The US Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) served papers the week of Jan. 30 on seven US activists relating to a march and fast the group Witness Against Torture carried out in Cuba in December. The OFAC is apparently investigating to see if there was a violation of a US ban on most forms of travel to Cuba when a group of 24 US Christians marched over 60 miles to the US Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to protest the indefinite detention of some 500 Muslim prisoners there. The group camped and fasted for four days outside the base.

On the morning of Feb. 10, agents of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in Puerto Rico started a series of raids on the homes of independence activists in the cities of Mayaguez, San German, Rio Piedras and Trujillo Alto. The FBI said it was carrying out an operation against the rebel Popular Boricua Army (EPB)-Macheteros, according to national police chief Pedro Toledo, who reported that the FBI didn't inform the Puerto Rican police until one hour after the raids had started. Five homes and one business were searched on the basis of 23 warrants; sociologist Liliana Laboy and longtime activist Norberto Cintron Fiallo were among the people targeted.

A very interesting piece from the Feb. 6 Christian Science Monitor, online at RethinkVenezuela. Smells like the usual "regime change" recipe, doesn't it?

Democracy's 'special forces' face heat
CARACAS, VENEZUELA -- A diplomatic row between the United States and Venezuela escalated this past week when President Hugo Chávez expelled a US naval attaché for espionage, prompting Washington to order the Venezuelan ambassador's chief of staff to leave the US.

What, us worry? From the AP, Feb. 10:

WASHINGTON -- The government concluded its "Cyber Storm" wargame Friday, its biggest-ever exercise to test how it would respond to devastating attacks over the Internet from anti-globalization activists, underground hackers and bloggers.

Bloggers?

A jazz musician and a bookstore owner? OK, could be. But this smells to us like another sleazy FBI fishing expedition in which the only "al-Qaeda" connection was the undercover federal agent. These guys may have wanted to collaborate with al-Qaeda. But is wanting to a crime? Well, Britain just convicted an Islamic cleric for thought crimes. From the Lower Hudson Valley's Journal News, Feb. 9:

From the Associated Press:

BOGOTA, Colombia, Jan. 27 Colombia insisted Friday that a false-passport ring it dismantled may have links to al-Qaida and Hamas, despite U.S. doubts about the counterfeiters' connection to the terrorist groups.

Colombian officials said Thursday the gang supplied citizens from Pakistan, Jordan, Iraq, Egypt and other countries with false passports and Colombian nationality without them ever setting foot in the country.

A letter sent to the Colombia Support Network in Madison, WI, from local campesino activsts in Putumayo, Colombia's Amazon rainforest department bordering Ecuador:

Mocoa, January 25, 2006

Beginning in December of 2005 the FARC-EP began a series of attacks upon the infrastructure of the Department of Putumayo, choosing different points supposedly to weaken the present government, among them the towers which take high voltage electricity to Putumayo communities, bridges on different roads and oil wells and the trans-Andean pipeline.

In the space of 15 days they dynamited electric towers twelve times, oil wells five times, dynamiting every 800 meters the pipeline which transports crude oil between a site in Orito denominated El Guarumo and the police station of Santana near Puerto Asis. And they dynamited bridges and roads in three places.

Two Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents at the border crossing (port of entry) in Douglas, Arizona shot and killed a driver on the night of Feb. 9 after Douglas police officers attempted to stop the man. Apparently trying to pass through the port of entry into Mexico, the driver maneuvered lanes and drove a stolen F-250 pick up into a port booth. "Because of the threat to their lives, the officers took necessary action and each fired one shot," said CBP spokesperson Brian Levin. CBP has not released any information on the driver, but said he died while being transported to a local hospital. ICE is investigating the shooting. The two agents involved in the incident have been placed on paid administrative leave. (KVOA.com; Arizona Republic, Feb. 10)