Whereas coup culture in a lot of countries is a thing of the past (e.g., Syria ain’t had a coup in a few decades) some countries like to kick it old skool, harking back to when it seemed like there was a coup-a-week somewhere in the world. While Mauritania isn’t Fiji, they are keeping the tradition of pointless coups alive and well in the Arab world. Events are still unfolding, but it looks like the venerable Mauritanian army has taken over from the government that was democratically elected in 2007, the country’s first. Let’s hope this ends well and with no bloodshed.
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Let’s hope this ends well and with no bloodshed.
*Eyeroll
Is there an even less significant story you could post about? I’ll give you a day to find it. Alright, two days.
Posted by Mitch | August 6, 2008, 2:11 pmSeriously dude, can you limit your topics to geographic locales Mitch has actually heard of?
Posted by Mohammad | August 7, 2008, 7:38 amSince Nimr couldn’t match this most obscure post, I’ve taken it upon myself to issue the First Edition of The Nimr Report (TNR).
TNR will be issued whenever Nimr posts on an obscure, irrelevant topic, with the aim of educating him, and the rest of Kabob, on how to spot stories relevant to at least 0.0001% of humanity.
Today’s TNR is all about Racism. That’s right, boys and girls, a favorite topic for the KabobCrew and its staunch Kabob Comments Resistance Committees (including myself, Firouz, PC, Mitch, Sara, Roy and… the incorrigible Anonymous).
Specifically, the subject at hand is the UN Conference on Racism, aka Durban II. We have a report from Joel Brinkley, a former Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign correspondent for The New York Times and now a professor of journalism at Stanford University:
I confess I had forgotten about the U.N. World Conference against Racism, in Durban, South Africa, on Sept. 8, 2001. It turned so quickly into a racist, anti-Semitic hate-fest that Secretary of State Colin Powell stood up and walked out.
The indignant commentary was just getting started when the Sept. 11 attacks swept the coverage away. The event was largely forgotten.
I bring it up now because they’re at it again. The United Nations has scheduled a sequel, dubbed Durban II, to take place in Geneva, Switzerland, next spring. (This time, Durban’s city fathers refused to host it.) And if the 2001 event proved to be an embarrassment for the United Nations and the world, the next one promises to be a shameful travesty that will light up cable news, late-night TV talk shows and multi-media blogs for weeks.
Worse, the event is certain to cleave an even deeper divide between the Arab states and the rest of the world. It’s pre-ordained.
…continue reading.
This concludes the First Edition of The Nimr Report.
Posted by Firouz | August 8, 2008, 3:18 pm