creating monsters [cynicism recovered]

WP: Hamas retains control of Gaza
"If there is any significant disenchantment with Hamas in the Gaza Strip, it is largely hidden behind the fear that many feel in speaking out against the group.

In dozens of interviews across Gaza on Friday, less than a week after the start of a tenuous cease-fire, Palestinians generally expressed either unbridled support for Hamas or resignation to the idea that the group's reign in Gaza will continue for the foreseeable future. No one suggested that the group is vulnerable, despite the hopes of some Israeli officials who have theorized that their military campaign could ultimately spur Palestinians to rise up against Hamas rule."

WSJ: and then there's counter-productive in the long-term
"Instead of trying to curb Gaza's Islamists from the outset, says Mr. Cohen, Israel for years tolerated and, in some cases, encouraged them as a counterweight to the secular nationalists of the Palestine Liberation Organization and its dominant faction, Yasser Arafat's Fatah. Israel cooperated with a crippled, half-blind cleric named Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, even as he was laying the foundations for what would become Hamas. Sheikh Yassin continues to inspire militants today; during the recent war in Gaza, Hamas fighters confronted Israeli troops with "Yassins," primitive rocket-propelled grenades named in honor of the cleric...

When Israel first encountered Islamists in Gaza in the 1970s and '80s, they seemed focused on studying the Quran, not on confrontation with Israel. The Israeli government officially recognized a precursor to Hamas called Mujama Al-Islamiya, registering the group as a charity. It allowed Mujama members to set up an Islamic university and build mosques, clubs and schools. Crucially, Israel often stood aside when the Islamists and their secular left-wing Palestinian rivals battled, sometimes violently, for influence in both Gaza and the West Bank...

After the 1948 establishment of Israel, the [Muslim] Brotherhood recruited a few followers in Palestinian refugee camps in Gaza and elsewhere, but secular activists came to dominate the Palestinian nationalist movement.

At the time, Gaza was ruled by Egypt. The country's then-president, Gamal Abdel Nasser, was a secular nationalist who brutally repressed the Brotherhood. In 1967, Nasser suffered a crushing defeat when Israel triumphed in the six-day war. Israel took control of Gaza and also the West Bank...

In Gaza, Israel hunted down members of Fatah and other secular PLO factions, but it dropped harsh restrictions imposed on Islamic activists by the territory's previous Egyptian rulers...

The Muslim Brotherhood, led in Gaza by Sheikh Yassin, was free to spread its message openly...

In fact, the cleric and Israel had a shared enemy: secular Palestinian activists. After a failed attempt in Gaza to oust secularists from leadership of the Palestinian Red Crescent, the Muslim version of the Red Cross, Mujama staged a violent demonstration, storming the Red Crescent building. Islamists also attacked shops selling liquor and cinemas. The Israeli military mostly stood on the sidelines."
NYT: the cleavage endures: Hamas targeting suspected Fatah supporters
"Many Fatah members and supporters said in interviews that Hamas might feel somewhat weakened by the Israeli offensive and was concerned that its political rivals not take advantage of the disorder created by the war.

The Palestinian human rights worker shared that view. “The internal security department is sending a very clear and strong message to Fatah to be quiet,” he said.

The shoemaker’s cousin, who actively supports Fatah, said that he had been moving from house to house after Hamas members searched his home on Sunday while he was out.

“They’re afraid that Fatah will take advantage of the chaos to come back to power,” the cousin said. “The message is: Stay at home. Be afraid. We didn’t lose power.”

A few patterns did seem to be emerging. Those who had Fatah and Hamas political affiliations within a single family tended not to be targets. And the cousin said it was not the central Hamas leadership that was looking for him, but only people from the party’s neighborhood branch, confirming, in part, what Mr. Nunu of the Gaza government said.

Several people said Hamas had given children cellphone credits to keep tabs on them. They are called “drones,” and when they pass, everyone knows to stop talking, said a man in Bureij, a town south of Gaza City, who said he had been told by local Hamas supporters to stay inside his house."
LAT: Hamas leadership still in hiding
LAT: debating what happened - and legal and moral implications

WP: tough terrain in Afghanistan hinders counterinsurgency
"Bessey, a tall, athletic-looking West Point graduate from Michigan, glanced over at the stalled convoy while he settled in on a pile of rocks and waited for help to arrive. He vigorously worked a plug of tobacco in the corner of his mouth while he listened to Malik Dalawar, the Khuga Kheyl tribal elder, plead his case.

Thick-fisted and balding, with a stubbly white beard, Dalawar took Bessey's measure with a long, hard look. We need guns, he said. At night, there are few NATO forces or Afghan police or troops around to safeguard local villagers. Dalawar said he and his people needed some way to defend themselves against the Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters who regularly sweep into the area from Pakistan. But Bessey was not entirely convinced.

Dalawar, a member of the Mohmand tribe, said he is no fan of the Taliban. But in places such as Khuga Kheyl, the pressure on tribal elders to join the Taliban is intense. Electricity is scarce. Paved roads are nonexistent. And insurgent hideouts are abundant on both sides of the border. Dalawar said insurgent commanders regularly try to entice him to join the fight against coalition forces...

"I am an elder, so if someone has a gun and I don't, I can't do anything," Dalawar said.

"If the area is secure, then you don't need a weapon," Bessey replied.

Dalawar tried again: "If something happens and I do not have an AK-47, it could be a problem."

"If you have a weapon, it could be a problem for someone else," Bessey said.

In other parts of Afghanistan, the debate over whether to arm local tribal leaders has been largely settled. In southern Afghanistan and in provinces near the capital, Kabul, where the Taliban is strongest, the training and arming of local tribal militias will soon be underway.

Nevertheless, some Afghans have said they fear that arming local militias will lead to abuses and could reignite the same intertribal frictions that sparked a protracted and brutal civil war in Afghanistan in the 1990s."
LAT: the debate about 'public guard' forces
"For many Afghans, the notion of private militias also evokes nightmarish memories of urban battles between warlords in the early 1990s. Entire districts of the capital, still rocket-pocked and battered, serve as a testament to that spasm of factional fighting that helped set the stage for the rise of the Taliban.

Critics also point to a disastrous 2006 effort by the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai to create an auxiliary force to supplement the regular police. With little or no screening of recruits, large numbers promptly deserted to join the insurgency, taking their government-issued weapons with them.

"We need to protect our country with our police and army, not a bunch of uneducated guys running around with guns," said Khan Mohammed, a businessman in the southern city of Kandahar. "One trained soldier or policeman is better than 10 or even 50 militiamen, because they won't follow any rules."

But to authorities in places like Wardak, where long stretches of the main national highway are littered with the remains of bombed-out convoys and government control is tenuous everywhere except district centers, the idea seems worth trying.

"We need something to fill the gap; there aren't enough police and there aren't enough troops," said Mohammed Halim Fidai, Wardak's governor. "Who is more motivated than someone guarding his home and family?"...

Many of the plan's Afghan backers say, however, that they expect the public guards to be modeled on traditional tribal groups called arbakais -- in no small measure because in rural Afghanistan almost everything breaks down along tribal lines.

Some Afghan officials worry tribal leaders' main goal in supporting the initiative is to expand influence, particularly because money to pay guards will be funneled through tribal councils, which are also supposed to vouch for those picked to serve as "paid volunteers."

Another sensitive point is weaponry. If the public guards are given guns, as expected, it would fly in the face of years of efforts by the Afghan government to disarm private militias. But few believe village-based groups would dare confront the Taliban, even indirectly, unless they have ready access to weapons.

U.S. and NATO officials said they did not envision arming the public guards. But one American military official acknowledged that nearly every village home has weapons, and use of them might be tacitly allowed.

Critics consider that hypocritical."

WP: US continues air strikes in Pakistan
"The separate strikes on two compounds, coming three hours apart and involving five missiles fired from Afghanistan-based Predator drone aircraft, were the first high-profile hostile military actions taken under Obama's four-day-old presidency."
AJE: ...as Zardari meets with tribal leaders in Islamabad

Slate: how many prisoners are still in Guantanamo, who are they, who has been released, and how many have returned to (or joined) terrorist groups?
Slate: ...and how many have gone to rehab?
"Detainees selected to enter Saudi Arabia's counseling program—usually Saudis who committed terror-related crimes and don't repent of their extremist beliefs in one-on-one interviews—are sent to a former desert resort outside Riyadh. There they swim in a pool, play soccer and volleyball, use Playstation, do art therapy, and learn to practice a more moderate form of Islam. They also take classes taught by clerics and social scientists. Coursework covers 10 subjects, from religious concepts like jihad (religious struggle) and takfir (calling someone an unbeliever) and walaah (loyalty) to psychological courses in self-esteem. The clerics impart the laws of Wahhabism—the dominant form of Islam in Saudi Arabia—which prohibit jihad unless there is an official fatwa. At the end of six weeks, students take an exam. If they pass, they may be approved for release. (That is, if they have already served out their original jail sentence.) If not, they have to take the class again.

The goal of the rehab program is to give the "students" a stable social network that doesn't rely on terrorist organizations. Detainees eat and cook communally and live in rooms with fellow prisoners. Family members visit regularly, and detainees can phone them whenever they want. They can even request furlough for weddings and funerals. Families also receive generous stipends, since prisoners can't earn money...

Saudi Arabia isn't the only country to offer rehab to terrorists. Egypt, Yemen, Algeria, Sinagpore, Indonesia, Malaysia, and now Iraq have similar programs. But none of these are as elaborate or well-funded as Saudi Arabia's. They have different approaches, too. In Indonesia, they bring in reformed extremists to talk to detainees. (The highest profile convert was Nasir Abas, who split from the group Jemaah Islamiya after the Bali bombing in 2005 and has since become the poster child for rehabilitation.)

So, does rehab work? Recidivism figures come from the local governments, so they aren't particularly reliable. The Saudis claim that, since 2003, they have converted and released 1,400 participants; as of 2008, only 35 of them—or 2 percent—had been rearrested. Of the 121 or so prisoners repatriated from Guantanamo Bay to Saudi Arabia, six have been rearrested. These are, of course, cases of known recidivism. The real numbers may be much higher."

Slate: speaking of social networks - how they influenced soldiers' decisions and survival in the US Civil War
"Costa and Kahn look at the larger stakes decision of whether Union soldiers [in the US Civil War] chose to risk death by remaining to fight or desert and save their own skins. The authors reason that social bonds are stronger among soldiers from similar backgrounds. New England-born soldiers, for example, will feel greater kinship with other New Englanders, the Irish with other Irish, blacksmiths with other blacksmiths. In companies where men had shared backgrounds, fewer soldiers would be expected to abandon their comrades, both because of the greater kinship among men with a sense of social connection and because their shared network would make it easier to punish and censure cheaters back home...

The military service records of every Union soldier—including birthplace, occupation, age; whether he deserted, got captured, won a Medal of Honor—were sent to the National Archives after the war. To test their theory, Costa and Kahn analyzed the records of soldiers in 354 Union companies, a total of 41,000 men. They found that on average, nine out of 100 men deserted. However, in companies populated by a relatively homogeneous group of men—of similar ages, born in the same place, who worked similar jobs before the war—the desertion rate was closer to two in 100. Belief in the cause mattered—enlistees from pro-Lincoln counties were less likely to desert. And the likelihood of catching a bullet by staying and fighting naturally figured into soldiers' decisions to go AWOL as well—desertion rates went down when the war tilted in the Union's favor. But neither belief in the war nor hopes for survival mattered nearly as much as the strength of social bonds in predicting who would stay and fight.

This wasn't because soldiers felt safer surrounded by friends whom they could count on for life-saving favors—a soldier's best chance at survival was to desert, regardless of the strength of his fighting unit. Rather, it was the shame and embarrassment of abandoning one's comrades. A community quickly got word of cowardice as well as heroics through soldiers' letters home, and deserters were nearly 50 percent more likely to pick up and move to a different state after the fighting ended."

BBC: remembering Roma victimization in the Holocaust
"Historians often call it "the forgotten Holocaust". Up to 500,000 Roma are believed to have died in mass shootings and Nazi gas chambers."

NYT: Nkunda caught
wronging rights: why did Rwanda turn on him?
BBC: Congo seeking extradition
Econ: a brief synopsis of the convoluted war

Gdn: Thai gov't turning away migrants from Burma and Bangladesh without enough provisions to survive at sea; more than 400 have died
AJE: immigrants and asylum-seekers break out of holding center on Italian island, march to city hall
"Police said the group forced open the gates of the camp and marched peacefully to the town centre to protest against their detention.

They were joined by a few hundred locals who also want the inmates transferred to bigger camps elsewhere in Italy...

The UNHCR said it is only built for 850 people but now has up to 2,000 crammed in, many sleeping under plastic sheets.

Originally a temporary stop for people waiting for transfer to other centres in Italy, the camp's role has changed this year with tough new immigration rules meaning all those rescued are kept in Lampedusa until being granted asylum or expelled...

Italy's interior ministry estimates that 31,700 immigrants landed on Lampedusa in 2008, a 75 per cent increase on the previous year."

AJE: Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) will return to peace talks if Philippine gov't puts secession back on the agenda
"The 12,000-strong MILF has...continued the struggle for political autonomy, becoming one of four groups that are fighting for a separate Muslim state in the southern Philippines."

WP: reviews of 'Slumdog Millionaire' in Mumbai
"Some of Mumbai's poor also are taking offense. On Thursday, a small band of slum residents, organized by a social activist, held up banners reading "Poverty for Sale" and "I am not a dog" outside the home of Anil Kapoor, one of the film's stars.

But many more slum residents -- the people who keep this teeming metropolis running by working as drivers, tea wallahs (or vendors), cobblers, laundry men and tailors -- say it's about time they received some attention in a country that tries to present itself as a success story, better known for its booming economy and its growing roster of millionaires than for the mayhem of its slums, among the world's largest. They say slumdogs are underdogs who deserve a film about their lives."

WP: slums receiving short shrift in Colombia as well
"Yodiris Parra, 32, one of 55,000 people who arrived in Cartagena during the past decade after being displaced by war , says her life has changed very little in recent years.

Her home is a wood-plank shack in the teeming Villa Hermosa slum. There is no running water, and raw sewage flows in the streets outside. Though Parra's husband works in construction, ostensibly benefiting from a building boom, she said that the typical meal she serves her three children is soup filled out with a bone...

As Uribe lobbies Washington for a free trade agreement, held up so far because of Democratic concerns over human rights abuses, he makes the case that his twin policies of fostering a healthy business climate and fighting armed groups have improved the lives of ordinary Colombians...

Here, inside Cartagena's ramparts and along an adjacent stretch of luxury seaside high-rises, it is easy to see signs of that investment and feel the optimism that has come with it...

But to Jesús Mercado, who takes tourists on romantic carriage rides, the city that tourists see is far from being the real Cartagena. "They show the tourists and the foreigners the good face of Cartagena," he said. "But the dark side, the southeast side, they do not show that. They hide it."

Indeed, in this city of 1 million people, 600,000 are poor, and tens of thousands are destitute. The percentage of residents lacking basic necessities -- a yardstick used by demographers to measure poverty in Colombia -- is 26 percent, nearly three times the rate in Bogota, the capital."

BBC: the state of the landless movement in Brazil
Gdn: referendum on new constitution to be held in Bolivia on Sunday

Ind: Castro starting to fade
"On Thursday night, he instructed Cuban officials to start making decisions without taking him into account. In a column titled "Reflections of Comrade Fidel", he suggested his days are numbered, saying Cuban officials "shouldn't feel bound by my occasional 'Reflections', my state of health or my death. I have had the rare privilege of observing events over such a long time. I receive information and meditate calmly on those events. I expect I won't enjoy that privilege in four years, when Obama's first presidential term has ended." The lines had the ring of a farewell."

BBC: with spiraling crime, Mexico considering reinstatement of the death penalty

NYT: hip hop in China
" 'Hip-hop is free, like rock ’n’ roll — we can talk about our lives, what we’re thinking about, what we feel,' said Wang Liang, 25, a popular hip-hop D.J. in China who is known as Wordy. 'The Chinese education system doesn’t encourage you to express your own character. They feed you stale rules developed from books passed down over thousands of years. There’s not much opportunity for personal expression or thought; difference is discouraged.' "

NYT: the gag rule is gone!

course of treatment [stuck on band-aids]

NYT: riots continue in Greece
"A march through downtown Athens on Monday night turned violent, as demonstrators threw concrete slabs, rocks and flaming gasoline bombs at the officers and smashed storefronts. A government Christmas tree along their path was set on fire.

Rioting also intensified in the country’s second largest city, Salonika, and spread to Trikala, a city in the agricultural heartland.

Schools were shut in Athens, the capital, and high school and university students spilled onto the streets, leading to scattered violence throughout the day.

But the evening demonstration, which had attracted thousands and was organized by the Communist Party, was accompanied by some of the worst of the violence of the past several days."
Gdn: timeline
Gdn: photos
BBC: more photos
BBC: cultural context

New Yorker: policing Pashmul with outsiders
Khan and his police officers are members of Afghanistan’s Hazara minority, identifiable among Afghans because of their Asiatic features; the population they patrol is Pashtun. Hazaras are mostly Shia, with a history of ties to Iran, whereas most Pashtuns are Sunni and have turned to Pakistan for support. Over the past century, the two peoples have fought periodically, and the Hazaras, who are thought to make up between nine and nineteen per cent of Afghanistan’s population—the Pashtuns make up nearly half—have usually lost...

Units like Khan’s, made up of a despised minority with an unsparing attitude toward those they police, embody many of the paradoxes involved in trying to bring order to Afghanistan’s ethnically fissured society...

In July, I visited Pashmul’s police base, a small installation about twice as large as a tennis court and surrounded by ditches and razor wire. Nearby are crumbling Pashtun villages of mud-brick homes, sprinkled with trash and unexploded ordnance. Pashmul is ideal terrain for an insurgency. The main sources of livelihood, other than hemp and poppies, are grapes and pomegranates, and, during the summer fighting season, foliage in fields and orchards provides cover for insurgents. Because farmers are too poor to use wooden frames in their vineyards, their grapevines are supported by deep furrows cut in the earth; thus in an apparently empty field hundreds of Taliban may be hidden. Grape huts, scattered around the fields, have mud walls thick enough to stop bullets, and narrow ventilation slits that can accommodate rifle barrels. Fighting has caused many Pashmul residents to flee to a temporary camp in the desert, from which they trek several miles each morning to cultivate the fields.

Khan’s police unit patrols a war zone, and the men often do the work of soldiers rather than of normal beat police officers. Although the Army lends support when the police encounter armed resistance, the soldiers then retreat to a base outside Pashmul. On most days, the police patrol the alleys alone, except for a few Canadian soldiers whom NATO has assigned to train and mentor them...

At the command level, the decision to exploit one of Afghanistan’s least noted and most bitter ethnic rivalries seems to have been improvised rather than planned. I asked Brigadier-General Denis Thompson, the top Canadian commander, about Khan’s unit, and he emphasized the similarity between Hazaras and Pashtuns, rather than the differences. “The advantage of any Afghan, regardless of their ethnicity, is that they get a better measure of what’s going on on the ground than we could ever get,” he said. “They know when something is amiss in this district.” No NATO officer I met seemed to appreciate the full significance of the Hazara-Pashtun rivalry...

Two days earlier, NATO artillery strikes had destroyed a Taliban position. Footage from a Predator drone suggested that Taliban soldiers had suffered serious injuries and that, more interestingly, villagers had surrounded and stoned wounded Talibs as they tried to crawl away. Cox’s mission was to lead soldiers to the village to find out what had happened, and to see whether they could harness any anti-Taliban feeling. Some areas haven’t seen a patrol in years, so even farmers who might sympathize with the government lack any guarantee that the government will protect them if they oppose the Taliban. “How are these people supposed to know about their government and support it when there’s no police there?” Cox asked.

The men on duty were not inattentive, but they seemed fundamentally unserious. They lacked initiative, and sat back and murmured to one another while the Canadians interviewed a local farmer. The Canadians barely spoke with their A.N.A. contingent at all, and the Afghan soldiers seemed to regard it as their principal duty to stand in place while the Canadians conducted their search.

The team cornered a farmer, who confirmed that some villagers had persuaded the Taliban to set up their heavy machine gun in another area, in case the Canadians sent in artillery to destroy the position. The team seized on the disclosure as a sign that the villagers could rise up against the Taliban. The farmer shook his head. “No,” he said. “We can argue with you. Not with them. If we say just one thing against the insurgents, they will come and kill us.”

“Have the insurgents come back to say that to you?” the Canadian asked.

The farmer leaned in and looked around. “They always come here.”

Soon afterward, Cox received word that some insurgents were just a few hundred yards away. An unmanned aerial vehicle had spotted men clustering south of us, across a vineyard and near a suspected weapons cache. Cox summoned an A.N.A. quick-reaction force, to support an assault against the position. Half an hour later, no one had arrived, and Cox was furious. He yelled at his counterpart in the Afghan forces, stabbing his finger at the soldier, who was suppressing a laugh: “I’m asking you if they’re ready to come here and help us fight. If you want to take this job half-assed, then fucking get out of the Army.”

When the Afghan quick-response force arrived, its soldiers stood looking dazed. We started to move toward the insurgents’ position by fanning in two directions—one of the most basic tactical maneuvers an infantry unit can attempt. The Afghans now looked slightly frightened—less of the Taliban ambush than of their officer, an Afghan captain trained by Green Berets. As he issued commands through a radio, the soldiers moved down the road and into the vineyard, correctly enough but with uneasy attention to detail, like a troupe of dancers staring at their feet. When we had closed half the distance, I crouched in a furrow, amid grapevines, until a soldier ahead of me—a stubbly, spindly man with a backpack full of rocket-propelled grenade warheads—yelped “Gun!” and pointed at the ambush point.

Seeing a weapon triggered the rules of engagement, and we ran toward the position. I kept my head low, looking at the ground a few steps ahead of me to avoid I.E.D.s. We leaped over an irrigation ditch, and, when I looked up to make sure I was still running in the right direction, I saw the soldier again. He had his grenade-launcher in one hand and, in the other, a colossal bunch of grapes, which he had started to eat. By the time we arrived at the place where the surveillance had spotted the insurgents, the Taliban had long since vanished back into the surrounding villages. As we stood in the empty Taliban position, I noticed that most of the Afghan soldiers carried grapes that they had picked up during the maneuver, and that they looked pleased...

When the patrol encountered residents, [Hazara] Khan and [Canadian] Vollick asked them about Taliban in the area, and received jittery and unhelpful answers. Neither spoke Pashto, but through a translator they managed to perform a kind of good-cop, bad-cop act. Vollick approached two old men sitting outside a house, and asked about Taliban. The response was cordial but evasive. Vollick repeated a line, familiar by now to the villagers, about NATO’s desire to make sure the government could meet their needs for schools and wells. While the men spoke, Khan rolled his eyes in operatic boredom and instructed his men to search the building and to frisk every passerby. The villagers obviously regarded Khan and Vollick as equally foreign. They denied any knowledge of Taliban activity, but, as Khan’s aggressiveness and suspicion grew, they gave Vollick more and more desperate excuses for not coöperating—they were afraid, they said, and hadn’t seen any insurgents anyway. Two other men and a teen-ager looked at us over the walls, perhaps close enough to report back to insurgents on what was said."

LAT: sectarian polarization intense as violence subsides in Baqubah, Diyala
LAT: Tonga troops end deployment as 'coalition of the willing' members

WP (Eugene Robinson): the trial of Blackwater contractors is a whitewash by the White House et al
"There is a huge difference between self-defense and the kind of indiscriminate fusillade that the Blackwater team allegedly unleashed. Proper training and supervision -- which was the Blackwater firm's responsibility -- would have made it more likely for the guards to make the right split-second decisions amid the chaos of Nisoor Square. Rather than give Blackwater a free pass, the Justice Department ought to investigate the preparation these men were given before being sent onto Baghdad's dangerous streets...

But a real attempt to establish blame for this massacre should go beyond Blackwater. It was the Bush administration that decided to police the occupation of Iraq largely with private rather than regular troops.

There are an estimated 30,000 security "contractors" in Iraq, many of them there to protect U.S. State Department personnel. The presence of these heavily armed private soldiers has become a sore point between the U.S. and Iraqi governments. Until now, the mercenaries -- they object to that label, but it fits -- have been immune from prosecution by the Iraqi courts for any alleged crimes. This will change on Jan. 1, when the new U.S.-Iraqi security pact places them under the jurisdiction of Iraqi law. Blackwater and other firms are likely to have a harder time retaining and recruiting personnel, given the possibility of spending time in an Iraqi prison. Yet it is presumed that more private soldiers, rather than fewer, will be needed as the United States reduces troop levels...

Putting national security in the hands of private companies and private soldiers was bad practice from the start, and incidents such as what happened at Nisoor Square are the foreseeable result. The five Blackwater guards may have fired the weapons, but they were locked and loaded in Washington."
Slate: Gates should follow his own advice to change the Pentagon
WP: report offers recommendations to intervene and prevent genocide

Gdn: short list of 9/11 suspects
Slate: how to close Guantanamo

LAT: Pakistan raids Lakshar-e-Taiba; unclear if leader in custody
Ind: former militants describe schooling/ indoctrination
Gdn: tracking down the captured attacker's home in Punjab
NYT: in op-ed, Ali Zardari says that Mumbai terror attacks meant to target Pakistan too
WP: apparently no one told him that whole thing was just a prank

NYT: tribe in Brazil asks for state intervention as drug war encroaches
"For the Tikunas, these traumas represent the latest threat in a fight for tribal survival. With high unemployment and new challenges to its subsistence livelihood, the community is struggling to keep young people from losing themselves in the vices of the white man’s world and from destroying what is left of traditional Tikuna culture.

Like other Indian communities tucked close to growing urban areas, Tikunas are tempted by the consumerism on display and frustrated that it is beyond their means. To the youth especially, alcohol, drugs and drug money seem to offer a way out. They have also unleashed a surge of violence and disobedience.

Alarmed by these trends, Mariaçu’s two chiefs recently made an unusual and desperate appeal for help: they asked the Brazilian police, who generally do not have jurisdiction in Indian towns, to enter their community and crack down on traffickers and substance abusers, even if that would mean putting the Indians at the mercy of Brazilian laws.

“We want government officials to help us save our children, so they don’t take part in these ruinous practices,” said Oswaldo Honorato Mendes, a deep-voiced Mariaçu chief. “Every day the situation gets worse. The younger generation does not obey. They do not show respect for our authority as chiefs. They need to learn respect.”

Respect and obedience to the chiefs are the pillars of tribal law, which usually holds sway in Indian communities but has proved insufficient to cope with new challenges...

[The chiefs] pleaded for the police to do more to control drug traffickers and arrest lawbreakers in their communities. The police officials listened politely but walked away unconvinced they could help.

“It is a desperate request, but not one that we can legally respond to,” said Sergio Fontes, the superintendent of the federal police in the northern city of Manaus, which oversees Tabatinga. “The chiefs want to resolve a social problem with the police, and that is wrong.”

The police generally may not enter an Indian community to carry out investigations, and Indians generally enjoy immunity from Brazilian laws, Mr. Fontes said. In addition, Brazil treats drug users as victims who require treatment, not as criminals. They are usually sentenced to receiving drug-addiction treatment and performing community service in lieu of serving prison time...

But with the police rejecting the Indians’ plea, for now, at least, the Tikunas will have to find ways to cope with their own social problems and the swirling new influences."

LAT: slaying in Monterrey jewelry shop offers gruesome window into expanding drug war
CSM: the military has replaced the police in Tijuana

LAT: paramilitaries, new drug trafficking groups, and guerrillas fighting for control on Colombia's Pacific coast
"The reemerging armed gangs are wreaking havoc in Nariño state. They are vying with guerrillas and drug traffickers for control of a zone that boasts ideal coca growing conditions as well as a labyrinthine coastline offering hundreds of concealed, mangrove-studded inlets from which to ship drugs to U.S. markets.

The new paramilitary groups, like the rebels and traffickers, often force people such as Antonio from their homes and farms to take possession of land as war booty and to clear the area of potential enemy sympathizers. With an estimated 3 million people having been displaced, Colombia is second only to Sudan in the number of its internal refugees."

LAT: Brookings rept says US drug war has failed, should turn focus to treatment
Brookings: full rept here

NYT mag: the evolution of the revolution - change and stasis in Cuba
"The confining shadow of Fidel’s tropical curtain, on the 50th anniversary of the revolution, was captured in the emptiness before me — of the Malecón, but even more so of the sea. I noticed over subsequent days that Cubans perched on the seafront wall rarely looked outward. When I asked Yoani Sánchez, a dissident blogger (www.desdecuba.com/generaciony), about this, she told me: “We live turned away from the sea because it does not connect us, it encloses us. There is no movement on it. People are not allowed to buy boats because if they had boats, they would go to Florida. We are left, as one of our poets put it, with the unhappy circumstance of water at every turn.”

WP: speaking of unending terms, Chávez tries to extend his again


WP: turnout high in Ghana presidential election

LAT: Islamists poised to take control when Ethiopia withdraws from Mogadishu
"Although the movement is divided by competing ideologies and goals, it has nonetheless made many gains recently through a combination of brutal force and political dialogue.

The militant wing, Shabab, which claims affiliation to Al Qaeda, now controls 90% of southern Somalia, including parts of the capital, Mogadishu. The moderate faction signed a peace deal with Somalia's transitional government that could hand it half the seats in parliament.

Islamists who fled two years ago after their defeat by Ethiopian troops who had crossed the border to prop up Somalia's government are reemerging to assert their authority in several cities, often imposing strict Islamic laws against dancing, drinking or conducting business during prayer time. They're even starting to flex their muscles again to halt piracy offshore...

The other main faction, led by former Islamic Courts chairman Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, is working to reconcile with the transitional government in a power-sharing agreement. Ahmed is viewed as a possible new prime minister, but Shabab commanders accused him of betrayal.

A third Islamist faction falls somewhere between the other two. Rivalries are so bitter that fighting among groups recently broke out south of Mogadishu."

CSM: discontent in the Zimbabwe army leads to looting in Harare
LAT: Zimbabwe has bloody diamonds too
"The prison official said the real aim of the recent crackdown was to give the syndicates operated by top ruling party figures free rein.

"In effect, these operations are not to restore order but to make sure [the syndicates] can take the diamonds," the official says. "But what is devastating us is that they're actually killing people. They're shooting to kill."

Political violence and power struggles in Manicaland province, where the Marange diamonds are found, suggest how important the area is to Mugabe and ZANU-PF. Manicaland was one of the areas most severely hit by political violence after the elections in March, which saw ZANU-PF lose the Mutare council, the mayoral post and 20 parliamentary seats there to the Movement for Democratic Change.

Although Zimbabwe's diamonds are not technically "blood diamonds," or ones that fuel wars, they are bloody in nature."

CSM: talks to end violence in eastern Congo began Monday, already in jeopardy
"A last-minute glitch in the talks between General Nkunda's representatives and the Congolese government still could bring the talks to a precipitous halt. Congo's government announced this weekend that it had invited more than 20 other rebel groups to the talks, a move that Nkunda's spokesman called "impossible" and likely to scupper the talks altogether."
Econ: mapping the wars in the Congo over the last 15 years
Gdn: gendered violence: women and girls are raped, while men are killed
Gdn: people taking on risks to shelter the displaced
"The people who had set up home in the open fields of Nyabirehe had fled fighting between government troops and the rebels in their village of Kiwanja, some 15 miles (24km) north, where more than 50 people had been killed.

'The rebel captain came to Nyabirehe and told everyone to leave, that it was shameful to live in camps,' said Nyanzira Vitwaiki, 14. 'He said they are places where spies and enemies hide. They opened fire because people didn't run fast enough. Five people were hurt.'

With her mother and crippled brother, she was taken in by a family of strangers in Kalengera, a sprawling village that sits midway along what is now a rebel-controlled stretch of line that leans out into a semi-circle from a point just outside Goma in the south, up to Ishasa, some 100 miles north, on the Ugandan border. Hundreds of people displaced by the violence of the past month have been taken in by people here."

Ind: albinos hunted in Tanzania
"There is similar violence throughout east and central Africa. And even in west and southern Africa, albinos face persecution and discrimination. The campaign is being orchestrated by witch doctors who claim they can make people rich using limbs and blood from their white-skinned neighbours. In some areas, albino children go to school with bodyguards, others hide at home, and distraught relatives pile rocks on their dead loved ones to deter grave-robbers."

Slate: Canada's constitutional crisis?!


NYT: Chinese officials sending detractors to mental hospitals
"In an investigative report published Monday by a state-owned newspaper, public security officials in the city of Xintai in Shandong Province were said to have been institutionalizing residents who persist in their personal campaigns to expose corruption or the unfair seizure of their property. Some people said they were committed for up to two years, and several of those interviewed said they were forcibly medicated."

++
history lessons
Gdn: genes reveal forced conversions of Sephardic Jews in 15th and 16th century Spain and Portugal
LAT: Museum of the War to Resist American Aggression and Aid Korea
Slate: inside the Stalin archives
"All of this gave a new lease on life to the incestuous world of Soviet studies, which had been divided for decades into historians who preferred the triumphant version of Soviet history, accessible in official documents like newspapers, and those who listened to the very different story told by witnesses, refugees, and dissidents. This essentially ideological argument ended forever with the publication of archival information by Yale and others, replacing it, for the first time, with real history—and proving, among other things, that the witnesses, refugees, and dissidents had largely been right.

Although he discusses some of the academic issues that lay at the heart of the Yale project, the point of Inside the Stalin Archives is somewhat different: Brent is less interested in what his series meant for Western academics and more interested in explaining the strange atmosphere of post-Soviet Moscow, and in particular the ways in which Russia's twisted past continued to shape its present."

++
NYT: praying for a bailout at the auto altar

deconstruction [shiva clocks overtime]

NYT: burning out insurgents in Chechnya
"In a campaign to punish families with sons suspected of supporting the insurgency, at least a dozen homes have been set ablaze since midsummer, residents and a local human rights organization said.

The burnings have been accompanied by a program, embraced by Ramzan A. Kadyrov, Chechnya’s president, that has forced visibly frightened parents of insurgents to appear on television and beg their sons to return home...

The burnings have occurred in several districts or towns — including Alleroi, Geldagan, Khidi-Khutor, Kurchaloi, Samashki, Shali, Shatoi, Nikikhita and Tsenteroi — suggesting that the arsonists have been operating with precise information and with a degree of impunity in a republic that is crowded with police and military units.

Residents and the human rights organization said that the impunity was unsurprising, because the arsonists appeared to be members of the police...

In a series of state-run news programs this summer in Chechnya, senior officials spoke openly of the collective responsibility of people whose relatives have joined the insurgency, and of collective punishment."

WP: Chechen refugees in Georgia fear Russians again
"[Pankisi Gorge, with its] fruit orchards and towering mountains has not been stable for long. During the Chechen war, it became a base for fighters making excursions into Chechnya and attracted a stream of money and fighters from Muslim nations. For years, it was a lawless pocket where men strode through villages with automatic weapons strapped to their bodies and where street shootings were common. At one point, Russia dropped bombs here to wipe out the fighters.

Then, after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the United States began a $64 million program to train and equip Georgian forces to help root out suspected al-Qaeda agents -- a program that eventually expanded into a general training program for the Georgian army. The valley is now under the Georgian police's control, and locals say the "Arabians" who had settled here have melted away.

The war last month did not reach the valley, and Georgian officials say the helicopters spotted by the locals were most likely Georgian, conducting routine border patrols. But for Chechens living here, seeing Russian tanks cross into Georgia reawakened old fears. It also brought surprise. Some recalled watching TV reports of Russian tanks near the capital and finding it strange to see no resistance from the Georgians, not even a rock thrown.

Chechens would never have let that happen, said Lia Margoshvili, a Georgian Chechen who works with refugees here. "Chechen kids, when they're in fifth or sixth grade, they learn that they have to kill Russians -- but the Georgian kids, they learn, I don't know, books or something."

BBC: opposition in Belarus does not win one parliamentary seat in "election"
BBC: Lukashenko's days on the farm prepared him to be dictator
"His experience at the farm is what keeps him in power today," Mr Gulyaev says.

"Under that system, the director of the collective farm was equal to God, the tsar and the commander-in-chief. His word is the law, and no-one can argue with him."

NYT: policewoman killed by Taliban in Afghanistan
"Ms. Kakar, with the rank of captain, was head of Kandahar’s department of crimes against women. She joined the police in the city in 1982, following in the footsteps of her father and brothers, but was forced out after the Taliban captured Kandahar in the mid-1990s and barred all women from working.

She was the first female police officer in the country to return to work after the Taliban were ousted. Her commitment was particularly notable for the fact that it took place in Kandahar, which became the headquarters for the Taliban soon after the movement was formed in the early 1990s."

BBC: forming self-defense militias in Pakistani villages
"Tribal elders gather in a mammoth meeting place, or jirga hall, to tell us why they support the military offensive.

They accuse the Pakistani Taleban of setting up a parallel state in Bajaur, undermining the traditional tribal leadership. They say they've exhausted all attempts at negotiating a peaceful solution to the problem."

WP: several attacks in Baghdad leave 27 dead

Reuters: car bomb in Tripoli kills 5

LAT: code of honor survives in Albania
"Many still live at least in part by the Kanun, a code handed down through the centuries in which "besa" -- loosely translated as word of honor or sacred promise -- is paramount. The code was adhered to by Albania's Muslim majority and Catholic and Orthodox Christian minorities.

The code covers everything from inheritances and the rights of the church to the treatment of livestock. Disobeying the Kanun could lead to harsh penalties that might include banishment or the transgressor's household being burned. A slight could lead to a blood feud that lasted for generations.

In Theth, nobody will sell land to an outsider, or even to another villager. Brides must come from outside the valley, a tradition that follows along the lines of the Kanun's rule that marriage within the same clan is forbidden.

"The Kanun is the law. Just like the state law," explains Gjovalin Lokthi, 39, a gruff "kryeplak," or elected chief of the village...

The Kanun has survived despite four decades of communist rule after World War II, with hardships such as mass imprisonment in labor camps and attempts to stamp out tribal practices."

WP: 52 Somalis die at sea trying to reach Yemen

Econ: whites leaving South Africa's violent crime

NYT: hurricane recovery as opportunity in Cuba

WP: Ecuadorans approve new constitution

NYT: conflict lingers in Bolivia
"Increasingly, the question confronting Bolivia, a country of deep ethnic and geographical divisions, is how they will wield that power, and whether Mr. Morales can redress the historical grievances of Bolivia’s indigenous majority while keeping his country from descending into chaos...

As violent as his opponents have sometimes been, they charge that Mr. Morales is achieving much of this by running roughshod over them. They say he has ignored court rulings that challenge his policies and used some of the same intimidation tactics he honed as a leader of the powerful coca growers unions before he was elected president.

As such tactics spread on both sides, fears are growing throughout the region that Bolivia’s crisis could produce, if not civil war, then pockets of fierce conflict across its rebellious tropical lowlands, which are an important source of natural gas and food for neighboring countries."

Slate: the history (and future?) of humanitarian intervention

LAT: decoding men's headbands in Iraq
"Like the people who wear the agal and for whom it is a crucial part of daily dress -- everyone from rural farmers to Arab kings -- the headband's history is intriguing for its mix of tragedy and toughness. Some say it evolved from the collapse of Islamic rule in Andalusia. One version says the caliph ordered men to wear black headbands in mourning. Another says that distraught women tore their hair out and hurled it at men to show their rage at the men's inability to protect Islam. The men then wrapped the locks of black hair around their heads in shame and sorrow.

In the most practical version, Bedouins carried the black bands on their heads in case ropes were needed to secure their camels."

BBC: Maoists cancel Ms. Nepal pageant

NYT mag: deconstructing my city (literally - Clevelanders are not postmodern)

NYT: maybe McCain should use his own height logic to support universal health care in the US

multilateral (ir)relevance [generally assembling]

LAT: Italy deploys troops after mafia violence near Naples
"This time authorities are responding to months of deadly violence attributed to the Casalesi, a Camorra clan whose wild, swaggering exploits contrast with the brutal but more disciplined and discreet style of the Sicilian Mafia. Recent killings in Castelvolturno, a hub of the drug trade in Caserta province, also reflects the new ethnic structure of a criminal underworld that is being reshaped by immigration.

On Thursday, four men killed the owner of an amusement arcade in Castelvolturno. The assailants then drove to a clothing store operated by West African immigrants and fired hundreds of rounds into the store, killing three Ghanians, two Liberians and a man from Togo. On Monday, police arrested a suspect linked to the Casalesi clan.

The slayings set off riots by African immigrants, tens of thousands of whom have settled in the region.

Prosecutors suspect that the shootings stemmed from a clash over drug turf. As cocaine smuggled into Europe increasingly arrives via West Africa, criminals from that region have carved out a role in the underworld in places such as Caserta. The Neapolitan mafia collects "taxes" from Africans, Albanians and other immigrant gangs engaged in drug dealing, prostitution and other crimes in its territory."

BBC: Pakistan police kill 6 in protests against military operations in the northwest
BBC: group claims responsibility for suicide bomb in Islamabad last week
WP: Afghanistan wants joint operations with US and Pakistan

CSM: Iraq insurgents underground, not gone
"Facing a local population that has grown intolerant of AQI's indiscriminate acts of violence, many operatives like Mr. Wasit have gone underground – some have even formed sleeper cells in the Iraqi security forces. Members now only emerge from hiding to conduct high-profile attacks. Though this strategic shift has created an apparently less active AQI, the group has not given up the fight in Iraq and will likely remain a threat here for years."

BBC: UN says LRA has 90 child hostages in Congo

BBC: Nigeria militants claim air attacks have been launched against them, 3 days after they enacted a unilateral cease-fire
"[The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta] declared a ceasefire after appeals from local leaders, but it warned it would end the truce if attacked by the army again.

"Mend will not play into the hands of the military by retaliating and putting the peace process in jeopardy at this time," the group said in an e-mailed statement, Reuters news agency reports."

BBC: violence flares in Mogadishu, peacekeepers targeted

BBC: Somalia, other war-torn countries, top new ranking of most corrupt states

NYT: Burma political prisoner freed after 19 years in solitary confinement

BBC: fighting escalates in northern Sri Lanka as troops move against the LTTE; UN aid worker recounts withdrawal

BBC: the distribution of East Timor's resource wealth
"Oil and gas revenues currently make up more than 95% of the government's income and there is a pressing need to create a more stable mainstream economy for when those resources run out.

But most of the extra money in this year's budget was to enable the government to subsidise rice and fuel prices - not exactly a contribution to Timor's long-term growth.

And the finance minister herself admits this was more about avoiding potential instability than building a future economy."

Gdn: anti-government blogger imprisoned in Malaysia

WP: US offers aid to Cuba for first time in 47 years, following hurricanes - but so far it's rejected
"Our country cannot accept a donation from the government that blockades us," [Fidel Castro] wrote recently in Granma, the party's daily newspaper. "The damage of thousands of lives, suffering, and more than $200 billion that the blockade and the aggression of the Yankees has cost us -- they can't pay for that with anything."
But, the aid conversation on the US side might open opportunity to soften or end the embargo.

Gdn: Japan confirms Taro Aso new prime minister

BBC: Luo politicians undergo circumcision, against tradition, to support anti-HIV measures in Kenya

Gdn: landmark: it's the last time Bush will ever represent the US at the UN General Assembly
"The US president - who ultimately ignored the UN in pressing ahead with the 2003 invasion of Iraq - said the scale of the threat illustrated that the UN and other multilateral organisations 'are needed more urgently than ever.'"

campaigns and last chances

LAT: opposition says 24 of its members have been killed in Zimbabwe, 5 after beatings on Mon
"During the Monday beating incident, about 100 ruling party supporters arrived at dawn, ordering people from their houses in Dakudzwa and about seven other nearby villages to a central point near a Catholic church, according to witnesses interviewed by The Times by phone. About 400 villagers were gathered outside the church.
'They started telling us, 'We're not going to do anything, we're just campaigning. You're not supposed to vote for the opposition party. If you are opposed to the ruling party you should come up and confess and we won't do anything to you,' said Rebecca Vela. 'More than 10 confessed; they all got beaten. The women were beaten naked.'"
NYT: many schools have been closed and 121 have been taken over by militias linked to ruling party as a base of operations to give opposition backers a second chance to "mend their ways" in the run-off elections
"A member of ZANU-PF’s Politburo, speaking anonymously about its secret deliberations, said in an interview that the party had no intention of giving up power through the ballot box.
'We’re giving the people of Zimbabwe another opportunity to mend their ways, to vote properly,' the Politburo member said. 'This is their last chance.'
If voters fail to return Mr. Mugabe to office, the Politburo member told a Zimbabwean journalist working with The New York Times, 'Prepare to be a war correspondent.'"

BBC: "armed men" in Casamance region of Senegal cut off left ears of cashew harvesters
"The cashew-nut harvest time has regularly seen as upsurge in violence and armed attacks.
The Gambia lies between Casamance and the rest of Senegal and the MFDC rebels started a war for independence in 1982.
A peace deal was signed in 2004 but the armed robbery remains common in the area, badly hitting its once vibrant tourist industry."

WP: Ahmadinejad's claims draw ire of clerics
"Several clerics in the Iranian parliament accused Ahmadinejad of implying that Imam Mahdi or Imam Zaman (Imam of the Age), as the Shiite messiah is also called, supports his government. Since the 1979 revolution, Iran's government has been overseen by Shiite clerics, but religious leaders here have resisted Ahmadinejad's frequent hints that his government's actions are guided by the Mahdi."

Gdn: Whitehouse says it "lost" 5 million emails from early days of Iraq invasion
(didn't find this in any major US outlet)

USAT: 43,000 troops deployed, even though they had been declared medically "unfit for combat"

Gdn: former Guantánamo prisoner detonated suicide bomb in Iraq last month

BBC: US soldier accidentally calls home while in Afghanistan battle, leaves message on answering machine
"When he was played back the message, he said was embarrassed by all the swearing. 'He said, 'Don't let Grandma hear it',' Mrs Petee said."

BBC: the legacy of war and resettlement in Palestine and Israel 60 years later

Gdn: fighting between Hezbollah and gov't backers spreads beyond Beirut
"This morning, the rival sides exchanged gunfire in two villages in eastern Lebanon's Bekaa valley, with three people reported injured, according to security forces...'Beirut relives the chapters of sectarian and militia horror,' the pro-government An-Nahar newspaper said on its front page today. The opposition al-Akhbar newspaper said: 'Lebanon in the mouth of the dragon.'"

WP: paramilitary leader 'Macaco' extradited to US from Colombia
"Prosecutors in Colombia consider Jiménez one of the three most brutal warlords to have formed the directorate of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, a coalition of paramilitary groups. The AUC, as the group was known, was assembled to fight rebels but morphed into Colombia's top drug-trafficking cartel while carrying out massacres and illegally seizing land."
Victims' advocate Ivan Cépeda lost a motion to block extradition to allow victims to confront him and seek reparations. "Cepeda's organization has estimated that Jiménez's paramilitary bloc killed and disappeared as many as 10,000 people. 'This superimposes drug trafficking over crimes against humanity,' he said."
BBC: Colombian military officer and troops sentenced to 50+ years for massacre of anti-narcotics police force in 2006

LAT: dual currency in Cuba punishes the poorest
"Those with jobs in hotels, airlines and shops and on the thriving black market earn CUCs, referred to as "the dollar" and worth about 25 times the peso. The peso is the currency given to all state workers and pensioners, which must be converted to CUCs to purchase most goods. The Cuban government retains the peso because it lacks sufficient foreign reserves to back and circulate only CUCs.
The U.S. dollar, which circulated in Cuba from the mid-1990s to late 2004, was removed by then-President Fidel Castro and now is subject to a 10% tax whenever it is converted to CUCs -- in effect a devaluation by the state. The tax is felt most by tourists and the estimated 10% of Cuban households receiving money from relatives abroad.
Those like Rosa, who have neither foreign benefactors nor the vigor to run their own dollar-earning schemes, watch the buying power of their moneda nacional recede each month as more goods become available only for 'dollars.'"

BBC: Germany bans two right-wing groups that deny Holocaust happened

WP: Bush's astute assessment of world food prices offends Indians
"'[W]hen you start getting wealth, you start demanding better nutrition and better food,' [Bush] said. 'And so demand is high, and that causes the price to go up.'
In the days since, Indian newspapers have published articles citing comparative food consumption statistics for the United States and India. One headline said, 'U.S. eats 5 times more than India per capita,' and quoted data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
A cartoon in the Times of India on Tuesday showed a couple of overweight American tourists looking at emaciated Indian men rummaging for leftover food in a trash heap. 'No wonder we're having food shortages back home in the States -- these guys in India have started eating way too much,' they say.
'Bush is shifting the blame to hide the truth. We all know that the food crisis is an outcome of the American policy of diverting huge land area from food to fuel production,' said Devinder Sharma, a food policy analyst and chair at the New Delhi-based Forum for Biotechnology and Food Security. 'America has the largest land for ethanol production in the world.'
'If Indians start eating like Americans, the world would have to grow food on the moon,' he said."

The Caucus: Hillary's campaign will continue to offer citizens chance to mend their ways, even though it won't make a difference
"...the campaign advisers acknowledged some hard truths. Even if the Florida and Michigan delegations were seated, it would not be enough for a win. The financial health of the campaign appeared grim — Mrs. Clinton loaned herself $6 million last month, and she is prepared to donate more. And if there was good news to share about overnight on-line fund-raising totals, Mr. Wolfson did not mention it."

don't hate. miscegenate.

Slate: 12 women became suicide bombers in Iraq between Jan and Apr of this year, more than in the 5 previous years combined
BBC: two stadiums in Baghdad prepared for arrival of civilians seeking safety; gov't announces push to clear out Mahdi Army forces from Sadr City
"The government has distributed leaflets in two key districts of Sadr City, warning people to leave.
The speculation is that government forces are preparing for a big push into eastern Baghdad to end the current fighting once and for all."
CSM: meanwhile, newly gated Saidiyah neighborhood being repopulated

Slate: the 7,000 more troops Gates wants for Afghanistan have to be redeployed from Iraq

Gdn: US House issues subpoena for Addington, aide to Cheney, about Guantánamo methods.
UK human rights lawyer questions why US didn't seek UK advice, given its experience interrogating IRA members.
Republican lawyer blows him off, asserting that the IRA was not an "existentialist" threat, therefore the experience is irrelevant.

WP: Mexican cartels brazenly recruit, especially among soldiers and army deserters
"It was printed on a 16-foot-wide banner and strung above one of the busiest roads here, calling out to any 'soldier or ex-soldier.'
'We're offering you a good salary, food and medical care for your families,' it said in block letters.
But there was a catch: The employer was Los Zetas, a notorious Gulf cartel hit squad formed by elite Mexican army deserters. The group even included a phone number for job seekers that linked to a voice mailbox...
'The cartels are very good at this -- they've had songs written about them, they put up these signs, they make themselves out to be Robin Hoods,' Carlos Martínez, a Nuevo Laredo elementary school principal and community activist, said in an interview. 'People like this. We Mexicans like a good joke -- we like to make fun of our problems.'
The banners also appeal to many poorer Mexicans who respect the brashness of the cartels, which provide food, clothing and toys to win civilians' loyalty."

LAT: USAID's plan to shift Cuba "democracy-promotion" programs away from Miami-based groups
A chief goal, officials say, is to spend most of the $45-million budget on communications equipment, such as cellphones and Internet gear, that possibly could be smuggled into Cuba to increase its people's exposure to the outside world...USAID is hoping to receive bids from Central European and Latin American nongovernmental groups that have experience with dissidents in authoritarian societies, Cardenas said. 'They know how to evade the authoritarian governments' efforts to control your behavior,' he said.
And because they are not U.S. organizations, it will be easier for their staff members to enter Cuba and make contact with people, he said.
[which begs the question, why not lift the travel ban for US citizens??? (also at least posed by a Congressional rep in the article.)]
Generación Y: blogger Yoani Sánchez writes clandestinely from Cuba, posing as a tourist in internet cafés (in spanish) Update: apparently the blog has been shut down; Sánchez was recently named one of the world's "most influential people" by Time magazine, perhaps drawing too much attention. HT: Laia Balcells.

Gdn: aid to Burma after cyclone disaster slow and complicated

Slate: Israel and African refugees
"But if Israel embraces thousands of African refugees, millions in Egypt alone could try to follow. All developed countries worry about the effects of an influx of poor refugees. But the problem is especially delicate for Israel, which worries about someday losing its Jewish majority to the growing Palestinian population (especially if it does not relinquish control of the West Bank). And then there's the country's location: It's not as if there are other prosperous democracies in the region for refugees to choose among."

LAT: Palestinian police force clashes with Islamic militants in West Bank

BBC: strike in Lebanon over the minimum wage politicized, violent
"Pro-government supporters exchanged rifle and grenade fire with Hezbollah sympathisers in three neighbourhoods, security sources said."

Slate: the state of Abkhazia's autonomy from Georgia; or Georgia's from Russia
LAT: Medvedev sworn in as president; demonstrating his autonomy, nominates Putin as prime minister

LAT: Human Rights Watch calls for investigation into possible Kosovo and Albania war crimes

Slate: the prez of lower-than-Bush-approval fame
plus, Gallup used to conduct face-to-face interviews?!

Slate: don't hate. miscegenate.
"In 1967, Loving v. Virginia reached the Supreme Court. Citing the 14^th Amendment, the court overturned the Lovings' conviction and ruled that all anti-miscegenation laws would henceforth be null and void (see the opinion below). "Under our Constitution," wrote Chief Justice Earl Warren, "the freedom to marry or not marry a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed upon by the state." At least two subsequent Supreme Court justices have Mildred Loving to thank for the legality of their own interracial marriages."

a terrible thing to say

LAT: Sunni militants launch coordinated attacks in Iraq, while fighting in Sadr City continues
WP: Iraqi Christians targeted
"[A reverend in Baghdad] said every Christian business executive he knows has been threatened, kidnapped or attacked. 'The Christian is weak. He has no tribe,' he said."
BBC: doubts over Iraqi security forces' capacity, willingness to fight
"There were also many desertions from the Iraqi security forces. About 1,000 personnel - including a full infantry battalion - refused to fight or joined the militias during last month's offensive.
More than 900 police and soldiers have been sacked in Basra, including nearly 40 senior police officers, where the fiercest clashes took place. A further 400 police officers were dismissed in Kut."

LAT: Afghan insurgents targeting cell phone towers, angering civilians
"For the last two months, Taliban fighters have been blowing up telecommunications towers, with the aim of preventing NATO-led forces from hunting them down via cellphone signals. It could hardly have been a worse public-relations move for the insurgency."

BBC: history of a village destroyed (nearly 60 years ago) in Israel

WP: Uribe's cousin and confidante arrested on charges of collusion with paramilitaries
Also, "With the legitimacy of Congress at rock bottom, lawmakers have been locked in a series of heated debates over how to reform the 268-member body and punish those parties whose members have been linked to paramilitary groups." [32 members have been arrested, 30 others are being investigated, and dozens more implicated, with investigations to begin soon.]

Ind: Cuban authorities break up 'Women in White' protest, calling for release of their imprisoned husbands

NYT: Zimbabwe state newspaper calls for unity gov't
BBC: which may change, now that Mugabe's party is announced winner of first recount
Econ: while repression, violence continue
"Human Rights Watch, an international group, says that ZANU-PF, the ruling party of President Robert Mugabe, has set up torture camps across the country as part of a systematic campaign to intimidate the opposition, which won the parliamentary elections and, it claims, the presidential vote too. Victims are taken to the camps at night and beaten for hours with thick sticks, bars and army batons. Huts and houses have been torched. An unofficial curfew is in force in the poor suburbs of Harare, the capital. The MDC says that ten of its supporters have been killed, some shot dead. The opposition also says that some 3,000 families have had to flee their homes, 500 people have been put in hospital and over 400 opposition activists have been arrested."
Ind: Church leaders call for intervention to "avert genocide"
arms shipment refused in South Africa, then in Mozambique, now in Angola

Gdn: estimate of dead in Darfur reaches 300,000

BBC: Bosnian Serbs convicted of war crimes for massacre in 1992

BBC: unmanned Georgian drone shot down; Russia claims it was work of Abkhaz rebels

BBC: nearly 100 die in Sri Lanka, in battles between the LTTE and gov't forces

LAT: rice prices straining families in the Philippines, largest rice importer in world
"'Rice is something you need every day,' [a resident of Manila] said. 'When it gets to the point that families can't afford to buy 2 kilos a day, that's when people will get really mad.'"

Gdn: Clinton issues threat to Iran
"In an interview with ABC's Good Morning America, she was asked what she would do if Iran attacked Israel with nuclear weapons. She said: 'In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them. That's a terrible thing to say but those people who run Iran need to understand that because that perhaps will deter them from doing something that would be reckless, foolish and tragic.'"

CSM: new organization of former Jihadis to work for tolerance in UK
"The Quilliam Foundation – named for a 19th-century British convert to Islam – aims to propagate a tolerant and pluralistic view of Islam among young Muslims who are the most vulnerable to radicalism."

BBC: the noble donkey, Facebook unite Cypriots

transitions

NYT: Pakistan People's Party - the apparent victors of Sunday's elections - say they'll seek dialogue with militants; coalition talk on the table with Sharif's party
WP: they might want to send a memo to the CIA, because unilateral attacks seem here to stay
WSJ: chat with Musharraf
"Sitting in his office in Islamabad in a gray pinstriped suit, Mr. Musharraf issued cautionary words to the next prime minister. "The clash would be if the prime minister and president would be trying to get rid of each other. I only hope we would avoid these clashes," he said."
Slate: election analysis

Slate: el comandante signs off
LAT: brief profiles of four possible successors

NPR: text messages to incite violence in Kenya
NYT: ...maybe spurred demographic changes along ethnic lines

NYT: housing crisis in (the new state of) Kosovo, too -- sorting out squatters and IDPs
"The United Nations is trying to right the most recent of those wrongs, committed during the civil war in 1998 and 1999, when hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanians and Serbs fled their homes in this poor, landlocked territory, only to seize a house belonging to somebody else.

The attempt to reverse these misdeeds underlines the challenge facing conflict zones around the world, where ensuring the right of returning minorities to take possession of their homes is deemed essential to reconstruction in multiethnic countries like Rwanda and Iraq."
NYT: the new country has other problems already

AP: Colombian soldiers convicted of killing anti-narcotics police squad

AP: Liberian refugees in US weigh participation in Truth and Reconciliation Commission

USAT: after university shootings, 12 states consider allowing students and professor to carry guns on campus

New Yorker: an historical look at water boarding by Americans in the Philippines - at the turn of the last century

rain rain go away

africa
BBC: another opposition MP in Kenya shot
But the killing seems unrelated to politics: "A local police chief says Mr Too was having an affair with the girlfriend of the policeman, who shot them both." The killing has prompted Kikuyus to flee town, Eldoret, nonetheless.
Econ: talks so far inching along, as violence continues

BBC: rebels capture town in Chad
"'We are moving towards N'Djamena,' rebel spokesman Abderaman Koulamallah confirmed to AFP. Meanwhile, army units have stepped up patrols on the streets of the capital, Reuters news agency says."

BBC: UN peacekeepers in Western Sahara deface ancient rock paintings

middle east
BBC: former supreme court chief in Pakistan denounces Musharraf
"He described his treatment at the hands of President Musharraf as an 'incredible outrage' committed by an 'extremist general' who is supported by the West. "
WP: the US "urges" fair elections, after surprising allegations of intimidation
SWJ: analysis of possible US military operations in Waziristan, featuring some shaky generalizations related to "tribal" and "western" logics

BBC: Fatah militant killed near Gaza border gap; Mubarak meets with Abbas
WP: Israeli Supreme Court oks reduced energy supply to Gaza, enough to meet "basic humanitarian needs"
IHT: Israeli report faults leadership in 2006 Lebanon war, but Olmert likely to retain power
Ind: text of (unclassified) Winograd Report
"•We found serious failings and shortcomings in the decision-making processes and staff-work in the political and the military echelons and their interface.

•We found serious failings and flaws in the quality of preparedness, decision-making and performance in the IDF high command, especially in the Army.

•We found serious failings and flaws in the lack of strategic thinking and planning, in both the political and the military echelons.

•We found severe failings and flaws in the defence of the civilian population and in coping with its being attacked by rockets.

•These weaknesses resulted in part from inadequacies of preparedness and strategic and operative planning which go back long before the 2nd Lebanon war."

BBC: bomb in Helmand mosque kills deputy governor; suicide bomber in Kabul kills one.

IHT: developments in Mosul
AP: US commanders warn that the campaign there will be long
"Lieutenant Colonel Michael Simmering, of the 3rd Armored Cavalry, based near Mosul, described the insurgent force in the city as a patchwork of groups, including Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia and other factions, 'all vying for different things at this point.'

'The thing about the insurgency in Mosul is that there are many different facets,' he said.

'This is going to be a long, protracted push by coalition forces and more importantly by Iraqi security forces to re-establish security,' Simmering said. 'If you're looking for one big culminating event, you'll never quite see it. I call this the 'campaign for Mosul.' "
WP: speaking of long, US commanders in favor of freezing troop reductions at 15 brigades
SWJ: has round-up of Iraq updates

asia
BBC: four separatists killed in Indian Kashmir, from group Hizb-ul Mujahideen

BBC: extortion trial of former Bangladeshi prime minister, Sheik Hasina, begins

Gdn: China suffering in cold spell; food shortages severe
Ind: soldiers called in to clear roads
LAT: in bizarre timing, China announces that it's working to control the weather - for the Olympics (imagine! a regime so powerful it can control the weather. nevermind about those pesky citizens starving in the snow)
"Cloud-seeding is a relatively well-known practice that involves shooting various substances into clouds, such as silver iodide, salts and dry ice, that bring on the formation of larger raindrops, triggering a downpour. But Chinese scientists believe they have perfected a technique that reduces the size of the raindrops, delaying the rain until the clouds move on.
The weather modification would be used only on a small area, opening what would be in effect a meteorological umbrella over the 91,000-seat Olympic stadium."

Econ: North Korea's (violations of) human rights record

americas
BBC: 43 Rio policemen offer mass resignation days before Carnival, after chief sacked for allowing protest about low pay.
IHT: police kill at least 6 anti-drug trafficking operation in Rio slums

LAT: Mexican city a safe-haven for illegal immigrants
Ecatepec is the place where Hondurans, Guatemalans, Salvadorans and others begin the long, final stage of their journey across Mexico, northward to the U.S. border aboard a freight train known as 'the beast.'"

BBC: Canada says it will pull out of Afghanistan unless more NATO troops are sent

IHT: "election" outcome in Cuba: shocker, Castros retain power

Slate: Mukasey to Congress: torture, smorture
"Unless someone were to actually be water-boarded before Mukasey's eyes at the witness table in the Hart Senate Building, America's lawyer cannot hazard an opinion as to its legality."
WP: more on the volley
"At one point, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) asked: 'Would waterboarding be torture if it was done to you?'
'I would feel that it was,' Mukasey replied.
But Mukasey said that does not mean it would be illegal."
Also, he *might* investigate the conduct of CIA officers shown on the tapes, rather than just the destruction of them.
The Onion: the CIA has a plan to make this whole conversation irrelevant

NYT: concussions, stress linked to PTSD in soldiers

NYT: police shoot woman and baby in Lima, Ohio, sparking protests of racism and brutality

europe
BBC: Slovakia delays EU reform vote

WP: linguistic, ethnic conflict in Belgium

misc
Wonkette: here's another news round-up. of sorts.
"If Americans know one thing about the Foreigns (and sometimes that’s a near thing), it’s that they live in Foreign countries, which, obviously, are hellholes of awfulness and despair."