Local anger at the redevelopment plan that city bureaucrats have unveiled in New Orleans is making the country's top newspapers. From the Washington Post, via the Boston Globe, Jan. 12:

Angry homeowners screamed and City Council members seethed yesterday as this city's recovery commission recommended imposing a four-month building moratorium on most of New Orleans and creating a powerful new authority that could use eminent domain to seize homes in neighborhoods that will not be rebuilt.

The commission's recovery plan anticipates a city that will be only a fraction of its pre-Katrina size of nearly half a million residents. The city now has about 144,000 residents and is projected to grow to 181,000 by September and 247,000 by September 2008.

A Jan. 12 New York Times story, online at the Assyrian International News Agency (AINA), indicates a civil war breaking out within Iraq's Sunni insurgency:

In town after town, Iraqis and Americans say, local Iraqi insurgents and tribal groups have begun trying to expel Al Qaeda's fighters, and, in some cases, kill them. It is unclear how deeply the split pervades Iraqi society. Iraqi leaders say that in some Iraqi cities, Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia and local insurgent groups continue to cooperate with one another.

A Jan. 12 communique from the San José de Apartadó Peace Community in Colombia's northern Urabá region, via the Colombian independent human rights network Red de Defensores:

On Jan. 12, 2006, the army assassinated Edilberto Vasquez Cardona, 53 years old, a member of the humanitarian zone of Arenas Altas. Edilberto was the first leader of the Arenas Altas humanitarian zone, and was replaced by Arlen [Salas David], also assassinated by the army [in November].

At around 7 PM on Jan. 11, Edilberto laid down to sleep in his house located between Arenas Altas and Guineo Alto. With him was his son of 12 years. On the morning of Jan. 12, the army arrived very early, and forced him from the house. At some 20 minutes from his house, in the farmlands of the community of Arenas Altas at 7:15 AM, Edilberto was assassinated by gunshot.

The lines are drawn ever more sharply in Latin America. Peru could be the next to join the growing anti-imperialist bloc if the indigenist/populist candidate Ollanta Humala takes the presidency in this year's election. And Venezuela's Hugo Chavez has wasted no time in showing whose side he is on. From Reuters, Jan. 13:

From AP via Mexico's El Universal, Jan. 12, via Chiapas95:

Mexico's foreign secretary on Wednesday criticized Bolivian President-elect Evo Morales for inviting Zapatista rebels to his inauguration. "There should be one invitation to the Mexican government, which represents the Mexican state," Luis Ernesto Derbez said, "and not to specific groups."

Morales, who was elected the first Indian president in Bolivia's history in December, has said he will invite leaders from various Latin American leftist organizations, such as the Landless Rural Workers Movement of Brazil and Mexico's Zapatistas, to his Jan. 22 inauguration ceremony.

Royal Dutch Shell has shut down a tenth of Nigeria's oil production, after armed militants kidnapped four foreign oil workers and blew up a major pipeline Jan. 11. The incidents followed attacks on pipelines owned by the Nigerian state-owned oil company in December, disrupting supplies from the world's eighth-largest oil exporter for several days.

New York's Jewish weekly The Forward weighs in on the recent imbroglio over supposed anti-Semitic comments by Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez.

Venezuela's Jews Defend Leftist President in Flap Over Remarks
By MARC PERELMAN
January 13, 2006

The Venezuelan Jewish community leadership and several major American Jewish groups are accusing the Simon Wiesenthal Center of rushing to judgment by charging Venezuela's leftist president, Hugo Chavez, with making antisemitic remarks.

Officials of the leading organization of Venezuelan Jewry were preparing a letter this week to the center, complaining that it had misinterpreted Chavez's words and had failed to consult with them before attacking the Venezuelan president.

"You have interfered in the political status, in the security, and in the well-being of our community. You have acted on your own, without consulting us, on issues that you don't know or understand," states a draft of the letter obtained by the Forward. Copies of the letter are also to be sent to the heads of the World Jewish Congress and the American Jewish Committee, among other Jewish groups.

From Reuters, Jan. 10:

U.S. soldiers fed up with almost daily bomb attacks on their patrols near Iraq's main oil refinery are taking drastic measures to fight their shadowy enemy -- they're walling in an entire town.

Army bulldozers have begun building giant sand embankments around Siniya, a town of 50,000 close to the northern oil refining city of Baiji. When finished it will be 10 km (6 miles) long and more than 2 meters (nearly 8 feet) high.