On June 1 in Chicago, immigration judge John Brahos granted a continuance of more than four months to Flor Crisostomo and five other workers arrested last April 19 in an ICE raid of the IFCO Systems pallet company in Chicago…. Read moreChicago: immigrant workers end hunger strike; vigil continues
On June 3, Mexican telenovela star Ofelia Medina, who has launched the group Mujeres Sin Miedo (Women Without Fear) to support those arrested in the protests at San Salvador Atenco, held a press conference to announce that 24 of the… Read moreMexico: Atenco prisoners 30 days on hunger strike; Marcos calls for national protests
Here is a pretty good indication that the US is losing control of the client state it has set up in Iraq—which, in turn, is afraid of losing control of Iraq. And, since Maliki and his gang are more loyal… Read moreMaliki challenges US on civilian killings
Iraq’s Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has decared a state of emergency in Basra, where battles are raging both between Shi’ite and Sunni militias, as well as among rival Shi’ite militias. Nearly 140, mostly Sunnis but also Shi’ites and members of… Read moreSectarian cleansing in Basra; Zarqawi wants more
Doug Ireland writes of an “anti-gay pogrom” underway in Iraq, for In These Times, May 31: Shiite death squads in Iraq are carrying out a campaign that targets gay men for murder. This so-called “sexual cleansing” is happening under the… Read more“Sexual cleansing” in Iraq
The ascendance of the center-left Romano Prodi as Italy’s new prime minister in the narrow (and contested) April elections will apparently mean at least a phased withdrawal of Italian troops from the US-led mission in Iraq, depriving Bush of one… Read moreItaly to expand Afghanistan role
For a second consecutive night yesterday, French police battled hundreds of Muslim youth in the Paris suburbs of Clichy-sous-Bois and Montfermeil. (Seattle Times, June 1) This makes headlines; the ongoing institutionalized racism that fuels these periodic eruptions does not. From… Read moreContinued racism behind resumed Franco-Intifada
What a breath of fresh air! The website Screw Loose Change reports that Gedeon and Jules Naudet, the French film-makers who captured images of the first plane striking the World Trade Center on 9-11, have sent a “cease and desist”… Read moreFrench film-makers threaten 9-11 conspiracy vultures
Alan J. Kuperman, author of Gambling on Humanitarian Intervention: Moral Hazard, Rebellion and Civil War, has a positively ghastly op-ed in the New York Times May 31, blaming the Darfur guerillas for sparking the genocide–as if they had taken up… Read moreDarfur: NY Times op-ed blames the victims
Pretty bad times to be part of an ethnic or religious minority in Iran, it seems. From the New York Times, June 1: Members of the Bahai religious minority in Iran said this week that the government had recently intensified… Read moreIran: Bahais under attack
From the Pakistan Tribune. June 2: KABUL: U.S. troops fired into a crowd of hundreds of stone-throwing rioters, killing at least three Afghans, as their convoy left the scene of an accident that triggered Monday’s anti-American riots, Kabul’s chief of… Read moreAfghanistan: US kills more civilians
When Slobodan Milosevic died, he was in a prison cell at The Hague facing war crimes charges, and it made world headlines. The May 27 passing of Guatemala’s equally genocidal dictator of the late ’70s and early ’80s, Romeo Lucas… Read moreGuatemalan war criminal dies a free man
