Two small explosions caused minor damage on the morning of Nov. 18 in branches of the BBVA Bancomer bank in Tlalnepantla and Atizapan de Zaragoza, cities in Mexico state just northwest of Mexico City. According to the Mexico state attorney general's office, several people threw a "firecracker" into the Atizapan branch at 3 AM, damaging furniture and files and shattering windows in the bank and in two nearby houses. The state authorities said a homemade device found in the Tlalnepantla branch later in the morning probably failed to explode properly, though it did cause some damage. Bank personnel didn't notice the device until 11:30 am, after it had already partially exploded. BBVA Bancomer is owned by the Spanish bank BBVA.

All of a sudden, the right-wing blogs and pseudo-news sources (MichNews, PostChronicle) are rallying around bogus claims that WMD really were found in Iraq. One who has actually written a book arguing this transparently ridiculous case is Richard Miniter:

From the UK Guardian, Nov. 19:

The right to rule ourselves
Faced with US torture, killing and collective punishment of civilians, support for the Iraqi resistance is growing

by Haifa Zangana

The photograph of an elderly Iraqi carrying the burned body of a child at Falluja, widely shown during the chemical weapons controversy of recent days, is almost a copy of an earlier one that Iraqis remember - from Halabja in March 1988. Both children were victims of chemical weapons: the first killed by a dictator who had no respect for democracy and human rights, the second by US troops, assisted by the British, carrying the colourful banner of those principles while sprinkling Iraqis with white phosphorus and depleted uranium.

Perhaps it is a sign of the turning of the tide, evidenced by Congressional demands for a timetable on troop withdrawals this week. Or maybe it was just the magnitude of the death toll. But after weeks of burying the near-daily ethno-religious carnage in Iraq deep in the paper, the New York Times finally put the latest outrage in the front page Nov. 19.

From the LA Times, Nov. 19:

Jewish Group Demands an Exit Strategy
From Newsday

NEW YORK — The largest grass-roots Jewish organization in the United States voted overwhelmingly Friday to demand the Bush administration develop a "clear exit strategy" from the war in Iraq.

The Union for Reform Judaism, representing more than 1.5 million American Jews out of an estimated 5 million, is the first major Jewish organization to oppose the war. The group has a long history of antiwar activism.

Another leader of the Peace Community of San José de Apartado was killed by the Colombian army on Nov. 17. Arlen Salas David was working in his cornfield with his comrades when a unit of the 17th Brigade opened fire on them. One soldier threw a grenade, which exploded near Salas, apparently killing him instantly. His comrades could not come to his aid when he fell, as the soldiers continued to fire. By the time they were able to reach him, he was dead. Salas was the Peace Community's local coordinator for the hamlet of Arenas Altas, where the incident occurred.

Later that day, a delegation from San Josesito, the refugee camp where the Peace Community leadership has lived since the village of San José was occupied by the army earlier this year, visited Arenas Altas to investigate. The delegation was detained in a house in Arenas Altas, where the army accused them of being guerillas and attempted to interrogate them. The troops also shot at other houses in Arenas Altas, and at the hamlet's schoolhouse, which had children in it at the time. Troops told residents they had been fired on from the schoolhouse; this was denied by the teacher, who said only he and the pupils were in the building, and that he instructed the students to lie on the floor as the troops fired. (San José de Apartado Peace Community statement, Nov. 18, via Red de Defensores)

Readers of WW4 REPORT will be aware that we hate David Irving's filthy crypto-Nazi guts. But we oppose his imprisonment, just as we did that of the vile Judith Miller. We wish the Europeans would realize that locking up these intellectual hoodlums just makes them look like martyrs and paradoxically vindicates them. And then, as in the case of Holocaust revisionist Robert Faurisson (who was just sacked from the University of Lyon, not even locked up), you get people like Noam Chomsky running to their defense in The Nation. And then the right (especially the Zionists and neocons) jump in, portraying the left as a hotbed of anti-Semitism. And then, worse still, the left itself gets all confused about the ethics of genocide and historical truth.

The first round of voting in Egypt's parliamentary elections--much hailed as evidence of a democratic opening--has brought a big surprise. Candidates of the officially outlawed Muslim Brotherhood won an unprecedented 34 of the 164 contested seats, totaling more than 20% of the vote. Nother nine seats went to an opposition front composed of the Nasserite al-Wafd and the Kefayah and al-Karamah parties. The remainder went to the long-ruling National Democratic Party (NDP).

Muslim Brotherhood spokesman Muhammad Habib said that "the result confirms that the Egyptian people stand behind the Muslim Brothers and sympathize with them and that they actually represent the strongest political and social group in Egypt." (Arabic News, Nov. 18)