Ryskeldi Satke | Bishkek,Kyrgyz Republic

http://english.ohmynews.com - Kyrgyz journalist Kubanych Djoldoshev suffered multiple injuries after being assaulted by unknown attackers at about 2 a.m. on November 1 in the southern city of Osh in Kyrgyzstan.
As Djoldoshev recalls, three men approached and beat him, resulting in a concussion and broken ribs.
The emergency staff at the local hospital described his condition as critical.
This is the latest incident in a series of hostile actions against freelance journalists and reporters in the country.
Djoldoshev has been working for the Kyrgyz branch of the RFE/RL (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty) prior to his current assignment with a newspaper. The paper, Osh Shamy, has been critical of local authorities in the country's southern region.

Milan | Nov 4

Reuters - An Italian judge sentenced 23 former CIA agents to up to eight years in prison on Wednesday for the abduction of a Muslim cleric in a landmark ruling against the "rendition" flights used by the former U.S. government.

Judge Oscar Magi dropped the case against another three American defendants and the ex-head of the Italy's Sismi military intelligence service, Nicolo Pollari, as well as his former deputy.

Seoul | Nov 4

AFP - The United States and North Korea have agreed to hold two rounds of bilateral meetings before the North returns to multilateral nuclear disarmament talks, a US news report said.

The agreement was reached at last month's meetings in New York and San Diego between officials from the two sides, Foreign Policy magazine said on its website, in a report seen Wednesday.

The communist state, putting further pressure on the United States to start direct talks, announced Tuesday it has completed reprocessing spent fuel rods to produce more plutonium for its atomic weapons programme.

The US State Department responded that the plutonium production "runs counter" to the North's disarmament commitments and violates UN Security Council resolutions.

It said it has not decided when and where to hold bilateral talks involving the US special envoy to North Korea, Stephen Bosworth.

Phnom Penh | Nov 4

AFP - Cambodia said on Wednesday it had appointed fugitive former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra economic adviser to premier Hun Sen in a move that adds to tensions between the countries.

The appointment was announced on state television almost two weeks after Hun Sen first riled Thailand by offering safe haven to Thaksin, who was ousted in a coup in 2006 and is living abroad to avoid a jail term for corruption.

"Thaksin has already been appointed by royal decree... as personal adviser to Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen and the adviser to the Cambodian government in charge of economy," said a government statement read on television.

"Allowing Thaksin to stay in Cambodia is virtuous behaviour...good friends need to help each other in difficult circumstances," it added.

The statement went on to call charges against Thaksin "politically motivated" and vowed not to extradite him if he "decides to stay in Cambodia or travels in and out of Cambodia in order to fulfill his duties".

WOW

I was going to start today, but Numerian beat me to the punch:

The Rights of Women

Women will have made advancements across the globe – chiefly in those countries where their rights today are heavily restricted, such as in the Middle East. In most countries, women will enjoy the same rights available to a woman in France or Japan or the US today, but in these countries, women will improve their situation only marginally. This will still be a patriarchal world, and wars and insurrections will remain the work of men.

Tehran | Nov 4

AFP - Thousands of Iranians staged a noisy anti-US rally in central Tehran Wednesday to mark the storming of the American embassy by students 30 years ago, as police and opposition supporters clashed violently nearby.

US President Barack Obama, meanwhile, said in a statement marking the anniversary of the event that sparked decades of hostility between America and Iran that the Islamic republic "must choose" now whether to open the door to opportunity and prosperity.

Huge crowds from early morning descended on the former US embassy complex in central Tehran, dubbed the "Den of Spies", chanting slogans such as "Death to America" and "Death to Israel," witnesses said.

They also smashed up posters they had brought with them of the American "Uncle Sam" symbol and chanted "The blood in our veins is a gift to our leader" – a reference to Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

_{** Unfaded memories: 444 days of captivity
** Iran's anti-government protesters clash with security forces
** Iran's anti-US protests could turn on Ahmadinejad
** Obama notes 30th anniversary of US Embassy takeover in Tehran, asks Iran to move beyond it}

Mamoon Alabbasi | Baltimore Chronicle

Editorial note by Robert Parry: A year after Barack Obama was elected President, many on the American Left are criticizing him for not achieving all they had hoped for – including an end to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a complete rejection of George W. Bush’s “war on terror,” and sharp reductions in military spending.

But MIT professor Noam Chomsky suggests those hopes were always naïve and that only a powerful grassroots movement can force such changes, as reported in this guest article by Mamoon Alabbasi that previously appeared in Middle East Online:

As civilized people across the world breathed a sigh of relief to see the back of former U.S. President George W. Bush, top American intellectual Noam Chomsky warned against assuming or expecting significant changes in the basis of Washington's foreign policy under President Barack Obama.

During two lectures organized by the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London, Chomsky cited numerous examples of the driving doctrines behind U.S. foreign policy since the end of World War II.

"As Obama came into office, Condoleezza Rice predicted that he would follow the policies of Bush's second term, and that is pretty much what happened, apart from a different rhetorical style," Chomsky said.

"But it is wise to attend to deeds, not rhetoric. Deeds commonly tell a different story," he added.

"There is basically no significant change in the fundamental traditional conception that we if can control Middle East energy resources, then we can control the world," explained Chomsky.

Chomsky said that a leading doctrine of U.S. foreign policy during the period of its global dominance is what he termed as "the Mafia principle."

Nov 4

Rogue Afghan officer kills five British soldiers

The Taliban claimed responsibility today for the killing of five British soldiers by a rogue Afghan policeman.

The servicemen, three from the Grenadier Guards and two from the Royal Military Police, died when the officer turned his gun on them at a checkpoint in Nad-e-Ali in Helmand Province yesterday.

Another six British soldiers and two Afghan policemen were wounded in the shooting, which sent shockwaves through the coalition mission in Afghanistan.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown told the House of Commons that the Taliban had claimed responsibility for the killings.

** Former Afghan presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah has said Hamid Karzai's re-election is "illegal".

More bomb blasts rock Baghdad

Separate explosions in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad injured at least 16 people Wednesday, Iraqi police say.

Five people were injured when a car bomb exploded near a checkpoint in the al-Athamiyah neighborhood while at least seven others suffered injuries in an explosion in the al-Eskan neighborhood, KUNA, the Kuwait News Agency, reports.

Police said four more Iraqis were injured in a third explosion on a highway in the northern part of the capital.

** Whatever Happened To Iraqi Oil?

please check comments for more articles and updates

Juliet Eilperin | Palo Alto, CA | November 4

WaPo - For years, humans have thought of great white sharks wandering the sea at random, only occasionally venturing close to shore.

We were wrong.

Pacific white sharks spend months near the northern and central California coast between August and February foraging among elephant seals, sea lions and other prey, according to a new study published online Tuesday in the Proceedings of the Royal Society. The team of 10 California-based researchers determined that these sharks probably pass close to populated beaches and have been spotted as far inland as the mouth of the San Francisco Bay, east of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Jonathan Sherwood | Rochester, NY | November 3

Futurity - In 2005, a gigantic, 35-mile-long rift broke open the desert ground in Ethiopia. At the time, some geologists believed the rift was the beginning of a new ocean as two parts of the African continent pulled apart, but the claim was controversial.

Now, scientists from several countries have confirmed that the volcanic processes at work beneath the Ethiopian rift are nearly identical to those at the bottom of the world’s oceans, and the rift is indeed likely the beginning of a new sea.

Robert F Worth & Alan Cowell | Beirut | November 4

NYT - Police firing tear gas and wielding batons clashed Wednesday with anti-government demonstrators in Tehran who sought to turn a rally commemorating the 30th anniversary of the takeover of the American Embassy into a renewed protest against the disputed June 30 election, news reports said.

The protesters had turned out to display opposition to the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose victory in Iran’s disputed elections last June provoked Iran’s biggest political crisis since the Islamic revolution in 1979.

The leaders of Argentina's horrible junta from the 1970s and 80s are finally facing trial:

The trial has begun of Argentina's last military ruler, Reynaldo Bignone, and five other retired generals.

The men are charged in connection with the alleged kidnapping, torture and disappearance of 56 opponents of the military government in the late 1970s.
...
Mr Bignone, 81, appeared frail and rocked back and forth in his chair as the charges were read out, correspondents said.

I hope Dick Cheney's heart holds out long enough to answer before a court of law for atrocities like this.

Michael J. de la Merced & Andrew Ross Sorkin | November 1

NYT - General Electric and the cable giant Comcast have moved closer to a deal giving control of NBC Universal to Comcast, and a formal announcement could be made sometime next week, people briefed on the talks said Sunday.

After a series of meetings last week, the two companies reached a tentative agreement on Friday over the main points of a deal, these people said. Comcast would own about 51 percent of NBC Universal, contributing several billions of dollars in cash and its own stable of cable networks to the new venture.

November 3

BBC - US Democrats have lost ground in two key elections for governor, according to unofficial results.

Republican candidate Bob McDonnell has won in Virginia, while the race in the Democrat heartland of New Jersey is said to be too close to call.

Clifford J. Levy | Mytishchi, Russia | November 11

NYT - It was late on a Monday afternoon at the drunk tank in this Moscow suburb, but it could have been any day, at any hour, at any similar facility across this land. People would come. They always do. Such is Russia’s ruinous penchant for the bottle — and the challenge facing a new government policy to curb it.

First to be escorted in by police officers was a construction worker named Damir M. Askerkhanov, who said he had been bingeing on vodka and beer — “This is my very own holiday!” — before he was found stumbling about in the cold. At 23, he admitted that he had already been picked up intoxicated twice recently. “Only even drunker,” he said.

Edward Rothstein | Paris | November 3

NYT - Claude Lévi-Strauss, the French anthropologist who transformed Western understanding of what was once called “primitive man” and who towered over the French intellectual scene in the 1960s and ’70s, has died at 100.

His son Laurent said Mr. Lévi-Strauss died of cardiac arrest Friday at his home in Paris. His death was announced Tuesday, the same day he was buried in the village of Lignerolles, in the Côte-d’Or region southeast of Paris, where he had a country home.

Last week the Washington Post printed two letters from different sources who had spent time on the ground in Afghanistan that came to very different conclusions about the American presence there.

First, there is the letter from Matthew Hoh, the former Marine captain who had fought in Iraq and had recently taken a temporary foreign service assignment in Zabul province. One State department official referred to this area as, “one of the five or six provinces always vying for the most difficult and neglected.” Hoh had developed great misgivings about the war and had become so disillusioned that he chose to resign. Hoh wote in his resignation letter,

How about a little light verse today? It gets too serious around here at times and remember: humor is good!

Common Sense ~Ogden Nash

Why did the Lord give us agility,
If not to evade responsibility?

Do you have any light verse favorites? Limericks? Doggerel?

While I was in Denmark my best friend, Stuart, asked me what I thought the world would look like in thirty years. Yes, yes, I know it's prediction and a lot of people don't like to speculate. But I think exercises like this are good, even if all they do is project the attitudes and prejudices of the present onto the future. In that vein I'd like to offer a challenge to all the readers/diarists here and the writers/editors including Don, Numerian, Brian, Tina, Nat, QB. In a nutshell: a short essay, say a thousand words or less addressing how you see the future developing in five broad categories. Those categories are: agriculture/food, economy/development, environment, military/war and the rights of women. You can write about just the US, or the world at large, or, if you are an ex-pat the country in which you live.

I'll start tomorrow.

From The Guardian:

In Wired for War, author Pete Singer speculates the machines are harbingers of a new era of "cost-free war".

"It's an historic change," said Singer. "Going to war has meant the same thing for 5,000 years. Now going to war means sitting in front of a computer screen for 12 hours. Then you go home and talk to your kids about their homework."

Am I the only one who finds this method of war tantamount to terrorism? And despicable, to boot?

Oh yeah, they hate us for our freedoms. Sorry, I forgot.

It's obvious by what I've written in the past (here and here as well.) that I don't think highly of India's economic prowess, writ large and I don't believe any of the hype when it comes to India's economic miracle. But Quax makes a point about Kerala that deserves further comment.

Quax brings up the point about the matrifocal ethnicity in Southern India, namely the state of Kerala. And he's right: Kerala is different from the rest of India. I'm not sure what makes Kerala different: the prevalence of Christianity, the relative freedom of women in the state, years of Communist rule, and the forward looking and commercial character of Muslims there? Perhaps it's a combination of all four. Needless to say, Kerala was the cleanest, least intimidating and most upwardly mobile of Indian states, even more so than the miracle city of Bangalore. And I found the Muslims in Calicut to be the most forward looking of any Muslims I've ever encountered, outside of pockets in Turkey and those in North Tehran.

Their daughters were educated, free to pursue a love match--not an arranged marriage and not relegated to a very real purdah extant in many places in India. It's the sort of place where a young Indian woman can have lunch with a strange foreign man and no one raises an eyebrow. I'm not sure how much of this is due to the fact that the area around Calicut has been integral to the global economy for two thousand years--ships have plied the monsoons from East Africa to the Malabar Coast since very early Roman times, bringing pepper an other spices to the West in exchange for gold, or how much of it is due to the tolerance between Hindus, Christians and Muslims. There is much more history to this area than meets the eye.

More after the jump.

Many suggest the US CIA and Indian Intelligent services have created a "fifth column" of specially trained anti insurgent forces composed of BEARS, in an effort to control the influx of militants. I would suspect an impending "anti bear fatwa" being proclaimed shortly.

Bear kills militants in Kashmir

A bear killed two militants after discovering them in its den in Indian-administered Kashmir, police say.

Two other militants escaped, one of them badly wounded, after the attack in Kulgam district, south of Srinagar
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8339549.stm

Washington DC | November 3

AP - Republicans boycotted the start of committee debate Tuesday on a bill to curb greenhouse gases, protesting that the bill's costs have not been fully examined. The action put a spotlight on the difficulties Democratic leaders face in moving climate legislation this year.

Republican Sen. George Voinovich of Ohio attended the session for 15 minutes to explain the GOP's argument for staying away. He insisted the tactic ''is not a ruse'' to block the bill, but concern that its widespread impact on the country has not been made clear.

But Sen. Barbara Boxer of California, the panel's chairman, argued the EPA already has provided ''a full blown economic analysis'' and that Majority Leader Harry Reid has promised further studies when the bill is merged with other legislation. She insisted ''we're not rushing we are taking our time.''

The partisan rift in the Environment and Public Works Committee, which delayed votes on amendments to the legislation, exposed the sharp divisions in the Senate over how to address global warming. Democrats also have been split on the issue. Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., who said he had deep reservations about the bill also was absent.