mush and bush

NYT: incorporating returning refugees and displaced back into Baghdad
"American commanders caution that if the return is not carefully managed, there is a risk of undermining the recent security gains." US military blames Iraqi gov't.
WP: from same briefing where NYT picked up the refugee return story, WP highlights instead "mixed bag" quality of life for Iraqis.
WP: processing of Iraqi refugees for resettlement to the US improves (but there was really nowhere to go but up)

LAT: radicalization in Tunisia
"This year, police killed more than 20 militants in a series of gun battles in a suburb of the capital and in mountains near the Algerian border. The extremists, including Tunisians and a Mauritanian, were part of a group that trained in Algeria and was allegedly planning attacks on the U.S. and other Western embassies in Tunis."

Slate: creating the border between Ethiopia and Eritrea - the US blurs the line

WP: United Russia - Putin's party - "campaigns" for parliamentary elections
"Employees and students at state enterprises and institutions, including hospitals and universities, have come under pressure from their bosses and deans to vote for United Russia on Sunday or face retribution, according to activists."

NYT: support for Chávez's reforms appears tenuous, even in strongholds
''Chávez is delirious if he thinks we’re going to follow him like sheep,' said Ivonne Torrealba, 29, a hairdresser in the gritty Coche district, who has supported Mr. Chávez in every election since his first campaign for president in 1998."

WP: best name possible for satirical column in Pakistan (and good summary of media censoring)
plus, a new holiday tune: "'On the twelfth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me twelve bombers' bombings, eleven laathi charges, ten Swat beheadings, nine majors gloating, eight foreign sanctions, seven lawyers tortured, six house arrests, no BBC, four militants, three rallies, two Taliban and a state of emergency.' A laathi charge is a police tactic involving batons."

break-ups

Ind: coup attempt fails in Philippines

LAT: President Musharraf could lift General Musharraf's emergency rule soon
LAT: meanwhile, many Pakistanis wonder when inflation, economic troubles will end

Gdn: polls suggest Chávez's reform referendum will fail Sun, but they have underestimated his support in the past. on the other hand, the opposition seems more active than it has in the past, so watch for violence and vote-rigging this weekend.
(anectdote: at a soccer game in Bogotá against a team from Colombian border city Cucutá last Dec, fans taunted cucuteños by calling them 'venezolanos' - apparently it's common knowledge that Colombians along the Venezuelan border and Atlantic coast have Venezuelan ids that entitle them to food and gas subsidies in Venezuela; all they have to do to validate them is show up for elections and vote for Chávez. maybe this is one reason polls don't capture his support, though who knows by how much. even hundreds of miles from the border I met several with Venezuelan ids. Colombians even get Venezuelan passports that way, since Venezuelan travelers face fewer restrictions.)
IHT: Chávez breaks up with Colombia for as long as Uribe is president (who so far denies he'll change the constitution again to run for a 3rd term)
NPR: background on the Chávez family, then and now

Gdn: talks on future of Kosovo fell apart yesterday

LAT: report on assassination of Lebanese PM Hariri finds that killers still organized, linked to 18 other political killings

CSM: Marines propose redeployment from Anbar to Afghanistan
"Conway, for one, is convinced that Afghanistan's security needs inevitably will require more American forces – and that the Corps, with its "expeditionary" focus, is well suited to the mission."

Ind: Iraqi refugees returning from Syria in bus caravan

IHT: Girl Scouts still exists, gives Muslim girls "a sense of belonging"
even if it requires some negotiating with parents: "'They are afraid you are going to become a blue-eyed, blond-haired Barbie doll,' said Asma, the girl who at times makes her sash everyday attire. Asma noted that her mother had asked whether she was joining some Christian cabal."

contenders for outstanding achievement in the field of excellence

LAT: Annapolis meeting kicks off more meetings, protests in Palestine
"In the statement, called a "joint understanding," Israelis and Palestinians pledged to begin negotiations next month, with a goal of creating a Palestinian state before the end of Bush's term."
Ind: meanwhile, Israel moves bulldozers into Gaza

LAT: Musharraf steps down as head of the army; former intelligence chief takes over

NYT: shotguns, molotov cocktails have replaced rocks in the Paris riots (so much for only lasting 6 hours). also, reports of very young participants...13, 14 years old.

Slate: the opposition in Russia look like the dissident movement in the Soviet Union
"Just as the old dissident movement was united only by its hatred of Soviet communism, "Other Russia" is an umbrella organization, united only by its hatred of Putinism...[but] If Putin really is wildly popular, why bother calling [opposition members] names? Kasparov himself answers this question...by arguing that Putin is far less secure than he appears to be."

WP: Sec Def urges more - wait for it - diplomacy funds

OSI: report on Zimbabwe (doesn't look good)

IHT: fighting between rebels and gov't forces in Chad

CSM: assessing security, by neighborhoods in Baghdad

Gdn: Chávez gears up for the referendum Sunday, issuing threats to opponents of Constittional reform
IHT: maybe the industrialists would like to take a page from King Juan Carlos's book

BBC: opposition in Bolivia calls strike to protest Constitutional reforms

BBC: Nigeria asks UK to train police

Slate: do women govern better? assessing India's 1991 gender quota law for village councils.

Slate: new legislation in the house to prevent "homegrown terrorism" in the US. or something.

Gdn: Ahmadinejad demonstrates that the ignorance is mutual

irregularities

LAT: Mideast peace conference, first since 1991, and first talks in 7 years, open today
WP: the uninvited might have the biggest impact - everyone except Syria wants to contain Iran, thwart Hamas
Salon: how Israel's isolation makes pushing past the status quo to a sustainable solution difficult.

NYT: seeking information in Afghanistan: "Uneventful patrols defy ready measurement. Mullah Shabir had not been found. The Taliban’s local leader could be watching calmly from a window, under the village’s protection, or he could be far away.

The patrol’s ambition was shifting from hunting for him to seeking intelligence and potential allies. But which of the villagers were potential allies? Which were foes? Were most of them simply pragmatic — saying whatever they needed to say to men who stood before them with guns? No one knew."

USAT: a vague, non-binding deal struck between Maliki and Bush on the long-term relationship between US and Iraq

NYT: Sharif's history with the US; Musharraf to resign army post wed, be sworn in as Pres thurs
LAT: paramilitaries in Pakistan, or local security forces, are deserting

LAT: new prime minister nominated in Somalia, formerly the secretary general of the Red Crescent there

BBC: Congo army head targets dissident general in Eastern Congo

BBC: the ICG warns of new groups forming and fighting in Darfur

BBC: violence and a strike in Assam by Adivasis (unclear if the violence or the strike, in favor of recognizing Adivasis as a scheduled caste, came first)

NYT: Putin blames US for meddling in elections

BBC: Turkish police break up a rally protesting shut-down of Kurdish political party

Econ: hellooooo Macedonia
BBC: hellooooo Croatia

Econ: in Jordan, the Muslim Brotherhood party and only coherent opposition, the Islamic Action Front, didn't gain many seats in elections

Econ: Sri Lanka in a holding pattern: military, political solutions far off

NYT: Cheney treated for irregular heart

NYT: not-so-communist, Soviet-style nostalgia for $600 a pop

clashes

BBC: protests, clashes in Uganda at the Commonwealth meeting
Ind: although the rest of the country is enjoying a relative calm

BBC: three killed in protests against proposed constitutional changes in Bolivia

BBC: riots broke out in Paris suburbs again, this time only for six hours (after two teens were killed in a motorbike accident with police)

Ind: 10,000 ethnic Indians clash with police in Malaysia at rally in support of lawsuit for reparations from the British for those brought to Malaysia from India as indentured servants

CNN: diary of a Dutch girl who joined the FARC in Colombia: "This would be worth it if I knew I was fighting for something. But I don't really believe that anymore"

NYT magazine: a Moroccan neighborhood and boys who join jihadist movements

Gdn: Taliban controls 54% of Afghanistan, according to a report by thinktank the Senlis Council

WP: investigating another shooting in Iraq by State Dept contractors: "...the U.S. military has no authority over Unity because the company is not under a Defense Department contract."

IHT: if you're from Yemen, you're out of luck: nationality plays a role in who gets released from Guatanamo

NYT: Long Island immigrants arrested in gang sweep
"'Collateral arrests' of illegal immigrants who are not gang suspects are always appropriate to the agency’s mission, [INS officials] said...at several other houses on the detective’s list, Latino residents answered the door, and the agents gained entry. They searched the premises, demanded immigration papers, and arrested any man who could not produce the right documents. Women and children were left behind...For the first six to eight days, the Lopez cousins and Mr. Salazar were held incommunicado, without access to counsel, at the maximum-security Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, where Muslim immigrants considered terror suspects were held after 9/11."

WSJ: in a different kind of clash, the Kansas-Missouri game features rivalries from the Civil War that live on - most evidently through the Kansas mascot, the Jayhawk, named for Kansan guerrillas from the 1850s. (Mizzou won, 36-28 - at least this time they were wearing pads.) also, perhaps the first rendering in the WSJ ever of a random guy from a bar whose claim to fame is that he's a Missouri fan (he was apparently interviewed because he was wearing a jersey bearing the name of a rebel guerrilla leader that pillaged Lawrence, Kansas in 1863 - William Quantrill). Missouri needs to win the Big 12 championship next week to get into the national championship game (where hopefully they'll face ohio state...)

policing

BBC: the opposition struggles in Russia
Gdn: and returns (sort of) in Pakistan

Gdn: Hamas warns of more violence as Annapolis summit approaches
CSM: is the violence and conflict in Palestinian territories causing an increase in honor killings?

CSM: LA police scrap a plan to map Muslims, label some communities "violent, ideologically based extremism"
BBC: apparently Kenyan security forces used lower-tech means to target banned "extremist" sect members in Nairobi; rights group claims over 8,000 have been killed and tortured in the last few years.

Gdn: from last week, Lebanon braced for fall-out from not choosing a president
WP: not to worry, the army stepped in

BBC: Nigeria's senate re-thinking the handover of an oil region to Cameroon

BBC: there were riots in Senegal last week, and the gov't backed down on plans to regulate street vendors

BBC: Mbeki trying to negotiate a deal between Mugabe and the opposition in Zimbabwe
Gdn: but he's got some troubles of his own

WSJ: this article takes the cake for best title, on the students protesting Chávez. (worth a look even if you can't read the entire story...)

VQR: a blind mayor manages in Colombia

NYT: plan to train Iraqi security forces, take 312
"The precise arrangements would vary depending on the threats and the quality of Iraqi forces in specific regions, and brigade commanders would have considerable leeway in deciding how many soldiers to commit to mentoring. But the shift toward training would be gradual, reflecting what commanders say have been lessons learned from the failure of earlier, overhasty efforts to transfer responsibility to the Iraqis."

Gdn: NYC's murder rate way down

"Murder rates in cities in the United States and other countries, per 100,000 people, 2006

Detroit: 47.3
Rio de Janeiro*: 45
Baltimore: 43.3
New Orleans: 37.6
Washington DC: 29.1
Bogota*: 18
Moscow*: 11.9
New York: 6.1
London**: 2.1
Tokyo*: 1.4

* Data for most recent available year

** Data for 2007 so far"

alliances and pardons

NYT: the situation in Somalia is dire, and getting worse on nearly every dimension. yet it escapes the attention of activists and states.

Weekly Standard: counterinsurgency and anthropologists in Afghanistan: the efficacy of Human Terrain Teams questioned

NYT: US Special Forces float plan to ally with Pakistani border tribes.

NYT: even though Musharraf claims that the crackdown is easing up and opposition members have been released from jail, it doesn't seem to be true.

WP: Bush still backs Musharraf anyhow, calling him a democrat who "hasn't crossed the line." Biden responds, "What exactly would it take for the president to conclude Musharraf has crossed the line? Suspend the constitution? Impose emergency law? Beat and jail his political opponents and human rights activists?...He's already done all that. If the president sees Musharraf as a democrat, he must be wearing the same glasses he had on when he looked in Vladimir Putin's soul."

WP: but Bhutto is a false prophet too, says an artist and activist
LAT: (and her niece)

LAT: Shiites are incorporated into Concerned Citizens patrols in Anbar, not far from Baghdad. The story bills it as local-level reconciliation between Sunnis and Shiites.

NYT: fighters from US allies join the insurgency in Iraq. (featuring a found dataset on individual characteristics of the recruits)

WP: meanwhile, Iraqis join the insurgency for cash

NYT: interviews with civilians suggest that at least some are enjoying improvements in security

WP: Congressional inquiry into Blackwater shootings looks like it'll be a more expansive investigation into contractors in Iraq

WP: Meeting on Palestine has players lining up to participate, even if no one knows exactly when the Annapolis conference will happen or what the agenda will be.

Slate: but once it does happen, it'll be just like a big party, where the Saudis will be the popular kids

BBC: Colombia ends Chávez-led mediation between the FARC and Colombian gov't, attempting to agree on a "humanitarian exchange" to release high-profile kidnapping victims, including 3 American contractors held by the FARC since 2003.

Slate: is the US army reforming itself? here's to hoping

Slate: the Supreme Court will ponder the 2nd amendment; here, a bit of background

Slate: for those who opt for lower-tech weaponry, here's how to clean the knife

WP: the turkeys have been pardoned by the president. (both the animals and his more-human buddies.)

Q: do totalitarians fear pagans or heretics?

LAT: Bhutto back under house arrest. "well-placed" western diplomat claims Musharraf will step down soon.
NPR: Bhutto was interviewed from her home this morning on morning edition, says power-sharing with Musharraf unlikely, but blames his advisers for his behavior and leaves the door open to reversing course

WP: emergency rule distracting from the fight against insurgents, even though fighting "extremists" is part of Musharraf's justification. "Unlike the tribal areas, which are officially semiautonomous and in practice have never been under the central government's control, Swat is part of Pakistan's so-called settled areas. The government is supposed to rule there. But in 70 villages throughout the valley, Fazlullah's extreme interpretation of Islamic law, or sharia, is the only law that matters."

Econ: why elections in Georgia won't help
Slate: how Bush misfired with Misha: "We'd be better off building institutions, not egos."

NYT: 6 killed, 100 wounded at Fatah rally in Hamas-controlled Gaza. Hamas and Fatah blamed each other for starting the violence.
"At Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, Afaf Abu Tayeh, 45, was waiting by the morgue. She was there to look for two sons, ages 16 and 17. 'The Israelis were more merciful than them,' she said of Hamas. 'They beat children in front of my eyes.'"

USAT: roadside bombs in Iraq way down in last two months

AP/NPR: Turks launch air strikes against abandoned villages inside Iraq

Gdn: widespread rape in the DRC continues. DRC and Darfur "don't compare" in terms of scope of the problem. the article says that rape is used to punish women who collaborate with the "wrong side," or to anger members of rival armed groups, but it's unclear how these "instruments of war" function, given that identifying attackers seems nearly impossible.

Econ: retiring soldiers in China posing a challenge to the gov't; demobilization is delicate, even of non-insurgents.

NPR: Kremlin-friendly Kadyrov rebuilding Grozny; no opposition is necessary, Kadyrov claims, since Chechnya is "going in the right direction." but support is ambivalent "'We have to live like this, like it or not. Putin launched his war saying he'd kill us in our outhouses. Tens of thousands of us have been abducted, killed and have disappeared,' Saratova says. 'And now we're forced to say things we don't believe.'"

Econ: French step in to Lebanon to help presidential elections get back on track, apparently through trying to get Syria on board. Hezbollah-backed opposition has left gov't, will boycott March elections.

Econ: assessing the elections in Colombia

Gdn: more Khmer Rouge officials arrested

NYT: swarming behavior in ants and other animals: new mechanisms to explain overcoming collective action problems? (or why sometimes collective action isn't a "problem" at all?)

Slate: the plastics, rock 'n roll, tom stoppard, jazz and the answer to today's question: pagans.

comparative studies (by area and theme)

afghanistan
Ind: British trying to train security forces in Afghanistan with limited resources

LAT: Karzai seeks dialogue with Taliban militants

iraq
WP: Americans find recruiting and training Iraqi police is tricky too

NYT: Bab al Sheik, the outlier neighborhood in Baghdad, where Sunnis, Shia, Christians and Kurds live together. the article mentions inter-marriage and centuries of family residence as reasons for the community's solidarity, but it seems like it can't be the only Baghdad neighborhood with those characteristics. (?)

New Yorker: the Baghdad suburb Ghazaliya's Sunni-Shia profile didn't survive the Samarra bombing and ensuing sectarian violence; then it became one of the first targets of the surge.

LAT: meanwhile, in Samarra today, Sunni groups are fighting each other

pakistan
NYT: Musharraf sets election date, but no end to emergency rule in sight

New Yorker: a bit more on Musharraf, and hints at division in the military

LAT: getting the youths to protest

(Gdn: like students have in Venezuela)

georgia
Slate: dispatch from another state of emergency

arms
NYT: losing track of weapons in Iraq. somehow it doesn't seem like anyone's fault

Gdn: trying to prohibit firearms in DC, the Supreme Court will announce tomorrow if it will hear the case, opine on the meaning of the 2nd amendment:
"A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." (stay tuned to learn how the "strict constructionists" of the constitution "interpret" when they want to.)

Slate: the NRA might point out that Finns manage to own lots of guns without killing each other with them quite so much. (they do have the highest murder rate in Western Europe, but it turns out they prefer other weapons.)

Gdn: fall-out from a shady arms deal in South Africa has Zuma in trouble again, and the ANC divided

Gdn: apparently guns and drugs are keeping the LTTE funded quite well, given the weapons they used against the gov't in a recent battle

LAT: the UDA in Northern Ireland commits to stop using theirs
"...loyalist paramilitaries, primarily the UDA and the Ulster Volunteer Force, have engaged in vicious internal warfare, drug dealing, extortion, loan sharking and the sale of counterfeit goods, according to the Independent Monitoring Commission, a group set up to help disarm the region."

did someone say drug dealing?
Gdn: British to pay farmers to abandon opium in Afghanistan: "Opium production is heavily concentrated in areas of insecurity, with the British area of responsibility in Helmand now the world's biggest source of illicit drugs."

Gdn: using teens as mules in the last leg of the trafficking route from Colombia to Europe, through West Africa. "Almost all of the Ghana-based mules used by drugs gangs are poor and willing to risk not only their liberty but their lives for less than £500...A kilo of cocaine brings about £25,000 in Europe, compared with about half that in the US."

LAT: as demand (and naturally, supply) increase in Europe, the US 'drug czar' claims success in the US front of the war on drugs. but it's debatable: ""Assuming that high cocaine prices are hurting cartels is like assuming high gasoline prices are hurting oil companies," Piper said.
Others say the decreased supply may just reflect the fact that more Colombian cocaine is being shipped to Europe, where it can fetch even higher prices."

Adam Isacson: on how tricky assessments of the narcotics trade can be

LAT: i'm not sure what the implications of this study are, but rats prefer sugar water to cocaine, even addicted ones

miscellaneous
Gdn: confusing violence in West Bengal kills 6, accusations of rape registered. but the details are unclear. it was reported to be members of the Communist party against farmers resisting plans to develop an oil project. but Maoist insurgents were also accused. plus 1,000 paramilitaries hired by the central gov't didn't intercede.

Ind: UN human rights envoy back in Burma after four years; will seek access to prisons

Newsweek online: de Waal and Prendergast debate Darfur and the role of activists, insult each other

WP: it's the 25th anniversary of the dedication of the Vietnam memorial

Gdn: students aren't the only ones sick of Chávez

emergencies ongoing

NYT: protests against Musharraf forcefully blocked today. 5,000 party activists have been arrested in the past few days; gov't says Bhutto would've been target of a terrorist attack had they permitted the rally.

BBC: Bhutto's house arrest lifted this afternoon

Slate: dispatch from Pakistan, with participants' and non-participants' takes on why lawyers were lonely protesters

CSM: a look at the military behind Musharraf

MIT: analysis of the 2 conflicts Pakistan is facing by Paul Staniland

BBC: Sunni chiefs are killed who had opposed Al-Qaeda in Diyala province

BBC: fighting in Mogadishu between Ethiopians and Islamist insurgents

NYT: the challenges of state-building, development, and drug-crop eradication in a civil war
"'We had come to Helmand thinking of opium as the local currency, and had tried to replace it with cash,” Mr. Hafvenstein writes. “But security was the real currency of Afghanistan. The traumatized population of Helmand would trade anything for it, follow anyone who could offer it.'"

Slate: revisionist attorneys general. "Finally it's clear: In the Age of George W. Bush, a truly independent attorney general is at his best when he is "independent" of the Rule of Law."

BBC: opposition calls off protests in Georgia, after Saakashvili announces early elections. no indication of when state of emergency, approved by parliament, will be lifted.
NYT: recently, police repressed protesters

CSM: organized crime in Italy - 'Ndrangheta takes over for Cosa Nostra, imports 80% of europe's cocaine

Slate: dating experiments (not my own) confirm what we already know: "We males are a gender of fragile egos in search of a pretty face and are threatened by brains or success that exceeds our own."

McSweeney's: damage control for the emperor

NYT: this otherwise painful story at least inspires faith in Iowans: “'You people are really nuts,' she told a reporter during a phone interview. 'There’s kids dying in the war, the price of oil right now — there’s better things in this world to be thinking about than who served Hillary Clinton at Maid-Rite and who got a tip and who didn’t get a tip.'”

tea time

AP: protests continue in Pakistan, Bhutto's party to hold rally. estimates that between 2500-3500 have been arrested. the opposition is divided because other parties resent that Bhutto's broke ranks to negotiate with Musharraf.
NYT: in an op-ed, she writes that the US should demand elections in 60 days
"It is dangerous to stand up to a military dictatorship, but more dangerous not to. The moment has come for the Western democracies to show us in their actions, and not just in their rhetoric, which side they are on."
NYT: how the lawyers lost hope in the general (this one estimates 700 have been arrested)
Salon: Juan Cole writes that the US stance towards Musharraf isn't even ambivalent.
Daily Show: Musharraf shares tea, discusses politics last year with Jon Stewart. (stay tuned for part II)

NYT: more US troops have died in 2007 than any other year in Iraq
"The deaths occurred only a few days after the military announced a steep drop in the rate of American deaths this year."
CSM: how things change: from one week ago, "US Troop Losses Plunge in Iraq"
Slate: no wonder all the recruitment packages and bonuses

Salon: and somehow, talk of attacking Iran is no joke

LAT: yahoo under fire for handing over names of email account holders in China, leading to their arrest

BBC: LRA deputy goes missing, speculation in Uganda that he and Kony had split

NPR: managing memories of the USSR in Russia:
"'A new history is being created: Stalin's rule was a golden age. Khrushchev was utopia. Brezhnev was a continuation of the golden age. None of this today is happening by chance,' Gorbachev says. [He] refuses to criticize Putin's administration directly, but he says the current trend toward historical revisionism is putting Russia at risk of a rebirth of Stalinism."

GDN: "misdemeanor murder" in New Orleans. what was Katrina's effect on an already violent city? unbelievable laxity in law enforcement seems to have gotten worse.

Chris Blattman comments on yesterday's news that children's drawings from Darfur can be used as evidence in ICC trials.

USAT: good thing DHS is keeping watch over potential terrorists (even if at an early age) "John Anderson of Minneapolis, who turned 6 on July 4, is among those who have been inconvenienced" by the terror watch list.

strongly disapproving

Ind: developments in Swat; violence there was one of Musharraf's justifications for crackdown.

NYT: arrested justice urges protesters to continue

Slate: the US has poured billions into the Pakistani military for years, rather than any other institution. "The Bush foreign policy was neither shrewd enough to play self-interested power politics nor truly principled enough to enforce its ideals."

USAT: US opinion on Iran "While 46% of those surveyed say military action should be taken either now or if diplomacy fails, 45% rule it out in any case. Republicans are twice as likely as Democrats to endorse taking military steps."
[sidebar: at least the public is discerning in one dimension: "For the first time in the history of the Gallup Poll, 50% say they "strongly disapprove" of the president. Richard Nixon had reached the previous high, 48%, just before an impeachment inquiry was launched in 1974."]

GDN: US public-at-large shares confusion on Iran: "Even at Harvard, that bastion of east coast intellectual liberalism, a dangerous mixture of ignorance and belligerency towards Iran swirls through the hallways of America's premier university."

BBC: Taliban fighters in Waziristan released 200 Pakistani troops Sunday

Ind: in nearby Afghanistan, stability slipping in Kandahar
"It is very worrying that an area that had previously been secure should become vulnerable to the Taliban," [a European diplomat] says. "But the big problem is, who is sitting on the fence? Are they going to remain against the insurgents or join them?"

LAT: wondering if drug traffickers' tactics will be copied by terrorists: "There could be 5 tons of anything" in submarines like the clandestine ones found recently in Colombia.

NYT: Chávez launching another coup, constitutional style?

BBC: Tuaregs talk peace in Mali

LAT: Colom wins in Guatemalan presidential election, over General Perez Molina, in power during the 1980s war and dictatorship.

LAT: Bhutanese refugees to be resettled in the US. the refugees are Hindu, and have been residing in Nepal for years after being forced out of Bhutan, the only Buddhist kingdom.

Ind: childrens' drawings can be used in ICC as evidence of war crimes in Darfur

LAT: breaking caste-based endogamy in India, with state-sponsored pay-offs

Ind: advancing dignity and public health (plus, for women, personal security): India commits to improving coverage by 2012 at the World Toilet Summit

lawyers take the lead

NYT: lawyers protest emergency rule in cities around Pakistan;
Slate explains why they came out.

VF: the bunker, er, embassy, of Baghdad. only hypothetically defending diplomacy, since the fortress still can't convince foreign service officers to go.

New Vision (Uganda): interview with a former LRA leader
Chris Blattman comments here.

NYT: commentary on the misguided attempt to "save" "orphans" by taking them to Europe. as Chris Blattman writes, Polgreen points out the irony that "the current episode has a particular sting because Europe has been writing increasingly stringent rules to keep Africans from migrating there."

a little Marx, a little Jesus, a lot of Pervez

LAT, NYT and WP: Musharraf had a busy day yesterday, enacting emergency powers, firing the chief justice of the supreme court, and sending troops into the streets. WP has most extensive coverage, including the fact that Musharraf spoke in English at one point, "to address the United States and the West. 'I would kindly ask you to understand the criticality of the environment inside Pakistan and around Pakistan," he said. '. . .Inaction at the moment is suicide for Pakistan, and I cannot allow this country to commit suicide.'
He then quoted Abraham Lincoln, saying that America's 16th president had broken laws, violated the U.S. Constitution and trampled individual liberties to keep the country together during the Civil War."
NYT has the full text of the proclamation

WP: diplomacy behind the scenes, before the state of emergency and analysts' responses now. astoundingly, "One adviser traveling with Rice saw a silver lining in the rapid turn of events. "Thank heavens for small favors," the official said. Compared to Pakistan, "Iraq looks pretty good."

GDN: general background

more background - The Mission: Dana Priest, who formerly covered the Pentagon for the WP, describes how Centcom under General Zinni advocated for Musharraf in 1999, based on a relationship that formed before the coup (search Musharraf to find the relevant passages -- page 112 is especially interesting).

NYT: apparently going for the RNC sympathy vote, Musharraf said "judicial activism" was hurting the country.

SWJ: another early-20th-century British officer on tribes in Iraq (from a military that didn't contract out the anthropology work)

IHT/NYT: Guantánamo almost gone?

NYT magazine: Venezuela and oil. hands-down, best quote of the week: "[Chávez] has invented a new kind of socialism, which he calls Bolivarian socialism, named for the independence hero Simón Bolívar: a little Marx, a little Jesus, a little anti-imperialism and a lot of the whim of Hugo Chávez, dedicated to the 'comprehensive, humanist, endogenous and socialist development of the nation.'"
IHT: Venezuelans will vote whether or not to continue down the path of Marx, Jesus, and Chávez Dec 2
NYT: even if Chávez can't keep the the gas subsidy going, let's hope this youth orchestra program survives yet another administration

Slate: speaking of oil-rich countries, Iran imports lots of gasoline. huh.

GDN: expulsion of Romanians from Italy turns violent

GDN: legislating the legacy of Spain's civil war: "Unlikely as it seems in a vibrant and modern Spain, the old fault lines of the war that began in 1936 and ended in 1939 with the defeat of the republicans by Franco's nationalist and fascist forces have been uncovered by a new law that was intended to assert formally for the first time the 'moral rights' to recognition of the tens of thousands who fell victim to Franco."

IHT: the US Sentencing Commission reduced the sentence for crack possession by about a year and a half, to 8 years 10 months (about the same amount of time some of those convicted of the bombing in Madrid will end up serving before parole).

NYT: German painters from the frontlines of WWI

coercive methods

Slate: a veteran's take on the drop in violence in Iraq, the surge, and what it all might mean for the future.

NYT, LAT, and WP: all lead with Schumer and Feinstein announcing they'll support Mukasey, most likely clearing the way for him to become the next AG, despite his vacillations on what counts as torture. (here's Jon Stewart's take.) the LAT goes into an explanation for Schumer's support -- Mukasey assured him that if Congress passes legislation banning "coercive methods," the president will not be able to sidestep the law.

WP: the Total Intelligence Solutions: for the second day in a row, a creepily named intelligence group in the news (this time it's an affiliate of everyone's favorite contractor, Blackwater)

GDN: Italian police crack down on Romanians after a murder, tear down shanty town outside of Rome

GDN: how an attack on Iran might affect Bahrain's sectarian cleavage

GDN: Fatah targets clerics who support Hamas

GDN: stabilizing Haiti. for now.

Slate: oh, henry. how Kissinger boxed out the State Dept.

misc.
WP: technology and proselytizing: how Christian missionaries are innovating in Cambodia (featuring best phrase of the day: "Farther north in the Cambodian hinterlands, Elijah Lok zoomed down dirt paths across the rice paddies to the village of Trapain Ampil with the "Jesus" film strapped to his motorbike.")

GDN: coffee-flavored condoms for public health in Ethiopia
"The dark brown condoms are made to smell like Ethiopia's popular macchiato, an espresso with a generous amount of cream and sugar." Not everyone is a fan, though: "I hate coffee-flavoured condoms," said Tadesse Teferi, 37, a mechanic. "But I use ordinary condoms when I have sex with ladies other than my wife."

NYT magazine: Pierre Bayard talks about not reading books to really live with them

McSweeney's: on the concept of community

arrrrgh

NYT: changing warfare in Pakistan, but US urges Musharraf not to enact emergency powers.

AP: leader of Tamil Tigers political wing killed in airstrike

LAT: Israeli police storm a Druze village (to find alleged vandals of a cellphone tower); villagers resist and 40 end up injured.

Gdn: Burmese army, facing "manpower crisis," replaces deserters with children, according to a Human Rights Watch report. "Military recruiters target underage recruits at bus and train stations, threatening arrest if they refuse to join. Some children are beaten into making them "volunteer". The number of child soldiers is estimated to run to thousands...Burma's 30-odd armed groups - rebels and those allied to the regime - also use children in their ranks, though some of the underage recruits volunteer because their families cannot afford to support them."

Econ: more on the Madrid bombing trials
Slate: making sense of those 40,000-year sentences

LAT: student protest of 69 proposed constitutional amendments in Venezuela turns violent; protesters reject Chavez's latest move to consolidate power and run for re-election indefinitely.

Econ: round-up of the Darfur peace talks
Econ: the US military re-organizes to create Africom; previously, 'jurisdiction' over Africa was shared by 3 Unified Combatant Commands (Cocoms). "This has changed in the current strategic environment, with the US more concerned at the risk of terrorism incubating in failed or failing states."

Ind: intrigue in Kazakhstan

Ind: a colony that won't let go

Slate: the admin PR rep who did

LAT: new book on India's Research and Analysis Wing (i.e., spy agency) met with gov't alarm. apparently no alarm expressed over the agency's acronym.

Adam Isacson: Plan Colombia vs Plan Mexico, a comprehensive comparison.

SWJ: Nagl's take on the continuing debate on anthropologists' and social scientists' role in counter-insurgency: "General Sir William Francis Butler noted a century ago that 'The nation that draws a clear line of demarcation between its thinking men and its fighting men will soon have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools.' "

NYT magazine: blurring the line between "thinking men" and "fighting men": of poetry and war at West Point

AP: pirates off the coast of Somalia were overpowered by the crew of a ship they attacked. "Somali pirates are trained fighters, in some cases linked to powerful Somali clans, outfitted with sophisticated arms and equipment, including GPS satellite instruments. They have seized merchant ships, ships carrying aid, and once even a cruise ship."

Slate: drive carefully next week

torturous

LAT: over last two months, civilian death toll "plunged" in Iraq. some attribute the drop to displacement and segregation of neighborhoods, some to the surge. " 'What happened this time is we stayed . . . so now the people said, 'Hey you're staying,' and once they see we're staying with Iraqis and the Iraqis [army and police] are staying with us and getting much better and treating the people with dignity and respect, they start coming forward with tips,' said Brig. Gen. John Campbell, U.S. deputy Army commander for Baghdad."

NYT editorial: "Consider how President Bush has degraded the office of attorney general." In his testimony, Mukasey seen as trying to prevent possibility of prosecution of admin officials, including the president, for approving water boarding.
Ind: offers more insight on the Medieval technique, which a Homeland Security adviser says the SEALS use as well (even though the CIA is supposedly the only dept that the administration gave the go-ahead to, not the military.)
Check out the original memo written at the Small Wars Journal by Malcolm Nance, the adviser cited in the article.

WP: hell no, we won't go: the diplomatic corps protests possibility of going to the Green Zone.

WP: Rummy's ruminations. the WP gets two of his "snowflakes" (what Pentagon employees called his memos because he wrote so many each day) and selects some gems (e.g., "...Make the American people realize they are surrounded in the world by violent extremists")

BBC: rebels from the Hyniewtriep National Liberation Council, a group fighting for a homeland for Khasi tribes, killed by Indian security forces.

BBC: censoring and un-censoring reporting in Sri Lanka.
GDN: the gov't can't prevent the UN and Human Rights Watch from reporting; groups accuse gov't of torture

LAT: Dennis does my 10th Ohio district proud.

penance for taking my first-world toilet for granted.