disorderly conduct [analog societies]

NYRB: Roger Cohen: Iran's past and future

I was still using a notebook then. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, had not yet pronounced foreign correspondents "evil" agents, thus granting heavenly sanction to their manhandling, expulsion, or arrest, which duly followed. Like everyone that morning I was perplexed. The Iranian government proceeds with cautious calculation. The revolution's survival has not been based on caprice. Had this government really invited hundreds of journalists to a freedom fest only to change its mind? I lingered when I could, ran when I had to, bumping into another railing young woman in tears. As we stood talking, a middle-aged man approached. "Don't cry, be brave and be ready," he told her.

I will call him Mohsen. He showed me his ID card from the Interior Ministry, where he said he'd worked for thirty years. He'd been locked out, he said, as had other employees, many of whom had been fired in recent weeks. We ducked into a café, where patriotic songs droned from a TV over images of soldiers and devout women in black chadors—had we just witnessed an election or the imposition of martial law?—and Mohsen talked about his brother, a martyr of the 1980–1988 Iran–Iraq war, and how he himself had not fought in that war, nor endured a sibling's loss, to see "this injustice against the Revolution, conscience, and humanity."

Iran's dignity had been flouted, he said, the alleged election results emerging from the Interior Ministry plucked from the summer air. Why, I asked, had he admonished the young woman? "Because the best decisions are needed in the worst of conditions and crying is not the answer." Mohsen told me he'd also admonished the police: "I asked them: if Ahmadinejad won, why is such oppression needed?"

LRB: Slavoj Žižek:...and what it portends for the future of democracy? (hint: Ahmadenijad = Berlusconi = Kung Fu Panda

What all this means is that there is a genuinely liberatory potential in Islam: we don’t have to go back to the tenth century to find a ‘good’ Islam, we have it right here, in front of us. The future is uncertain – the popular explosion has been contained, and the regime will regain ground. However, it will no longer be seen the same way: it will be just one more corrupt authoritarian government. Ayatollah Khamenei will lose whatever remained of his status as a principled spiritual leader elevated above the fray and appear as what he is – one opportunistic politician among many. But whatever the outcome, it is vital to keep in mind that we have witnessed a great emancipatory event which doesn’t fit within the frame of a struggle between pro-Western liberals and anti-Western fundamentalists. If we don’t see this, if as a consequence of our cynical pragmatism, we have lost the capacity to recognise the promise of emancipation, we in the West will have entered a post-democratic era, ready for our own Ahmadinejads. Italians already know his name: Berlusconi. Others are waiting in line.

Is there a link between Ahmadinejad and Berlusconi? Isn’t it preposterous even to compare Ahmadinejad with a democratically elected Western leader? Unfortunately, it isn’t: the two are part of the same global process. If there is one person to whom monuments will be built a hundred years from now, Peter Sloterdijk once remarked, it is Lee Kuan Yew, the Singaporean leader who thought up and put into practice a ‘capitalism with Asian values’. The virus of authoritarian capitalism is slowly but surely spreading around the globe. Deng Xiaoping praised Singapore as the model that all of China should follow. Until now, capitalism has always seemed to be inextricably linked with democracy; it’s true there were, from time to time, episodes of direct dictatorship, but, after a decade or two, democracy again imposed itself (in South Korea, for example, or Chile). Now, however, the link between democracy and capitalism has been broken.

Kung Fu Panda, the 2008 cartoon hit, provides the basic co-ordinates for understanding the ideological situation I have been describing. The fat panda dreams of becoming a kung fu warrior. He is chosen by blind chance (beneath which lurks the hand of destiny, of course), to be the hero to save his city, and succeeds. But the film’s pseudo-Oriental spiritualism is constantly undermined by a cynical humour. The surprise is that this continuous making-fun-of-itself makes it no less spiritual: the film ultimately takes the butt of its endless jokes seriously. A well-known anecdote about Niels Bohr illustrates the same idea. Surprised at seeing a horseshoe above the door of Bohr’s country house, a visiting scientist said he didn’t believe that horseshoes kept evil spirits out of the house, to which Bohr answered: ‘Neither do I; I have it there because I was told that it works just as well if one doesn’t believe in it!’ This is how ideology functions today: nobody takes democracy or justice seriously, we are all aware that they are corrupt, but we practise them anyway because we assume they work even if we don’t believe in them. Berlusconi is our own Kung Fu Panda. As the Marx Brothers might have put it, ‘this man may look like a corrupt idiot and act like a corrupt idiot, but don’t let that deceive you – he is a corrupt idiot.’
Gdn: speaking of Berlusconi, buried treasure on sexploit tape
The Silvio Berlusconi tapes released this week have focused, not surprisingly, on lurid discussions of threesomes, condoms and staying power. But today Italy's prime minister was facing the bizarre possibility that the most explosive secret in the recordings was neither sexual nor financial, but archaeological...After noting that the lake is adorned by a fossilised whale, Berlusconi purportedly adds: "Underneath here, we found 30 Phoenician tombs from 300BC."

Baltimore Sun: a feud that spawned a gang
Back one day in 1966, at a house party in North Baltimore's Pen Lucy neighborhood, two teenage boys asked the same girl to dance.

One boy lived on Old York Road, the other on McCabe Avenue.

The two fought, first inside, then on the street, and a feud began that turned two neighborhood groups into gangs that terrorized a collection of blighted blocks for more than three decades.

Street wars between the Old York and Cator Avenue Boys and the McCabe Avenue Boys would become legendary and deadly. Corner disputes turned into drug disputes, and battles with knives, fists and bats turned into fights with rifles, revolvers and automatic handguns.

Police now say the two gangs are all but gone, their victims memorialized in a park, their leaders eviscerated by the law and their own hands, and residents living in the old turf proclaim a new day...

The recent violence brought back memories to a man who grew up on Old York Road in the 1960s and was one of the boys who had asked the girl to dance. He's 56 now, an Air Force veteran and a college graduate with an accounting degree. He has two children and runs his own consulting business.

Back in the day, he was an original lieutenant for the Old York and Cator Avenue Boys. He asked that his name not be used because he still has relatives in Pen Lucy and they fear for their safety...

He chose the suburbs over the inner city, but about a decade ago he took his 10- and 12-year-old sons to a family gathering in the old neighborhood.

There, he saw some men he used to hang with, now in their 40s but still strung out on the corners, still trapped in the old game, one that had long passed them by with violence and heroin. One son looked up incredulously and said, "Dad, do you know these bad people?"

Stunned, the man looked down and answered: "They're not bad people. They're people who made bad choices."

As he thinks back at the violence that engulfed Pen Lucy, he's sorry about the fight over the girl - she rejected both suitors, but that didn't seem to matter to boys fighting for honor - and wonders if any of the members of the gangs even know why they started fighting.

He suspects that the pattern in Pen Lucy was and is repeated all over the city. A simple dispute escalates, turns to drugs and guns, then jail and death.

Slate: race, racism, the law, and policing in the US
I know Gates and find it very hard to imagine him engaged in "disorderly conduct." But many police officers demand more than orderly conduct; they demand submission and deference. Given the difficult and dangerous jobs they do, they usually deserve it. But it would be naive to imagine that there are no power-hungry bigots wearing the uniform. Anyone, particularly a black person, needs only to encounter one such rogue officer to find himself in serious jeopardy—at that point a few hours in custody is about the best one can hope for. Maybe Gates, who is well-acquainted with the history of American racism, raised his voice in anger or fear. Maybe he even unfairly berated Crowley. But there's no way that the slight, 58-year-old Harvard scholar, with his cane, posed a threat to public order that justified his arrest.

Rather than improve those neighborhoods and help the people who live in them join the prosperous mainstream, we as a society have given police the dirty job of quarantining them. Frankly, we should expect that a disproportionate number of power-hungry bigots would find such a mandate attractive. And an otherwise decent and fair-minded officer, faced with the day-to-day task of controlling society's most isolated, desperate, and angry population, might develop some ugly racial generalizations and carry them even to plush and leafy neighborhoods such as those surrounding Harvard Yard. Yet when the inevitable racial scandal surfaces we, like Capt. Renault in Casablanca, are shocked, shocked to find racial bias in law enforcement and quick to blame individual police officers, rather than ourselves.
HuffPo: Brandon Terry: 'disorderly conduct' and vicious cycles
But if we can step back and see how easily this happened to someone like Gates, arguably the most famous academic in the country, it should encourage us to be more vigilant about the toll that continuing racial disparities in law enforcement are taking on blacks, particularly the working class and poor, in America. The disproportionate policing of amorphous criminal statutes like "disorderly conduct" and "disobeying the lawful order of a police officer" have served to introduce thousands of otherwise law-abiding people into the criminal justice system. This puts undue stress and costs on police forces and communities, undermining the capacity to stem crime at its roots. When applied to juveniles in particular, this type of policing only stigmatizes and alienates youth, exposing them further to deleterious influences that ultimately encourage them to turn away from school and legitimate employment.

NYT: Chavez's nepotism in Barinas; kidnappings skyrocket
Barinas offers a unique microcosm of Mr. Chávez’s rule. Many poor residents still revere the president, born here into poverty in 1954. But polarization in Barinas is growing more severe, with others chafing at his newly prosperous parents and siblings, who have governed the state since the 1990s. While Barinas is a laboratory for projects like land reform, urgent problems like violent crime go unmentioned in the many billboards here extolling the Chávez family’s ascendancy...

The governor of Barinas, Adán Chávez, the president’s eldest brother and a former ambassador to Cuba, said this month that many of the kidnappings might have been a result of destabilization efforts by the opposition or so-called self-kidnappings: orchestrated abductions to reveal weaknesses among security forces, or to extort money from one’s own family...

“In the meantime, while the family wraps itself in the rhetoric of socialism, we are descending into a neo-capitalist chaos where all that matters is money,” said Alberto Santelíz, the publisher of La Prensa, a small opposition newspaper.

One reason for the rise in kidnappings is the injection of oil money into the local economy, with some families reaping quick fortunes because of ties to large infrastructure projects...

More than a decade into the Chávez family’s rule in Barinas, the state remains Venezuela’s poorest, with average monthly household income of about $800, according to the National Statistics Institute. Kidnapping, once feared only by the wealthy, has spread in Barinas to include the poor. In one case this year of a 3-year-old girl kidnapped in the slum of Mi Jardín, the abductor, when told that the only thing of value owned by the girl’s mother was a refrigerator, instructed her to sell it to pay the ransom.

Kidnapping specialists here said the abductors were drawn from two Colombian rebel groups, a small Venezuelan guerrilla faction called the Bolivarian Liberation Front, other criminal gangs and corrupt police officers. Just a fraction of the kidnappings result in prison sentences.

Gdn: Rio's gangs treat members in makeshit medical clinics, to avoid hospitals and arrest

SWJ: SV defers to this extensive round-up on Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Georgia, and Honduras

Wired: Twitter, Google, YouTube execs deploy to Iraq

Cohen is a former Condoleezza Rice protégé now thriving under Hillary Clinton. Between puffs of flavored tobacco smoke drawn from a hookah, he explains that using technology to spread democracy has become a cornerstone of what diplo-nerds are calling 21st-century statecraft. Cohen chose this group for several reasons: to expose them to the changed reality of Iraq so they could spread the word back home, to inspire Iraqis to pursue capitalism with the fervor of a tech startup, and to initiate a few projects that will actually help Iraq rebuild. David Nassar, a VP at Blue State Digital—which handled online aspects of Barack Obama's campaign—is along to offer ideas on elections. Raanan Bar-Cohen, vice president of Automattic (the company behind WordPress), is an advocate for blogging and the open source movement. Richard Robbins, AT&T's "director of social innovation" (a title he invented), represents the big mobile firms. And there are three people from Google (including YouTube's Walk) because—well, because it's Google.

Cohen's fear is that taking a bunch of Web 2.0 suits into a nation shattered by war will be seen as an absurd boondoggle, mocked in the press as war tourism for Twittering geeks. The way to counter this, he says, is to produce "deliverables." In Cohen's personal word cloud, that's a noun set in 36-point type. "The technology that's second nature to you is going to be really important to countries like this," he tells the group. "You have a chance to contribute to this country in this early form of nation-building."

On one hand, it's ludicrous. What can makers of social networks and video sites do to fix an economy that's as broken as Saddam's statue? On the other hand, Silicon Valley types like to think they know how to make the world better. This trip isn't about profits or investing opportunities—as new markets go, Iraq falls somewhere between Antarctica and Somalia in desirability. They're motivated by a mix of curiosity and Obama-inspired patriotism. (If George Bush were still president, some of them might not have come.) There is also the guilt factor. "It's the least we can do for fucking up their country," Heiferman says.

Just how fucked up is Iraq? The executives get an overview in a series of briefings from State Department and military officials in embassy meeting rooms. Not all bad. Just mostly bad. Violence is down, but danger still lurks outside the Green Zone. The economy is a wreck. Electricity comes and goes.

"This is an analog society," says an Army major charged with expanding the communications infrastructure.

LAT: American Al-Qaeda recruit turns informant
His account highlights Al Qaeda's penchant for bureaucracy: personnel files, applications and evaluations. Over four months, Vinas took three courses from an Arab instructor, alongside 10 to 20 students. The curriculum encompassed the use of firearms such as the AK-47 rifle; explosives theory and the assembly of bombs and suicide vests; and the use of rocket-type weapons.

NYRB: Hochschild on the historical continuity of rape and enslavement in the Congo

WP: Aung San Suu Kyi could face 5 more years of detention because American broke into her property
Suu Kyi was charged in May after a U.S. citizen from Falcon, Mo., eluded the tight security surrounding the villa where she was detained in Rangoon by swimming across a lake to the house...

They say that despite 13 years of house arrest -- imposed by the military junta that rules Burma after Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy won an overwhelming electoral victory in 1990 -- she remains the government's most formidable opponent.

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NPR: (one of) Escobar's legacies: a theme park and hippos

a war of existence [hemorrhaging]

LAT: "hemorrhaging" of Pakistani civilians from Swat Valley amidst intensified 12-day government offensive
In his interview with NBC's "Meet the Press," President Asif Ali Zardari brushed aside concerns that Pakistan's armed forces are still too focused on a potential threat from longtime rival India. He said the resources devoted to the fight against the Taliban -- 135,000 troops in the northwest, he estimated -- were sufficient. "It's a war of our existence," Zardari said.
NYT: military officials' tally: 1.3 million civilians displaced, 700 militants killed, 22 soldiers dead
The general’s claims are impossible to verify because reporters and other independent observers have been excluded from the area. There was no indication, for instance, that the fight to wrest the district capital, Mingora, from Taliban fighters, had begun. Pakistanis reached earlier this week said the militants had retained all the territory they held in Swat when the operation began.

The exodus, if it proves to be as large as the government says, would be one of the largest migrations of civilians in the region since the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947, when as many as 14 million people left their homes for one of the newly independent countries...

As the fighting in Swat unfolded this week, missiles fired by a remotely piloted American drone killed 15 people, suspected of being militants, in a village in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas on Tuesday morning. The missiles, apparently three in all, hit a suspected safe house operated by local militants in Sra Khawra, a village that sits on the border between the tribal agencies of North and South Waziristan.
LAT: part of new US-Pakistani joint operation with predator drones inside the country
The U.S. military has begun flying armed Predator drones inside Pakistan and has given Pakistani officers significant control over targets, flight routes and decisions to launch attacks under a new joint operation, according to U.S. officials familiar with the program...

For the U.S. military, the missions represent a broad new role in searching for Islamic militants in Pakistan. For years, that task has been the domain of the CIA, which has flown its own fleet of Predators over the South Asian nation.

Under the new partnership, U.S. military drones will be allowed for the first time to venture beyond the borders of Afghanistan under the direction of Pakistani military officials, who are working with American counterparts at a command center in Jalalabad, Afghanistan...

The Pakistanis, however, have yet to use the drones to shoot at suspected militants and are grappling with a cumbersome military chain of command as well as ambivalence over using U.S. equipment to fire on their own people.
NYT: new offensive brings number of displaced to 360,000 in last 12 days, 900,000+ since August
BBC: UN to deliver some emergency aid

BBC: US military claims the Taliban is using white phosphorus
LAT: at least 20 dead in coordinated suicide attacks in eastern Afghanistan
The assault was a worrying sign of insurgents' growing ability to stage sophisticated, multipronged attacks. Militants in the eastern part of the country are thought to have better access to training in Pakistan's tribal areas, a haven for the Taliban and Al Qaeda. At least one of the suicide bombers was disguised in a burka, the all-enveloping veil worn by many Afghan women. Insurgents also apparently laid an ambush for a rescue team deployed from the American base
NYT: ...and as many as 140 civilians dead in US attack, the largest single incident since start of the war; payments made to families
The U.S. military has said it believes the number of civilians killed was much lower, in the neighborhood of 50. American officials acknowledge bombing the area, but say at least some of the deaths were caused by insurgents.

LAT: Gates replaces Gen. David McKiernan, commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, in move toward fresh strategy stretching beyond the border with Pakistan
Gates has ousted a succession of top military officials since becoming Defense secretary, firing the Army secretary and top leaders of the Air Force as well as accepting the resignation of the former head of U.S. forces in the Middle East. But McKiernan is the first ground commander fired by Gates. McKiernan, who has been in command for 11 months, was originally supposed to serve for up to two years.
NYT: personal profile of replacement, "ascetic" Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal
Lt. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the ascetic who is set to become the new top American commander in Afghanistan, usually eats just one meal a day, in the evening, to avoid sluggishness.

He is known for operating on a few hours’ sleep and for running to and from work while listening to audio books on an iPod. In Iraq, where he oversaw secret commando operations for five years, former intelligence officials say that he had an encyclopedic, even obsessive, knowledge about the lives of terrorists, and that he pushed his ranks aggressively to kill as many of them as possible.

But General McChrystal has also moved easily from the dark world to the light. Fellow officers on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, where he is director, and former colleagues at the Council on Foreign Relations describe him as a warrior-scholar, comfortable with diplomats, politicians and the military man who would help promote him to his new job.
NYT: McChrystal "ideally suited" for new strategy treating Afghanistan and Pakistan "as part of a single, urgent problem"
Among his last projects as the head of the Joint Special Operations Command was to better coordinate Pentagon and Central Intelligence Agency efforts on both sides of the porous border...

As head of the Joint Special Operations Command, General McChrystal was a key advocate last year of a plan, ultimately approved by President George W. Bush, to use American commandos to strike at Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan. Under an arrangement put in place as part of the more aggressive posture, a senior C.I.A. official based at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan was put in charge of C.I.A. and military commando missions in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
CSM: Gates also nominates Lt. Gen. David Rodriguez to be his chief of staff; McChrystal has plans to alter redeployments
On Monday, Gates also nominated his own chief of staff, Lt. Gen. David Rodriguez, to a newly created position in Kabul that will oversee day-to-day operations. This is expected to result in greater US control over the multinational mission there...

McChrystal, who now heads the Joint Staff at the Pentagon under Adm. Mike Mullen, has mostly stayed behind the scenes, given his background in special operations. But he has recently led an effort to have certain units redeploy to the same places in Afghanistan again and again in order to build longer-term relationships with the population. The plan is still in the development stage.

Gdn: soldier kills 5 at stress counseling center in Baghdad
[Sergeant John] Russell, from Sherman, Texas, had been sent for counselling to the Liberty Combat Stress Control Centre. In a sign of the extent of the military's concern, he had had his weapon taken away last week.

Investigators are looking at reports that he had been taken to the clinic, had a row with staff, been escorted off the premises but managed to obtain a weapon and return. Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the incident highlighted the need to deal with combat stress and the impact of multiple deployments.

Before the tours in Iraq, Russell had served in the Balkans. He had been due to leave Iraq in about three weeks.
CSM: repeated long tours of duty = major problem
Experts and commanders say 15-month tours are too long because they compound mental-health problems and other issues at home. Secretary Gates agrees. He extended Army tours from 12 to 15 months only reluctantly, saying it was needed to help support the "surge" of troops to Iraq in 2007. He has since lifted the policy, but there remain two units in Iraq still finishing 15-month tours that won't return until this summer and fall.

Yet perhaps the more important factor in stress among soldiers is "dwell time" – the amount of time the military allows servicemembers to stay at home. The Army's current dwell time is about 12 months, meaning 12 months at home followed by a 12-month deployment. By 2012, the service hopes to double the amount of time spent at home for every 12-month tour to a war zone.
NYT: inside these "restoration centers" in Iraq
Camp Liberty is one of four bases that also offers soldiers a place to go when they need more intensive counseling and rest. These so-called large restoration centers offer service members three hot meals and a cot to sleep in for up to four days to recharge. While they are there, they receive more rigorous care, including individual or group mental health counseling.

It is unusual for a commander to take a soldier’s weapon away in Iraq, and it is often prompted by concerns that the soldier said something about the possibility of suicide or harming somebody else. Mental health specialists can also make the determination to take away a soldier’s weapon.

WP: US district judge orders Yemeni prisoner released from Guantánamo; says government "produced virtually no credible evidence" to show he fought against the US
In a 45-page opinion, U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler said the government failed to prove that Alla Ali Bin Ali Ahmed, 25, supported the Taliban or al-Qaeda. He was arrested in Pakistan and has been held at the Guantanamo Bay prison since 2002.

She ordered the government to enter into diplomatic negotiations to release Ahmed, though it is unclear whether that will work. The United States has hesitated to send Yemenis back to their home country because of its instability.

Most of the evidence against Ahmed was classified, and the Justice Department has not released a public version of its allegations... Federal judges have ordered eight detainees released after they challenged their confinements in federal lawsuits. Three have been sent home.
WP: while federal jury finds guilty a man who tried to establish terrorism training camps in Bly, Oregon (population: 486)
Kassir traveled to Bly, Ore., in late 1999, according to prosecutors, to establish a military-style facility at the direction of Muslim cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri, a fixture at the Finsbury Park mosque in London who has been designated a terrorist by the United States... He left the United States after two months, telling a witness that he was disappointed in the paltry number of people he had been able to attract to the camp, prosecutors said...

Kassir was arrested under an Interpol warrant in 2005 while traveling through Prague on his way to Lebanon. It took U.S. officials two more years to clear the path for his journey into the criminal justice system in New York...

The Kassir verdict came the same day that prosecutors in Miami won convictions against five men accused of conspiring to blow up Chicago's Sears Tower, a case that twice had ended in mistrial. Jurors convicted the alleged ringleader, Narseal Batiste, on four counts of conspiracy. One defendant, Naudimar Herrera, was acquitted of all charges.

Experts on national security law had argued that the case, known as the Liberty City prosecution after the downtrodden neighborhood in Miami where the men set up headquarters, was built on flimsy and contradictory evidence. It has been viewed as a test of the government's desire to bring prosecutions in instances in which terrorist plots are in the early stages.
WP: unsolved intra-UN killing in Afghanistan, and the problems of internal enforcement
Lacking its own police force, the United Nations relies on a combination of local law enforcement authorities, internal U.N. investigators and outside consultants with varying degrees of competence and limited power to enforce their findings.

Early last year, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon proposed establishing a U.N. anti-crime squad to respond more aggressively to allegations of corruption and sexual misconduct in peacekeeping missions. But the initiative encountered broad opposition from member states, including the United States, whose governments feared it would place too much power in U.N. hands.
WP: disappeared CIA detainee, tortured into giving false intelligence about the al Qaeda-Iraq connection, dead in Libyan prison
Libi was captured fleeing Afghanistan in late 2001, and he vanished into the secret detention system run by the Bush administration... When President George W. Bush ordered the 2006 transfer to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, of high-value detainees previously held in CIA custody, Libi was pointedly missing. Human rights groups had long suspected that Libi was instead transferred to Libya, but the CIA had never confirmed where he was sent.

"I would speculate that he was missing because he was such an embarrassment to the Bush administration," said Tom Malinowski, the head of the Washington office of Human Rights Watch. "He was Exhibit A in the narrative that tortured confessions contributed to the massive intelligence failure that preceded the Iraq war."

LAT: bloodiest day in Sri Lanka, says government doctor: 378 civilians dead, 800+ wounded
NYT: UN warns that "bloodbath" has become a reality
Concern for civilians trapped in the zone has grown in recent weeks. The area of fighting, which at one time had been set aside by the government as a “no-fire zone,” has shrunk to about 2.5 square miles. About 50,000 civilians, mostly Tamils, are thought to be caught there, along with a holdout force of between 200 and 500 rebel fighters.
Gdn: ...as a mortar shell hits the only functioning medical facility in the war zone
Doctors, nurses and medical administrators working out of a single room in their makeshift hospital in the school have become the eyes and ears of the world in this conflict. The government in Colombo has sought to dismiss them, to claim that they are pawns of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), or even to claim that some do not exist...

The hospital was packed with more than 1,000 patients awaiting evacuation by a ship operated by the International Committee of the Red Cross. Many of the patients fled after the attack and staff in the hospital said shells continued to fall around the perimeter.

NYT: weak ceasefires among ethnic groups create waves for new constitution in Myanmar and country's future
As Myanmar’s military government prepares to adopt a new and disputed Constitution next year, a fragile patchwork of cease-fire agreements between the central government and more than a dozen armed ethnic groups is fraying.

The new Constitution would nominally return the country to civilian rule after four and a half decades of military government and, in theory, could formally end the now dormant civil war that has plagued the country since it gained independence from Britain in 1948. But as a precondition for what they portray as a fresh start, Myanmar’s ruling generals are ordering the Kachin and other groups to disarm and disband their substantial armies.

So far, the answer is no.
FP: photos from inside North Korea, "land of no smiles"

BBC: Swedish report finds arms and aid shipped to African conflicts through the same carriers
Sipri's report called for agencies to deny contracts to air transport firms engaged in arms flights. But it also admitted that sometimes the only companies willing to fly aid to conflict zones were the same ones that also transported arms shipments.

BBC: "show me proof" of civilian killings, says Bashir in Darfur (that's just what the ICC wants to do, right?)
BBC: if you force 13 major international aid agencies out of Darfur, does it make a noise?
Two months after key international aid agencies were expelled from Sudan, the UN is cautiously optimistic about the humanitarian situation in Darfur. Visiting the region, the UN's emergency relief co-ordinator said there was no hard evidence that more people had died because of the disrupted aid effort...

The dramatic expulsion of 13 foreign aid agencies followed the announcement that Sudan's president was being indicted by the International Criminal Court.

The impact in Darfur has been serious. But Mr Holmes said that recently there had been signs of much greater flexibility from the Sudanese authorities. Privately, other UN officials went further, arguing that the operating environment had actually improved, and welcoming the fact that the Sudanese government was being forced to take more of a role in the relief effort.

NYT: Congolese government, in search of path to peace, passes amnesty law for illegal armed groups in North and South Kivu Provinces

BBC: bloody days in Mogadishu, as hardliners fight interim government in intense battles
"The fighting erupted in the most densely populated areas," Elman Human Rights Group's Ali Shaykh Yasin told HornAfrik radio. "The number of people killed who we saw were 123, while 312 others were wounded," he said. His group estimates that more than 17,000 people have fled so far.
CSM: fighting appears to have calmed after the weekend, but conflict far from over
Reuters: and famine on the way!
The target for a U.N. appeal for Somalia this year has been increased to $984 million, but is only one-third funded by donors to date.
NYT: piracy and pirates respond to social pressures
Much like the violence, hunger and warlordism that has engulfed Somalia, piracy is a direct — and some Somalis say inevitable — outgrowth of a society that has languished for 18 years without a functioning central government and whose economy has been smashed by war.

But here in Garoowe, the pirates are increasingly viewed as stains on the devoutly Muslim, nomadic culture, blamed for introducing big-city evils like drugs, alcohol, street brawling and AIDS...

FP: Obama's visit with Egyptian leader test for human rights policy

AP: Colombian senator, ally of President Uribe, arrested for collusion with paramilitaries
CSM: sexual violence cases under Justice and Peace Law jump from 12 to 228, show systematic nature
A 2006 report by a special rapporteur of the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights said: "The actors in Colombia's armed conflict, particularly the paramilitaries and guerrillas, use physical, sexual, and psychological violence against women as a strategy of war."... Paramilitary commanders have said that most were isolated cases of their men getting out of hand.

But Buriticá says testimonies she's collected show the practice was systematic and widespread, despite the extremely low numbers of reported cases. A 2006 report by a special rapporteur of the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights said: "The actors in Colombia's armed conflict, particularly the paramilitaries and guerrillas, use physical, sexual, and psychological violence against women as a strategy of war."

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NYT: Sarah Palin to write a memoir
Ms. Palin, who graduated from the University of Idaho, told The Daily News that it would “be nice to put my journalism degree to work on this and get to tell my story, Alaska’s story.”

war(,) on drugs [uninvited]

Gdn: efforts in Afghanistan hampered by corruption, mismanagement
BBC: ...and drugs - that is, use of opium and marijuana by Afghan police
WP: McKiernan estimates 60,000 US troops will be deployed for 3-4 more years
McKiernan said violence is likely to escalate in Afghanistan as fresh troops expand into insurgent-held areas where the military has little or no presence. "When we do put additional security forces, I would expect to see a temporary time where the level of violence might go up," he said.
WP: 'Human Terrain' researcher killed
Loyd's mission this time, as a researcher on contract to the Pentagon, was to get to know the villagers and their problems, to help the military map out what it called the "human terrain" of Afghanistan and thus improve its ability to fight Taliban and al-Qaeda insurgents. With two interpreters at her side, she began to ask shoppers about the cost of fuel. One Afghan man, carrying a jug of gasoline, lingered to chat and thanked her for the visit. It was a bright winter day, and the mood in the market seemed relaxed and cordial.

Suddenly, the calm was shattered: According to court documents and government accounts, the man holding the jug abruptly hurled the gasoline at Loyd's face and chest, set her on fire and bolted. She fell to the ground in a fetal position, groaning, in flames. One guard took off after the attacker while the other rolled Loyd into a stream to douse the flames. Police began firing their guns in confusion. One guard, Don Ayala, had cuffed the man and pinned him to the ground when an Afghan interpreter ran over, screaming hysterically that Loyd was burning to death. Ayala turned and shot his prisoner in the head.

That brief flurry of violence has left a lingering trail of tragedy. The attacker died instantly, unable to shed light on his motives or possible conspirators. Ayala, one of three people in Loyd's tight-knit field team, was charged with murder in U.S. federal court and could face 15 years in prison. And Loyd, who had become deeply attached to Afghanistan, died 10,000 miles away in a San Antonio Army hospital, finally succumbing to her burns Jan. 7..

Although the Human Terrain System was designed by an anthropologist, it was ardently opposed by groups of social scientists who believe the military should not use scholars as collaborators in combat. After the program started in 2005, it generated an avalanche of heated debate in academic circles and online, which has intensified since Loyd's death.

"In theory, it is a good idea. . . . In practice, however, it has been a disaster," the magazine Nature said a recent editorial, noting that Loyd was the third civilian casualty on a Human Terrain mission in the past year. While conceding that scientific insights "have much to offer strategies in a war zone," the editors added that unless the program can be revamped to lessen "deadly mistakes, it needs to be closed down."...

"Paula died, and others will die. It is very hard to accept, but we need more people like her," [Brig. Phil Jones, an officer at the British Embassy] said. "Otherwise we will just be out there, blundering around in our diving boots and stomping on eggshells."
abu muquwama: an interview with Craig Mullaney on his new book
I had not expected to find the common ground in my interactions with local Afghans to be Bollywood pop culture. The larger value of graduate school and travel for me was changing my perspective. Traditionally, lieutenants and NCOs were handed missions / problems and they were expected to solve them within given parameters. "Answer this question. Solve this problem." In today's operating environment, and particularly in a counterinsurgency in Afghanistan, the hard part is defining the question and problem in the first place. Studying and traveling abroad continually exposed me to ambiguous, uncertain, and unscripted environments. I couldn't have asked for better preparation for the unfamiliarity of rural Afghanistan.

CSM: adjusting to new dynamics in Iraq
Ind: real estate booming in Baghdad; segregation sticking
Until recently anybody wanting to sell a house in Baghdad avoided putting up “for sale” signs because they were closely watched by gangs who would wait for the purchase to go through and then kidnap the seller or one of his children so they could demand the selling price as ransom.

House prices have risen by 50 per cent in many parts of central Baghdad during the past year, and rents have almost doubled. Mr Hadithi says that this is explained primarily by the end of the war. “Refugees are returning, but not to the places where they once lived,” he says. “A Shia who owns a new and expensive house in a Sunni area will want to sell it and buy a cheaper one in a Shia-majority district for safety reasons.”

Baghdad has become wholly divided into sectarian enclaves since the Sunni-Shia civil war of 2005-07. Long grey concrete walls snake through the city, cutting off neighbourhoods from each other. Exits and entrances are closely guarded. Checkpoints every few hundred yards create horrendous traffic jams. There is far less violence than two years ago, but there are still daily bombings and assassinations.

The property market reflects the outcome of the Sunni-Shia war, in which the Shia were by and large the winners. Baghdad is today probably about 75 per cent Shia. The Sunni – traditionally the richer community – have been pushed into smaller enclaves.
WP: shoe-thrower defends himself; trial postponed
"I did not mean to kill the leader of the occupation forces," Muntadar al-Zaidi said, speaking clearly and forcefully from a wooden cage before a packed courtroom. "I was expressing what's inside of me and what's inside the Iraqi people from north to south and from west to east."

Throwing his shoes, fastball style, at the leader of the free world was not, Zaidi argued, a crime.

Zaidi, 30, who is charged with assaulting a foreign head of state, posited that Bush's Dec. 14 trip to Baghdad was not an official visit by a foreign dignitary because he arrived in the country without prior notice and didn't leave the Green Zone, which at the time was still under U.S. control.

"I am charged now with attacking the prime minister's guest," he said stoically, making his first public remarks since the incident. "We Arabs are famous for being generous with guests. But Bush and his soldiers have been here for six years. Guests should knock on the door. Those who come sneaking in are not guests."

Roughly an hour into the hearing, Presiding Judge Abdul Amir al-Rubaie announced that he would postpone the proceeding until March 12 to seek an opinion from the Iraqi government about whether Bush's swan song visit to Baghdad was, in fact, an "official" one.

AJE: leader that brokered deal to impose Sharia law in Swat organizes march
Mohammad, who served six years in prison for leading thousands of local men across the border into Afghanistan to fight US-backed foreign forces there, intends to persuade Pakistani Taliban leaders to lay down their arms for the long term.

"I ask you to remain peaceful. We have reached an agreement with the provincial government and Nizam-e-Adl (Islamic system of justice) will soon be enforced here," he told his supporters.

"People will soon start getting justice and there will be a durable peace."

However, news of Monday's ceasefire agreement between the Pakistani government and pro-Taliban fighters has alarmed Nato, the US and other Western powers.
BBC: journalist covering the story abducted and killed

New Yorker: will the Obama administration advocate a form of 'preventive' detainment?; weighing how to play the case of the last enemy combatant held in the US
NYT: this case a piece of the broader anti-terrorism legal picture, which doesn't look so different from Bush admin policies so far
The administration has also put off taking a stand in several cases that present opportunities to embrace or renounce Bush-era policies, including the imprisonment without trial of an “enemy combatant” on domestic soil, Freedom of Information Act lawsuits seeking legal opinions about interrogation and surveillance, and an executive-privilege dispute over Congressional subpoenas of former White House aides to Mr. Bush over the firing of United States attorneys.
Ind: a former Guantánamo guard offers a look inside the prison (and how he found himself there)
Did you get any briefing on who the soon-to-arrive prisoners were?

The only thing I can recall being told about the detainees that would arrive was that they were captured fighting the Americans in Afghanistan. And that they were known terrorists. And that many of them helped in the planning of the 9/11 attacks. We would be coming face-to-face with the worst people the world had to offer. Our mission would be to guard these terrorists so the United States could get more info on attacks and, possibly, stop more terrorist attacks.

As to us, we talked a lot about the detainees before they arrived. About them and what they had probably been involved in. A lot of us, including myself, were pissed off, and many people were out to get revenge for the havoc the United States had been through in recent months by these people.

But, as the months went on, one or two of us would question what was going on here, the way the detainees were being treated, and if they were actually terrorists or not, but being no ones, and young, and dumb, we never questioned anything further; just did our time until we went home.

NYT: political dissident released in Egypt

AJE: France sends police force to Guadaloupe after death of a union leader, injury of police

LAT: Colombian ex-paramilitary leader confesses to killing, money laundering
Fierro spent his first days on the stand last year meticulously reviewing hundreds of killings, a litany that included university professors, union leaders, peasants accused of giving aid and comfort to leftist guerrillas. Family members of victims, many of them in tears, watched via closed-circuit video.

Now the former Colombian army captain is just as scrupulously detailing how paramilitaries bled dry not just businesses and landowners, large and small, but public officials who either turned over chunks of their government budgets and revenue or were killed...

Foreign multinational companies apparently weren't exempt from paying the "war tax." Jose Gregorio Mangones Lugo, a leader of a neighboring paramilitary group, testified last year that both Chiquita Brands International Inc. and Dole Food Co. paid a 3-cents-per-50-pound tax on bananas shipped through Caribbean ports.

BBC: thousands protest deployment of military against drug violence along US-Mexico border
Many of the protesters said border towns had become more dangerous since President Felipe Calderon sent the army in.

But the governor of one state - Nuevo Leon - said he believed the Gulf drugs cartel and its armed wing, the Zetas, were behind the border protests.
BBC: militarization in Cancun

NYT: militias form to defend villages from the LRA in the Congo
A terrible mismatch may be shaping up in this lush, isolated patch of northeastern Congo. Thousands of teenage boys and their farmer fathers are grabbing machetes, slingshots, axes and ragtag shotguns, wading into the bush to confront a band of experienced killers.

They bang on drums to signal to one another. They patrol at night in shifts. Already, several members of these so-called self-defense forces have been killed. And in Congo’s recent past, the advent of local militias has only led to more bloodshed and abuses.

But here, the people feel they have no choice...

“They took me on Christmas,” Mrs. Yebiye said. Several dozen villagers squeezed around. Her story was one of the first inside accounts of the rebel army Faradje had ever heard.

She said the rebels had dreadlocks and wild eyes. They believed in witchcraft and dabbed themselves with palm oil. They marched in seemingly endless circles, often through elephant grass as high as their heads, but never seemed to get lost. Sometimes, they liked to dance.

“The rebels would eat their marijuana and turn up their radios in the middle of the jungle,” she said. “If you didn’t dance with them, you got killed.”

It is stories like these that have sent the farmers and the other civilians out on loosely organized search-and-destroy missions. But in mid-January, in a village not far from here, it did not work out so well. Some farmers crossed paths with a band of rebel fighters, Mr. Dalafada said. The rebels killed four farmers and fled.
BBC: meanwhile, FDLR 'on rampage' further south

BBC: arrests made in Equatorial Guinea of alleged gunmen who fired on presidential palace last week; officials claim they have ties to Nigerian rebels

Gdn: Zimbabwe to pay soldiers and bureaucrats in dollars

BBC: India offers haven to Tamil civilians

WP: Obama administration considers new approach to Burma
"Clearly the path we have taken in imposing sanctions hasn't influenced the Burmese junta," [Sec of State Clinton] said, adding that the route taken by Burma's neighbors of "reaching out and trying to engage them has not influenced them either."

WP: protests in China over Tibet prompt crackdown
Zhou Xiujun, owner of a grocery store, said that she witnessed a small protest near the county's main vegetable market Sunday that escalated into a much larger one about lunchtime Monday. On the second day, she said saw several hundred Tibetans gathered downtown, shouting "Long Live the Dalai Lama," the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists who lives in exile in India. In just a few minutes, she said, squads of police arrived and melee ensued.

NYT: Kosovo celebrates its one-year anniversary: a photo essay

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Econ: the Bloody White Baron (book review)
A PSYCHOPATHIC Buddhist warrior-king hardly sounds plausible in fiction, let alone in modern history. But the story of Freiherr Roman Nikolai Maximilian von Ungern-Sternberg, an Estonian-raised, ethnically German, tsarist officer, who became the last khan of Mongolia amid the chaos of the Russian civil war, has so many bizarre elements that the reader will soon believe almost anything.

Econ: animals! decisions! how we social ones make them
But exactly how do bees reach such a robust consensus? To find out, Dr List and his colleagues made a computer model of the decision-making process. By tinkering around with it they found that computerised bees that were very good at finding nesting sites but did not share their information dramatically slowed down the migration, leaving the swarm homeless and vulnerable. Conversely, computerised bees that blindly followed the waggle dances of others without first checking whether the site was, in fact, as advertised, led to a swift but mistaken decision. The researchers concluded that the ability of bees to identify quickly the best site depends on the interplay of bees’ interdependence in communicating the whereabouts of the best site and their independence in confirming this information.

This is something members of the European Parliament should think about.

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LAT: a new kind of nationalism? some African-Americans tracing DNA trail to contemporary African states

Ind: hip hop and political participation in Kenya
At a time where a political power struggle was inflaming tribal and ethnic divisions some of the finest voices in Nairobi's ghettos decided to see whether MCs could do a better job for their communities than MPs and the parliament was born.

selection and mutations [but the nation died]

AJE: campaigning in Israel
About 20 per cent of Israelis remain undecided on who they will vote for, polling organisations say, and the leading candidates in the election are focusing their efforts on winning them over.
Gdn: in Umm al-Fahm, conflict between far-right and Arab-Israelis
If Lieberman [head of the far-right Israel Our Homeland Party] has his way - and his party has surged ahead of Labour to push it to a humiliating fourth place - Umm al-Fahm may be transferred out of Israel into the Palestinian Authority, something its residents forcefully oppose in exchange for Israeli "villages", or settlements.

Its young people may be required to serve in the army, which they currently resist as they consider that army is fighting their own people in the Palestinian Territories. They would, all in all, be required to demonstrate - in Lieberman's own words - their loyalty to the state, both ordinary people and politicians, in exchange for citizenship.
LAT: Livni works women, leftists for their vote
Gdn: and everyone goes clubbing for the youth vote in Tel Aviv
BBC: where a new party has emerged, advocating reform of the closed-list PR electoral system
"Every day he changes his dirty underwear... This is the way also he votes in elections - when there is a dirty government, he replaces it with a clean one.

"And when the second government is more dirty than the first, we swap them back."

With this sales pitch, Haisraelim, a new, single issue party has entered the political fray ahead of Israel's 10 February elections, pushing for a change in the electoral system...

While rockets from Gaza and potential nuclear bombs from Iran are looming large in the minds of Israeli voters, the party's leader, political science Professor Gideon Doron, says the voting system itself is a "threat to Israel's existence".

"We can't make peace and we can barely make war," he says, as he fields phone calls about election billboards.

Econ: parsing the election results in Iraq
If confirmed—the final results are not expected for several weeks—Mr Maliki will be well placed to run for a second term in the general election due within a year. His success, though, did not reflect a trend towards voting along religious lines. Quite the opposite. The prime minister, who leads the Dawa Party, a Shia religious movement, seems to have benefited from his party’s decision to join with others to form the State of Law Coalition, which campaigned, in a non-religious way, on themes of national unity, law and order. Mr Maliki thus managed to profit from an apparent shift to secularism.
IHT: unlikely candidate, former Baathist, wins in Karbala
WP: how General Odierno shaped the surge
Sent back to Iraq in 2006 as second in command of U.S. forces, under orders to begin the withdrawal of American troops and shift fighting responsibilities to the Iraqis, Odierno found a situation that he recalled as "fairly desperate, frankly."

So that fall, he became the lone senior officer in the active-duty military to advocate a buildup of American troops in Iraq, a strategy rejected by the full chain of command above him, including Gen. George W. Casey Jr., then the top commander in Iraq and Odierno's immediate superior.

Communicating almost daily by phone with retired Gen. Jack Keane, an influential former Army vice chief of staff and his most important ally in Washington, Odierno launched a guerrilla campaign for a change in direction in Iraq, conducting his own strategic review and bypassing his superiors to talk through Keane to White House staff members and key figures in the military. It would prove one of the most audacious moves of the Iraq war, and one that eventually reversed almost every tenet of U.S. strategy.
NYT: the state of Iraq, after the invasion, surge and elections (not so enlightening analysis)
WP: unclear why presence of mani/pedi salon for soldiers in Mosul not considered, for example
TAL: Americans talk to an Iraqi (part 1; part 2)
"I think people here want me to say yes, that things will get better, so you will feel better."
Reuters: Bush shoe-thrower trial set; if convicted, faces 15 years in prison

WSJ: the tedious and dangerous work sniffing out roadside bombs in Afghanistan

LAT: state courts in Mexico opening trials to public
Perhaps the most basic change is that suspects are presumed innocent, reversing the inquisitional system brought by Spanish colonizers. The arrested are no longer tossed straight into jail, but can remain free while prosecutors present evidence in hopes of winning an indictment.

Many residents question whether the reforms that include more rights for the accused may be to blame for a yearlong wave of killings in Chihuahua, especially in Ciudad Juarez. A little less than a year after the reforms debuted in the capital, lawmakers responded to public pressure and made more suspects subject to incarceration before appearing in court.

But killings tied to drug trafficking are federal offenses. Robberies, assaults and murders not linked to organized crime are handled in state courts.

LAT: witnesses are being killed in Colombian trial linked to former governor
Diaz, the reform-minded mayor of El Roble in northern Sucre state, had received death threats from paramilitary groups, and told [President] Uribe during a community meeting in February 2003 that he feared for his life.

The 47-year-old doctor had resisted the right-wing militias' efforts to take control of El Roble's treasury and health system for fear they would loot them, according to his son, Juan David.

Diaz had also denounced Arana at the 2003 meeting before Uribe, saying the then-governor backed paramilitary fighters.

Despite his warnings, two months later, in April, Diaz was kidnapped, tortured for five days and killed. The mayor had been on his way to a meeting supposedly to reconcile with Arana.
PCB: meanwhile, Uribe decries left-leaning leaders the 'intellectual bloc' of the FARC
CNN: ...as Colombians for Peace (the NGO organized by said leaders) negotiates release of politician kidnapped in 2002 by the FARC; he was the last politician held, though police officers and soldiers are still in captivity, as well as hundreds of civilians

BBC: reforms in Bolivia reveal regional divisions
There are two main areas where the opposition is likely to continue its fight.
The first is in Congress, where the ruling Movement to Socialism party (MAS) does not have a majority in the upper house.

It is likely that more than 100 new laws will need to be passed to make the constitution operational. Some members of Podemos, the main opposition party in Congress, are bound to try to block them.

The second area is how the various levels of autonomy will work.

AJE: opposition mounts massive demonstration against Chavez's proposed constitutional reforms
WP: Jews raise concerns about anti-Semitic attacks and rhetoric

Econ: contemporary clan politics in Brazil
Dominance by a single man or family was not uncommon in Brazil’s north-east. But it is fading away. The Sarney clan is becoming unusual. Mr Sarney’s daughter, Roseana, has been Maranhão’s governor and currently represents it in the Senate. His son was a minister in Brazil’s previous government. Other relatives are scattered in positions of authority in Maranhão’s courts and the civil service. One of his lieutenants, Edison Lobão, is Lula’s minister for mines and energy. When he took the job, Mr Lobão’s seat in the national Senate went to his son; his wife sits in the lower house. All three of Maranhão’s senators answer to Mr Sarney, as do his fellow senators from Amapá.
This control is aided by the Sarney family’s ownership of Maranhão’s biggest media company.

WP: economic downturn in Russia endangers immigrant laborers
Econ: the problem is likely under-reported, given the targeting of journalists
Both [human rights lawyer] Mr Markelov and [journalist] Ms Baburova were killed in broad daylight in the centre of Moscow. The next day, a party of Russian nationalists brought champagne to the murder scene to celebrate the “elimination” of their enemies. Her death was part of a continuing battle between fascists and anti-fascists in Russia, which is seldom so plainly revealed to the outside world...

[Baburova] and her friends rightly identified fascism as the biggest and most pressing threat to her country. She swore to fight it. She sensed accurately the social kinship between Stalinism and fascism: the link between attempts to portray Stalin as a “successful manager”, and the current upsurge of nationalism.

BBC: Poland, the Round Table Talks and communism's fall
Twenty years ago, Poland's communist government did something without precedent - it sat down with the banned Solidarity trade union to try to defuse growing social unrest.

What became known as the Round Table Talks led to the first multi-party elections in the Soviet bloc and a stunning victory by Solidarity, led by Lech Walesa, which heralded the collapse of communism across the eastern half of Europe.

NYT: the legacy of war in Bosnia
Today, the country known as Bosnia and Herzegovina has a new class of young entrepreneurs, a growing influx of tourists and new shopping malls selling everything from luxury ski equipment to mango bathing gel. But the country remains weighed down not just by a bloated bureaucracy, but also by a national brand inextricably linked with ethnic violence and an economy overly dependent on foreign aid.

BBC: technology and warfare: using cell phones to fight Maoists in India
The government in the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand has given free mobile phones to more than 200 village leaders to help fight Maoist rebels.

Police say the aim is to receive swift tip-offs about rebel movements...

Jharkhnd is under presidential rule, which ensures Delhi's direct control over its administration.

More than 6,000 people have died during the Maoists' 20-year fight for a communist state in parts of India.

The rebels say they are fighting for the rights of poor peasants and landless workers.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has said the Maoist insurgency is the "single biggest threat" to India's security.

The rebels operate in 182 districts in India, mainly in the states of Jharkhand, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and West Bengal.

Ind: Burmese seeking opportunities risk enslavement
It appears that the businesswoman's potential customers are middlemen, probably Chinese. Through a translator, they discuss placing the men on boats in the South China Sea, trawling for tuna. First, they will be flown to a Chinese city. In echoes of the slave trade, she describes a selection process worthy of a livestock market. In a 21st-century twist, she does so with the aid of pictures on her laptop.

"We make them stand in the sun for one hour," she says. "In the middle of the day when it is very hot. We see how they manage, if they look uncomfortable." The group leans in to see the pictures on her computer. "We make them carry 20 kilos, like this," she continues, showing them photographs I cannot see. "For deep-sea fishing, they may need to carry very big fish for long distances across the ship."

Then comes the seasickness test. "We put them in here," the woman says, but I can't see the picture. I think it must be an enclosed truck or some sort of container on water. "Then we start to move them around. If they are sick or find it hard to breathe we don't select them. This is how we select the best bodies."

The group nods. The images of Burma's Rohingya boat people, fleeing oppression only to be allegedly abused and cast adrift by the Thai military, has drawn international attention to the plight of one of the world's most downtrodden people. The Muslim Rohingyas face particular persecution in military-ruled Burma, but throughout the country, impoverished men and women who see no future at home are embarking on risky journeys abroad in search of an income for their families.

Econ: HRW accuses Ethiopia of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Ogaden
[Human Rights Watch] says that Ethiopian troops burned down villages and killed, raped and tortured civilians in a counter-insurgency campaign against the separatist Ogaden National Liberation Front after its fighters had killed 74 Ethiopian and Chinese oil-exploration workers in 2007. Ethiopia’s government was so incensed by the description of “systematic atrocities” in the Ogaden that it commissioned a report of its own that dismissed Human Rights Watch’s allegations as hearsay and its methods as slapdash.

AJE: opposition in Madagascar undeterred by state violence

LAT: the accord in Zimbabwe and power sharing in general
Critics argue that African-brokered power-sharing deals such as those signed after Kenya's violent 2007 elections and Zimbabwe's disputed vote last year have set a precedent that leaders in Africa can cling to power when voted out, just by refusing to leave office.

They say bodies such as SADC [the Southern African Development Community] and the African Union have done little to protect democracy or stop violence and human rights abuses, tending to side with incumbent leaders such as the long-ruling Mugabe, whose regime has been accused of unleashing violence to stay in power and denying food to opposition villagers.

BBC: water vendors in Abuja
The urban poor in developing world cities including Abuja pay much more for their water than citizens of rich cities such as New York or Tokyo, precisely because the poor have to depend on private providers rather a piped municipal supply.

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NYT: satirizing politics in Lebanon
Although direct political satire is virtually impossible in most of the Arab world, the impulse has long thrived in more oblique and private forms. “Basmat Watan” draws on the live comedy and song performances known as chansonières, which started in Beirut theaters in the early 1960s and continue today. For centuries before that, villagers here would gather to sing “zajal” — an indigenous form of poetry that is partly improvisatory, a kind of ancient Levantine rap.

The actors in “Basmat Watan” often break into zajals, which by tradition often include satire and plays on words. The name “Basmat Watan” is itself a play on words, with the sounds meaning both “The Smile of the Nation” and “But the Nation Died.”...

Mr. Bou-Gedeon becomes grim when asked about the role of comedy, and dramatic art in general, in Lebanon. Only shallow work is possible, he said, because the Lebanese are always trying to escape themselves.

“Shakespeare said, ‘Show a mirror to the people,’ ” he said. “But people do not want to see themselves here. They want an image that is false, not the truth.”

Mr. Khalil, who cites Woody Allen and Mel Brooks as two of his chief influences, concedes that satire is not a very powerful weapon in a country where politics is still largely a matter of feudal allegiance. But he seems willing to settle for making people laugh.

LAT: celebrating Darwin, evolving faster than ever
As it happens, the pace of evolution has been speeding up -- not slowing down -- in the 40,000 years since our ancestors fanned out from Ethiopia to populate the globe.

And in the 5,000 to 10,000 years since agriculture triggered the growth of large societies, the pace has accelerated to 100 times historical levels.

"When there's more people, there are more mutations," [paleoanthropologist] Wolpoff said. "And when there are more mutations, there's more selection."

weak and moderately functional [beware of armed asses]

Econ: the meaning and implications of state collapse and weakness
But for al-Qaeda, remoteness alone is not enough. Terrorists need protection too, and that has to be secured from local populations as in Pakistan’s tribal belt. International terrorists, moreover, need to be able to travel, communicate and transfer funds; they need to be within reach of functioning population centres. Stewart Patrick of the Council on Foreign Relations, an American think-tank, argues in a forthcoming book that international terrorists do not find the most failed states particularly attractive; they prefer “weak but moderately functional” states. The shell of state sovereignty protects them from outside intervention, but state weakness gives them space to operate autonomously.
Econ: Yemen seems to fit the bill
With its rough terrain, weak central state and gun-slinging tribal culture, Yemen may prove a fairly secure redoubt for al-Qaeda. The group has suffered sharp setbacks in such places as Iraq, Lebanon and especially Saudi Arabia, where it has not mounted a serious attack since 2006. The relative quiet in Yemen, which some critics of its government ascribe to a secret amnesty whereby Sunni jihadists backed the state against a smouldering Shia insurrection in the country’s north, has been eroding. Waves of arrests, prompted partly by Western and Saudi pressure, have provoked an escalation of al-Qaeda attacks that culminated in a double car-bombing of America’s embassy in Sana’a last September; the attack failed to penetrate the fortified compound but left 16 people dead.

AJE: (video) Pakistan's military operations in the FATA region (ht: pstan)
AJE: police officers released by Taliban after promising to quit

WP: sheiks set to ignore election outcome in Anbar
"An honest dictatorship is better than a democracy won through fraud," Abu Risha said.

Here, in the cradle of the Sunni insurgency, tribal leaders nurtured and empowered by the United States appear ready to take control the old-fashioned way -- with guns and money -- if their political ambitions are frustrated...

Abu Risha and other leaders of the Awakening, the U.S.-backed Sunni sheiks who rose up to quell the insurgency, charge that Sunni politicians of the Iraqi Islamic Party have committed electoral fraud, which party officials deny...

Ever since they turned against the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq more than two years ago, a dozen of the sheiks who founded Awakening have considered themselves the saviors of Anbar. Enriched by U.S. contracts and courted by U.S. military commanders eager to preserve security gains, the tribes are more powerful than at any time since the demise of Iraq's monarchy half a century ago.

Now, they seek to transform their anti-insurgency credentials into political power. But democracy is a new concept for the Anbar sheiks, who are participating for the first time in elections. In 2005, they ordered their tribesmen to boycott the polls, allowing the Iraqi Islamic Party, a religious Sunni group, to take control of the province amid paltry voter turnout.

The tribal leaders' inexperience has shown. In a world of byzantine allegiances and fickle loyalties, the original Awakening leaders have split up, bickering over who has the authority to lead them. Several Awakening parties competed in the elections, dividing their vote. At least four founding sheiks were candidates...

The Awakening sheiks have a source of leverage in the police. An estimated 30,000 tribesmen have joined the provincial police, but most remain loyal to their tribes.
AJE: suicide bomber attacks in Diyala

AJE: Hamas seizes aid intended for civilians
AJE: and Israel follows suit
The Israeli military told Al Jazeera it had captured the Lebanese vessel and taken it to Ashdod, where authorities were examining its cargo. The passengers and crew, meanwhile, were being questioned by police.
LAT: ICC considers Gaza investigation
Now [Ocampo's] prosecutors must analyze three questions, [Ocampo] said: whether the Palestinian Authority has legal power to recognize the court's authority, whether war crimes occurred, and whether the governments involved conduct genuine investigations.
AJE: Abbas says 90,000 are homeless
Slate: finding humor in the tragedy
If tragedy and comedy are inseparable, as Eugène Ionesco believed, the Gazans are equipped to be among the world's funniest people. The strip is nowadays little more than a prison for its 1.5 million residents. The water is nearly poisonous, travel is restricted even for Fulbright scholars, and what remains of the civil infrastructure is administered by a mirthless set of militant Islamists.

And, weirdly, rage and sorrow often did give way to laughter among Jebalia's erstwhile residents. One man, a half-blind veteran of the British Mandate years, swung seamlessly from excoriating the U.S. government to weeping over his lost home to cackling about the death of his donkey. Why would Israel want the beast dead, he wondered—it couldn't even hold a gun.

AJE: Sudanese capture town in Darfur, defeating JEM fighters
Government forces have entered the city of Muhagiriya, 80km from Nyala, the south Darfur capital, and are pursuing Jem fighters, Sudan's army spokesman said on Wednesday.

The army started bombing the town earlier this week as the United Nations-African Union peacekeepers deployed in the area, refused to leave.

At least 30 people have been killed in the fighting and thousands of civilians have been forced to flee, a UN officials said...

Suleiman Sandal, the Jem commander, denied that the group had been pushed out of Muhagiriya, saying it had withdrawn voluntarily to spare the population from government air attacks...

There has been speculation that the increase in violence in Darfur is tied to a decision expected by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on whether to issue an arrest warrant for Omar al-Bashir, Sudan's president, for suspected war crimes.

Ban Ki-moon, the UN chief, warned in a report issued Wednesday that an arrest warrant by the ICC could have an adverse impact on UN personnel in Sudan.

NYT: Somali pirates have their ransom for the Ukrainian tanker

IHT: Madagascar coup leader relieved of mayoral post

BBC: Qaddafi says democracy in Africa causes bloodshed
BBC: run-down of upcoming elections around the world

Ind: bombing closes last hospital in region where Sri Lanka troops are pursuing Tamil Tigers
Consisting of a payload of small bombs that spread over a wide area, cluster bombs are notorious for their impact on civilians and are particularly difficult to find and remove after a conflict has ended. In May 2008, 107 nations adopted the international Convention on Cluster Munitions, but Sri Lanka was not among them.

While the hospital had been struck several times by artillery shells fired from positions occupied by both government troops and rebel fighters, Mr Weiss suggested that the cluster munitions – believed to have been used for the first time since a ceasefire between the two sides broke down two years ago – had been fired by the rebels. "The government has assured us that they do not have these munitions and we have accepted that," he added...

If anything, the fighting seems set to intensify as the government seeks to crush the separatist LTTE, which has have been using guerrilla tactics and suicide bombers to fight for an independent Tamil homeland for the past 30 years. At a speech to celebrate Sri Lanka's 61st Independence Day yesterday, President Mahinda Rajapaksa said soldiers had "defeated the cowardly forces of terror that had wrapped our entire nation in fear".

Mr Weiss said there was evidence that the LTTE, forced into an ever-diminishing area of jungle, had been preventing civilians from crossing the front lines and escaping the conflict. He said LTTE fighters had also tried to commandeer two UN vehicles, but desisted once the staff argued with them...

Uncertainty hangs over the fate of the LTTE's leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran. Reports say the rebel commander may have tried to flee the country but there has been no evidence to confirm that. This week, however, government troops revealed what they said was his underground bunker, a "luxury" hideout complete with air-conditioning, sound-proof generators, a four-poster bed and CCTV.
AP: testimony from survivors
Econ: civilians caught in the crossfire all too common
Gdn: gov't rejects call for ceasefire
The government said it would offer a limited amnesty to rebel forces that were ready to lay down their arms as they were on the brink of defeat in their 25-year-old struggle for a Tamil homeland. But ministers refused to hold peace talks, saying they would accept nothing less than total surrender.

Apparently down to their last 600 fighters, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam appear to be approaching the final battle with the Sri Lankan army. The military has encircled the rebels and says the Tigers are close to collapse, having lost almost 99% of the territory under their control only a year ago.

Slate: the durability of the Burmese junta

New Yorker:Nigeriatown in China

BBC: Brazil's occupation strategy for the favelas
After an initial violent confrontation with the Red Command - a drug gang that once controlled this district - police have, for the moment at least, established a full-time presence. Normally, they leave the area, with the traffickers still in control.

Speaking exclusively to the BBC, President Lula said the state was making up for a time when it had abandoned its poorest citizens...

"In the past it was only the police intervening with lots of brutality which punished the guilty and the innocent - very often only the innocent. Now we have police there, who are becoming a community police force."

...with the traffickers gone and police maintaining a 24-hour presence, local commanders believe they can now win over hearts and minds.
AJE: police incursions still happen, though: at least 10 dead in Rio favelas

AP: in case you're keeping tabs, the Mexican gov't says the Gulf Cartel, with its Zeta hit squad, is the most violent - apparently based on the number of weapons captured

Plan Colombia & Beyond: former governor released by FARC after 7 1/2 years describes life in the jungle
“After being kidnapped for two days, they gave us a snack. It was Royal water and soda crackers. I put down the cup and put the soda crackers on top. I went out to “take care of business,” and when I came back, the crackers were folded over from the humidity. If that’s what it does to some crackers, imagine what it does to the people there. It kills and rots everything. That’s why the humanitarian exchange is urgent...

Around us, like planets orbiting, were many guerrillas of the vanguard and rearguard, who served as protection. On occasion they came close to us or we retreated. On one occasion when they came close, about 50 meters I think, the group that was in front encountered an Army patrol. We, who were a bit behind, heard the shots. They held me down on the ground, the shots continued. And so I didn’t know which bullets to protect myself from, those of the Army or those of the guerrillas. It was very tense, we stayed on the ground all afternoon until it got dark. Once it was night, we moved a bit backward. We had to walk in silence. I remembered Alan Felipe [his son] when he was 4 years old. One day he said to me, “Papi, I hate you,” and I thought that the world was backward. And that’s how it was that night, like the world backward: the guerrillas protecting me and the Army shooting. … In the past, on four occasions bombs and planes passed very close by. The guerrillas ran to get us out, to protect us.”

CSM: Venezuela plagued by inflation, ahead of referendum on whether Chávez can run for reelection indefintely

BBC: castration of sex offenders in the Czech Republic

BBC: demonstrations across Europe related to the economy
BBC: 'immigrant'-native conflicts in Italy also affecting Roma population
"A series of what appear to be racially motivated attacks and reprisals have contributed to concerns that a creeping xenophobia is infecting the country's social fabric, aided by a political discourse that often links Italy's social and economic woes to immigration."

Daily Beast: NYPD counterterrorism force
As I came back to New York from years in the Middle East and Europe, what fascinated me about the NYPD was that it offered an alternative to the dangerously ill-conceived, mismanaged, and highly militarized “global war on terror” that had pushed the United States into the gruesome occupation of Iraq and helped inspire a violent loathing for Americans around the world. When [NYPD Commissioner Ray] Kelly says the acronym as a single word, “the GWOT,” it’s with a twinge of irony that makes it sound almost obscene.

++
The Onion: Cheney dunk tank fundraiser the best stimulation package!
Organizers reported Sunday that the 44th White House Carnival was a rousing success, raising a record $800,000,066,845 for the federal government—$800 billion of which came from a dunk tank featuring former vice president Dick Cheney..."All right, you candy arms, let's go," Cheney shouted at the line of people, which consisted of Americans, non-Americans, out-of-work autoworkers, teachers, luminaries from the science community, gays, lesbians, military personnel, members of Congress, children, and the entire Arab-American population.

BBC: politics causing part of the increase in Indonesian divorce surge
But changes in lifestyle are not the only cause of marriage break-up, according to an official at the Religious Affairs Ministry, Nasaruddin Umar.

"Believe it or not," said Mr Umar, "some couples decide to divorce because the husband and wife have different takes on political issues. This has never happened before."

New Yorker: James Baldwin, Istanbul, and race in the US

freeloading [up to here]

Gdn: Israel and the US agree on monitoring scheme for Egypt-Gaza border...
Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, and Tzipi Livni, Israel's foreign minister, signed the agreement for Washington to provide technical and intelligence co-operation, as well as logistical support, for monitors on the Egypt-Gaza border – a move designed to address one of the principal Israeli demands: that any truce with Hamas include measures to stop it from rearming by smuggling weapons.

Israel said the agreement would commit the US and Nato to track and intercept weapons shipments to Gaza from Iran or anywhere else... The deal could lead to the reopening of Gaza's border with Egypt, a key Hamas demand. The Islamist group also wants Gaza's crossings into Israel reopened after three years of economic blockade. This is crucial to reviving the territory's economy but Israel is reluctant to allow it.
NYT: ...but details still to be worked out, while competing meetings are held by Hamas in Qatar and the Palestinian Authority in Kuwait
The agreement will provide American technical assistance, as well as monitors, to crack down on the tunnels. The composition of the monitoring force was not yet clear, as Israeli and American diplomats were still working out, a senior American official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Ms. Rice said ending the smuggling of weapons from countries like Iran was one of the conditions for a cease-fire and that European allies including Britain, Germany and France were likely to join in the monitoring effort...

At a meeting organized by Qatar, a top exiled Hamas leader rejected Israeli terms for a cease-fire and called for increased resistance. “Israel will not be able to destroy our resistance, and the United States will not be able to dictate us their rules,” the leader, Khaled Meshal, said in defiant remarks broadcast worldwide. “Arab countries should help Hamas to fight against the death of civilian Palestinians.”...

The once dominant regional leadership of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and even Jordan, tried to undermine this meeting, refused to attend, and pressed Arab states to stay away, too. They insist that the lines of communication remain open with Israel and they have each struggled to deny Hamas the kind of legitimacy the conference appeared to confer on Mr. Meshal.
Slate: how to really close the Gaza tunnels; options from buffer zones to drone-operated gradiometry
CSM: Israeli strikes on UN compound, hospitals may be part of last-minute frenzy, reveal points of tension within leadership pre-election
The Israeli strikes on what political officials said were unintended targets in the Gaza campaign underscore what some analysts see as a furious drive by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) to achieve as many last-minute blows to Hamas as possible before a cease-fire is reached. And at this stage of the war, fissures are emerging within the Israeli civilian and military leadership.

"It's the final push to make Hamas understand, either they make a decision for a cease-fire, or it will be difficult to survive," says Shmuel Rosner, a leading opinion maker and journalist. "They need to show seriousness so Hamas doesn't interpret Israel's waiting of the last few days as reluctance to continue the operation."

While Ehud Barak, Israel's defense minister, apologized to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon for Israel's strike on their Gaza headquarters, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert took a different approach. He said the building had been used by Palestinian militants to strike Israeli forces... Those two points provide a window into the differences that have developed at the top of the Israel political structure, run by an unlikely troika of Olmert, Mr. Barak and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni – none of whom are allied.

With an election set for Feb. 10, the political rivals have become even more assertive in claiming their share of the credit for the war.
Gdn: Israeli use of white phosphorus harder to deny in the YouTube era
CSM: A look at Gaza through Egyptian hospitals...
NYT: ...versus a (guided) tour of Gaza outskirts
Israelis face harsh censure abroad for their tactics, but a visit by 10 foreign reporters to this position arranged by the Israeli military showed an army that feels serenely confident that it is doing the right thing. The army, which has banned foreign journalists from entering Gaza on their own, has begun taking small groups to outer positions for briefings with commanders in the field...

The war has been successful, but not necessarily decisive, from Israel’s perspective, Colonel Herzi said, especially as talk of a cease-fire has grown.

“I know that in the end Hamas will say they won,” he said. “It doesn’t matter what will be the end of this war. We know they know today that they have a problem. Will they put down their weapons forever? For sure, no, but I think they have learned a lesson from this war.”

LAT: as security improves in Baghdad, "new cars are the latest must-have accessory for the well-to-do"

WP: CIA Director says Obama has no intentions to investigate waterboarding

NYT: military planners preparing troop shifts for Obama administration
The broad outlines of the military plan for Iraq presented to Mr. Obama in December envisioned withdrawing two brigades, or some 7,000 to 8,000 troops, over the next six months, officials said.

[American military officials] have made clear that the plan does not set forth as fast a withdrawal as Mr. Obama pledged during the presidential campaign, when he repeatedly promised to have all combat troops out of Iraq within 16 months of his taking office, or by May 2010...

The current military plan for Iraq was drawn up to meet the recent status-of-forces agreement between the United States and the Iraqi government that calls for both shorter and longer timetables than Mr. Obama’s campaign promise. Under that agreement, all United States combat troops are to be out of Iraqi cities by June and all American forces are to be out of Iraq entirely by the end of 2011. That agreement, however, can be renegotiated.

Even as Mr. Obama prepares for the drawdown in Iraq, some influential Democrats and national security experts have begun voicing concern about his willingness to send up to 30,000 additional American troops to Afghanistan, where the United States has been at war for more than seven years. They say that Mr. Obama has yet to make clear his overall goals beyond calling for more forces, money and diplomacy in an increasingly violent, ungovernable country that the military says presents even more problems than Iraq.
WP: concerns that troop surge in Afghanistan not enough, as obstacles are high
Officials are also worried about other issues: the upcoming Afghan presidential election and the revived hostility between Pakistan and India caused by a deadly terrorist rampage in Mumbai in November, could inject unpredictable tensions and competing priorities into the region just as a new administration in Washington tries to focus afresh on the anti-terrorist struggle here.
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Unlike the troop "surge" in Iraq, the doubling of the U.S. military presence on the ground in Afghanistan is not temporary, military officials said. Rather, troops will maintain a protracted presence focused on securing and holding villages currently dominated by the Taliban.

One conundrum, U.S. military officials say, is that the expanded forces will have to come in with heavy firepower and aggressive military tactics -- likely to create more civilian casualties and public animosity -- in order to secure rural districts so they can bring in services, aid and governance aimed at winning over the local populace.
LAT: another obstacle: the weather
A helicopter carrying one of Afghanistan's most senior army generals and 12 soldiers crashed in bad weather Thursday, killing all aboard, the Afghan military said.

Taliban insurgents claimed to have downed the Russian-made chopper in western Afghanistan, but the military said in a statement that poor visibility caused the craft to slam into a jagged mountainside. Much of Afghanistan is enveloped in rain and snow, which has been hampering military transport as well as civilian flights. The nation's military relies largely on a poorly maintained fleet of aging Russian aircraft.

It was one of the largest losses of life in a single incident that the Afghan army has suffered in recent years. The general who died, Fazl Ahmad Sayar, was one of four regional commanders. He was in charge of army operations in the west of the country.
WP: Britain's Secretary of Defense criticizes NATO members for "freeloading" on the US
The Obama team hopes to complete work on the new strategy [for Afghanistan] by the NATO summit in early April. European and Pentagon officials suggested yesterday that alliance members may be waiting to consider new commitments until they hear what he has to say.

The NATO force in Afghanistan has long been divided between those who conduct the bulk of combat operations -- including Britain, Canada and the Netherlands, in addition to the United States -- and those such as Germany whose operations are restricted and whose zones of operations are centered in more peaceful areas...

Even as Hutton was delivering his speech, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband wrote in a Guardian newspaper column yesterday that the notion of a "war on terror" was "misleading and mistaken." Defining it as "a simple binary struggle between moderates and extremists, or good and evil" played into the hands of extremists by unifying groups such as al-Qaeda and Hezbollah with little in common, Miliband said.

NYT: Pakistan arrests 124 people possibly linked to Mumbai attacks, forms high-level investigation committee to examine information provided by India
CSM: India demands extradition
Pakistan announced that it has arrested 71 members of Lashkar-e-Taiba and detained 124 more in an effort to crack down on the Islamic militant group believed to be responsible for November's attacks on the Indian city of Mumbai.

India's foreign minister insisted that Pakistan must extradite the suspects for trial in India, backing down from his earlier statement that India might accept a trial in Pakistan.

NYT: US freezes assets for Burmese businessmen and their companies aiding the military junta

BBC: Massive, repeated displacement in rebel-controlled Sri Lanka, says Red Cross

NYT: three Red Cross workers kidnapped in southern Philippines
The Red Cross in Manila said its three workers were in Sulu to inspect a jailhouse as part of its efforts to improve prisons in the Philippines. Richard Gordon, chairman of the Philippine National Red Cross and a member of the Senate, attributed the kidnappings to Abu Sayyaf, Reuters reported.

El Paso Times: Vigilante group threatens to confront lawlessness in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico
AP: Mexico's liaisons to Interpol charged with selling confidential information
Time: Narcos attack TV station in Mexico

NYT: Zimbabwean opposition members and human rights activists allege torture
Chris Dhlamini, an aide to Zimbabwe’s opposition leader and prime minister in waiting, Morgan Tsvangirai, said in an affidavit that his head was pushed down into a sink full of water until he believed that he would drown.

They are among more than a dozen activists who say they were tortured to obtain false confessions after they were abducted and detained for weeks in secret locations by agents of President Robert Mugabe’s government. They are now imprisoned in Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital, accused of crimes related to acts of sabotage and terrorism against the government.
WP: nevertheless, Tsvangirai remains committed to power-sharing deal, as the "best means of preventing Zimbabwe from becoming a failed state"

BBC: LRA rebels in new attacks
[S]ince Christmas Day, suspected LRA rebels have been attacking villages across hundreds of kilometres in an area stretching from the Central African Republic (CAR) though Sudan and into DR Congo... The government of the CAR has sent troops to its border with DR Congo in an effort to push back the rebels, the country's defence minister said on Wednesday.

NYT: Sudanese opposition leader arrested, air strikes on Darfur admitted

AP (via Wronging Rights): Congolese rebel leader flips, wants to join government against Rwandan militias
Bosco Ntaganda [leader of a splinter rebel faction in eastern Congo] held landmark talks with Interior Minister Celestin Mboyo in the eastern town of Goma and said in a statement afterward that his forces are now "at the disposal of the Congolese armed forces high command."

It was unclear, however, what effect — if any — the move will have on the deeply entrenched and complex crisis in eastern Congo. Though Ntaganda's statement was signed by 10 other rebel officials who identified themselves as colonels and lieutenant colonels, nobody knows how powerful Ntaganda really is or how many forces he control.

BBC: in Somalia, Islamist militia targets its first politician, for "apostasy"
BBC: and UN agrees to Somalia peacekeeping force "in principle," as Ethiopia pulls out and power-sharing talks appear to be going well
Only about 3,600 Ugandan and Burundian peacekeepers, from an intended 8,000-strong AU force, are deployed in Mogadishu.

Last month UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said few countries were willing to send troops to Somalia, as there was no peace to keep.

Analysts had feared the withdrawal of the Ethiopians would lead to a power vacuum and fighting between rival Islamist factions.

But at the moment all factions - whether they back the peace process with the government or not - seem to be working together.

NYT: tensions in Chechnya after early release of Russian Army colonel for killing a Chechen woman
The former commander, Yuri D. Budanov, a decorated Russian Army colonel before he was stripped of his rank, was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2003, but a court in the Ulyanovsk region agreed last month to grant him early parole for good behavior. A last-minute appeal by the victim’s lawyer failed to keep him in custody...

He has admitted to abducting Elza Kungayeva, an 18-year-old Chechen woman, and strangling her in a fit of rage in his quarters in March 2000, thinking her to be an enemy sniper. In proceedings that highlighted the capriciousness of Russian justice, he was initially acquitted on grounds that he was temporarily insane at the time of the killing, and convicted in a second trial.

in a region where loyalties to clan can supersede national pride and murderous blood feuds can rage for decades, some say Mr. Budanov’s release — just under a year and a half before the end of his prison term — now threatens to disrupt Chechnya’s tenuous stability.

“This will only benefit the militants, because for them there is no clearer demonstration of the futility of appealing to the Russian authorities,” said Stanislav Y. Markelov, a lawyer for Ms. Kungayeva’s family.

NYT: Police using tear gas against Lithuanian rioters

SF Gate: Killing of unarmed man by public transit officer in Oakland brings back memories of Rodney King, riots... and a murder charge against the officer
The unarmed man killed by former BART police Officer Johannes Mehserle on an Oakland train platform early New Year's Day put up a brief struggle with officers but had been restrained and had both arms behind him when he was shot in the back, police investigators said.

The conclusion by Oakland police, contained in a legal filing made public Wednesday, contributed to Alameda County prosecutors' decision to charge Mehserle, 27, with murdering 22-year-old Oscar Grant of Hayward.

It was an extraordinary decision. Several legal experts said they could recall no instance of a police officer in California being charged with murder for an on-duty incident, and Alameda County District Attorney Tom Orloff said he had never brought such a case in his 14 years on the job.