Already facing war crimes charges in Germany, Donald Rumsfeld—like Henry Kissinger before him—now runs into a spot of legal bother in France. From RINF Alternative News Media, Oct. 28:

Former US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld fled France today fearing arrest over charges of "ordering and authorizing" torture of detainees at both the American-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and the US military’s detainment facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, unconfirmed reports coming from Paris suggest.

Our October issue featured the story "Israeli High Court Returns Palestinian Lands? Don't Believe the Hype!" by WW4 REPORT co-editor David Bloom, finding: "A review of the decisions shows that even in the few cases where the High Court decided in favor of Palestinians, the benefits to the villages have been minimal... In a widely publicized ruling, on Sept. 4, the town of Bil'in won a case at the High Court to have the barrier moved, saving 500 acres of its farmland which had been isolated from the rest of the village by the wall. But the very next day, in a separate ruling that received little media attention, the court ruled that Matityahu East, a large, new settlement outpost being built within the wall on part of Bil'in's land, could stay. So while the publicized decision returned lands to Bil'in, the quiet one upheld an illegal grab of other village lands." Our October Exit Poll was: "Separation barriers appear to be the icon of the new security state from the West Bank to Baghdad to the US-Mexican border. Are there still potentialities for a just co-existence (Israeli-Palestinian, Sunni-Shi'ite, gringo-Latino), or do 'good fences make good neighbors' and it is just a question of where to draw the line?" We received the following responses:

The recent controversy over the cancellation of two concerts sponsored by the group OneVoice, to have been held simultaneously on Oct. 18 in Israeli-occupied Jericho and Tel Aviv, has drawn wide recriminations from its New York-based leadership. OneVoice was founded by Daniel Lubetsky, a young Israeli-Mexican-American polyglot businessman. He has called the mostly Palestinian critics of OneVoice "extremists" who are against peace. Ironically, one of the Israeli musicians Lubestky hired for OneVoice's ill-fated Tel Aviv show was the popular Israeli singer Ehud Banai. Banai recently got into some hot water of his own with the Israeli left. We were first tipped off to this controversy by a comment left on OneVoice's blog:

From Shabelle Media Network via AllAfrica.com, Oct. 27:

More than 15 people mainly civilians and seven Ethiopian soldiers have been killed and many more have been injured after insurgents and government-allied forces battled with different sorts of weapons like, machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and other automatic rifles.

Libyan authorities expressed pessimism as key Darfur rebel factions failed to show up for the peace talks with the Sudanese government at the Mediterranean port of Sirte. On the eve of the AU/UN-mediated talks, the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) and Sudan Liberation Army Unity faction announced they would not attend. Another rebel commander, Abdel Wahed Mohamed el-Nur, founder of the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA), also said he would not travel to Libya for the talks. (Reuters, Oct. 28)

It seems that since the capitulation of warlord Khun Sa 11 years ago, his Mong Tai Army has collapsed back into its constituent entities—and that his former militia, the Shan State Army, is back in rebellion against the Burmese regime. From the BBC, Oct. 26:

The leader of a Burmese ethnic army has urged all opponents of the ruling junta to unite in the aftermath of last month's uprising. "All those battling the regime must co-operate," said Colonel Yawd Serk, of the Shan State Army (SSA). "If we cannot unite, and if the international community does not come to our help, then nothing will change in Burma for a decade."

From AFP via Pakistan's Daily Times, Oct. 28 (links added):

PALWAL — A serpentine column of India’s poorest of the poor is moving across cities, determined to reclaim their land taken over in the name of the country’s heady economic boom.

From AP, Oct. 27:

SAN FRANCISCO - Thousands of people called for a swift end to the war in Iraq as they marched through downtown on Saturday, chanting and carrying signs that read: "Wall Street Gets Rich, Iraqis and GIs Die" or "Drop Tuition Not Bombs."