In The World Where You Live
01 Dec Edition

What's happening outside the confined media borders of the U.S. today? Let's take a spin 'round the globe, starting with... the ever-splintering Iraq. First, some internal turmoil:

LATimes - Kurdish Oil Deal Shocks Iraq's Political Leaders
A controversial oil exploration deal between Iraq's autonomy-minded Kurds and a Norwegian company got underway this week without the approval of the central government here, raising a potentially explosive issue at a time of heightened ethnic and sectarian tensions.

The Kurdistan Democratic Party, which controls a portion of the semiautonomous Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq, last year quietly signed a deal with Norway's DNO to drill for oil near the border city of Zakho. Iraqi and company officials describe the agreement as the first involving new exploration in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.
[...]
In Baghdad, political leaders on Wednesday reacted to the deal with astonishment.

"We need to figure out if this is allowed in the constitution," said Adnan Ali Kadhimi, an advisor to Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari. "Nobody has mentioned it. It has not come up among the government ministers' council. It has not been on their agenda."

The start of drilling, called "spudding" in the oil business, is sure to be worrisome to Iraq's Sunni Arab minority. They fear a disintegration of Iraq into separate ethnic and religious cantons if regions begin to cut energy deals with foreign companies and governments. Sunnis are concentrated in Iraq's most oil-poor region.

Next, turmoil within the Coalition of the Willing:

AP (MyWay.com - Two U.S. Allies Leaving Iraq, More May Go
Two of America's allies in Iraq are withdrawing forces this month and a half-dozen others are debating possible pullouts or reductions, increasing pressure on Washington as calls mount to bring home U.S. troops.

Bulgaria and Ukraine will begin withdrawing their combined 1,250 troops by mid-December. If Australia, Britain, Italy, Japan, Poland and South Korea reduce or recall their personnel, more than half of the non-American forces in Iraq could be gone by next summer.
[...]
Although the nearly 160,000-member U.S. force in Iraq dwarfs the second-largest contingent - Britain's 8,000 in Iraq and 2,000 elsewhere in the Gulf region - its support has shrunk substantially.

In the months after the March 2003 invasion, the multinational force numbered about 300,000 soldiers from 38 countries. That figure is now just under 24,000 mostly non-combat personnel from 27 countries. The coalition has steadily unraveled as the death toll rises and angry publics clamor for troops to leave.

In the spring, the Netherlands had 1,400 troops in Iraq. Today, there are 19, including a lone Dutch soldier in Baghdad.

Ukraine's remaining 876 troops in Iraq are due home by Dec. 31, fulfilling a campaign pledge by President Viktor Yushchenko. Bulgaria is pulling out its 380 troops after Dec. 15 parliamentary elections, Defense Minister Veselin Bliznakov said.

How about some culture war news--but not from the US. Here are two articles on the report of South Africa's high court finding in favor of legalizing gay marriage:

BBC
South Africa's highest court has ruled in favour of same-sex marriages, which are banned under current legislation.

The Constitutional Court ordered that parliament amend marriage laws to allow gay weddings within a year.
[...]
Keketso Maema, a lawyer for the Lesbian and Gay Equality project, said he was disappointed that the Constitutional Court did not order the immediate legalisation of gay marriages.

"It's a bit disappointing. It feels like it's one step forward and still another one step backwards," he told Reuters news agency.

Church groups in South Africa have argued that the issue should be put to a referendum, and say that most South Africans would oppose the legalisation of gay marriages.

South Africa's constitution - introduced in 1996 - was the first in the world specifically to outlaw discrimination on the grounds of sexual preference.

WaPo
Gay activists expressed hope that the ruling would lessen the violence and ridicule they say are common in South Africa despite a clause in the nation's constitution prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation. Rape of lesbians by men claiming they can "cure" their attraction to women are also common, gay and lesbian leaders said.

"It's really, really difficult to be black and a lesbian in South Africa," said Thuli Madi, head of Behind the Mask, a Web-based magazine focused on gay life and issues. "As a woman, you are constantly harassed by the males in your community."

Elsewhere in Africa, attitudes toward homosexuality are more severe. Gay and lesbian sex is illegal on most of the continent, with punishments in some cases including the death penalty. Many religious and political leaders call homosexuality "un-African."

From yesterday, a new wrinkle in Israel's political upheaval:

WaPo - Peres Quits Labor, Endorses Sharon
Shimon Peres quit the Labor Party on Wednesday and endorsed his old political rival, Ariel Sharon, for reelection next spring. But Peres stopped short of joining the prime minister's nascent centrist movement.
[...]
Peres's departure, the latest turn in his nearly five-decade career in Israeli party politics, leaves Labor without its most recognizable figure, and largely concludes a shift in Israeli politics triggered by Sharon's decision to withdraw from the Gaza Strip earlier this year. It also means that the next Israeli parliament, scheduled to be elected March 28, will be the first since the 1950s without Peres as a member.

His endorsement, which infuriated veteran Labor officials, could enhance Sharon's centrist credentials at a time when the prime minister is seeking recruits to his new party, known as Kadima.

On World Aids Day, a report on its incursion into one of the last unaffected areas of the world--Sudan:

The independent - HIV/Aids invades Africa's last uninfected outpost in Sudan
HIV/Aids has penetrated southern Sudan, the last untouched pocket of Africa, threatening an isolated and uninformed people with disaster, health experts warned yesterday, the eve of World Aids Day.

Sudan's 22-year civil war displaced more than four million people - the highest number of internally displaced people in the world - but it also guarded the region against the spread of Aids. That isolation is over and the impoverished inhabitants face a new and previously unknown killer. Charles Lumori, programme director with HelpAge International, in the regional capital, Juba, said: "The spread of HIV in southern Sudan has been held back by the war. We know that it hasn't yet reached many areas but this innocence will soon be lost."
[...]
According to government figures, HIV/Aids has infected only 2.6 per cent of people in the whole of Sudan. But Dr Patrick Abok from the World Health Programme, said the region was under threat from all sides now that peace had reconnected it to its neighbours.

[ed. note: I thought I'd switch up the title of this recurring feature to a Crowded House tune from the previous Earth, Wind & Fire-based title]