Yesterday I mentioned the odd fact that Japan still sends China around $1.2 billion in aid every year to make ammends for the damage done during World War II, but it's not the only country still paying for its (long) past wars. This Sunday, Germany will finally put the 1919 Versailles Treaty behind it: 

Oct. 3, the 20th anniversary of German unification, will also mark the completion of the final chapter of World War I with the end of reparations payments 92 years after the country's defeat.

The German government will pay the last instalment of interest on foreign bonds it issued in 1924 and 1930 to raise cash to fulfil the enormous reparations demands the victorious Allies made after World War I.

The reparations bankrupted Germany in the 1920s and the fledgling Nazi party seized on the resulting public resentment against the terms of the Versailles Treaty.[...]

The debt payments were halted during the Great Depression and the Nazi era, then resumed in 1953. The final installment comes to €69.9 million.

You know, there once was a time in the not too distant past when the British military defended civilization against a genocidal German regime that appeared intent on rampaging across much of the planet. Now, it looks as if it will be reduced to a shadow of its former self: Proposed cuts would slice the Royal Air Force to levels not seen since World War I, while the Army could see reductions of as much as 40 percent of its forces.

Some observers suggest that these selectively-leaked numbers are merely posturing -- the military is airing a doomsday scenario in order to rally support for scaling back the cuts. That may be true, but the reality of serious reductions to the Britain's armed forces is here to stay. The government's budget, weakened further by a persistent economic crisis, simply can't support the present size of the British military.

Critics of the size of the U.S. defense budget will no doubt look to Britain for tips regarding how they can reverse the growth in military spending. I'm not sure, however, that they are going to find anything useful. If we take Britain as a model, the keys to reversing defense spending appear to be, in order of importance: Have an unsustainable budget deficit that cannot be managed any other way, find another global superpower to police the world for you, and transform the region of the world where your interests lie into one of peace and stability. The United States doesn't look likely to fulfill any of those requirements in the short-term -- though, with the capabilities of one of its most important allies looking to be slashed, its job is only about to get tougher.

Spanish investigative judge Baltasar Garzon has made a name for himself by prosecuting human rights abusers around the world -- including former Chilean leader Augusto Pinochet -- using universal jurisdiction to get around national amnesties. But Garzon is now himself being charged with abuse of power relating to an investigation of murder's and disappearances under the Franco regime. His supporters are now fighting back:   

Lawyers representing Argentine relatives of three Spaniards and an Argentine killed during the 1936-39 war will ask the federal courts here Wednesday to open an investigation, and hope to add many more cases in the months to come.

So Garzon's supporters now hope to launch the same investigation - citing the same principles of international law - from Buenos Aires. And while Garzon limited the scope to crimes committed until 1952, the Argentine rights groups hope to address any state terror in Spain from 1936-1977, when its democracy was restored.

Attorney Carlos Slepoy, a specialist in human rights law, told The Associated Press the plaintiffs are invoking the principle of universal jurisdiction, which provides that genocide and crimes against humanity "can be prosecuted by the courts of any country.

 

The choice of Argentina is interesting since it was Garzon who led the charge to prosecute military figures there for crimes committed during the 1976-83 dictatorship.

Garzon is currently being charged with violating a 1977 amnesty law designed to help Spain move on from the Franco years. I don't know nearly enough to weigh in on the legal questions involved here, but politically it doesn't look very good that Spain was willing to let Garzon prosecute abuses in other countries for years, but became uncomfortable with his tactics as soon as he started poking around in his own country's dirty laundry. This type of challenge should have been expected. 

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has, in the past, shown little interest in discussing the darker periods of French history. His summed up his attitude while visiting former colony Algeria two years ago, saying:

"Young people on either side of the Mediterranean are looking to the future more than the past and what they want are concrete things. They're not waiting for their leaders to simply drop everything and start mortifying themselves, or to beat their breasts, over the mistakes of the past because, in that case, there'd be lots to do on both sides."

But in the last two weeks there have been some signs that Sarkozy may be tentatively softening his relentlessly forward-facing outlook. Visiting Haiti last week to announce a debt cancellation package, Sarkozy had this to say about France's legacy of slavery, colonialism, and economic dominance over the country:

"Our presence did not leave good memories,'' Sarkozy conceded outside the still-standing French Embassy in downtown Port-au-Prince.

"The wounds of colonization, maybe the worst, [and] the conditions of our separation have some traces that are still alive in Haitian memories.''

Visiting Rwanda today, Sarkozy didn't exactly apologize for France's conduct during the 1994 genocide, but at least took note of his country's faults: 

"What happened here is unacceptable and what happened here forces the international community, including France, to reflect on the mistakes that prevented it from anticipating and stopping this terrible crime."

Asked what he felt those mistakes had been, the president cited a seriously flawed assessment of the situation in Rwanda as the genocide unfolded and a UN-mandated French military intervention that was "too late and undoubtedly too little".

But reflecting a thaw in relations, Sarkozy said he hoped the future would enable the two countries to "turn an extremely painful page" on a past fraught with mutual distrust. "Off the back of all these mistakes … we are going to try to build a bilateral relationship," he said.

Granted, this isn't much -- certainly less than the Rwandans were expecting and much weaker than the apologies Bill Clinton and Kofi Annan have made -- but it's a new style from Sarkozy, whose rhetoric has never exactly been known for its sensitivity. 

President Obama recorded a video message today for the ceremony marking the 65th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz:

We have a sacred duty to remember the twisted thinking that led here—how a great society of culture and science succumbed to the worst instincts of man and rationalized mass murder and one of the most barbaric acts in history.

We have a sacred duty to remember the cruelty that occurred here, as told in the simple objects that speak to us even now.  The suitcases that still bear their names.  The wooden clogs they wore.  The round bowls from which they ate.  Those brick buildings from which there was no escape—where so many Jews died with Sh’ma Israel on their lips.  And the very earth at Auschwitz, which is still hallowed by their ashes—Jews and those who tried to save them, Polish and Hungarian, French and Dutch, Roma and Russian, straight and gay, and so many others.     

But even as we recall man’s capacity for evil, Auschwitz also tells another story—of man’s capacity for good.  The small acts of compassion—the sharing of some bread that kept a child alive.  The great acts of resistance that blew up the crematorium and tried to stop the slaughter.  The Polish Rescuers and those who earned their place forever in the Righteous Among the Nations.

Obama's remarks were very well written, though the sentiment suggested in them was hardly new. Each time a Holocaust anniversary comes around, we hear the same speeches about how these camps stand as a symbol of the human capacity of evil and the duty to prevent it, yet nations are still just as slow to respond  to modern-day cases of genocide and atrocity or take steps needed to prevent them.

Writing for Foreign Policy in December, the International Crisis Group's Andrew Stroehlein, who was led international delegations to Auschwitz, suggested that using it as our model for genocide might be the problem:

There is probably no more appropriate single location than Auschwitz-Birkenau for grasping the scope of the Nazi horror. But the unprecedented and unequaled nature of that horror makes it somewhat inappropriate as a useful lesson for preventing genocide today. When you're waiting for something that looks like Birkenau, it's almost too easy to say, "never again."

From March 1942 to late 1944, Birkenau was the largest factory of mass murder in wartime Europe. Every day, trains arrived carrying thousands of people -- mostly Jews, but also Poles, Roma, and others -- and apart from a limited number deemed fit for slave labor, they were sent immediately to their deaths in massive, purpose-built gas chambers. At its peak, Birkenau could kill as many as 20,000 people a day, and in the end, this place was the worst of the extermination camps: The Nazis are estimated to have murdered over a million people here.

It was the mechanization of murder on a scale never before seen, and it stretched far beyond the grounds of this camp. With victims shipped in from all across Europe, this was an integrated system of collection, transport, and execution that covered a continent. It was precisely that sort of industrialization that I feared might inhibit an understanding of mass atrocity among the participants. Walking around Birkenau with these diplomats, some of whom represent states on the edge -- a few perhaps even over the edge -- of mass atrocities right now, I got the feeling some might have missed the point.

The Holocaust was a minutely organized and completely structured -- not to mention disturbingly well-documented -- genocide, miles away from the messy realities of their countries. They could look at the camp and the gas chambers and recognize nothing familiar. In fact, the visit may have only confirmed their belief that their countries were incapable of mass atrocities, when all they are really incapable of is the industrialized method. [...]

This issue goes far beyond a couple dozen participants in a seminar in Poland. I suspect too many people in the wider international community still only recognize genocide in this one most specific sense. They are always looking for Birkenau -- expecting industrialized killing rather than seeing genocide the way it unfolds today. They ignore the evidence that in the right environment, simple machetes can be just as effective as rail networks and gas chambers.

The whole piece is well worth reading. Particularly this week,  it's useful to consider whether when leaders say "never again," they mean "never again will Germans kill Jews here" or something more universal. 

No, U.S. President Barack Obama has informed People. The United States has no interest in or plans to invade Yemen or Somalia -- and nor should it.

Out of curiosity, I took a look at the experience of the last western power to occupy part of Yemen: Britain. The history's complicated. But, very briefly: last century, Britain controlled Yemeni territory at the strategic port of Aden; the western portion of the country was a kingdom. In the early 1960s, Egypt attempted to overthrow the kingdom by funding anti-royalists. Britain attempted to insulate itself by creating buffer protectorates. Still, the Aden local insurgency simmered, and boiled over when Egypt started funding it as well. In 1963, Britain declared a state of emergency and started fighting a full-on counterinsurgency.

Contemporary accounts of the conflict -- known as the Aden Emergency in Britain -- from Time paint an interesting picture. For one, they clearly demonstrate how racist the rhetoric was just 50 years ago. (Some of the descriptions below are, well, uncomfortable to read.) The clips also show how, despite inferior weaponry, domestic insurgencies so successfully chip away at the will and resources of occupying forces.

First, some insulting if evocative description of the Yemeni Imam from 1957:

The Imam of Yemen, who acts like a Borgia Pope, is known to have a minimum of five diseases in various stages of arrested development (rheumatism, heart trouble, bilharziasis, gastritis, syphilis), but this does not prevent him from greedily devouring huge meals consisting of nothing but Russian salad heavily splashed with mayonnaise. The Imam's greatest trouble is psychological: he is under the impression that the British are depriving him of huge oil royalties....

A very colorful 1962 story, "Arabia Felix," describes him thus:

Ahmad governed by means of spies, subsidies and the executioner's ax, decapitating more than a thousand enemies. He was a man of enormous appetite: he would do away with an entire roast lamb at a single sitting and then gulp down a pound of honey as a between-meals snack. He had three wives and 40 concubines, but in the last years of his life his potency declined, and he had unsuccessful recourse to rejuvenation treatments by a Swiss doctor. His luckless harem consoled itself with sorties into lesbianism and erotic gadgets sent from Japan. Like many Yemenites, Ahmad chewed qat, a narcotic shrub similar to marijuana, and switched to morphine in 1953 -- heroically breaking the habit six years later.

A year later, with fighting escalating in Aden, Time overviews the conflict:

Though some scholars maintain that the Garden of Eden was in Aden, the country today seems more like purgatory than paradise. A British protectorate since 1839, Aden is a sun-scorched moonscape of thrusting volcanic mountains and rock-strewn wadies. Temperatures commonly rise to 110, and survival rations for British combat troops there include at least two gallons of water daily -- for drinking, not washing. Aden is a tempting prize nonetheless.

The British primarily fought from the air, dropping leaflets and bombing villages from the sky (a strange echoing of today's drone fights):

In the days when might was still right in the Middle East the British invented a technique for dealing with recalcitrant Arab tribesmen. The R.A.F. would drop leaflets on Arab villages demanding that they give up fugitive criminals or be bombed. Usually the trick worked, and the wanted man would be expelled from the threatened village, pursued through the desert, shot down or captured. On other occasions the population would flee the village, which the R.A.F. would then destroy.

While the guerrilla war waged on:

Sir Arthur Charles, the British Speaker of the Aden Legislative Council, was shot and killed as he was leaving his tennis club at sundown. As the incidents increased, British security forces arrested 29 suspected terrorists and imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew. Last week schools were shut down when students tried to demonstrate, and newspapers were forbidden to "carry news that might incite people." British troops patrolled the streets, exchanging occasional fire with snipers on the rooftops.

Until the British finally recognized the fight as futile, and wanted to get out:

In its rush to rid itself of the weight of empire, Britain has often bestowed independence on lands that had no business accepting it...Few lands, however, have been so ill-prepared to rule themselves as [South Yemen], which Britain announced last week will become independent by the end of November. [It] consists of the port of Aden and 17 feudal satraps whose Bedouin tribesmen eat goat meat and carry everywhere their curved djambias (daggers). Its life has been disrupted and its British-sponsored federal government destroyed by four years of terrorism and civil war.

And finally, they left:

"Farewell, Far East," headlined the London Evening Standard. In the Daily Express, Labor M.P. Desmond Donnelly called the government's plan "the most stark military withdrawal since the Roman legions were recalled from Britain." With a mingled sense of nostalgia and relief, Britain announced that it will gradually rid itself of the most burdensome vestige of its venerable but faded oriental empire.

Maybe it's just because we've been discussing upcoming Berlin Wall-related content here at the office, but I find Matt Welch's Reason cover essay, calling the 1989 defeat of communism in Europe, "the Unknown War" a little strange:

November 1989 was the most liberating month of arguably the most liberating year in human history, yet two decades later the country that led the Cold War coalition against communism seems less interested than ever in commemorating, let alone processing the lessons from, the collapse of its longtime foe. At a time that fairly cries out for historical perspective about the follies of central planning, Americans are ignoring the fundamental conflict of the postwar world, and instead leapfrogging back to what Steve Forbes describes in this issue as the “Jurassic Park statism” of the 1930s (see “?‘The Last Gasp of the Dinosaurs,’?” page 42). There have been more Hollywood hagiographies of the revolutionary communist Che Guevara in the last five years than there have been studio pictures in the last two decades about the revolutionary anti-communists who dramatically toppled totalitarians from Tallin to Prague (see Tim Cavanaugh’s “Hollywood Comrades,” page 62). And what little general-nonfiction interest there is in the superpower struggle, as Michael C. Moynihan details on page 48 (“The Cold War Never Ended”), remains stuck in the same Reagan vs. Gorby frame that made the 1980s so intellectually shallow the first time around.

Sure, it might be nice to see a Hollywood blockbuster or two about the Gdansk shipyard strike (unfortunately for producers, Lech Walesa wasn't quite as dashing as Che) but is there really a lack of end-of-cold-war awareness out there?

The "post-9/11 era" is only just starting to eclipse the "post-Cold War era" as foreign-affairs writing's most ubiquitous cliche. (If you're submitting to FP, please don't start your piece with either of them.) Indeed much of the contemporary debate over globalization takes 1989 as a starting point. 

It seems to me that the images of 1989 -- from Tiananmen to the fall of the wall -- are just as, if not more iconic today than anything from 1968, which seems to be Welch's nominee for history's most overrated year. The tsunami of Berlin Wall media content that's already starting to trickle out in advance of next week's anniversary should drive that point home. As should German Chancellor Angela Merkel's address to congress today in which she described how "the wall, barbed wire and orders to shoot limited my access to the free world" until 1989. How exactly is Welch proposing that we take this anniversary more seriously?

Welch's larger point is that "Americans are ignoring the fundamental conflict of the postwar world" as more and more of the U.S. economy is nationalized. But while these trends might not be moving in the direction Welch likes, it seems odd to argue that the free-market vs. government-control dialectic is being "ignored" given the number of times Obama's economic policies have been decried as socialist in the last year. 

GERARD MALIE/AFP/Getty Images

When Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi goes on the offensive, great things happen for bloggers. He got worked up after a Spanish reporter asked whether he should resign for the rising scandal over his womanizing, including an escort who says she was paid to spend the night with him. Reuters reports Berlusconi's stunningly candid explanation for why he thinks he should stay:

"I sincerely believe I am by far the best prime minister Italy has had in its 150 year history (since unification in 1861)," Berlusconi said in televised news conference in Sardinia with Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero.

Now, though struggling with corruption, Italy is a democracy, but I'm pretty sure that's what Robert Mugabe says too. But back to Berlusconi, it gets better. He has never denied sleeping with the woman accusing him, but forcefully explained why he would never pay for sex:

"Never in my life, not even once, have I had to pay for a sexual encounter," Berlusconi said. "And I'll tell you why: for someone who loves to conquer, the greatest joy is the conquest, so I ask, 'if you pay, what joy can there be?'"

That must make his wife feel even better about her decision to start divorce proceedings. But the press conference still gets better:

When Berlusconi apologized to Zapatero for his lengthy answer, the Spanish leader said there was no need and it was "very interesting."

Bravo Silvio. 

ANDREAS SOLARO/AFP/Getty Images

This week's list looks at some of the late Ted Kennedy's notable international achievements. Of course, it's only a very partial list. See Joe Cirincione for Kennedy's impact in the nuclear disarmament debate or UNHCR commissioner Antonio Gutteres on his longtime advocacy for refugees. There's also a lot more to be said on Kennedy's Cold War diplomacy and work on immigration reform.

Given the number of areas of U.S. foreign policy where Kennedy helped shape the debate, it's actually a testament to his outsized impact on domestic politics that this isn't a big part of his legacy. 

There are so many great Kennedy anecdotes, but here's one truly bizarre one from Peter Canellos's book "Last Lion" about an awkward meeting between Kennedy, his advisor David Burke and President Lyndon Johnson, soon after Kennedy's return from a trip to Vietnam in 1968:

Finally, in the last week of January, Ted received word that the president wanted to see him.

Burke and Ted prepared their presentation for Johnson and then sat with him in the Oval Office. As Ted began his remarks about the failure of the United States to win over hearts and minds of the Vietnamese, Johnson cut him off.

"Now wait a minute, Teddy," the president drawled. "There's no need to rush on this. There was something I wanted to ask you first, and then we can get down to what you wanted to say."

"Yes, sir."

"Teddy," Johnson said, pausing for effect. "Do you want a Fresca?"

"Um, no thank you, Mr. President," Ted stammered.

As Ted tried once more to deliver his report, Johnson again interrupted and turned to Burke. "Dave, would you like a Fresca?"

"No thank you, Mr. President."

"Well, I'm going to have a Fresca," the leader of the free world announced. Then he turned to look at his butler, who was holding a silver beverage tray. "I'll ask you again, Dave, are you going to have a Fresca with your president? We'd enjoy it."

Burke caved. "Yes, Mr. President, I'll have a Fresca."

Johnson smiled. "Good, good. Now that's good." He turned to his butler. "David and I will have a Fresca." He waited several beats before adding, "Teddy doesn't want one. 

As the butler left the room, one of Johnson's dogs came bounding into the room and leaped onto Burke's lap. So in between sipping his Fresca, Burke sat in the Oval Office dutifully petting a dog. He couldn't have looked more like and 8-year-old boy if he tried, which was precisely what LBJ had in mind. Ted tried to suppress a laugh as he glanced at Burke.

From there, Ted tried resuming his remakrs, but it was clear to both him and Burke that Johnson had absolutely no interest in anything he had to report. Their command performance in the Oval Office had been just one more exercise in Johnson proving who was top dog. 

Something tells me this kind of thing wouldn't have worked on Kennedy later in his career.

STF/AFP/Getty Images

The audiotape of Italian Prime Minister talking with a professional escort who alleges he paid her for sex are embarrassing enough. But now it appears Berlusconi may have committed an archaeological crime:

In one of the transcripts of his purported conversations with Patrizia D'Addario posted on an Italian website, Berlusconi boasts to her about his sprawling villa in Sardinia -- complete with an ice cream parlor and artificial lakes.

"Here we found 30 Phoenician tombs from (around) 300 BC," the voice is heard to say.

The latest audio clip was posted on the website of L'Espresso weekly on Thursday and immediately raised the interest of the opposition and the archaeological community.

Under Italian law archaeological discoveries made on private property must be reported to authorities for inspection, cataloguing and possible excavation.

Archaeologists say that if Berlusconi's boasts are true, he may have stumbled onto a major find. 

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan seems pretty quick to throw the g-word at China, considering his own country's historical sensitivities:

"The incidents in China are, simply put, a genocide. There's no point in interpreting this otherwise," Erdogan said.

It's not exactly that simple. There's a case to be made that China's suppression of the Uighurs combined with it's efforts to build the Han population in Xinjiang constitute genocide under the 1948 convention, which includes "Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part" as part of the definition. But this is a pretty broad interpretation, especially considering that the local Han population has been suffering attacks as well. 

It's also surprising to see a Turkish president so willing to use the word genocide this freely. Turkey has charged quite a few people over the years -- including the country's most famous author -- with insulting Turkishness for saying similar things about the massacre of Armenians after World War I or the killing of Kurds in more recent years. Erdogan himself has attacked proposals that Turkey apologize for historical wrongdoings.

Is this really a conversation he wants to start?

TIM SLOAN/AFP/Getty Images

Britney Spears could be returning to film for the first time since "Crossroads" in 2002, for which she was given a Golden Raspberry award for worst actress of the year. She is said to be reviewing the script for "The Yellow Star of Sophia and Eton" a romantic tragedy partially set in the Holocaust. 

As Der Spiegel reports, not everyone is thrilled about the potential casting choice:

Charlotte Knobloch, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, has said she is horrified..."In films that deal with the Holocaust, the script should be carefully chosen and the cast picked with care," Knobloch told the German tabloid Bild. "It is reprehensible to combine the issue of the Holocaust with Britney Spears in an attempt to secure financing for the film 'The Yellow Star of Sophia and Eton.' Ethical considerations should have priority."

More on the film from Haaretz:

If she accepts the role, Spears will be taking on the title role of Sophia LaMont, a woman who invents a time machine and succeeds in traveling to the time of the Second World War. According to the script, LaMont ends up at a concentration camp and falls in love with a Jewish prisoner named Eton. However, the budding love story is cut short when both are killed by the Nazis.

Britney, time-travel, Nazis. What could they be worried about?

Dan Senor and Christian Whiton have an op-ed in today's Wall Street Journal with some suggestions for how the United States could effectively help the reformists in Iran. It's a tricky subject and creative thinking is certainly welcome (my colleague Chris Brose has weighed in on this), but Senor and Whiton's bold declaration that "Our own experience with dissidents around the world is that proof of concern by the U.S. government is helpful and desirable" worries me a bit, paritcularly in their choice of Ukraine's 2004 Orance Revolution as a model:

Mr. Obama should deliver another taped message to the Iranian people. Only this time he should acknowledge the fundamental reality that the regime lacks the consent of its people to govern, which therefore necessitates a channel to the "other Iran." He should make it clear that dissidents and their expatriate emissaries should tell us what they most need and want from the U.S. This could consist of financial resources, congresses of reformers, workshops or diplomatic gatherings. The key is to let the reformers call the shots and indicate how much and what U.S. assistance they want. Simply knowing we care, that we are willing to deploy resources and are watching their backs -- to the extent we can -- often helps reformers.

The 2004 Orange Revolution in Ukraine is a model. In that case the West joined Ukrainians in refusing to accept the results of a stolen election. This combined effort helped to force a final run-off vote that reflected the people's will. In Iran, this would mean not only redoing elections but also allowing a full field of candidates to run. As with Ukraine and the Soviet Union before, Mr. Obama could at least make it clear that the U.S. will separate the issues of engagement and legitimacy. Our engagement of the Soviet Union in arms-control talks did not prevent us from successfully pressing human-rights issues and seeking an alternative political structure. So it can be with Iran. Engagement without an effort to talk to the "other Iran" would not only be a travesty but tactically foolish as well.

Not every revolution is a "color" revolution. The visuals from Tehran may resemble Kiev in 2004, but the message from the streets is different. Both are nationalist movements in addition to democratic movements (as most successful democratic movements are) but Ukrainian and Iranian nationalism are very different beasts.

In Ukraine that nationalism could be directed against a government dominated by an outside power, Russia. The orange coalition (like the Polish Solidarity movement, which Senor and Whiton also cite) welcomed overt U.S. signs of support because it counteracted the support the pro-government forces were receiving from the Kremlin. The coalition billed itself as pro-Western.

In Iran, the protesters are crying allahu akbar from the rooftops and marching behind a fairly conservative hero of the 1979 revolution. They're protesting a probably rigged election, yes, but the nationalist rhetoric coming out of the movements leaders is not about rejoining the West but about protecting the Islamic state from Ahmadinejad's corrupt and bungling rule. 

On a more practical level, U.S. NGOs were involved in the run-up to the Ukrainian election, supporting poll monitoring and training activists so when the trouble started, they were in place to help out. This is certainly not the case in Iran.

This is not to say that a Mousavi presidency wouldn't be better for the United States, or that the U.S. government shouldn't be seeking out ways it can help (Evgeny Morozov has one novel idea) but it seems odd to assume that the young people marching in the streets of Tehran would welcome the outspoken support of the U.S. president just because other young people marching in other streets have welcomed it in the past. 

AFP/Getty Images 

Posted this one during the Olympics last year but am re-posting in honor of tomorrow's anniversary:

Freedom House's Ellen Bork along with the Weekly Standard's design director Philip Chalk and Tiananmen survivor Tian Jian have created this map for Beijing tourists interested in visiting the sites of the June 4, 1989 massacre of the Tiananmen Square protestors. Each number shows the place where where one of the 176 victims were killed or the hospitals to which their bodies were taken.

You can find information on the victims here and read Bork's explanation of the map at the New York Sun's site.