For starters, a couple of apologies.

Yes, our February issue is coming out five days late, and our daily weblog has been inactive for nearly a week. This is because your hard-working editor (yours truly) has been down with the flu. (At first I thought it was an ultra-virulent genetically-modified strain of SARS, but I was just being bionoid.)

Mike Ferner writes for Voices for Creative Nonviolence, Feb. 6:

From Alaska to Washington, D.C. yesterday, peace activists escalated their tactics and occupied Congressional offices, demanding elected officials vote against George Bush’s request of $93,000,000,000 to extend the war.

We have already noted rampant conspiracy theories in the fluctuating oil prices. We'll here's more grist for the mill. From NBC News, Jan. 26:

Oil traders and others believe that the Saudi decision to let the price of oil tumble has more to do with Iran than economics.

Samir Adil, president of the Iraq Freedom Congress, reports on the progress of the new popular Safety Force, Jan. 18:

Samir Adil meets with the IFC Safety Force

Accompanied by Raid Salih, head of the Safety Force in Baghdad, Samir Adil met with members of the Safety Force to evaluate and discuss the latest period. The new Bush strategy and its implications for on the ground, and priorities for the Safety Force also were on the agenda.

The Pentagon recently posed Colombia as a "good model" for the war on opium in Afghanistan. But Hamid Karzai, to his credit, is displaying greater concern for the health of his own land and people than top US Latin American ally Alvaro Uribe. From Reuters, Jan. 26:

KABUL, Afghanistan - Rebuffing months of U.S. pressure, Afghan President Hamid Karzai decided against a Colombia-style program to spray this country's heroin-producing poppies after the Cabinet worried herbicide would hurt legitimate crops, animals and humans, officials said Thursday.

Hundreds of anti-water privatization activists gathered outside El Salvador’s Legislative Assembly this week to back legislation that would "increase [water] coverage, quality and sustainability and guarantee access… for low-income families." They presented a new proposal entitled "The Potable Water and Sewage Sub-sector Law" for legislative approval. The alternative proposal was developed by a number of civil society organizations in close consultation with communities struggling for access to clean water.

The Honduran government reversed its decision to take over oil storage terminals in attempt to lessen oil prices for the Central American country’s impoverished population. The reversal, announced last Friday, followed a threat by U.S. Ambassador Charles A. Ford, who said that "the consequences of this situation could be serious."

We have noted internal divisions in Iran over the nuclear issue. This story from the Jan. 23 New York Times provides another piece of the puzzle, and greater nuance than the corporate media generally display on the Tehran regime:

TEHRAN — Iran is barring 38 nuclear agency inspectors from entering the country in retaliation for a United Nations resolution aiming to curb Iran’s nuclear program, a senior Iranian lawmaker said Monday.