truth and relevance [hearing what you expect]

HuffPo, Rob Blair: Liberians' takes on the Sirleaf-TRC controversy
Sirleaf is under fire, it seems, because she failed to repent her actions, while more sordid characters were dropped from the TRC's list because they expressed remorse. Among them is the notorious Joshua Blahyi, alias Gen. Butt Naked, a warlord-cum-preacher known for his brutality and his penchant for entering battle wearing nothing but boots. Blahyi's compunction outweighed, in the TRC's peculiar calculus, the more than 20,000 deaths he caused during the war. Asks Kristof: "Can anybody explain?"...

I posed Kristof's question to five Liberians living in Monrovia. I picked individuals from disparate backgrounds to try to capture some of the variety in Liberian views on the TRC. Everyone I interviewed agreed that Sirleaf supported Taylor, but disagreed on just about everything else. These are some of their insights.

Making Sense of Darfur, Alex de Waal: on interviewing, listening, and understanding (via wronging rights)
I have observed the same person say completely different things in different contexts. It’s not deceit or even contradiction: it’s that courtesy demands saying certain things, context constrains what can be said, and the ways in which questions are posed—or discussions left unfinished—means that only one part of a complicated picture emerges. In some cases, political instructions dictate that certain things are said in a formal exchange, and other messages passed when the proceedings have formally closed.
Sudan commentary: Kristof responds to Mamdani (via Chris Blattman)

Boston Review: development debate featuring Collier, Miguel, Easterly, Diamond, Krasner, Birdsall, and McGovern (via Chris Blattman)
Collier:
Chad is not alone. It is one of a group of about 60 small, impoverished, post-colonial countries that “came unnatural into the world.” With neither the social unity needed for cooperation, nor the size to reap the benefits of larger scale, they are structurally unable to provide the public goods—such as security—that are critical for decent quality of life and imperative for economic development. They have diverged from the rest of mankind. They will never tap their vast reservoir of frustrated human potential unless the international community, at least for a time, supplies basic public goods that go beyond the typical aid agenda. This, stated baldly, is the thesis of my new book, Wars, Guns, and Votes. It is a troubling thesis. I have come to it reluctantly, and the international community has shied away from it, as have the societies of the bottom billion themselves.

Why is outside intervention necessary? The countries of the bottom billion are, paradoxically, too large to be nations, yet too small to be states. They are too large to be nations because, with rare exceptions, too many different peoples, with too many distinct ethnic and religious identities, live in them. This is not because they have large populations: on the contrary, the typical bottom-billion country has only a few million people. But these populations have yet to forge a strong sense of national identity that overrides older sub-national ethnic and religious identities. Considerable research shows that where sub-national identities predominate, it is more difficult for people to cooperate in providing public goods.

Easterly:
I have been troubled by Paul Collier’s research and policy advocacy for some time. In this essay he goes even further in directions I argued were dangerous in his previous work. Collier wants to de facto recolonize the “bottom billion,” and he justifies his position with research that is based on one logical fallacy, one mistaken assumption, and a multitude of fatally flawed statistical exercises...

Yet even if Collier got valid correlations, which he has not, correlation does not equal causation, which he also fails to address. As Daron Acemoglu of MIT commented on Collier’s earlier research on civil wars: “The correlations that are interpreted as causal effects are really no more than correlations. . . . It is too early to jump to policy conclusions.”

Collier:
Nothing could better illustrate the true nature of the disagreement about peacekeeping than Easterly’s accusation of colonialism. This accusation is founded on coarse thought, not statistical rigor. Colonialism was an oppressive system in which non-democratic empires conquered territories and ran them according to the interest of their own elites. International peacekeeping is temporary, sanctioned by democratic governments whose electorates have no appetite for empire, and aimed at establishing governments that are accountable to their own citizens. Conflating peacekeeping with colonialism is too crude to constitute abuse.

LAT: Uighur - Han violence in China
China's worst ethnic violence in years broke out Sunday in the northwestern city of Urumqi, leaving 140 people dead and more than 800 injured, the state news agency Xinhua reported.
NYT: the violence was sparked by government repression of a Uighur protest
The clashes on Sunday began when the police confronted a protest march held by Uighurs to demand a full government investigation of a brawl between Uighur and Han workers that erupted in Guangdong Province overnight on June 25 and June 26. The brawl took place in a toy factory and left 2 Uighurs dead and 118 people injured. The police later arrested a bitter ex-employee of the factory who had ignited the fight by starting a rumor that 6 Uighur men had raped 2 Han women at the work site, Xinhua reported.

WP: Mexican army accused of egregious human rights abuses in drug war
In Puerto Las Ollas, a mountain village of 50 people in the southern state of Guerrero, residents recounted how soldiers seeking information last month stuck needles under the fingernails of a disabled 37-year-old farmer, jabbed a knife into the back of his 13-year-old nephew, fired on a pastor, and stole food, milk, clothing and medication...

Mexican security forces have long had a spotty human rights record, but the growing number of abuse allegations appears to be a direct response to the savagery unleashed by the cartels after President Felipe Calderón put the military in charge of the drug war in December 2006. Most of the violations have occurred in regions where the sight of dismembered bodies of soldiers and police is remarkably common. In the state of Michoacán, investigators with the government's National Human Rights Commission concluded that the army committed abuses against 65 people over three days -- including several cases of torture and the rape of two girls -- after five soldiers were killed in an attack in May 2007.

LAT: stellar series on gangs and intervention programs in South L.A.
...The boys' lives were at risk, she told him. The gun was for defense. There were no jobs, not here; they had no money to move away from their troubles. Finally, defeated, she whispered: "This is South-Central."

And so it's been for decades -- the cradle of the thug life, the home, still, to many of the city's 400 gangs. But nights like this one are no longer explained away as simply the way things are and the way things will be.

Looking to capitalize on declining crime rates, and gang violence in particular, the LAPD has doubled its rate of gang arrests in some pockets of South Los Angeles, as South-Central is now known officially, and has implemented a new enforcement strategy against six gangs, including Barrio Mojados. Meanwhile, a wave of construction is underway and, in an area long crippled by an absence of social services, community-based groups are bringing job training, kids' baseball -- even a free Internet "cloud" over one neighborhood.

This is still a troubled place, and will be for years to come. But police, residents and civic leaders alike believe there is an opportunity here, however fragile, to restore a sense of community that many feared was lost forever in the crack-and-bullet epidemic of the 1980s and '90s. If so, South L.A.'s identity within the city could begin to shift, revealing a far more dynamic place than the one cemented in the public consciousness as an intractable ghetto.

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NYT: a non-war-related story on Colombia! (who cares if it's about the 'environment'? SV will take it.)

war crimes [on the hook]

Al Jazeera (English): Israel destroys hospital, UN outpost in Gaza
"Officials said that a building of the UN relief agency in Gaza had been hit by Israeli shells and set ablaze.

"They are phosphorus fires so they are extremely difficult to put out because if you put water on it, it will just generate toxic fumes and do nothing to stop the burning," John Ging, the director of UN relief operations, said...

About 500 people were inside the hospital in Tal al-Hawa when it came under attack. Many had taken shelter in the hope of escaping the onslaught."
AJE: death toll has reached 1,000; civilians have nowhere to go
"More than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza Strip as Israeli ground forces pushed deeper into densely-populated urban areas.

Thousands of civilians fled their homes on Thursday as tank shells and missiles exploded causing black smoke to rise above the neighbourhoods of Tal al-Hawa, Zeitoun and Shujaiyeh in Gaza City.

Battles raged in the northern town of Jabaliya and Israeli ground troops backed by dozens of tanks pushed at least 1km into the southern town of Khan Yunis."

WP: civilians account for estimated half of deaths; almost any target is 'legitimate' for Israel, while Hamas fighters hide among civilians
"The Israeli military blames Hamas for using Gazans as human shields and for retreating to densely populated areas to fight the war. But Palestinians and human rights groups say that Israel has been reckless and that in pursuing Hamas, it has employed tactics that unnecessarily drive up the civilian toll...

Later in the week, Harb stood in the street of the southern town of Rafah with his wife and six children and looked on as his neighborhood was systematically turned to rubble. His family had been warned to leave, he said, but in Gaza there is nowhere to go. The street seemed the safest place to ride out the airstrikes that landed like an earthquake every five minutes, each one sending a thick black plume into the sky from the spot of ground where a house once stood.

Some of the houses, Harb acknowledged, had concealed tunnels used by Hamas to smuggle weapons from Egypt. But most, he said, did not...

The Geneva Conventions, an international agreement on a code of war, say civilians must be permitted to escape from fighting, but "the Gazans are not allowed to flee," Myers said. "That's a big problem." None of the border crossings is open. And no part of the strip -- which is about 25 miles long and five miles wide -- has been insulated from the fighting."
NYT: Israeli rights groups issue call for war crimes investigation
"Nine Israeli human rights groups called on Wednesday for an investigation into whether Israeli officials had committed war crimes in Gaza since tens of thousands of civilians there have nowhere to flee, the health system has collapsed, many are without electricity and running water, and some are beyond the reach of rescue teams."

NYT: the effect of the bombing on Palestinian cleavages
"The more bombs in Gaza, the more Hamas’s support seems to be growing at the expense of the Palestinian Authority, already considered corrupt and distant from average Palestinians."
WP: polarization seems to favor Hamas
"Men who say they have never fought before or were not Hamas loyalists now vow to join the struggle against Israel when they return to Gaza. They include policemen and other professionals who form part of the backbone of Gazan society."
CSM: Fatah's (in)action drawing scrutiny
"Fatah is keeping a lid on protests, not letting West Bankers draw it into Israel's war on Hamas. Senior voices in the secular party that runs the Palestinian Authority (PA) see restraint as key to its quest for statehood. Getting entangled in Gaza, they say, would only embolden Hamas.

Others say Fatah is making a fatal mistake. Its inaction will irreparably damage its standing in the eyes of Palestinians and erode support for the group that both America and Israel view as peace partners."

CSM: violence down, but some Iraqis can't return home
"...after the US-led invasion, his Sunni neighbor began threatening Mr. Mohamed, a Shiite. When the neighbor killed four of Mohamed's cousins, Mohamed and his family fled, selling his home of more than 20 years for $126,000 – just half its market rate.

Now, with relative calm returning, Mohamed is trying to reconstruct his former life. But while he's happy about the greater security, he's confronting a troubling reality that underscores that recovery will take more than an end to fighting. Like many Iraqis, he can't afford his old neighborhood."
NYT blog: a peek at the (very confusing) ballots for next month's election

Slate: military lawyer says suspect was tortured; someone will have to stand trial
"What Crawford has done here is astounding. She has repudiated the formalistic (and perennially shifting) definitions of torture as whatever-it-is-we-don't-do. She has admitted that there is a medical and legal definition for torture and also that we have crossed the line into it.

The consequences go further. Crawford also told Woodward that the charges against al-Qahtani were dropped because he was tortured. This has devastating consequences for the Bush administration's entire rationale for the new techniques of interrogation: that they would make the United States safer by producing intelligence and keeping dangerous individuals off the streets. We now know they do neither. The torture produced no useful information from al-Qahtani, and the cruelty heaped upon him will make it more difficult, if not impossible, to justify his long-term incarceration.

There is a third major consequence to the Crawford interview: Her principle objection to detainee abuse is not ephemeral or spiritual, but a damning indictment of the impact it will have on American troops and the prospects for America's authority abroad: "If we tolerate this and allow it, then how can we object when our servicemen and women, or others in foreign service, are captured and subjected to the same techniques? How can we complain? Where is our moral authority to complain? Well, we may have lost it."...

Under the 1984 Torture Convention, its 146 state parties (including the United States) are under an obligation to "ensure that all acts of torture are offences under its criminal law." These states must take any person alleged to have committed torture (or been complicit or participated in an act of torture) who is present in their territories into custody. The convention allows no exceptions, as Gen. Pinochet discovered in 1998. The state party to the Torture Convention must then submit the case to its competent authorities for prosecution or extradition for prosecution in another country.

The former chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces and general counsel for the Department of the Army has spoken. Her clear words have been picked up around the world. And that takes the prospects of accountability and criminal investigation onto another level. For the Obama administration, the door to the do-nothing option is now closed. That is why today may come to be seen as the turning point."
WP: 'trials' against Guantanamo inmates also undermined by basic incompetence
"[Former military prosecutor] Vandeveld said in a phone interview that the 'complete lack of organization' has affected nearly all cases at Guantanamo Bay. The evidence is often so disorganized, he said, 'it was like a stash of documents found in a village in a raid and just put on a plane to the U.S. Not even rudimentary organization by date or name.' ...

Military defense lawyers also said yesterday that the Office of Military Commissions may have accidentally withdrawn the charges against all defendants at Guantanamo Bay facing trial, including Jawad and even Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the operational mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Defense lawyers said the Office of Military Commissions, while creating new jury panels, took the additional step of re-referring all charges, which, they said, would return all cases to square one and require new arraignments."
NYT blog: closing Gitmo is gonna be tough

CSM: discovered arms cache raises suspicion of secular coup plot in Turkey

NYT: riots in Latvia over economy
"In the wake of the demonstrations, President Valdis Zatlers threatened Wednesday to call for a referendum that would allow voters to dissolve Parliament, saying trust in the government, including in its ability to deal with growing economic problems, had “collapsed catastrophically.”

For years, Latvia boasted of double-digit economic growth rates, but it has been shaken by the global economic downturn. Its central bank has spent a fifth of its reserves to guard against a steep devaluation of its currency, the lat, and experts expect a 5 percent contraction of the country’s gross domestic product in 2009. Salaries are expected to fall substantially, and unemployment is expected to rise"

AP: fighting in Mogadishu: al-Shabab attacks presidential palace, says African Union forces next
"There are currently about 2,400 Ugandan and Burundian peacekeepers in Mogadishu whose mandate is restricted to guarding key government installations such as the port and airport. To date, they have rarely been the target of insurgent attacks...

The Ethiopian army, one of Africa's largest, was viewed by many Somalis as abusive and heavy-handed. But few expect the Somali government now can ensure security. It controls only pockets of the capital, Mogadishu, and Baidoa, where parliament sits -- and has tried to rule without a president for weeks.

Thousands of civilians have been killed in fighting in the past year, particularly in the capital, and hundreds of thousands have fled the violence...

Rival Islamic groups control other areas of southern and central Somalia, with the al-Shabab making the most dramatic gains in recent months. Al-Shabab, which denies it is a terrorist organization, says its goal is to establish an Islamic state in Somalia.

Also today, officials said gunmen had abducted an Egyptian teacher in Somalia's relatively peaceful northwestern breakaway republic where such kidnappings are rare...it is rare for abductions to take place in northwestern region of Somaliland, which declared its independence from Somalia in 1991 and has its own regularly elected government, parliament and judiciary. The breakaway republic has avoided much of the chaos and anarchy that exists in the rest of the country."

BBC: UN says Eritrea must pull out of Djibouti

AJE: Guinea names new gov't
"The 29-member government would comprise both civilians and military, coup leaders said in a statement aired on national radio and television on Thursday.

Members of the military were appointed to defence, security, justice and finance ministries.

No representatives of political parties, however, have been included in the new government."

AJE: reemergence of Shining Path, self defense forces in Peru

AP: Chávez wins constitutional amendment vote allowing him to run for office indefinitely; referendum to be held

Gdn: Rio police say City of God no longer ruled by gangs
"Until the success of Meirelles' film, which was nominated for four Oscars, City of God, or Cidade de Deus, was a little-known slum on the western outskirts of Rio. Based on a book of the same name published in 1997, the film documented the bloody struggle between cocaine traffickers that ravaged the community during the 1970s and 1980s, with many of the actors recruited from Rio's favelas.

Attempts to evict the real traffickers from the City of God, which is home to about 50,000 people, are part of a police initiative that authorities hope will help them regain control of the slums and serve as a blueprint for fighting urban crime across South America. "The state is going back to occupy territories from which it was absent, both in terms of public security and in terms of social investment," Rio's governor, Sérgio Cabral, said.

In their battle against the city's three drug factions, police have traditionally launched "hit and run" attacks on the favelas. The police kill more than 1,000 people each year, according to official figures, many during such raids.

Now the authorities plan to permanently station hundreds of military policemen inside three favelas as part of a pilot project to combat organised crime.

The police, who will spend 24 hours a day in the communities, aim to build trust, gather intelligence and help rebuild the slums. Millions of dollars will be invested in infrastructure and housing. City of God, where about 700 troops will be deployed, is the second favela in which the new "hearts and minds" policy will be tried...

The community policing scheme has not pleased everyone. Many predict the authorities will soon withdraw from places such as City of God and Dona Marta, allowing the traffickers to return. The government has also admitted its "policy of confrontation" will not end as a result of the community policing project.

Others view the initiative as little more than a marketing stunt by a media-savvy government, arguing that the City of God was only chosen because of its notoriety."

CSM: targeting gangs' assets in LA
"The city of Los Angeles, plagued by 23,000 violent gang crimes since 2004, including 784 murders and 12,000 felony assaults, announced Tuesday that it had won its first civil judgment, for $5 million, against a criminal gang that had dominated the heroin trade downtown for decades.

The verdict could bode well for another first-of-its-kind lawsuit the city filed last month that goes after all assets of gang leaders, not just those associated with their criminal activity. Both suits seek to plow the money back into improving the neighborhoods affected by the gangs through a fund..

The tactic of trying to cripple organizations by taking away their assets has been commonly used against the mafia. More recently, it has been used against white supremacist organizations. In 2000, the Southern Poverty Law Center won a $6.3 million verdict against the Aryan Nations that forced the organization to give up its 20-acre compound in Idaho...

The City Attorney's office says it is moving against the 18th Street gang on behalf of residents who can't file suit themselves because they can't afford the expenses and they fear retaliation. Gangs control certain neighborhoods by exacting so-called "street taxes" on home and business owners as well as street vendors.

The suit seeks compensation for property damage, emotional distress, personal injury, and intangibles such as residents not being able to use public parks because of gang activity...

The city currently has 463 known gangs with 26,000 members, according to the Los Angeles Police Department.

But the use of injunctions has been controversial, Mr. Parrish says, because of "perceived selective enforcement and various civil rights issues."

The new law, too, "may raise significant civil rights issues depending on how it's used," Mr Parrish adds.

Unlike with organized groups, street gang members may be hard to identify."

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more on the transition:
The Onion: luring Cheney out of his lair
NYT blog: while Bush declares national emergency

perceptions

NYT: Sadr City fighting continues
NYT: (op-ed) the conflict in Basra foretold
"As has been widely reported of late [in 2005], Basran politics (and everyday life) is increasingly coming under the control of Shiite religious groups, from the relatively mainstream Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq to the bellicose followers of the rebel cleric Moktada al-Sadr. Recruited from the same population of undereducated, underemployed men who swell these organizations' ranks, many of Basra's rank-and-file police officers maintain dual loyalties to mosque and state."
WP: report released Sunday on state of Iraqi police confirms not much progress has been made
WP: Shiites splitting
"The hostilities highlighted how intra-sect struggles, after five years of war, are increasingly defining the nature of conflict in Iraq, as violence lessens between Sunnis and Shiites."
CSM: Sunni groups, Islamic Army of Iraq, still fighting, though
"Chasing out Al Qaeda has benefited us a lot," he says, explaining that AQI militants have largely been driven out of Anbar and Baghdad and are now concentrated in parts of Diyala, Nineveh, and Salaheddin provinces to the north. He says AQI used indiscriminate violence to subdue other Sunni insurgent groups....
He says the situation pushed Sunnis to the brink of a protracted internal battle, so siding with the US military to root out AQI and preserve Sunni unity made sense.
'Some people joined ... while others are still in the resistance.… We wanted to prevent fitna [discord] among Sunnis, and to unite our front,' he says.
Members of these US-backed militias now number almost 91,000 and are paid a total of $16 million a month in salaries by the US. They are often lauded by President Bush in his speeches on Iraq.
The US military now calls these Sunni militias 'Sons of Iraq.' Iraqis simply refer to all these groups as sahwas. But the Shiite-led government is resisting US pressure to fold these groups, especially the ones in Baghdad and Diyala provinces, into the Army and police. 'Trust me, the sahwas are ultimately with the resistance, heart and mind,' says Abu Abdullah. He says IAI continues to have a loose affiliation with other factions that share its outlook, such as Muhammad's Army, the Rashideen Army, and Mujahedeen Army."
CSM: the Marines still fighting in Anbar
Slate: Petraeus and Crocker were predictable

NYT: secret military trials in Afghanistan
NYT: defense lawyers for Guantánamo prisoners try to delay trials, because don't want to confer legitimacy on tribunal system
LAT: a Saudi prisoner refuses to participate

LAT: policing in LA: public perceptions of racial violence (especially Latino-Black) vs how homicides have been recorded
"[Police Chief] Bratton now concedes that his 'just the facts' approach hasn't worked. Black commentators have accused him of downplaying a rising menace. Reporters have pressed him at every turn."
Ind: police in South Africa given shoot-to-kill orders from minister
"'You must kill the bastards if they threaten you or the community. You must not worry about the regulations,' said Deputy Safety and Security Minister Susan Shabangu."

LAT: gangs in Zimbabwe target opposition
"Intimidation of opposition activists is occurring -- outside the limelight -- in rural areas of Zimbabwe that have traditionally been ruling party strongholds but where the MDC scored upset parliamentary victories. One activist has been killed. The fear tactics are viewed both as political retribution and as an attempt to scare opposition supporters from backing the MDC in a possible presidential runoff, allowing the 84-year-old Mugabe to hold on to power. Thus far, many believe the heavy-handed tactics are working."
Gdn: regional summit called to try to broker election outcome

Ind: unrest in Kenyan slum as power-sharing agreement still not implemented
NYT: displacement still leaves some without adequate resources; threatens to reshape politics
"Hundreds of thousands have already resettled in areas where their ethnic group dominates, because that is seen as the only way to guarantee safety."

NYT magazine: memories of Liberia

LAT: Sudan census - first in 25 years - won't include religion or ethnicity

Ind: captured yacht reveals sophisticated pirate network
UNOSAT: a map of Somali pirate attacks (HT: Chris Blattman)

WP: Nepalis voting despite violence
Gdn: good Q&A on background of the elections

Gdn: riots continue in Haiti

BBC: Kosovo adopts new constitution
BBC: Burma puts its up for sale
BBC: Senegal amends its to charge Habre

Gdn: 1971 Bangladesh war of independence in photos

BBC: four army death squad members convicted of 1992 university massacre in Peru

NYT: (op-ed) more on MLK Jr and his legacy

NYT: Zakaria's take on Bhutto's take on Islam and politics

the Onion: Mead releases new grad-school-ruled notebook
BBC (really, not the Onion): for the good of the children, Venezuela drops the Simpsons for Baywatch