spooky edition

NYT: the effort to collect testimonies of Liberian immigrants on Staten Island about the war, including low-level perpetrators' perspectives. (the legal distinction between victims and perpetrators seems like a substantial hurdle.)
BBC puts it in broader context.

Another BBC-NYT head-to-head over ruling in the Madrid train bombings that killed 191:
BBC: 21 convicted of bombings
NYT focuses on the 7 acquitted
BBC: meanwhile, MPs have passed the "Law of Historical Memory," condemning Franco's dictatorship and requiring local gov'ts to unearth graves from the Civil War.

BBC: violence breaks out in Somalia, the Niger Delta
AP: monks march again in northern Burma

Slate: Bush breaks his own pattern on Darfur "God, or at least His representatives in the evangelical movement (including Bush's former speechwriter Mike Gerson), is telling Bush to end the slaughter in Darfur. This time, though, Bush isn't doing much of anything. Why not?" answer: the vice puppetmaster won't let him.

BBC: OSCE stunner: Russia curbing polling observers

BBC: US giving intel to Turkey to target the PKK

BBC: seriously? a toilet conference?

Abu Muqawama: COIN reading list

happy halloween!

introducing the megalocracy

WP: Blackwater gets immunity from someone who hopefully won't be granted immunity: " It is unclear when or by whom the grant of immunity was explained to the guards." it's like the opposite of the Trial.
New Yorker: speaking of improving the diplomatic corps

USAT: Pentagon inflated data on sniper violence in Iraq to push for more Congressional $$

LAT: Somalia's prime minister resigned yesterday
LAT: a journalist reflects on his dangerous time there

Slate: selections from the sandbox, a blog kept by soldiers deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq, and their families

Ind: US hands over Karbala to Iraqis, the 8th province (of 18) to come out of military rule

NYT op-ed: terror and liberté, then and now

LAT: the Vatican stokes civil war memories in Spain by recognizing priests and nuns killed

NYT: "hundreds" of foreign fighters most violent within the Taliban, but article does little to demonstrate this other than claim that the Pakistani-led troops don't permit development projects at the local level, while Afghan Taliban do
GDN: UN says Taliban blocks aid, has killed 34 aid workers
GDN: across the border in Peshawar

LAT: Iranians have been paying attention to how the US ignores (supports?) the PEJAK

Ind: "Zoe's Ark" misguided humanitarians arrested trying to take 103 children out of Chad

Ind: month-long march to highlight extreme inequality in India ends in Delhi

GDN: sex-trade in children allegedly rampant in Burma

NYT: pablo escobar, screen star
New Yorker: more film - NYC kingpin runs heroin in the pre-escobar era

The Onion: new form of gov't created in lab settings

LAT: thinking of spring break plans? visit Cartagena!

the ball has been dropped

NPR: insurgency in southern Thailand seems to be intensifying - a report on how it's affecting one muslim-buddhist friendship in particular.

WP: cocaine shipments from Colombia through Venezuela
WP: and the drug cartels in Mexico are well-armed to oversee shipments into the US.

LAT: life in Gaza under Hamas: "Now more than ever, Gaza is besieged: from the outside by economic sanctions and from the inside by a continuing battle of wills between Hamas and Fatah loyalists."

Ind: military lawyer in Guatanamo quits the process, calling it unconscionable

WP: Bush hasn't followed through on Darfur

NYT: Kurdish rebels welcome another reporter

Nat'l Geographic non-sequitur: memory is a very strange thing

guardian angels

Econ: irregular warfare finally gets the US military's attention, plus origin of the word "zealot." now the Pentagon's catching up, or at least debating restructuring the US military. "...the murderous chaos in Iraq, and the growing violence in southern Afghanistan, have shown that America is good at destroying targets, and bad at rebuilding states." Gates is pushing to adapt army to fight counter-insurgencies: "Precisely because America is so powerful against conventional armies, Mr Gates expects its enemies to rely on asymmetric warfare," in which "The model soldier should be less science-fiction Terminator and more intellectual for “the graduate level of war”, preferably a linguist, with a sense of history and anthropology." and less, from the first article, like what T.E. Lawrence described as “helpless without a target, owning only what he sat on, and subjugating only what, by order, he could poke his rifle at.”

NYT: speaking of anthropology and “armed social work," this UChicago anthropology prof thinks the Human Terrain System (read: deployment of anthropologists to translate culture to American soldiers) shouldn't be officially boycotted by the American Anthropology Assoc: "The real issue for academic anthropologists is not whether the military should know more rather than less about other ways of life — of course it should know more. The real issue is how our profession is going to begin to play a far more significant educational role in the formulation of foreign policy, in the hope that anthropologists won’t have to answer some patriotic call late in a sad day to become an armed angel riding the shoulder of a misguided American warrior."

Slate: thank god for polling technology - now we can just ask Iraqis about the state of their hearts. or minds. or something. have a look at the full report here.

WP: on another related note, US expanding its non-military presence in Iraq by forcing diplomats to rotate to Baghdad.

NYT: playing with the life of a former top military commander under Saddam to see if it can generate any solidarity among sects in Iraq. ever-insightful anonymous American: “Once you execute someone, you can’t unexecute him”

Slate: Blackwater begs for help from supporters in an email, leaked to Slate

LAT: domestic pressure builds in Turkey to launch attack against PKK

Reuters: Maoist insurgents in India fire on civilians at a soccer match, kill 17. apparently police had increased operations against them in the area.

McSweeney's: outsourcing guardian angels can be dangerous

messiness

NW: profile of militants in Pakistan; gives a bit of the complicated web of Taliban leaders, tribal militants, and local warlord clerics.
AP: Pakistan troops move against cleric/warlord in Swat, not far from Peshawar, where car bomb killed about 20 2 days ago.

Econ: global political risk index (of order, conflict, violence): shocker, Pakistan is volatile.

Transparency Int'l released its Corruption Perceptions Index of countries, based on surveys of how much business leaders and others think they would have to grease the wheels in each place. more unsurprising findings: "deeply troubled states such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Myanmar, Somalia, and Sudan remain at the very bottom of the index."

LAT: speaking of corruption in Iraq, US says mafia-style rackets funding insurgency: "U.S. diplomats and senior Iraqi officials have repeatedly singled out corruption as one of the greatest obstacles to stability in Iraq. But until recently, commanders acknowledge, they knew little about the criminal dealings they say sustain militant groups across the country."

LAT: meanwhile, marines try to (literally) clean up Ramadi. contact Ryan to find out how garbage duty going in Kenya.

NPR: shiite groups in Iraq splintering with help of Iran, private interests

WP: revisiting 2002 Hindu-Muslim violence in Gujarat, India videotaped confessions of perpetrators

Ind: observing the PKK in their mountain hideout

NYT: giving Mexico some money for sisyphean task of stopping cocaine, meth from entering the US
Economist covers it too
BBC: don't call it Plan Mexico
Houston Chronicle: don't hate the (drug war) soldiers: what it means to fight the cartels - thank god for the haven in Houston.
Ind: addiction, violence, and the drug trade: convicted 1988 "preppy killer" busted again for running drugs out of NYC apt

Econ: Kosovo not quite independent

Econ: stunner of the week: Putin won't let go of the reigns anytime soon. (reader discretion advised - photo mildly disturbing)

Wonkette: thank god someone's keeping track of all the Blackwater mayhem

Gawker: scandal over "baghdad diarist" at The New Republic. reporter's husband poses as deployed US soldier, fabricated unflattering reports of US Army.

smoldering southern California seems an appropriate setting for the Claremont Institution's evening of evil.

Slate: "territory" still available for war of annexation

you can't win this military

IHT: UN trying to hold Darfur talks together. rebel groups are balking.
BBC: JEM, for example, is busy kidnapping and trying to force Chinese company out of the region.

BBC: Fatah tries 8 security force members, somehow blamed for allowing Hamas's takeover of Gaza by not following orders

BBC: troops and civilians killed in Swat region of Pakistan, where an anti-gov't militant is active

BBC: ahead of December elections, Uzbek reporter killed. "Over the past two years, Mr Saipov's investigations has helped to reveal that ethnic Uzbeks were the targets of the cross-border security sweep and that the security services were behind the kidnapping of dozens of asylum seekers and refugees."

IHT: clashes in Congo

Ind: not enough order around here? head for the Maldives (until recently, anyhow)
LAT: speaking of persistence. Bush draws the line at some forms of nepotism.

BBC: voodoo sex trafficking ring busted in the Netherlands; Nigerian children forced into sex work

LAT: cocaine and control in LA: the drug war goes local

VA Quarterly: mourning the unknown dead in Colombia

Slate: will airstrikes in Iraq save American lives? (apparently Kaplan was keeping tabs on the OCV speaker series...)

Ind: US imposes new sanctions on Iran

BBC: teeny tiny states group almost had another member

Gawker: Condi's in the capital, with a warm welcome

Slate: our fearless decider gives yet another reason to be afraid

sometimes brevity is the absence of wit

WP: check-in with Burma, where people are afraid.
NYT: check-in with the monks in Burma, who are also afraid.
Ind: check-in with the diplomats, who are "cautiously optimistic" for nearly unidentifiable reasons, indicating just how pessimistic the situation is.

LAT: Turkish Kurds on the border with Iraq and in the middle of everything

Ind: Hamas and Fatah both accused of torturing opponents

Ind: UN is concerned about women's safety in post-conflict countries

IHT: Bin Laden extends ire to proposed Darfur peacekeepers

BBC: students protesting against proposal to let Chavez run indefinitely get roughed up

USAT: the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are really expensive.

BBC: sect members killed in Kenya; state police blamed, amidst rise in "vigilante" violence

BBC: 2 more candidates were killed in Colombia

BBC: a pro-gov't militia in Congo refuses to disarm

Slate: is our most promising presidential candidate breaking the law?

NYT: California burning, in incredible photos

Virginia Quarterly discovers a village of albinos in Argentina. seriously.

New Yorker: undergarments and absurdities in guatanamo.

pesky paperwork

WP: the dog ate the state dept's homework, make-up work due in 3-5 years: independent inspector general can't audit State's outsourced $1.2 billion police training program in Iraq. INL's (the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs) "oversight" of Dyncorps in disarray.
NYT: which is encouraging, since an in-house, broader report on monitoring and programming of State Dept's 3 contractors (Dyncorp, Blackwater, and Triple Canopy) "found serious fault with virtually every aspect of the department’s security practices, especially in and around Baghdad, where Blackwater has responsibility."

LAT: the gov't can't get its evidence together in the judiciary either: no wonder it wants to throw out habeas corpus -- juries won't convict alleged terrorist financiers without evidence (even in Texas). in the detainee cases, FBI scrambling to strengthen cases because even the military commissions might balk at the flimsy evidence they have.

NYT: while everyone's busy on the Turkish border with the PKK, a Kurdish guerrilla group - the PJAK - is launching attacks into Iran, and claiming much higher casualties of Iranian troops. not surprisingly, the Bush administration doesn't seem to mind. "While most Kurds are Sunni Muslims, the guerrillas reject Islamic fundamentalism. Instead, they trace their roots to a Marxist past. They still espouse what they call “scientific socialism” and promote women’s rights."

Ind: remember those Maori terrorist-separatists in New Zealand? turns out that might've been an overstatement.

Econ: california's crop might not all be for medical purposes.

BBC: violence against political elites by unusual actors. madison's dilemma with monkeys, contemplated in Dehli.
Slate: here's how to protect yourself if you've ever got one on your back.

Nat'l Geographic: a different perspective. maybe in other galaxies, there's no use for specialists in violence.

hiccup edition

GD: Iraq says PKK to call cease-fire. NYT (and most other US outlets) focusing on the Turkish troops killed and missing after PKK attacks yesterday. WP's coverage includes news of a US incursion into Baghdad's Sadr City, where residents claim children were killed.

WP: US occupation forces staying ahead of the curve in Iraq. (in case the sarcasm isn't e-friendly, read: 18 steps behind)

GD: christians contemplating leaving palestine?

GD: continuity and change in china: two new politburo members look poised to carry the torch, after ouster of VP

GD: Tamil Tigers launch ground and air assault on air force base in Northern Sri Lanka.

Salon: book review of "the Farther Shore" - billed as good fiction about modern warfare by a former soldier.

Economist: most creative proxy of the week: strippers' tips. evolutionary psychologist finds that lap dancers earn more when fertile, offers one possible explanation.

This American Life, Act V: walking the (shakesperean) line at a maximum-security prison in Missouri. highly recommended.

mao the fashionista

LAT: tens of political candidates for local-level offices have been killed in Colombia, where elections will be held Oct 28.

Miami Herald: rights groups allege increase in extra-judicial killings by Colombian gov't forces over 2002-2007 (compared to 1997-2002), lobby US Democrats to cut off military aid and block the bilateral free trade agreement up for renewal.

AP: sadly as if on cue from last week's story about the Brazilian film “Tropa de Elite,” 12 die in favela police raid

Slate: check out report on a privately run juvenile detention center in Texas. dear lord. frightening realization: even Texas cancels deals with abusive contractors.

LAT: Italy manages immigration by manhandling; but how is the issue being framed?

LAT: Burmese generals map road to "democracy" (apparently includes paving over activists, monks, anyone along the way)

LAT: strangest metaphor of the edition -- apparently "Mr Toad's Wild Ride" aptly describes Polish politics at the moment. too bad that has to be meaningless to a sizable chunk of the readership.

AP: Congo militia leader taken into custody at the Hague, to stand trial for war crimes in Ituri.

BBC: meanwhile, in the Kivu region of Congo, rebel leader denies that 1,000 of his troops defected.

AP: dust-up at bolivia's busiest airport between federal troops and locals. the national gov't was trying to enforce collection of landing fees, and local officials protested that Santa Cruz, the province, should retain the fees. after locals took back the airport, Morales and the national gov't backed down.

WP: Bush announces new sanctions against Burma -- now 25 leaders of the junta face "freezing any accounts they may have in U.S. banks or other institutions under U.S. jurisdictions. While it seems unlikely those generals have much money in the United States, administration officials hope to use the restrictions to force foreign financial institutions to follow suit. The administration also imposed a U.S. visa ban on 260 Burmese officials and family members."

WP: local-level deal reached between Sunnis and Shiites in Baghdad; leaders of some factions agreed to the "'cessation of firing on main streets, markets, and parks,' demands that both Sunnis and Shiites refrain from stealing property from displaced families, and says that authorities will release all innocent people held in American and Iraqi prisons."

LAT: security chief announces crackdown against transgressions of the Islamic moral code in Iran - more fallout from Ahmadinejad's Columbia Univ speech?
(SNL had its own take)

AP: dirty war trial begins in Argentina.

LAT: manila mall bombed

WP: the aftermath of war for American vets

Slate: and then there are the laws that the US gov't does enforce (or at least does nowadays...grandpa never paid a fine for his moonshine.)

Ind: Mao, a man with ageless style (who knew that there was a Chinese edition of Vogue?)

abbreviated edition

everyone: estimated 130-150 killed by blasts during Bhutto's procession. LAT's take seems most detailed on conditions, implications.
Ind: she continues to campaign today.

NYT: eritrea in photos

CSM: chinese village resists corruption, protests the party

IHT: an alleged Rwandan genocidaire is arrested in France

WP: Putin invokes FDR (yes, as in Franklin Delano Roosevelt) to justify his role at the helm indefinitely

BBC: rebels in Chad balk at integrating into national army in the border region with Darfur, fight instead. details very fuzzy.

IHT: displacement in Iraq -- shared sectarian identity can't trump complications of absorbing new population into Najaf.

IHT: Sudan peace accord still uncertain

Guardian: apparently the junta in Burma has an unexploited weakness until now: women's undergarments. activists are hoping that sending them some will make them feel impotent.

NYT: more non-violent news from Colombia. on the Pacific coast, palenquero, a language with links to escaped slaves survives

Slate: another take on the indie rock scene (a response to the new yorker piece i sent yesterday)

evolution

with mild reluctance, i'm moving specialists in violence to the blogosphere. (and look what's happened - i'm already using terms like blogosphere.) it seems like this format will be more convenient than the group email.

Ind (and everyone else): Bhutto's back. Pakistan's court will rule in 10-12 days on whether or not Musharraf's re-election was legal.

LAT: Turkey voted to authorize force in Iraq; already has an estimated 1500 troops in 3 battalions in Iraq.

Ind: Somali gov't troops arrested the head of the UN's World Food Program for unclear reasons 3 days after the program started; "Since Ethiopian troops drove out the Union of Islamic Courts at the end of December, violence in the capital has increased dramatically with insurgents engaging Ethiopian and Somali government troops almost daily." Islamic Courts members formed a new party in Asmara, Eritrea; appear to be biding time for stand-off between Somalia's president and prime minister to blow up.

So to sum up the web of issues smoldering in Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Somalia: Eritrea is mobilizing residents into military for potential clash with Ethiopia, which has reportedly moved troops to the border because Eritrea is allowing Islamists to operate from the country. Ethiopia-backed gov't on edge of collapse in Somalia; Eritrea at least passively backing exiled rivals. Finally, Ethiopia fighting a separatist insurgency in region of Ogaden by targeting civilians. uf.

Ind: looking for relief? try Mauritius

Ind: burmese junta acknowledges 3,000 have been arrested, 468 still held. observers suspect it's an underestimate. but the generals are steadfast, rebuking calls for democratization: "We will go ahead. We will not deviate from our path...We will get rid of the barriers and obstacles on the way."

Ind: gang violence in the UK

Slate: taking the principle out of principle-agent: an update on the CIA investigation of its own investigator general.

Slate: law and order: how mormon fundamentalists and the amish get to break so many laws. "Such group rights are a challenge for a legal system centered on the individual;" does the US gov't allow groups to regulate themselves on the condition that no members can live under both systems? the amish give 18-year-olds a year to work out if they'll commit to the community, if not, they're banished. mormon fundamentalist boys, among others, are kicked out for transgressions from group rules (or to increase the supply of women available to older men to marry). both are extreme in the sense that community members can't even maintain contact with the outsiders. contact Ryan for a comparison with nomads and pastoralists in Kenya. (note: the entire series is an interesting look at how law flexibly keeps order.)

USAT: armed group recruitment sometimes misfires

New Yorker non sequitur: race in the indie rock scene