From New York’s Jewish Week, April 28: As the world’s largest chasidic sect mourns the death this week of the Satmar Grand Rebbe Moshe Teitelbaum, the bitter, litigious — and sometimes violent — feud between two of his sons shows… Read moreNYC: Satmar feud escalates with Grand Rebbe’s death
Writes David Wood of Newhouse News Service, April 26 (emphasis added): WASHINGTON — If Iran succeeds in building nuclear weapons, it will be paid for in part by American drivers. With oil prices and global oil consumption at near-record levels,… Read moreOil struggle behind Iran WMD showdown: analysts
From our contributor Mahmood Ketabchi: After more that two years of haggling with the Islamic regime of Iran over its nuclear program, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), under pressure from the European powers and particularly the US government, referred… Read moreUS v. Iran: “nuclear hypocrisy” on both sides
For all the unseemly obsession on the American left (and American right) with the notion that the recent paroxysm of hyper-interventionism is really more about Israeli national interests than US imperial interests, the actual global vision of the interventionists is… Read moreUS National Security Strategy 2006: global hegemony, permanent war
Note that this Reuters report on the Sinai bombings offhandedly mentions more sweeps of the peninsula’s Bedouin inhabitants. The Bedouin, their lands divided by Egypt and Israel, have been kicked around plenty on both sides of the border. The situation… Read moreEgypt: Bedouin face sweeps after Sinai terror
Osama bin Laden’s latest audiotape release is almost funny. Along with the usual swipes at the “Crusader-Zionist” war on Islam, he accuses the UN Security Council of being controlled by the “Crusader movement along with pagan Buddhists”–an apparent reference to… Read moreZarqawi, Osama wow media
On April 18, three Uruguayan military officers–one retired–arrived in Chile after being extradited there to face charges relating to the 1991 abduction in Chile and subsequent murder in Uruguay of Chilean chemist Eugenio Berrios. Berrios worked for the National Intelligence… Read moreUruguay: officers extradited to Chile
Mapuche rights activists Juan Patricio Marileo Saravia, Florencio Jaime Marileo Saravia, Juan Carlos Huenulao Lienmil and Patricia Troncoso Robles (known as “La Chepa”) have been on hunger strike since March 13 in prison in Angol, Chile’s Region IX, demanding a… Read moreChile: Mapuche prisoners strike
On April 17, members of Brazil’s Movement of Landless Rural Workers (MST) commemorated the 10th anniversary of the day in 1996 when Military Police (PM) agents fired at some 1,500 MST members who were marching on the PA-150 highway in… Read moreBrazil: landless mark massacre
A violent confrontation between 800 federal and state police agents and more than 500 striking steelworkers left two workers dead and dozens of workers and police agents injured on April 20 at the Siderurgica Lazaro Cardenas-Las Truchas, SA (Sicartsa) steel… Read moreMexico: workers killed in steel strike
From the AP, April 22: CALEDONIA, Ontario — As an uneasy calm settled amid the barricades, fresh tensions erupted Friday as protesters shut down a vital Ontario rail corridor in solidarity with those occupying a disputed tract of southwestern Ontario… Read moreOntario: Mohawk uprising spreads
This may not be linked to the recent ascendence of reactionary elements in the Vatican—but it does point to an intersection of clerical reaction and organized crime in Sicily, at least. From The Guardian, April 21: Italian police codebreakers are… Read moreBible scholars to crack Mafia code?
