WW4 REPORT Editor Bill Weinberg will be speaking on Friday March 10 in Barre, MA, at a double-feature screening of films on the Zapatista movement in Mexico and the civil resistance in Iraq. The latest installment in the Barre Winter Film Series will present the 1998 documentary A Place Called Chiapas and the new DVD Go Forward, Iraqi Freedom Congress!, produced by Japanese peace activsts and documenting the activities of a new anti-occupation civilian coalition in Iraq. Weinberg, the author of Homage to Chiapas: The New Indigenous Struggles in Mexico (Verso Books, 2000), recently returned from a conference in Japan where he met with and interviewed leaders of the Iraqi Freedom Congress.

Feb. 16 marked a full decade since the signing of the San Andres Accords, negotiated by rebel Zapatista commanders and Mexican federal legislators in the restive southern state of Chiapas. The Accords called for changes to the Mexican constitution as a minimum peace demand for the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), but have languished for ten years as the federal bureaucracy has refused to implement them. As the anniversary passed, Zapatista leaders on a national tour dubbed "The Other Campaign" (a reference to the presidential campaigns now underway in Mexico) arrived in the city of Puebla. (La Jornada, Feb. 17)

All press stories on this controversy note that the oil will be exported to China. But, as we have noted, Russia is racing with China to provide a Pacific outlet for Central Asian oil, and we suspect this is the real geopolitical imperative for this project. From the London Times, March 7:

From AP, March 7, links added:

VARANASI - Explosions rocked a packed railway station and crowded Hindu temple Tuesday in Hinduism's holiest city, and at least 12 people were killed and dozens injured, officials said.

This doesn't sound very good, does it? From the BBC, March 1:

An opposition leader in Uzbekistan has been jailed for 10 years for economic crimes, a Tashkent court has said. Nadira Khidoyatova of opposition group Sunshine Uzbekistan was found guilty of tax evasion and money laundering.

Our contributor Mahmood Ketabchi offers another critique of the US left's reponse to the "cartoon controversy." Interestingly, he finds reflexive support for any forces ostensibly opposing the US to be a paradoxical form of nationalism, that places the United States at the center of the moral universe. He explains his term "left nationalism" in a footnote:

Great, just what we need—military incursions to provoke a general uprising in Pakistan's increasingly restive Tribal Areas. Just to give the teetering edifice of Musharraf's dictatorship a healthy shove towards the abyss. Then we can have a nuclear-armed Taliban in power. From VOA, March 1, via Global Security:

From the Village Voice Power Plays blog, Feb. 25:

Critical Mass: NYPD Carries Smaller Stick This Week

by Sarah Ferguson

The NYPD switched up its game at Friday's Critical Mass ride. Instead of making mass arrests for protest charges like disorderly conduct and parading without a permit, cops cited cyclists with traffic violations, then let them go on their way.