Q’s Year in Review: Top World Events of 2013

Welcome back to the Year in Review.  Today’s installment is the top World events of the year…at least as seen through my eyes.  I’m sure I missed plenty…and that I’ll put undue weight on some things while forgetting about others…but such is life! 

10.  Nelson Mandela Dies - Nelson Mandela was a great man.  A freedom fighter, a political prisoner, a statesman revered for preaching reconciliation in a nation torn by racial strife. Nelson Mandela was all that and more - the icon of the anti-apartheid movement and South Africa's first black president. With his death at the age of 95, his compatriots, world leaders and countless other admirers mourned the loss of a one-of-a-kind hero.

9.  Boeing 777 Crashes at SFO - Three people died when an Asiana Airways Boeing 777 landed just a little bit short of the runway as it arrived at San Francisco International Airport last July. It was the first fatal accident of a commercial aircraft in the United States since a Colgan Air crash near Buffalo in February 2009.

Did the famous Bay Area fog leave pilots disoriented? Was there a microburst or sudden shift of wind that reduced lift? Did an engine falter in the final minute of flight?  The answer appears to be no to all the above. The crash of Asiana Flight 214, late on the morning of July 6, appears to have happened in perfect weather, in a trouble-free aircraft. 

The airplane was flying too slow and too low as it approached the airport. The airplane’s main wheels hit a sea wall on the airport’s edge. The impact broke off the airplane’s tail and send both sections tumbling down the airfield.

8.  Syria's Civil War - On the morning of Aug. 21, reports emerged from a Damascus suburb of a sarin gas attack, a grim event in a civil war that had already cost the lives of 100,000 people and spurred the largest refugee crisis in a generation. Chilling videos of women and children, some twitching, others lifeless, brought out the strongest reactions yet from an international community that has sat on the sidelines for much of the country’s grinding two-year-long civil war.

Ten days later, after releasing to the public an intelligence report determining that Syrian President Bashar Assad fired the weapons and killed at least 1,429 people, President Barack Obama announced that he was going to ask Congress for authorization to strike Syrian chemical weapons installations. While Assad and his allies dismissed these allegations, the rebels seeking his overthrow appeared poised for a major breakthrough.

And then it never happened. US public opinion was dead set against another intervention in the Middle East. Russia, one of Assad’s closest backers, managed to convince Damascus to cede its chemical weapons stockpile to a UN Security Council mandate. The Assad regime has reportedly been cooperating with UN inspectors as it goes about now eradicating its stockpile.

All the while, the civil war rages, hollowing out cities and scattering communities. The rebels — a loose coalition of militias at the best of times — have grown more fragmented, with rival Islamist and secular-leaning factions even clashing with each other. Peace talks set for Geneva early next year could not come sooner, but few are optimist of what they will achieve.

7. Supertyphoon Haiyan - The deadliest storm to hit the Philippines since at least Typhoon Tehlma in 1991, Haiyan smashed into the archipelago with wind speeds as high as 170 mph (more than 20 mph faster than Hurricane Katrina’s worst gusts) and surging sea levels up to 20 feet. Despite preparations, including the evacuation of nearly 800,000 people, more than 5,000 people were killed as the storm wreaked havoc in central Philippines and leveled entire parts of the coastal city of Tacloban. Nearly 2 million people were left homeless.

6.  Benedict Resigns, Pope Francis Voted New Pope - This one's for you mom!  White smoke rose to announce the new pope on March 13—habemus papam!—ending one saga and setting off a new era for the Vatican. A month earlier Pope Benedict XVI resigned from the office due to his old age, becoming the first pontiff in nearly 600 years to cede his post.

In his place the papal conclave voted for the Argentine cleric Jorge Bergoglio, who from the outset has fashioned himself a reformer of the Church and an advocate for the poor. He selected his name—the first Francis in the history of the papacy—after the champion of the poor Saint Francis of Assisi, and has since shaken things up, spearheading financial reform within the Vatican, challenging traditional Church views on homosexuality and women, and denouncing the rapacious nature of Western capitalism.

5. Boston Marathon Blasts - When two pressure cookers exploded near the finish line of the Boston Marathon on April 15, the blast killed three people, injured more than 260 others, and put an entire nation on edge. The bombs — a crude mix of nails and shrapnel that tore through the crowd of cheering spectators, volunteers and proud, almost-finished runners — instantly transformed a moment of shared joy into one of collective terror. On April 17, the FBI sought the public’s help in identifying grainy surveillance images of two young men thought to be the perpetrators. The search took a violent turn just hours later when brothers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev allegedly shot and killed an MIT police officer and then exchanged fire with police as they tried to escape in a hijacked SUV. Tamerlan, 26, was killed in the fracas; his younger brother, Dzhokhar, 19, managed to escape. As day broke April 18, state officials shut down Boston area public transit and urged residents to “shelter in place” behind locked doors, effectively paralyzing a major American city. Police ultimately found a bloodied and dazed Dzhokhar hiding in a small boat, in which he allegedly wrote pro-Islamist messages with his own blood. He has pleaded “not guilty” to 30 charges related to the bombing, including 17 punishable by death.

4.  Government Shutdown - Unable to reach agreement on federal spending levels, a dysfunctional Congress stumbled into the first government shutdown since the mid-1990s, grinding much of the federal bureaucracy to a halt for more than two weeks in October. The showdown was forced by a cadre of conservative Republicans, who sought to tie government funding to a bill to gut the Affordable Care Act. The 16-day impasse, which ended with a short-term deal that averted a debt default, torpedoed Republican approval ratings, slowed economic growth and ultimately cost some $24 billion, according to the credit agency Standard and Poor’s. While the political and economic fallout should prevent a repeat when funding deadlines expire in early 2014, the episode may have long-term ramifications. Moderate Republicans and business lobbies aligned with the GOP vowed to take a more aggressive posture against the Tea Party conservatives who spurred the shutdown, setting up a battle for the soul of the party that will define the 2014 midterm elections.

3.  Obamacare's Bungled Rollout - The passage of the Affordable Care Act may have been President Barack Obama’s greatest triumph, and its roll-out his greatest failure. The Oct. 1 launch of the federal website for purchasing private insurance coverage through a government-operated exchange was an unmitigated disaster. A combination of technical glitches, high demand and faulty coding rendered healthcare.gov barely usable for its first month of operation. By the end of October, less than 2% of the 7 million Americans government officials hope to enroll in Obamacare by the end of 2014 had signed up. The President didn’t help his own cause when his promise that anyone who liked their current health plan could keep it proved to be untrue. The fallout has been substantial: Obama’s popularity hit an all-time low as voters disapproved not just of his performance but also of his personal credibility. As his administration races to fix the broken website, the fate of its signature domestic achievement – and potentially, Obama’s legacy — hang in the balance.

2.  Edward Snowden's Bombshells - On June 6, the Guardian and the Washington Post broke the first stories in a series that would expose extraordinary surveillance at home and abroad by the U.S. National Security Agency in arguably the most important leak of classified intelligence ever. The stories initially detailed the NSA’s program of bulk data collection of Americans’ phone and internet records, but soon exposed U.S. spying against allies and other more traditional espionage targets abroad. NSA-contractor Edward Snowden revealed from Hong Kong that he had handed over hundreds of thousands of documents to reporters, and said he was doing so to prevent the establishment of “turn-key tyranny” in America. The ensuing revelations and Snowden’s flight to Russia infuriated the Obama administration, which sought his extradition on criminal charges. They also embarrassed the intelligence community and initiated an international discussion on the boundaries of surveillance in this age of instant communication.

The cache of documents released by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden shed light on the extent of U.S. espionage operations in various parts of the world and threatened to damage U.S. relations with some key international players, who claimed in public to be furious with the U.S.’s snooping in their own countries. There was White House ally German Chancellor Angela Merkel, demanding answers on allegations that the NSA had tapped her cell phone, and Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff who canceled a trip to the U.S. and then, later, complained before a global audience at the UN about the “affront” to her country’s sovereignty.

The repercussions echoed far outside the intelligence community: U.S. web companies could lose billions of dollars as international users turn to products they think are less prone to spying eyes. And it does the already tetchy relationship between Washington and Moscow little good when the latter is giving asylum to America’s now best-known fugitive.

1.  The IRS Overreaching their Bounds/ Obama's Lack of Knowledge of Anything - When a report surfaced in May that the IRS was targeting nonprofits with words like “Tea Party” in their name for increased scrutiny, it looked, momentarily, like President Obama was facing a major political scandal. Within days, the IRS’ acting commissioner resigned and Republicans were calling for Obama’s impeachment. But things didn’t unfold as expected. Obama maintained he had no knowledge of the policy, and the IRS quickly dangled some liberal groups they had run to flag down to hide this travesty and everything kinda blew over.

This leads to a much bigger issue of, it turns out, Obama seemingly knows nothing about anything.  He didn't know about the IRS targeting his rival groups.  He didn't know Obamacare's rollout would be so bungled.  He didn't know about all of the NSA's spying on us.  Apparently he doesn't know anything!  AND HE'S OUR PRESIDENT!!!

Of course, this leads to the biggest problem we face, and our biggest news story of the year...the lack of accountability prevalent in our society.  No one is accountable for anything.  Whatever you do wrong, its someone else's fault.  And however hard your life is...you shouldn't have to work to make it better...the government should make it better.  It sickens me, but that's what the current administration wants to turn our country into.  Its a story worth watching as we head into year 6 of the Obama reign of terror...

And thats my list!  Check in tomorrow for the Sports year in review!