Especially given the contested presidential elections and the seizure of popular power in Oaxaca—both potential threats to Mexico's ruling elites—it is ominous indeed to see the evident emergence of Colombia-style death squads linked to the drug trade and (we can assume) elements of the security forces. From Reuters, Oct. 8:

Freedom's on the march. From the Rocky Mountain News, Oct. 3:

Arrest over Cheney barb triggers lawsuit
A Denver-area man filed a lawsuit today against a member of the Secret Service for causing him to be arrested after he approached Vice President Dick Cheney in Beaver Creek this summer and criticized him for his policies concerning Iraq.

A new Pentagon study group called the Iran Directorate has surfaced in recent media reports, drawing analogies to now disbanded (and discredited) Office of Special Plans which pushed for war on Iraq. An Oct. 6 analysis by Daniel Schulman in Mother Jones calls the Directorate and figures around it the "Whack Iran" lobby, naming Elizabeth Cheney (the VP's daughter); prominent neocons David Wurmser, Abram Shulsky, Elliott Abrams and Michael Ledeen; and Iranian arms dealder Manucher Ghorbanifar. The old nuclear ultra-hawk think thank, the Committee on the Present Danger, has apparently also been revived to stump for war on Iran. A Sept. 30 account in Newsday widely quoted Danielle Pletka of the conservative American Enterprise Institute, who openly takes pot-shots at the State Department pragmatists who are slowing the war drive:

It seems that hubristic neocons, with their ambitions to dismantle Iraq (and, eventually, the rest of the Arab world) are moving in for the kill, posing it as a solution to the sectarian and ethnic strife their own policies unleashed. Will the State Department pragmatists prevail in stopping them, and somehow shoring up a centralized Iraq with Baghdad as its capital, the traditional Anglo-American strategy for stability-by-proxy in the region? From the London Times, Oct. 8, link and emphasis added:

From the US Labor Against the War via the Iraq Freedom Congress:

Dear Ambassador Khalizad, and Secretaries Rice and Rumsfeld:

On September 7 and 8, 2006, members of the U.S. military participated in an aggressive armed raid on the offices of the Iraq Freedom Congress in Baghdad. During that raid, U.S. military personnel and others operating with them or at their direction ransacked the office, destroyed furniture and equipment, and confiscated records and documents.

Amid the internecine Palestinian violence now rocking Gaza comes a distrubing report from Israel's YNet Oct. 8 that an entity calling itself the Islamic Swords of Justice, said to be the Palestinian wing of al-Qaeda, shot up and set fire to an Internet cafe in Jabaliya in the northern Gaza Strip, causing massive damage. A communique said the attack was "part of a series of actions aimed at fighting corruption and the corrupt. During the holy month of Ramadan, our fighters have started operating on the holy land and in the early morning placed a bomb weighing ten kilograms (22 pounds) next to the coffee shop, ridden with corruption and characteristic of the unethical activities that have increased in recent days. Jihad fighters detonated the bomb as a message to all the corrupt people."

Sarah Ferguson writes for the Village Voice, Oct. 5:

Rallies Today: World Can't Wait—for What?

Call them the popular front to MoveOn.org's dogged efforts to defeat Republicans at the ballot box this November.

Houzan Mahmoud, UK-based overseas chair of the Iraq Freedom Congress, writes for The Guardian's Comment is Free blog, Oct. 7:

It's not a matter of choice
More than ever, women are claiming that wearing the veil, burqa or niqab is their own decision. I totally reject this view.

The veil is not merely a piece of "cloth", but a sign of the oppression of women, control over their sexuality, submissiveness to the will of God or a man. The veil is a banner of political Islam used, to segregate women born by historical accident in the so-called "Islamic World" from other women in the rest of the world.