Alliance Update: Top Pakistan Diplomat Criticises US Terror Warning

As Islambad continues to block the movement of NATO tankers through the Khyber Pass to Afghanistan, leaving them prey to attack, and Washington criticises Pakistan's lack of fortitude in pursuing insurgents --- even accusing the Pakistani intelligence service of backing the Taliban in Afghanistan --- the latest spat arises.

Senior Pakistani diplomats, as well as European intelligence officials, are telling journalists that a US terror alert this week about Al Qa'eda plots to attack targets in western Europe was politically motivated and unsupported by credible intelligence.

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Burma: Seeing the Political Prisoners

The Guardian of London highlights Even Though I'm Free, I'm Not, an exhibition by James MacKay,  of the portraits of former Burma's political prisoners, almost all photographed in exile from Thailand to Britain to Norway. 

The exhibition can be seen on-line at Enigma Images' website.

Two years ago Aye Min Soe was known the world over, star of Oscar-nominated documentary Burma VJ, the shot-in-secret story of Burma's 2007 Saffron Revolution. Today, the former political prisoner leads an anonymous existence, stateless, penniless and vulnerable, on the Thai-Burma border. Mired between UN and Thai government bureaucracy, his application for refugee status has stalled. He has no documentation allowing him to be in Thailand, he cannot work, and is regularly threatened with deportation back to Burma.

"If I was sent back to Burma, I would be arrested and jailed straight away. I might be killed. I thought I would be free when I escaped from my country, but I am not. I feel I am still in prison."

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Mexico: Twitter & Bloggers Break the Silence on the Drug Wars (Tuckman)

Jo Tuckman writes for The Guardian of London:

A small army of bloggers and tweeters is filling the gaps left by traditional media in Mexico that are increasingly limiting their coverage of the country's drug wars because of pressure from the cartels.

"Shots fired by the river, unknown number of dead," read one recent tweet on a busy feed from the northern border city of Reynosa, #Reynosafollow. "Organized crime blockade on San Fernando road lifted," said another. "Just saw police officers telling a group of narcos about the positions of navy checkpoints," ran a third.

Nothing of this kind appeared in the city's papers which, along with most media outlets in the north-eastern state of Tamaulipas, have become better known for what they do not publish than for what they do.

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