unconventional priorities [tweet]

LAT: US Defense Sec Gates proposes shifting priorities in the Defense budget
Under his plan, 50% of the budget would be used to counter conventional threats, with about 10% going to go irregular warfare and 40% to weapons useful to both types of conflicts.
Slate: the key points
Foreign Affairs: Gates's rationale behind it
The strategy strives for balance in three areas: between trying to prevail in current conflicts and preparing for other contingencies, between institutionalizing capabilities such as counterinsurgency and foreign military assistance and maintaining the United States' existing conventional and strategic technological edge against other military forces, and between retaining those cultural traits that have made the U.S. armed forces successful and shedding those that hamper their ability to do what needs to be done.
Abu Muquwama: some people have strong opinions about it
Abu Muquwama: and some have wrong ones
James Inhofe should be ashamed of himself -- not for saying the new budget is "gutting" our military and "disarming America" but for traveling all the way to Afghanistan on the tax-payer's dime and failing to discover that the kinds of weapons systems and skillsets needed for Afghanistan are exactly the kinds of weapons systems and skillsets privileged in the budget. Don't use the war in Afghanistan a cheap prop, Senator, if you're not even going to study the nature of the war itself.
WP: Pentagon dedicating resources to studying the Israel-Hezbollah 2006 war in Lebanon
A big reason that the 34-day war is drawing such fevered attention is that it highlights a rift among military leaders: Some want to change the U.S. military so that it is better prepared for wars like the ones it is fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, while others worry that such a shift would leave the United States vulnerable to a more conventional foe.

irregular threats
WP: bombings kill 34 across Baghdad, in worst violence in months
"Nobody knows," said Hussan Fadhil Aziz, 29, as he watched American soldiers cordon the area in Um al-Maalif. "We don't know who controls the area anymore."
He still ventured an explanation for the violence: Last week's bitter clashes between members of the Awakening, a U.S.-backed Sunni paramilitary force, and the mostly Shiite security forces had triggered a new wave of animosity.
NPR: conflict emerges among Anbar province's Sunni tribes
Stars & Stripes: doctor rejoins US Army after 37 years (via Tom Ricks)
WP: shoe-thrower/icon's sentence reduced to 1 year

AJE: apparent revenge attack against village in West Bank by Israeli settlers wounds several
The settlers from Bat Ayin, where a Palestinian killed a young settler last week, attacked cars and homes in the village of Safa on Wednesday.

The Israeli account is that the settlers, who were armed, came under attack when they entered Safa to pray, Nour Odeh, Al Jazeera's correspondent in the West Bank, said.

The Palestinians were injured when the Israeli troops fired tear gas and live ammunition to break up the disturbance, medics said.

NYT: Sri Lankan military, Tamil Tigers ignore calls for a ceasefire, step up the fighting
The government said on its Defense Ministry Web site that it had killed more than 250 Tamil Tigers during weekend fighting and 420 more in foiling an ambush Monday morning. A pro-rebel site said that Sri Lankan shelling of the no-fire zone had killed at least 71 civilians and wounded 143 over the weekend...

The government said its troops had taken control of the Puthukkudiyiruppu area, the rebels’ last remaining stronghold at the edge of the safety zone. A general said Sunday that the rebels had been driven into the safety zone, a small strip of beachfront jungle in the country’s northeast.
BBC: interviews with civilians escaping the area
Gdn: Tamil supporters arrested in London protest

AJE: 2 bombings in Assam kill several
Police said they suspected both attacks to have been carried out by the separatist United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA).

Manmohan Singh, the Indian prime minister from the ruling Congress party, was set to campaign in Assam on Tuesday...

The latest incidents occurred a day before the 30th anniversary of ULFA, which has previously carried out attacks around their anniversary and has been blamed for violence in Assam before.

ULFA is fighting for secession for the Assamese people in the northeast and is one of dozens of armed groups operating in the region.

WP: Somali pirates seize Dutch ship; US crew regains control

Reuters: Zetas training camp raided in Guatemala (via Tom Ricks)
Security forces were tipped off about suspicious activity at a ranch in Quiche, in the central highlands, by residents who said men in ski masks were asking villagers to join their ranks, police chief Marlene Blanco said at a news conference.

Two commanders of the Zetas, the armed wing of Mexico's Gulf cartel, and 37 recruits fled the camp before the police and army arrived, leaving behind 500 grenades, six rifles and hundreds of rounds of ammunition, Blanco said.

protests
NYT: Twitter, texting help mobilize post-election protests in Moldova
A crowd of more than 10,000 young Moldovans materialized seemingly out of nowhere on Tuesday to protest against Moldova’s Communist leadership, ransacking government buildings and clashing with the police...

There was no sign that the authorities would cede to any of the protesters’ demands, and President Vladimir Voronin denounced the organizers as “fascists intoxicated with hatred.”

But Mihai Fusu, 48, a theater director who spent much of the day on the edges of the crowd, said he believed that a reservoir of political energy had found its way into public life.

“Moldova is like a sealed jar, and youth want more access to Europe,” he said. “Everyone knows that Moldova is the smallest, poorest and the most disgraceful country. And youth are talking about how they want freedom, Europe and a different life.”...

The immediate cause of the protests were parliamentary elections held on Sunday, in which Communists won 50 percent of the vote, enough to allow them to select a new president and amend the Constitution. Though the Communists were expected to win, their showing was stronger than expected, and opposition leaders accused the government of vote-rigging...

Behind the confrontation is a split in Moldova’s population. The collapse of the Soviet Union brought benefits to much of Eastern Europe, but in Moldova it ushered in economic decline and instability. In 2001, angry citizens backed the return of the Communists and their social programs...

The participants at that first gathering, on Monday, dispersed peacefully. But demonstrations on Tuesday spun out of control. News coverage showed protesters throwing stones at the windows of Parliament and the presidential palace, removing furniture and lighting it on fire. Riot police officers shielded their heads as demonstrators pelted them with stones. The police then used water cannons and tear gas to disperse the crowd. Fires continued to burn late into the night.
Reuters: police take control of president's office
Ind: president: the Romanians are to blame
After riot police retook the smoking and wrecked buildings overnight and rounded up the protesters, Voronin said he was expelling Romania's ambassador and introducing visa regulations for Romanians wanting to enter Moldova.

"When the flag of Romania was raised on state buildings, the attempts of the opposition to carry out a coup became clear," the 67-year-old Communist leader said. He vowed "strict punishment" for the ringleaders.

Most of Moldova, an ex-Soviet republic, was part of Romania until World War Two and retains close cultural ties with its larger neighbour. Moldovans are split between those wanting reunification with Romania and those keen to stay independent.

The Romanian Foreign Ministry said it was unacceptable that "the Communist power in Chisinau transfers responsibility for the Moldovan Republic's domestic problems on to Romania".

Voronin won strong backing from Russia which said the riots were aimed at undermining Moldova's sovereignty.

NYT: former prime minister's supporters protest in Bangkok
Wearing the red shirts of Thaksin loyalists, the demonstrators streamed into Bangkok throughout the day from his political strongholds in the rural north and northeast and by early evening the police estimated the crowds at 100,000.

The demonstrations were the biggest challenge to the four-month-old government of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, who took office after a pro-Thaksin government was dissolved when a court ruled that the governing party had engaged in electoral fraud.

BBC: police prevent protest in Egypt

trials
WP: Fujimori convicted of crimes against humanity; sentenced to 25 years
The verdict, delivered by a three-judge panel on a police base outside Lima where Fujimori has been held throughout the trial, marked the first time that an elected head of state has been extradited back to his home country, tried and convicted of human rights violations...

Many people in Peru admire Fujimori for largely defeating the Shining Path insurgency and ending a two-decade war that left about 70,000 people dead. But the tribunal found that Fujimori was guilty of creating and authorizing a military intelligence death squad that killed innocent people...

Fujimori's trial focused on two episodes of killings: a 1991 raid in which 15 people, including an 8-year-old boy, were killed at a barbecue in Lima where the military intelligence unit was looking for Shining Path suspects. This raid, which became known as the Barrios Altos massacre, was followed by the 1992 abduction and killing of nine students and a teacher from La Cantuta University, also by the Colina Group...

One of the arguments Fujimori partisans sometimes offered was that the dead had been terrorists and that their deaths were, therefore, justified. But the tribunal wrote in the summary of the 711-page sentencing document that none of the 25 people killed in the two massacres had been members of the Shining Path.

AJE: former RUF leaders sentenced by Sierra Leone War Crimes Tribunal
The Freetown-based court handed down its highest ever sentence to Issa Sesay, the leader of the RUF, on Wednesday.

Sesay was sentenced to a total of 693 years, but the judges ordered the 16 sentences be served consecutively, meaning he will spend a maximum of 52 years in prison.

Alongside Sesay, Morris Kallon, a former RUF commander, received a total of 340 years in prison, but will spend a maximum of 39 years in jail under the judges' ruling.

Augustine Gbao, whom the court said was the RUF's ideology trainer, will spend 25 years in prison.

New Yorker: the British law professor who helped launch the investigation of Bush's 'torture team'
NPR: ICRC report found that CIA medics were involved in torture
The ICRC report was based on statements from 14 prisoners who were held in CIA prisons overseas before being sent to the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 2006. The prisoners said that medical personnel were on hand when they were stripped naked, beaten, shackled for days in "stress positions" and subjected to the practice of controlled drowning, commonly known as waterboarding.

wronging rights: international justice round-up

the politics of history
AJE: commemorating the 15th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide

LAT: no such acknowledgment of (what some call) the Armenian genocide during Obama's trip to Turkey
By refraining from calling the deaths of as many as 1.5 million Armenians beginning in 1915 a genocide, Obama for the moment avoided offending a country whose help U.S. officials need in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. At the same time, he avoided infuriating his Armenian American supporters.

But Obama also contributed to the suspense surrounding a likely presidential proclamation expected in time for April 24, the annual Armenian remembrance day.

U.S. presidents usually issue statements deploring the mass killings without calling them genocide. Armenian American organizations are urging Obama to make good on his campaign pledge...

Turkish President Abdullah Gul emphasized that Turkey was willing to open its archives to historians investigating the subject and allow a joint commission to draw conclusions.

"It is not a political but an historic issue," he said. "That's why we should let historians discuss the matter." Obama administration officials said delicate talks are continuing between Turkey and Armenia over normalizing relations.

BBC: Bangladesh to investigate war crimes during its war of independence
The government says those suspected of collaborating with the Pakistani army in the killing and rape of thousands of civilians will be put on trial.

The party which fought for independence in 1971, the Awami League, has recently been returned to power.

The plan is opposed by one of the main opposition parties, Jamaat-e-Islami.

Its leaders are among those accused of alleged war crimes.

elections
Econ: 'election' campaigning in Algeria
Abdelaziz Bouteflika has conducted a vigorous campaign to be re-elected for a third term on April 9th. There is little doubt that he will emerge with a commanding majority in the first round, against largely token opposition from five rivals who have been widely derided as "rabbits" in the local press. However, the main focus of his campaign has been on emphasising the need for a respectable turnout to accord legitimacy to his new mandate....

Mr Bouteflika had also been constrained to lower his public profile owing to a resurgence of Islamist terrorist attacks during 2007 and 2008, including a suicide bombing in Batna, a town in the east of the country, which appeared to have been intended as an assassination attempt. His recent re-emergence at public meetings has come amid reports of setbacks suffered by the armed Islamist movement, which regrouped under the banner of al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) at the end of 2006. Four former "emirs" (commanders) of the Groupe salafiste pour la prédication et le combat (GSPC; the precursor of AQIM) have issued a public appeal to Islamist fighters to lay down their arms and take advantage of Mr Bouteflika's reconciliation plan, which offers the chance of an amnesty from prosecution, and the security services reported at the end of March that they had killed several AQIM members in raids on the their hideouts in the mountainous region to the east of Algiers.
Gdn: Bouteflika promises referendum on amnesty for militants

WP: opposition presidential candidate in Iran calls for more freedoms
New Yorker: in-depth coverage of the campaign

governance and policing
LAT: South African tribe wins rights to natural resources revenue, provides public goods

New Haven Advocate: urban informants and police corruption
NYT: gangs of New York
It was mostly battles over turf. “They were like all these street gangs — ‘Don’t bother my territory, don’t get in my way’ — fighting for land or space,” he said. “In other words, ‘This is my territory, stay out of it,’ and so forth.”

From a law enforcement perspective, the motivation for joining a gang was apparent.

“They formed the gangs because they had close-knit living quarters in the tenements, and they formed gangs going to school, to protect themselves,” said Eric C. Schneider, who wrote “Vampires, Dragons, and Egyptian Kings: Youth Gangs in Postwar New York.”...

“You have a transformation of gangs from social entities organized around turf or ethnicity or around projecting honor and learning what it is like to be a male to becoming, in the 1970s, more economic entities that are increasingly, over time, organized as means of entry into the underground economy,” Mr. Schneider said. “And kids then went from fighting with things like switchblades and car aerials to fighting with weapons that were supplied by returning veterans during the Vietnam era and eventually the surplus production of all our arms manufacturers.”

daily show: the turnover of power tastes like...

++
Slate: faith no more: the scientific explanation of Biblical miracles

LAT: hip-hop in the Arab world
Iranians rhyme about stifled lives and street-level viciousness born of economic hardship. Lebanese rap subtly about sectarian blood feuds. Palestinians sling verses about misery in refugee camps and humiliation at Israeli checkpoints. Egyptians lament the fragmentation of the Arab world.

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

++
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.

++
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.

the all-of-the-above approach [past is prologue]

NYT: British diplomat predicts NATO defeat and recommends dictatorship for Afghanistan
NYT: three fronts in recently ramped-up war against the Taliban in Pakistan
"In early August, goaded by the American complaints and faced with a nexus of the Taliban and Al Qaeda that had become too powerful to ignore, the chief of the Pakistan military, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, opened the front in Bajaur, a Taliban and Qaeda stronghold along the Afghan border.

Earlier this summer, the military became locked in an uphill fight against the militants in Swat, a more settled area of North-West Frontier Province that was once a middle-class ski resort. Today it is a maelstrom of killing...

At a third front, south of Peshawar, around the town of Dera Adam Khel, the army recently recaptured from Taliban control the strategic Kohat tunnel, a road more than a mile long that carries NATO supplies from the port of Karachi to the American and coalition forces in Afghanistan."

NYT: rebuilding Samarra
LAT: US cops advising Iraqis
"Acree is one of about 800 civilian police officers working under a military contract with DynCorp International. Unlike the thousands of civilian contractors who have come to Iraq to supplement the military, Acree and his colleagues don't provide security services. They're here to impart their experience in urban police work to a young and inadequately trained and equipped force.

The consultants, whose pay starts at $134,000 a year, are assigned to U.S. military police units and travel in convoys of Humvees."

LAT: more clashes between Turkish and Kurdish forces
"The fighting, which represented Turkey's largest loss of troops this year in a single incident, was considered likely to spur Turkish military strikes at rebel hideouts across the border in northern Iraq. Within hours of the rebel attack, the Turkish military was already aiming artillery strikes across the frontier...The fighting came days before Turkish lawmakers are to take up a measure that would give the army continued authority in the coming year to stage strikes across the border in Iraq."

NYT: who will pay the pirate ransom?
"As if things were not complicated enough, one of the few people with experience in prickly pirate problems has been jailed by the Kenyan government on suspicion that he is a pirate himself...Many seamen in Kenya insist that Mr. Mwangura is a good man, and that his only fault may have been being outspoken. He was the first maritime official to say that the hijacked ship was part of a secret arms deal between Kenya and southern Sudan. Kenyan officials have denied this, saying the heavy weaponry, including battle tanks, is for their use. But Western diplomats have privately said this is a lie."

LAT: ANC factions may prove too difficult to keep together
LAT: bloggers expose dissent within the opposition in Egypt
"This Internet revolution strikes at the Muslim Brotherhood's identity. The organization, founded in 1928, has renounced violence and supports democratic change in Egypt, but it is allied with the militant group Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Hundreds of the banned party's members are arrested each year; human rights groups say Mubarak is portraying the brotherhood followers as terrorists in an effort to silence his most potent detractors.

The brotherhood is praised for its community outreach services, but often viewed as out of touch, too rooted in religious dogma and its quest for an Islamic state. This ideology and constant pressure from government security forces have left the organization unable to create a credible coalition with leftists, nationalists and others to seriously challenge the ruling National Democratic Party.

In one of his posts, Naggar urged the brotherhood to "question ourselves and admit our mistakes. It is not shameful to revise our ideas and change our positions. It is not shameful to be brave enough and say that we were mistaken. What is really shameful is not to speak about our mistakes and claim that our ideas are sacred."

Such soul-searching represents an unprecedented public criticism of the bureaucracy and thinking in a major Islamic movement and has shattered the secrecy prized by the brotherhood, said Khalil Anani, an expert on the group. He suggested that the brotherhood's leadership is threatened by the brashness of its young reformers, yet it needs these Web-savvy critics to reach new generations of Muslims."

LAT: Mexicans march on 40th anniversary of student massacre
"The killings -- official reports put the toll at 25 to 43 but human rights groups have long maintained that the number was closer to 350 -- started when government forces opened fire on a massive but peaceful student demonstration just days before the Olympic Games were to open in Mexico City. It was a time of political effervescence in the country and across the globe, and the Mexican government of the day was eager to conceal what had happened.

The incident in the Plaza of the Three Cultures, in the Tlatelolco zone of Mexico City, remained shrouded in secrecy for decades."

LAT: reassessing how many died in Dresden
"While estimates for the numbers killed in the attacks on the city have fluctuated wildly between 35,000 and half a million over the past six decades, the historians commissioned by the city say the figure was considerably lower.

"The results of the commission conclude that 18,000 to 25,000 people died in Dresden from the air raids," an official said yesterday. The figure has long been a matter of dispute, heightened by the entry into the regional parliament of Saxony in Dresden of the NPD, a far-right political party, who called the February 1945 raids a "bombing holocaust", and claimed they had killed half a million.

The bombing, which took place just 12 weeks before the surrender of Nazi Germany, remains one of the most controversial actions of the second world war. While the operation was defended by the allies as a justified attack on a vital transport hub, most of those who died were civilians and refugees. Many were said to have perished in the resulting firestorm.

The former mayor of Dresden, Ingold Rossberg, commissioned the 11-strong team of historians four years ago to try to establish a clear figure. The results were presented at Dresden's annual Conference of Historians.

While the figure is well below previous estimates, members of the conference were keen to stress that the report did not belittle the immensity of the act. Thousands of lives were claimed in just four US and UK raids, lasting 63 minutes. Almost 4,000 tonnes of high explosives and incendiary devices were dropped."

LAT: the women of San Luca and behind the 'Ndrangheta mafia
"The women here have always had a complex role in the dynamics of an insular society that seems to exist at the margins of mainstream Italy. They are the mothers of the mobsters, their wives and, prosecutors say, often their accomplices. Fiercely protective of their brood, they can be as ruthless as their men. In the last year, it also appears that some San Luca women have served as a counterforce to the violence spiraling from internal feuds...San Luca is a town of interconnected clans, and there is no one who cannot claim a mobster among his or her relatives. In virtually every family, someone has been imprisoned or killed...

Calabria, the toe-of-the-boot region of Italy where San Luca is located, is the nation's poorest, on paper at least; the women complained that the only time they see an arm of the government it's in the form of police rounding up suspected gangsters...

San Luca sits on the edge of the densely forested Aspromonte mountain range, a favorite spot of the 'Ndrangheta for hiding its kidnapping victims in the 1970s and '80s. The organization has existed in some form for more than a century, evolving as a protection racket after World War II and then graduating to drug trafficking a decade or so ago. The 'Ndrangheta developed a multibillion-dollar enterprise in the last few years when it took over cocaine routes from Latin America to Europe, the fastest-growing market for illicit narcotics.

This region is like few others. The minute a stranger enters San Luca, a kind of silent alarm is sounded. Outsiders will be followed, their movements tracked. The people have their own body language, not to mention their own actual language: All speak a Calabrian dialect. An Italian speaker unfamiliar with the dialect will grasp only parts of a conversation.

San Luca gained international notoriety last year when six Italians were gunned down outside a pizzeria in Duisburg, Germany. Authorities called it a revenge hit in an escalating 'Ndrangheta feud. Three of the dead, including a 16-year-old boy, were from San Luca, and the others from nearby Calabrian towns.

The killings -- the most public evidence to date of the international reach of the 'Ndrangheta -- shocked Italians and unleashed fears of further violence. But more than a year later, no one else has been killed, and the credit, at least partially, goes to a woman...

At a tense funeral for the Duisburg dead in San Luca in August 2007, instead of demanding revenge, as many mothers and wives had, Strangio insisted on forgiveness...

Diego Trotta, a senior police investigator in Calabria who has led many operations against the 'Ndrangheta, thinks reprisals have only been delayed, not canceled. Any relative peace, he said, is thanks to scores of arrests in the last year...

The women of San Luca are for the most part locked into a certain fate. They are married off to other families within the clans to seal the impervious unity of the 'Ndrangheta. Only in the last decade or so did San Luca families allow their daughters to go to high school."

lessons in foreign policy [we hope she's reading]

WP: Somali pirates hold 100 people hostage in Gulf of Aden
"The attacks are being carried out by increasingly well-coordinated Somali gangs armed with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades, maritime officials said. Somalia has been without a functioning government since 1991, and remains one of the world's most violent and lawless countries."

WP: Egyptian forces kill refugees and migrants on the Sinai border
"Since the first recorded border killing in the summer of 2007, when Egyptian authorities announced a live-fire policy on the Sinai border, Egyptian security forces have shot dead at least 28 migrants as they left Egypt for Israel, the rights group Amnesty International said Thursday. Of those, the group said, 23 have been killed since January."

Gdn: peace-keeping forces in Darfur lacking equipment, adequate troops
"Unamid formally took over peacekeeping responsibilities at the beginning of this year, but only 10,000 of the agreed 26,000 troops and police have so far arrived in Sudan.

"Most people expect us to carry out the primary role of our mandate - protection of civilians, helping the humanitarian agencies. But right now that is not our priority, because for us to be able to do that we need the troops, we need the equipment ... so we are struggling," the Nigerian general said. "Now we have even turned some of our own personnel into drivers to bring in the equipment."

BBC: tax-paying pride in Freetown ghetto
"The chains that dangle around the necks of the handful of local loiterers are not the customary gangsta dog tags, but plastic holders displaying nothing less than tax receipts.

For the first time in generations, people have been flocking to pay their local council tax of 5,000 leones (about $1.5, 90 UK pence) in the Sierra Leonean capital, Freetown."

BBC: Kenyan IDP camp closure delayed
10,000 have lived there since December displacements related to electoral violence

BBC: calls to prevent outbreak of new war in the Kivus, DRC

Gdn: power-sharing agreement reached in Zimbabwe: MDC will control police, Mugabe retains military
Gdn: profiles of Mugabe and Tsvangirai

Gdn: interactive maps are cool (here's one of Africa)

++
WP: Chavez boots the US Ambassador from Venezuela, recalls Ambassador from DC, accepts Russian bombers
"Go to hell, Yankees," he said as the crowd hollered in support."

NYT: South Ossetian leader calls for independence, not to join Russian Federation

LAT: alliance in Lebanon unstable

LAT: US-backed Sunni groups targeted by Iraqi government

++
Slate: the scandalous report on the corrupt Interior Dept. SV wonders why Dems (other than Bill Nelson) aren't jumping on this

++
Slate: SV has resisted joining the Facebook group 'I have more foreign policy experience than Sarah Palin.' but we're only being polite.

tight in the eyes [lines, peaceful and violent]

LAT: wall still stands in Belfast, 10 years after peace deal
"...for dozens of front-line communities of Belfast, fences still make the best neighbors...In this city of 650,000, roughly half Catholic and half Protestant, only the university district and upper-class streets, chiefly on the south side, bear no clear-cut tribal identity...

[One Protestant] says his varied work experiences since -- as security guard, construction worker and now grocery store deliveryman -- mellowed him through regular social contact with Catholics...But he says that some neighborhoods, those most notorious for Irish Republican Army sympathies, give him the creeps...Catholic colleagues on occasion have invited him across the wall for an after-hours pint at their pub. He won't go.
'You'd be afraid that they might recognize you're from the other side. Am I too tight in the eyes?' he said, referring to a stereotype of Protestant eyes supposedly being closer together...

There are striking similarities between the experiences of the [Catholic] Quinns and the [Protestant] Youngs. Both feel safe living beside a peace line. Both say their problems come from hell-raisers within their own communities, not the other side. Both feel powerless to stop them.

Quinn said her previous neighborhood -- barely half a mile away in a sprawling, low-rise housing project -- was increasingly overrun by glue-sniffing, car-stealing teens. Such behavior was once brutally suppressed by IRA "kneecapping" squads. But the group has been keeping its 2005 promise to renounce bloodshed, and that means no more vigilante violence.

'The hoods have taken over. There's no telling them what to do. It's the Wild West,' she said.

Quinn says she has never called the cops to prevent a crime and doesn't think she ever will. Her attitude illustrates the other daunting task of peacemaking -- to build Catholic trust in what was once an overwhelmingly Protestant police force.

A sweeping reform program with affirmative-action recruitment over the last seven years has dramatically reshaped the police, with the goal of a 30% Catholic force. But many Catholics remain hostile to the police -- or fearful of being labeled collaborators.

So does she think the IRA should resume shooting teens in the legs? An uncomfortable silence follows.

'Well, I don't know. But the current situation is out of control,' she says finally...

"'I've really no problems with Roman Catholics,' Young said with a wry smile. 'It's my own kind that cause me the headaches. Maybe I need another peace line!'"

NYT: Lebanon faces sectarian violence
"He returned to this northern village only after family members won his release just over a week ago by threatening the kidnappers with retaliation. By that time Mr. Obaid, a Sunni Muslim, had gained a whole new way of seeing his Shiite countrymen and his native land.
'We cannot go back to how we lived with them before,' he said as he sat with relatives and friends at home here. 'The blood is boiling here. Every boy here, his blood is boiling. They push us, they push us, they push us.'"

LAT: rumors in China fuel panic
"Rumors are an integral part of Chinese folk history, songs and poetry. Last year, authorities drained a reservoir in central Sichuan province to dispel rumors that a growling water beast lived there. In 2006 a rumor spread in Anhui province that the virus that causes AIDS was being injected into watermelons, devastating sales.
Chinese emperors long sought to halt the spread across their far-flung empire, with the first recorded anti-hearsay campaign launched by King Li nearly 3,000 years ago, despite a proverb: 'Trying to stop people's mouths is like trying to stop a flood.'"

NYT: meanwhile, US downturn in economy means boon in denunciations for reward money
"Some coordinators suggest that rising crime rates might be driving up the number of tips. But in Jackson, Tenn., Sgt. Mike Johnson said his call volume had gone from two or three a day to eight or nine. He theorized that rising crime there was not a factor because the program advertises steadily regardless of trends. “People just need money,” Sergeant Johnson said...In some cases, the quality of the tips is lagging as people grasp for any shred of information that might result in an arrest. A woman in Macon, for example, recently called to report that a family member — who was wanted for burglary and whose name and address were already known to the police — was at home. His home. Such a tip might seem worthless on its face, said Jean Davis, who took the call. But many police departments do not have the personnel to watch a suspect’s comings and going. In that case, the young man was arrested."
(SV wonders if hotlines will disrupt the relationship between economic downturns and increased crime. Or if the denunciations are mostly useless.)

LAT: food prices offer opportunity for Islamic groups to give gifts, gain support

WP: pro-democracy protest organized on facebook in Egypt falls apart

WP: hundreds captured in Mosul sweep, just after Maliki offered amnesty
"[Al-Qaeda spokesman for Anbar] Janabi said that most fighters were warned in advance of the operation because the Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government had trumpeted its plans for the offensive for weeks. The fighters, Janabi added, had moved their heavy weapons, along with "our explosives experts" and "engineers of our missile attacks," to other areas, while a small group of volunteers stayed behind to fight "a war of exhaustion" against Iraqi and U.S. forces."
LAT: US sniper uses the Koran for target practice; commanders pull him from duty, apologize

NYT: Chávez consolidates power, nationalizing private enterprises
McClatchy: meanwhile, his relationship with the FARC indicated by the guerrillas' communications, may not be enough to warrant sanctions

LAT: the crackdown on cartels in Mexico continues
"Pressured by the government, they say, the Sinaloa cartel is in retreat and disarray, split into factions that have turned on each other. Several mid- and high-ranking members of the gang have been arrested, and army troops already deployed in the region have seized drug shipments, destroyed opium poppy fields and seized more than 100 airplanes believed to be used by traffickers...The Sinaloa cartel is one of the oldest in Mexico. Founded by a few close-knit families and once dominant in Mexico's drug trade, it has been challenged over the last decade by the so-called Gulf cartel, based in the northeastern border state of Tamaulipas. But the Sinaloa traffickers still control Pacific smuggling routes that U.S. officials say have become the most popular for shipment of Colombian cocaine to the United States."

Gdn: Icelanders curiously happy
"Highest birth rate in Europe + highest divorce rate + highest percentage of women working outside the home = the best country in the world in which to live. There has to be something wrong with this equation. Put those three factors together - loads of children, broken homes, absent mothers - and what you have, surely, is a recipe for misery and social chaos. But no. Iceland, the block of sub-Arctic lava to which these statistics apply, tops the latest table of the United Nations Development Programme's (UNDP) Human Development Index rankings, meaning that as a society and as an economy - in terms of wealth, health and education - they are champions of the world."

the dog in the fight

LAT: Shiites in Baghdad (associated with Sadr) protest the violence in Basra (between Sadr allies, a bunch of other militias, the Iraqi government forces, and the US military)
US officials cite renegade Sadr allies, not the Mahdi army itself, as the problem; they seem to be trying to salvage Sadr's cease-fire, even though for all intents and purposes it already seems irrelevant.
WP: US forces are more than advisers in the fighting in Baghdad; no one knows why Maliki acted now
"Iraqi army and police units appeared to be largely holding to the outskirts of the area as American troops took the lead in the fighting...Maliki decided to launch the offensive without consulting his U.S. allies, according to administration officials. With little U.S. presence in the south, and British forces in Basra confined to an air base outside the city, one administration official said that 'we can't quite decipher' what is going on. It's a question, he said, of 'who's got the best conspiracy' theory about why Maliki decided to act now...
Some officials have concluded that Maliki himself is firing 'the first salvo in upcoming elections,' the administration official said.
'His dog in that fight is that he is basically allied with the Badr Corps" against forces loyal to Sadr, the official said. 'It's not a pretty picture.' "
Slate: breaking down the alliances in Basra
"In other words, as with most things about Iraq, it's a more complex case than Bush makes it out to be.
The two Shiite parties—the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq and Muqtada Sadr's Mahdi army—have been bitter rivals since the early days of post-Saddam Iraq. And Maliki, from the beginning of his rule, has had delicate relations with both...Late last month, Iraq's three-man presidential council vetoed a bill calling for provincial elections, in large part because ISCI's leaders feared that Sadr's party would win in Basra. The Bush administration, which has (correctly) regarded provincial elections as key to Iraqi reconciliation, pressured Maliki to reverse his stance and let the bill go through. He did—at which point (was this just a coincidence?) planning began for the offensive that's raging now."
Gdn: mass grave found
WP: Bush in his own world - Ohio

BBC: many killed in fighting in the tribal region of Pakistan
"The violence follows rising tensions between the Sunni Muslim Orakzai tribe and the minority Shia Katchai tribe.
Heavy weapons were used in the clashes in the Lautang area of Kohat district, a local official told the BBC."

Reuters: Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Egypt talks end without deal

Gdn: Colombia says it will release FARC prisoners in exchange for Betancourt
"President Alvaro Uribe signed a decree last night allowing the massive release of guerrillas from jail if Betancourt, who is French-Colombian and was kidnapped during her 2002 presidential campaign, and suffers from hepatitis B, is set free, according to peace commissioner Luis Carlos Restrepo."

BBC: massive kidnapping in Central Africa Republic, allegedly by LRA members

NYT: Puerto Rico's governor is in trouble

Gdn: opposition in Zimbabwe threatens "Kenya-like" protests if Mugabe rigs the vote

Gdn: Burmese leader asks for solidarity with government, against "destructive elements"

LAT: Arrrr: US Navy fighting pirates off coast of Somalia
" 'We're like a cop walking a beat,' said Capt. David Adler, commander of the guided-missile cruiser Port Royal in the Persian Gulf. 'We haven't had any piracy incidents, but that's because we're here.' "

LAT: brokering a peace deal among youth groups - tribus - in Mexico City

possible deployments for an ex-president

middle east
NYT: Pakistan's Taliban problem
"'The police are scared,' Mr. Sherpao [former head of law enforcement in Pakistan] said. 'They don’t want to get involved.' The Frontier Corps, a paramilitary force that could help in tracking down leads on suicide bombers, was 'too stressed, fighting all over,' he said. The Pakistan Army has forces in the tribal areas where the militants have built their sanctuaries but the soldiers have remained in their headquarters. 'They are not moving around,' he said. 'That’s their strategy.'"
NYT: on secret mission, CIA's offer to jump in is rejected
"Instead, Pakistan and the United States are discussing a series of other joint efforts, including increasing the number and scope of missions by armed Predator surveillance aircraft over the tribal areas, and identifying ways that the United States can speed information about people suspected of being militants to Pakistani security forces, officials said."
(it's interesting that the Pentagon and CIA keep talking to the press about their efforts -- scroll down for previous postings (too lazy to link))
LAT: more assurances from Musharraf: nuclear weapons are secure

LAT: Iraq resists US pressure to have free reign; in particular, US cannot use Iraq as platform to attack any of its neighbors
IHT: so far, US still participating in diplomacy: UN Security Council drafts new terms of Iran sanctions

Gdn: Gaza breach into Egypt reshapes regional demographics; background and accounts of crossings
AP: Egypt trying to close border for fifth straight day
BBC: Israel to allow fuel shipments to Gaza, ending 2 week embargo

africa
LAT: "tit-for-tat" violence, looting between Kenyan tribes in Nakuru
"Kenyan police spokesman Eric Kiraithe tried to assure the public Saturday that security would be restored, blaming the violence on gangs and 'advantage-takers.' Police in Nakuru have been criticized for allowing the violence to get out of control before intervening. 'What is causing the chaos is gangs of youths, forming on ethnic lines,' Kiraithe said in an interview on local television. 'But looting does not solve the political problems.'"
Gdn: has specific, terrible examples of victimization
"Morris Ouma, a 25-year-old trader, said he had taken part in the fighting. 'I didn't feel good about it, but they are killing our people. What shall we do?'"

Econ: Nigeria elections on trial

Econ: rebellions in the "phantom state" Central African Republic
"The International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based lobby, says that the CAR has dropped below the level even of a failed state. 'It has become virtually a phantom state, lacking any meaningful institutional capacity at least since the fall of Emperor [Jean-Bédel] Bokassa in 1979,' it says...
When the French, who ran the place until 1960, decided that their long-time protégé had become a liability, they helped to oust him. That did not bring stability. The CAR has suffered no fewer than 11 mutinies or attempted coups in the past decade alone...
Since then, however, two more rebellions have erupted. One, in the north-west, pits supporters of Mr Patassé, who is in exile, against the government's feeble forces. Another, in the north-east, has its origins in a combination of ethnic tension and regional neglect made worse by some disgruntled Bozizé men who complain they have not been paid for liberating the country. Thrown into the mix are bandits known as Zaraguina, who are mostly from Chad; they loot, kidnap and demand thousands of dollars in ransom for local cattle-herders from the Peuhl tribe...
At least the government is trying to talk to its opponents. 'Rebels or Zaraguinas, they're just bandits,' says Dieudonné-Stanislas M'Bangot, a presidential adviser. 'But we have to negotiate with them, as we don't have the means to fight them. Do you have any better ideas?'"

asia
Econ: Thailand's war on meth, violence by security forces

Econ: ethnic Indians in Malaysia demanding more from government
"In the 50 years of peninsular Malaysia's independence from Britain, the ethnic Indians have been more quiescent than the richer, better educated and more assertive ethnic Chinese, who make up about one-quarter of the population. Under an implicit “social contract”, the two minorities, mostly descended from migrant workers, were given citizenship in return for accepting that ethnic Malays and other indigenous groups, together known as bumiputras (sons of the soil), would enjoy privileged access to state jobs and education. All the races have done well from strong economic growth since independence. The Indians and Chinese suffer even lower poverty rates than the bumiputras. But whereas the majority population have, with official help, started catching up with the Chinese in the property and shares they own, the Indians still have few assets (see chart). Often they are stuck in rented homes and low-skilled urban jobs. The Indians' sense of missing out on the good life has helped to feed their mood of grievance. But what has most fuelled their anger in the past few years is a feeling that “creeping Islamisation” threatens their religious freedom."

Econ: sex work and tourism in Nepal
"During the recently-ended civil war, Nepal's Himalayan tourism industry collapsed. Some activists think that sex tourism is replacing it."

europe
Econ: Serbia should court the EU
"...politicians in Belgrade should not imagine that they have a plausible long-term alternative—least of all one of Slav solidarity with Russia."

BBC: police and protesters clash in Ingushetia region of Russia
"Muslim Ingushetia borders Chechnya and has suffered from overflowing unrest. There is a low-level insurgency, with regular small-scale ambushes against police and soldiers."

BBC: former prime minister Kasyanov, main opponent in Russian presidential elections, barred from participating
LAT: but former KGB operative and suspect in poisoning case, is a member of parliament
LAT scores an interview: "'I don't agree that the Cold War is back. It has never ended,' he said. 'Any normal Russian person in the 1990s didn't see anything from the West except insults and humiliation.'
So is this payback time? Lugovoy laughed a little, then spoke deliberately.
'I don't agree with this biblical saying that if they hit you on one cheek you should turn the other cheek,' he said. 'If they hit you on one cheek, you hit them back with a fist.'"

NYT mag: maybe in a "multipolar" world, the Cold War will be put to rest?
"The more we appreciate the differences among the American, European and Chinese worldviews, the more we will see the planetary stakes of the new global game. Previous eras of balance of power have been among European powers sharing a common culture. The cold war, too, was not truly an 'East-West' struggle; it remained essentially a contest over Europe. What we have today, for the first time in history, is a global, multicivilizational, multipolar battle."

Econ: outlaw lawmaker isn't only area of strain between UK and Russia
Econ: cutbacks for bobbies: weighing decrease in funding and crime fighting
LAT: football diplomacy: UK denies work permit to Iraqi star

Gdn: gang fighting in Dublin

LAT: ethnic politics in Germany

americas
IHT: Canada stopped sending prisoners to Afghanistan after finding abuse
Econ: Ottawa government stable, boring

IHT: mass killing in Guyana

IHT: Venezuelan pleads guilty in Miami to trying to cover up scheme to transfer $800k in cash from Chávez to Cristina Kirchner

Econ: nepotism in Brazil

Slate: Obama crushes Clinton(s) in SC
"...after South Carolina we might see Bill Clinton suddenly dispatched to solve some new crisis in a country with no satellite trucks and no cell towers. The South Carolina result suggests that he wasn't effective and raises the question of whether his antics during the past week reminded voters that the whole Clinton circus is one that they just don't want coming to town." [perhaps he could organize a humanitarian mission to the CAR? or - sorry, can't resist the bait - maybe investigating the sex tourism in Nepal would be more up his alley]

don't call it a comeback

NYT: resupplying Gaza
"Thousands of Palestinians streamed over the Rafah border crossing from the Gaza Strip into Egypt on Wednesday, after a border fence was toppled, and went on a spree of buying fuel and other supplies that have been cut off from their territory by Israel...Initial reports suggested that Hamas militants had used explosives to blow a hole in the corrugated-iron border fence at Rafah. The Rafah crossing into Egypt has been shut since Hamas took over Gaza in a short war with Fatah last summer."

NPR: rebuilding Fallujah
"Fallujah is still an armed fortress — anyone coming in has to show a U.S-issued residency card at checkpoints on the perimeter. While this may be a pain, there hasn't been a car bomb here since last March — and local police are now able to secure the city instead of relying on the unpopular Iraqi army brigade, which had been brought in from the Shiite south...

Sheikhs like Alwani, who have spearheaded the fight against al-Qaida, remain vulnerable, especially outside the city. This week, a 12-year-old managed to get through guards. The boy was supposed to be coming to pay respects — instead he blew himself up. He missed his target, but killed five others.

The youngster was a relative of the sheikh. Successful attacks like this are often inside jobs, which poses a problem for tribal leaders who want to reintegrate former al-Qaida members. Marine Gen. John Allen says tribes demand the former fighters make amends for killings in the past in a very specific way.

'You must commit yourself in public, and in the light of day, to opposing al-Qaida — and you must go fight al-Qaida,' Allen says. 'You must equalize this blood feud. You've got to get al-Qaida blood on your own hands.'"

WP: making sense out of the new "reconciliation" law in Iraq
"Some say the law's primary aim is not to return ex-Baathists to work, but to recognize and compensate those harmed by the party. Of the law's eight stated justifications, none mentions reinstating ex-Baathists to their jobs.

'The law is about as clear as mud,' said one U.S. senior diplomat."

Newsweek: it's as much al-Sadr as the surge
"Gen. David Petraeus has been deservedly praised for tamping down violence in Iraq, but an unlikely character deserves some credit—Sadr. Five months ago the firebrand cleric ordered his followers to lay down their arms, and they've largely obeyed. Mahdi cadres have gone after bad seeds like the Assassin, whose thuggish tactics have disgusted ordinary Iraqis...

By the summer, the aggressive raids [in Baghdad neighborhoods] had forced moderate Sadrists to the negotiating table; the ceasefire then gave them more latitude to work with the Americans. Ducote, an Atlanta native who once studied for the seminary, pointed out to them that if attacks on civilians ceased, he could cut back on the raids. As a good-faith measure, he released a well-known Shiite extremist shortly after his arrest. "We thought about it a lot and decided, 'We're going to do it because we really want this to work'," says Ducote. The gamble paid off. 'That really, really earned us a lot of credibility.' Tip-offs from locals soared. Attacks against civilians and the Coalition in Jihad have dropped to roughly one tenth of what they were when the Black Lions arrived. In October, Sunni and Shiite leaders in the neighborhood signed a peace deal...

[The Lt Col in charge of southwest Baghdad] likens the Mahdi Army to the once omnipotent Baath Party: Shiites who want to have influence in their communities have to become members at least nominally...

...things could just as well turn out badly. If Sadr achieves the rank of ayatollah, he will be a heavyweight political, as well as religious, authority—and he'll have a leaner, more loyal militia at his disposal."

USAT: Padilla sentenced to 17 years; judge lightened sentence because of 'harsh treatment'

non-sequitur

USAT: what does the interest rate slash mean for normal folks?
New Yorker: or ignore that and read Ben Franklin's Way to Wealth instead (with a grain of salt, naturally)
"'Friends, says he, and Neighbours, the Taxes are indeed very heavy, and if those laid on by the Government were the only Ones we had to pay, we might more easily discharge them; but we have many others, and much more grievous to some of us. We are taxed twice as much by our Idleness, three times as much by our Pride, and four times as much by our Folly, and from these Taxes the Commissioners cannot ease or deliver us by allowing an Abatement'...After the hoary old man finished, the people 'approved the Doctrine and immediately practised the contrary, just as if it had been a common Sermon.'...In London, in 1766, Franklin was questioned before the House of Commons during its deliberations on the repeal of the Stamp Act. Asked how soldiers sent to enforce the new taxes would be received, Franklin answered, 'They will not find a rebellion; they may indeed make one.' The king and Parliament heeded Franklin’s advice just about as much 'as if it had been a common Sermon.' They sent the soldiers. They made a rebellion."