In the last intallment of a series on the looming disaster in Nepal, Newsday‘s courageous reporter Matthew McAllester Aug. 17 highlights a little-noted ethnic dimesion to the conflict, which is usually portrayed soley in terms of fanatical Maoist guerillas versus… Read moreParamilitary terror, ethnic warfare in Nepal
The Gaza disengagement is being completed, without the armed resistance from settlers that had been feared. Reports AP: “Israeli troops dragged sobbing Jewish settlers out of homes, synagogues and even a nursery school Wednesday and hauled them onto buses in… Read moreGaza disengagement; West Bank “consolidation”
The Abu Dubai-based Information & Technology Publishing‘s online magazine offers an Aug. 14 story by Rhys Jones, “Wronging Iraq’s rights,” that paints a dire picture of the kind of oppressive theocracy that could be enshrined by the new constitution. The… Read moreIraq: new constitution threatens women
The Committee to Defend Women’s Rights in the Middle East offers this commentary from Yanar Mohammed of the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq (OWFI): Yanar Mohammed: Condemn a constitution of de-humanizing women An era of post-occupation atrocities unfolded to… Read moreYanar Mohammed speaks on Iraq’s pending constitution
Cindy Sheehan, the California mother of a young man killed in Iraq, has now been camped out for ten days in a ditch down the road from George Bush’s ranch in Crawford, TX, demanding the president meet with her to… Read moreCindy Sheehan: America’s conscience?
As the paramilitaries in Mexico’s southern state of Chiapas are re-asserting their reign of terror, their Zapatista enemies, in contrast, are disavowing a return to arms and trying to draw support for their national political mobilization, announced last month. At… Read moreChiapas: Zapatistas host national meetings
A new wave of paramilitary violence is reported from Mexico’s conflicted southern state of Chiapas. Within the last eight weeks, more than 20 Chol Maya families have been displaced from the community of Andres Quintana Roo, in Sabanilla municipality, by… Read moreChiapas: more paramilitary violence
The US company Epi Security & Investigation says it has hired some 1,000 Colombian military and police veterans to work as mercenaries for the US occupation in Iraq. Epi is operating from a house near a US air base in… Read moreEcuador: Iraq mercenaries recruited
At least 18 opponents of the Cuban government were detained in connection with four small protests on or near Havana’s waterfront on July 13. Several hundred government supporters, including construction workers on a job at the nearby Hermanos Ameijeiras hospital,… Read moreCuba: dissident protests attacked
The interim Haitian government released right-wing paramilitary leader Louis Jodel Chamblain from jail on Aug. 11. Chamblain, a leader in an armed rebellion that ended when President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was ousted in February 2004, had been imprisoned since April 2004… Read moreHaiti: paramilitary leader released
Early on Aug. 2, unidentified individuals broke into and used homemade explosives to set fire to the Quebracho Poty community radio station at the San Ramon Nonato parish in Puerto Casado, Paraguay. No one was hurt, but the attack left… Read moreParaguay: community radio bombed
The Indonesian government and the rebel Free Aceh Movement (GAM) signed a peace deal in Finland Aug. 15 aimed at ending the local war which has claimed 15,000 lives in over 29 years. “This is the beginning of a new… Read morePeace for Aceh —and West Papua?
