Washington's closest South American ally plays the wimp-baiting and commie menace cards in his bid to become president for life. Sadly, the polls indicate it is working. From Reuters, May 6:

BOGOTA - Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, expected to win re-election later this month, turned up the heat of the campaign on Friday by suggesting his opponents would hand the country over to leftists rebels.

It was heartening to see a picture of Subcommander Marcos in the New York Times May 10, even if it was on page 12. The masked Zapatista leader sat down in a Televisa studio for a nationally-broadcast interview May 9, as the political crisis sparked by violence at the village of San Salvador Atenco, just outside the capital, continued to escalate. Politicians of all stripes are baiting the rebel leader as a demagogue and extremist, even as the press continues to portray him as a washed-out has-been. Pretty funny. An excerpt from the Times story:

Samir Adil, president of the Iraqi Freedom Congress, is on a tour of the United States sponsored by the American Friends Service Committee. He most recently spoke in Barre, VT. The following May 5 account from Vermont's Rutland Herald is misleadingly headlined: Adil and the IFC are not seeking support from the US government, but from anti-war activists, trade unionists and other grassroots progressive forces in the US.

Gee, what reason would these people have to be so angry? Note that the refugees accuse the guerilla leader who signed the peace deal of being a traitor. Note that they are very eager for Western, and especially American intervention. Once again, the case against Western intervention in Darfur may be a good one, but if the anti-war forces are going to make it, they had better be prepared to offer some other meaningful solidarity to the refugees--instead of loaning succor to their oppressors, as the idiot left did in the case of Kosova. From the New York Times, May 9 (emphasis added):

There's oil in Cuba! Can the invasion be far behind? Actually, the fact that this story (complete with maps of the divided offshore zone and the exploration blocs) appears on the front page of today's New York Times indicates that maybe more pragmatic elements of the US ruling elites would like to get in on the action and view this embargo jazz as a Cold War anachronism. Maybe these elements constitute enough of a critical mass to indefinitely forestall any military designs on the island. We hope.

This sort of thing has become so common in Iraq that it rarely makes headlines any more. But this one inconveniently happened just as a break has been announced in the deadlock over forming a new government. This obvious escalation contradicts Bush's facile claim that the US "strategy is working." On the contrary, the war is spreading. From Bloomberg, May 9:

The BBC reports today that price of oil is back up to over $70 a barrel following a drop of more than $1.50 following news yesterday that Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had written Bush a personal letter. This was initially considered a remarkable overture, unprecedented since the US cut off relations with Iran in 1979, and was thought to signal a thaw in the nuclear crisis. No such luck. The contents of the letter were leaked today, and poured cold water on any hopes for de-escalation. Instead, Ahmadinejad lambasts the Iraq occupation, questions the Holocaust, loans credence to 9-11 conspiracy theory and attacks the legtimacy of the Israeli state. The letter may be addressed to the White House, but it is clearly playing to a very different audience, trying to win global sympathy in what is obviously regarded by both Tehran and Washington as the prelude to an invetiable war. And showing greater strategic savvy than the White House, Ahmadinejad makes clear he is not only playing to the Islamic world, but also Latin America and Africa.

As we have noted, more sophisticated minds have questioned his math. From AFP, May 6:

WASHINGTON: United States President George W Bush has said the September 11 revolt of passengers against their hijackers on board Flight 93 had struck the first blow of World War III.