you are near paradise [on revolt, martyrs and memory]

CSM: Iranian Revolutionary Guard steps in against protesters, while foreign intervention blamed for violence
Until now, the government has employed police and ideological militia to quell protests. But now Iran's Revolutionary Guard have vowed to weigh in. It ordered protesters to "end the sabotage and rioting activities" and warned them to be ready for a "revolutionary confrontation with the Guards, Basij, and other security... and disciplinary forces" if they dared to gather in public again.

The Revolutionary Guard is tasked with preserving the 1979 revolution, The force was created by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini because he did not trust the regular Army. The Guard is considered more ideological than the regular Iranian Army.

But on Monday afternoon an estimated 1,000 protesters tried to gather at Haft-e Tir Square in central Tehran. Row upon row of waiting riot police and militiamen kept them from assembling. They were met with teargas and bullets fired into the air… The student rembembered, Neda Agha Soltan, was reportedly shot in the chest by a basiji militiaman passing on a motorcycle. Graphic Internet video of the aftermath has turned her into an instant icon of the movement lead by defeated moderate Mir Hossein Mousavi… Mr. Mousavi – who has not been seen since Thursday – urged his followers late Sunday to keep up the pressure…

But the protesters are torn between their desire to challenge an election result they consider a fraud – relying on Article 27 in Iran's Constitution that says peaceful marches "may freely be held" – and their fear of more violent confrontations that won't bring them any closer to their goals.
WSJ: ...and stakes rise for protesters
Witnesses said security forces appeared particularly alert to spectators on balconies or nearby buildings taking pictures or filming the clashes. Homemade videos and photos have flooded the Internet despite attempts by Iranian officials to restrict reporting of protests… A 33-year-old woman who has been attending protests said the stakes were getting higher as the crackdowns intensified and said she wasn't sure how long she and her friends would keep it up. "It's now crossed the line, if you come out it means you are ready to become a martyr and I'm not so sure I want to die yet," she said.
WP: a vision of Neda, the icon of the protests
CSM: Chatham House releases study showing numerous statistical problems in election
LAT: ...but no “major” irregularities, according to Guardian Council, so results remain
LAT: on the role of memory and imagery in rebellion
Rebellion is about passion, but it's driven by universal themes and images. It is moved by the clear delineation of two sides, which in Iran's case are a police state, where militias roam and camouflage-clad police race around on motorcycles, and a protest movement humming with text messages citing bygone heroes and video of anonymous bloodied hands rising toward cameras.

Twitter may be the sound bite of the new century, but it takes more than 140 characters to rally a nation. The electronic discourse streaming out of Iran onto online social networks feeds on images that offer the power of poems and anthems. Hence the references to King and Mohandas Gandhi -- unimpeachable moral authorities -- against the stony visage of Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei, the white-bearded ayatollah who has scolded protesters and sent out security forces to force them back.
WrongingRights: protesters sing pre-Revolution anthem: "if the regime was going to get nervous this would be the moment."
Salon: dispatches from Tehran

WP: Republicans seek to draw contrast with "weak" Obama vis-a-vis Iran
During a single weekend interview, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) invoked the 1956 Hungarian revolution, the Prague Spring, the Solidarity movement, and Reagan's 1982 "evil empire" speech on the Soviet Union to argue for more explicit U.S. criticism of the Iranian government, which the Obama administration has made clear it will engage no matter who ultimately emerges as president.
WSJ: “Obama and the rogues”: on legitimacy and coercion

NYT: US to adopt new war planning strategy focused on hybrid warfare
In officially embracing hybrid warfare, the Pentagon would be replacing a second pillar of long-term planning. Senior officials disclosed in March that the review was likely to reject a historic premise of American strategy — that the nation need only to prepare to fight two major wars at a time…

The previous Pentagon strategy review focused on a four-square chart that described security challenges to the nation as perceived then. It included traditional, conventional conflicts; irregular warfare, such as terrorism and insurgencies; catastrophic challenges from unconventional weapons used by terrorists or rogue states; and disruptive threats, in which new technologies could counter American advantages.

“The ‘quad chart’ was useful in its time,” said Michele A. Flournoy, the under secretary of defense for policy, who is leading the strategy review for Mr. Gates. “But we aren’t using it as a point of reference or departure,” she said in an interview. “I think hybrid will be the defining character. The traditional, neat categories — those are types that really don’t match reality any more.”

The nation’s top military officers are reviewing their procurement programs and personnel policies to adapt to the new environment, focusing in particular on weapons systems that can perform multiple missions.
CSM: gun laws, loopholes and the terror watch list
Nearly 900 people on the FBI’s terror watch list applied for and received a certificate to buy a gun in the United States between 2004 and 2009, according to a Government Accountability Office report released today… The GAO document is a follow-up to a 2005 report, which said the FBI cleared gun purchases for 80 percent of terror watch subjects who applied. The current report shows that the percentage has gone up: of 963 background checks, 865 were given the go-ahead – 90 percent.

There's currently no basis to automatically prevent a person from buying a gun simply because they appear on the terrorist watch list, wrote Ellen Larence, the GAO's director of homeland security and justice issues. There must be additional disqualifying factors, such as a felony conviction or illegal immigration status.
WP: Guantanamo detainee, first held and tortured by al-Qaeda, to be released
Abdul Rahim Abdul Razak al-Janko was tortured by al-Qaeda and imprisoned by the Taliban for 18 months because the groups' leaders thought he was an American spy. Abandoned by his captors in late 2001, he was picked up by U.S. authorities, who shipped him to the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on suspicion that he was a member of the two groups.
Yesterday, a federal judge ordered Janko's release, saying the government's legal rationale for continuing to detain him "defies common sense."

CSM: weekend attacks in Iraq kill more than 100, highlight tensions remaining before official US pull-out
The Iraqi government's failure to pass several important pieces of legislation also poses a threat to the country's political stability. They include:
•Approving a national oil law for an equitable distribution of the country's oil revenues.
•Finding a solution to Kirkuk's ethnically based territorial dispute.
•Passing legislation to help combat rampant corruption…

A less physically imposing but still robust American military and diplomatic presence should focus on developing "good governance" principles at all levels of the Iraqi government, says Mr. Nagl, author of a new report, "After the Fire: Shaping the US Relationship with Iraq." Moreover, the US must concentrate on building professionalism within the Iraqi military.

NYT: same goes for Afghanistan: focus on training local forces
The Bush administration planned to increase the Afghan Army from 90,000 troops to 134,000. That still won’t be big enough to secure a vast, rugged country with a larger population than Iraq’s. American planners propose expanding it to as many as 260,000 troops — roughly the size of Iraq’s Army. No decision has yet been made.

The Pentagon estimates that it would cost $10 billion to $20 billion over a seven-year period to create and train a force that size. Paying it would cost billions more, especially if the current $100-a-month salary is to become more competitive with the $300 the Taliban pays.

The total bill would still be a lot smaller than the cost of sustaining a huge American fighting force there. By the end of this year, there will 68,000 American troops in Afghanistan, costing American taxpayers more than $60 billion a year.

Afghanistan’s national police force will have to be rebuilt almost from scratch. Kabul’s central government is notoriously corrupt, but the tales from the field are even more distressing. Journalists for The Times have reported seeing police officers burglarizing a home and growing opium poppies inside police compounds. American soldiers complain of police supervisors shaking down villagers, skimming subordinates’ wages and selling promotions and equipment. Muhammad Hanif Atmar, the interior minister, has pushed for greater accountability by senior police officials. He has a lot of work ahead of him.
LAT: McChrystal to issue new tactical directive to protect Afghan civilians
In a "tactical directive" to be issued in coming days, Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal has ordered new operational standards, including refraining from firing on structures where insurgents may have taken refuge among civilians unless Western or allied troops are in imminent danger, said spokesman Navy Rear Adm. Gregory J. Smith.

Also under revision are ground search and seizure practices and the treatment of detainees, changes officials hope will reduce tensions between U.S. forces and Afghan citizens, and build a "civilian surge" to improve reconstruction and governance.

The directive is described as the most stringent effort yet to protect the lives of Afghan civilians, which McChrystal has identified as the crucial task of NATO and U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

"We can easily destroy the enemy," Smith said. "But if we do not know precisely who is in that structure, we need to take measures to avoid loss of innocent life -- step back or put up a cordon, or other measures."
WSJ: rules on airstrikes highlight differences between two US wars
The rules reflect key differences between the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In Iraq, most fighting took place in urban areas where the U.S. maintained enough troops that it rarely needed to call in airstrikes. In Afghanistan, combat mainly takes place in remote areas that reinforcements can't easily reach, leaving ground forces far more reliant on air power.
CSM: Qari Zainuddin, rival of Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, killed

LAT: focus on institutions required to achieve goal of statehood, says Palestinian Authority PM
Western officials credit [Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad], a Texas-trained economist, with improving the Palestinian Authority's effectiveness in the West Bank since being appointed to the post two years ago. He has modernized government ministries and overseen the deployment of Western-trained security forces to fight crime and armed militants in the territory's cities, though he said Monday that much work remains to be done.

BBC: former Rwandan deputy interior minister who lured thousands of Tutsis to be murdered sentenced to 30 years by ICTR; total tribunal judgments now reach 38
BBC: al-Shabab carries out amputations as punishment in Somali capital
Three mobile phones and two assaults rifles were displayed, which the accused had allegedly stolen, reports the AFP news agency... No date was set for the punishment, which will be carried out after the health of the accused is assessed. Furthermore, Monday was very hot and the court decided that carrying out an amputation in such conditions could lead the accused to bleed to death.

Amnesty International said the four men had not been given a fair trial.
CSM: Ethiopian troops quietly take up posts in Somalia, although "past foreign interventions haven't gone well"
Sources close to Western embassies in Nairobi confirmed news reports that Ethiopian troops have taken positions in the Central Somali town of Beledweyne, and that Ethiopian troops were also active in the Gelgadud region north of the capital of Mogadishu. Kenyan forces, too, are reportedly amassing along the Somali border as a defensive measure, in what Kenya's foreign minister described in a press conference as a matter of "national security."

The intervention – officially denied by the Ethiopian government – comes as Somalia's parliament speaker, Sheik Aden Mohamed Nor Madobe, sent an urgent call Saturday for military intervention by Somalia's neighbors within the next 24 hours. At present, pro-government militias and a 3,000-strong contingent of African Union peacekeepers control a few city blocks around the presidential palace in Mogadishu, along with the airport and seaport. The rest is firmly in the hands of hardline Islamist militias....

After a brief period of back-channel negotiation between the Sharif government and Sheikh Aweys, organized by clan elders, fighting broke out anew over the weekend. Clashes in the central parts of Mogadishu claimed the lives of at least 20 in the past two days, and wounded some 60 others.

The best evidence of a new foreign Islamist presence in Somalia are the string of high-level assassinations, most recently the suicide-bombing of Security Minister Omar Hashi in the central town of Beledweyne, and the attempted assassination of Interior Minister Sheikh Abdulkadir Ali Omar. The rising use of suicide attacks has even drawn the criticism of some top Islamist militia commanders, including Aweys, the leader of Hizbul Islam.

WP: many of 10,000+ dead in Mexico's drug war since 2006 are low-level dealers
Much attention is given to Mexican drug cartels warring over lucrative transport routes to the United States. But more and more, they're battling for an exploding number of Mexican consumers, a market that barely existed a decade ago. While the United States is expected to remain the largest and most coveted market, local consumers are a big and rapidly growing source of cash.

That makes street dealers like Mr. Rodriguez prime targets for assassins. Low-level sellers are easy prey for rivals seeking to expand turf because they work openly on street corners without bodyguards or armored cars...

His stints in prison put him in touch with important drug runners, and he used his contacts to move up from corner dealing to managing a handful of dealers when he got out.

Low-level dealers make about $20 a day on 100 hits of methamphetamine, said Julian Leyzaola, Tijuana's public-safety secretary. Many opt to be paid in drugs instead to support their habits. That's a handsome wage in hardscrabble neighborhoods where bricklayers earn the equivalent of $5 a day and factory workers make $60 a week...
NYT: a profile of Mexican cartel hitmen in the US
The two teams of assassins took direction from Lucio Quintero, or El Viejon, a capo in the Zetas across the river, trial records show. They received $500 a week as a retainer and $10,000 to $50,000 for each assassination, and the triggerman was given two kilos of cocaine.

Detective Roberto A. Garcia Jr. of the Laredo Police Department said they all worked for Miguel Treviño, the leader of the Zetas in Nuevo Laredo, the Mexican city across the river
from Laredo, who goes by the name El Cuarenta, which means Forty. (Many Zetas identify by a number.)

In addition to their retainers, the assassins received perks. At one point, Mr. Reta was given a new $70,000 Mercedes, for a job well done. Family members described how the young men would go to parties hosted by cartel capos. To keep up morale, the drug leaders would raffle off automobiles, firearms and even dates with attractive women, the family members said, speaking on the condition of anonymity...

Speaking of his upbringing, [one of the assassins] said that to him and his friends, growing up in ramshackle houses on dirt lots, the narcotics traffickers were heroes. The poorest counties in America lie along the Rio Grande, and Mr. Reta recalled stealing gummy bears from a local candy shop with Mr. Cardona when they were children.

“You know, here, all the little kids that are young, they say, ‘I want to be a firefighter when I grow up,’ ” Mr. Reta said, “Well down there, they say, ‘When I grow up, I want to be a Zeta’... You know, it’s the money, cars, houses, girls,” he said, pausing, “and you know that ain’t going to last a lifetime, that it’s going to end.”

Chron: 7 Colombian police killed in FARC ambush in southwest
CSM: 11 officers killed in India, by Maoist Naxalites feared to be gaining momentum
Since [1967], the movement, which claims to fight for India's poorest, has spread across strips of eastern, central, and southern India. Naxalites now operate in at least 11 of the country's 28 states and are thought to boast some 22,000 fighters.

On Monday, the central government warned that five states in central and eastern India were under threat of attacks during a two-day strike called by the rebels. That strike was called to protest against a government offensive in Lalgarh, a Maoist-seized jungle enclave in West Bengal. Last week, after the local police fled, the state government sent 1,000 paramilitary forces to Lalgarh where they are still fighting to commandeer hundreds of villages.

Here, as in other areas affected by Naxalism, the rebels have set out to attract the poor and alienated – "any group that has a grievance," says Ajay Sahni, a terrorism expert at the Institute for Conflict Management in New Delhi. In India, where hundreds of millions survive on less than a dollar a day and 70 percent of the population lives in rural areas largely bypassed by the country's recent economic boom, there is no shortage of such groups.

Geography also plays its part. The areas of West Bengal into which the Maoists are making inroads are close to the eastern states of Orissa, Jharkland, and Chhattisgarh, where the Maoist presence is heaviest. There are new concerns, too, that the rebels, who have tended to focus their operations on rural areas, are attacking areas close to cities. Mr. Sahni says the rebels are also stepping up a campaign to recruit more Indians to their cause. In Delhi, where the Maoists have previously tried to appeal to university students, they are now seeking to attract small retailers who have been displaced by multinational companies and urban planning laws, he says.
LAT: Moscow-backed president of Ingushetia republic wounded in suicide attack

BBC: ICRC study finds civilians bear major costs of war