Every Friday for months now, the Palestinian village of Bi'lin in the Israeli-occupied West Bank has been the scene of creative and organized non-violent protests against the illegal construction of Israel's "separation wall,"which will cut off much of the village's farmland. Hundreds of Palestinians, Israeli anarchists, and international activists have taken part in demonstrations brutally repressed by Israeli occupation forces with tear gas, live fire, rubber bullets, experimental weapons like sponge, salt, and sand bullets, and sound weapons. Palestinian Israeli members of the Knesset have attended the protests and been attacked, as well as Muslim clerics, and Palestinian politicians, including one-time presidential candidate Mustafa Barghouthi. On Sept. 2, Israeli soldiers attacked the villagers as they left their mosque after Friday prayers with tear gas, declaring that there would be no demonstration at all. Israeli Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz has ordered that the Wall be completed by the end of the year, so a crackdown on the protests is currently under way:

From the Arizona Daily Star, Aug. 31, online at Chiapas95:

The North American Free Trade Agreement may have boosted big business, but it has had a disastrous effect on Mexicans, a Chiapas economist said.

A heat wave with high temperatures peaking at 120 degrees Fahrenheit has led to a record number of deaths of migrants crossing into the US through Arizona. The US Border Patrol reports that at least 229 immigrants have died in Arizona so far in the fiscal year that ends Sept. 30, a 57% increase over the previous year's total. The large number of deaths has forced the Pima County Medical Examiner's Office to use a refrigerated trailer as a temporary morgue to handle the overflow of bodies. The morgue has a capacity of 120 bodies. The trailer can hold 60 to 70 bodies, depending on whether remains are intact or skeletal. (Arizona Daily Star, Tucson; Reuters, Sept. 1)

The Denmark IMC reports that Danish police have raided part of Christiania, a longtime squatter community in an abandoned military base in Copenhagen, Denmark. About 200 riot police stormed the "freestate" compound and quickly sealed off "Fredens Eng" (Meadow of peace), where people live in trailers. In one of the biggest mass sweeps in Denmark ever, the police made over 100 arrests. Most were charged with not following police orders, although some face charges of physically resisting. The trailers have to leave under a new zoning ordinance, to clear the area for development. Writes the IMC: "The people from Christiania have resisted this new legislation for years. They wish to keep their autonomy and self managed decision making structures that have kept the place running for over 20 years..."

The New York Times Sept. 5 made it official: the oil shock has arrived. Online at the International Herald Tribune:

When Hurricane Katrina ripped through the oil rigs and refineries along the Gulf Coast last week, it set off the first oil shock of the 21st century.

"This is a lot like 1973," said Daniel Yergin, who wrote a Pulitzer Prize-winning history of oil, "The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power," and is the chairman of Cambridge Energy Research Associates. "Since Monday, we've had a supply shock on top of a demand shock."

A Sept. 8 Wall Street Journal story, run in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, finds that New Orleans' "old-line" elite is already charting a racially-purged future for the city:

[I]n an exclusive gated community known as Audubon Place, is the home of James Reiss, descendent of an old-line Uptown family. He fled Hurricane Katrina just before the storm and returned soon afterward by private helicopter. Mr. Reiss became wealthy as a supplier of electronic systems to shipbuilders, and he serves in Mayor Nagin's administration as chairman of the city's Regional Transit Authority. When New Orleans descended into a spiral of looting and anarchy, Mr. Reiss helicoptered in an Israeli security company to guard his Audubon Place house and those of his neighbors.

Another chilling story of the authorities breaking up an inspiring citizens' self-help effort in New Orleans. EMSNetwork News Sept. 6 runs a first-hand account by Larry Bradshaw and Lorrie Beth Slonsky, paramedics from California and both shop stewards with SEIU Local 790, who were attending an EMS conference in New Orleans and led a procession of some 200 refugees from the city. At the advice of a local police commander they marched along the Pontchartrain Expressway towards the Greater New Orleans Bridge over the Mississippi, where they were told evacuation buses were waiting. Instead they were met with gunfire over their heads and ordered back. Online at TruthOut:

From Reuters, Sept. 8, via TruthOut:

Baghdad - The United Nations raised the alarm on Thursday about mounting violence in Iraq blamed on pro-government militias and urged the authorities to look into reports of systematic torture in police stations.

In a bi-monthly human rights report, released on a day when 14 more victims of "extrajudicial executions" were found near Baghdad, the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq also said "mass arrests" by US and Iraqi forces, and long detentions without charge, could damage support for the new political system.