The UN Human Rights Council High Level Mission to Sudan has delivered a critical report, accusing the Sudanese government of orchestrating "gross and systematic" human rights abuses in Darfur, and decrying that the international response has been "inadequate and ineffective." The five-member panel also urged that leaders of Sudan's government and militias be charged with war crimes. "The principal pattern is one of a violent counterinsurgency campaign waged by the government...in concert with Janjaweed militia and targeting mostly civilians," the report found. "Rebel forces are also guilty of serious abuses of human rights and violations of humanitarian law." Khartoum is organizing opposition to the mission's report. The Human Rights Council in Geneva will now consider adopting the report, but Sudan and its allies are trying to thwart it. Khartoum had blocked the team that wrote the report, led by 1997 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Jody Williams, from visiting Darfur, so the mission had to rely on interviews with refugees across the border in Chad. (UPI, March 12; The Guardian, LAT, March 13)

Afghan drug lords linked to the Taliban get busted. Others get appointed to government posts. From AP, March 9:

Afghan Anticorruption Chief Sold Heroin in Las Vegas in ’87
KABUL — When the deal went down in Las Vegas, the seller was introduced only as Mr. E. In a room at Caesars Palace hotel, Mr. E exchanged a pound-and-a-half bag of heroin for $65,000 cash, unaware that the buyer was an undercover detective. The sting landed him in a Nevada state prison for nearly four years.

Words of wisdom from an Iranian diplomat. Imagine. From the Chicago Tribune, March 11 (emphasis added):

BAGHDAD -- The United States and Iran traded blame for the violence engulfing Iraq at a conference of Iraq's neighbors Saturday that was hailed as a first step toward resolving the building tensions between the decades-old rivals.

From Ria Novosti, March 9:

PETROZAVODSK — One man was killed in a brawl between locals and migrants from the Caucasus in northwestern Russia in the early hours of Friday, local police said.

Three weeks ago, the New York Times told us in a front-page story that there is more oil in Iraq than we ever dreamed of. Now comes another front-page story telling us that reserve estimates for the United States—and everywhere else—have been dramatically upwards revised, due to new advances in extraction technology. Exxon and Chevron are already using the technology to pump thousands of barrels a day out of fields that had pretty much been considered spent a few years ago from Texas to Indonesia. This is a clear blow aimed at the "peak oil" theorists. Oil prices have been falling modestly in recent days (almost down to $60/barrel at the moment, Bloomberg says), and the Times might want to help that trend along. But the development of the new technology was itself spurred by high prices (so much for "objective" science), which were in part driven by "peak oil" fears. Which deepens our suspicions that the "peak oil" hysteria was instrumented by the oil industry all along.... Here are the relevant excerpts from the story, "Oil Innovations Pump New Life Into Old Wells" by Jad Mouawad, New York Times, March 5 (links added):

Now they are openly calling some of these increasingly specious terror conspiracies "fictitious," which they certainly are. Two guys are getting sent up the river for a plot hatched by an FBI informant, which had no independent basis in reality. Can anyone explain to us why this does not constitute entrapment? Does anyone else out there grasp how far down the slippery slope we have slid towards the Orwellian concept of "thought crime"? From the New York Times, March 8:

From AP, March 8:

A marriage off to a rocky start: He's jailed after hitting her with car
SALT LAKE CITY - It wasn't the most romantic of honeymoons. The groom was in jail yesterday, accused of trying to run over his new wife after a weekend wedding in Las Vegas.

As if the jihadis aren't ticked off enough already. The opponents quoted in this story seem entirely legitimate, but this obviously serves as more grist for Osama's propaganda mill. Talk about "jihad versus McWorld." What can you say but a plague on both their houses? From the New York Times and International Herald Tribune, March 8 (links, emphasis added):