This report contains the usual condescension of mainstream (English-language) media accounts on the Zapatista movement. For instance, the Zapatista-led protests around the Atenco crisis earlier this year were quite significant, and dominated the news in Mexico before they were overshadowed… Read moreSubcommander Marcos declares Lopez Obrador legitimate winner
As if things weren’t “interesting” enough in Somalia already, it looks like they are about to get much more so. The Taliban-style militia which has taken power in the capital, Mogadishu, seems to be waging a low-level war against the… Read moreSomalia militia pledges jihad
How many times a day do we have to say “A plague on both your houses”? First Saddam vows to “crush the heads” of Kurds testifying about his genocidal 1988 “Anfal” campaign. Then the judge in the case, Adullah al-Almiri,… Read moreHRW: “judicial independence” trampled in Saddam trial
A textbook case in how Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez is viewed differently by the Imperium and the global south. First this, from the Voice of America, Sept. 20, on day two of the annual UN General Assembly debate: Chavez brought his… Read moreChavez calls Bush “Devil”, proposes “Bank of the South”
We sure hope this is Jewish paranoia! From the Jerusalem Post, Sept. 19 (emphasis added): Venezuelan Jews fear Chavez-Iran ties On the day that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad arrived for a 30-hour visit, it seemed appropriate that Venezuela’s Jewish community… Read moreHezbollah training Venezuela’s Wayuu Indians?
From Newsday, Sept. 19 (emphasis added): BLOCK 7, AYACUCHO PETROLEUM FIELD, Venezuela — The Islamic world may be roiling over remarks by the pope, but in this remote patch of eastern Venezuela, President Hugo Chávez suggested yesterday that a little… Read moreChavez to Ahmadinejad: Islam is “revolutionary”
Sarah Ferguson writes for the Village Voice, Sept. 19: Anti-War Crowd Dogs Bush at the U.N. Protesters swamped Dag Hammarskjold Plaza opposite the United Nations Tuesday as President Bush was inside pledging to deliver “democracy” to the Middle East. Most… Read moreNew Yorkers protest Bush
We’ll have a clearer idea of what is going on here when the dust settles, but two things are worth noting about the Sept. 19 coup d’etat in Thailand. First, the coup leader Gen. Sonthi Boonyaratglin is the first Muslim… Read moreThailand: new GWOT flashpoint?
More evidence that Pakistan, the USA’s closest ally in the region, is ironically serving as a staging ground for the destabilization of US-occupied Afghanistan. First this, from The Guardian, Sept. 19: A chain of suicide bombings killed 19 people, including… Read moreAfghanistan: “Mullah Dadullah” pledges more terror
We warned even before the US invasion that the northern city of Kirkuk—contested by Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen—was Iraq’s most likely flashpoint for civil war. Up until now, it has (comparatively speaking) been spared embroilment in the sectarian warfare tearing… Read moreIraq: ethnic struggle behind Kirkuk terror
As suicide bombings and other random carnage become a daily affair in Iraq, a Baghdad book-sellers’ enclave which had been something of an intellectual autonomous zone even under the Saddam dictatorship is effectively shut down. Freedom’s on the march. From… Read moreBaghdad intellectual enclave shut down by war
Anybody have any idea who the “Lions of Monotheism” are? From Newsday, Sept. 19: Palestine’s Christians face retalliation from Muslims over Pope’s words NABLUS — The charred churches of this West Bank town were shuttered yesterday and circled by armed… Read moreAnti-papal backlash spreads to West Bank
