A US court in Washington DC Sept. 17 ordered Chiquita Brands International to pay a $25 million fine to settle charges that it underwrote a terrorist organization in Colombia. Chiquita had agreed to the fine when it pleaded guilty in March to paying protection money to Colombian paramilitaries from 2001 to 2004. US District Judge Royce C. Lamberth approved the agreement, which also places the company on probation for five years. The fine is the largest ever imposed under US counter-terrorism laws. The amount is slightly more than half the profits Chiquita earned from growing bananas in Colombia during that period. Company spokesman Michael Mitchell said Chiquita will pay the fine in five equal installments over five years.

After 16 months in hiding, three leaders of the People's Front in Defense of the Land (FPDT), Martha Pérez Pineda, David Pájaro Huertas and Ulises del Valle Ramírez, returned to the central Mexican village of San Salvador Atenco to lead the Sept. 16 "Grito de Independencia" celebration. The three re-emerged from clandestinity after a judge issued an amparo, a special order suspending the arrest warrants against them. The father of Ulises del Valle is FPDT director Ignacio del Valle Medina, who remains imprisoned at the top-security Altiplano facility. Several more FPDT leaders remain in hiding, including América del Valle, Jesús Adán Espinoza Rojas, Bernardino Cruz Cardona and Jorge Flores. Twenty-eight FPDT adherents are in prison following the May 2006 violence at Atenco. Hundreds of Atenco residents attended the Grito ceremony, rattling their machetes in the air as a symbol of resistance. (La Jornada, Sept. 16)

A striking schoolteacher named Wilfredo Lara was killed Aug. 27 while participating in a road blockade at Macuelizo, in Santa Bárbara department of western Honduras. An angered motorist, who apparently opened fire on the blockade with a handgun and hit Lara in the throat, was arrested in the slaying. The blockade was one of ten held throughout the country by the National Coordinator of Popular Resistance (CNRP), made up of more than 30 unions, student groups, indigenous and campesino organizations, and community assemblies. They are demanding land redistribution, the repeal of neoliberal laws on forestry, mining and water, the suspension of planned hydro-electric dams, the punishment of corrupt officials, and controls on the prices of basic goods. (EFE, Aug. 27)

The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions announced in Geneva that it will review the arrests of followers of the Popular People's Assembly of Oaxaca (APPO) in Mexico. On the eve of leaving for the Working Group's session in Geneva, president of the Center for the Human Rights of Indigenous Peoples (CEDHAPI), Maurilio Santiago Reyes, told a press conference in Oaxaca City, "The UN will come to realize...that activists were detained arbitrarily, beaten and tortured physically and psychologically." (La Jornada, Sept. 10) The state of Oaxaca has agreed to create a special fund to indemnify victims of torture and illegal arrest. The move was taken in response to Recommendation 15/2007 issued by Mexico's National Human Rights Commission (CNDH). (La Jornada, Sept. 12)

From CBS News, Sept. 15:

Tens of thousands of anti-war demonstrators marched through downtown Washington on Saturday, clashing with police at the foot of the Capitol steps where more than 190 protesters were arrested...

Talk about a vicious cycle. Global warming opens the long-sought Northwest Passage, which will mean easier access to the Arctic and its resources (including oil), thereby exacerbating...global warming. It should also exacerbate the geopolitical struggle over the far north. Russian authorities have already announced they will open new ports on the Arctic Sea as major petroleum hubs for the 21st century. (Barents Observer, Sept. 11) From Science Daily, Sept. 14:

In a blow to the auto industry, US Judge William K. Sessions III ruled Sept. 12 that the state of Vermont can set limits on car emissions that contribute to global warming, rejecting arguments that only the federal government can regulate the industry. The EPA has so far refused to demand a curb in emissions linked to global warming. In 2002, California passed a law requiring automakers to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 22% by 2012, and 30% by 2016. Vermont followed suit with its own such law in 2005, as have a handful of other states. Automakers took the individual states to court, arguing that the laws usurpsed federal authority. But Sessions wrote: "The regulation does not impermissibly intrude upon the foreign affairs prerogatives of the president and Congress of the United States."

First, the basic facts from the New York Times, Sept. 14:

Sunni Sheik Who Backed U.S. in Iraq Is Killed
BAGHDAD, Sept. 13 — A high-profile Sunni Arab sheik who collaborated with the American military in the fight against jihadist militants in western Iraq was killed in a bomb attack on Thursday near his desert compound. The attack appeared to be a precisely planned assassination meant to undermine one of the Bush administration’s trumpeted achievements in the war.