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.'”