resurrections

NYT: local-level governance in Iraq, captain by (retiring) captain
"During the war in Iraq, young Army and Marine captains have become American viceroys, officers with large sectors to run and near-autonomy to do it. In military parlance, they are the “ground-owners.” In practice, they are power brokers. 'They give us a chunk of land and say, ‘Fix it,’ ' said Capt. Rich Thompson, 36, who controls an area east of Baghdad."
LAT: in some areas of Iraq, US trying to transition militia members into alternative sectors
LAT: Fallujah repopulated, "alive again"; but article fails to describe how it's been rebuilt
"To ensure continued security progress, Marines conduct late-night raids several times a week after picking up intelligence about possible insurgent activities. The troops also have sought to provide employment to young Falloujans to help win their loyalty."
Gdn: letters responding to article on Iraq fatality estimates

CSM: Herat strike for more security against criminal gangs
"Doctors, nurses, and other health providers walked out on their jobs to protest what they say are the government's half-hearted attempts to address a growing security problem. Shopkeepers, judges, and the city's main trade union soon joined them, prompting the closure of close to 250 factories.
The strike, which ended earlier this week, highlights widespread dissatisfaction with government efforts to provide security and illustrates the extent to which criminal gangs – not the Taliban – are seen as the biggest security threat in Afghanistan's major cities."

LAT: in Colombia, army units accused of increasingly killing civilians, labeling them as guerrillas
"Ramiro Orjuela Aguilar, a Bogota human rights attorney representing 20 families of suspected 'false positive' victims in Meta, blamed the military's use of paid informants or demobilized guerrillas for many of the killings.
'They have an incentive to name people as rebels because they are paid for information whether it's correct or not,' Orjuela said.
Several of the Meta victims last year were youths living in and around Granada, the hub of a cattle and farming region that has been fiercely contested in recent years by leftist guerrillas, the armed forces and right-wing paramilitary troops. It is also home to the army's 12th Mobile Brigade, a unit that Orjuela says is implicated in many of the killings.
Orjuela alleges that the army is engaging in 'social cleansing' in Meta, home to four of the five municipalities that made up the so-called neutral zone occupied by Colombian guerrillas from 1998 to 2002. Killings and mass displacements of residents here are efforts to deprive guerrillas of sympathizers, Orjuela said.
'They are trying to deprive the fish of its water,' he said."

NYT: violence between Tibetans and the Chinese state may influence voting in Taiwan

BBC: veterans of Bangladesh's 1971 independence war want collaborators of Pakistan tried for war crimes

BBC: Cyprus peace talks on again

BBC: Liberia launches its first census since 1984; pop song translated into 16 languages plays daily urging citizens to stay home to be counted

Slate: how early Christians understood resurrection
"The ancient Jewish and early Christian idea of personal resurrection represented a new emphasis on individuals and the importance of embodied existence beyond the mere survival or enhancement of the soul, although there was debate about the precise nature of the post-resurrection body...In the earliest expressions of their faith that we have, Christians claimed that Jesus' resurrection showed that God singled out Jesus ahead of the future resurrection of the dead to show him uniquely worthy to be lord of all the elect...In Christianity's first few centuries, when believers often suffered severe persecution and even the threat of death, those who believed in Jesus' bodily resurrection found it particularly meaningful for their own circumstances. Jesus had been put to death in grisly fashion, but God had overturned Jesus' execution and, indeed, had given him a new and glorious body. So, they believed that they could face their own deaths as well as those of their loved ones in the firm hope that God would be faithful to them as well."

anniversaries

lots of outlets focusing on the 5th anniversary of Iraq invasion...most are pessimistic. here are 2 from the LAT: signs of progress don't last long enough to report, and one Iraqi general's story of lost hope
"As the fifth anniversary of the invasion to oust Saddam Hussein nears, he serves as a singular witness to the hopes and horrors of the last five years: a man haunted by his role in a terrible stampede on a Baghdad bridge that left nearly 1,000 people dead; a man targeted for his involvement in the discovery of a Shiite police torture chamber; a man devastated by the killing of his son."

New Yorker: documenting life at Abu Ghraib
“'[the prison looked] Like something from a Mad Max movie,' Sergeant Javal Davis, of the 372nd, said. 'Just like that—like, medieval.' There were more than two and a half miles of wall with twenty-four towers, enclosing two hundred and eighty acres of prison ground. And inside, Davis said, 'it’s nothing but rubble, blown-up buildings, dogs running all over the place, rabid dogs, burnt remains. The stench was unbearable: urine, feces, body rot.'
The prisoners—several thousand of them, clad in orange—were crowded behind concertina wire. 'The encampment they were in when we saw it at first looked like one of those Hitler things, like a concentration camp, almost,' Davis said. 'They’re in there, in their little jumpsuits, outside in the mud. Their rest rooms was running over. It was just disgusting. You didn’t want to touch anything. Whatever the worst thing that comes to your mind, that was it—the place you would never, ever, ever, ever send your worst enemy.'”

Ind: older atrocities: remembering Mai Lai, 40 years later

NYT: US trying to convince Pakistan to embrace counterinsurgency (against militants) rather than conventional warfare (against India) (SV wonders if Musharraf cites Rumsfeld and Cheney)

Gdn: Tibet demonstrations, violence move to Xiahe
BBC: Taiwanese plan to demonstrate against anti-secession law

Ind: Iranian students reflect on the elections
Gdn: despite risks from the Morality Police, women resist restrictions through 'self expression' (indoors)

Ind: mercenary Mann agrees to give evidence of other coup plotters to Equatorial Guinea

BBC: the United National Liberation Front (UNLF) of Manipur claims 6 Indian soldiers' lives

WP: the Left (read: Communist Party) in Germany making a comeback

subprime voting

SWJ: the US military and governance
"...the United States Army and the United States Marine Corps actually have a long history of establishing and running “governments” in both smaller-scale contingency operations and in the aftermath of major theater war"
WP: the surge is working (op-ed)
WP: no it isn't (op-ed)

BBC: Cubans vote for parliament today
LAT: incremental change under Raul Castro?
"Analysts of the secretive Cuban power structure see signs of modest political and economic change emerging on the island in the 18 months since an ailing Fidel Castro temporarily ceded power to his brother Raul and retreated to pen his thoughts and memoirs."

LAT: Chávez, Venezuela approve measure to recognize FARC, ELN as "belligerents"
"To qualify for "belligerent" status, experts say an armed group must control territory, have a unified command, demonstrate the capacity to carry out military operations and observe basic human rights...Various governments and human rights groups contended last week that the FARC neither controls territory in Colombia nor does it respect human rights, so it shouldn't qualify as a belligerent group."
Econ: the politics of the hostage release
"Proof of their continuing “terrorist” status could be found in the letters and photographs of eight of the remaining hostages, sent with the released women, Mr Uribe suggested. In a letter to his family, Luis Mendieta, a Colombian police officer, who has been held for nearly ten years, said his legs had become partially paralysed. “It's neither the physical pain nor the chains around my neck that torment me,” he wrote. “It's the mental anguish.”
Although Mr Uribe may not like it, any deal with the FARC will almost certainly have to involve Mr Chávez despite the souring of relations between the two men. "
BBC: US official accuses Chávez of colluding in cocaine trafficking

WP: constitutional debates in Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia

WP: Ashura in Iran
Econ: and other sorrows

LAT: Bhutto's legacy and gender politics in Pakistan
"For women such as Mohsin, Pakistan is a land of bitter contradictions. Entrenched tribal and religious taboos subject women to what human rights groups call some of the cruelest repression in the world. But the country also elected Bhutto, the first female prime minister of a Muslim nation... 'She was a strong woman. But if Benazir Bhutto is not safe, what can the rest of us expect?'"
WP: India monitoring turmoil in Pakistan

WP: education and caste in India
"Activists fear that failure to close the education gap could not only cause further social unrest but also hold back national development. Backward castes, along with Muslims and other tribal groups, make up nearly 70 percent of India's 1.1 billion people."

WP: don't forget Burma (editorial)

BBC: postponed again: Lebanon to hold vote Feb 11

BBC: Georgia's Saakashvili sworn in

Econ: voting in Serbia today

Econ: turnover in Taiwan

BBC: 5 Kikuyu IDPs killed in Rift Valley camp by Kalenjin youths; Kenya opposition to return to protest Thurs
BG: violence in Kenya not caused by tribal hatreds (op-ed)

WP: South Africa leans on Mugabe to reform
BBC: meanwhile, lights out in Zimbabwe
WP: and South Africa

WP: Poland's support for missile shield cools
"He said that Poland would be exposing itself to risks if it agreed to host part of the shield -- Russia has threatened to aim missiles at Poland in retaliation -- and that it wants more American help in exchange."
WP: Princeton historian may be charged with slandering Poland for book on treatment of Polish Jews in aftermath of Holocaust
"The measure prohibits anyone from asserting that "the Polish nation" was complicit in crimes or atrocities committed by Nazis or communists. The maximum penalty is three years' imprisonment...Poland has prosecuted Gross for his views before. In 1968, during communist rule, he was arrested as a student for participating in a free-speech movement and served five months in prison. He departed for the United States a year later, taking advantage of a Polish government policy that encouraged Jews to leave the country. He enrolled at Yale University and ultimately became a U.S. citizen."

Econ: France sets up shop in the UAE

Econ: sex work in Chicago and Ecuador (and at the American Economic Association's annual meeting)
WP: less sex work in Amsterdam: revamping the red light district
"The area has been a center of prostitution since Amsterdam's golden age in the 1600s. After World War II, it became a major tourist attraction, along with coffee shops where marijuana is sold openly."

CFT: Cleveland, Baltimore sue banks over sub-prime lending; Cleveland cites public order concerns
"Citing state public nuisance statutes, Cleveland has targeted 21 Wall Street investment banks for fueling an explosion of subprime loan products that, given Cleveland's dim economic profile, city officials say, were bound to fail - and these banks knew it.
It's a gutsy move, and unprecedented. Cities have used similar state public nuisance laws in the past, in cases involving lead paint exposure and the gun industry (where gun manufacturers were sued for making weapons available to criminals and minors). But Cleveland is the first to make public nuisance claims against certain subprime mortgage lending practices - something not as obviously harmful as lead or firearms."

LAT: behind the scenes in a casino caucus