The overwhelming majority of Gazans are impoverished and officially 49.1 per cent are unemployed. In fact the prospect of steady employment is rapidly disappearing for the majority of the population.
(...) According to Oxfam only 137 trucks of food were allowed into Gaza in November. This means that an average of 4.6 trucks per day entered the strip compared to an average of 123 in October this year and 564 in December 2005.
(...) Between 5 November and 30 November, only 23 trucks arrived, around 6 per cent of the total needed; during the week of 30 November it received 12 trucks, or 11 per cent of what was required. There were three days in November when UNRWA ran out of food, with the result that on each of these days 20,000 people were unable to receive their scheduled supply. According to John Ging, the director of UNRWA in Gaza, most of the people who get food aid are entirely dependent on it. On 18 December UNRWA suspended all food distribution for both emergency and regular programmes because of the blockade.
(...) By April, according to the FAO, there will be no poultry there at all: 70 per cent of Gazans rely on chicken as a major source of protein.
(...) The breakdown of an entire society is happening in front of us, but there is little international response beyond UN warnings which are ignored. The European Union announced recently that it wanted to strengthen its relationship with Israel while the Israeli leadership openly calls for a large-scale invasion of the Gaza Strip and continues its economic stranglehold over the territory with, it appears, the not-so-tacit support of the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah – which has been co-operating with Israel on a number of measures. On 19 December Hamas officially ended its truce with Israel, which Israel said it wanted to renew, because of Israel’s failure to ease the blockade. How can keeping food and medicine from the people of Gaza protect the people of Israel? How can the impoverishment and suffering of Gaza’s children – more than 50 per cent of the population – benefit anyone? International law as well as human decency demands their protection. If Gaza falls, the West Bank will be next.

This is a battle pitting the rural poor and their liberal allies against wealthy urban conservatives who now want to diminish the elected status of Thailand's parliament. It is fought on the streets between the left-wing red-shirts, whose power base is in the north-east, and the yellow-shirted royalists of Bangkok and the south. It is also a struggle for the soul of Thailand after Thaksin, the telecoms billionaire turned politician whose legacy has divided a country. The outcome will be studied with trepidation by a region with much to lose from the implosion of a former tiger economy.

The mass grave at Dasht-e-Leili in northern Afghanistan is thought to contain the remains of between 1,000 and 2,000 Taleban prisoners massacred by fighters loyal to the Uzbek warlord General Abdul Rashid Dostum in November 2001. The killings occurred in the remote Leili desert as General Dostum’s forces fought alongside US special forces. Prisoners were packed into sealed shipping containers and left to suffocate. Others are alleged to have died when fighters riddled other containers full of prisoners with bullets before burning and burying the bodies.
(...) General Dostum, the alleged perpetrator of the massacre, was chief of staff to the Afghan National Army until this year. He retains strong support among the Uzbek population in the north and won 10 per cent of the vote in the 2004 presidential elections.

But “genocides” aren’t what they used to be and the Russian government, which had previously claimed 2,100 civilians were killed in the war, lowered that number dramatically, concluding that the official civilian toll is 162. Also killed were 48 Russian soldiers and 215 Georgian soldiers. Georgia, as it has with previous allegations of war crimes, condemned their accusers, saying it was a “cynical lie” and part of a “Kremlin propaganda campaign.”

U.S. forces in Iraq have detained 10,000 prisoners without evidence of their wrongdoing, a U.S. detention centers in Iraq commander said on Monday.

Nigerian police and troops carried out more than 90 summary executions in suppressing violent religious and political rioting in the central city of Jos, Human Rights Watch alleged on Saturday.

POTA and its predecessor, Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA), were extensively abused. They typically targeted the religious minorities, specifically Muslims, and allowed for their harassment and persecution. The TADA story is especially horrifying. Some 67,000 people were arrested under it, but only 8,000 put on trial, and a mere 725 convicted. Official TADA Review Committees themselves found the law’s application untenable in all but 5,000 cases. In 1993, Gujarat witnessed no terrorism, but more than 19,000 people were still arrested under TADA. Religious minorities were selectively targeted under both Acts. For instance, in Rajasthan, of 115 TADA detainees, 112 were Muslims and three Sikhs. Gujarat had a worse pattern under POTA, when all but one of the 200-plus detainees were Muslims, the remaining one a Sikh.
(...) The passing of the two new laws is certain to increase the alienation of India's Muslims from the state. They have been the principal victims of India's anti-terrorism strategy and activities in recent years.