From South Africa's Mail & Guardian, Sept. 17:

Israel has enforced a news blackout on what may be its air force's most audacious raid since its jets destroyed Saddam Hussein's nuclear reactor in 1981. The Israeli government has made no comment about the raid on what is believed to be a nuclear installation in Syria and Israeli newspapers have been forbidden to write anything on the subject.

Spanish high court judge Baltasar Garzón ordered preventive detainment Sept. 11 for Juan Mari Olano, leader of the Askatasuna prisoner support organization who was arrested during an illegal demonstration at San Sebastián in the Basque country two days earlier. Olano is charged with "membership of the ETA-EKIN terrorist organisation through the Askatasuna structure" as well as inciting "kale borroka" street violence during the banned march. The march, organized to demand amnesty for imprisoned ETA activists and self-determination for the Basque region, was held in defiance of an order banning it by the Basque regional government. It ended in violent clashes with riot police, who opened fire on the marchers with rubber bullets. Nine people, including Olano, were arrested and 11 injured, including one police officer. (EuskalInfo, Sept. 11; ThinkSpain, Sept. 10; Typically Spanish, Sept. 9)

Colombian authorities have decided to hold a top drug lord and a former paramilitary boss, both wanted by the US, in prisons fashioned on navy warships. But authorities were embarrassed Sept. 14 when they picked up the wrong prisoner in the high-security transfer. Helicopters and troops were mobilized to move accused drug lord "Don Diego" Montoya and former para commander Carlos Jimenez from their prison cells to navy ships, in response to death threats against them and claims that they continued to run their networks from behind bars. Instead of picking up Diego Montoya, authorities moved Diego "Don Berna" Murillo to Bogota from Combita prison (Boyacá department). Murillo is another ex-para commander jailed under a peace deal with President Alvaro Uribe.

A US court in Washington DC Sept. 17 ordered Chiquita Brands International to pay a $25 million fine to settle charges that it underwrote a terrorist organization in Colombia. Chiquita had agreed to the fine when it pleaded guilty in March to paying protection money to Colombian paramilitaries from 2001 to 2004. US District Judge Royce C. Lamberth approved the agreement, which also places the company on probation for five years. The fine is the largest ever imposed under US counter-terrorism laws. The amount is slightly more than half the profits Chiquita earned from growing bananas in Colombia during that period. Company spokesman Michael Mitchell said Chiquita will pay the fine in five equal installments over five years.

After 16 months in hiding, three leaders of the People's Front in Defense of the Land (FPDT), Martha Pérez Pineda, David Pájaro Huertas and Ulises del Valle Ramírez, returned to the central Mexican village of San Salvador Atenco to lead the Sept. 16 "Grito de Independencia" celebration. The three re-emerged from clandestinity after a judge issued an amparo, a special order suspending the arrest warrants against them. The father of Ulises del Valle is FPDT director Ignacio del Valle Medina, who remains imprisoned at the top-security Altiplano facility. Several more FPDT leaders remain in hiding, including América del Valle, Jesús Adán Espinoza Rojas, Bernardino Cruz Cardona and Jorge Flores. Twenty-eight FPDT adherents are in prison following the May 2006 violence at Atenco. Hundreds of Atenco residents attended the Grito ceremony, rattling their machetes in the air as a symbol of resistance. (La Jornada, Sept. 16)

A striking schoolteacher named Wilfredo Lara was killed Aug. 27 while participating in a road blockade at Macuelizo, in Santa Bárbara department of western Honduras. An angered motorist, who apparently opened fire on the blockade with a handgun and hit Lara in the throat, was arrested in the slaying. The blockade was one of ten held throughout the country by the National Coordinator of Popular Resistance (CNRP), made up of more than 30 unions, student groups, indigenous and campesino organizations, and community assemblies. They are demanding land redistribution, the repeal of neoliberal laws on forestry, mining and water, the suspension of planned hydro-electric dams, the punishment of corrupt officials, and controls on the prices of basic goods. (EFE, Aug. 27)

On Sept. 12, some 150 activists (according to the Chicago Tribune) marched through the House of Representatives' Rayburn Office Building, chanting for an end to deportation raids. The protesters had arrived in buses from Chicago, New York, Rhode Island and elsewhere. Capitol police arrested two Puerto Rican activists from Chicago following a tussle near the office door of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, where demonstrators taped up a letter demanding she take action for immigrant rights. The two were charged with disorderly conduct and released. Pelosi was out of town.

The Sept. 9 election to replace Guatemalan President Oscar Berger featured more body bags than tangible ideas to improve the country. Now facing a Nov. 4 runoff election, voters are left with the tired choice between a military strongman and an oligarch.