experimenting with order [try a little tenderness]

WP: US changing tactics in Iraq
"With violence down sharply this year, the U.S. military is broadening its efforts to reconcile Sunnis and Shiites, reintegrate former insurgents into society and repair the rift between residents and their government...The U.S. reconciliation campaign includes some major projects, but much of the American effort is decentralized, consisting of reconstruction programs, peace marches and meetings with rival tribal leaders over platters of rice and lamb. In many cases, soldiers are making up the details as they go along...

Lt. Col. Monty Willoughby, 42, has had to figure out how to keep the peace in an area of northwestern Baghdad that was previously a hotbed of Sunni insurgents. He became worried last spring when U.S. commanders announced a plan to release thousands of Iraqis detained for alleged ties to insurgents.

"We're like, man, how are we going to keep these guys from falling back into it?" asked Willoughby, an earnest, freckled officer from Clever, Mo., who commands the 4th Squadron of the 10th Cavalry Regiment, which is attached to the 101st Airborne.

Willoughby decided he needed someone to help the detainees reenter society. And that is how a squadron of macho U.S. infantrymen and gung-ho tankers came to hire their first professional nurturer...

[nuturer] Kashmoola and his fellow managers line up housing as well as jobs or training programs. Then the managers check up on the men to ensure they stay out of trouble.

On a recent sunny Thursday, Kashmoola and Willoughby attended a detainee release ceremony on the lawn of a blue-domed mosque. The U.S. military has made these into gala affairs, with flag-waving crowds and speeches from Muslim leaders and Iraqi army officers. The 48 newly freed men were handed gift-wrapped bags of chocolates by U.S. soldiers who a year ago might have flex-cuffed them...

The Army issued a field manual last month on "stability operations" to guide its troops in facilitating reconciliation and providing essential services. It was produced after the Department of Defense in 2005 elevated "stability operations" to the same level in its doctrine as offensive and defensive operations...

Building support for government institutions is a key part of the U.S. military's pacification effort in Iraq. In Willoughby's area of northwestern Baghdad, for example, American troops have cleaned out sewers, rebuilt schools and put in a swimming pool.

"As you, as a citizen, are looking on, you've got to say, 'It's nice to live here,' " Willoughby said. If insurgents return, the U.S. officers hope, Iraqis will consider what they have to lose.

It can be difficult to assess the effectiveness of some of the American programs. Hickman's soldiers, for example, have helped organize soccer games between Sunni and Shiite neighborhoods, providing the young players with T-shirts or uniforms.

The matches aren't billed as peace events, he said, but the parents mingle, re-creating an atmosphere that existed before the invasion. The games draw them from neighborhoods divided by giant blast walls and painful memories of sectarian warfare."

NYT: 10,000 Sadr supporters protest US-Iraqi troop agreement in Baghdad
"A spokesman for Mr. Sadr in Baghdad said his followers opposed the security agreement because they did not believe assurances that the Americans would leave."

NYT: historical headlines on troop agreements past
"In a treaty signed on Oct. 10, 1922, Britain agreed to prepare the country for independence. But the treaty postponed discussion of exactly how this would happen, and effectively prolonged Britain’s mandate under another form for at least 20 years (a period later reduced)."

NYT: photos from the Congo, Iraq, and Afghanistan

WP: UN security council approves immediate deployment of 3,100 peacekeepers to the Congo
"The 15-nation council urged the leadership of the U.N.'s largest peacekeeping mission -- which has faced criticism for failing to defend civilians -- to forcefully implement its mandate. But the council has ignored appeals by the U.N.'s special representative in Congo, Alan Doss, to send a heavily armed multinational force to help restore stability.

Doss cautioned this week that U.N. reinforcements, while welcome, would not be sufficient to restore peace in a region the size of France. He said any durable peace would have to be reached in political talks led by the U.N.'s special envoy, former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo, between the rebels and the Congolese government."

NYT: Mai Mai militias complicate the conflict
"The Mai Mai are the third piece to eastern Congo’s violent puzzle, with the rebels on one side, the government forces on the other and the Mai Mai often terrorizing the uncontrolled areas in between. With their guns, leaf headdresses and special potions that many fighters believe make bullets bounce off them, they are a surreal — but still deadly — dimension to Congo’s civil wars.

The Mai Mai insist that they are Congo’s true patriots, but it is questionable how much influence they wield — most villagers call them crooks and they tend to lose their battles. In the past few weeks, they have emerged as spoilers, fighting on when the other armed groups have agreed to stop. The Mai Mai now seem to have a beef with just about everybody: the rebels (whom they clashed with on Thursday); United Nations peacekeepers (whom they clashed with on Wednesday); and Congolese government troops (whom they clashed with on Tuesday)...

There are thousands of Mai Mai fighters in dozens of loosely connected Mai Mai groups scattered across Congo. The movement started decades ago when Congolese communities formed militias to protect themselves and tapped into local customs as a way to inspire the fighters. The term “mai mai” refers to maji, the Kiswahili word for water, because many of the Mai Mai fighters grease themselves up with a mixture of palm oil and holy water before stepping on the battlefield. Often the emollient — and some homemade necklaces — is all they wear...

Many of the Mai Mai militias in other parts of Congo have agreed to disarm. But in eastern Congo, the Mai Mai seem increasingly restless."

LAT: brief respite in Goma in history of hard times
"In a sign of how bad things are, Goma's residents now say that life under brutal Congolese dictator Mobutu Sese Seko is seen as the "good old days."

Then, this eastern Congolese border town [of 600,000] was looked at as the Switzerland of Africa, envied for its natural beauty, stability and prosperity. A vast agricultural industry of coffee, tea, potatoes, beans and cheese fed not only Congo, but the entire region. Gold and tin mines pumped the local economy. Tourism flourished thanks to lush parks and a nearby population of several hundred mountain gorillas.

The relative idyll began unraveling with the 1994 genocide in neighboring Rwanda, when bodies clogged Lake Kivu and millions of refugees fled here, trampling Congolese farmland, depleting resources and bringing cholera and other epidemics.

Then Goma became a launching pad for two civil wars, one of which escalated into a regional conflict known as Africa's First World War. The most recent estimates put the war's death toll at 5 million, mostly due to disease and malnutrition, with many of the fatalities in Goma.

Finally, when peace seemed around the corner, Mt. Nyiragongo exploded in 2002, engulfing half the town in ash and lava and killing as many as 100 people.

Today farms lie fallow and 1 in 10 people rely on international food aid. Mines still thrive, but three-fourths of the profits line the pockets of rival militias and illicit foreign-owned businesses. Tourism long ago disappeared.

Surviving in Goma, residents say, requires a combination of fatalism and pragmatism, accepting that their future is largely out of their hands but keeping a suitcase packed...

An explosion in rapes is another side effect, Butsitsi said. Thousands of women have been sexually attacked in eastern Congo over the last five years, one of the worst records worldwide."

Ind: carving out a parallel state
"Inside General Nkunda's territory the markets are starting to operate again, there are uniformed police and there are plans for an anthem and a flag. There are also – officials insist – no refugees or displaced people. Around the town of Rutshuru that recently sheltered nearly 15,000 refugees, there is little or no sign that they were ever there. Dumes camp which housed 4,000 people last month has been razed, its clinics dismantled."

Econ: options for negotiation
"The simplest way forward would appear to be the reintegration of Mr Nkunda and his National Congress for the Defence of the People into Congo’s security structures. But the price would almost certainly be too high. Mr Nkunda wants the Congolese president, Joseph Kabila, to grant him a principality in eastern Congo, a sinecure in Kinshasa and the disarming of the Hutu militias he accuses of attacking Tutsis."

WP: ICC seeking warrants for 3 rebels in Darfur, accused of war crimes for killing AU peacekeepers in September


WP: NIC predicts rise of state-run capitalism in multipolar world
"It is not a prediction," [Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Analysis] Fingar said. "Nothing that we have identified in this report is determinative. Nothing in it is inevitable or immutable. These are trends and developments and drivers that are subject to policy intervention and manipulation."

LAT: judge orders release of 5 Guantanamo prisoners
"A federal judge ruled here for the first time Thursday that the Bush administration had no basis for holding several of its long-term prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and he ordered that five of the Algerian natives go free."


Gdn: tensions still high in Nicaragua over disputed election
"Sandinista supporters armed with machetes, rocks and home-made mortars snuffed out opposition protests earlier this week, leaving dozens injured. For much of the trouble police were notably absent.

A tense calm descended on the capital when the opposition withdrew from the fray and vowed to challenge the results in the national assembly, setting the scene for weeks of political wrangling and fears of renewed flare-ups."

LAT: drug violence flares in Sinaloa
"Sinaloa, a fertile state on the Pacific coast, has long been at the center of Mexico's drug trade. It has become a hub of violence since President Felipe Calderon dispatched an army of soldiers and federal police to take on some of the biggest drug lords.

The alarming level of violence -- shootouts and kidnappings almost every day -- has sown panic and fear among a normally resilient citizenry."

BBC: Syrian weapons dealer convicted of trafficking arms to the FARC

BBC: "Hindu terrorism" debate in India

WP: grenade kills protester in Bangkok; demonstrations continue
"The dispute between the predominantly urban, middle-class demonstrators and the government, which was voted into power last year with the backing of millions of Thailand's rural poor, has paralyzed the country's political process and gouged deep political divisions between the rural and urban populations.
The demonstrators have ruled out any compromise, vowing to maintain their protest until the government is forced out of office."


Econ: new UK law to punish johns attempts to tackle trafficking
"Most prostitution [in the UK], which is legal, is consensual. But worries about abuse are rising. Performed behind closed curtains and often by people who fear to seek help, prostitution has always been a job in which exploitation is possible. Now, like most unappealing, low-paid occupations, it is increasingly carried out by immigrants: eight out of ten London prostitutes are foreigners, police think. Isolated, lacking knowledge of English or the law and sometimes trafficked by criminal gangs, the new arrivals are especially vulnerable. In the past two years police have rescued 251 women whom they believe were trafficked to Britain for sexual slavery.

The situation is shameful, but the proposal the government unveiled this week—to make those buying sex liable to criminal charges if it subsequently emerges that the prostitute was controlled for another person’s gain—is no way to remedy it. This newspaper tends toward a liberal view of these matters, but even those who do not will find this amber light a waste of space. Better by far either to criminalise outright the purchase of sex or to legalise it and regulate what ensues."

BBC: testifying against the Camorra
"The Camorra kills someone on average every three days, so I only have to stop a random person on the street to find someone who has witnessed a murder first hand and ask if they gave their testimony to the police.

"No, no, no," one woman tells me, "I would be afraid, no-one talks about this."

She tells me the murder she saw took place at nine in the morning in a crowded square, and no-one talked to the police."

Econ: experimenting with disorder and behavior
"The tendency for people to behave in a particular way can be strengthened or weakened depending on what they observe others to be doing. This does not necessarily mean that people will copy bad behaviour exactly, reaching for a spray can when they see graffiti. Rather, says Dr Keizer, it can foster the “violation” of other norms of behaviour...The researchers’ conclusion is that one example of disorder, like graffiti or littering, can indeed encourage another, like stealing."

++
Slate: a new translation of the Quran
"The new crop of Quran translators are brushing aside centuries of traditionalist, male-dominated, and often misogynistic clerical interpretations in favor of a more contemporary, more individualized, and often more gender-friendly approach to the Quran. In the process, they are not only reshaping the way Islam's holy book is read; they are reinterpreting the way Islam itself is being understood in the modern world."

++
NYT (Brooks): Brooks tips off terrorists, Sarah Palin
"If a foreign enemy attacks the United States during the Harvard-Yale game any time over the next four years, we’re screwed." (ht: steve shewfelt)

people, calm down. przeworksi's threshold still in effect [pirates and prostitutes come up big]

NYT: David Brooks searches the capital for "leadership" and "authority", comes up short
"I’ve spoken with several House Republicans over the past few days and most admirably believe in free-market principles. What’s sad is that they still think it’s 1984. They still think the biggest threat comes from socialism and Walter Mondale liberalism. They seem not to have noticed how global capital flows have transformed our political economy."
Wonkette: but Mr Brooks hasn't gotten the memo: it's all over [but hey, still outlasted the commies]
"Well, shit. Fun while it lasted, right? For us, anyways — the elites who had the MacBooks and iPhones and flat-screen teevees and cars and hot water and, uh, food. Pretty much sucked for the other 5 billion, but whatever, it’s all academic now. Ha, not really, because there will be no more academics."

NYT: pirates unaffected by economic crisis
Gdn: but facing their own crisis of leadership - arrgh (since when do pirates use guns instead of planks?)
"Three Somali pirates have been shot dead during an argument over what to do with a hijacked Ukrainian ship and its cargo of 33 tanks, a maritime group said today."
NYT: and, the Navy's on their tail

Slate: high-end prostitutes find niche in crumbling economy: comforting the losers
Slate: could be an omitted variable in the 'why aren't more bankers jumping out windows' analysis

BBC: oh, ohio. get it right this time.

this announcement will self-destruct

WP: the 5-year anniversary of the accomplished mission (for some sailors on a ship at that moment not really the war in general and the whole thing has been taken out of context and the president really was aware that a strategy for occupying Iraq and preventing insurgency and sectarian warfare was essential, so when he said "end of combat operations," he meant for a small group of people on that particular deployment. on that day. sheesh.)
"Now, after half a trillion dollars and the deaths of 4,000 troops and tens of thousands of Iraqis, the president's spin doctors have waved the white flag of surrender over the USS Abraham Lincoln episode. "President Bush is well aware that the banner should have been much more specific, and said mission accomplished for these sailors who are on this ship on their mission," White House press secretary Dana Perino told reporters this week."
WP: The problem, sources tell us, is that White House planners couldn't figure out how to get all that on the sign in letters large enough for people to read on television.
Gdn: British don't think mission is accomplished yet in Basra, or will be anytime soon
Gdn: Turkey bombs Kurdish targets in Iraq

New Yorker: wire-tapping gone haywire

BBC: press freedom in the world, touch and go
Gdn: freedom gained for one Al-Jazeera camerman, after imprisonment for 6 years without charges in Guantánamo

CSM: building the police force in Afghanistan
"Unlike the Army, in which the public has much confidence, the police have been seen as weak, ineffectual, and corrupt."

Ind: Gaza in the line of fire
Gdn: and under blockade; Israel pressured to ease up

Ind: car bomber in Yemen kills 6 outside mosque in Saada
"It was not known who planted the bomb near the door of the mosque, but the northwestern province has been rocked by sporadic violence since a conflict broke out in 2004 between government forces and rebels loyal to Abdul-Malik al-Houthi.
Hundreds of people have been killed and thousands have fled their homes in Saada since the conflict began.
Seven Yemeni troops were killed late on Tuesday in an ambush by the rebels, who often clash with troops of the U.S.-allied Yemeni government and tribes loyal to it.
Yemeni officials say the rebels, from the Zaydi sect of Shi'ite Islam, want to return to a form of clerical rule prevalent in the country until the 1960s. The rebels say they are defending their villages against what they call government aggression.
Sunni Muslims form a majority of Yemen's 19 million population, while most of the rest, including Houthi and his supporters, are Zaydis."

LAT: Ecuador overhauls military
"Correa is expected to appoint a seven-member commission in the next several days to look into what he says is possible CIA infiltration of his military's intelligence.
The military's exalted status under Ecuadorean law is expected to change with the new constitution that Correa's legislative allies are drafting in a special assembly, which will be put to a national vote...
After Ecuador emerged from military dictatorships in 1979, defense ministers were either active-duty or retired military commanders. That changed under Correa; since taking office last year, he has named only civilian defense ministers."

BBC: Santa Cruz moving forward with referendum on autonomy from Bolivia

BBC: Taylor had $5 billion in US banks during rule

BBC: US announces new sanctions against Burma

BBC: sex workers in Calcutta get life insurance

LAT: gay rights in Nepal
"In less than a decade, [activist] Pant's Blue Diamond Society has scaled massive heights in a nation known mostly as the home of Mt. Everest. Despite deep-seated social conservatism, the group has won a landmark Supreme Court anti-discrimination ruling, chalked up support for gay rights from two of the biggest political parties and garnered international accolades...An extraordinary week in 2004 catapulted his cause to the center of public attention. Even conservative Nepalese who don't approve of homosexuality were horrified by the actions of a policeman who slit the throat of a transgendered person after forcing her to perform oral sex. When 39 members of the Blue Diamond Society were arrested at a protest a few days later, sympathetic media coverage and international outrage stung the government."
BBC: residents of Lesbos, in Greece, take gay rights group to court over word lesbian
"The islanders say that if they are successful they may then start to fight the word lesbian internationally.
The issue boils down to who has the right to call themselves Lesbians. Is it gay women, or the 100,000 people living on Greece's third biggest island - plus another 250,000 expatriates who originate from Lesbos?"

checkpoints

NYT: heavy fighting with Shiite militias in Baghdad and southern cities, especially in Basra
"A British Army spokesman for southern Iraq, Maj. Tom Holloway, said that while Western forces had not entered Basra, the operation already involved nearly 30,000 Iraqi troops and police forces, with more arriving. 'They are clearing the city block by block,' Major Holloway said...Sadr City, the Baghdad neighborhood that is the center of the Mahdi Army’s power, was sealed off by a cordon of Iraqi troops and what appeared to be several American units. A New York Times photographer who was able to get through the cordon found more layers of checkpoints, each one run by about two dozen heavily armed Mahdi Army fighters clad in tracksuits and T-shirts...Basra, which until 2005 enjoyed relative peace, has since been riven by power struggles among the Mahdi Army and local Shiite rivals, like the Badr Organization and a militia controlled by the Fadhila political party, a group that split from the Sadr party."
LAT: potential preview of election cycle violence
"The U.S. military says it is targeting rogue elements of Sadr's militia who continue to attack its forces, allegedly with Iranian backing, though Tehran denies the charges. Sadr loyalists accuse his Shiite rivals in the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council and Maliki's Islamic Dawa Party of using the Iraqi army and police to round up the cleric's followers ahead of the elections."
LAT: summary of the main Shiite factions
WP: Maliki gives militias 72 hours to stop fighting; rockets hit Green Zone in Baghdad

Gdn: Islamic Courts briefly seize Jowhar, Somalia

Gdn: Mugabe makes opposition eat campaign posters

Ind: behind the coup in the Comoros (ok, it's not really a coup, but SV favors alliteration)

Gdn: (slide show) Congo's displaced people

WP: violence in Sri Lanka escalates; famous monk advocates a "military solution"

WP: 1,000 arrested in Tibet protests

WP: US intelligence estimates to become more rigorous in attempt to regain credibility
(though it could be argued the NIE was only reflecting the executive, will rebound in Jan 2009)

jurisdiction, smurisdiction
LAT: US Supreme Court pushes back against executive power (so Texas can implement the death penalty unimpeded)
Slate: but seems ok with the executive denying habeas corpus to citizens held by "multinational forces"

WSJ: Black funeral parlors facing violence during services

Slate: apparently suicide bombers shave their bodies before attacks

BBC: sex workers' workshop canceled by Ugandan gov't

protests that would make st. pat proud

LAT: Tibetan protests, Chinese repression like whack-a-mole
"The Chinese have deployed thousands of troops from the paramilitary People's Armed Police and the People's Liberation Army. But just as soon as the troops stamp out one protest, another pops up...The violence was seeping outside Tibet proper into parts of Gansu, Qinghai and Sichuan provinces with large ethnic Tibetan minorities."
WP: Chinese actions appear to have popular support
"The Dalai Lama, now 72, led a violent uprising with help from the Central Intelligence Agency after Chinese troops reimposed rule from Beijing in 1950. The subversion campaign failed, and he was forced in 1959 to flee on horseback to India, where he has lived in exile for half a century. It was to mark the anniversary of his dramatic flight over the Himalayas that anti-China demonstrations in Lhasa got started last Monday...
Tibet, a 750,000-square-mile territory sitting between the Himalayan and Kun Lun mountain ranges, was more or less part of various Chinese empires over the centuries, paying fealty but often too remote to be totally controlled. With the Dalai Lama as its leader, however, Tibet governed itself as an independent nation while China was torn by the upheavals of the first half of the 20th century. So for Beijing officials and the public they have educated through propaganda, the Dalai Lama is less a devout Buddhist than a secessionist rebel."

Gdn: Serbs take court in Kosovo, clash with UN forces
"Mitrovica's 40,000 Serbs are militantly opposed to Kosovan independence and, backed by Belgrade, they are bent on partitioning the province and taking over the police and judicial institutions in the north."

NYT: decision to disband military taken by Bremer and Bush without consultation
NYT: (op-ed) Bremer doesn't think that's his biggest mistake
NYT: (op-ed) it wasn't Perle's fault either
WP: at Congressional hearing, representatives debate the obligations of the US gov't to Iraqi refugees and IDPs
WP: Dick "the Liberator" Cheney goes to collect long-overdue flowers in person
Gdn: soldiers speaking at Iraq Veterans against the War forum know better

IHT: Shariah and (Western) rule of law

BBC: new parliament opens in Pakistan

WP: violence in Kenya's Rift Valley organized by opposition, says HRW report
"'This was not done by ordinary citizens, it was arranged by people with money,' said one young man who took part in the attacks, according to the report. 'They brought the jobless like me. We need something to eat each day.'"

Ind: ivory funds warlords in the DRC, Sudan and Chad, Somalia
BBC: violence in usually (relatively) stable western DRC
Bundu Dia Kongo challenges central state authority; police are trying to disband its militia

Gdn: (book excerpt) marijuana trade in Canada
BBC: coca and cocaine labs discovered in Brazilian Amazon for first time

IHT: families sue Chiquita over 1993 deaths of loved ones in Urabá, Colombia
"The 63-page complaint asserts that Chiquita provided 'numerous and substantial hidden payments' to [the FARC] in addition to weapons and supplies. That financing, the plaintiffs say, contributed to the deaths of the five men because Chiquita had in fact supported 'acts of terrorism.'"

IHT: the changing patterns of sex work
Slate: Venkatesh outlines the new tiers

New Yorker: washboarding is not torture. it's just really really irritating

Slate: raise a glass today for St Patrick today, even if you're not sure why

do as i say, not as i do

WP: clash between Chinese security forces, civilians, and Tibetan protesters leaves at least 10 dead
Gdn: an eyewitness account
WP: oops, just when US removes China from list of worst human rights abusers

Vanity Fair: the US supported Fatah militia to destabilize Hamas
"Vanity Fair has obtained confidential documents, since corroborated by sources in the U.S. and Palestine, which lay bare a covert initiative, approved by Bush and implemented by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams, to provoke a Palestinian civil war. But the secret plan backfired, resulting in a further setback for American foreign policy under Bush. Instead of driving its enemies out of power, the U.S.-backed Fatah fighters inadvertently provoked Hamas to seize total control of Gaza."
WP: seven weeks in, the official program is stumbling
Is this program a legal version of the previous one? I can't tell...

LAT: Rice expresses outrage at possibility that Chávez is supporting the FARC, presumably to destabilize Colombia
BBC: Colombia will pay millions in reward to FARC members who mutinied and killed Iván Ríos, member of the secretariat; still may be charged with homicide, mutilation of a corpse (for cutting off his hand to offer proof of death)

LAT: SV would like to thank the British general who points out that winning 'hearts and minds' is "ridiculous"
"He said the best an occupying army could hope for was the consent of local people, and this required delivering tangible benefits such as electricity, water and security."
Slate (but could've appeared in the Onion): Bush laments being too busy, old to fight in the romantic war that is Afghanistan. obviously he failed to read the summary of the NYT magazine article a few weeks back...

The Nation: who really is fighting, and how
"The government treats its soldiers the way most corporations treat their workforce--as an invisible, disrespected, disposable means to an end that is contrary to workers' interests."

WP: drug war on the Mexican border
"More than 20,000 Mexican troops and federal police are engaged in a multi-front war with the private armies of rival drug lords, a conflict that is being waged most fiercely along the 2,000-mile length of the U.S.-Mexico border...A total of more than 4,800 Mexicans were slain in 2006 and 2007, making the murder rate in each of those years twice that of 2005."
WP: mass grave uncovered at cartel safe house in Ciudad Juárez
Gdn: Peruvian lawmakers protest the UN's recommended ban on traditional uses of coca

Gdn: the fall of the USSR and the rise of the Russian mafia (book excerpt)

WP: glowing report on health of multi-party democracies in West Africa
WP: in Kenya, where glowing news stories on African states used to all be based, the Rift Valley still receiving displaced people, one week after peace deal reached
BBC: more than 150 members of the Sabaot Land Defence Forces (SDLF) have been arrested in West Kenya, for violence that appears to be opportunistic rather than motivated by election outcome
Gdn: further south, Mugabe receives "endorsement" from police and army
"Zimbabwe's police and army chiefs have said they will not allow Robert Mugabe to be defeated in this month's presidential election by opposition candidates they deride as "puppets" and "sell-outs" to Britain."
AP: Sudan and Chad agree to peace deal
Reuters: but Darfur armed groups balk at pact

WP: Croatians on trial for perpetrating war crimes against Serbs in 1995
Gdn: in another court, militia member testifies that Charles Taylor ordered combatants to eat enemies

Reason: sex work, slavery, and rhetoric at the turn of the 20th century still resonates, from New York to
Ind: Bangladesh

The Onion: war czar says war isn't imminent

subprime voting

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

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

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

WP: constitutional debates in Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia

WP: Ashura in Iran
Econ: and other sorrows

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

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

WP: don't forget Burma (editorial)

BBC: postponed again: Lebanon to hold vote Feb 11

BBC: Georgia's Saakashvili sworn in

Econ: voting in Serbia today

Econ: turnover in Taiwan

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

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

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

Econ: France sets up shop in the UAE

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

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

LAT: behind the scenes in a casino caucus