Vox Sentences: Why the UN is comparing Burundi 2015 to Rwanda 1994

Atrocity watch in Burundi; another Republican presidential debate; and new EU regulations will make it easier to boycott Israeli settlements.

TOP NEWS

"Only good for dying"

Landry Nshimiye/AFP/Getty Images

• International human rights observers are very, very worried about what's going on in Burundi right now.

  [Political Violence at a Glance / Barbara F. Walter]

• We don't make comparisons to the Rwandan genocide lightly. But that's the comparison international groups, including the International Crisis Group, are making.

  [International Crisis Group]

• Burundi's been in disarray since its president, Pierre Nkurunziza, announced in April he was running for a third term. The announcement sparked protests in the capital — and hardened opposition fighting in the north.

  [Al Jazeera]

• At least 240 people have been killed since April, in a combination of mysterious deaths at home, police killings, and executions by the military's youth wing. Tens of thousands of people have fled the country.

  [Time / Cara Anna]

• This fall, Nkurunziza and his government have been ratcheting up their rhetoric against the opposition. Last week, Nkurunziza gave opposition members until the weekend to get rid of any weapons; anyone with a weapon found in his home, he said, would be dealt with as an "enemy of the state."

  [International Crisis Group]

• The president of the senate, meanwhile, made a reference to telling the police to "go to work." That's the code phrase used by Hutu genocidaires in Rwanda. Burundi and Rwanda have a closely shared history, which is to say, the Burundian opposition got the reference.

  [AFP]

• (One important difference between Burundi and Rwanda: this appears to be purely based on political factions, rather than ethnic divisions.)

  [Foreign Policy / Ty McCormick]

• The UN is warning that it doesn't have the capacity to stop Burundi from spinning out of control, if Nkurunziza provokes widespread violence against the opposition.

  [The Telegraph / Colin Freeman]

Pundits are waiting for a Cruz-Rubio cagematch

Scott Olson/Getty Images

• Nothing earth-shaking happened at last night's Republican debate, which pundits are interpreting as a win for Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio — the two candidates who, in the eyes of the political insiders who care about questions like "who won the debate," are already the favorites to last through the campaign.

  [Washington Post / David A. Farenthold and Abby Phillip]

• In fact, there's already anticipation of a Cruz/Rubio fight. Pundits are expecting Cruz to start going hard on Rubio on immigration. But he hasn't done it yet.

  [New York Times / Jeremy W. Peters]

• Cruz is dogwhistling pretty loudly, though. In addition to interjecting last night to make a point about "amnesty," he attacked sugar subsidies — one kind of crony capitalism which Rubio, as the senator from Florida, has aggressively supported.

  [MSNBC / Steve Benen]

• In the real Republican campaign — not the one in political consultants' minds — Ben Carson is still a close second to Donald Trump, and managed to generate way more Facebook interest than any other candidate last night despite speaking a total of 5 times.

  [Vox / Sarah Kliff and Javier Zarracina]

• And Rand Paul sort of remembered why he was on the stage, getting in a relatively meaty debate with Rubio about the costs of military expansion.

  [National Review / Katherine Timpf]

"Made in the West Bank (Israeli settlement)"

Menahem Kahana/AFP/Getty Images

• The European Commission has released new export regulations, which require all products made in Israeli settlements in the West Bank and the Golan Heights to be labeled accordingly (instead of saying "Made in Israel") when they're sold in Europe.

  [BBC]

• Facilities that use Palestinian workers have to put "(Israeli settlement)" on their labels. Palestinian-owned businesses can label their goods "Made in Palestine."

  [Washington Post / William Booth]

• Israel is not happy. It's recalled its EU ambassador. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused the EU of siding with Palestinian terrorists.

  [The Guardian / Peter Beaumont]

• And former ambassador to the US and current member of parliament Michael Oren went to a supermarket in Israel and started labeling goods that were made in the EU.

  [Jerusalem Post]

• The labels will make it easier for individuals or groups that are boycotting settlement-produced goods — part of the "Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions" (BDS) strategy that pro-Palestine activists have pursued over the last decade to pressure Israel to withdraw.

  [Vox / Zack Beauchamp]

• The BDS strategy has forced some companies, like SodaStream, to withdraw from settlement factories. Those moves cut jobs for Palestinian workers, but activists calculate it's worth it.

  [Washington Post / William Booth]

MISCELLANEOUS

IPAs are gross and it's time to stop pretending we like them. [Medium / Silvia Killingsworth]

• Twitter's switch from "favs" to "likes" is working: favs — excuse me, likes are up 6 percent.

  [BuzzFeed / Alex Kantrowitz]

• Can you recognize a movie, just by looking at the color palette it uses?

  [Washington Post / Ana Swanson]

• The NorthStar implant seeks to be like Microsoft Kinect, but placed directly into your hand.

  [Daily Dot / Gavia Baker-Whitelaw]

• Google has open-sourced its machine learning package, TensorFlow. That's actually a really big deal.

  [Slate / Will Oremus]

VERBATIM

"Stars Not Where They Seemed or Were Calculated to be, but Nobody Need Worry." [The New York Times (archive)]

• "It’s like watching an episode of DuckTales about the financial crisis."

  [Entertainment Weekly / Darren Franich]

• "In the Netherlands, the national health system provides a grant scheme for people with disabilities to receive public money to pay for sexual services up to 12 times a year."

  [Vice / Nelson Moura and Yun jie]

• "I reached out to the male halves of these power couples, to find out if they had ever been inadvertently demoted to second-author status, or otherwise been given insufficient credit … Mr. Akerlof responded, 'No, I cannot recall ever being slighted in this way.' And Mr. Deaton said, 'I can’t recall a case where I was slighted or given less than my due.'"

  [NYT / Justin Wolfers]

• "Stephen [Colbert] is the first late night host from South Carolina and the bajillionth white guy."

  [Aziz Ansari to Stephen Colbert via AV Club / Danette Chavez]

WATCH THIS

The 116 images NASA wants aliens to see [YouTube / Joss Fong]

National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center / Herman Eckelmann