The leader of the Thai opposition Abhisit Vejjajiva won today selection in the Thai Parliament as Thailand’s next Prime Minister ending seven years of control by forces loyal to exiled and disgraced former prime minster Thaksin Shinawatra. The vote went 235-198 for Mr. Abhisit who also becomes at 44 the youngest Prime Minister in Thailand’s history. The selection of Mr. Abhisit is seen a triumph for the interests of urban Thailand and a swipe at the corruption of Mr. Thaksin.

From the New York Times:

The leader of the opposition Democrat Party, Abhisit Vejjajiva, won enough votes in Parliament on Monday to become Thailand’s next prime minister.

Mr. Abhisit’s victory, by a vote of 235-198, ended a seven-year dominance of electoral politics by parties loyal to the former prime minster, Thaksin Shinawatra.

Mr. Abhisit, who formed a coalition with some of his most persistent political enemies, is an Oxford-educated politician who at 44 is set to become the youngest prime minister Thailand has had.

The parliamentary vote followed the end of months of protests against pro-Thaksin parties that culminated in a weeklong shutdown of Bangkok’s two airports.

The protests ended Dec. 3, after a Thai court disbanded the governing party for fraud in the 2007 election that brought it to power.

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This week, Al Jazeera’s Inside Iraq programme looks at Iran’s nuclear ambitions. One thing often missed is that Iran’s oil production peaked in 1974 and has been declining ever since. So it’s clear that Iran does have an energy problem to solve. The question in my mind isn’t that Iran doesn’t require nuclear power, it does, but can it be trusted with its use for peaceful purposes given the character of its regime?

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In the Ugandan civil war, most of the victims and perpetrators of violence are children. North Uganda has been devastated by the LRA, the Lord’s Resistance Army. The LRA’s standard initiation involves recruiting children, after torturing and executing their parents, and then training them to become killers. Thousands of children have been turned into soldiers or sex slaves. The LRA wants to gain control over all of Uganda and then implement a government ruled by the Ten Commandments. For the moment their commandments are rather more hellish. One of their most recent and esoteric edicts has been against the riding of bicycles – anyone caught doing so has both their feet cut off on the spot. One missionary school fell prey to the LRA in the dead of night. Working all night, the rebels chiselled right through the dormitory walls. They abducted the 130 girls inside. A brave nun chased them through the night and begged the LRA Commander to give back the girls. He gave most back, but kept 30. Today their beds are empty, and their parents beg Musseveni to negotiate with the LRA for their return from camps in neighbouring Sudan. But Musseveni tells us his army will defeat the LRA in war, then the abductions will stop. Those who do escape the LRA’s clutches are encouraged to dance or act their horror out. 10 year old Francis was asked to stab a woman as others beat her up, or be shot himself. “We left her dead, holding her baby.” One of those who was forced to abduct children into the LRA says he himself killed 120 people.

More video on the LRA from Journeyman Pictures.

With that introduction, a joint offensive has been launched against the LRA.

“The armed forces of Uganda (UPDF), DRC (FARDC) and Southern Sudan (SPLA) in a joint intelligence-led military operation, this morning the 14th of December 2008 launched an attack on LRA terrorists of Joseph Kony in the Garamba forests of the Democratic Republic of Congo,” the three nations’ military intelligence chiefs said in a joint statement.

In case you missed it the SPLA of the Southern Sudan, a rebel group attempting to establish a breakaway country in the southern Sudan, has entered into a formal military alliance with the governments of Uganda and the DR Congo. Unusual to say the least but necessary. The LRA has been an unholy terror for far too long.

More from Reuters under the fold.

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The riots in Greece, now entering their second week, are interesting on various levels. One, it has been quite some time since anarchists played such a critical role in such widespread rioting. While anarchist elements have been present in riots and protests from Seattle to Genoa (largely against the setting of G-8 and WTO meetings), the riots in Athens seem to have been largely led by anarchists. Not that this is that surprising since anarchism has strong roots in Greece and the movement is largely intertwined with the Greek student movement but these riots are a significant departure in terms of scope and duration from any in recent memory. Two, Greek politics remain an uneasy truce between the right and the left. It seems that wounds of the Greek Civil War (1946-1949) and the Greek coup of 1973 remain open and bitter. Three, there also seems to be anti-globalization current as Greece struggles through a fiscal crisis.

More reading on Greece’s troubles. The first offering from the left EuroTrib blog is perhaps the clearest most succinct overview of the riots besetting Greece.

Greek Riots
By Talos in the European Tribune.

By all accounts Alexis Grigoropoulos was an unlikely martyr. A “good kid”, top student and nice with friends, he was born into relative upper middle class privilege and wealth. He attended good private schools. His mother and father were successful professionals. He didn’t hang out in Exarchia regularly, and all his friends agree that he wasn’t some sort of anarchist. A progressive kid, sure, but not someone who habitually clashes with the police.

He seems to have been, however, in the wrong place, the wrong time and he didn’t realize the “cops” who are patrolling Exarchia, meant deadly business – more like rival gang members than cops. This was about to cost him his life and produce the most violent extensive and persistent rioting the country has ever seen in peacetime, since the Polytechnic uprising against the Junta in 1973.

So it started: like something seen ten times daily in the neighborhood. The “anarchist heartland” of Athens, the Mecca of local protest. A no-go area for the police, supposedly, despite the fact that the neighbourhood has been frequently overrun by the authorities. It is a weird kind of lawlessness: it was, and probably still is, the safest neighborhood say, for a woman to walk alone at night (in a generally safe city, comparatively speaking).

Because of the frequent skirmishes with various anarchist and anti-authoritarian groups (understand that the majority aren’t Wobbly activists, nor Kropotkin scholars – they are mostly teenagers with a very broad and possibly slanted idea of what anarchism is: they don’t like cops mostly) the cops send the “worst” kind of police: untrained ramboid “special guards”.

Two of those Special Guards were on patrol Saturday night. Witnesses state that they were jeered when passing by Exarchia square by a group of kids. Water-bottles were possibly thrown at the patrol car. The two officers left, they parked their car a couple of blocks away, they notified a squad of riot police that were in the area, and they proceeded to the square. There they start threatening and swearing at the group of kids – quite possibly (though this is still murky AFAIK) a different or larger group of kids – from a distance of possibly twenty meters. The kids swear back. It’s like a street quarrel, only one side is armed and dangerous. No side moves towards the other. There are dozens of witnesses to all of this because the area is packed with cafes and shops. The police officer by all eyewitness accounts raises his gun, aims and shoots at a figure from the other side. he shoots at Alexandros Grigoropoulos, 15, not an “Exarchia regular”, who dropped by that day to meet some friends. The bullet hits the kid in the heart. He drops. Friends think he slipped and try to pick him up. They realize he’s dead. The news spreads like wildfire.

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Singapore’s economy is heavily dependent on strong exports of electronics, pharmaceuticals and oil services. The other pillar of the Singaporean economy is the country’s financial sector. While the economy grew 7.5% in 2007, 2008 has been far different with the country entering a recession early in the year.

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From the Associated Press:

On an Iraq trip shrouded in secrecy and dissent, President George W. Bush on Sunday hailed progress in the unpopular war that defines his presidency and got a size-10 reminder of opposition to his policies when a man hurled shoes at him during a news conference.

“This is the end!” shouted the man, later identified as Muntadar al-Zeidi, a correspondent for Al-Baghdadia television, an Iraqi-owned station based in Cairo, Egypt.

Bush ducked both shoes as they whizzed past his head and landed with a thud against the wall behind him.

“All I can report,” Bush joked of the incident, “is a size 10.”

The U.S. president visited the Iraqi capital just 37 days before he hands the war off to President-elect Barack Obama, who has pledged to end it. The president wanted to highlight a drop in violence in a nation still riven by ethnic strife and to celebrate a recent U.S.-Iraq security agreement, which calls for U.S. troops to withdraw from Iraq by the end of 2011.

“There is still more work to be done,” Bush said after his meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, adding that the agreement puts Iraq on solid footing.

“The war is not over,” Bush said, adding that “it is decisively on it’s way to being won.”

It was at that point the journalist stood up and threw his shoe. Bush ducked, and it narrowly missed his head. The second shoe came quickly, and Bush ducked again while several Iraqis grabbed the man and dragged him to the floor.

In Iraqi culture, throwing shoes at someone is a sign of contempt. Iraqis whacked a statue of Saddam Hussein with their shoes after U.S. marines toppled it to the ground after the 2003 invasion.

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The states have finished their tallies and have certified their results. It becomes official tomorrow when the Electoral College meets to elect Barack Obama the 44th President of the United States. All told, the number of voters increased 7.37% in the United States in the 2008 Presidential election over 2004. More than 131 million people voted this time around, the most ever for a Presidential election, compared to a little more than the 122 million who voted in 2004. Overall, 61.6% of the nation’s eligible voters turned out to cast their ballots. That’s the highest turnout rate since 1968, when Republican Richard M. Nixon defeated Democrat Hubert Humphrey and native son George Wallace. Four years ago in the Bush-Kerry race, 60.1% of those eligible voted.

As a measure of comparison, the electoral turnout rate in Spain’s March Parliamentary elections (9-M) was just under 75% (though only 53% voted in the Basque Country) and 59.1% in Canada’s recent election. In Canada, the highest voter turnout was in Prince Edward Island., where 69.5% of registered voters cast ballots. The lowest turnout was in Newfoundland and Labrador, where just 48.1% of registered voters took part.

Here are some other highlights:

– Early voting hit a new high, with about 41 million people — or more than 31 percent — voting before Election Day, either by mail or at designated sites, according to returns compiled by The Associated Press. Early voting accounted for 22 percent of the votes cast in 2004.

– Voter turnout increased substantially in newly competitive states such as Virginia, Indiana and North Carolina, which all went for Obama after decades of favoring Republican presidential candidates. Turnout also increased in some Republican states with large black populations, such as Mississippi, South Carolina and Georgia.

– North Carolina, which had competitive elections for president, governor and Senate, had the biggest increase in turnout, from 57.8% in 2004 to 65.8% this year. Obama won North Carolina by 14,177 votes, out of more than 4.3 million cast. Safe to say, without that turnout it’s unlikely Obama would have carried North Carolina.

– Minnesota, with a competitive Senate race that still hasn’t been decided, had the highest turnout rate, even though it dropped slightly, to 77.8 percent. It was followed by Wisconsin, Maine, New Hampshire and Iowa.

– West Virginia and Hawaii tied for the lowest turnout rate, at 50.6 percent. Arkansas, Utah and Texas came close.

– In all, the turnout rate increased in 33 states and the District of Columbia.

– Turnout dropped in some states that did not have competitive presidential contests, such as Utah and Oregon. Oregon had been a battleground in previous presidential elections and the state had a competitive Senate race.

More from the New York Times.

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