imperial power [who's the ass?]

NYT: young elite Azeris mock the government, but apparently it doesn't have a sense of humor
Late last month, a group of Azeri bloggers posted their latest tongue-in-cheek opus, a video in which a donkey holds a news conference before a circle of gravely nodding journalists.

“I always told him, ‘Be careful, son, be careful,’ ” said Hikmet Hajizada, who once served as Azerbaijan’s ambassador to Russia. “I told him that. But in our situation, no one knows from what direction danger comes.”

wronging rights: Taylor takes the stand; defense team blames West for everything
In his opening statement, lead lawyer Courtenay Griffiths compared Taylor's extradition to the Netherlands to the slave trade's forced movement of Africans to Europe. (Because sometimes the race card just isn't enough and you've got to play the whole deck.)

FP: Walt has something to say about empire, based on Brendon's book on the Brits. 10 things, actually. (they're not surprising, but it's unclear what his point is for the US - be an empire but do it better? or avoid it altogether? see #3).
3. Successful empires require ample "hard power."
Although the British did worry a lot about their reputation and prestige (what one might now term their "soft power") what really killed the Empire was its eroding economic position. Once Britain ceased to be the world’s major economic and industrial power, its days as an imperial power were numbered. It simply couldn't maintain the ships, the men, the aircraft, and the economic leverage needed to rule millions of foreigners, especially in a world where other rapacious great powers preyed. The moral for Americans? It is far more important to maintain a robust and productive economy here at home than it is to squander billions of dollars trying to determine the political fate of some remote country thousands of miles away. External conditions may impinge on U.S. power, but it is internal conditions that generate it.

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FP: how are mega-rapper rivalries like insurgencies? not at all as it turns out, but this is still amusing.
So what does Jay-Z do? If he hits back hard in public, the Game will gain in publicity even if he loses... the classic problem of a great power confronted by a smaller annoying challenger. And given his demonstrated skills and talent, and his track record against G-Unit, the Game may well score some points. At the least, it would bring Jay-Z down to his level -- bogging him down in an asymmetric war negating the hegemon's primary advantages. If Jay-Z tries to use his structural power to kill Game's career (block him from releasing albums or booking tour dates or appearing at the Grammy Awards), it could be seen as a wimpy and pathetic operation -- especially since it would be exposed on Twitter and the hip hop blogs.

writers and despots [like recognizes like*]

BBC: Chávez ends 4-day-long television broadcast to celebrate 10th anniversary of Alo Presidente, has spat with Vargas Llosa
The decision to suspend Alo Presidente comes after a series of challenges and counter-challenges about holding a televised debate with the Peruvian writer - and arch-critic of President Chavez - Mario Vargas Llosa.

Mr Vargas Llosa is currently in Venezuela to attend an opposition-led seminar about democracy and authoritarianism in Latin America...

The Venezuelan leader has described his four-day TV extravaganza as a "soap opera", promising that there would be singing, debate and "a little bit of everything".
NYT: while everyone's watching the telenovela, Chávez grabs more control of military
Since February, Mr. Chávez has moved against a wide range of domestic critics, and his efforts in recent weeks to strengthen his grip on the armed forces have led to high-profile arrests and a wave of reassignments.

These are seen here as part of a larger effort by Mr. Chávez to cement loyalty in the military, where some officers are growing resentful at what they see as his micromanagement and politicizing of a proud and relatively independent institution...

In March, Mr. Chávez replaced the chiefs of the army, the air force and the Bolivarian Militia, a Cuban-inspired reserve force created to repel what Mr. Chávez repeatedly raises as the threat of an invasion by the United States.

BBC: writers' glimpses of Nigeria, on 10th anniversary of democracy

BBC: after 100 days, still awaiting substantive change in Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe's prime minister has set out a bleak assessment of the pace of democratic change in what was once one of Africa's most prosperous nations...Although his party is now part of the government, commentators have warned that the MDC has responsibility without authority.

BBC: Sudanese military takes Darfuri town back from JEM
An army spokesman said Jem had "completely evacuated" the area of Kornoi, 50km (31 miles) from Chad, and retreated towards the border, AFP news agency reports.

Jem seized Kornoi earlier this month and it tried to take an army base at nearby Umm Baru twice last week.

The rebels said they had withdrawn from the area for "humanitarian purposes" to protect the civilian population from air attacks.
WP: astounding one-third of refugees surveyed report or show signs of sexual violence
About half the rapes were carried out in Darfur by Janjaweed militiamen allied with the Sudanese government, and half were assaults by Chadian villagers near the U.N. refugee camp, usually when the women left to search for firewood or herd livestock, according to the report by the U.S.-based group Physicians for Human Rights.

The group reached the 88 women included in the survey through camp leaders and by word of mouth -- a sampling method the report said hinders drawing general conclusions about the prevalence of rape in Darfur or in the Farchana refugee camp in Chad...Further complicating the effort, women displaced inside Darfur live mostly in government-controlled areas and fear reprisal...

As many as 450,000 people have died as a result of the violence, mostly from disease, hunger and malnutrition, and more than 2.5 million have been forced from their homes. About 250,000 have fled into Chad, where they live in refugee camps.
AP: tribal clashes in Kordofan region leave hundreds dead
Tribal clashes over cattle grazing and water rights is common across Sudan, but the violence has grown worse over the years with the number of arms left over from the two-decade long civil war between the north and the south that ended in 2005.

The Messariah and Rezeigat tribes that clashed Tuesday and Wednesday straddle the border region between southern Kordofan and neighboring Darfur, where a separate conflict that has claimed 300,000 lives has raged for more than six years.

Interior Minister Hamed Ibrahim told the Cabinet on Thursday that in addition to the police, 169 tribesman were killed in the fighting, including 89 from the Messariah and 80 from the Rezeigat. Calm has now returned to the area, he was quoted as saying by the state news agency.

A previous round of fighting last year between the two tribes left over 70 from both sides dead, Messariah chief Babou Nimr Mukhtar told The Associated Press.

Mukhtar said fighting began Tuesday when 2,000 Rezeigat gunmen on horseback and in trucks attacked his tribe. Police were deployed to the area to prevent the fighting but were attacked by the Rezeigat, he said.

"Calm is restored. But there is no guarantee it will last," said Mukhtar. He stressed that tribal chiefs, not security forces, were the only ones who could end the rivalry...

Separate tribal clashes in the country's south over the last three months claimed the lives of some 900 people, mostly women and children.

Gdn: report from Mogadishu (spoiler alert: things aren't good)
After the parliament voted to introduce sharia I went back to visit the police officer. He shrugged and smiled when I told him about the debate. "We have always used sharia in our work," he said, handing me a cup of murky tea. "When the whole state is collapsing all that we have is our religion."

He told me he had joined the army in 1970 and then the police just before the collapse of Mogadishu 20 years ago. He had been wearing the same beige uniform ever since. "You are trying to impose law but where is the law when everyone is fighting? When the Ethiopians came those same Islamists that are in the government attacked us every day. They said we were supporting the invaders. In one day 15 shells fell on our police station. Now they are the government hopefully things will be better."...

"This how we establish sharia," the judge told me. "First we establish order and judgment in the middle of the chaos of war and destruction. When we started back in 1996 we were not a political movement. We started as judges to bring justice, then we became a political movement and then we became military." We crossed the basketball pitch of the compound that was once an army college. A lone boot sat in the middle of the pitch. The judge went on: "You know, sharia is fearing God and establishing religion. It's not about chopping hands off. First we establish security and then impose the rulings. It's the fear and hunger and chaos. If I cut the hands of hundreds of thieves I will not bring justice. Feed the hungry first and then punish them if they steal."...

After 20 years people had become used to life without a functioning state, explained one businessman with interests in fuel, mobile telephones and food. "Businessmen learned to do their work without a government. In the port the shipment is downloaded just as if there was a government – only you are the government, so if you have a ship you have to bring your men and your guards and do your work. Amongst the businessmen everything is run through trust – for example, when we need to buy fuel 20 merchants put money together, send it to Dubai, and our Somali friends send us a fuel tanker. Every merchant has his own militia and men who protect his interests. We do business with the government and the Shabaab. Our friends in Dubai are envious of us because we live without a state and we can do trade everywhere without control."

AJE: ongoing protests become clashes between civilians and police in south Yemen
Aden is the former capital of South Yemen, which was united with the north of the country in 1990.

Protesters carried banners with anti-government messages and posters of Ali Nasser Mohammed, the former president of South Yemen.

The death toll since protests started in the south in late April is now 16, including five security personnel.

Socialists, who formerly ruled the south, previously tried to gain secession in 1994, igniting a two-month civil war before the movement was crushed by forces loyal to the government.

Some southerners want independence because of alleged discrimination and neglect.

However, President Ali Abdullah Saleh has give warning that the nation could split up into several entities.


NYT: what unrequitted means during wartime
It goes like this: Boy meets girl. They exchange glances and text messages, the limit of respectable courting here. Then boy asks girl’s father for her hand. Dad turns him down. Boy goes to girl’s house and plants a bomb out front. The authorities call it a “love I.E.D.,” or improvised explosive device, and it is not just an isolated case.

WP: Pakistan military claims control of Mingora
Capturing Mingora, 80 miles north of Islamabad, the capital, has been one of the army's primary objectives. But Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, a military spokesman, conceded that the Taliban had not put up a strong fight for the city and that many insurgents probably slipped away. Large parts of Swat remain beyond the government's grip.
LAT: in possible tactical shift, the Taliban targets Pakistan's cities
Only a week ago, the military said it was expecting a long, hard-fought battle with Pakistani Taliban militants who had fortified themselves in the city's hotels and buildings. It now appears that, after initially putting up stiff resistance, many militants chose to flee...

But the militants may have decided to fight another way: seeding fear in other parts of the country through well-coordinated bombing attacks.
WP: meanwhile, insurgent-linked groups offering humanitarian aid to some of the millions displaced from Swat
The government has been overwhelmed by the human tide that has washed over the northwest as about 2 million people have fled fierce clashes in Swat. With Pakistan experiencing its largest exodus since the nation's partition from India in 1947, only a fraction of the displaced civilians are receiving assistance in government-run camps. The rest are fending for themselves or getting help from private charities, including some that are allied with the very forces the Pakistani army is fighting in Swat.

Refugee camps in Pakistan have been prime recruiting grounds for militant groups ever since the Soviet invasion forced millions of Afghans to cross into Pakistan in the 1980s. Now, concern is growing that this latest wave of displacement will create a fresh crop of Pakistanis with grievances against the government and loyalty to groups that seek to undermine the state through violent insurgency.

AP: violence in Afghanistan's western Bala Murghab district; bomb detonated in Kunduz
Northern Afghanistan was once thought to be a peaceful enclave unaffected by rampant Taliban violence in the south and east. But militants have increased attacks in the area in the last two years as the insurgency has spread across the country.

LAT: Azerbaijan enters the fray
The case offers an inside look at one of the stealthy duels being fought by Israel on one side and Hezbollah and Iran on the other in remote locales, from Latin America to Central Asia...

Azerbaijan, a moderate Muslim nation of 8 million, finds itself in a delicate spot. It has strong commercial and diplomatic ties to Iran, on its southern border. About a quarter of Iran's population, including supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, are ethnic Azeris.


AP: battle between Hamas, Palestinian police leave 6 dead
Despite Hamas' threats of reprisals, it was not immediately clear whether it would change its tactic of lying low in the West Bank while it weathers Abbas' crackdown. Since Hamas' Gaza takeover, Abbas' security forces have detained hundreds of Hamas supporters in the West Bank and closed the group's institutions and charities.

The Qalqiliya clash began late Saturday when Palestinian troops surrounded a hideout of Mohammed Samman, a leader of Hamas' military wing, and his assistant, Mohammed Yassin. Both had been on Israel's wanted list for six years, Palestinian security officials said..

Hamas officials in the West Bank said that some 40 loyalists of the group had been arrested in Qalqiliya in the past week as part of the search for the top two fugitives. Some 200 Hamas supporters are in Palestinian Authority custody...

But Abbas aide Nabil Abu Rdeneh said going after militants is key to one day setting up a Palestinian state. "To build our country and our state, we need to have one authority, one gun, one law," he said.
WP: Obama pushes Israel to stop settlements


BBC: contested statistics in Sri Lanka
The Sri Lankan government has strongly denied allegations that more than 20,000 civilians were killed during its recent onslaught against Tamil rebels.

The figures published in The Times newspaper in the UK - quoting official documents and witness accounts - is far higher than previously thought...

"I am bemused that The Times, like a jilted old woman, is continuing a bitter campaign against Sri Lanka based on unverified figures and unsubstantiated assertions," [Permanent Secretary to the Sri Lankan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Dr Palitha Kohona] said.

"The simple fact is that Sri Lanka eliminated a detestable terrorist group and in the process rescued over 250,000 hostages held as a human shield by the terrorists."
WP: satellite imagery seem to back the jilted old woman

WP: in Northern Ireland, eleven Protestants arrested in death of Catholic
Kevin McDaid, a plasterer who worked with youths in the community, was beaten to death by a large number of Protestants who drove into a Catholic neighborhood armed with bats and clubs after a soccer match. McDaid had gone into the street to make sure his four children were safe.

A 1998 peace accord known as the Good Friday agreement is often credited with ending the religious violence that had caused more than 3,600 deaths since 1969. But despite enormous political strides, an average of four incidents of sectarian violence or threats are reported to police each day in Northern Ireland. Now, instead of paramilitary groups using rifles and bombs, the incidents often involve youths armed with knives, bats and hate...

The mob Sunday night assembled after the Rangers, a soccer team with a long history of Protestant support, clinched the league championship over archrival Celtic, a team favored by Catholics. Both teams are Scottish, and many of their Northern Irish fans fly or take the boat over to Scotland for every game.

The rivalry between the two teams is a "proxy war" between the two long-feuding groups in Northern Ireland, Shirlow said. He said territorial conflicts continue in working-class neighborhoods where boundaries between Catholics and Protestants are clearly known and often marked by fluttering flags: the Union Jack or the Irish Republic's flag. The wearing of a blue-and-white Rangers scarf or the green-and-white Celtic shirt also distinguishes Catholics from Protestants.

After the championship match that the Rangers won Sunday, a group of fans, many of whom had been drinking, drove in several cars to a Catholic housing estate in Coleraine, a town of 24,000 people 55 miles northwest of Belfast. Witnesses told police they beat up the first people they came across.

McDaid had worked with youths in the community to ease sectarianism and had married a Protestant. His wife was severely beaten and suffered head injuries. Another man, Damien Fleming, was critically injured...

Between April 1, 2008, and March 31, 2009, police recorded 1,595 incidents of sectarian violence or threats, a slight rise over the year before. Most are not publicized, and few result in death. The largest category -- nearly 500 reports -- involved "criminal damage," and 287 were assaults...

Catholics accounted for 40 percent of Northern Ireland's 1.7 million people in the 2001 census, while 45 percent considered themselves Protestant. Bew said Protestants would probably remain in the majority for at least another generation. But in many areas, traditional working-class Catholic neighborhoods are expanding because of larger Catholic families and exiting Protestants. In the shrinking Protestant enclaves, some feel threatened and "left behind," Bew said.

LAT: La Familia penetrated state political institutions in Michoacan
A relatively new and particularly violent group, La Familia Michoacana, is undermining the electoral system and day-to-day governance of this south-central state, pushing an agenda that goes beyond the usual money-only interests of drug cartels...

Just last week it became clear how deeply embedded La Familia is. Federal authorities detained 10 mayors and 20 other local officials as part of a drug investigation, saying the organized-crime group has contaminated city halls across the state. The roundup comes at the height of the electoral season, as Michoacan and the rest of Mexico approach local and national contests July 5.

Dozens of mayors, city hall officials and politicians have been killed or abducted in Michoacan as La Familia has extended its control in the last couple of years...

Unlike some drug syndicates, La Familia goes beyond the production and transport of marijuana, cocaine and methamphetamine and seeks political and social standing. It has created a cult-like mystique and developed pseudo-evangelical recruitment techniques that experts and law enforcement authorities say are unique in Mexico.

No party has been spared its influence or interference, politicians of all stripes said in a series of interviews conducted before the arrests of the mayors...

La Familia emerged this decade as a local partner of the so-called Gulf cartel, whose operatives were moving into the region along with their ruthless paramilitary force, the Zetas. La Familia and the Zetas gradually muscled out most of the other gangs, and La Familia announced its dominance by tossing five severed heads onto the floor of a dance hall in the Michoacan city of Uruapan in September 2006. The gruesome calling card soon became all too common in areas where drug traffickers settle accounts...

Nonetheless, La Familia is stronger today than ever. It has expanded into the neighboring states of Guerrero, Queretaro and Mexico, which abuts the national capital, Mexico City, while battling remaining pockets of the Gulf cartel.

La Familia also has steadily diversified into counterfeiting, extortion, kidnapping, armed robbery, prostitution and car dealerships. The group offers money or demands bribes; increasingly, people in Michoacan pay protection money to La Familia in lieu of taxes to the government...

They recruit at drug rehab centers and indoctrinate followers with an ideology akin to religious fundamentalism, complete with group prayer sessions. Some armed guards wear uniforms with the FM logo, witnesses say. Failure by a recruit to live by the rules is said to be punishable by death.
NYT: being part of una familia has its pay-offs and consequences
NYT: Mexican cartels expanding business in US


Slate: there already are inmates convicted of terrorism in US jails

NYT: the NYC projects where Sotomayor (and Jay-Z, Wesley Snipes, and Marc Anthony) grew up
Slate: status question: can you immigrate from within the Commonwealth?
In the [2001] speech, Sotomayor called her parents "immigrants," but the island they departed has been an American territory for 111 years. Why it has remained so longer than any other overseas possession (save the odd atoll or guano deposit) is an enduring historic puzzle.

Puerto Rico is often described as the world's oldest colony, having recently entered its sixth century under off-island rule. Spanish settlers seized Puerto Rico from the Taíno Indians in 1508, a decade and a half after Christopher Columbus "discovered" it. It remained a Spanish colony until the United States chased Spain out of the neighborhood in the Spanish-American War. That was 1898, the same year the United States acquired the Hawaiian Islands. Hawaii became a state. Puerto Rico did not. (Another island acquired in 1898 is Guam, which would share Puerto Rico's 111-year record as a U.S. territory but for its seizure by Japan during World War II.)...

Debate now focuses on whether to continue commonwealth status or to make Puerto Rico a state. Commonwealth status has the advantage of sharply restricting island dwellers' exposure to federal taxation but the disadvantage of limiting their representation in Congress, excluding them from nonprimary presidential elections, and reducing their eligibility for Medicaid and other federal entitlements. Statehood would bring more taxes, more representation, more government benefits, and some loss of cultural identity (including, in all likelihood, additional pressure to make English the island's primary language). During the past 40 years, Puerto Rico has conducted four plebescites on the island's fate.

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NYT: sv mournfully suggests new Cleveland slogan: 'better luck next year'

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*sv has finally gotten to 'the brief wondrous life of oscar wao,' in which she currently delights, and from which this allusion comes: "What is it with Dictators and Writers, anyway? Since before the infamous Caesar-Ovid war they've had beef. Lke the Fantastic Four and Galactus, like the X-Men and the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, like the Teen Titans and Deathstroke, Foreman and Ali, Morrison and Crouch, Sammy and Sergio, they seemed destind to be eternally linked in the Halls of Battle. Rushdie claims that tyrants and scribblers are natural antagonists, but I think that's too simple; it lets writers off pretty easy. Dictators, in my opinion, just know competition when they see it. Same with writers. Like, after all, recognizes like" (p97, fn11). sidenote: he was referring to a dissertation writer in particular.
bonus sidenote: to wit, the ferocity of poets
triple bonus sidenote: Pinochet henchman arrested this week for murder of Jara 36 years ago
Jara, a political songwriter and poet and high-profile supporter of socialist President Salvador Allende, was among thousands swept up in the aftermath of Pinochet's CIA-backed coup in September 1973. The author of El cigarrito and Manifiesto was herded into Santiago's football stadium which was used as a mass jail.

Soldiers broke the musician's hands before shooting him in the head and riddling his body with bullets, one of 3,100 murders committed by Pinochet's forces during military rule which lasted until 1990, when democracy returned to the South American country.

tainted trials

americas
Gdn: US already on defensive about 9/11 military trials
LAT: standards will be stricter than in Nuremberg; and apparently the military offered straight-faced assurance that defendants will have more rights than those facing trial for assassination of Lincoln. yes, in the 19th century.
WP: FBI claims the "Clean Team" gathered evidence without 'coercive' measures

IHT: drug traffickers' patron saint
"Jesús Malverde has been revered for almost a century in northwestern Mexico. According to folklore, he was a Robin Hood who took from the rich and gave to the poor until he was killed by the police in 1909...Courts in California, Kansas, Nebraska and Texas have ruled that Malverde trinkets and talismans are admissible evidence in cases involving drugs or money laundering."
[so much for offering protection from the law...]
Econ: drug-related violence in Vancouver
"...for many of the 2.2m residents of Vancouver, accustomed to idyllic calm, a spate of gun killings is starting to give their city the aura of Prohibition-era Chicago. In violent battles over power and money, brazen young bandits are blowing each other to pieces for a piece of another prohibited market—that for drugs."

LAT: remembering slavery in Barbados and the West Indies

africa
Econ: no one's innocent in Kenya
Gdn: opposition offers power sharing scheme for new elections in 2010

IHT: in one of its four open cases in Africa, ICC receives 3rd war crimes suspect from the Congo
"Ngudjolo allegedly led forces of the National Integrationist Front — including child soldiers — who attacked the village of Bogoro in the eastern Ituri region in 2003, the court said."

BBC: Nigeria orders oil companies to start production again in the Niger Delta, says it's safe enough

Ind: evolution of US operations in Somalia since 1993
"As America has lost its grip on southern and central Somalia it has turned its attention further north. Somaliland, formerly a British protectorate, declared itself independent in 1991, while Puntland, at Africa's most easterly tip, gained semi-autonomy from the rest of Somalia in 1998. Both provinces have their own intelligence services; both are funded by the US.

So far there appears to have been little reward. One Puntland Intelligence Service officer thinks he knows why. "The Americans know nothing," he said, sitting in a café in the port city of Bosasso. 'They pay for information, but they don't know what's right and wrong.' This officer insisted he gave only good information but knew of others who used their position to settle old scores."

Econ: Europe's colonial legacy in Africa hobbling intervention now

Scientific American: Jeff Sachs writes about resources and war in the "drylands"

BBC: another ambush in Algeria

middle east
BBC: presidential election in Lebanon rescheduled (again) for Feb 26

Gdn: Musharraf not so popular
Gdn: suicide bomber kills six opposition supporters
Econ: summarizing scholarship on suicide bombing

Econ: Gaza border back in order (of sorts)
BBC: Olmert urged restraint

LAT: Azerbaijan in the middle
"In the turbulent world of geopolitics, the Middle East gets most of the ink. But it is here along the gloomy shores of the Caspian Sea that one of the most vital global contests -- for energy, money and political dominion -- is being waged between East and West."

asia
Econ: religious conflict and violence in the tribal belt...of India

Econ: (trying) to end military rule in Bangladesh

LAT: junta in Burma plans "elections" for 2010
Econ: maybe it plans to follow the lead of its friendly neighbor to the north

Econ: Sri Lanka's independece celebrated. sort of.
Gdn: clashes between the LTTE and gov't forces in the north

Ind: top Khmer Rouge leader gives interview
"The command had come from above, he said. 'All the prisoners had to be eliminated. We saw enemies, enemies, enemies everywhere.'"

Gdn: East Timor calls state of emergency after attack on PM

europe
Gdn: Serbia warns of potential violence in Kosovo
"Critics of the plan to declare independence, which follows the failure of Serbia and the Kosovo-Albania leaders to negotiate terms for separation, have already warned of the risk that Kosovo's Serbian population, concentrated in northern Mitrovica, would respond by declaring their own independence, setting the stage for violent confrontation."
Econ: assessing the new president
Econ: assessing a familiar face in Montenegro

Gdn: British troops allowed to record video while deployed, contribute to museum exhibit

Gdn: massive arrests last week in operation against Cosa Nostra, the Gambino crime family

misc
CSM: counting the atrocities: a profile of Patrick Ball

Gdn: no red roses for your sweetheart in Saudi Arabia

Gdn: Obama, Japan supports Obama