From the Afghan Women's Mission, Oct. 10:

‘Afghanistan Like a Ticking Bomb,’ Says Women's Rights Activist on 5th Anniversary of US Bombing

“Today Afghanistan is still chained and burning in the fires of both the Taliban and the criminal ‘Northern Alliance’ fundamentalists and the future of Afghanistan is in serious jeopardy,” warned Zoya, a member of RAWA (Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan) five years after the start of Operation Enduring Freedom.

Sarah Ferguson writes for the Village Voice, Oct. 11:

Iraqi Body Count: How Many Is Too Many?

Has the U.S. "liberation" of Iraq succeeded in tripling the death rate for people there? That's the conclusion of new study published today by the British medical journal Lancet, which estimates a staggering 655,000 Iraqis (civilians and fighters) have died as a result of the 2003 invasion.

Pretty funny that the Turkish Foreign Ministry has officially congratulated novelist Orhan Pamuk, who has just won the 2006 Nobel Prize for literature, saying the prize would make valuable contributions to promotion of Turkish literature in the world. (Xinhua, Oct. 13) Meanwhile, the Turkish government, which recently put Pamuk on trial for daring to write the truth about the World War I-era Armenian genocide, seems to be doing its best to suppress Turkish literature. And just to complicate things further, France's move to make denial of the Armenian genocide a criminal offense is meeting with all the predictable reactions...

The Fiscalia, the Colombian national prosecutor's office, has released a final report on the scandal surrounding a laptop siezed from Rodrigo Tovar Pupo (alias "Jorge 40"), leader of the Northern Bloc of the paramilitary Colombian Self-Defense Forces (AUC), revealing widespread control of the political system in northern Colombia by the officially outlawed paramilitaries.

Following an agreement reached late on Oct. 10, a Mexican Senate committee is pursue a constitutional process known as "desaparicion de poderes," that could result in the fulfillment of the Oaxaca protesters' demand to have Ulises Ruiz removed as the state's governor. Committee members from all three major parties agreed to send a subcommittee to the conflicted state to investigate evidence that Ruiz's government has ceased to function and can therefore be dissolved.

From La Jornada, Oct. 11 via Chiapas95 (our translation):

Culiacan, Sinaloa -- Felipe Calderon Hinojosa will not last six years as president of the Republicin light of the social disconent generated by the electoral fraud and the social mobilizations that are occurring throughout the country, affirmed Subcommander Marcos of the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN).

From AMATE news agency, via Narco News, Oct. 11:

The Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN in its Spanish initials), together with its leader Subcomandante Marcos, paid homage to Cuba and to guerrilla leader Ernesto “Che” Guevara on the 39th anniversary of his October 9, 1967 murder in a remote area of Bolivia.

More nameless dead. A photo caption in the Oct. 11 New York Times, not online:

Two killed in Traffic Accidents Blocks Apart

Two people died in accidents within two blocks of each other on the Uopper West Side yesterday, the police said. Left: Shortly before 6 p.m., a 73-year-old woman was hit by a truck on Amsterdam Avenue at 74th Street, Right: A 66-year-old man fell into the path of a city bus on Broadway at 73rd Street around 4:10 p.m. Neither person's name was released.