2011 Headcount - including the late Dear Leader:

• Than Shwe (Burma): retired (maybe)
• Ben Ali (Tunisia): deposed
• Hosni Mubarak (Egypt): arrested
• Fidel Castro (Cuba): retired (medical)
• Muammar Gaddafi (Libya): killed while resisting revolution

A lot has happened in Libya in the past few weeks, culminating with this weekend's push into Tripoli. A lot that seemed clear a month ago is no longer clear, and a lot that seemed impossible is no longer impossible ( Read more... )

If you've got some goodwill to spare today, Tropical Storm Emily is hovering within 100 kilometers of Port-au-Prince, Haiti right now, a city where over 600,000 people are still living in tents. Currently it looks like the heart of the storm will pass slightly west of the main city, but even so a possibly devastating near miss is about to hit one ( Read more... )

And to keep with my habit of posting commentary on news about violence roundup of weird, potentially destructive news from the past [arbitrary number] of weeks. This time though, in keeping with the media's habit of ignoring serious topics in favor of celebrities, I'm ignoring serious wars all over the world to give the roundup from Southeast Asia ( Read more... )

Since this journal normally looks more like a news and politics blog then anything else, here are some updates from the last month for things I'm watching that could go boom just to prove that if I've been replaced by a doppelganger, he's at least consistent.

( The World Keeps Going Faster )

Coup count for 2010: -1 ( Read more... )

Coup count for 2010: +2

Well, we haven't had one since February, so I thought we might be safe, but there now appears to be a serious coup in progress in Madagascar. This should hardly be unexpected, since Madagascar has been in the throes of a political and economic mess for some time, and the referendum probably didn't help. Nobody knows ( Read more... )

Coup count for 2010: +1

Since it overthrew a scummy regime, and since it happened in inaccessible Niger, don't expect anything serious anytime soon.

And speaking of people making pacts "with the devil"...

Former Liberian dictator Charles Taylor, speaking during his trial for war crimes at The Hague, decided he had nothing to lose, and threw Pat Robertson (as in, American televangelist, Haiti-made-a-deal-with-the-devil Pat Robertson) under a bus last week. Taylor, who is guilty as hell of ( Read more... )

Remember Moussa Dadis Camara? He managed to get himself in trouble lately by, oh, being responsible for the rape and/or murder of hundreds of people, which is the sort of thing that slips out of the media's eye.

Of course, that's not the way he tells it.

( Camara's Day in Court )