We've noted that CentCom commander Adm. William Fallon is an exponent of the "pragmatist" view on Iran—a point also stressed by this March 11 AP account of his sudden resignation. Does this signal a silent coup by Cheney and the neocons—and point towards an "October surprise" invasion of Iran? We sure hope not.

Chaldean Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho, kidnapped in Iraq last month, was found dead on March 13, his body half-buried in an empty lot in the northern city of Mosul. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki blamed Rahho's death on al-Qaeda and said his Shi'ite-led government was committed to protecting Christians, who make up about 3% of Iraq's population. "The perpetrators of this horrible crime will not run from the hand of justice," Maliki said. Pope Benedict, who had made several appeals for Rahho's freedom, called his death "an act of inhuman violence that offends the dignity of the human being" in a letter to Iraqi church leaders. (Reuters, March 13)

We're surprised the right-wing blogosphere hasn't yet accused the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) of being behind the revelations of gubernatorial hanky-panky-for-pay in New York state. Among the now-shamed Elliot Spitzer's many enemies is Richard Grasso, the former NY Stock Exchange CEO brought down in 2003 by then-Attorney General Spitzer over "compensation issues." (In a March 13 Newsweek commentary, wittily entitled "Spitzenfreude," Daniel Gross invokes his name while noting the unseemly "joy at the governor's suffering" among The Street's bottom-feeders.) In June 1999, Grasso flew into the jungles of Colombia to meet with the FARC guerillas at their then-autonomous zone in Caquetá department, in an unlikely bid to convert them to capitalism. (Reuters, June 26, 1999) Actually, given the FARC's control over a sizable chunk of Colombia's cocaine trade, maybe the meeting wasn't all that unlikely. In any case, the visit served the rebels well in their bid for international legitimacy. There is a picture of Grasso hugging the late FARC commander Raul Reyes on his Wikipedia page.

A gay teenager who sought sanctuary in the UK after his boyfriend was executed by the Iranian authorities now faces the same fate after losing his legal battle for asylum. Mehdi Kazemi, 19, came to London to study English in 2004 but later discovered that his boyfriend had been arrested by the Iranian police, charged with sodomy and hanged. Kazemi's father in Tehran told him by telephone that before the execution in April 2006, his boyfriend had been interrogated about sexual relations he had with other men. Kazemi filed for asylum, but late in 2007 his case was refused and he fled for The Netherlands.

The US State Department's new annual human rights report accuses China of "extrajudicial killings, torture and coerced confessions of prisoners and the use of forced labor." Russia and Sudan were also especially criticized. Ten countries were named as under "unaccountable rulers [who] remained the world's most systematic human rights violators": North Korea, Burma, Iran, Syria, Zimbabwe, Cuba, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Eritrea and Sudan. It noted improvements in Mauritania, Ghana, Morocco and Haiti, but little or no progress in Nepal, Russia, Georgia Kyrghyzstan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan or Iraq. (AlJazeera, March 11)

Kenya has largely disappeared from the headlines, and what is reported generally has an optimistic slant—a new power-sharing accord is hoped to end the violence. Meanwhile, the situation seems to be escalating to open war. On March 10, the armed forces reportedly opened fire and launched aerial bombing raids with helicopter gunships on the Sabaot Land Defense Forces (SLDF) at Mount Elgon in the west of the country. The SLDF is a local militia representing the Sabaot clan of the Kalenjin community, which says it seeks to reclaim traditional lands and is accused of a massacre last week in which 13 people were burned alive or hacked to death. (BBC, March 11; AP, March 10)

A town meeting in Brattleboro, VT, voted 2,012-1,795 March 4 to approve a measure calling on the town's police to arrest and indict Bush and Cheney if they enter the municipality. The smaller village of Marlboro passed a similar measure 43-25, with three abstaining. The Brattleboro measure read: "Shall the Selectboard instruct the Town Attorney to draft indictments against President Bush and Vice President Cheney for crimes against our Constitution and publish said indictments for consideration by other authorities, and shall it be the law of the Town of Brattleboro that the Brattleboro police, pursuant to the above mentioned indictments, arrest and detain George Bush and Richard Cheney in Brattleboro if they are not duly impeached, and prosecuted or extradite them to other authorities that may reasonably contend to prosecute them?" (Democratic Underground, March 4)

The family of New York IMC reporter Brad Will, killed Oct. 27, 2006—presumably at the hands of municipal police in Santa Lucía del Camino, Oaxaca—called upon Mexico's Prosecutor General of the Republic (PGR) to follow the "logical" line of investigation and abandon ongoing probes of popular activists in Oaxaca. "This crime was one of the most photographed in history, yet they continue with this hypothesis while those responsible remain free," Brad's father Howard Will told the Mexico City daily La Jornada. He called upon Mexican federal authorities to undertake a "serious and objective" investigation, because that pursued by Oaxaca state authorities is totally "prejudiced." (Re-translated from Spanish translation.) (La Jornada, Feb. 29)