From the War Resisters League (WRL), Aug. 25:

Blowing the whistle on war crimes is not a crime!
Bradley Manning, a 22-year-old intelligence analyst stationed in Iraq, stands accused of disclosing a classified video, published by WikiLeaks on April 5, 2010, depicting American troops shooting civilians from an Apache helicopter in 2007.

European Union's top diplomat criticized Israel on Aug. 25 over the conviction of a leader of Palestinian protests against the West Bank separation barrier. Catherine Ashton said she was deeply concerned by the guilty verdict against Abdullah Abu Rahmeh, one of the organizers of weekly marches from he Palestinian village of Bil'in to the co-called "apartheid wall" nearby.

Indigenous community leaders on Aug. 23 staged a take-over of Santiago-based Radio Bío-Bío to protest the station's failure to report on the hunger strike of 32 Mapuche activists. The protesters demanded that Radio Bío-Bío air an interview with a spokesperson for the prisoners, who began their hunger strike on July 12. Dressed in traditional garb and carrying musical instruments, the Mapuches gathered outside the studio's main entrance at 9:30 AM and put a padlock on the door.

At least six militants were killed in a presumed US drone strike in Miranshah, in Pakistan's North Waziristan tribal region. The missiles hit a small convoy of vehicles minutes before the scheduled iftar time, when the Ramadan fast is broken. After the attack, Taliban militants barricaded the site and shifted the bodies to an undisclosed location. At least four drones continued to hover over the region for an hour after the attack. Over 900 people, mostly civilians, have been killed in more than 200 drone strikes in Pakistan's northwest tribal areas since 2008. (ANI, Aug. 22)

Ecuador announced Aug. 17 it will renegotiate contracts with foreign oil companies, seeking up to 90% of revenues for the state. The OPEC member has 33 foreign oil contracts, and the largest ones—with Spanish-Argentine YPF and Chile's Enap—will be the first to be reworked, Non-Renewable Resources Minister Wilson Pastor told a press conference. President Rafael Correa's government on July 26 signed a legal reform under which the state is 100% owner of crude oil resources. Under the new contracts, foreign firms will no longer own what they pump, but will have to purchase it from the state. The new contracts are to be ironed out by Jan. 23, 2011, Pastor said. Ecuador currently produces 472,000 barrels per day. (AFP, Aug. 17)

The decapitated bodies of four men were hung from a bridge Aug. 22 in the south-central city of Cuernavaca, Morelos. The Beltran Leyva Cartel claimed responsibility for the killings in a message left with the bodies. The beheaded and mutilated bodies were hung by their feet from the Tabachines bridge in the south of the city, near an on-ramp to the Mexico City-Acapulco highway. The message threatened: "This is what will happen to all those who support the traitor Edgar Valdéz Villarreal"—a reference to the former high-level Beltran Leyva operative code-named "la Barbie" who has broken with the cartel and is now the subject of a massive manhunt by Mexican federal police. On Aug. 10 a condo complex in Mexico City's posh Bosques de las Lomas district was besieged by a massive federal police contingent backed up helicopters on an apparently erroneous tip that "La Barbie" was there. In an incident that failed to make headlines outside Cuernavaca, the day before the bodies were found the home of a purported Valdéz Villarreal supporter in the city was torched by unknown assailants. A note left by the "Pacifico Sur Cartel" threatened to target more properties. (AP, La Jornada, Aug. 22; Diario de Morelos, Aug. 21; Poder360, Aug. 10)

Pablo López Alavés, a Zapotec leader of the Popular Indigenous Council of Oaxaca "Ricardo Flores Magón" (CIPO-RFM), was abducted Aug. 15 by a group of some 20 masked and black-clad men armed with rifles who stopped his car outside his pueblo of San Isidro Aloapam when he was going to gather wood with his wife, two daughters and five-year-old son. The gunmen broke his car window before forcing him from his vehicle and transferring him to their own unmarked truck. The family members returned to the pueblo and alerted his CIPO-RFM comrades, who in turn alerted the authorities and began a search. It was initially assumed he was kidnapped by paramilitaries in league with local talamontes, or illegal timber exploiters, whose operations CIPO-RFM has long opposed. But the following day authorities revealed he is being held at the state prison at Etla, apparently on assault charges. In 2000, López Alavés had faced charges of "attacking the means of communication" related to roadblocks protesting the talamontes, but was acquitted. CIPO-RFM calls the current charges politically motivated and is demanding his release. (CIPO-RFM communique, Aug. 18; CIPO-RFM communique, Aug. 17)

Venezuela and the US are both seeking the extradition of Walid Makled, a notorious drug lord known as "The Arab" or "The Turk," who was arrested in a joint operation by Colombian police and the DEA in the city of Cúcuta near the Venezuelan border Aug. 19. A federal court in Manhattan has indicted Makled on charges of drug trafficking—allegedly in cooperation with Colombia's FARC guerillas. Venezuela is meanwhile seeking him on multiple murder counts.