Internecine violence in the militant campesino movement escalates in Las Cañadas, the canyonlands on the edge of the Lacandon Selva, the Chiapas rainforest which is the primary support base of the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN). From the Mexican news… Read moreChiapas: political violence grows in Las Cañadas
In a pre-dawn raid yesterday, Oaxaca state police with helicopters, tear gas and firearms evicted several thousand striking school teachers from the plantón, or ongoing protest encampment, they had been maintaining for two weeks in Oaxaca City’s central plaza. Witnesses… Read moreOaxaca: police attack striking teachers
The Think Progress blog notes this disturbing confluence of news stories: The New York Times reports [June 11] that the Bush administration is making plans to keep tens of thousands of U.S. troops in Iraq indefinitely: Mr. Bush on Friday… Read moreIraq: White House plans 50,000 troops for decades
Yesterday’s multiple coordinated suicide attacks in Kirkuk, leaving over 20 dead, seemed intended not only to demonstrate that the “insurgency” (a rather too flattering word) is still alive despite the killing of al-Zarqawi, but also to advance the late jihad… Read moreBombs rock Kirkuk; Zarqawi’s revenge?
Zapatista Subcommander Marcos joined actress Ofelia Medina and other celebrities at a public meeting of activists and artists in the Mexico City district of Coyoacan June 12 to demand that the World Cup not obscure the struggle to demand justice… Read moreMarcos: don’t let World Cup obscure Atenco struggle
First from CBS, June 13, via Chiapas95: LOS ANGELES Dozens of people have been arrested for allegedly violating a court order and obstructing sheriff’s deputies from evicting farmers and supporters from a 14-acre urban garden near downtown Los Angeles. About… Read moreLA: South Central farmers evicted
Another brick in the wall. From AP, June 9: WASHINGTON – A federal appeals court sided with the Bush administration Friday on an electronic surveillance issue, making it easier to tap into Internet phone calls and broadband transmissions. The court… Read moreDC Court of Appeals rules for Bush on wiretapping
More uneasy deja vu from Lebanon. The sons of the Syria-backed President Emile Lahoud and the bitterly anti-Syria Druze leader Walid Jumblatt get into a shoot-out in Beirut—just as their fathers opposed each other in the civil war. From Lebanon’s… Read moreDeja vu in Lebanon: Lahoud-Jumblatt shoot-out
Nine people were wounded, five seriously, when a bomb exploded in a roadside restaurant in Hub, on the eastern edge of Pakistan’s restive Baluchistan province on June 9. “It is done by those who have been carrying out such terrorist… Read moreTerror escalates in Baluchistan
Talk about deja vu all over again. The US secretly backs a loose alliance of lawless warlords it had previously fought because they are now opposing an ultra-fundamentalist cleric-led militia with supposed links to al-Qaeda. The clerical militia has just… Read moreSomalia: Afghanistan redux?
This is not the first anti-Semitic killing in Uzbekistan this year. Yet a Google News search for the story reveals only this account from the vile Arutz Sheva (June 9), voice of the Israeli settler movement. Why is that? Jewish… Read moreAnti-Semitic killings in Uzbekistan
We don’t necessarily have a problem with prayers in German being spoken at Auschwitz. But this sad case illustrates how the Holocaust has been hijacked for propagandistic purposes: “reified” as the ultimate evil, something unique and existing outside history, serving… Read morePope at Auschwitz silent on resurgent anti-Semitism
