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The makers of this week's map want to remind visitors to Beijing of the violent history lurking behind the glitz and glamor of the Olympic Games. Freedom House's Ellen Bork along with the Weekly Standard's design director Philip Chalk and Tiananmen survivor Tian Jian have created this map for Beijing tourists interested in visiting the sites of the June 4, 1989 massacre of the Tiananmen Square protestors. Each number shows the place where where one of the 176 victims were killed or the hospitals to which their bodies were taken.

You can find information on the victims here and read Bork's explanation of the map at the New York Sun's site.

This isn't the first time the world has looked on sympathetically while Georgia was trounced by Russia. Does this sound familiar?

The President of the Georgian Republic has made an appeal to the League [of Nations] and sympathetic reference to his country's efforts was made by M. Paul Boncour in the Assembly. But it is realized that the League is incapable of rendering material aid, and that the moral influence which may be a powerful force with civilized countries is unlikely to make any impression on Soviet Russia. -The Times. Sept. 16, 1924

Here's Wikipedia on Georgia's "August Uprising."

The Hoover Institution, the conservative-leaning think tank located at my alma mater Stanford University, is finding itself in a bit of hot water over some 7 million pages of Baath Party records that both Iraqi and American archivists now say were taken by an "act of pillage" and must be returned to Iraq immediately.

The documents came to Stanford as part of a deal with the Iraq Memory Foundation, a nonprofit group run by Kanan Makiya (above left) -- an Iraqi exile known for his outspoken advocacy for the war in Iraq. Makiya, who stumbled upon the documents during the invasion's nascent period in 2003, maintains the information they contain is too dangerous for general view because they explicitly mention individuals who collaborated with the Hussein dictatorship:

This was not stuff for every Tom, Dick, and Harry to have access to," he said in a recent interview. "This stuff was dynamite."

While the last thing Iraq needs is more dynamite, this episode is yet another example of the United States and a certain cabal of Iraqi exiles thinking they know what's best for the country. As long as there's a reasonable enough guarantee that the documents will be safe, I agree with Jon Weiner's op-ed in Friday's Los Angeles Times: "It's up to the Iraqis to decide what to do with them."

RAVEENDRAN/AFP/Getty Images

With all eyes on China this week, it's refreshing to see George and Laura Bush noting that today is the 20th anniversary of pro-democracy protests in Burma that were brutally suppressed.

Last fall's Saffron Revolution was the probably the closest the country has come to mass protests since that fateful day when hundreds of thousands of Burmese took to the streets to call for democracy: 8.8.88.

The Irrawaddy, the best source of news on Burma, has a special issue today commemorating the '88 uprising. They are reporting that many people in the capital donned black clothing to mark the anniversary today, and that plainclothes police were out in force. All the while, conditions in the delta where Cyclone Nargis hit hardest remain dire, with little to no government or foreign aid coming through.

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Yesterday, a shorn and shaven Radovan Karadzic faced his first day in court at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

The Karadzic arrest has been hailed as a pivotal turning point in Serbia's path to EU cooperation and accession. But although Karadzic was captured in Serbia, his crimes were in creating the ethnically divided state that is Bosnia. And in Bosnia today, the story remains less than comforting.

In a compelling call for a revitalization of international efforts in the still-fractured country, Paddy Ashdown, former head of the Office of the High Representative in Bosnia, explains:

Bosnia's predominantly Serb entity, Republika Srpska, Karadzic's creation, has seen the vacuum where will and policy should be. Its premier, Milorad Dodik, is now aggressively reversing a decade of reforms. He has set up the parallel institutions and sent delegations to Montenegro to find out how they broke away….

Meanwhile, in European capitals the growing view goes like this. We invested 13 years of hard work and huge resource in Bosnia. Now it is stable and peaceful and we are rather tired. Kosovo has proved it is possible to divide a country. What matter if Bosnia becomes another Cyprus?…

This is folly of a very dangerous order. What happens to the Muslim populations who have moved back to Republika Srpska, even to Srebrenica, if they are handed back to an exclusively Serb-dominated regime? What happens to Bosnia's shining star, the multi-ethnic, markedly successful sub-entity of Brcko, hemmed in by Republika Srpska? Is it to be handed over, too? I do not believe Bosnia is likely to go back to conflict; most of its people are just too war-weary. But the one event that could change that calculation in favour of blood would be to return to the old Karadzic/Milosevic plan to divide Bosnia.

But minus those few returnees and that one "shining star," Bosnia is divided, functioning largely as two separate, ethnically split states. Yes, it's a sad fact -- one that U.N. peacekeepers allowed to materialize between 1992 and 1995, and one that any international efforts will be hard pressed to undo.

It's no wonder the celebration over Karadzic's arrest in Bosnia has been short-lived. For as Bosnian novelist Aleksandar Hemon concludes in an excellent NYT op-ed, "Justice is good, but a peaceful life would have been much better."

Osama bin Laden once said that his goal is "bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy." Maybe he should have gotten into the mortgage business instead of becoming a terrorist.

Zubin Jelveh blogs a new IMF working paper by Hui Tong and Shang-Jin Wei, who look at the responses by economic forecasters and consumers to 9/11 vs. their reactions to the subprime mortgage crisis. As you can see, everybody pretty much shrugged off 9/11 (at least when it comes to the economy; emotional grief is, of course, beyond measure) after about six months, but subprime has brought a steady decline in confidence:

AFP/Getty Images

This week's arrest of the Bosnian-Serb war criminal Radovan Karadzic has made headlines almost as big as those announcing the arrest of Slobodan Milosevic back in 2001. The shocking photos of Karadzic disguised as a bearded Dr. Dabic have painted the whole story ridiculous; statements from Brussels highlighting the arrest as a milestone trumpet the news that Serbia has really chosen a European future; and re-reported accounts from Bosnian Muslim victims have added an element of remorse for the fact that justice had not been brought sooner. But a lesser story today, that of Dinko Sakic, illustrates the long-term significance of Karadzic's overdue arrest.

Sakic, the last living commander of Jasenovac, the Croatian World War II concentration camp, died this week. Long after fleeing to Argentina, where he lived a rather vocal life in support of Croatian nationalism, Sakic was eventually tried and found guilty of killing thousands of Serbs and Jews -- but not until 1999, decades after his crimes were committed and years after those very crimes were used by Croat and Serb leaders alike to stir up nationalist fervor and inter-ethnic fear during the last bloody days of Yugoslavia.

Fortunately the losses at Srebrenica and Sarajevo will not go the way of Jasenovac, whose significance and death toll still remain in question. Thanks to the work of the ICTY, the former Yugoslavia's crimes of the 1990s have been investigated and documented in great detail, leaving far less room for future finger-pointing and fear-mongering. And with the EU promising future membership to all the countries of the Western Balkans, they'll need all regional stability they can get.

For more reflections what Karadzic's capture means, check out FP's interview with Richard Holbrooke, the man who did as much as anyone to bring peace to Bosnia. He's thrilled:

I got the news on a train from New York to Washington. I’ve rarely been so excited about any news event in a positive sense. The world gets so much bad news, and to bring this man to justice, this terrible man, ranks right up there with capturing Saddam Hussein.

Here's what Barack Obama wrote in the guestbook at Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust memorial. You have to admit, the man has a way with words:

GALI TIBBON/AFP/Getty Images

Nazi Germany's bombing raids on London and other English cities in late 1940 and early 1941 destroyed millions of homes and left thousands of civilians dead. However, an estimated 1 in 10 bombs dropped by the Luftwaffe during the Blitz failed to detonate, and have remained hidden in gardens, fields and building sites.

Using Royal Air Force photographs from the time of the Blitz, as well as maps produced by insurance companies after the war, the Landmark Information Group has developed charts that label the most likely places where unexploded bombs may still be located.

Landmark Information Group

Some 21,000 sites have been labeled as likely to contain unexploded bombs. The makers of this map hope to help builders, contractors and private citizens become more aware of their surroundings. Discoveries of these bombs are fairly common. Just last month, construction on an Olympic site outside of London had to be halted after a 2000-pound bomb was unearthed.

GENIA SAVILOV/AFP/Getty Images

Tomorrow marks the the 90th anniversary of the execution of Tsar Nicholas II and the Russian royal family at the hands of the Bolsheviks. It is fitting, then, that the monarch erased an early deficit and is now neck and neck with Josef Stalin in an online vote to select "The Name of Russia" -- the greatest Russian in history.

The vote, sponsored by state-run Russian television, is the latest iteration of a format won by Winston Churchill in Great Britain in 2002 and Ronald Reagan in the United States in 2005.

The Tsar currently leads Stalin 267,000 to 263,000, out of nearly 2.4 million votes cast overall. As one might expect, the contest has been far from democratic, with viewers allowed to vote more than once. Alexander Lyubimov, one of the show's producers, is also openly lobbying for Nicholas II:

I said, 'Let's commemorate Stalin's disastrous input into Russia's history by clicking for Nicholas II, whose family was massacred by the Bolsheviks'," Mr Lyubimov said.

A similar effort in Chile is also drawing controversy, with former dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet omitted from a ballot for the greatest Chilean. Pinochet is revered by many in the country for modernizing the economy, despite presiding over a brutal regime that killed some 3,000.

What is it about heavy-handed rulers that people seem to love so much?

AFP/AFP/Getty Images

In recent interviews and speeches, Barack Obama has been painting himself a pragmatic realist on foreign policy. As we noted yesterday, such an approach seems somewhat curious for a candidate running on the theme of change.

With that in mind, I found a line from Eli Lake's recent essay in The New Republic on Obama's foreign policy particularly galling. Lake quotes Susan Rice, an Obama advisor likely on the short list for a high-profile position in his administration:

She described Obama's opinion of America's historic involvement with insurgency and counterinsurgency. She applauded the 1980s arming of the mujahedin resistance to the Soviets: "[S]upport for the Afghan resistance to Soviet aggression was the right decision in the 1980s."

While that policy may have shaken up the Soviets when they withdrew in the late 1980s, let's not forget that the United States is paying the price in Afghanistan now. As violence grows in Afghanistan, two familiar faces, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Jalaluddin Haqqani, are showing up on the other side, U.S. News reports:

Ironically, these two warlords—currently at the top of America's list of most wanted men in Afghanistan—were once among America's most valued allies. In the 1980s, the CIA funneled hundreds of millions of dollars in weapons and ammunition to help them battle the Soviet Army during its occupation of Afghanistan. Hekmatyar, then widely considered by Washington to be a reliable anti-Soviet rebel, was even flown to the United States by the CIA in 1985.

As Obama continues to iron out his foreign policy, which has targeted Afghanistan as "a war we have to win," he should be loth to forget how we got there to begin with. Or has he been too busy on the campaign trail to watch "Charlie Wilson's War?"

Ahmad Batebi, an Iranian student, was sentenced to death nine years ago for appearing on the cover of the Economist under the banner "Iran's second revolution?" He was pictured holding the bloodsoaked shirt of a fellow student protestor -- an unforgettable image that apparently was too much for the Islamic Republic to bear. After enduring years of solitary confinement and torture, the student activist and photographer escaped, crossed into Iraq, and recently made it to the United States.

Today, the Economist reports on Batebi's experiences after he was apprehended and Iranian authorities told him that appearing on the cover of The Economist constituted a "death warrant":

During his interrogation he was blindfolded and beaten with cables until he passed out. His captors rubbed salt into his wounds to wake him up, so they could torture him more. They held his head in a drain full of sewage until he inhaled it. He recalls yearning for a swift death to end the pain. He was played recordings of what he was told was his mother being tortured. His captors wanted him to betray his fellow students, to implicate them in various crimes and to say on television that the blood on that T-shirt was only red paint. He says he refused."

In a moment reminiscent of the Shawshank Redemption, Batebi can be seen on his blog photographing himself in front of the U.S. Capitol building. Welcome to Washington, Ahmad.

U.S. Library of Congress

Which economists, journalists, and business leaders are doing the best job of advancing free markets and free people? You can make your opinions known by voting for nominees for the Free Market Hall of Fame.

At this year's FreedomFest—which describes itself as the world's largest annual gathering of free minds and is the brainchild of contrarian economist Mark Skousen—the first five members of the Free Market Hall of Fame will be inducted at a July 12 gala banquet in Las Vegas. Unlike with FP's top public intellectuals poll, however, the nominees receiving the highest vote counts won't necessarily make it into the Hall of Fame. Rather, "[a] select group of economists and other free-market supporters will make the final decision and vote on upcoming Hall of Fame members," according to the hall's Web site. I guess the Hall of Fame isn't ready to surrender the commanding heights to the tyranny of the Internet majority.

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Nelson Mandela turns 90 on July 18. This morning, President Bush gave the former South African president and anti-apartheid leader an early birthday present by signing into law a bill removing Mandela and other members of the African National Congress from a three-decade-old terrorist watch list.

The bill had been sponsored by Sens. John Kerry, Sheldon Whitehouse, and Bob Corker:

It's high time we honored his message of human dignity and valor by removing unjustified travel restrictions placed on him and other members of the ANC," said Kerry. Whitehouse added, "This problem has caused injustice to South African leaders and embarrassment to the United States, and I'm glad it will be repaired."

Prior to the bill's passage, Mandela had been subject to travel restrictions and required special certification to visit the United States. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had called on Congress in April to remove the restrictions, deeming them "rather embarrassing."

HOANG DINH NAM/AFP/Getty Images

This 2008 presidential campaign has seen its fair share of strange endorsements worldwide, and many believe this is the most internationally monitored U.S. election in history. We've seen Hamas endorse (and unendorse) Barack Obama. Fidel Castro has weighed in.

Now comes the most intriguing unwanted endorsement yet. The BBC reports today that Tran Trong Duyet, who ran the infamous Hoa Lo prison in North Vietnam -- more commonly known as the Hanoi Hilton -- would support John McCain if he were a U.S. voter. He should know; he spent five-and-a-half years with John McCain while the then-Navy pilot was a prisoner at the Hanoi Hilton. McCain had been shot down during a bombing raid over Hanoi, and was barely alive when an mob of angry North Vietnamese pulled him out of a lake. (That's McCain's flight suit on the right.)

In Duyet's telling, the Hanoi Hilton was nothing like its fearsome reputation. He claims that although he and McCain had frequent political debates about the validity of the Vietnam War and other topics, neither McCain -- who to this day cannot raise his arms above his shoulders -- nor any other imprisoned GIs were tortured at his prison.

McCain is my friend," said 75-year-old Mr Duyet as he feeds the caged birds he now keeps in his garden in this coastal city [Haiphong]. "If I was American, I would vote for him."

I'll just go out on a limb here and say that McCain might not exactly feel the same way about his jailer-in-chief.

From left: Holbrooke, Madeleine Albright, Lake, and AL Gore; FILE: Getty Images

Barack Obama is fond of citing Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals, not least because the Illinois senator styles himself as Lincoln's heir, but also because, as he put it to Time's Joe Klein, "The lesson is to not let your ego or grudges get in the way of hiring absolutely the best people."

But if Obama really wanted to put this proposition to the test, he might consider bringing Richard Holbrooke into the fold. Holbrooke, a Democratic Party heavyweight on foreign policy and the point man on the Dayton Accords that ended the Bosnian civil war, was conspicuously absent from Obama's national-security working group, announced Wednesday.

Yes, Holbrooke strongly backed Hillary Clinton in the primary, which probably wasn't a good way to endear him to the eventual nominee. But I mention Holbrooke because of his famous feud with Anthony Lake, who was Bill Clinton's first national security advisor and is now a key member of Team Obama's inner circle. As the late David Halberstam recounts in War In a Time Peace, his book on Clinton-era foreign policy, Holbrooke and Lake were once close friends and rising stars in the diplomatic establishment. But their friendly rivalry turned ugly when Holbrooke was made ambassador to Germany instead of scoring a top job. Halberstam writes:

His slippage in the pecking order in the world of foreign policy was especially painful for Holbrooke friends thought, because Lake ended up with one of the two prized jobs, national security adviser. Their friendship had always had an unstated competitive quality, and now Lake seemed to be the clear winner and had, in Holbrooke's eyes, worked against his place in the administration. As a result, a simmering tension now existed between the two old friends, turning them into genuine enemies.

Their relationship was apparently no better when Holbrooke returned from the German wilderness to take the lead on Bosnia:

Their personal friendship, once so close, had long ago been shattered, and they worked in an atmosphere of barely disguised rivalry and distrust.

So, if he really wanted to be the second coming of Lincoln, Obama would put his money where his mouth is and bring Holbrooke back. At the least, it might inject some much-needed drama back into the campaign.

TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP/Getty Images

This cork-filled life preserver from the Titanic, which sunk in 1912, will be sold at auction house Christie's annual ocean liner sale in New York next Wednesday. The life preserver, one of only six known to exist, had been kept by a family in Nova Scotia since it was found -- allegedly by a farmer at the Halifax shoreline soon after the tragedy. Christie's expects it to go for 30,000 to 40,000 pounds ($59,000 to $79,000); the auction house sold another one last year in London for 61,000 pounds ($120,000).

ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP/Getty Images

If you want to become a German citizen, you'll have to pass a new citizenship test as of September 1. The test has 33 questions on the country's politics, history, and society. To pass, you have to answer 17 questions correctly (52 percent of the total 33).

Seven sample multiple-choice questions were unveiled this week. I took the mini-test here and passed, but just barely (I got four questions right). How did you all score? Feel free to leave comments below.

And, for anyone planning to become an American, the United States will be using a redesigned citizenship test as of October 1 that is supposed to focus less on civics trivia and more on fundamentals about the country's government, history, and geography. Ten sample questions are here. I doubt many American-born citizens would know the answers to most of these questions. In fact, Gary Gerstle, a professor of American history at Vanderbilt University, told the New York Times that of those who take the test:

[T]heir knowledge of American history may even exceed the knowledge of millions of American-born citizens.

No word yet on whether the German or American citizenship tests' study materials will include a DVD of gay men kissing and a topless woman on the beach -- images found in the Netherland's test-prep package.

Here's an interesting excerpt from The China Diary of George H.W. Bush: The Making of a Global President. This is Bush writing on Saturday, November 20, 1974:

Kissinger is an extremely complicated guy. He is ungracious, he yells at his staff, he is intolerable in terms of human feelings. Dictatorial. 'Get people here.' 'Have those people here,' 'Where are they?' 'Why do I need these papers?' 'Where are my papers?' And yet all those petty little unpleasant characteristics fade away when you hear him discussing the world situation. He comes alive in public. Walk up the steps and the salute rings out from the PLA guard. He literally is so alive within, you can see it on the outside very clearly. He is like a politician with a roar of a crowd on election eve or the athlete running out at the 50-yard line just before the kickoff. The public turns him on.

"He does a first-class job on that whole press operation," Bush assesed. But "clearly he is not an administrator."

The book, edited by Texas A&M historian Jeffrey A. Engel, comes out next Wednesday.

A number of readers have responded to my list of the most clichéd quotes and references in foreign policy writing with a few worthy entries of their own. Here are five more:

Sen. Arthur Vandenberg: "Politics stops at the water's edge.

From Charlie_B.

"Only Nixon could go to China."

From benadair.

Descriptions of the Balkans as "the powder-keg of Europe."

From la.

"The Clash of Civilizations"

From kadhi.

Neville Chamberlain: "Peace for our time."

From vjvalk. (And as one of Chris Matthew's guests proved last week, often commentators who talk about Chamberlain have no idea what he actually did.)

Keep 'em coming!