Foreign Affairs

AFP: November 15, 2005 JOHANNESBURG — A giant underwater cable network connecting Africa to Europe and Asia provides Internet access to the planet’s poorest continent but only a handful of countries seem to be enjoying its benefits. The 28,000-kilometer (17,500-mile) optical fiber cable, named SAT-3/WASC/SAFE, brings the Internet to Africa but seems to be giving an unfair advantage to coastal countries. Its first segment, in the Atlantic Ocean, leaves Portugal and goes down to the Cape in South Africa. In…

For those of you who know me, you know that I’m obsessed with geographic oddities around the world. One of my favorites is Nauru, a tiny island in the South Pacific (Population: 13,000) that entered into a Faustian tale of strip mining itself into oblivion during the bulk of the 20th century. It was “rescued” through a huge influx of cash by the Australian government when they built a detention center on the island, one of the largest icons of…

Slate: Since high school, I’ve been a student in three very different environments—Afghanistan, where I’ve been spending my summers; Diablo Valley College, a community college in Pleasant Hill, Calif., about 20 minutes from my home in Concord, Calif. (where I spent most of my life); and Yale, where I transferred this semester as a junior majoring in economics. So, when the professor asked who you shouldn’t mess with, I immediately thought of something I saw in the summer of 2002.…

1) From the WTF!?!? Department: NYT: WASHINGTON, Nov. 10 – The Senate voted Thursday to strip captured “enemy combatants” at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, of the principal legal tool given to them last year by the Supreme Court when it allowed them to challenge their detentions in United States courts. 2) From the Good Explainer Department: NYT: PARIS, Nov. 10 – Semou Diouf, holding a pipe in one hand and a cigarette in the other, stood amid the noisy games of…

E&P, via MeFi: Q I’d like you to clear up, once and for all, the ambiguity about torture. Can we get a straight answer? The President says we don’t do torture, but Cheney — MR. McCLELLAN: That’s about as straight as it can be. Q Yes, but Cheney has gone to the Senate and asked for an exemption on — MR. McCLELLAN: No, he has not. Are you claiming he’s asked for an exemption on torture? No, that’s — Q…

Marjane Satrapi (of Persepolis fame), has joined the NYT as an online cartoonist/columnist, drawing mini vertical comics for the web. They’re pretty damned sweet. Unfortunately, you have to be part of the TimesSelect thing to see them.

Harper’s: Posted on Monday, November 7, 2005. All text is verbatim from senior Bush Administration officials and advisers. In places, tenses have been changed for clarity. Originally from Harper’s Magazine, October 2003. By Sam Smith. Sources Once again, we were defending both ourselves and the safety and survival of civilization itself. September 11 signaled the arrival of an entirely different era. We faced perils we had never thought about, perils we had never seen before. For decades, terrorists had waged…

Hats off to my co-worker Curt Poff and my editor Jason Snell for telling me about Sealand. The Principality of Sealand is a micronation (a self-declared, unrecognised state-like entity) that claims as its territory Roughs Tower as well as territorial waters in a twelve nautical mile radius. Roughs Tower is a former Maunsell Sea Fort located in the North Sea six miles (10 km) off the coast of Essex, United Kingdom, at 51° 53′ 40″ N, 1° 28′ 57″ E.…

AP: This tiny Baltic republic is breaking new ground in digital democracy. This week, the country nicknamed “e-Stonia” because of its tech-savvy population became the first country in the world to hold an election allowing voters nationwide to cast ballots over the Internet. Less than 10,000 people, or 1 percent of registered voters, participated online in elections for mayors and city councils across the country, but officials hailed the experiment held Monday to Wednesday as a success. “Everything has gone…

Slate: Even if that were so, why would anybody assume that she is the one to do the face-to-face spinning? Wouldn’t it be better to find someone who—oh, I don’t know—speaks the language, knows the culture, lived there for a while, was maybe born there? Put the shoe on the other foot. Let’s say some Muslim leader wanted to improve Americans’ image of Islam. It’s doubtful that he would send as his emissary a woman in a black chador who…