Linkliste unbehandelter Themen

Politics: 

Muammar el-Qaddafi was killed yesterday. Al Jazeera has an obituary highlighting his early political ideology. His death will probably put an end to NATO's engagement. Still remaining "under siege" from widespread protests in their countries are Bashar al-Assad of Syria and Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen. Michael Hastings wrote a detail report about the decision-making that lead to the decision to intervene in Libya - Inside Obama's War Room. 

The White House has no illusions about the risks that remain in Libya: Even if the rebels manage to make a successful transition to democracy, the country could still be roiled by extremist jihadists or other Islamic factions hostile to the United States. "Qaddafi is going to fall eventually," a senior administration official told me shortly before the regime collapsed. "The question is: What demons are waiting that we don't yet know about?" But whatever demons lie ahead in Libya, America, for once, will not be solely responsible for having unleashed them – or for exorcising them.

President Obama also announced today a complete withdrawal of US troops from Iraq - “After nearly nine years, America’s war in Iraq will be over".

Last week, Obama also announced that he had ordered the deployment of 100 armed military advisers "to help regional forces combat the Lord’s Resistance Army, a notorious renegade group that has terrorized villagers in at least four countries with marauding bands that kill, rape, maim and kidnap with impunity." The LRA emerged from an rebellion against the Ugandan government and has since been active both in Sudan and in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and is responsible for massacres, rapes and the brutal recruitment of child soldiers. Or, as Rush Limbaugh put it, they are good Christians fighting against Muslims in Sudan (the article on boingboing links to this Human Rights Watch report on one of the LRA's massacres in DR Congo). 

Soldiers of the Al-Shabaab militia in Somalia might have killed more than 70 soldiers of the African Union currently employed in the region (the AU denies the claims). Kenyan soldiers moved into the territory after militia kidnapped two Spanish employees working for Doctors Without Borders. 

Herman Cain is the current frontrunner for the Republican candidacy! Good thing that foreign policy hasn't come up at all so far, even though that should be fun. 

Pop Culture: 

The Guardian has an interview with director Gus van Sant about his current movie Restless. 

Spin asks (and photographs) Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen about Rock's Great Clichés. "If you want to imagine a Bieber fan, you can just imagine Fred and me on a normal day." The second season of Portlandia will start airing in January 2012. 

Also, if you're not watching The Fades, DO IT NOW! The season finale airs next Wednesday and it hasn't been renewed. YET. Let us just say that it is currently battling Game of Thrones for best new show in my head and there is a chance that it might win.