Another escalation is reported in the struggle of Maya campesinos in Yucatan state to hold their communial (ejidal) lands that the government seeks to expropriate for a new airport, part of the “Metropolisur” regional development plan. An Aug. 18 communique… Read moreMexico: repression in Yucatan
Ricardo Lopez Espinosa, a community leader in the conflicted central Mexican village of San Salvador Atenco and a member of the local People’s Front in Defense of the Land (FPDT) was freed from jail in Molino de Flores Aug. 17… Read moreMexico: repression in Atenco, Puebla, Queretaro
From EFE, Aug. 14 via Chiapas95 (our translation): MEXICO — Mexico’s Federal Preventative Police (PFP) today used blows and tear gas to break up a group of legislators who support leftist candidate Manuel Lopez Obrador at one of the gates… Read moreMexico: police attack PRD legislators
From El Universal, Aug. 14 via Chiapas95: OAXACA – Around 5,000 striking teachers and activists marched silently through the streets of this southern city on Sunday to demand that the murder of one of their number last week be resolved… Read moreOaxaca teachers march for justice
Unrepentant about the wall his own country is building on the West Bank, Uza Dayan wisely warns the US against emulating Israeli strategies in Occupied Aztlan. From Newsday, Aug. 16: JERUSALEM — Six years ago, then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak… Read moreEx-Israeli security chief on US-Mexico border wall: “Don’t build it!”
They’ve been after this guy for a long time. But if similar busts in the past are any indicator, his demise will merely set off a violent succession struggle—and do absolutely nothing to to reduce the flow of drugs into… Read moreUS nabs Tijuana cartel kingpin
Mike di Paola writes an excellent summary of the environmental and archeological damage from the Lebanese war for Bloomberg, Aug. 15. One of the coastal areas affected by an Israeli bombing-induced oil slick is the ancient Phoenician Canaanite harbor of… Read moreLebanon: historic Byblos threatened by oil slick, Israeli naval blockade
Way to go, Mr. Sensitive. From Japan’s Yomiuri Shimbun, Aug. 16: Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi visited Yasukuni Shrine in central Tokyo on Tuesday–the 61st anniversary of the end of World War II–writing his name as prime minister in the shrine’s… Read moreKoizumi visits Yasukuni on VJ Day
From the New York Daily News, Aug. 15: Crash horror on N.J. Turnpike A Queens couple and their 3-year-old daughter were among four people killed when an 18-wheeler hauling bricks spun out on the New Jersey Turnpike yesterday – but… Read moreWHY WE FIGHT
Seymour Hersh‘s latest feature in the Aug. 21 New Yorker openly portrays Israel’s Lebanon adventure as Washington’s test war for an attack on Iran. Like most of his recent journalism, it relies overwhelmingly on anonymous sources. One “US government consultant”… Read moreSeymour Hersh: Lebanon was Bush’s test war for Iran
The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), which rules one half of Iraq’s northern Kurdish autonomous zone, is currently facing a wave of popular unrest. Among the greivances are deals the PUK has cut with local tribal leaders respecting their despotic… Read morePUK connives with “tribal” woman-killers
Another heroic blow by the Iraqi resistance… against Shi’ite civilians. From the AP, Aug. 14: BAGHDAD, Iraq — Residents dug through the rubble of devastated buildings today in a predominantly Shiite neighborhood of Baghdad that was pounded by a barrage… Read moreIraq: sectarian cleansing grinds on
