From New York Newsday, Oct. 12: Legless man hit by car in Harlem A homeless panhandler with no legs was critically injured yesterday when he was struck by two cars in Harlem, police said. Donald Samuels, 33, broke several bones,… Read moreWHY WE FIGHT
On the heels of the outcry over the Blackwater massacre, comes another atrocity by a private contractor in Iraq. A particular ugly irony is that this time the victims were members of one of Iraq’s threatened minorities—the Armenians, whose very… Read moreContractors kill Armenian Christians in Iraq
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, speaking to the Association of the United States Army in Washington DC Oct. 10, said the US Army of the future will need to concentrate more on training foreign militaries, mastering other languages and customs,… Read moreRobert Gates: insurgent wars wave of future
Pakistani soldiers and tribal fighters in North Waziristan are observing an unofficial ceasefire while tribesmen bury their fallen killed in air raids. At least 250, including dozens of soldiers, have died and thousands have fled in five days of fierce… Read moreAir raids, insurgency rock Waziristan
Just a week after Baghdad and Ankara made a public show of pledging cooperation against the PKK, Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his military staff Oct. 9 for the first time formally approved unilateral incursions into Iraqi territory… Read moreTurkish conspiracy theory: PKK pawn of NATO?
Turkey reacted angrily to the Oct. 10 vote by the House Foreign Relations Committee approving a measure that condemns the mass killings of Armenians in Turkey during World War I as an act of genocide. Said President Abdullah Gul in… Read moreTurkish “left” supports official revisionism on Armenian genocide?
Former Buenos Aires provincial police chaplain Christian von Wernich was sentenced to life imprisonment Oct. 9 for crimes against humanity committed under the 1976-83 military dictatorship. Human Rights Secretrary Eduardo L. Duhalde hailed the verdict as “historic and strictly legal.”… Read moreArgentina’s Father von Wernich gets life in “dirty war” killings
In several radio interviews Oct. 9, Colombia’s President Alvaro Uribe charged the country’s Supreme Court offered benefits including a reduced sentence to imprisoned paramilitary commander José Moncada in exchange for testifying that the president ordered the killing of another incarcerated… Read moreColombia: high court accuses Uribe of obstruction in paramilitary case
On Oct. 10, rural popular organizations mobilized in several regions of Colombia, marching towards the capitals of their respective departments. They are protesting the pending free trade agreement with the United States, legislation which would roll back Colombia’s agrarian reform… Read moreColombia: national campesino mobilization follows threats, detentions
The UN International Court of Justice (ICJ) at The Hague, Netherlands, Oct. 8 awarded Honduras sovereignty over four cays in the Caribbean Sea and delineated its maritime boundary with Nicaragua as part of a ruling on a longstanding border dispute…. Read moreWorld Court rules on Nicaragua-Honduras border dispute; oil conflict in background
Three workers from the Mexican oil monopoly Pemex were killed by inhaling toxic fumes when the gas pipeline they were working on suffered a leak Oct. 8. The workers were repairing the Potrero del Llano-Naranjos pipeline in Alamo Temapache, Veracruz,… Read moreMexico: three workers dead in gas pipeline accident
Nathaniel Deutsch, professor of religion at Swarthmore College, writes for the New York Times, Oct. 6: Save the Gnostics The United States didn’t set out to eradicate the Mandeans, one of the oldest, smallest and least understood of the many… Read moreIraq’s indigenous Gnostics make NY Times op-ed page
