WW4 Report

Al-Qaeda announces merger with Algeria's Salafist Group

From AP via Qatar's The Peninsula, Sept. 15 (link added):

PARIS — Al Qaeda has for the first time announced a union with an Algerian insurgent group that has designated France as an enemy, saying they will act together against French and American interests.

Darfur: 200,000 dead?

US researchers writing in the peer-reviewed journal Science maintain that more than 200,000 people have died in Sudan's Darfur conflict, much higher than most previous estimates. Says Dr. John Hagan of Northwestern University: "We've tried to find a way of working between those overestimations and underestimations. We believe the procedures we have used have allowed us to come to very conservative and cautious conclusions which we used to try to identify a floor to these estimates—a floor figure of 200,000. We do not believe it is possible or defensible to go below in estimating the scale of this genocide."

Colombia announces 20% privatization of state oil company

As populist leaders in Bolivia and Venezuela are determined to nationalize their oil industries, Colombia's government is insisting on a privatization plan for its state-run oil company. By selling off 20% of Ecopetrol, Colombia hopes to net some $5 billion and finance new exploration to boost production, according to Armando Zamora, president of the National Hydrocarbon agency. He warns that if more crude isn't discovered soon, Colombia will begin importing oil in 2011, with devastating results for the government's finances, which depended on Ecopetrol for 7% of last year's $41 billion budget. In 2005, Ecopetrol had sales of close to $6.5 billion. The Colombian government is expected to release details of the sale in the coming weeks.

Borderlands activists in legal victory

On Sept. 1 in Tucson, Arizona, US District Judge Raner Collins dismissed federal charges against humanitarian activists Shanti Sellz and Daniel Strauss. The two were arrested by the Border Patrol near Tucson on July 9, 2005, while driving sick migrants to a clinic, and were indicted on Aug. 3, 2005, for transporting undocumented immigrants. Collins ruled that No More Deaths officials had assured the activists "that the 'protocol' had been approved by Border Patrol and that the transportation for these medical purposes was not a violation of the law." Collins noted that in the three years before 2005, "no one was arrested and prosecuted for following the protocol." (Arizona Daily Star, Sept. 2, 5)

NYC bicyclists win another round

A small tentative step in the right direction—a little counter-vortex against the general downward spiral of global civilization towards ecological hell, permanent war and petrochemical totalitarianism. From amNewYork, Sept. 13:

City puts forth ambitious bike plan

After a series of high-profile bicycle rider deaths this summer, the city Tuesday unveiled its most ambitious plan ever to improve cyclist safety and access across the five boroughs.

US troops raid Iraq Freedom Congress offices

An urgent alert from the Iraq Freedom Congress:

US Troops raid offices of Iraq Freedom Congress (IFC) in Baghdad

On September 7 and 8, U.S occupying troops raided the head office of IFC in Baghdad. The raid came after a number of IFC public activities against the occupation. The troops were outraged when they saw the anti-occupation banners and posters showing international solidarity with the Iraqi people hanging on the walls. They reacted aggressively and ruined all internal doors, destroyed furniture, and confiscated most of the office property.

Colombian military implicated in Bogotá blasts

Colombia's President Alvaro Uribe took over the country's airwaves Sept. 10 to defend the military against reports soldiers were behind a string of bombings in the capital, Bogota. In a live half-hour speech during prime-time on all the major networks, he also called for an investigation into how the press came by the reports. "It has still not been proved that there was any participation by the soldiers in the attacks," Uribe said.

On Sept. 8, the national daily El Tiempo reported that four soldiers worked with a demobilized FARC Lidia Alape Manrique, alias "Jessica," to organize bombings ahead of Uribe's Aug. 7 inauguration. Two of the implicated soldiers were officers: Major Javier Efrén Hermida Benavidez and Captain Luis Eduardo Barrero, both assigned to an elite counter-terrorism unit, the Army Military Intelligence Regional (Rime). The officers allegedly hoped to claim reward money from the government's informants program for discovering the bombs. One attack was alleged to be a car bomb that killed a civilian and injured 18 soldiers on July 31.

"Jessica," arrested in the bombings Sept. 8, allegedly said under interrogation that she had worked in the past with Major Hermida.

Colombia's capital was on high alert on the inauguration day as authorities tried to prevent a repeat of the scenes when Uribe first took office four years earlier, when guerillas launched mortar attacks on the city center.

Uribe's focused on the "illegal leak" which "has caused so much damage, must be investigated." He said he would not be making any changes to the armed forces brass.

The military has been the largest recipient of the more than $4 billion in aid the US has given Colombia since 2000. But this is but the latest in a series of recent have hurt the military's image.

A number of army units are under investigation for extra-judicial killings of civilians, and one is accused of taking money from drug traffickers to assassinate 10 Colombian anti-narcotics police agents and an informant. The incident was presented as a "friendly fire" tragedy, but evidence has revealed they were killed at point-blank range. Several soldiers, including a colonel, have been arrested in the case. (El Tiempo, Sept. 9; AP, BBC, Sept. 11)

See our last post on Colombia.

Terror convictions in Jordan

A military court in Jordan Sept. 13 convicted 10 people in two cases involving conspiracies to kill "Americans training Iraqi police" at the Muwaqqar barracks outside Amman. The court said the defendants were found guilty of "conspiring to carry out terrorist acts and of illegal possession of automatic weapons," in two plots foiled last year.

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