On Feb. 15, Raúl Lucas Lucía of the Independent Organization of the Mixtec People was wounded in an ambush by unknown gunmen on a mountain road near his village of Coapinola, Ayutla municipality, in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero…. Read moreZapatista supporters attacked in Guerrero, Jalisco
The General Command of the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) and the rebels’ local civil authorities, the Good Government Juntas (JBG), report a resurgence of paramilitary groups in their jungle stronghold in Mexico’s southern Chiapas state, the Lacandon Selva. Local… Read moreChiapas: paramilitary resurgence seen
Teachers from the Section 22 union local in Mexico’s divided southern state of Oaxaca launched blockades and occupations of government offices throughout the state Feb. 20, demanding that their members be allowed back into 250 schools where authorities have installed… Read moreOaxaca: APPO and teachers block government offices
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met with her Canadian and Mexican counterparts Peter MacKay and Patricia Espinosa in Ottawa Feb. 23 for a summit of the North American Security and Prosperity Initiative (NASPI, or ASPAN by its Spanish acronym),… Read moreNAFTA security summit held in Ottawa
Thousands of Mexican miners held a one-day strike Feb. 19, marking the one-year anniversary of the underground blast that killed 65 at the Pasta de Conchos coal mine in northern Coahuila state. Relatives of the victims celebrated a Mass and… Read moreMexico: strike and scandal on anniversary of mine disaster
Jorge Noguera, former head of Colombia’s Department of Administrative Security (DAS) under President Alvaro Uribe, was arrested Feb. 22. He is accused of handing over a hit list of human rights workers and trade union activists to the right-wing paramilitaries…. Read moreColombia: ex-spy chief arrested
Dick Cheney in Australia he gave an interview to the national ABC network’s PM program Feb. 23, in which he invoked Anglo racial solidarity in the most blatant terms—and raised the threat of a new Caliphate stretching from Spain to… Read moreCheney: terrorists seek new caliphate
The latest entry in the wave of dangerously specious terror cases is giving us deja vu. Like Jose Padilla, Daniel Maldonado is a Latino convert to Islam. Like John Walker Lindh in Afghanistan, he is accused of bearing arms for… Read moreLatest “al-Qaeda” bust reveals GWOT futility
From DPA, Feb. 23: LONDON – A group of mothers who lost sons in Iraq Friday set up a ‘peace camp’ outside the Downing Street offices of British Prime Minister Tony Blair in London. They were joined by relatives of… Read moreBritish “war mothers” protest at Downing Street
Anti-war protesters clashed with police in Sydney Feb. 22 before the arrival of US Vice President Dick Cheney. Seven people were arrested as mounted police attempted to bar hundreds from marching through Australia’s largest city, demanding Prime Minister John Howard… Read moreAussies protest Cheney, Iraq war; troops kill in East Timor
Arab Monitor calls the brief detainment by US forces of a son of Shiite leader Abdul Aziz al-Hakim “a message to SCIRI,” the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq. Washington has got to be uneasy that its allies in… Read moreIraq: US intimidates SCIRI?
The US denies it, of course, but the evidence seems pretty convincing. From AP, Feb. 23: BAGHDAD – U.S. troops battled insurgents in fierce fighting that killed at least 12 people in the volatile Sunni city of Ramadi, the military… Read moreIraq: women, children killed in Ramadi fighting
