Well That Went By Quickly : Best and Worst of 2012

As this is the last 2012 post for Academy, I believe it's appropriate to become a little bit nostalgic. This year has been big for Academy and it's all because of you, the readers. Before I get on with my list of the best and worst of the year, I would like to thank you all for taking the time to read this real first year of Academy's existence. Without you, I'd merely have a pointless soapbox on which to stand on. 

Anyway, onward with the list. 

Best of 2012

Women Representing Arab Countries at the Olympics

London had one very important job while hosting the Olympics this year; make its mark in Olympic history as the country that had to follow China's Olympic opening. They did so, not with Danny Boyle but instead with Sarah Attar. Ms. Attar was the first female athletic representative from Saudi Arabia to ever compete in the Olympics, and was part of a swell of women athletes from countries that are historically tied to not encouraging such a behavior. But Saudi Arabia did not stop at one female competitor as Wojdan Ali Seraj Abdulrahim Shahrkhani also competed in women's judo. This came after what could only be described as a Saudi internal scuffle between conservatives on twitter and dazed Saudi Olympic officials sprang up conversation as to whether or not women could even be allowed to practice sports and be seen in sporting events at all by the general public. Thankfully for viewers of the Olympics and the brave girls who didn't let internet trolls get to them, they were allowed to compete and they showed the rest of the world that progress for women's rights is indeed possible anywhere, even at the Olympics. If there ever was a question as to whether or not the Olympics serves as a greater purpose than the sports themselves, you can cite 2012 as one prime example of the power of humanism that the Olympics are able to evoke, even under obtuse circumstances.

Mario Draghi Keeping them Honest

Let's be frank, the Eurozone has been severely crippled by this economic downturn more by political inactivity than by a lack of a recovery. Everywhere in the Eurozone, you have leaders that have had to broker agreements between their interest groups, their weakened parties and coalitions, their people, the rest of Europe and the banks. This has led to mixed results across Europe. Germany teetered on dropping out of the Euro until the German courts decided to bite the Nth bullet for the Euro by backing the bailout fund in September. Italy decided to politically implode in the later months of 2012 by destroying a technocratic government and pushing for elections which will pit an unelectable former communist against an electable former felon, if only to add a bit of drama to the scene. To top it all off, Greece checked its balance sheets in February of this year and came to the conclusion that the recovery was going to cost slightly more and take more time, hinting at a possible third bailout later in the year. Is there a rock to be found among these tall waves? Mr. Draghi is probably the closest thing to it. For the entirety of 2012, financial news like this one depicting Mr. Draghi's honesty about the health (or lack thereof) of the Eurozone injected a sense of humanity when many state leaders looking to justify higher emergency taxes were wary of explaining to their people exactly why their taxes had gone up. If anything, Mr. Draghi's honest approach is constantly extending a political lifeline to EU leaders looking to use this crisis as a way to strengthen bonds between nations and ensure that future crises like this one are managed better with greater tools in the EU toolkit. 

Coalition of the Outnumbered

The 2012 American Presidential Election told pollsters everywhere (except for perhaps Nate Silver) that this time around it wasn't the economy, stupid. Instead, it was all about offering an honest progressive package to minority voters on the part of the Obama team. The electoral college landslide and the popular vote win that ensued was painted by some Republicans as being proof of promising gifts as Gov. Romney put it to those constituents, but the fact of the matter is that the Democratic ticket merely involved minorities in the conversation about what progressive reform looked like in 2012, whereas the Republicans opted to avoid the issue altogether on ideological and moral grounds. More importantly, the Obama campaign won the heart-vote, that gut instinct that simply cannot be persuaded by numbers alone, of these constituencies. Instead of alienating Latinos with talk of heavy deportation or alienating African Americans by enacting "voter-fraud" turned "vote-suppression" laws like the Republicans did, Democrats were much more moderate in their rousing of the base, making their platform effectively more centrist and more approachable. Why does the coalition then make it on the list of the best of 2012? Simply because regardless of what either campaign said or promised, it still was up to them to give President Obama the victory by going to the polls. Some mailed them in, others sat in lines for hours even after the election was called simply because they believed in what they were doing. Their vote is more than just a political expression, it's their stake in a rapidly demographically changed country, and that is something to celebrate regardless of what party you come from. 

Worst of 2012

Taliban Assassination Attempt of Malala Yousafzai

The Taliban are not nice people. This much is evident. They proved this fact earlier this year when they attempted to assassinate Malala Yousafzai in October in an effort to silence her call for greater rights for girls. The backlash that the Taliban received in Pakistan was not enough to derail it, but it was enough to genuinely challenge their notion of being right about suppressing women's rights in Pakistan. It takes a real idiot to think that creating a martyr for an opposing cause will prove fruitful, but it takes a real coward to do so by trying to shoot a little girl. If only by the grace of God Malala was able survive the attack, let alone recover in Britain in the months following, only adding on to the failure of the Taliban attack and their supposed need to take out a little girl. I really do wish that once Malala is fully recovered that she go back to Pakistan, even with death threats still out there for her, and continue her work of giving women a voice in life under the Taliban, and remind the twisted cowards who tried to kill her that they essentially failed in all facets of their plan and have been reduced to child killers instead of the religious warriors they make themselves out to be.

Benghazi Consulate Attack

I have been meaning to return to this topic ever since more intelligence came in, but I have had to postpone it for more pressing issues that needed to be covered. Here you can read what I had to say about the attack in the days that followed, but I figure that this needs a final wrap up here. The terrorist attack that unfolded that night told the world three things. One, that terrorism is still alive. It may not be as strong as it once was, but radical militant elements of the Jihadi sort are still quite operational in some parts of the world, especially where unrest is high as it is in new Libya's Benghazi. Two, the United States needs to drastically re-evaluate its preparedness for defense of its diplomatic missions in hot-spots around the world. This is being made evident by murmurs coming from Senate hearings as well as the raised levels of unrest in the Arab world after the Arab Spring as mentioned before. This seems like a simple fix but in reality it raises a lot of separate issues. For example, what does something like the Fiscal Cliff say about funding for diplomatic mission security? Also what sort of message do extra armed forces surrounding diplomatic missions say to host countries and their populations? The worst part of this is that all these questions must be answered on a country-by-country basis, multiplying the severity of the challenge. Thirdly and lastly, in this new world of ours, are diplomats safe as they once were? Historically speaking, diplomats have always been regarded as untouchable entities of foreign states. They were to be treated as gold dust, but in a world where there are constantly new questions about the rules of war and who follows them, are diplomats inherently safe anymore? This question unfortunately will be answered with time, but here's to hoping that diplomats of any country are still regarded as off-limits by combatants. 

Anti-Scientists

The title is a bit obscure, but anti-scientists are exactly what they sound like. They are people that inherently doubt expert opinions on concepts that they find obscure or unimportant in the realm of science. 2012 has been an absolute treasure chest in terms of scientific advances and discovery, for instance the Higgs Boson particle was discovered this July, giving researchers a depth of the universe like never before. Meanwhile on Mars, NASA's Curiosity Rover landed much to the relief and joy of NASA scientists and began transmitting an insane amount of information about a foreign planet millions of miles across the solar system to Earth. While all that was going on, there were still people who doubted and belittled the work of these scientists who spend their lives giving hard meaning to everyone else's lives. Those sorts of people are the ones who really drag humanity through the mud instead of helping everyone else raise it and try to avoid getting dirty for no reason. Even worse, many are proud of their skepticism to such a tee that they run on it as political platforms. If it wasn't for scientists' logic-induced stoicism, I'd hate to wonder what sort of contraption they would come up with to try to teach these anti-scientists a lesson. Fortunately, scientists have better things to do than worry about what some people who shy away from enlightenment have to say or think; they just keep going, discovering wonderful things about our universe and our world that deserve amazing praise day in and day out. In 2013, let's try to be a little more trusting of the people who have done their work on problems of the universe instead of taking the easy way out and criticizing from the get-go.

And so here we are, at the end of what has been a fantastic year for this blog and I truly hope your readership as well. I wish you all a wonderful New Year and hope to see you back here on Academy in 2013. 

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