Let’s be frank, with the derivative tosh that Hollywood is serving up on a daily basis these days, the real world is a far more interesting place than anything the world of entertainment can serve up. And this year was an absolute doozy: good countries turned bad, bad countries turned good, natural disasters, man-made disasters, assassinations, deaths, that weird week where everyone turned into pan-dimensional celery demons, yes, 2011 had it all.


10. The US political shitstorm AKA The fall of Rome

As the Republicans officially emerge as the most contemptible party in modern democratic history, the effect on the US has been little short of catastrophic. Driven by nothing except a pathological desire to destroy Barack Obama and their cowardly kowtowing to the increasingly insane demands of their base, the GOP have surprised us month after month with new and inventive ways of bringing their supposedly beloved country to the brink of disaster. While August’s debt ceiling crisis was the most marked of all of them – and the one with the greatest potential to be felt outside the US – the high stakes and usually farcical battles being waged in Washington these days could barely be dreamed of three years ago. Back then, Congress had its issues, but they at least still thought that their job was to make things happen. Now it’s pure, malicious gridlock. And with the economy still stagnant, debt skyrocketing and unemployment close to 10%, the impression one gets of a country slowly and unnecessarily destroying itself is almost overwhelming. Which is why this story gets an animation of a man eating his own head. I look forward to 2012’s Presidential election with morbid glee.




9. Steve Jobs' death

It’s been a year for big deaths (and a particularly hectic past week), but none of these mortal moments precipitated quite so much media attention as that of Steve Jobs, Apple founder and a man who changed our relationship to technology in ways too numerous to mention. His legacy isn’t quite on par with Gutenberg’s printing press, but it isn’t far off, either. The actual scale of the outpouring surprised me – even as I read about his death on my MacBook Pro while listening to music on iTunes and messaging people about it on my iPhone – but in fields as diverse as film, telephony, music and personal computing, Jobs essentially rewrote and continued to rewrite the narratives that had maintained for decades. Crossing borders, cultures and economies, few people in history have had such a pervasive – if not necessarily completely positive – effect on the world.




8. Occupy Wall Street

An Arab Spring for the comparatively wealthy, the Occupy Wall Street movement was borne of an understandable dissatisfaction with economic inequality in the US, a country where the incomes of the middle class have essentially remained unchanged since the 90s. While the annual incomes of the very rich have discovered zeros where there were no zeros before. As people increasingly came to realise that the obscenely wealthy few that had destroyed America’s economy continued to prosper at their expense, a cluster of dedicated and hard done by individuals took up residence in a privately owned park near Wall Street and let the chaos (and arbitrary arrests) unfold. Soon there were copycat protests cropping up across America and the world and Obama suddenly had himself a re-election narrative. While it’s hard to see much longevity for a movement that exists largely without a distinct aim, and whose primary form of protest – occupation of public land – isn’t all that appealing during North America’s bitter winters, as a political flashpoint for the essential but long ignored debate over corporate wealth, its effects have been potent. And now, as a symbol of the currently prevailing atmosphere in America, here’s Fox News on why the new Muppets movie is brainwashing children with an anti-corporate agenda.




7. The Queensland floods and Cyclone Yasi

At the high point of these floods, some 75% of Queensland was underwater. And it is not a small state. There’s something about the inexorable nature of floods that makes them a particularly hypnotic disaster – the knowledge that the water has to go in one direction gives them a certain grim purpose, the locations of tragedy almost pre-known. Still, nobody could have predicted exactly how vast the scale of the damage would be, nor exactly how much it would affect the price of bananas in this country. My fruit intake has been down all year. Then, to cap it all off, the category five Cyclone Yasi materialised a fortnight later, threatening to wipe half the north-eastern coast off the map. Fortunately, unlike the floods, this turned out better than anticipated, but it was still a particularly galling garnish on the shit sandwich that was Queensland’s first six weeks of the year.




6. The News of the World phonehacking scandal

Has there been any more purely enjoyable image this year than that of Rupert Murdoch, billionaire, media tycoon and all round vile example of humanity, being forced to come before a UK Parliamentary inquiry and fend off accusations of wrongdoing? It’s not often you get to see one of the most powerful men on Earth look doddering and confused, so the spectacle made for compelling viewing. Meanwhile, the steadily cascading series of revelations about the News of the World’s squalid dealings made for an advent calendar of bitter scandal, each day seeming to bring with it a new delicious ethical atrocity. Murdered girls? Check. Celebrities? Check. The grieving parents of people killed in the 2005 London bombings? Good lord, check. While the inquiries dragged on for interminable periods (and are still going on many fronts), the scandal has already cost Murdoch his most lucrative paper, a lucrative UK cable contract and the reputation of his most lucrative son, James. There was also the incident where Wendi Deng hit a man who tried to throw a custard pie at Rupert, so that was definitely a positive too.

 


5. The Carbon Tax

Oh God. Even before this started I was sick of hearing about it, our parched media landscape never seeming quite so dismal (and Rupert Murdoch owned) than in the “debate” that the nation had over the merits of the carbon tax. A recent survey showed that only 15% of the articles published in Australia showed the carbon tax in a positive light, with the remainder either skewing neutral or, overwhelmingly, negative. News Limited – which owns 70% of the newspapers in Australia – was the worst offender, with 82% of their coverage coming out against the tax, so it was unsurprising that in a year of bloody battles for the Gillard government, the carbon tax was by far the most damaging. But hey, it’s here now and, notwithstanding Tony Abbott’s frothing protestations to the contrary, there is almost zero chance of it being repealed, leaving Australia at the forefront of global environmental policy. We should probably be a little prouder of that than we are.




4. Osama's Assassination and the end of the War on Terror

Quibble about the ethical concerns raised by the US’s prejudicial assassination of a man if you must, but there’s no denying that this was a seriously ballsy move by Barack Obama. Flying into Pakistani territory without consent, dropping into the compound, killing Bin Laden and then getting out again before the Pakistani militrary realised what was happening made for one of the most impressive, clinical exercises in modern military history. Of course the political fallout has been a little messier, with US-Pakistan relations at an all time low, but it was hard to avoid the feeling that, all things considered, this was probably a net positive for the world. Add to it the removal of the last American troops from Iraq last week and you finally have what looks like a pay out from the War on Terror. Ten years, two wars, tens of thousands of deaths and trillions of dollars later. Victory!




3. Japanese Earthquake/Tsunami/Fukushima

Watching all five minutes of this video is one of the hardest things I think I’ve ever done on YouTube. It serves as a fitting testament to the brute force and abject horror of this grandest of calamities.

 


2. The EU Meltdown

It’s been a while since an event of this importance has been matched up with an event of this impenetrability. But while the actual mechanics of what’s happening in Europe – the perils of the universal currency, the bond sales, the soaring debt, the austerity budgets, the arcane EU rituals – are pretty difficult to make head or tail of as a casual observer, it can all be boiled down to one basic problem: Europe does not have enough money to pay off its debts. And barring China buying up half the continent, a solution seriously posited a couple of months back but then firmly repudiated by China, it’s sort of hard to see where the rest of that money is going to come from. And make no mistake, what the people did to their governments during the Arab Spring, the markets are doing to governments in this ongoing financial catastrophe. Over the past 12 months, Greece, Italy, Spain and Ireland have all seen Prime Ministers and Presidents removed as a consequence of economic mismanagement and IMF/EU-mandated harsh austerity programs. As the crisis grew in scale and diminished in manageability, democratic niceties were flung out the window and new leaders were forced upon Italy and Greece, elections be damned. Even more remarkably, Germany emerged as the new kingmaker, one of the few economically viable nations left in the EU in fast danger of becoming its de facto overlord. Again. For some reason this is making the rest of Europe a little uneasy. But, on a lighter note, and as a farewell to our friend, Silvio, here he is pretending to hump a police woman.




1. The Arab Spring

Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Syria, Bahrain, Tunisia, Algeria, Kuwait, Morocco, Oman, Saudi Arabia: all were affected in ways large and small by a protest movement that was remarkable for its unexpected force, fervour and sheer transmissibility. From the self-immolation of a fruit vendor in Tunisia, a country the world hadn’t paid attention to for half a century, disenchantment and populist anger spilt across the Arab world with uncanny speed, challenging a regional obsession with autocracy in a way not seen since the demise of colonialism. Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Libya all saw the demise of dictators not confronted in thirty years or more. While the largely peaceable removal of the first two saw optimism spread around the world, the brutal, grinding conflicts in Yemen and particularly Libya, where upwards of 30 000 people are thought to have died, threw the challenges faced by post-dictatorial societies into stark relief. While much of the heat that powered the protests has subsided due to a mix of governmental reforms and state-sanctioned violence, the shadow of the movement carries on into 2012 with the protest-riven uncertainties of the new Egypt and Libya standing alongside the ongoing horror show in Syria standing as reminders that the path toward democracy is a pitted and fraught one. But now, to take us out, Muammar Gaddafi: A life in hats.