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TONY SOPRANO, EAT YOUR HEART OUT — Italy’s harassed store owners paid $8.5 billion in protection money to organized crime in one year, almost all of it in the south and Sicily, where the Mafia and its Neapolitan counterpart, the Camorra, hold sway. About 160,000 businesses were targeted throughout the country, according to the Italian retailers association, Confesercenti. Loan sharks took in double that amount: $17.1 billion. From 2004-2006 Mafia loan sharks “foreclosed” on 165,000 businesses nationwide, and nearly 50,000 hotels. Confesercenti — quoted in the newspaper Corriere della Sera — listed the fixed rates for protection. Market stall holders […]

When French President Nicolas Sarkozy attended a Bush family barbeque in Kennebunkport this summer he brought with him his wife Cecilia’s regrets. Her excuse was a sore throat, which some saw as a deliberate snub of her would-be hosts, the American president and his father. On Nov. 6, Bush is scheduled to host a White House dinner for Sarkozy, and again Cecilia will not be present. This time, though, there is no doubting the reason: The Sarkozys were divorced last Thursday. The breakup came after five months in which Sarkozy’s wife clearly had problems fitting into her new role as […]

TOKYO — Reports that India’s nuclear deal with the United States is faltering have prompted a string of gloomy editorials in Indian newspapers. With the government of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh apparently reluctant to face down opposition from its Communists allies, the deal is, as the Times of India lamented, “probably . . . in the deep freezer.” But 3,500 miles away in Tokyo, recently installed Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda may not be feeling quite so gloomy, for the deal risked becoming an awkward sticking point in the blossoming relationship between nuclear state India and the avowedly anti-nuclear […]

Editor’s Note: Rights & Wrongs is a weekly column covering the world’s major human rights-related happenings. It is written by regular WPR contributor Juliette Terzieff. ARAB ONLINE MEDIA COVERAGE LACKING — Arab online media is not doing a thorough job of covering human rights and the issues that surround them, according to a new study by the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information. The report, “Electronic Media and Human Rights,” studied a year’s worth of content on eight of the largest Arabic Web sites including aljazeera.net, alarabiya.net, naseej.com and islamonline.net. An estimated 29 million people in the Arab world regularly […]

Last week, the White House released an updated version of its National Strategy for Homeland Security. The Bush administration intends the document, which replaces the original July 2002 National Strategy hastily prepared in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, to provide an overarching framework for assessing all U.S. homeland security programs and policies. The new National Strategy provides a well-organized summary of the numerous organizational and programmatic changes that have occurred in the area of U.S homeland security since 9/11. For example, the Department of Defense has established its first combatant command — U.S. Northern Command — […]

Following months of bickering, Poland’s populist-conservative coalition government finally collapsed in September after two years in power. Early elections are scheduled for this Sunday, Oct. 21. Some suggest that they may turn into a referendum on de-Communization. To grasp the players and issues at stake, a whistle stop tour of Poland’s political history and geography is in order. The Grand Transformation Poland’s current political order took shape at the end of the 1980s. Far from being an outcome of the democratic process, it is the ultimate progeny of behind-the-scenes maneuvering and backstage deals. It was not the general electorate but […]

KABUL, Afghanistan — It’s a daily ritual for 8-year-old Bismillah. Every morning, five grimy plastic cans slung over his tiny shoulder, he descends a rugged hillside, negotiating the steep pitches of scree and gravel with goat-like agility. At the bottom of the hill, he waits under the broiling sun in a long queue leading up to a spigot. But wait he must or his family will be left without drinking water for the day. Bismillah lives with his handicapped father, mother and four sisters in a mud-and-wood house in a cramped settlement clinging to a shale-brown hill overlooking Kabul. With […]

KATMANDU, Nepal — The postponement of Nepal’s crucial November elections has dealt a serious blow to the Himalayan nation’s fragile peace process, dashing the credibility of the interim government, allowing time for the security situation to worsen and shifting the focus of peace talks away from elections and towards the much thornier issue of armies. Earlier this month, the polls were delayed for a second time because of new Maoist demands and general political apathy. An emergency session of the interim parliament broke for a festival holiday on Oct. 16 without managing any breakthroughs amongst bickering parties. The result in […]

U.S.-Iran relations have been growing more tense as the standoff over the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program continues, prompting speculation about the significance of the “oil factor” in Iran’s domestic politics and in its relationship with the outside world. Is Iran importing gasoline because it is running out of oil? Do the fuel riots in Iran earlier this year mean that sanctions against Iran are working? Would Iran use the oil weapon? Can the oil weapon be used against Iran? These questions are crucial, but attempts to answer them have often been misleading and characterized by hyperbole. But putting the oil […]

WIN SOME, LOSE SOME — Almost the same day that foreign ambassadors in Washington received invitations to attend Wednesday’s presentation of the Congressional Gold Medal to the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan ruler, they got letters from the Chinese ambassador urging them to boycott the ceremony. Predictably, the decision to honor the Dalai Lama has drawn strong protests from the Chinese government, which controls his mountainous country. The presentation was initiated by the U.S. Congress, and is supported by the Bush administration. But Congress also has plans to declare the death of up to 1.5 million Armenians in Turkey in […]

WASHINGTON — The Army’s $200-billion Future Combat Systems — the centerpiece of the service’s “network-centric” modernization — has been buffeted by cash shortages, insurmountable engineering obstacles and criticism that lighter, smarter, sensor-laden vehicles are not what the Army needs to fight tomorrow’s wars. The program aims to equip 15 of the Army’s roughly 70 combat brigades with new robots and hybrid diesel-electric manned vehicles connected by a secure radio network and equipped with high-tech sensors. After a difficult 2006 that saw four of FCS’ robot designs axed due to budget constraints, this year the decade-old program achieved several milestones, wrapping […]

JERUSALEM — With Condoleezza Rice in town and multiple meetings between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators in recent weeks, there is little doubt that the season of peace has come again to the Middle East: Peace, as in peace process. Few people, however, seem persuaded that an end to the decades-old conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is at hand. In fact, the word one hears more often these days is “Intifada” — as in Palestinian uprising; as in a new outbreak of deadly violence between the two sides. That may seem odd, considering that top-level government officials from the United States, […]

Last Sept. 11, German state-owned television ZDF marked the sixth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks by broadcasting a prime-time documentary titled “September 11, 2001: What Really Happened.” By enticingly implying a discrepancy between what the film itself repeatedly terms the “official version” of 9/11 and the reality of the events, the mere title of the film already provides obvious grist for the mill of what might best be called “alternative” 9/11 conspiracy-theorizing: “alternative” because in the legal sense of the term, the 9/11 attacks were in fact the product of a conspiracy. On the ZDF Web page promoting the documentary, […]

“Daddy, I thought you were coming home after Bayram,” read somber headlines in newspapers across Turkey Oct. 10, capturing the sentiments of the daughters of a soldier killed by a PKK ambush in southeastern Turkey. Bayram is the three-day celebration that started Oct. 12 to mark the end of the month of Ramadan. It is custom for fathers, sons, brothers and husbands fulfilling their military duties to return home on Bayram to briefly visit their loved ones, and bring presents and candies to children. The last two weeks have seen the assassination of 30 soldiers in the perilous southeastern border […]

HONG KONG — Australians will go to the polls on Nov. 24 after Prime Minister John Howard staked what’s left of his enormous political career and called an election that most analysts believe he will lose, heralding an overhaul of Canberra’s political landscape that would shape key policy at home and abroad. The announcement came after Howard made the ritual visit to Queen Elizabeth II’s representative in Australia, the Governor General Michael Jeffery, on Sunday, where he requested parliament be dissolved and an election called. Howard is U.S. President George W. Bush’s staunchest remaining war ally, and the U.S. leader […]

Editor’s Note: Rights & Wrongs is a weekly column covering the world’s major human rights-related happenings. It is written by regular WPR contributor Juliette Terzieff. EGYPTIAN BACKLASH AGAINST CRACKDOWN — Egyptian authorities found themselves contending with an avalanche of public anger Sunday over widespread allegations of police brutality and an ongoing crackdown against the media, political opponents and labor rights activists. Private newspapers across the country staged a blackout day, withholding their products from store shelves in protest over the September convictions of seven prominent journalists and an ongoing government assault on press freedom. Local clashes between Bedouin tribes in […]

The crisis in Myanmar has bedeviled the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) at a time when its members had hoped to focus on celebrating the organization’s 40th anniversary. Although most other ASEAN governments oppose the military government’s repression of Myanmar’s peaceful opposition, they have proven unable to break fully with their traditional policy of non-interference in member governments’ internal affairs. The decision to invite Myanmar into ASEAN in March 1997 resulted from a fleeting consensus among members that granting Myanmar membership was preferable to its continued exclusion. Even those ASEAN states most censorious of the Myanmar government, led since […]