Vox Sentences: Good news for peace in Colombia, bad news for peace in Syria

Colombia brings a 50-year civil war to an end; the Syrian peace talks are over before they begin; the truth behind Barbie's body diversity revamp.

Vox Sentences is written by Dylan Matthews and Dara Lind.

TOP NEWS

A Half-Century of Solitude

Carlos Villalon/Getty Images

• The United Nations has agreed to dispatch a mission to Colombia to monitor a peace agreement between the Colombian government and the FARC.

  [UN ]

• The deal would bring an end to a civil war that's gone on for more than 50 years and claimed the lives of 200,000 Colombians.

  [Vox / Amanda Taub]

• The Colombian government has been negotiating for peace since 2010. The FARC unilaterally declared a ceasefire last year, but the two sides agreed on the terms of a peace agreement only last week.

  [UN ]

• Defense journalist Tom Ricks attributes the Colombian government's success against the FARC to its "demobilization" campaign to attract FARC fighters who had defected or were tempted to defect — a strategy, he points out, that could be used against ISIS.

  [Foreign Policy / Thomas E. Ricks]

• The Economist, meanwhile, says that the war's end is a belated validation of the US government's controversial Plan Colombia of the George H.W. Bush era, which poured buckets of money into Colombia to fight the drug trade (which the Economist argues helped the government remain stable).

  [The Economist ]

• It might be too soon to issue that verdict. Security experts are worried the remaining elements of the FARC are morphing into pure criminal groups — particularly in the drug trade.

  [InSight Crime]

• And Colombia still has to contend with various neo-paramilitary groups, which might turn on the FARC once the rebels disarm after the peace agreement goes through.

  [Americas Society / Pablo Medina Uribe]

One-sided negotiations

Spencer Platt/Getty Images

• Peace talks in the Syrian civil war were supposed to start in Geneva Friday. But it looks like one side — the rebels — isn't showing up.

  [Reuters / Suleiman Al-Khalidi, John Davison, and Stephanie Nebehay]

• Opposition groups have laid out conditions for participating in the peace talks, like an end to airstrikes by the regime of Bashar al-Assad. Those demands haven't been met, so the opposition isn't going.

  [Al Jazeera]

• Observers were hopeful about the talks partly because of a breakthrough summit in Saudi Arabia last month, which represented the first time various rebel groups organized themselves into a single negotiating unit to deal with Assad.

  [Time / Jared Malsin]

• But Assad's forces are in a stronger position now. Thanks to support from Russia and Iran, the government is winning territory back from the rebels. This gives Assad little incentive to give in to demands like not bombing people.

  [Wall Street Journal / Michael Singh]

• Even if the rebels show up in Geneva, the talks are "proximity talks" — the UN rapporteur will shuttle back and forth between separate rooms to talk with Assad's government, then with the rebels. The two won't talk to each other directly.

  [CNN / Mick Krever]

Barbie at every size

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

• Mattel is rolling out three new body types for Barbie dolls: "curvy," "petite," and "tall," to complement the original physiologically unsound model.

  [Time / Eliana Dockterman]

• The move is getting hailed as a win for body diversity and body image: Research indicates playing with unrealistic-looking dolls can make girls feel worse about their own bodies.

  [Developmental Psychology / Dittmar et al.]

• But it's also an attempt by Mattel to claw back the girls' toy market. It's lost serious market share over the past couple of years, as its key demographic continues to be captivated by the Disney movie Frozen.

  [Vox / Libby Nelson]

• Mattel used to own the rights to Disney dolls but lost them to Hasbro (in an epic battle covered by a Businessweek feature late last year).

  [Bloomberg Businessweek / Claire Suddath]

• And Frozen's Elsa and Anna aren't exactly models of realistic body image. The title of this post says it all: "Help! My Eyeball Is Bigger Than My Wrist!"

  [The Society Pages / Philip Cohen]

MISCELLANEOUS

Iowa's Ann Selzer is widely regarded as the best pollster in politics. Her secret is that there is no secret. [FiveThirtyEight / Clare Malone]

• The blood libel — the accusation that Jews kill Christian children to use their blood for religious ceremonies — is one of the most pernicious and enduring anti-Semitic tropes in existence. The author of a new book claims to have figured out where the lie started.

  [The Nation / Madeleine Schwartz]

• Because it's never too early to start speculating about the vice presidential race, here's a great piece that makes clear just how unqualified HUD Secretary Julián Castro (an oft-mentioned Democratic VP hopeful) is for the job.

  [Politico / Edward-Isaac Dovere]

• The Massachusetts Department of Children and Families took away Sara Gordon's baby, saying that Gordon's intellectual disability made her an unfit mother. Is that protecting a child — or blatant discrimination on the basis of disability?

  [NY Mag / Lisa Miller]

• CBGB now has an airport restaurant. It's not punk, and Vice is telling everyone. Save your breath, I never was one.

  [Vice / Eugenia Williamson]

VERBATIM

"The purpose of documentary—whether it’s true crime or anything else, for that matter—is not just to give us reality on a plate, but to make us think about what reality is." [Errol Morris to Slate / Isaac Butler]

• "To the astonishment of rival networks, 'House Hunters' remains one of the most unlikely and unstoppable juggernauts on TV."

  [Washington Post / Drew Harwell]

• "The solution would eventually be named Reactions. It will arrive soon. And it will expand the range of Facebook-compatible human emotions from one to six."

  [Bloomberg / Sarah Frier]

• "Traffic design is the greatest public manifestation of government on any given day, and yet it’s the most dreadful, tired, unresearched, undesigned part of the public interface with government."

  [Donald Meeker to CityLab / Kriston Capps]

• "On a recent rainy afternoon over veggie burgers at NeueHouse, the co-working space in the Flatiron district, three Vedic meditators were discussing drink options for a new kind of happy hour they were organizing."

  [NYT / Rachel Levin]

WATCH THIS

Hip-hop is political again. Here's why. [YouTube / Carlos Waters]

White House / Pete Souza

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