The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), which rules one half of Iraq's northern Kurdish autonomous zone, is currently facing a wave of popular unrest. Among the greivances are deals the PUK has cut with local tribal leaders respecting their despotic and anti-woman standards of "justice." This Aug. 12 petition was received from Houzan Mahmoud of the Iraq Freedom Congress:

Another heroic blow by the Iraqi resistance... against Shi'ite civilians. From the AP, Aug. 14:

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Residents dug through the rubble of devastated buildings today in a predominantly Shiite neighborhood of Baghdad that was pounded by a barrage of rockets, bombs and mortars that killed at least 47 people and injured dozens..

From Prensa Latina, Aug. 14:

LA PAZ -- Bolivian government denounced indications of a conspiracy by economic power groups against the Constituent Assembly to open works in the southern city of Sucre on Tuesday.

From AP, Aug. 14:

LA PAZ -- Bolivia's decision to suspend a plan to nationalize its oil and gas industry has reinforced doubts about the ability of its state-run energy company to manage the country's gas reserves.

We noted one year ago a heart-rending case of indigenous peasants in Mexico's southern state of Chiapas dying after eating a stew of apparently poisonous mushrooms. The peasants were driven by hunger and failed harvests to gather wild mushrooms (which have little nutritional value in any case). Another such tragic case was reported earlier this month, with the ominous conclusion that the mushrooms of Chiapas are mutating—explaining how indigenous inhabitants who know the local flora intimately could make such a fatal error. From AP, Aug. 4:

In a 10-2 decision released late on Aug. 9, the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, Georgia, turned down an appeal on behalf of the "Cuban Five," a group of Cubans sentenced to lengthy prison terms in 2001 for allegedly seeking to carry out espionage in the US. Their lawyers said the Cubans shouldn't have been tried in Miami, where sentiment against Cuba's leftist government made a fair trial impossible. A three-judge panel of the same appeals court sided with the Cuban Five in a decision exactly one year earlier, on Aug. 9, 2005, but the full court overturned that ruling on Oct. 31 and, in an unusual move, agreed to have all 12 members hear the appeal

From El Universal, Aug. 12 via Chiapas95:

SAN CRISTOBAL DE LAS CASAS, CHIAPAS -- A judge has imposed long prison terms on 50 indigenous defendants convicted of carrying out one of the most heinous crimes in past decades - the 1997 butchering of 45 other indigenous people, mostly women and children, as they prayed in a southern hamlet. Despite the sentences announced Thursday, the motive for the slaughter and its possible instigation by erstwhile authorities remain shrouded.

One year after the hysteria that followed the London bombings, we are treated to yet another terrorist scare emanating from the UK, with the alleged plot to blow up airliners mid-flight by mixing combustible liquids, supposedly discovered in the nick of time. While that dominates the headlines (much more so, note, than the real terrorist carnage in Mumbai, which generated barely a media flicker compared to the significantly less deadly London attacks), buried in the inner pages of even the New York papers comes another turn of the screw they started tightening a year ago. From the New York Daily News, Aug. 12: