insurgent activity in Iraq is declining, Afghanistan has seen a 40% increase in attacks over the last several months. Though the actual number of casualties is still relatively small, it is a tough problem for the US to address since there aren’t really any troops left. In related news, the Army has made the official flightpath out of Baghdad for returning soldiers include a brief 4-month layover in Kandahar.
The Zimbabwe runoff election is scheduled to be held this Friday. Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai (who won the initial election, but not by enough to prevent a runoff), has dropped out of the race and sought refuge in a foreign embassy at the request of his supporters. President Robert Mugabe has led a campaign or terror, including thousands of beatings and dozens of murders of opposition activists. Other South African leaders are trying to decide what they want to do in advance of the election, but no matter what they do it is likely at this point that Mugabe will win. All of this is set against the backdrop of a catastrophic economic situation. The inflation rate is in the millions (compared to the US inflation rate, which at around 3% is considered kind of high). A single U.S. dollar is now worth 14 billion Zimbabwean dollars on the black market.
The Wall Street Journal continues its attempt to remake itself as the kind of paper that breaks marquee stories. They are reporting that the Justice Department didn’t hire many low-level officials and interns because they had associations with Democratic or liberal groups. The report that unearthed this information was produced by the investigation into the firing of several U.S. attorneys for political reasons. I can actually see the rational for replacing high-level attorneys or staffers with people in the same party, but to deny a kid who applied for the “Justice Honors and Summer Law Intern” programs? That is just petty.
Tom Friedman continues to exist. I can’t tell if this column is insightful or racist.
