untold horror [only the beginning]

NYRB: the Holocaust was worse than you thought
The very reasons that we know something about Auschwitz warp our understanding of the Holocaust: we know about Auschwitz because there were survivors, and there were survivors because Auschwitz was a labor camp as well as a death factory. These survivors were largely West European Jews, because Auschwitz is where West European Jews were usually sent. After World War II, West European Jewish survivors were free to write and publish as they liked, whereas East European Jewish survivors, if caught behind the iron curtain, could not...

By 1943 and 1944, when most of the killing of West European Jews took place, the Holocaust was in considerable measure complete. Two thirds of the Jews who would be killed during the war were already dead by the end of 1942. The main victims, the Polish and Soviet Jews, had been killed by bullets fired over death pits or by carbon monoxide from internal combustion engines pumped into gas chambers at Treblinka, Be zec, and Sobibor in occupied Poland.

Auschwitz as symbol of the Holocaust excludes those who were at the center of the historical event. The largest group of Holocaust victims—religiously Orthodox and Yiddish-speaking Jews of Poland, or, in the slightly contemptuous German term, Ostjuden—were culturally alien from West Europeans, including West European Jews. To some degree, they continue to be marginalized from the memory of the Holocaust...

An adequate vision of the Holocaust would place Operation Reinhardt, the murder of the Polish Jews in 1942, at the center of its history. Polish Jews were the largest Jewish community in the world, Warsaw the most important Jewish city. This community was exterminated at Treblinka, Be zec, and Sobibor. Some 1.5 million Jews were killed at those three facilities, about 780,863 at Treblinka alone. Only a few dozen people survived these three death facilities. Be zec, though the third most important killing site of the Holocaust, after Auschwitz and Treblinka, is hardly known. Some 434,508 Jews perished at that death factory, and only two or three survived...

All in all, as many if not more Jews were killed by bullets as by gas, but they were killed by bullets in easterly locations that are blurred in painful remembrance...By the end of 1941, the Germans (along with local auxiliaries and Romanian troops) had killed a million Jews in the Soviet Union and the Baltics. That is the equivalent of the total number of Jews killed at Auschwitz during the entire war. By the end of 1942, the Germans (again, with a great deal of local assistance) had shot another 700,000 Jews, and the Soviet Jewish populations under their control had ceased to exist...

In shorthand, then, the Holocaust was, in order: Operation Reinhardt, Shoah by bullets, Auschwitz; or Poland, the Soviet Union, the rest. Of the 5.7 million or so Jews killed, roughly 3 million were pre-war Polish citizens, and another 1 million or so pre-war Soviet citizens: taken together, 70 percent of the total. (After the Polish and Soviet Jews, the next-largest groups of Jews killed were Romanian, Hungarian, and Czechoslovak. If these people are considered, the East European character of the Holocaust becomes even clearer.)
NYRB: (podcast interview with historian Tim Snyder)

Gdn: alleged Nazi death facility guard to stand trial in Germany
Demjanjuk has claimed he was a Red Army soldier who was a prisoner of war, and that he never hurt anyone.

But Nazi-era documents obtained by US justice authorities and shared with German prosecutors include a photo ID card identifying Demjanjuk as a guard at the Sobibor camp and information that he was trained at an SS facility for Nazi guards at Trawniki in Poland.

BBC: violence in the Northern Caucuses

AP: presidential elections held in the DRC, opposition boycotts
Few took part in demonstrations called by the opposition in the lead-up to the vote, but there was apathy among many of the 2.2 million eligible voters.

Mr. Sassou-Nguesso, who has attracted large crowds at campaign rallies and told his followers not to fear political violence, voted under a heavy security presence.

He has been in and out of power since a 1979 coup, losing multiparty elections in 1992 before sweeping back into power in a war that destroyed much of the capital, Brazzaville, in 1997. He won the election in 2002, when his main rivals were barred or withdrew, citing irregularities.

LAT: contemporary child slavery in Ghana


LAT: militarization and murder in Mexican cities
The offensive [against drug cartels] has exposed corruption so widespread that key institutions, from police forces to city halls, appear rotten to the core. And a battered society has grown increasingly worried about the effects of the massive military deployment on its democracy...

By disrupting the cartels' operations, the offensive intensified turf struggles among the traffickers. About 11,000 people, some of them bystanders, have died in the violence...

More than 45,000 troops have been deployed in these 2 1/2 years to hot spots across the nation. It's not just boots on the ground: Army generals and colonels have taken command of law enforcement in seven states and, from Juarez to Tijuana to Cancun, have supplanted civilian authority...

In November, killers were able to break into the police radio frequency and play narcocorrido music [a style of music associated with, and often commissioned by, narcotraffickers] as a sign an officer had been killed, or was about to be. Now, officials are developing a secure radio system...

Troops were dispatched in February this year to the northern border state of Nuevo Leon, Mexico's wealthiest and long a symbol of relative stability. Traffickers quickly mobilized low-level dealers and their families to protest the military presence and to create the impression that the traffickers had a broad social base. Monterrey, the capital, and other cities were paralyzed for days...

A politician from the Monterrey area's richest district was caught on tape describing the power of the drug lords. Mauricio Fernandez is heard saying that the area was relatively peaceful because the Beltran Leyva cartel wanted it that way.

"Their families live here," he said. "You don't think it's the police [that maintain order], do you?"


WP: Marines with a new mandate in Helmand
But employing U.S. forces to restore a sense of normalcy in a country ravaged by 30 years of war involves a series of assumptions and a set of challenges that are already proving more complicated than mounting hunt-and-kill missions against the Taliban. Will residents want the Marines to stick around? Will those who do be convinced that the Americans will stay until security improves? Will residents trust the local leaders -- including the police chief, whom one Marine officer calls "the Tony Soprano of Nawa" -- to run the town better than the Taliban?...

Although he is now in a different country, with different traditions and a different insurgency, [Nicholson, the troop commander] nonetheless sees lessons from Anbar that can be applied to Helmand. At the top of his list is the need for more indigenous security forces...

Nicholson had wanted his troops to conduct every patrol and man every checkpoint with members of the Afghan National Army, largely because people here take less umbrage at being searched by fellow Afghans, and Afghan soldiers have a keener sense of who ought to be searched. But plans to partner with the Afghan army have been scaled back because the Marines have been allotted only about 400 Afghan soldiers instead of the several thousand Nicholson had sought.

He has been promised more troops, but they will not start rolling in until next year. In the interim, he has asked his superiors for permission to arm young men and train them to serve as a local protection force. It is similar to the Sons of Iraq initiative the Marines created in Anbar that resulted in locals turning against foreign fighters in the group al-Qaeda in Iraq.

But senior commanders have shown no sign of approving the request. They feel Helmand has too many overlapping tribal rivalries. Arming groups of young men could exacerbate tensions and lead some factions to turn to the Taliban for protection.

NYT: more on Tamils still in IDP/internment camps
“We were liberated,” [a Tamil civil servant] said in an interview at one of the sprawling, closed camps set up here to house those displaced in the war against the rebel group, known as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. “Now we are prisoners again. I lost everything in this war. The Tigers killed my son. I lost my property. Now I have lost my freedom, too.”

Hundreds of thousands of Tamils remain locked in camps almost entirely off limits to journalists, human rights investigators and political leaders. The Sri Lankan government says that the people in the camps are a security risk because Tamil Tiger fighters are hiding among them...

“Perversely, if we keep helping we become the jailer of these people,” said one diplomat from a country that is helping pay for the relief effort.

AJE: Naxalites attack police in Chhattisgarh, India

bad liars [caught on satellite]

WP: bombing reflects, deepens sectarian rift in northwest Pakistan, kills at least 30
The suicide bombing, which turned a solemn [Shia] mourning procession into a scene of strewed limbs and bloody clothing, provoked a frenzy of retaliatory violence against local Sunnis, police and witnesses said. Dozens of Sunni-owned houses and shops were burned, and security forces imposed a curfew on the area.
BBC: how the cleavage has changed over time
In Pakistan, the focus of the sectarian violence has arguably changed. In the 1980s and 1990s the problem was acute in Karachi and in the province of Sindh.

But tough policing - especially in Karachi - over this period meant that many militants were either killed or arrested.
Slate: more skepticism on the Swat Valley deal
...as respected journalist Ismail Khan notes in an article in today's Dawn, the country's most widely read English-language newspaper, the deal calls for Pakistan's secular criminal code to be observed, unless a council of sharia judges rules that some law or another is un-Islamic. The deal also calls for a halt in the fighting between the Pakistani army and the Taliban militias.

The key facts here are that, at the moment, there is no working judicial system of any sort in the Swat Valley—and that the Taliban militias have routed the numerically superior Pakistani army in their armed confrontations. So the deal imposes national secular authority even more than it legitimizes sharia justice. And given the balance of power, it's unclear why the Taliban would go along with that.

The deal was made not with "the Taliban" as a whole—the term implies a more cohesive entity than actually exists—but rather, specifically, with Maulana Sufi Muhammad, whom the Pakistanis arrested two years ago for leading jihadist raids across the border into Afghanistan. He was released from prison after agreeing to give up the struggle and to work for peace.

The hope is that he would strike a deal with his son-in-law Maulana Fazlullah, who is the deputy to a much more militant Taliban leader—or that, if he can't come to terms with his son-in-law, a wedge might be driven between various Islamist factions, peeling Sufi Muhammad and his followers away from the radicals and thus strengthening the hand of the central government.

This is why the deal is not only ill-fated but potentially disastrous: It reveals the severe weakness of the Pakistani state. The politicians pursued the deal only because the state cannot control its own territory. Unless Sufi Muhammad can convince his son-in-law to accept peace and obeisance to secular authority in exchange for a parcel of land where Islamic law carries some weight, the deal is more likely to convince the militant Taliban simply to press on for more favors still.
AP: ...but it appears that the Taliban have agreed to a cease-fire
Slate: technology and warfare: Google Earth pinpoints a US drone base in Pakistan
The picture, together with a second picture of the same site taken sometime this year and posted on Google Earth, destroys much of the political advantage of the U.S. drones. The drones aren't supposed to be a U.S. military presence in Pakistan. They're unmanned, and until now, they were thought to be flown exclusively from the Afghan border. The satellite images, backed by expert analysis, prove otherwise. The drones are on Pakistani soil. And if the drones are there, so are the U.S. personnel who physically manage them.

BBC: militias in Paktia, Afghanistan
The insurgency has raged and grown in this part of the country. Paktia borders Pakistan and is a route for insurgents coming into the country. The Taleban and al-Qaeda have a growing presence here and clashes between them and government and foreign forces have escalated.

But Ahmadabad district is an exception, thanks to the gunmen of the Arbakai, a tribal militia that has protected this area and its people for centuries, making it something of a safe-haven from the violence all around.

They are a volunteer force of men and boys, armed with old rifles and true grit. They are part of a traditional code of conduct and honour called Pashtunwali.

The tribal elder is Haji Gulam Khan. He tells us that the area is stable and that there is a good relationship between the people and the government.

He is in no doubt who to thank: "If it weren't for the Arbakai, this area would've been controlled by the Taleban or mafia groups."
AJE: US acknowledges 13 civilians killed in missile strike in Herat earlier this week

AP: US Army medic sentenced to life in prison for executing four detainees in Iraq
NYT: another US soldier found not guilty in killings of 2 New York National Guard soldiers
AJE: Abu Ghraib re-opens as "Baghdad Central Prison"
NPR: how many have died in Iraq since the start of the war?
"By orders of minister's office, we cannot talk about the real numbers of deaths," says a man who works at the Baghdad central morgue statistics office, where all the deaths that take place in Baghdad get recorded. He doesn't want his name used because he's been told by his superiors at the Ministry of Health that he is not allowed to talk to the media. "That's been the case since 2004. When press comes to the morgue, they are taken to our boss's office and we have never been allowed to meet with them."

The reason, he says, is because the number of deaths the morgue registers never corresponds with numbers from the Ministry of Health or the Ministry of Interior.

"They do it on purpose," he says. "I would go home and look at the news. The ministry would say 10 people got killed all over Iraq, while I had received in that day more than 50 dead bodies just in Baghdad. It's always been like that — they would say one thingm but the reality was much worse."...

Dougherty [of Iraq Body Count] estimates at least 20,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed during U.S. military operations.

The military and human rights groups often disagree over whether victims were civilians or insurgents.

Econ: Turks and (Iraqi) Kurds getting along better for the moment
Turkish officials, who used to dismiss Iraq’s Kurdish leaders as “tribal upstarts”, privately concede that part of the solution is to co-opt Iraq’s Kurds. In the past year Turkish intelligence men and diplomats have held secret talks with Nechirvan Barzani, the Iraqi Kurdish region’s prime minister, to get the PKK to call off its fight, even as Turkish aircraft continue, with America’s blessing, to pound rebel strongholds near Iraq’s mountain border with Iran. One idea is that rebels untainted by violence might be coaxed home and their leaders offered cash inducements to move to any European country that would take them in.

NYT: Netanyahu invites Kadima and Labor parties to form moderate coalition
Mr. Netanyahu and Ms. Livni have agreed to meet Sunday, but the negotiations are likely to be tough. Ms. Livni, his chief rival for the premiership, has said she would rather go into opposition than serve as a fig leaf for a coalition of the right.

Mr. Barak, whose Labor Party fared badly in the elections, has already said he would head into the opposition.

To many here, it is increasingly likely that Mr. Netanyahu’s government will consist exclusively of parties from the right, which oppose a Palestinian state and favor expanding Israeli settlements in the West Bank, making it much harder for him to exercise his pragmatic penchant.

NPR: Saudi religious police facing more constraints

NPR: Lebanon no longer requiring sect identification

WP: Calderón will not relent, despite demonstrations against militarization
Calderón, who has sent more than 45,000 troops to fight the cartels, said the military would remain on patrol until the government had control of the most violent parts of the country and civil authorities were fully able "to confront this evil."

Only then, he said, "will the army have completed its mission." Turf battles involving the drug traffickers, who are fighting the army, police and one another in order to secure billion-dollar smuggling routes into the United States, took the lives of more than 6,000 people in Mexico last year. The pace of killing has continued in 2009, with more than 650 dead, most in the violent border cities of Ciudad Juarez and Tijuana. In the past few days, a running gun battle between soldiers and gunmen through the streets of the northern city of Reynosa, captured live on television, left five people dead.
LAT: Ciudad Juárez police chief opts out after threats, though
BBC: photos of the violence indicate why
SDT: lessons from Colombia's drug war (via Adam Isacson)
The drug-trafficking operation in Mexico is different than in Colombia. While there is some marijuana and opium grown in Mexico, as well as methamphetamine manufacturing, the cartels aren't fighting over production. They are battling to control the smuggling routes used to move drugs, including Colombian cocaine, into the United States...

The strategy of Mexico's leaders is to break the cartels into smaller pieces, as happened in Colombia, where local police in urban areas were better able to get a handle on street crime once the larger criminal organizations receded.

The assumption is that smaller drug operations would be better handled by state and local police, Shirk said. But it is not clear such a strategy will succeed, and institutional corruption presents a challenge...

But even if the Mexican government is successful in breaking up the big cartels, neither Mexican soldiers nor U.S. equipment and training are going to stop the demand for drugs, [former DEA regional director] Holifield said.

“The biggest lesson is for the U.S.,” he said. “And that is to stop using (drugs). Until that happens, nothing the U.S. does can prevent these people from doing this. There is absolutely no way to stop it.”
NPR: on top of that drug demand issue, US also arming Mexico, informally
The weapons and ammunition are being bought on the black market and at gun shows, but mostly from licensed dealers. Arizona and Texas make it especially easy to buy guns retail. Basically, any adult with a valid ID and no criminal record can buy as many as he or she wants...Authorities call the weapons smuggling trafico de la hormiga, or "ant traffic," because it's done in small steady shipments to avoid detection. And after all, the main mission of the customs service is not examining vehicles leaving the U.S....nearly 8,000 guns sold in America last year were traced to Mexico. That was more than double the number the year before.

Econ: Ortega as Somoza

WP: LTTE bomb Colombo, kill three and injure 48
The attack shows the apparent air power of the Tamil Tigers far from the northern war zone, where they are said to be boxed into a 34-square-mile sliver of the jungle, with government troops closing in.

AJE: riots claim lives in Bauchi, Nigeria
Several churches and mosques were set on fire in the violence on Saturday and at least 28 people were injured, but it was not immediately clear what triggered the unrest.

NYT: Latvian PM steps down, gov't dissolves over recession
BBC: 100,000 march in Dublin
Many are angry at plans to impose a pension levy on public sector workers.

Trade union organisers of the march said workers did not cause the economic crisis but were having to pay for it.

BBC: Bosnian Serbs ordered to pay for mosques destroyed between 1992-1995

Ind: German MP appointed to head new museum of expellees from Eastern Europe after WWII; Poland takes umbrage
Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, Poland’s special envoy on German affairs and a former foreign minister, summed up Warsaw’s objections to Mrs Steinbach’s planned appointment. “It is as if the Vatican had decided to give the Holocaust-denying Bishop [Richard] Williamson the task of overseeing its relations with Israel,” he said.

NYT: Guantánamo complies with Geneva Conventions, according to Pentagon report
Slate: (other) prison growth in the US
The United States has a prison population like nowhere else. With one out of every 100 adults behind bars, our incarceration rate is the highest in the entire world. Our inmates—1.5 million in prison, with another 800,000 in jail—comprise one-third of the world's total. This is a surprisingly recent development. After barely budging for 50 years, our incarceration rate increased sevenfold (to 738 per 100,000 people) between 1978 and 2008.

BBC: Italy implements new rape law
The decree sets a mandatory life sentence for the rape of minors or attacks where the victim is killed.

It also establishes rules for citizen street patrols to be conducted by unarmed and unpaid volunteers.

The number of sexual assaults fell last year, but three high-profile rapes last weekend sparked national outrage.

Many recent rapes have been blamed on foreigners, especially Romanians. Violent attacks on immigrants have since been reported.

Police say a mob of around 20 masked men beat up four Romanians outside a kebab restaurant in Rome on Sunday in an apparent vigilante attack.

The government has pointed to official statistics saying immigrants committed as many as 35% of crimes in Italy in 2007.

But analysts and opposition parties say many of these are related to breaches in immigration rules, and that foreigners have often been unfairly targeted amid a xenophobic backlash from right-wing politicians and the media.

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Slate: Q: does decapitation have a special meaning in Islam?
A: Yes, but it's important in other cultures, too. [eg, Mexican drug gang violence above.]

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Salon: Murakami accepts award in Israel
In most cases, it is virtually impossible to grasp a truth in its original form and depict it accurately. This is why we try to grab its tail by luring the truth from its hiding place, transferring it to a fictional location, and replacing it with a fictional form. In order to accomplish this, however, we first have to clarify where the truth lies within us. This is an important qualification for making up good lies...

I have only one reason to write novels, and that is to bring the dignity of the individual soul to the surface and shine a light upon it. The purpose of a story is to sound an alarm, to keep a light trained on the System in order to prevent it from tangling our souls in its web and demeaning them. I fully believe it is the novelist's job to keep trying to clarify the uniqueness of each individual soul by writing stories -- stories of life and death, stories of love, stories that make people cry and quake with fear and shake with laughter. This is why we go on, day after day, concocting fictions with utter seriousness.

NYT: resisting North Korean propaganda by parody

trapped [don't follow the leader]

WP: Gazan civilians are trapped
"As Israeli forces attacked Gaza by land, sea and air, residents living in the congested coastal strip faced a fateful question: Flee the shelling and shooting, or hole up inside their homes and hope for the best?"
NYT: sometimes there are no good options...
"The Samouni family knew they were in danger. They had been calling the Red Cross for two days, they said, begging to be taken out of Zeitoun, a poor area in eastern Gaza City that is considered a stronghold of Hamas. No rescuers came. Instead, Israeli soldiers entered their building late Sunday night and told them to evacuate to another building. They did. But at 6 a.m. on Monday, when a missile fired by an Israeli warplane struck the relatives’ house in which they had taken shelter, there was nowhere to run."
LAT: ...since missiles often fail to reach their intended target
WP: even areas of refuge aren't safe: at least 30 killed in UN school shelter
Gdn: (this story several hours before the bombing highlights the tragedy)
"Besides the schools in Jabaliya, three others have been turned into shelters in Gaza City, one in Rafah, in the south of the strip, and a handful of others scattered around. But Hasna says there will be more, although he is only marginally more confident than Khalil that the UN flag will provide protection.

"We depend on it being a UN installation with a big flag. We hope the Israelis will respect that. We are contacting them and telling them," he said."

WP: as death toll surpasses 550, Israel ignores European calls for ceasefire
LAT: Q&A on the sustained assault
NYT: reactions in the West Bank
"Fatah leaders are growing deeply worried over popular reaction and support for its rival, Hamas, to the point of crushing recent demonstrations.

There is also, after so many years of struggle, of Palestinian against Israeli and of Palestinian against Palestinian, no small degree of weariness with yet another deadly round. Even with the war in Gaza, there is no sign of a third intifada, or uprising, despite Hamas’s call for one.

“The people are tired,” said Jamal Fayez, who runs a modest restaurant in the city center...

[Others interviewed] said that support for Hamas would grow as this conflict went on, and that they were intimidated by the Palestinian security forces of Mr. Abbas and his appointed prime minister, Salam Fayyad — forces subsidized by the United States and trained by Jordan — which have cracked down on a series of demonstrations and banned the showing of the Hamas flag."
WP: repercussions in France...
CSM: ...and Arab states

LAT: meanwhile, Israel dealing with its own domestic issues: gang war is on
"An over-the-top gang war between Israeli crime families, complete with daylight bombings, bystander deaths and the occasional rocket attack, has laid bare the shortcomings of the country's formidable security apparatus...

Organized crime blossomed here in the 1980s and '90s while security forces were focused on Palestinian terrorist threats. By the time Israeli authorities truly began to grapple with the problem a few years ago, they faced a sophisticated global network of gambling, prostitution and drug trafficking, with Los Angeles as one of its hubs."

WP: speaking of urban warfare, Rio police apply some tactics to fight gangs
"The police have regularly launched large operations in Brazil's favelas, or slums, in their battle against drug gangs over the years, but authorities say the occupation of Santa Marta, a relatively small, contained neighborhood, is part of a new approach, a pilot project for the future of crime fighting in this violent city. Brazilian police officers are attempting counterinsurgency tactics similar to those used by U.S. soldiers in Iraq -- setting up small bases occupied around the clock inside violent neighborhoods, developing intelligence by living among their adversaries, and using government funds to rebuild broken areas and generate goodwill."
Gdn: which hasn't been so popular
"Authorities say the R$1m (£300,000) "eco-barrier", which will encircle part of the famous Dona Marta slum in southern part of the city, is intended to protect the nearby Atlantic rainforest from illegal occupation as well as improve security and living conditions for slum residents.

As tenders for construction of the 3-metre-high (10ft) wall opened yesterday, critics claimed the project was a form of "social apartheid", comparing it to ­Israel's security barrier."

WP: female suicide bomber kills 40 at Baghdad shrine
NYT: violence trends over time: better days, but still deadly ones

BBC: Taliban kills three in Pakistan for spying
Slate: ...the incident is not an isolated one

NYT: 6 years in Guantanamo

BBC: Nigerians get in on the piracy gig

WP: Ethiopia withdraws from Somalia
Econ: travelogue from the other side of the country, in border area with Kenya

AP: opposition leader declared winner in Ghana
"Ghana is now one of the few African countries to successfully transfer power twice from one legitimately elected leader to another. It made the transition to a mature democracy after experiencing years of coups in the 1970s and 1980s, and survived the closest presidential vote in its history with Atta Mills's win."

LAT: reconciliation efforts underway in Kenya after less successful election
"In a sun-drenched valley of central Kenya, a few dozen villagers gather each Saturday to sit under the trees and conduct the painstaking work of reconciliation that their government leaders seem happy to avoid.

These traumatized victims of Kenya's post-election clashes meet to talk, pray, sing and -- they hope -- heal...

At most sessions, group members still segregate themselves by tribe. But singing, dancing and a touch of pragmatism have helped break the ice."
BBC: those government leaders, meanwhile, are in 'crisis talks'
"Our correspondent says tensions were heightened on Friday when President Kibaki approved the media law, which journalists say will muzzle the press.

Mr Odinga had asked the president to reconsider the measures, after it was bitterly opposed by journalists."

BBC: Congo CNDP rebels rebel against Nkunda
BBC: ...then take it back

LAT: Subcomandante Marcos makes an appearance
"In January 1994, the Zapatista guerrillas launched an offensive aimed at dramatizing the bleak living conditions, poverty and alienation of Mexico's indigenous population. They managed to seize control of several towns in Mexico's southernmost province, Chiapas, before the army beat them back into remote hills. It was over in less than two weeks.

Since then, the Zapatistas functioned as a largely political movement. A folk culture emerged around the masked Marcos, meanwhile, as he gave interviews, received visitors from around the world and saw dolls and T-shirts bearing his likeness. And although he and his followers brought attention to the plight of Mexican Indians and achieved some voice in local governments, Chiapas remains mired in poverty and violence."

WP: Ohio man could face Nazi crimes trial in Germany
Slate: reporting from the Holocaust archives
"This is the Central Names Index—CNI—which covers three rooms and includes 50 million references for 17.5 million victims."

New Yorker: the legacy of Arendt
Econ: and Huntington

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The Onion: Hallmark scientists discover three new emotions

mixing it up [don't call it a comeback]

WP: young men fleeing to avoid forced recruitment by rebels in East Congo
"I ran away with about 20 others my age," said Christophe Maombi, 27, who fled his rebel-held village of Rugari when he said rebels tried to march him into the bush. "There are so many weapons there. If they see a young boy, they just give him a weapon and tell him to fight."
AP: UN reports that army troops are raping women
WP: displaced also dispossessed
"As panicked thousands have abandoned villages across eastern Congo in recent months, the scale of looting that has followed has been massive, a crime reflecting the predatory culture pervading Congo since the Belgian colonizers perfected it decades ago.
The millions of minor thefts may pale in comparison to the more professional looting of eastern Congo's vast mineral wealth, which is helping to finance the conflict. Collectively, though, the thieving soldiers have set back an already economically marginal population by years, if not decades, making it even harder to reverse the effects of a conflict that threatens to destabilize the entire Central African region."
CSM: Nkunda's goals
BBC: Rwanda agrees to send troops to fight Hutu militias
BBC: Obasanjo to mediate on UN behalf

AP: Islamist rebels seize port city in Somalia
"On Wednesday, al-Shabab added the town of Merka, 56 miles (90 kilometers) from the capital, to its list of conquests after poorly paid government fighters simply ran away.
The group now controls most of the country's south, with the crucial exceptions of Mogadishu and Baidoa, where the parliament sits...
Al-Shabab was part of the Islamic militia that controlled Mogadishu and much of southern Somalia for six months in 2006 before Ethiopian troops arrived to drive them out with the tacit support of the United States.
The group quickly fractured into hardline and more moderate factions. Al-Shabab's hard-liners are at the heart of the insurgency, which has killed thousands of civilians caught up in roadside bombs, grenade attacks and mortar fire."

WP: Shining Path reemerges, reformed, in Peru
"After years in relative obscurity, the Shining Path, one of Latin America's most notorious guerrilla groups, is fighting the Peruvian military with renewed vigor, feeding on the profits of the cocaine trade and trying to win support from the Andean villagers it once terrorized, according to residents and Peruvian officials....
Experts said the guerrillas have renounced the brutal tactics espoused by their original leader, Abimael Guzmán, who was captured in 1992. Unlike Guzmán, who said 10 percent of the Peruvian population had to be assassinated for the Shining Path to take power, the new leaders tell their followers they must protect the villagers and instead target the military and anti-drug authorities.
In numbers, the guerrillas' ranks remain a fraction of their former size: 400 to 700 full-time fighters in the branch that insists on armed struggle, according to various estimates; in the low thousands if offshoots that call for more-peaceful political revolution are included. In ideology, they appear to have abandoned the strict Maoism that Guzmán preached and to have adopted a muddled form of communism that welcomes foreign investment and large international mining companies, among others, provided they treat their workers well."
WP: interesting side-report by the journalist looking for them
"The purpose of this excursion was to explore the territory of the Shining Path, the communist rebel group whose guerrillas have resumed fighting the Peruvian military. We would not find them. Neither, it seems, does anyone else who goes looking. Perhaps the most basic reason the Shining Path has been able to survive for 28 years and counting is that they are so hard to get to. Forget the mines and booby traps and tunnels, or the dense jungle or constant cloud-cover, there seems no better defense than these roads.
Road is not the right word. A few minutes outside of the Andean cities of central Peru, tires roll onto something closer to goat trails, shoulderless single-lane ruts of dirt and rock fragments hacked and blasted out of the near vertical mountain slopes...
Our ultimate destination was a place called Pukatoro, a copper mining camp of unknown size somewhere in the mountains. The maps we could find did not care to mark this settlement. But the Shining Path had found it, why couldn't we? At each cross-rut, or as close to it as we could find a shepherd or avocado farmer, we would stop and Willy would ask if we were on the right path. Most of them hadn't heard of Pukatoro."

LAT: fighting amnesty for those who killed priests in El Salvador in 1989

CSM: Brazil's anti-poverty program a success
"The world's first conditional cash transfer programs were introduced in Brazil in 1995 at the municipal level, and were implemented at a national level in Mexico the following year."

WP: tribal militias in Pakistan "between the devil and the deep sea"
"But, so far at least, the tribal militias have been no panacea. Instead, the use of the militias, known as lashkars, has set off a debate over whether such a strategy will contribute to a civil war in the northwest that could engulf all of Pakistan. Yet some tribal leaders say they have little choice but to fight their brothers, cousins and neighbors: The Pakistani military, they say, has threatened to bomb their villages if they do not battle the Taliban."

WP: more US troops requested for Afghanistan

CSM: changes in a Diyala town that switched sides from Al-Qaeda in Iraq to the US/Iraqi coalition
"In 2006 and 2007, no US or Iraqi troops made it along roads laced with bombs to this remote village of 300 Sunnis. AQI operated with impunity, publicly killing one man who opposed them, imposing strict new social rules, and forcing villagers into a pact to reject any US or Iraqi military presence.
When Sheikh Thamir returned with US and Iraqi forces in January, his neighbors at first rejected them, saying that AQI had warned days before that "collaborators" would die. After days of pushing – sometimes with tears in his eyes from fear – Sheikh Thamir prevailed, joyfully declaring that the "power [of the people] is bigger than what Al Qaeda was expecting."

When the men of Dulaim finally agreed to don fluorescent green reflective belts and man checkpoints, much of AQI's weapons and money traffic from the unruly east side of the Diyala River dried up.

It also turned Al Qaeda fully against the village.

"If we quit, Al Qaeda will kill us," says Talib Ali Hussein, an SOI guard with a rifle and sun-bleached sash at a checkpoint on the outskirts of Dulaim. The recent AQI ambush was "a message from Al Qaeda that 'We are still here.' The key thing is they want to kill us."
WP: draft terms of troop agreement between Iraq and US unacceptable to Sadr; he threatens to defect if approved

BBC: ceasefire hangs in the balance in Gaza

BBC: Burma imprisons more protesters from last year, total rises to 60

BBC: village remains contested in Georgia; after Russians pull out, South Ossetian militia enters

BBC: inmate in German jail mails himself to freedom; manhunt underway

retrospective
The Onion: 'Nation finally shitty enough to make social progress'
"Another contributing factor to Obama's victory, political experts said, may have been the growing number of Americans who, faced with the complete collapse of their country, were at last able to abandon their preconceptions and cast their vote for a progressive African-American."

The Onion (2001): Bush's visionary leadership paved the way [comedy becomes tragedy]
"Mere days from assuming the presidency and closing the door on eight years of Bill Clinton, president-elect George W. Bush assured the nation in a televised address Tuesday that "our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity is finally over."...

During the 40-minute speech, Bush also promised to bring an end to the severe war drought that plagued the nation under Clinton, assuring citizens that the U.S. will engage in at least one Gulf War-level armed conflict in the next four years.

"You better believe we're going to mix it up with somebody at some point during my administration," said Bush, who plans a 250 percent boost in military spending. "Unlike my predecessor, I am fully committed to putting soldiers in battle situations. Otherwise, what is the point of even having a military?"

On the economic side, Bush vowed to bring back economic stagnation by implementing substantial tax cuts, which would lead to a recession, which would necessitate a tax hike, which would lead to a drop in consumer spending, which would lead to layoffs, which would deepen the recession even further."

campaigns and last chances

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

anniversaries

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

lather. rinse. repeat.

africa
Ind: revenge and ethnic cleansing continue in Naivasha
"'We don't want bloodshed,' said Leonard Sindani. 'We want peace.' The crowd murmured its approval. 'But they must go. If they stay we will deal with them. There is no going back. This is the final plan.' The crowd roared its approval."
Gdn: military uses helicopters to protect refugees in Kenya
"Police said rubber bullets were fired from machine guns as the helicopters dived three or four times towards a crowd of more than 600 people brandishing machetes and clubs. Two police trucks prepared to evacuate the displaced Luos to safety."
Ind: opposition MP shot in Nairobi, where gang fighting continues in slums
Econ: map of the violence

Ind: fighting resumes in the Congo, breaking peace accord
"Tutsi fighters loyal to renegade General Laurent Nkunda and Pareco Mai Mai militia, who both signed a peace accord on Wednesday, blamed each other for the fighting around villages 70 km (44 miles) west of the town of Goma."

BBC: fighting in Mogadishu between insurgents and government forces; AU forces targeted as well

BBC: UN Darfur deployment will take all year

middle east
Gdn: militants killed in missile attack in North Waziristan, Pakistan
"US forces in neighbouring Afghanistan have fired missiles at militants on the Pakistani side of the border several times in recent years. Neither US nor Pakistani authorities officially confirm the attacks on Pakistani territory as they would constitute a violation of Pakistani sovereignty."
Gdn: child hostages released after shoot-out

Ind: analysis of the violence in Beirut
"Eight Shia Lebanese Muslims were killed in just two hours in the Mar Mikael district of the city in a shootout involving unknown assailants in – and this is the most sinister part of the carnage – the very streets where the 15-year Lebanese civil war broke out in 1975. Then it was a busload of Palestinians ambushed on their way home from the Tel el-Zaatar refugee camp. On Sunday night, it was a large group of Lebanese Muslims protesting against high prices and power cuts."

LAT: Gaza border breach sparks pro-Palestinian demonstrations in Egypt
"Mubarak's vast intelligence and security forces are attempting to prevent pro-Palestinian protests from erupting into sustained nationwide anti-government rallies. But the Muslim Brotherhood and Kifaya, Arabic for "Enough," an umbrella opposition group of leftists and nationalists, are determined to make just that happen. The Muslim Brotherhood has sponsored 80 demonstrations since Wednesday, when hundreds of thousands of Gazans began pouring into Egypt through a breached border wall."

NYT: 5 US soldiers die in Mosul ambush
"The attack on Monday underscored the grim situation in Mosul, Iraq’s northern hub, which remains a stronghold for Sunni extremist fighters...a powerful blast shook the city last Wednesday as Iraqi soldiers entered a building packed with thousands of pounds of explosives. The Iraqi Red Crescent Organization reported that at least 60 people had been killed and 280 wounded, mostly children, women and the elderly. The attack enraged residents, who were furious at government leaders for failing to protect them. The next morning, when the provincial police chief visited the site of the blast, he was stoned by a crowd of angry people who had been digging bodies of relatives from the rubble. As he tried to leave, he was assassinated by a suicide bomber."
Newsweek: Zakaria says the war's over and the mission should switch to peacekeeping
Slate: Bush dissembles about troop reductions
"President Bush said the proof of our strategy's success is that 'more than 20,000 of our troops are coming home.' (The congressional crowd went wild with applause.) These are the 20,000 troops that were sent over as part of the surge. The simple fact is that, by the summer, the 15-month deployment tours of the last of these surge brigades will have run out. There are no brigades ready to replace them. So, they will come home—and this would have been the case, no matter what had happened in the past year. The surge has always been short-term; that's why they called it a surge...Don't bet on any more troops coming home for good before Christmas. And if a reduction from 160,000 to 140,000 puts the situation back on the precipice, below which further cuts trigger disaster, then the situation cannot be considered at all stable."
LAT: the real estate market in Baghdad prices some out
NYT blog: global governance: Iraq signs on to Kyoto treaty

BBC: car bomb in Algeria kills 2
"That attack was claimed by al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, which was behind a string of similar bombings last year."

asia
Gdn: opposition leaders in Burma face 7 years in prison for fall demonstrations

Ind: new prime minister, a "celebrity chef," elected in Thailand

europe
BBC: Russia restricts election monitors
NYT: Gorbachev criticizes Kremlin
"...the final leader of the Soviet Union, sharply criticized the state of Russia’s electoral system in remarks published Monday and called for extensive reforms to a system that has secured power for President Vladimir V. Putin and the Kremlin’s inner circle."

Gdn: EU dangles incentives for Serbian electorate: trade and travel

NYT: 75th anniversary of Hitler's assumption of power tomorrow

americas
BBC: Fujimori on trial for ordering massacres during COIN against Shining Path; former death squad member testifies

BBC: FARC leader Ricardo Palmera, alias Simon Trinidad, sentenced to 60 years in the US for kidnapping 3 US contractors

Slate: shocker: Bush doesn't demonstrate learning in his cut-and-paste State of the Union
"Does he believe that the violent battles for power in these lands really come down to freedom vs. tyranny? If so, no wonder this government has had such a hard time getting a handle on these dangers, much less trying to engage them...It is a horrible shame, a dreadful legacy of this administration, that the majority of people in so many once-allied (or at least not-unfriendly) nations, particularly in the Middle East and Asia, regard America as a bigger threat than Iran and Osama Bin Laden. To think seriously about why these views exist, to address the perception in a serious way, doesn't mean accepting their validity. Not to think seriously about this question is to perpetuate our bad image and diminish our real security."

misc
Slate: beauty and regimes, or: where did all the hot tennis players come from?

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]