Mali coup leader abandons hunger strike because "tummy hurts"

What else is there to read between the lines of this story?

You will recall that Captain Amadou Sanogo first took power in an accidental coup a couple of years ago. He and a few mates get shit-faced one night and have a drunken whoop-up at their barracks, staggering about firing their machine guns in the air and drunkenly baying for regime change.

The hapless civilian President catches wind of this, figures it's the real thing, and high-tails it for the border.

Next day Sanogo and his pals wake up from their drunken stupour and find out that they've taken over the country! For real!

Against his better judgement, the US-trained Sanogo decided to run with it, at least for a little while. For his troubles he's now been tossed into the brig while the French liberators figure out what to do with him.

Here's a bit of advice for Francios Hollande, who has been desperately casting about for a Mali exit strategy:

Three Point Plan for Mali Exit

1. Declare Mali a constitutional monarchy.
2. Declare Captain Sanogo the "King".
3. Wish him well and get the fuck out of there!

Sounds like a plan to me!

AFRICOM announces Taliban will be hired to train Mali Army

That's some shocking news out of the Dark Continent. While the UN has given the thumbs up to a Mali intervention, conventional wisdom had that intervention coming no sooner than late 2013.

This delay was thought necessary to give the Nations of Virtue time to train up the Malian Army. While we have already trained them numerous times, (in fact the leader of the Mali coup, Captain Sanogo, was repeatedly sent to the US for advanced training by his government) more training was deemed in order.

Apparently the fact that the French Socialists have jumped the gun on this timetable has created a new urgency among other members of the Nations of Virtue. While it was originally anticipated that US, Canadian, French and British trainers would be involved, today's announcement by AFRICOM boss Bwana Ham dismissed those expectations.

"We've decided to award the training contract to the Taliban," said Ham. "Those Towelheads put the run to us over in Afghanistan. Guys in sandals and bedsheets with WWII weaponry defeated the most advanced militaries on earth. I think we need to give the Towelers their due."

Taliban trainers are expected to arrive in Bamako as soon as they manage to hijack some commercial airliners and divert them to Africa.

Canadian troops to Mali?

Looks like Harper needs to knock a few heads together to make sure his cabinet goofballs are singing from the same page in the hymnal.

Foreign Minister Baird has gone out of his way for months to make it clearer than clear that under no circumstances will Canada commit troops to any Mali resuscitation effort.

So along comes Defense Minister Peter "Pinocchio" MacKay, and suddenly everything Baird has assured us was off the table is back on the table.

Yup. We could be "training" those Mali troops.

Because of the great job we've done training Afghan troops.

Yup.

We're a small country, but we punch way above our weight. Especially when it comes to training.

Yessiree, Canada is the troop-trainer of choice.

In fact, if you scroll down to the last few paragraphs, you learn that we've already been training Mali's army for years!

And in the very last paragraph you learn why anybody in Ottawa can even find Mali on a map.

It's because of the 20 Canadian mining companies operating there!