Daily Report
Bolivia: tin miners strike
President Evo Morales pledged to personally negotiate with strikers who have shut down Bolivia's largest tin mine if the 4,800 employees return to work first. Miners at the state-operated Huanuni mine went on strike last week to demand greater administrative control of the mine's growing profits. The strike is costing Bolivian state mining company Comibol the production of some 25 metric tons (27 US tons) of tin ore each day—roughly 80% of the country's total tin output.
El Salvador: "terrorism" charges against Suchitoto 13
Charges of "Acts of Terrorism" will stand against thirteen of fourteen defendants arrested at a July 2nd protest against water privatization in Suchitoto, El Salvador, a judge ruled July 6. Judge Ana Lucila Fuentes de Paz of the Special Tribunal of San Salvador denied bail for the accused, sending them to an estimated 90 days in jail while prosecutors gather evidence for trial.
Iran: transport union leader "kidnapped"
From the International Alliance in Support of Workers in Iran (IASWI), July 10:
Mansour Osanloo, the president of the board of directors of the Syndicate of Workers of Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company, was kidnapped by plain clothes agents in the evening of Tuesday, July 10, 2007.
UK to ditch GWOT nomenclature?
From The Economist, July 5:
Don't mention the GWOT
A new vocabulary is needed to confront terrorism
The "global war on terror" is what America calls its response to the September 11th attacks. Never mind the cliché, or the fact that "terrorism" is a tactic and "terror" a state of mind; George Bush's crisp slogan helped to rally a traumatised American public. His principal ally over the years, Tony Blair, shared the sentiment, if not always the same words. Now, dealing with his first terrorist plot as prime minister, Gordon Brown is changing the choice of language.
National Intelligence Estimate: al-Qaeda stronger than ever since 9-11
The National Intelligence Estimate has reached such findings before. Yet more evidence of what an astonishing success the Global War on Terrorism has been. From McClatchy Newspapers, July 11:
Calling al-Qaida the most potent terrorist threat to U.S. national security, the classified draft makes clear that the Bush administration has been unable to cripple Osama bin Laden and the violent terror movement he founded.
Algeria pledges to crush Salafists, open energy sector
In the wake of the third deadly suicide bombing to hit the country in four months, Algeria's government has vowed to eradicate armed Islamist groups—but also warned of new attacks. Interior Minister Yazid Zerhouni called for "greater vigilance" from the population, and said the latest blast claimed by al-Qaeda would only bolster the government's "determination" to continue its crackdown. The July 11 truck bomb attack on the army barracks at Lakhdaria, which killed 10 soldiers and wounded 35, was designed to coincide with the opening in Algiers of the All Africa Games and the end of a lightning visit by French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
Ecuador: indigenous march for land rights
Some 800 members of the Awá indigenous people, who inhabit northern Ecuador on the border with Colombia, arrived July 11 in Quito after marching cross-country to demand the government recognize their rights to "ancestral lands." Awá leader Byron Chuquisán said the Ecuadoran government had recognized their land rights in 1986, but their territories have since been invaded by illegal loggers who are exploiting timber without any controls.
Mexico: bodies found from Tlatelolco massacre?
After two decades of silence, architect Rosa María Alvarado Martínez come forward July 9 to say that at least three bodies—likely the remains of student protesters killed by the army at Mexico City's Tlatelolco Plaza in 1968—are buried under a hospital near the massacre site. Alvarado said the bodies were discovered in 1981 when the hospital was being renovated, but plainclothes men identifying themselves as police officers threatened to kidnap and kill her son if she went public. The site had previously been a vocational school where student occupiers confronted soldiers during the October 1968 protests. While official reports claim only 25 were killed at Tlatelolco later that month, human rights advocates have claimed up to 350 dead.
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