From Al-Jazeera, Oct. 27: Niger has suspended its plans to deport thousands of ethnic Arab nomads to Chad. The central African country’s cabinet decided against carrying out the deportations after neighbouring countries spoke out against the plan, the country’s communications… Read moreNiger plans ethnic cleansing of Arab nomads
Villagers seized three Shell Oil platforms in the Niger Delta region Oct. 25, forcing a halt of production at each. A nearby Chevron platform was also closed. Members of the Kula community invaded the facilities, accusing the company of not… Read moreNiger Delta oil war back on
Remember the two immigrant girls who got caught up in a bogus suicide-bomber scare in the New York metro area last year? An update on one in the Oct. 26 New York Times says a great deal about the general… Read moreCleared of terror plot, fighting deportation —and genital mutilation
We have recently been warning of the imminent emergence of a Taliban state in central Iraq. Today the New York Times op-ed page catches up with us. From “What Osama Wants” by Peter Bergen, a senior fellow of the New… Read moreNYT op-ed warns of Iraqi “Taliban” state
Historian Allen Barra provides some all-too-revealing historical perspective on the New York Times op-ed page, Oct. 26: One hundred twenty five years ago, three lawmen – Marshal Virgil Earp and his brothers Wyatt and Morgan – and their friend Doc… Read moreOK Corral shoot-out echoes 125 years later
About a dozen heavily-armed police, some wearing ski-masks, raided the homes of environmental activist Carlos Zorrilla, executive director of the NGO Intag Defense and Environmental Conservation DECOIN, and his neighbour Roberto Castro on Oct. 17, according to reports from the… Read moreEcuador: police raid home of environmentalist
Mexico’s President Vicente Fox, trying to put a good face on things as he leaves a bitterly divided country as his legacy, boasted to a meeting of businessmen at the National Chamber of Industry that the crises of Chiapas and… Read moreFox: Crisis? What crisis?
The Popular People’s Assembly of Oaxaca (APPO) issued a “call for a popular peaceful insurrection” Dec. 1 if the state’s governor, Ulises Ruiz, has not stepped down by then. The call steps up pressure on president-elect Felipe Calderon, already facing… Read moreOaxaca: APPO calls for “peaceful insurrection”
In his tour of Mexico’s northern state of Sonora, Zapatista Subcommander Marcos made public the existence of “forced labor camps,” where mostly indigenous migrant laborers from Chiapas, Oaxaca, Guerrero and southern Veracruz live in “inhuman conditions” and “virtual slavery.” “They… Read moreMarcos: forced labor camps in Sonora
File under “Well, duh.” From Reuters, Oct. 22: HOUSTON – Halliburton Co , the world’s No. 2 oilfield services group, on Sunday posted a 25 percent rise in earnings, beating Wall Street forecasts, on robust spending by producers on oil… Read moreHalliburton profits soar
Can you say deja vu? How about chutzpah? From BBC, Oct. 24: North warns against Ortega vote Ex-White House aide Oliver North—at the centre of a 1980s scheme to finance Contra rebels in Nicaragua—has warned the country not to return… Read moreOliver North meddles in Nicaragua —again!
Thousands of people marched in San Juan, Puerto Rico on Oct. 8 to demand the release of four Puerto Rican political prisoners being held in US jails. Oscar Lopez Rivera, Carlos Alberto Torres and Haydee Beltran Torres have been jailed… Read morePuerto Rico: march for political prisoners
