The international price of copper is soaring as strikes halt operations at two of the world’s largest mines, Cerro Verde in Peru and Grasberg in Indonesia—both owned by the multinational Freeport McMoRan.
Tuaregs in Mali and Niger report that their compatriots in Libya are being “hunted in the streets” and tortured. Black African residents of the town of Tawergha were forced from their homes by anti-Qaddafi forces, and have set up refugee camps near Tripoli.
US diplomatic cables from Bolivia and Peru, released by WikiLeaks, warn of an “anti-system movement” in the Andean region, with indigenous peoples moving towards “self-governance and control over land and resources.”
Protests over pollution and lack of local investment shut down the operations of Petrominerales, Colombia’s fourth largest oil producer, with residents and workers erecting roadblocks around the Corcel and Guatiquia oilfields in Meta department.
Colombia’s Supreme Court of Justice condemned Jorge Noguera, ex-director of the Administrative Security Department, to 25 years for allowing paramilitary groups access to intelligence, leading to at least three assassinations of dissidents.
Former US congressman Walter Fauntroy, recently returned from a “self-sanctioned peace mission” to Libya, claims much of the fighting attributed to the rebels was actually carried out by NATO special forces troops—who also brutalized the populace.
World War 4 Report editor Bill Weinberg, in the second Internet edition of the Moorish Orthodox Radio Crusade, discusses the emerging struggle for post-Qaddafi Libya and the potential for ethnic war as Arabs are pitted against Tuaregs and Berbers.
The “Truthies” and sectarians who protested in downtown Manhattan continue to fetishize 9-11 as much as the patriots they loathe. For both the patriots and the protesters, it is all about the USA—while the Muslim world is finally moving on.
Israel’s Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has broached supporting recognition by the US Senate of the Armenian genocide as part of a diplomatic offensive against Turkey, the Hebrew-language daily Yedioth Ahronoth reported.
Xenophobes and Christian fundamentalists are behind the anti-sharia measures now passed or pending in more than a dozen states—but secular progressives resist efforts to impose sharia on the unwilling in the Muslim world. Can we avoid confusion?
Egyptian authorities declared a state of emergency after protesters broke into the Israeli embassy in Cairo and dumped hundreds of documents out of the windows. The embassy’s Israeli flag was torn down, and a Palestinian one raised.
Thousands of teachers and students took to the streets of several Colombian cities to protest President Juan Manuel Santos’ proposal to “reform” higher education, weakening job security and increasing tuition.
