speak easy [but keep the mask on]

AP: heavy fighting in Congo, despite Nkunda's ceasefire pledge
"The two sides battled Sunday night in Rwindi, about 75 miles (125 kilometers) north of the eastern provincial capital of Goma. About 150 people took refuge outside a U.N. peacekeeping base here, huddling beside a white shipping container as mortar shells and artillery fire rained down.

"These blue helmets would not let us inside, but it's better than nothing," said Clement Elias, 20, referring to the U.N. peacekeepers. He said he heard 100 explosions Sunday night."

BBC: Swazi opposition leader arrested on terrorism charges

WP: US bans masks for Iraqi interpreters
"Many Iraqis, however, fear the relative calm won't last long. To them, ordering interpreters to work without masks suggests that some top U.S. officials are taking an unrealistically rosy view of the security situation in Baghdad, which remains a dangerous city.

Many interpreters lead double lives. Even among close friends at work, many don't disclose their identities or neighborhoods. The Mahdi Army, the armed group led by anti-American Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, collects and distributes photos of interpreters working with U.S. troops, A.J. and a colleague, Maximus, said.

"If anyone has a picture of your face, they pass it on to another area," said Maximus, 28, who has worked with the military on and off since 2003. "We can't work for the U.S. Army if we don't wear a mask. If they recognize our face, they're going to kill our families."

WP: Baghdad's singing parties
"Hidden away in the basement of a Sheraton hotel, this "singing party" brings to mind a 1920s speakeasy. It is a party no one talks about but everyone knows about. Such affairs were common in the days of Saddam Hussein and resumed in Baghdad about four months ago, with certain adjustments for the war that intervened. For one thing, partygoers at the Sheraton can't leave the hotel compound until 5 a.m., when curfew ends."

LAT: Salafists form unlikely alliance in Lebanon
"Lebanon's Salafists, often equated with terrorists in much of the Arab world, have teamed with Saad Hariri and his mainstream Future Movement to become part of the country's political order...

Like most of Lebanon's Sunnis, Salafists are largely staunch supporters of parliamentary leader Hariri, whose Future Movement is part of the U.S.-backed March 14 coalition of Sunni, Christian and Druze political organizations opposed to a mostly Shiite Muslim and Christian alliance backed by Syria and Iran.

Hariri has tapped the Salafists' grass-roots social and religious network and strong community ties as a means to build up his base for parliamentary elections in May.

But Hariri, son of slain former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, makes for an awkward fit for Lebanon's increasingly pious Sunni public. Although Salafists dream of reviving a medieval caliphate, the 38-year-old Hariri appears to be a liberal democrat."

Ind: animated documentary revisits 1982 massacre in Lebanon by Israeli troops
"The killings by Phalangist militiamen dispatched into the camps by Israel came after their leader, Bashir Gemayel, president-elect of Lebanon, was assassinated in a bombing wrongly blamed on Palestinians. An Israeli state commission of inquiry set up as a result of a tide of public protest in the massacre's wake found that Mr Sharon, today comatose from a stroke nearly three years ago, bore "personal responsibility" for not having foreseen the danger that the Phalangists would commit the slaughter...Lebanon, for its part, has never seriously investigated the massacre.

The film has been widely acclaimed in Israel. One reviewer, Eitan Weitz, writing for the website Parshan (Commentator), termed it "required viewing" for those aged 16 and 17 nearing their mandatory military service, for army reservists in their thirties and for mothers of soldiers."

NYT: ETA leader arrested in France
"[Mr. Aspiazu] is also believed to have ordered the December, 2006, bombing of a parking lot at Madrid’s Barajas International Airport that killed two people and ended peace talks between the Spanish government and ETA, the spokeswoman said. Mr. Aspiazu was born in 1973, according to Spanish press reports, and came up through the ranks of ETA from the militant Basque youth movement that is behind street violence and vandalism that plague many Basque towns. His age and apparent standing in ETA would be consistent with what Spanish security officials describe as a military command structure that is increasingly composed of young militants."

Econ: Estonia's past and present

Econ: bloodiest day-long battles in (western) history

BBC: drug violence in Mexico continues, claims more lives in Tijuana
"The murders happened just hours after at least 1,000 people marched through Tijuana to demand an end to violence.

The city, on the US-Mexico border, has seen more than 600 murders this year.

Across Mexico, more than 4,000 people have died in drug-related violence in 2008, as gangs fight each other and the security forces.

Correspondents say the surge in violence is related in part to the successes the Mexican authorities have had in recent months in arresting key members of the powerful drug cartels."
NYT: wealthy Mexicans purchase private security (or leave the country)

BBC: voters flock to polls in Indian-administered Kashmir, despite boycott called by separatists
"Security is tight across the state with armed soldiers and policemen deployed on every road and at almost every junction in the Muslim-majority Kashmir valley.

Half a million troops are providing a massive security blanket.

Over the summer hundreds of thousands of Kashmiri Muslims staged some of the biggest protests in a generation against Indian-rule.

The row began after the state government allotted a plot of land to a Hindu religious shrine trust.

Following violent protests, the government revoked the land transfer order.

This led to violent protests in the [mostly Hindu] Jammu region too.

Police broke up the demonstrations in the valley and the Jammu region and dozens of people were killed, many of them unarmed protesters.

The authorities have jailed or put under house arrest up to 100 separatist leaders who have called for a boycott of the vote."

++
McSweeney's: dance dance revolution

collective (in)action [fire up the bat signal]

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

chucky on trial [not enough hugging]

Rolling Stone: Chucky Taylor - son of Charles - on trial in Miami for torturing in Liberia
"In the midst of this reign of terror, Chucky was among the most feared men in the country. Only 25, he created and commanded the Anti-Terrorist Unit, the president's personal security force — a source of such pride that Chucky had the group's emblem, a crest of a hissing cobra and a scorpion, tattooed on his chest...Only a decade earlier, Chucky had been an American teenager growing up in a modest, two-story brick house with his mother and stepfather in a parched subdivision of Orlando, a short drive from Disney World. He had come of age in a strip-mall landscape of payday loan shops and an endless parade of fast-food joints...Today, as his father stands trial for war crimes at the U.N.'s court in The Hague, Chucky Taylor sits in the Federal Detention Center in Miami. On September 15th, he will face trial as the first civilian in American history to be charged with committing torture abroad."

Gdn: mutiny in the air: Mugabe's aids hold secret meeting with South African delegation to discuss defecting
"Some of President Robert Mugabe's senior aides have had secret negotiations with South African mediators in an effort to secure amnesties from any future prosecution in return for supporting regime change in Zimbabwe."

BBC: Angola's elections criticized; MPLA looks to win landslide

WP: Kenya's delicate stability
"Nearly eight months after a wave of post-election violence brought one of East Africa's most stable democracies to the brink of collapse, it is almost as if there had been no crisis. And that is what troubles some Kenyans the most."

NYT: Swaziland's king too ostentatious for some (but at least there aren't any messy elections)
"His countrymen wanted His Majesty to be happy, but some also thought so many spouses were an extravagance for a poor, tiny nation. After all, the king, Mswati III, often provided these wives a retinue, a palace and a new BMW."

New Yorker: maybe the king has a modern Machiavelli

WP: excerpts from Woodward's 'The War Within': debating the surge, and its effects
"At least three other factors were as important as, or even more important than, the surge. These factors either have not been reported publicly or have received less attention than the influx of troops. Beginning in the late spring of 2007, the U.S. military and intelligence agencies launched a series of top-secret operations that enabled them to locate, target and kill key individuals in groups such as al-Qaeda in Iraq, the Sunni insurgency and renegade Shia militias, or so-called special groups... A second important factor in the lessening of violence was the so-called Anbar Awakening, in which tens of thousands of Sunnis turned against al-Qaeda in Iraq and signed up with U.S. forces. Al-Qaeda in Iraq had made a strategic mistake in the province, overplaying its hand... A third significant break came Aug. 29, when militant Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr ordered his powerful Mahdi Army to suspend operations, including attacks against U.S. troops. Petraeus and others knew it was not an act of charity."
WP: inside an operation against an al-Qaeda in Iraq leader
"By the time he was captured last month, the man known among Iraqi insurgents as "the Tiger" had lost much of his bite. Abu Uthman, whose fierce attacks against U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians in Fallujah had earned him a top spot on Iraq's most-wanted list, had been reduced to shuttling between hideouts in a Baghdad slum, hiding by day for fear neighbors might recognize him."

NYT: reporter says evidence backs Afghan claims of enormous civilian death toll in US attack

IndiaExpress: Pakistan's new president...and the elusive balancing of institutions
"Last but not least, where would the centre of gravity lie? This is Pakistan’s g-spot. There’s much talk about it but it is difficult to locate. Here’s an attempt." (HT: ps)

BBC: peace process in the Philippines off the rails
The Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) in Mindanao launches attacks after Court blocks peace agreement:
"With perhaps half a million people displaced and some hundreds killed, observers now concur that two MILF commanders - Kato and Bravo - did launch attacks in Lanao del Norte and North Cotabato.
The MILF leadership has blamed the attacks on what it calls these two "renegade" commanders, but refuses to hand them over."

LAT: (former) paramilitary groups in Colombia still control commerce in northern border with Venezuela
"The Black Eagles and other gangs now control much of the cross-border trade that was once the exclusive province of the Wayuu [indigenous group], including incoming Venezuelan gasoline, groceries and dry goods and outgoing Colombian sugar and dairy products."
NYT: Colombia's (wealthy sections of) cities become more cosmopolitan as rural development lags, violence lingers

LAT: brutal revenge in Mexico's war on drugs

LAT: rifts in Bolivia extend to former allies
"[indigenous activitist] Cuellar, an ardent advocate of the capital switch [from La Paz to Sucre], broke with the government. The opposition turned to her as an alternative to head Chuquisaca province, of which Sucre is the capital. She won the governor's seat handily against a Morales surrogate, getting overwhelming backing from the urban, educated middle class and elite, mostly of mixed-race and European origins."

Gdn: the real-life wire
"It seems that in Baltimore, one of the most violent cities in America, jurors are far more reluctant to convict criminal defendants than in the suburban enclaves that ring the city."

BBC: maybe we should just hug it out