Oil rose above $61 Feb. 26 as UN Security Council plus Germany met in London to discuss tightening sanctions on Iran, the world’s fourth largest exporter. Oil prices reached a high of $78.40 on the Lebanon fighting last July, and… Read moreOil prices rise as Iran nuclear deadline passes
In the last weeks of 2006, just before Washington’s new escalation of the propaganda offensive against Iran, the Tehran government announced it is shifting its foreign currency reserves from the dollar to euro—and switching to the euro for oil deals—in… Read moreIran drops dollar for oil deals
Archeologists warn that if the Sivand Dam in Iran’s southern Fars Province is completed, precious relics from antiquity will be lost. The dam is projected to flood a gorge and an archaeological area called the Tangeh Balaghi. By increasing humidity… Read moreIran: ecologists, archaeologists protest dam project
Iran’s successful launch of its first space rocket Feb. 25 made global headlines. Iran’s Space Research Center said the rocket returned to earth by parachute, and did from where in Iran it had been launched or where it landed. The… Read moreRocket launches reveal Iran-Israel arms race
The International Federation of Journalists has condemned as “outrageous and inexcusable” an armed raid by US troops on the Baghdad offices of the Iraq Syndicate of Journalists. The soldiers ransacked the offices of the Syndicate—a member of the IFJ’s global… Read moreIraq: US troops raid journalists’ union
On Nov. 9, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) sent an “Open Letter to the People of the United States.” It was specially addressed to Hollywood figures Michael Moore, Denzel Washington and Oliver Stone; leftist academics Noam Chomsky, Angela… Read moreJames Petras replies to FARC appeal
As Umberto Eco said about Salman Rushdie, “A death sentence is a rather harsh review.” From AP via the San Diego Union-Tibune, Feb. 19: MEXICO CITY – Gunmen shot to death four men identified as members of a musical group… Read moreMexico: narco gangs kill musicians
The General Command of the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) and the rebels’ local civil authorities, the Good Government Juntas (JBG), report a resurgence of paramilitary groups in their jungle stronghold in Mexico’s southern Chiapas state, the Lacandon Selva. Local… Read moreChiapas: paramilitary resurgence seen
Teachers from the Section 22 union local in Mexico’s divided southern state of Oaxaca launched blockades and occupations of government offices throughout the state Feb. 20, demanding that their members be allowed back into 250 schools where authorities have installed… Read moreOaxaca: APPO and teachers block government offices
Dick Cheney in Australia he gave an interview to the national ABC network’s PM program Feb. 23, in which he invoked Anglo racial solidarity in the most blatant terms—and raised the threat of a new Caliphate stretching from Spain to… Read moreCheney: terrorists seek new caliphate
The latest entry in the wave of dangerously specious terror cases is giving us deja vu. Like Jose Padilla, Daniel Maldonado is a Latino convert to Islam. Like John Walker Lindh in Afghanistan, he is accused of bearing arms for… Read moreLatest “al-Qaeda” bust reveals GWOT futility
Arab Monitor calls the brief detainment by US forces of a son of Shiite leader Abdul Aziz al-Hakim “a message to SCIRI,” the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq. Washington has got to be uneasy that its allies in… Read moreIraq: US intimidates SCIRI?
