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.