Bill Weinberg

Christian fundamentalists remember September 11... 1683

There's a lot of this going around all of a sudden. Watergate figure and born-again evangelical Chuck Colson wrote for the Christian Post Aug. 18 (in a piece imaginitively entitled "The Clash of Civilizations"):

During the Cold War, there was a great clash of civilizations—communism vs. Western liberal democracy. And it threatened to destroy us in a nuclear holocaust. I was in the White House during those years. I can tell you, it was terrifying getting those daily briefings from the military. But the danger that we face from radical Islam today is even greater than the Cold War.

Gandhians remember September 11... 1906

From AndhraVision.com, Sept. 11:

Satyagraha movement completes 100 years

A hundred years ago today, Mahatma Gandhi launched the historic Satyagraha movement in South Africa to fight racism and colonial oppression in that country. Later, he used the same principles of non violence and mass civil disobedience in India, which eventually paved the way for the country's independence. The first seeds of Satyagraha were sown in 1893 when a young struggling lawyer Mohandas Karam Chand Gandhi came to South Africa. He arrived to serve as a legal advisor for an Indian merchant. But this was a country where the colour of one's skin mattered more than anything else.

Oaxaca: arson attack on APPO office

From El Universal, Sept. 10, via Chiapas95:

Unknown perpetrators attempted to burn down the offices of a leftist organization that is taking part in protests in Oaxaca City early Saturday. The door and main gate of offices belonging to the New Left of Oaxaca (NIOAX) were set afire but the blaze was put out before any real damage occurred.

Chiapas: reputed paramilitary boss declares for PRD governor-elect

For those who continue to follow events in Mexico's conflicted southern state of Chiapas, there is an increasingly surreal sense of being through the proverbial looking glass. On a national level, the leftist PRD candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is challenging his narrow defeat in the presidential race as fraudulent with massive protest movements; in Chiapas, Jose Antonio Aguilar Bodegas, the candidate of the PRI (which ruled Mexico through blatant fraud and corruption for 70 years) is attempting to emulate Lopez Obrador's example—claiming his victory was stolen by the PRD candidate! The conservative PAN (the party of President Fox and his apparent successor Felipe Calderon) is backing Aguilar Bodegas out of mutual enmity for the PRD—despite the fact that the PRI stole many electoral victories from the PAN in its long tenure in power nationally. Just to make the political bedfellows even stranger, Jorge Kanter—the notorious conservative rancher long held to be the mastermind of the White Guards, the brutal paramilitary force of Chiapas' landed oligarchy—has declared for the PRD candidate, Juan Sabines!

Mexico: splits emerge in Lopez Obrador coalition

From Spain's El Pais, Sept. 9, via Chiapas95 (our translation):

The entrance of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD, leftist) into Mexico's institutional life, with the signing of an accord for reforms to the Law of Congress, is a bad sign for its ex-presidential candidate, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who maintains a resistance against the president-elect, Felipe Calderon, and the "invalid institutions." The governor of the state of Michoacan, the PRDista Lazaro Cardenas (son of the founder of the party), and that of Chiapas have recognized Calderon as the new executive.

Terror blasts at Indian mosque

From the Sept. 9 New York Times, buried at the bottom of page 4 (below a much larger "profile" piece on a New Age self-help book written by Slovenia's president). Links added.

Explosions Hit Indian Mosque, Stoking Fear of Further Violence 
NEW DELHI — A series of explosions struck in and near the largest mosque in a flashpoint textile town in western India on Friday, killing more than two dozen people, wounding more than 100 and raising the specter of renewed sectarian clashes.

Afghan terror hits front page —at last!

Now, why should this story make the front page of the New York Times Sept. 9—above the fold, no less? Because the attack was near the US embassy? This is but the latest, and not even the deadliest, in a wave of such attacks in recent months—which have all been buried in the inner pages.

Suicide Bomber Kills 16 in Kabul Near Embassy

KABUL — A suicide bomber smashed his car into an American military vehicle just yards from the United States Embassy in downtown Kabul on Friday morning, killing as many as 16 people and wounding 29, Afghan and American officials said.

Istanbul: "al-Qaeda" cell busted

Turkish anti-terrorism police report they have captured four suspected al-Qaeda militants who were plotting to carry out a bomb attack in Istanbul. The raids, in the city's Bagcilar district, turned up two guns and explosive materials. Police said that the suspects came under suspicion after they held an illegal protest in favor of al-Qaeda on June 8, when the leader of "al-Qaeda in Iraq" Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed. (Zaman, Sept. 9)

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