On Aug. 31 about a dozen armed and masked people blocked the highway from Oaxaca city to Guelatao in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca and passed out two communiques which according to the Mexican daily La Jornada were from the rebel Democratic Revolutionary Tendency-People's Army (TDR-EP). The Spanish wire service EFE reported instead that the armed individuals were members of the Revolutionary Popular Army (EPR), from which the TDR-EP split in 2000. The literature demanded the removal of the state government, headed by Gov. Ulises Ruiz Ortiz, a central demand in a three-month-old protest of striking Oaxaca teachers and their allies. (La Jornada, Mexico, Sept. 1; El Diario-La Prensa, New York, Sept. 1 from EFE)

And not a moment too soon. This is sure to bring a smile to followers of the Global Anti-Golf Movement (GAGM). Chris Kraul reports for the Los Angeles Times, Aug. 31:

In Caracas, the Poor Shall Inherit the Golf Course
CARACAS, Venezuela — Perched in a green and forested aerie in the city's southern hills, the exclusive Valle Arriba Golf Club has long offered its members a breathtaking view and a pleasant escape from urban cacophony and congestion.

Now, a staunch ally of President Hugo Chavez wants it.

On Aug. 20, Brazilian landless activists Josias de Barros Ferreira and Samuel Matias Barbosa were murdered at an encampment of the Movement of Landless Rural Workers (MST) in Pernambuco state. Police claim the two men were murdered by other landless workers at the encampment; the MST says they were killed "by people who infiltrated the encampment with the objective of demobilizing the landless workers and demoralizing the movement." State police say the killers wanted $1,000 in compensation to give up their lands to a company building a gas pipeline near the MST encampment, and that Barros and Barbosa had refused the offer and demanded other lands in exchange for the deal.

More than 2,000 workers went on strike Aug. 7 at the Escondida mine in northern Chile, the world's largest privately owned copper mine. The workers were demanding a contract with an increase in salary and benefits that reflects this year's sharp increase in copper prices. During the work stoppage, most of the strikers were camped out at the sports complex of the Escondida company's corporate offices in the northern coastal city of Antofagasta. The strike ended after workers voted in a secret ballot late on Aug. 31 to accept a new 40-month contract providing a 5% wage increase and a special $17,000 bonus. The union had sought an 8% raise; management initially offered 4%.

On Aug. 28, two agents of Chile's militarized Carabineros police, acting without a warrant, raided a Mapuche family's property in the Bollilco Chico sector of the Nueva Imperial commune, Region IX, allegedly to search for stolen livestock. The family refused to allow the agents to enter their property, and the Carabineros responded by shooting to death Juan Collihuin, a 71-year-old lonko (traditional Mapuche authority), and wounding his sons Juan and Emilio Collihuin. (Argenpress, Sept. 1)

From India's Zee News, Sept. 5:

Baluchistan on strike over tribal chief's killing
QUETTA — Parts of the troubled southwest Pakistani province of Baluchistan were paralysed today by a strike called by opposition parties to protest the killing of a rebel tribal chief.

In its Sept. 6 account based on its reading of a direct translation, Newsday portrays the Pakistani government's new peace pact with tribal insurgents in Waziristan, in the autonomous Federally Administrated Tribal Areas along the Afghan border, as appeasement of Islamist militants. Which maybe it is. But this is further evidence of how Bush has painted both the US and Pakistan into a corner: the rise of the fundamntalists (which Newsday's text sloppily refers to as the "Taliban," meaning that they share the Afghan Taliban's ideology) to power in Waziristan is a result of US-mandated militarization of the region. A real crackdown could result in Gen. Musharraf's overthrow—and a Taliban-type regime coming to power in nuclear-armed Pakistan.

A Canadian soldier was killed and dozens wounded, five seriously, when two US fighter jets mistakenly strafed them Sept. 4 at a battlefront in Kandahar. (CanWest News Service, Sept. 5) If we were to engage in conspiracy theory, we could hypothesize that this wasn't really "friendly fire," but intentional retaliation for perceived Canadian national insubordination to US global leadership.