A week after Nepal's king dismissed his government and imposed emergency rule by personal decree, the isolated Himalayan nation has largely disappeared from the headlines. The NY Times reported Feb. 9 in short page 13 story that King Gyanendra has allowed international telephone service to resume (gee thanks, Your Highness).

More ironic timing for Washington's push to restore military ties with Indonesia. With Condi Rice on the stump claiming Jakarta is cleaning up its nasty human rights situation, the DC-based Marijuana Policy Project sends us the following chilling story:

It appears that different factions of the American Indian Movement (AIM) have released statements either condemning or supporting Ward Churchill, in equally vehement terms.

First this, from the AIM Grand Governing Council in Minneapolis:

Tom Wilner, attorney for 11 Kuwaiti men arrested by US forces in Afghanistan and Pakistan and now held at Guantanamo Bay, told the press his clients say they were beaten, tortured and subjected to electro-shock and sodomy to extract confessions. According to Wilner's notes, one detainee said: "The American soldiers kept saying, 'Are you Taliban or are you al-Qaeda?'... They kept hitting me, so eventually I said I was a member of the Taliban." He says the 11 are all innocent.

The Feb. 8 NY Times featured an op-ed by Shirin Ebadi, Iranian dissident attorney and winner of the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize, co-authored with Hadi Ghaem of Human Rights Watch: "The Human Rights Case Against Attacking Iran". Ebadi is skeptical about Condoleeza Rica's recent assertion that attacking Iran is "not on the agenda at this point." She is even more skeptical about Condi's claim "The Iranian regime's human rights behavior...is something to be loathed."

A traditional Punjabi festival of the approaching spring, Basant, is the source of controversy in Pakistan, where Islamic clerics went to court in an unsuccessful bid to have the celebrations banned and revelry in Lahore left at least 17 dead. Festivities usually include kite-flying, fireworks and firing rifles in the air. Stray bullets and throats slashed by metal kite strings were responsible for most of the deaths.

What an irony: Just after the tsunami's horrific toll has (briefly) focused world attention on Indonesia's grisly counter-insurgency war in Aceh, the US State Department is moving to approve restoration of official Pentagon ties to Indonesia's military. Indonesia's participation in the Pentagon's International Military Education and Training (IMET) program was suspended following atrocities in East Timor in 1999. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice is now advocating restoring it, telling key members of Congress "IMET for Indonesia is in the US interest."

On Feb. 5, the eve of Guerrero gubernatorial elections, suspected guerillas of the Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR) attacked police posts in Acapulco, leaving four dead, including a 15-year-old boy who was making a call at a payphone. (AP, Feb. 5) In the election, former Acapulco Mayor Zeferino Torreblanca of the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) was elected governor, ending the long-entrenched rule of the corrupt Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in Guerrero. (AP, Feb. 8)