With all eyes on the Iraq horrorshow, very little media attention these days for Afghanistan. But... From AP, Nov. 27:

KABUL - A Pakistani suicide bomber detonated himself in a crowded restaurant Sunday, killing 15 people and wounding 24, including an Afghan special forces commander and a district chief, the provincial governor said.

Slovenia has prided itself on being the "civilized" ex-Yugoslav republic, which avoided the explosions of hatred and "ethnic cleansing" which have plagued the rest. Critics have argued that it was easy for the Slovenes to affect moral superiority, being largely ethnically homogeneous. Now these Slovo-skeptics are, alas, being decisively vindicated. From the New York Times, Nov. 26:

In Slovenia, Villagers Block Gypsies’ Return to Their Homes

LJUBLJANA — A group of Gypsies who had been forced to flee their homes in central Slovenia a month ago by local villagers tried to return late Saturday afternoon but were forced to turn back.

Hmmm, it seems that all the lefties who weighed in against the admittedly vile Judith Miller's journalistic privilege in the Plame affair will be in the uncomfortable position of having to cheer her on this time around. From AP, Nov. 22:

Court Rejects N.Y. Times on Leak Probe
The Supreme Court ruled against The New York Times on Monday, refusing to block the government from reviewing the phone records of two Times reporters in a leak investigation of a terrorism-funding probe.

Sarah Ferguson writes for the Village Voice, Nov. 26 (with some very gruesome photos of the autopsy online):

The family of slain Indymedia journalist Brad Will has renewed its call for an independent investigation of his shooting, which occurred while Will was covering protests in Oaxaca, Mexico. Family members accused authorities in Oaxaca of attempting a "ludicrous" cover-up after the Oaxaca state attorney general, Lizbeth Caña Cadeza, alleged earlier this month that Will was shot by the protesters he'd gone to Mexico to film.

Protesters trying to force out the Oaxaca state governor set fire to government buildings in two days of street fighting that began on the night of Nov. 26, when masked youths broke away from a march by about 4,000 people and hurled rocks and gasoline bombs at the federal police camped out in the city's central square. Police drove off the attackers with tear gas and water cannons, then advanced in massed ranks to drive protesters from a camp at a smaller plaza two blocks away. Bands of youth engaged police throughout the downtown area, pushing shopping carts loaded with rocks and gasoline bombs. Courts and other government offices in the city's historic colonial buildings were gutted by flames. Three hotels were also reportedly attacked with firebombs, and some 20 private vehicles were torched. (AP, Nov. 27)

You know, we hate to disillusion Nursultan Nazarbayev, but his authoritarian state really doesn't need Borat to give it a bad name. ISCKON is the "Hare Krishna" movement, rather than mainstream Hindus, but that doesn't make this episode smell much better. Neither does the fact that (as Press Trust of India notes) India's reactionary BJP is predictably exploiting the issue. From the Indo-Asian News Service, Nov. 22:

It is vindicating that French complicity in the 1994 Rwanda genocide is finally coming to light. But it was actually Paris' tit-for-tat of a judicial order for the arrest of Rwandan military officers following Rwandan charges of French support for the genocidaires that pushed the affair into the headlines by provoking Kigali to expell the French ambassador. The French judge has also called for Rwanda's President Paul Kagame to face a UN tribunal for his alleged role in the plane crash that sparked the genocide. Some 25,000 rallied in support of Kagame in Kigali following the judge's call. (Jurist, Nov. 23). Now, is it possible that Kagame's forces really did shoot down the plane? Of course it is—just like it is possible that a lone Communist named Marinus van der Lubbe burned down the Reichstag in 1933. And if it is true, it will be just as meaningless—notwithstanding the claims of the French Rwanda-revisionists and their useful idiots.

Now this is pretty depressing. Pakistan finally moves to overturn the atrocious anti-woman Hudood ordinances, under which women are punished for "adultery" if they report a rape. The Islamist opposition links backlash against this long-belated bit of progress with (legitimate) calls for democratization. This exemplifies how the US can do no good in this part of the world: the State Department doubtless pressured the Musharraf dictatorship to do away with the Hudood ordinances, to give Washington's GWOT ally a minimally plausible imprimatur of secularism. But because it happens in the context of a military regime being pressured by its imperial patron, this allows the would-be jihadist totalitarians to dress up their clerical reactionary agenda as a pro-democracy struggle. And even elements of the idiot left in the West get confused. From the Pakistan Tribune, Nov. 25: