“Not sure which paper to buy,” I said. “The one with corruption headlines, or one with headlines about corruption.”

“Expletive,” the newsman said. “Those politicians are a bunch of expletive expletives.”

“A lot of them do seem to be up to their eyeballs,” I said.

“We need to go to France,” the newsman said.

“You wouldn’t be the first.”

“No, we need to go to France and steal from some museums.”

“Sorry?”

“Si, si. Steal some of their old guillotines. Set them up in our plazas. Make a few corrupt heads roll.”

“Well, I –“

“That’d make the next thief think twice.”

“Or,” I said, “Spain could just toughen existing penalties for corruption. The statute on such crimes usually runs out in five or six years. And if people do go to jail, it never seems to be for more than a year or two.”

The newsman nodded. “And,” he said, “they never give what money they’ve stolen back.”

I nodded.

“Which is why we need guillotines.”

“Yeah, but one big problem with guillotines is who gets to run them.”

“Guillotines.”

“Okay, see you tomorrow.”

I crossed the street to buy bread, and at the bakery the same discussion was already well underway.

“We ought to take away everything they own,” the baker was saying about politicians and bankers, shaking her fist. “If they’re going to continue stealing and kicking people out of their homes, then we take the clothes off their backs. Force them to live on the street too.”

She was holding a copy of a different newspaper, in which there was an article about another suicide by someone who’d been evicted from his home, but who was still being forced to pay the debt that led to his eviction to begin with. There was supposed to have been a moratorium on such evictions, since a couple of similar suicides this fall. But so far this year about 50,000 have been carried out.

A guy working on one of the baker’s ovens lifted his head up, wiped his brow.

“If a politician or civil servant steals the public’s money,” he said. “I don’t care about getting it back. I think we should put them to work, digging ditches. Then, when they’re done, we shoot them in the head and bury them right there. Under roads, wherever.”

An elderly woman waiting patiently in line nodded vigorously in agreement.

Complaining in shops is typical on early Spanish mornings. People gripe about whatever there is to gripe about, and you don’t really think too much about it. It’s more like a reflex. But what was different this morning was the suggestion of violence. I’ve never heard head-chopping and summary executions figure in the routine.

It doesn’t in any way suggest that my neighbors were serious. Or that Spaniards are close to a sort of collective uprising that might lead to lynchings.

On the contrary, violent protest here has been remarkably low in over five years of economic crisis. But the morning’s rants do reflect just how fed up people are with sacrificing, in the form of higher taxes and reduced public services, while their elected leaders are exposed, one after another, as corrupt. Or allegedly corrupt.

Every day seems to bring a new case to light. From the Royal Family to the top leadership of the country to countless local barons. Before leaving the bakery I suggested this was all actually good news.

“All the scheming must have already been underway,” I said. “The fact that the press is now writing about it shows that society is in a process of cleansing.”

My neighbors shook their heads, glanced at each other.

“Well, you have to start somewhere,” I said.

“The problem,” the oven repair guy said, “is once you start looking, it’s never going to end.”

That was a deeply defeatist thing to say, suggesting a total lack of confidence in the country’s ruling class. Some recent national polls here have reflected similar sentiment.

Apparently even the European Union Commission is becoming alarmed. According to the El Pais newspaper, it has issued an internal memo, expressing concern that so much corruption could cause ordinary Spaniards to “totally disconnect” from the political process.

This in a country held up and hailed as a model of democratic tradition only one generation ago.

Robert Worth writes a compelling and entertaining portrait of French spy novelist Gérard de Villiers in this week’s New York Times Magazine.

I was introduced to de Villiers’ SAS series when I lived in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. No. 76 in the series is “Putsch à Ouagadougou,” and as Worth explains in his story, the book contains undeniable verisimilitude.

“Putsch à Ouagadougou” was banned for many years in Burkina Faso when Capt. Thomas Sankara was president. The plot tells you why: SAS hero Malko Linge arrives in Ouagadougou to spearhead a coup d’état against a President Sankara. (I re-read large chunks of the book when I saw Worth’s article, and could not find the “camarade-president” to have a first name, but perhaps that just added to the believability of the story).

At the time, like anyone else in Ouagadougou who wanted to read it, I had to ask for a contraband copy from one of the city’s many street-side booksellers who would lay their wares on a table. If you were polite, a copy of “Putsch à Ouagadougou” wrapped in a sheet of newspaper would be quietly taken out of a box below the table. That had nothing to do with the requisite sex-scenes every 25 pages or so, and everything to do with perceived propaganda against the Sankara regime.

One of the remarkable things that Worth highlights in his profile of the author, and which is also true of “Putsch à Ouagadougou,” is de Villiers’ attention to detail.

I thought he had a research team that travels to these far-flung places around the globe to gather phone books, maps, photographs, anything that would make the narrative as realistic as possible. But in fact, de Villiers does the research himself, spending a couple of weeks in these places, and then returning to Paris to write.

Here’s a short list of a few of the accuracies de Villiers nails in “Putsch à Ouagadougou.”

• There is a Hotel Silmande, and it is the ritziest of the hotels in Ouagadougou.

• There is also a Hotel Indépendance. It exists, and so did the electrical short — described accurately by de Villiers — in the underwater light at the hotel pool that on certain days made people jump right out of the water.

• A certain Colonel Joseph Ouedraengo who will take the place of President Sankara when he is toppled is exiled in Ivory Coast. Okay, such a person did not exist, but if you were opposed to Sankara in the 80s, you were likely in Ivory Coast, or France.

• The real life Thomas Sankara had a bodyguard who was mixed race whose name was Gilbert Guengeré. De Villiers also describes in his book a mixed-race bodyguard who was like someone out of Haiti’s Tonton-Macoutes. This one’s name is Bangaré.

• And true to form, de Villiers gets the local beer correct (Flag), as well as various bars and nightclubs which existed at the time.

If you needed a manual on how to stage a coup in Burkina Faso, this book would have served quite well. Sadly, the coup against Thomas Sankara — when it happened on Oct. 15, 1987 — needed no instructions.

It happened simply, staged by the man who knew Sankara best, the army captain who was always by his side, Blaise Compaore. He’s the one who organized the 1983 coup that put Sankara in power. And he remains in power in Burkina Faso today.

Yet our recent road trip to the city of Gao, center of much of the jihadist troops, revealed suggestions that the area still isn’t secure from the threat of more attacks.

It was just last week that French and Malian forces swept into Gao, beating back the militants from the city, sparking scenes of jubilation from the residents who endured under occupation.

For the most part, though, journalists were unable to get to Gao to report on the fighting or even its aftermath. They were repeatedly blocked from traveling on the only road north to Gao by the Malian army, which cited safety concerns.

So when we saw a chance to make it through, there was no hesitation. We were in the town of Sevare, home to an airfield and a military base, when we learned a convoy of French vehicles would leave the next morning. We were told we could tag along as long as we arrived at the gates of the base by 5 a.m. the next day.

We watched as 61 vehicles – some ready for battle, others acting as lookouts and most trucks loaded with supplies for the troops in Gao – pulled out from the base. We fell in behind, finally able to do what so many other journalists had been unable to: sail through the checkpoints. Still that did not make for easy travel.

The convoy moved achingly slowly at points, covering ground carefully, watching for the enemy and alert to danger that was perceived to be getting worse the closer we got to Gao. We ended the day 160 kilometers short of the city after multiple roadside bombs were discovered up the road.

It meant a chilly, unexpected night sleeping on the ground, under the stars.

The next morning, the wake-up call came in the form of an explosion nearby, smoke drifting across the sunrise. Startled, we looked to the French soldiers nearby who seemed relaxed as they prepared to leave. One even shouted “reveille” to his colleagues. It was a controlled explosion, we learned later, of the two of the mines discovered the day before.

That discovery, coupled with a similar bomb that killed four Malian soldiers days before, suggests the extremists may be engaging in new tactics: Instead of fighting directly with troops, they will become an insurgency, employing guerrilla tactics similar to the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Once we did arrive in Gao, there were evident signs of the damage done by both the occupation and the battle to take it back. Buildings reduced to rubble by air strikes, gas stations closed due to fuel shortages and no electricity for most of the day.

Near a field where the Islamists carried out their amputations in full public view, black signs with white writing still stood: They were the stern reminders that up until last week, Sharia law was the law of the land.

For the residents, those are now difficult memories. One man named Ibrahim Konta says it was like they were in prison for nine months. Now he says it’s as though they’re celebrating independence all over again.

Konta runs a hotel in Gao, but he said the extremists moved in nine months ago, shutting down his business.

“I ran one of the oldest and best hotels in Mali, but there’s been no work for nine months there,” Konta said. “Now that the French have come, we’re cleaning it and getting it ready for customers.”

His main worry now is that the French will leave and what he said is a weak Malian army will fail to protect them, as it did nine months ago when Gao became a city under occupation.

He had gone to Haiti and Sierra Leone, and he was committed to covering the Arab uprising.

From Tunisia, he went on to Libya, Egypt, and then Syria.

On February 21st, 2012, he arrived in Homs late at night, as the city was under heavy shelling.

He reached a house which had been improvised as an underground media center in the besieged neighborhood of Baba Amr.

A few other Western journalists were there, including American reporter Marie Colvin.

Here is Ochlik that night, surrounded by Syrian rebel fighters.

French Photojournalist Rémi Ochlik with Syrian Army Fighters one day before his death in Homs, Syria. (Photo: WikiCommons)

The very next morning, the house came under rocket fire.

Colvin and Ochlik did not make it out of the house in time.

They were killed by a rocket explosion as they were trying to escape.

Ochlik’s photographs of the Arab Spring have been collected into a book titled “Révolutions.”

It was published by Karim Ben Khelifa, a Belgo-Tunisian photojournalist who was a friend and colleague of Ochlik’s.

He runs a crowd-funding platform for visual journalism called Emphasis, which published Ochlik’s book.

The subheading for “Révolutions” is a phrase in Latin: “In Girum Imus Nocte Et Consumimur Igni”

It’s a well-known a palindrome.

It means: “We Spin Around the Night Consumed by the Fire.”

Rémi Ochlik posted that phrase on his Facebook page at the beginning of the Tunisian revolution.

His friend photographer Arnaud Brunet says Ochlik had a hunch very early on that this rebellion was going to reverberate across the Arab world.

The French, leading the way for soldiers from Malian and other West African nations, have made their way swiftly into cities and town in the north that were taken over by Islamists and Tuareg rebels 10 months ago.

The offensive began earlier in January. Now the French Defense Minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, said the three week campaign has left the jihadists in disarray.

There have been jubilant scenes in the north, where the people are thanking the French for liberating them, but in Bamako, there are some who watch the unfolding events with more caution.

They are the refugees; those who fled their homes when the Islamists moved in and began imposing a harsh version of Sharia law.

Mohammed Ag Sabou came to Bamako from Timbuktu six months ago with his family in tow. He now lives in a house with three other families. For him, there is only wariness and little talk of a lasting peace.

“Realistically, the military will have to stay there for a long time to strengthen security and prevent revenge attacks. There are still lots of Islamists, in the cities, in the mountains, in the desert,” Ag Sabou said.

There are some who cannot contemplate ever trying to find a peace pact with those who invaded their cities and their lives.

At a busy bus downtown bus station, Suleiman Traore stands out. He is wearing a heavy grey jacket with long sleeves in the intense heat of Bamako’s midday sun.

He wears it for one sad reason.

“It is to stop me from seeing that my hand isn’t there anymore,” he said.

Traore was caught by militants last fall in Gao, accused of stealing their weapons.

For that, he said they cut off his right hand.

He rolled up his sleeve to show the stump, and pronounced what he thinks should happen to the fighters who are now retreating under fire.

“The best way to deal with them isn’t to kill them,” he said. “I think they should be mutilated too so they’ll know the pain and the difficulties of living this way.”

There are others who are more optimistic, including Mohammed Ibrahim Yattara. The father of six children he said it was frightening to be in Gao when it was invaded last spring.

“When you see people shooting gunfire in front of your house or threatening you with a gun in front of your children, in front of your wife, that’s a very scary thing,” Yattara said.

Now though he is smiling at the news that the last stronghold of the militants, Kidal, appears to have fallen. Yattara thinks the war is all but won and his country is saved.

“We think we’ll have years, centuries of security and peace.”

The fighters themselves, insist this is just a pause. Analysts suggest this may evolve into a guerrilla war with smaller scale, irregular attacks, similar to Afghanistan.

For those waiting to return home, it may not yet be safe enough. They will watch and wait in their temporary homes, not yet knowing how long they will have to be refugees in their own land.

They look like extracts from a bookie’s ledger: Column after column of handwritten dates, names and cash sums. They’re not in reference to horses, though, but to political leaders. The top leaders of Spain’s Popular Party, or PP, which is currently in power.

The documents appear to be a secret record of under-the-table payoffs to the PP’s top dogs, dating all the way back to 1990, as well as donations to the party mostly from big construction firms. The record was created and maintained by none other than the PP’s last two party treasurers, the guys who controlled the largely unregulated cash pouring into party coffers.

One prominent name appearing in the ledger is that of the current Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy, the man who just days ago said his hand would not waiver if it came to light that anyone among the ranks was engaging in illegal activity.

The documents purport to show that Rajoy received an annual “parallel pay” of around $32,000 a year, for 11 years.

Two former high-ranking members of the PP corroborated the existence of secret, cash-stuffed envelopes, before Thursday’s revelations. But party leaders have been vehemently denying knowledge of the funny money, much less having accepted any. The PP has threatened to take legal action against whomever is behind the documents, insinuating that they’re false.

But then today one current member of parliament for the PP admitted he had received about $8,000 from the treasury, on the quiet – but paid it back. This is hardly proof of systemic stealing within the party, but it adds to doubts among Spanish citizens who already largely considered the country’s political class to be corrupt.

Another worrying detail: These documents have come to light via an investigation into one of the former PP treasurers, who police say stole and squirreled away in Switzerland $30 million in public funds. That same treasurer also admitted this week in court that he laundered about half that money back into Spain through a recent tax-evasion amnesty program.

As of this writing, many questions remain unanswered. Not only as to whether the pay-offs ledger is real, and whether secret money was slipped to PP execs, but whether such payments are even illegal.

Legal or not, this is rapidly spiraling into an unprecedented crisis of ethics in modern Spanish politics. Prime Minister Rajoy has called an emergency meeting of his inner circle for this Saturday.

The pre-trial hearings in the military commission of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four co-defendants stalled midway through the week here at “Camp Justice,” in the naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The hearings this week were to address a number of defense motions before the court, including seeking to end government monitoring and censorship of attorney-client communications, the compelling of witnesses to testify for the defense, and requests for information about the treatment of the men while in CIA custody and in the Guantanamo prisons.

Confusion ensued on Monday, the first day of the hearings, when a mechanism to prevent classified information was triggered, leading to the courtroom feed being cut off. It’s a standard procedure, but no one knew who had hit the censor button, a question that has still not been publicly answered.

On Tuesday, Commission Judge James Pohl, an Army colonel, announced that the more controversial motions on the court docket for the week — arguments from the defense to make available information about the CIA’s rendition, detention, and interrogation program, and evidence from the “black sites” where Mohammed was held — were to be pushed back to later hearings scheduled for February and April.

The defense is trying to get details of the all five defendants’ treatment — such as Mohammed’s infamous waterboarding 183 times while in CIA custody — on the record in an effort to undermine the case against them. The defense is arguing that the treatment amounted to illegal pre-trial punishment — a concept derived from military law, and the same claim made unsuccesfully by Bradley Manning’s defense last December.

The defense also asserts that the treatment amounted to “outrageous governmental conduct” — a legal concept that essentially holds that the government’s behavior was so beyond the pale that they no longer hold the legal authority to convict. The prospect of the government dismissing charges for a crime on the scale of 9/11 seems unlikely; however, the same arguments could be advanced to make the case for mitigating the sentencing of the men, should the court get to that stage.

Right now, it looks as though that stage would be a very long way away. The court was to take the remainder of this week to resolve a number of defense motions that seek to compel the production of certain witnesses. On Tuesday, Judge Pohl issued an oral ruling rejecting a defense motion to find rule 703 (pdf) of the military commissions unconstitutional. Among other things, the rule gives the prosecution the right to approve and reject defense witness requests.

Navy CDR Walter Ruiz, the lawyer for co-defendant Mustafa al-Hawsawi, responded that the defense would need time to look over and adjust their witness request arguments based on the new ruling, noting that he would prefer to do that with the benefit of a written version rather than the oral description — a “Reader’s Digest” version, as the judge himself described it.

The judge asked if the defense had any witness motions they were willing to go forward with. But after getting through one motion, the judge cancelled Wednesday’s session, replacing it with a private meeting in which he and counsel for both sides would “see if we can make useful time of Thursday when everybody’s going to be here anyway.” Late Wednesday evening, word came from the court that enough resolution had been reached to hold one more session, beginning Thursday at 9 am.

The paper’s owner, Rupert Murdoch, has apologized for it.

And one of the only ways you can see the cartoon at this point is doing a Google search.

The image that’s causing such a furor is by English cartoonist and illustrator Gerald Scarfe.

It shows Netanyahu building a wall, but the mortar is blood and squeezed between some of the bricks are Palestinians.

The caption reads: “Will cementing the peace continue?”

Tuesday on the BBC, Stephen Pollard of the Jewish Chronicle, called the cartoon “disgusting” and “some of the worst kind of antisemitic blood libels.” Pollard added, “Whether there is a right to publish the cartoon is a different issue, I think it was a misjudgement and News International have handled it absolutely right by apologizing.”

British cartoonist Steve Bell challenged Pollard in the exchange on the BBC, saying “The problem with the State of Israel and the Zionist Lobby is that they never acknowledge the crime of ethnic cleansing upon which the State was founded.”

He also accused Pollard of undermining the real meaning of antisemitism by throwing around the term “blood libel,” the perverse myth that Jews secretly use human blood in their religious rituals.

That the cartoon was published on Holocaust Memorial Day has further angered many Jews and non-Jews.

On Tuesday, the senior editorial team of The Sunday Times met with Jewish leaders in London to apologize for the cartoon but they defended themselves against the charge of antisemitism.

Cartoonist and illustrator Gerald Scarfe has not commented publicly but reportedly had no intention of having the cartoon published on Holocaust Memorial Day.

Scarfe’s career with The Sunday Times goes back to the 1960s and he often depicts blood in his cartoons. He is also a well-known illustrator.

His most famous artwork is featured on Pink Floyd‘s 1979 album, The Wall, and in the film of the same name.

Scarfe is also known for his love of red.

Bright red in all forms — including blood — is splashed across his website and featured, for example, in a recent cartoon of Syrian leader Bashar Assad, who was pictured as a green, wraith-like creature drinking greedily from an oversized cup labeled “Children’s Blood.”

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, (2nd R) the alleged mastermind of the September 11 attacks, addresses the judge during the third day of pre-trial hearings in the 9/11 war crimes prosecution as depicted in this Pentagon-approved courtroom sketch at the US Naval Base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, October 17, 2012. (Photo: REUTERS/Janet Hamlin)

This report was cross-posted with our partner program Frontline.

The latest round of hearings at the military commission trying 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four co-defendants opened Monday at Guantanamo, but by the end of the day it appeared that the judge was not entirely in control of the proceedings.

Attorneys were preparing to argue a defense motion to preserve evidence from CIA “black sites” overseas, where Mohammed and others were kept and interrogated before being transferred to Guantanamo. David Nevin, Mohammed’s lead attorney, had barely spoken a few words before the audio feed from the courtroom abruptly cut out. The courtroom feeds out its audio on a 40-second delay, so if any sensitive classified information is discussed, an appointed court security officer can kill the audio before the information can be heard.

However, in this instance, the court security officer was not responsible; in fact, when the feed was restored, Judge James Pohl was as confused as anyone as to what had happened. Clearly irritated, he announced that he had not initiated the cutoff, and he was, “curious as to why” it happened. Apparently, someone on the prosecution had killed the courtroom feed, or at least knew what was behind it. Prosecutor Joanna Baltes suggested to the judge that the parties discuss the matter in a closed session.

Everyone else — including the assembled journalists, and seemingly the judge himself — had been of the understanding that the court security officer was the only one with access to the button to cut off the feed. Several of the defense attorneys demanded to know who exactly had access to the switch, and even if there were other, unknown parties monitoring and controlling the courtroom feed. The judge said they would address those concerns in a closed session immediately following today’s open court session.

On Tuesday, the judge will reveal what part of those conversations and arguments — if any — can be made public.

Update Jan. 29, 4:30 pm
Although Judge Pohl had said that an expert on the audio-video system in the court would provide details on the censorship mechanism today, no witness was produced because the judge said he couldn’t find the “right guy or gal” to testify. The prosecution indicated they might know the individual, but no other details were provided, and it was unclear when that testimony might take place.

There was also no clarity on the most controversial point from yesterday: who actually pushed the censor button, if it was not the court security officer. None of the defense attorneys asked about this; it was unclear why, although they may have been bound by orders discussed in yesterday’s private conference.

Update Jan. 29, 6 pm
In an interview, James Connell, who is representing defendant Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, described “an original classification authority who separately monitors the communications inside the courtroom” who has the opportunity to kill the feed.

Many non-Chinese commenters identified the cultural stigma in their own countries.

“Popogun” wrote:

In Japan they’re called “loser dogs.” The “winner dogs” are the ones who get married (and usually quit working right after).

“arch4non” said:

In Japan they’re known as Christmas Cake, because after the 25th they’re no longer wanted.

“pebrudite” wrote:

In Latino cultures after 30 they say a woman is “para vestir santos”, i.e. she’s only good for dressing up the statues of saints in the church since no one will marry her. This is quickly changing, though.

And “Bartleby1955” added:

In America, we call them Sit-Com material.

A lot of commenters identified with the cultural stigma around unmarried women in their late 20s and beyond, and mentioned the popularity of blind dating to avoid the situation.

“Xuanlie” wrote:

It mentions it in the article, but blind dates are a huge thing. In the West they’re seen as sort of a desperate measure to try and get married, but in China they are a legitimate way of finding a husband or wife (again, often perpetuated by the parents). I’ve had several friends practically forced into blind dating after they finished university, because they couldn’t find a boyfriend.

And “fiat_lux_” wrote:

I’m pretty sure that in every major Chinese city, there’s a place called “The People’s Park.” In that People’s Park will be a [edit] ton of old people advertising for their children and trying to set up blind dates.

Many commenters took issue with the fact Magistad’s article placed blame on the Chinese government for the “leftover woman” stigma.

“StevefromRetail” challenged:

It’s worth mentioning that Leta Hong-Fincher says the words “state media” over and over as if the order to criticize these women came down from Hu Jintao himself. The government’s grip on the media is slightly more nuanced than simply telling the news organizations what to run and when. If it’s a time of crisis, direct orders will come down, yes, but more often, it’s the government giving them directives on what not to publish. Hong-Fincher also doesn’t mention whether or not these are op-ed articles she’s referring to (which it sounds like they are), which is important information. For someone completing her PhD, she should know to cover her bases.

Others agreed that the problem lies in the Chinese government.

“viskarenvisla” wrote:

Most of the people who control China are old men who are used to seeing women in their place, and so I personally think that this whole ‘leftover woman’ campaign (pronounced ‘shung-nyu’) is a last desperate attempt by the patriarchy to reestablish women’s notions that they are lesser and incomplete without a man, that they need to be constantly worried about finding a man, and that they shouldn’t be distracted by such unimportant things as government corruption, advancing reform, protesting criminal behavior by public officials, or taking high paying jobs from men.

“wiseduckling” agreed:

I also read an article which mentioned that the term was made up by the CCP to encourage woman to marry earlier because of the demographic gap. Lots of single men = big social problems. That would make a lot of sense if it’s the case.

And hundreds upon hundreds of commenters raised the issue of unmarried men, and why they might be fighting an even bigger stigma.

“Dimeron” said:

Older well educated professional women who is looking for the right men that can match her status (who is most likely already married), and is not willing to marry down. At same time, there is huge number of less successful men can’t find wives, not because of physical or personality flaws, but rather because they are too poor or not well educated. Edit: lastly, just want to say, the issue with first group is rather overblown, while the second group does pose an interesting demographical challenge for the Chinese government.

“PIngp0NGMW” wrote:

I think this is one of the most messed up long-term implications of the one child policy. Since males are preferentially selected there are now literally millions more unmarried, single Chinese men. I think I read somewhere the figure was like 50 million. I wouldn’t be surprised if their prospects for marriage are essentially zero.

“StevefromRetail” wrote:

My wife actually told me a story several months ago of a family in Tianjin with a male son who was preparing to get married. The parents sold most of their possessions and borrowed lots of money from relatives in order to raise the money for a house so the son could get married. In the end, though, the funds were insufficient. The son got angry and told his mother that if she wasn’t prepared to buy him a house, then she should’ve just never given birth to him. The mother ended up committing suicide.

This guy was an [edit] about it, sure, but it’s indicative of the pressure that’s placed on young Chinese men to act as the primary breadwinner in a marriage and the expectation by Chinese women themselves that they be afforded the opportunity to simply not work and play the complacent trophy wife role.

These readers and commenters show there is a lot left to unravel about this new generation of women in China. Keep the discussion going in the comments section of Magistad’s story or by tweeting with the hashtag #worldgender.

… we are facing a world that is liable to ostracize us because of the deadlock in the peace process.

Not much there there. But this is also how Lapid ran his campaign. It was heavy on domestic issues, thin on foreign policy matters. And that is probably one factor that helped him and his Yesh Atid (“There is a future,” in Hebrew) party do so well at the polls.

“They wanted to focus on presenting themselves as an alternative on what they think are the issues that most concern voters,” said Mark Heller of Tel Aviv University. “Namely, social and economic issues, the quality of governance and the state of democracy inside Israel.”

But now that Lapid and his party are being crowned as the kingmakers in Israeli politics, the question is, where do they stand on major foreign policy issues?

Here are some hints.

The Jerusalem Post’s Gil Hoffman did an interview with Lapid back in October and asked him how he would handle Iran differently than Netanyahu.

Netanyahu made two big mistakes on the Iranian issue. The first was instigating a conflict with the US administration, betting on the wrong pony and thinking [Republican candidate Mitt] Romney would win the election. We have an Israeli prime minister who shares the biggest sponsor as the Republican candidate in Sheldon Adelson and says things that hurt the president in an election year. It has created a situation in which it became an Israel-Iran problem and not a world-Iran problem. Netanyahu made it into a local conflict between Israelis and Iranians, and this is wrong. There is only one way to end the Iranian nuclear threat: the fall of the ayatollahs. An Israeli strike would only delay the Iranian nuclear problem. It would enable the Iranians to say we have been attacked by a nuclear country and now we have no choice but to develop nuclear weapons. The way to make the ayatollahs fall is to strengthen the sanctions. Average Iranian citizens don’t understand why they have 60% inflation, why they can’t get chicken and they can’t get gas in one of the world’s biggest oil suppliers. If this continues, the Iranian people won’t stand for it. If you listen to Netanyahu, he is more interested in giving ultimatums to the US. It is hubris to give an ultimatum to the US. People tend to forget that the plane Netanyahu is sending to bomb Iran is an American plane. He thinks he can drag America to do what it doesn’t want to do. He is leading Israel to war too soon, before it’s necessary. Like Netanyahu, I think that if we came to the point of no return, Israel would have to bomb, but there is still a lot left to do to avoid that. I had problems with Netanyahu’s UN speech. Who gives a date on war in advance? You only go to war when you have no choice. My red line is the same as that of the professional security men I talk with.

The security man Lapid presumably talks with more than any other is Yaakov Peri, former head of Israel’s Shin Bet intelligence service and number five on Yesh Atid’s candidate list. Peri took part in a debate earlier this month at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, along with three other candidates from major parties, and he talked about what needs to happen to make peace with the Palestinians.

“Israel should do everything – its utmost – in order to come back, to go back, to the negotiation table and to find a compromise,” Peri said.

“I know that we have partners,” he said, warning against allowing the collapse of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, whose leaders have been much derided by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “Not easy partners,” Peri said, but “we should come to an agreement or a compromise which will build two states to the two people.”

Peri also offers a captivating quote during his appearance in the Oscar-nominated documentary, The Gatekeepers. After criticizing Israeli politicians on camera for utterly failing to make smart strategic decisions in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Peri tells the filmmaker that retiring from the job of Shin Bet chief means, “you become a bit of a leftist.”

But that is a label Yair Lapid rejects. “I am not a leftist,” Lapid told Gil Hoffman, while answering a question about who should blamed for the stalled negotiations with the Palestinians.

I think the Palestinians should blame mostly themselves. After the disengagement, instead of building hospitals and schools, they fired rockets. But if an Israeli prime minister would be really determined to have negotiations, there would be negotiations. I think Netanyahu is too scared of [activist Moshe] Feiglin and [coalition chairman Ze’ev] Elkin and other extremists in his party, so he took the most dangerous conflict, delayed dealing with it, and made our children have to deal with double the number of Palestinians just so he will have an easier time passing the next Likud convention in peace.

Lapid has said he will not join a coalition that refuses to return to negotiations with the Palestinians. But he has also gone out of his way to distinguish himself from Israeli leaders like Tzipi Livni, who campaigned heavily on a pledge to rekindle the peace process. For a venue to launch his campaign, for example, Lapid chose Ariel.

“You don’t come to negotiations only with an olive branch, the way the left does, or only with a gun, the way the right does,” he said in a speech at the Ariel settlement deep in the West Bank.

“You come to find a solution. We’re not looking for a happy marriage with the Palestinians, but for a divorce agreement we can live with.”

As Jeffrey Goldberg points out, Lapid has avoided taking positions that might lead Israelis to think of him as left of center on security.

Yair Lapid and his party — a “center center” party, in Israeli parlance — might agitate for new negotiations with the Palestinian Authority. But Lapid has shifted his rhetoric since moving from journalism into politics. Two years ago, he wrote caustically about the settlers: “Four percent of the country’s residents cannot decide that they are the only ones who know what’s right.” In this campaign, though, Lapid spoke about the importance of holding onto those large settlements closest to the 1967 “Green Line,” and he spoke repeatedly about the paramount importance of Jerusalem, which he said is “the reason we are here and if we have to fight for it we will fight for it.”

Still, Mark Heller doubts that Lapid and his Yesh Atid colleagues would end up joining a government coalition and then focus solely on their social and economic agenda at the expense of other issues. “They can’t and won’t,” Heller told me, “completely abdicate everything in the foreign and defense field to the other parties.”

Heller said he could see Lapid advocating for more centrist and pragmatic positions on foreign policy, especially compared to those of hardliners from the Jewish Home and Likud parties.

Love it or hate it, every Englishman of a certain age remembers the first time he saw “Zulu.” I was 15 and home alone one evening when it just came on the TV. For those of you not English and not of a certain age, “Zulu” is a stirring war movie about an incident in The First Zulu War, a colonial era conflict between the British and the powerful Zulu nation, located in what’s now the Republic of South Africa. Movie buffs may also know it as Michael Caine’s debut appearance on screen, back in 1964.

But Zulu is much more than a footnote of movie trivia. It’s a metaphor for almost every manly virtue once held dear in English hearts. Pluck. Phlegm. Duty. Discipline. Loyalty. Fair play. Calm defiance in the face of insuperable danger. Respect for your opponent. Service. Sacrifice.

These are kind of embarrassing and old-fashioned sounding values in this digital age. But for me and countless others, they can still raise a fire in the heart, and Zulu throws down the ultimate challenge to a certain type of male; will you stand your ground, and fight, and do your duty, when the situation seems hopeless. It’s a challenge that draws young men toward war in any age. It’s why you either love this movie or hate it. I enlisted a couple of years after watching Zulu the first time.

It’s the story of a tiny garrison and their fight for survival against overwhelming odds. These men occupy a converted mission station at a river crossing, called Rorke’s Drift, where the invading British army has set up a rear-area supply base-cum-field hospital.

The outpost is threatened after the main British field army is destroyed at the hands of the highly-disciplined, spear-wielding, Zulu warriors. The 150-odd redcoated British soldiers are abandoned by their allies, colonial militia and African auxiliaries, and are left alone to face a force that outnumbers them some 30-to-1. There’s no hope of relief. One perplexed squaddy asks, “why are we here? Why us?” And his unflappable Sergeant replies with immortal words that ring true for soldiers in all ages, “because we’re here, lad. Nobody else. Just us.”

The actual survivors of Rorke’s Drift. (Photo: Wiki Commons)

Zulu warriors. (Photo: Wiki Commons)

That’s one of the things that strikes you about Zulu. It’s pretty progressive for a movie about a colonial war made almost 50 years ago. There’s nothing but respect for the discipline, courage and culture of the Zulu nation; there’s nothing to suggest the war was anything but an unfair attempt to add Zululand to the British empire; there’s even a sub-plot about a gay couple in the logistics corps.

Now, the movie is littered with historical inaccuracies. The British 24th Regiment is portrayed as a Welsh regiment, where in fact it was mostly English at this point in its history. The Zulu attacks were more piecemeal and less well-organized than portrayed.

But who cares? The goal is to stir up those emotions and showcase those values we talked about earlier.

The climactic scene is not even violent. The Zulus prepare for a final attack at dawn on the second day. The Brits are exhausted, low on ammo and gasping with thirst. The Zulus prepare by singing a war song. You can see morale sag in the British outpost. But then those plucky Welshmen start singing the Welsh anthem, “Men of Harlech.” Calm defiance in the face of insuperable danger.

The attack is repelled. It’s a miracle, one of the characters acknowledges. Patrols find no sign of the Zulus

Then suddenly the Zulu impis appear again. But only to sing a song of respect to their fellow warriors, before heading for home.

It’s a wonderful, mythical, stirring, chivalric portrayal of war. How war should be. Sadly it is not.

But then, I know plenty of veterans who’ll be settling down this week to watch clips or perhaps the whole movie.

Bayete!

Charles de Gaulle (left) and Konrad Adenauer in 1961. (Photo: Bundesarchiv/Wiki Commons)

It was concluded following three devastating military conflicts: the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71 from which emerged the modern German nation state and the two world wars, fueled at least to some extent by the notion that the two nations were “arch enemies.”

The Élysée treaty put an end to all that: it wasn’t simply a peace agreement but called for consultations between France and Germany on all important questions and regular summits between high level officials were established.

Among the direct consequences of the treaty were the creation of the Franco-German Office for Youth, the creation of Franco-German high schools and direct partnerships between numerous French and German towns, schools and regions.

Young people from both countries would meet and get to know each other instead of thinking they’re arch enemies. In that regard the treaty has been a spectacular success: a war between Germany and France is now pretty unthinkable.

Like many others, I myself visited France many times when I grew up in Germany and our family hosted French exchange students. France was no longer the enemy across the Rhine of my parents’ generation but a weekend trip to Paris.

There are disagreements, of course, and being good neighbors is very important again in times of economic hardship say the leaders France’s and Germany’s socialist parties in a joint article.

“The crisis in the eurozone can only be overcome if Germany and France work together,” write Harlem Désir und Sigmar Gabriel in Der Spiegel and Libération.

And that’s exactly the plan according to German Chancellor Angela Merkel. “Germany and France intend to work together on proposals on how to improve economic coordination in the European Union this spring as the continent struggles to overcome its debt crisis and generate growth,” Merkel said after meeting with French President Francois Hollande in Berlin.

But first there’s time for a little celebration: as part of the “festival of friendship,” France and Germany are issuing stamps, coins and other memorabilia.

And more than 500 French lawmakers are coming to the German capital for a joint session with the Bundestag.