Foreign Lands Roundup

Well for all my good intentions of doing this on a weekly basis...here we are at week 2 and I'm already two days late. We'll shoot for Monday for the next roundup, but no promises...

Not this Rwandan genocide.

• Last week, a UN draft report was leaked which states that genocide may have been perpetrated by the Rwandan military in the DR Congo. Quelle surprise! Except that this report was not talking about the violence perpetrated by the Hutu majority against the Tutsi minority from 1992-1994. This time, in an exciting reversal of fortune, it was the predominantly Tutsi military of President Paul Kagame committing genocide against Hutu refugees in the Democratic Republic of Congo (then called Zaire, a decidedly cooler name)! What fun for all! Genocide all around! The draft report alleges that systematic cleansing of Hutu refugee camps occurred during these years, apparently carried out by the Tutsi armies. This, however, can be chalked up to just another fun encounter between the Tutsi and Hutu (who are virtually indistinguishable), who have been attempting to exterminate each other for millennia. Keep working, guys! One day you'll get it! I suggest nuclear weapons. [France24, link is in French]

• The Tornado Rock Festival in Miass, Russia - a nation known for its calm, collected, stoic peoples - was disrupted last weekend as a group of skinheads invaded, pushed their way past security cordons, and sought to cry 'Havoc!' and let loose the dogs of war. The malcontents, who are totally unique and not an endemic problem in Russian society, brought batons, sticks, and iron rods to their little jaunt to the rock festival, injuring somewhere between 10 and 100 people. Which is just incredibly specific for the Russian media. According to the radio station Ekho Moskvy, the skinheads were upset that the organizer of the festival will be running in the October legislative polls. Because that's a legitimate thing to do. I know when I am upset about an individual running for office, I go out and attack a crowd of festival-goers who are only tangentially related to said candidate, but generally it doesn't go so well for me. [RIA Novosti]

• Another day, another appalling discovery in the current War On Everything That Moves being waged by the Mexican drug cartels. On August 26, however, in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, the bodies of 72 migrants were discovered, likely killed by the cartel members who themselves died in a shoot-out with the Mexican police. It's like Kansas c. 1880 meets Chicago c. 1920. Jeez, Mexico, way to do everything we did about 100 years too late. One upshot for Tommy Tancredo and Lou Dobbs, though, is more migrants dead means fewer Illegals in the US! Though then they'd have to find something else to fall into fits of apoplectic fury over...so maybe they wouldn't like this so much. I get so confused sometimes about these ludicrous wedge issues. [BBC News]