Paraguayan foreign minister Ruben Ramirez announced on Oct. 2 that in 2007 Paraguay will stop granting US troops immunity from prosecution. The change in policy is an effort to coordinate policies with the other member nations in the Mercosur economic… Read moreParaguay: US troops lose immunity
Late on Oct. 4, Julian Andres Hurtado Castillo was shot to death outside his home in the Las Granjas neighborhood of the Colombian city of Cali, in Valle del Cauca department. The killers–apparently paid professionals–were a man and a woman… Read moreColombia: student leader murdered
Arthur Neslen on the UK Guardian’s Comment is Free blog Oct. 25 outlines various intellectual responses to the ascendance of the frightening Avigdor Lieberman to the Israeli cabinet. One which he overlooks is the “smokescreen” response, put forth by the… Read moreAvigdor Lieberman: “fascism” or “smokescreen”?
From Reuters, Oct. 25: Berlin: IAF jets fire shots over German ship off coast of Lebanon Two Israel Air Force warplanes and a German navy vessel have clashed off the Lebanese coast, the Defense Ministry in Berlin said on Wednesday… Read moreIsraeli war planes and German navy clash off Lebanon coast
If this turns out to be true, we wager the beneficiary will be Iyad Allawi. From UPI, Oct. 23: CAIRO — Iraqi army officers are reportedly planning to stage a military coup with U.S. help to oust the government of… Read moreUS planning Iraq coup d’etat?
In a class-action lawsuit filed on Sept. 25, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Southern California, the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project and the Stanford Law School Immigrants’ Rights Clinic charged that ICE routinely holds immigrants longer than six months… Read moreImmigrants’ lawsuit challenges detention
Continuing on his tour of Mexico’s north, Zapatista Subcommander Marcos stopped in Sonoyta (the Sonora border town across from Lukeville, AZ), where his caravan drove into the desert and stopped at the fence demarcating the international border, where signs warned… Read moreSubcommander Marcos crosses into USA!
After a heated all-night assembly, on the morning of Oct. 22 delegates of 70,000 teachers in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca voted down a proposal to end a strike that has paralyzed the capital city, also named Oaxaca, for… Read moreOaxaca: vote to end strike overturned
On Oct. 20 Raul Ojeda Zubieta, center-left candidate for governor of the southern Mexican state of Tabasco, charged in a press conference that Andres Granier Melo, candidate for the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), had won in the Oct. 14… Read moreMexico: violence in Tabasco vote
The Permanent Human Rights Assembly (APDH) of Ecuador is protesting the Oct. 15 killing of two Ecuadoran campesinos by the Colombian armed forces. Blanca Vega and her son Hector Monar were traveling by boat along the San Miguel river en… Read moreColombia war spills into Ecuador
Could someone possibly please explain what this one is all about? A rather opinionated report from the right-libertarian Liberty Forum, Oct. 20: Thessalonica – The Greek Government will move, as early as this weekend, to have armed police forcibly remove… Read moreRebel monks pledge to resist police at Greek abbey eviction
Even Donald Rumsfeld is starting to make cut-and-run noises. As the Bush White House holds a high-level strategy session on Iraq Oct. 21, the Defense Secretary told reporters: “It’s their country, they’re going to have to govern it, they’re going… Read moreIraq: clerics unite against sectarian terror
