Regime

For seven long years, Song Byeok performed the soulless work of drawing idyllic North Korean propaganda posters for Kim Jong Il's totalitarian regime. The intricate images he produced were dictated by the state. Song was handed a sketch, always of people happy and smiling, which the young artist dutifully brought to life with brush and paint. "You had to do exactly what they wanted," he recalled. "If you did one little thing differently, your whole family could be imprisoned as enemies of the state.

China Daily, the largest English-language newspaper in China, carried a front-page headline last week: "Village Gratitude Shows Integrity of Task. " Not clear what that's about, and the opening sentence isn't much help: "On a hot afternoon, Zhou Yi picked up a bag of freshly boiled eggs that had been left on the doorstep of the committee office in Chaqulak village in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region. " I figured this must be some feel-good story about the noble, uncorrupted country folk taking care of the less fortunate in their midst.

Only a crack of light from a tiny window high up the back wall of the room gave away that it was daylight. But it didn't really matter to the four young men who sat close together on thin foam mattresses, staring intently at their laptop screens, their sleeping patterns dictated more by the needs of news channels than by day and night. A bare bulb hung overhead, and a small electric heater glowed orange-red. Small video cameras and empty cardboard boxes for satellite modems were entangled with stray wires in the corner.

CAIRO - Seizing a moment in history they never imagined, the two old men walked arm in arm into a polling station on a day that was thoroughly and wonderfully Egyptian: Opinion polls were unreliable, intrigue was high, and there was a sense of destiny to rekindle the grandeur of the nation's ancient past. But it was also unlike any other day in this troubled land that has veered from euphoria to disgust to resilience: The name Hosni Mubarak wasn't on the ballot, and the two men didn't already know the outcome when they walked into the polling booth in an election that was as thrilling as it was unpredictable.

Syria's neighbors have turned decisively against President Bashar Assad, launching a diplomatic campaign against his crackdown on the country's pro-democracy movement that analysts say could have a major effect on important pillars of Assad's support. Even as Syrian armed forces pushed Monday against several opposition strongholds, international action against the government mushroomed. The diplomatic pressure marked a significant change from the largely cautious international response for most of the last five months.

Syrian security forces opened fire Saturday on protesters mourning the scores of demonstrators killed a day earlier in a deadly repeat of violence against an increasingly bold antigovernment movement. "Stop! Stop!" a voice from a mosque loudspeaker is heard calling out in a video on the Internet as security forces in a white pickup spray gunfire on mourners in the Damascus suburb of Barze. Witnesses reported that 12 people died in Saturday's violence. A compilation of names of the dead by human rights activists showed that at least 107 people were killed Friday in the suburbs of Damascus and smaller cities and towns around the country as forces loyal to the regime of President Bashar Assad attempted to crush a democracy movement inspired by revolutions and uprisings sweeping the Arab world.

Re "Soccer in a house of death," Opinion, Dec. 12 As I read Dave Zirin's article, I could not help but think of the millions of people who suffered under the regime of Salvador Allende in Chile before Augusto Pinochet's military coup in 1973. I am from Chile and lived there until 1977; I experienced both regimes. I do agree that torture and murder of innocent people are wrong and that and there is no excuse for it. However, let's not forget the millions of people who did not have enough to eat during Allende's regime.

Do not forget Iran. Remember Neda. If there are green-clad protests in Tehran this weekend — to mark the first anniversary of the election that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stole — they will doubtless again be crushed with casual brutality by the thugs of the Basij militia, the secret police and the Revolutionary Guard. Faced with violent repression, the green movement is a long way down — but not out. Iran will never again be the country it was before the election of June 12, 2009.

The United States has handed over 29 members of Saddam Hussein's government to Iraqi custody in recent weeks, including Tariq Aziz, the urbane, cigar-chomping official who served as the regime's global spokesman, Iraqi officials and Aziz's relatives said Wednesday. The U.S. military confirmed that it transferred 26 former regime officials Monday and three others last month. It added that it continued to hold eight high-ranking members of Hussein's government and his ruling Baath Party.

Having spent time in Iraq (on an archeological survey), I have strong feelings about the current war. The oppressed people of Iraq have been desperately awaiting liberation for years. Those antiwar demonstrators who so smugly believe they have the high moral ground are actually giving aid and comfort to one of the most ruthlessly oppressive regimes in history. The brutality of Saddam Hussein's Big Brother regime would impress even George Orwell. I have spoken to beaten, tortured, maimed and bereaved citizens of Iraq who want nothing more than the complete annihilation of every vestige of Hussein's criminal rule.

UCLA football is soft. Ask anyone. Even one of the Bruins. "I've heard that before," linebacker Patrick Larimore said last week. Larimore had little else to say on the subject. Actions, as always, have greater volume than chatter. The Bruins, under new management, have been getting a crash course in toughness from first-year Coach Jim Mora this spring. "The No. 1 thing is hunting the ball on every play," Larimore said. "Last year, we'd take a couple of steps to the ball.

CAIRO - When filmmaker and Egyptian democracy activist Amr Salama watched Hosni Mubarak's regime collapse in 2011, he couldn't have been more heartened. Salama had been making films for years and had found himself hamstrung by the government's censorship board. This was finally the opportunity he'd been waiting for. So shortly after the regime fell, Salama resubmitted a script that had been rejected under Mubarak - one whose story centered on tension between Cairo's majority Muslim population and its Coptic Christian minority.

North Korea is threatening "retaliatory measures" for a decision by the United States to withhold 240,000 metric tons of food promised as part of an agreement announced less than two months ago. Never mind that the cancellation followed Pyongyang's failed launching of a missile designed to put a satellite into space, an operation the U.S. considered a violation of that same agreement, not to mention U.N. Security Council resolutions. The regime's chutzpah and hypocrisy know no bounds.

CAIRO - The well-tailored spy and the dueling Islamists are out. Egypt's election commission Tuesday upheld its decision to disqualify three key presidential candidates: Omar Suleiman, former intelligence chief and vice president; Khairat Shater, onetime political prisoner and Muslim Brotherhood financier; and Hazem Salah abu Ismail, an anti-Western ultraconservative preacher. The outcome was largely expected after the candidates appealed the commission's Saturday ruling.

BEIJING - For decades,North Korea's leaders have bet heavily on a stark calculation: In order to survive, they need to nurture their rocket and nuclear programs at the expense of feeding their people. Rarely have the consequences been as clear. Friday's attempted satellite launch was an inglorious failure for Kim Jong Un, the twentysomething who has been in power only four months. The launch was supposed to be the marquee event of 100th anniversary celebrations this weekend marking the birth of his grandfather, North Korea's founder, Kim Il Sung, and the emergence of the third generation of the dynasty.

To the surprise of hardly anyone, the peace plan for Syria brokered by U.N. special envoy Kofi Annan is collapsing in a hail of bullets and artillery. The question is whether anyone has the stomach for tougher action. Despite low expectations that Annan's plan for averting all-out civil war would have much influence with Syrian President Bashar Assad, it was the only one on offer - a necessary first step, according to veteran diplomats and security experts. Its failure will force the international community to reconsider more aggressive options, such as imposing a no-fly zone or authorizing pinpoint airstrikes on Syrian artillery to end the year-old conflict, which has left an estimated 9,000 people dead.

It could be that the Baath Party congress in Syria will turn out to be just an ordinary ritual of the Soviet-style, single-party government that has ruled that country for the last 42 years. But the congress is attracting more than ordinary interest because of the anything-but-ordinary conditions in the region, as well as in Syria itself. Indeed, these conditions present such a challenge to President Bashar Assad's regime that few outside it would dispute the judgment that it must reform or die.

Yes, Manuel Noriega is a smarmy drug dealer. So was George Bush in the smarmy Iran-Contra affair. Yes, Noriega is ruthless, corrupt and treacherous. He's a boy scout compared to the monstrous, priest-killing regime in El Salvador, and Bush considers them worthy of being lavishly supported with our taxes. Yes, there was the incident where Noriega may have said he was at "war" with the U.S. and an American soldier was murdered. News accounts have reported that invasion preparations were well under way before these incidents took place.

BEIRUT — The United Nations-backed peace plan to end violence in Syria appeared to unravel Sunday as the Syrian government announced it will not withdraw its forces from cities and towns without written guarantees from opposition groups that they will halt attacks and lay down their arms. Rebels with the Free Syrian Army quickly signaled that they would provide no written guarantees to a government they do not recognize, suggesting that fighting probably will continue past the Thursday deadline for a cease-fire.

CAIRO - Egypt's curious gallery of presidential candidates reveals how much the nation has changed yet how deeply it still echoes with voices connected to the repressive rule of deposed President Hosni Mubarak. The country's revolution brought new faces, including Khairat Shater, onetime political prisoner now running as a candidate for the Muslim Brotherhood. But the revolt failed to sweep away prominent, if shadowy, challengers from the past, most notably Omar Suleiman, the former leader's spymaster and confidant.