WW4 Report
New Ecuador-Venezuela bloc —against US drug war
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Ecuador's president-elect Rafael Correa met in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, Dec. 21, where they spoke in support of a regional integration that goes beyond trade. "This integration must be based on a new model, on complementary coherence, replacing the absurd model imposed by the North of competing with one another," Correa said, repeating his request that Venezuela return to the Andean Community of Nations and said one goal should be the fusion of that organization with Mercosur, the South Common Market. (Periodico 26, Cuba, Dec. 21)
Colombia: guerillas kill campesinos?
According to the "Joel Sierra" Regional Human Rights Committee Foundation, "armed opposition groups" are believed responsible for a number of recent murders of civilians in Colombia's eastern department of Arauca. The killings include the Nov. 29 murder of campesinos Edgar Marin Munoz, Pablo Tulio Bautista Jimenez and Fernando Vega in the rural community of El Vigia in Tame municipality; the Dec. 10 murder of Elsa Yaneth Martinez Miranda in the rural community of Brisas de Caranal, in Arauquita municipality; and the Dec. 12 abduction and murder of campesino Hector Villamizar Becerra from the rural community of El Botalon, in Tame. On Dec. 10, 11-year-old Natalia Munoz Ramos was wounded by a bullet in the urban center of Arauquita; it is not known who was responsible for the shooting. (Fundacion Comite Regional de Derechos Humanos "Joel Sierra," Dec. 14)
Colombia: army kills more campesinos
On Dec. 12, troops from the Colombian Army's 12th Brigade, attached to the Sixth Division, killed campesinos Juan Bautista Munoz and Over Semanate and driver Javier Garzon in the community of La Estrella in La Montanita municipality, in the southern department of Caqueta. The troops stopped the pickup truck—property of Garzon, who had been hired by Munoz and Semanate to transport them on an errand—and shot the three men dead.
French air-strikes in Central African Republic; Darfur crisis spreads
From The Independent, Dec. 15:
France yesterday defended recent fighter jet raids on towns bordering Sudan's Darfur region by claiming the aggressive action was aimed at preventing regional chaos.
Mexico: guerillas speak on Oaxaca crisis
The commanders of six small Mexican guerilla groups said in an interview published in the national daily La Jornada Dec. 15 that the message from the recent events in Oaxaca is that "any attempt to transform our society in a peaceful way is doomed to failure." But the commanders agreed that the "routes to social change [aren't] necessarily armed" and acknowledged the importance of the Popular People's Assembly of Oaxaca (APPO), the civil "Other Campaign" of the larger rebel Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) and the electoral struggle that formed around center-left candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who officially lost the July 2 presidential election.
The nuclear terrorist threat: our readers write
Our December issue featured the story (reprinted from our sibling publication Toward Freedom) "Nuclear-Free Central Asia: A Model for the Korean Peninsula?" by Rene Wadlow. It noted a real glimmer of hope in the terrifyingly bleak world situation: the repudiation of the logic of nuclear proliferation by the governments of a highly restive and militarized part of the planet. The Central Asian nuclear-free zone is bad news for the nuclear ambitions of super-powers (which seek to station atomic weapons in the region), as well as "rogue states" (which seek accomplices in their efforts to build atomic weapons) and terrorists (always happy to have more atomic weapons infrastructure to raid or pirate, especially in unstable regions). It is good news for the rest of us—the overwhelming majority of humanity. We can only hope that the two Koreas follow the Central Asian example.
Iraq: sharia law for Kurdish constitution?
From the Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq (OWFI), Dec. 15:
To: Kurdistan Regional Government
International Campaign to remove Article No 7 from the Kurdistan regional constitution!
Article 7 of the proposed constitution for Kurdistan is an open threat to the rights and freedoms of the people.
Immigration sweeps in six states; ICE charged with racism
On Dec. 12, some 1,000 US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents carried out simultaneous dawn raids at six meat processing plants in six states and arrested a total of 1,282 immigrant workers, most of them Latin American. (AP, Dec. 12, 14; ICE news release, Dec. 13) The raids took place on a day celebrated by Mexican Catholics as a day of action honoring the Virgin of Guadalupe. Many of the arrested workers had attended an early Mass before their shifts to celebrate the day. (Rocky Mountain News, Denver, Dec. 13)

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