As Mexico has aggressively militarized its "drug war" over the past years, the nation's capital has been an exception, with authorities reluctant to send soliders to patrol the seat of federal power—until now. Over 1,000 army troops have been mobilized to the streets of Nezahualcóyotl, a suburb of Mexico City, just south of the Federal District line in México state, which has seen a dramatic increase of violence in the past weeks. The México state Prosecutor General says 119 assassinations have been registered so far this year, mostly in Nezahualcóyotl. The decision to send in army troops—under a program dubbed "Operation Neza"—was apparently sparked by the Sept. 16 stabbing death of México state lawmaker Jaime Serrano Cedillo of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). Although subsequent reports have indicated he was killed by his wife in a domestic dispute, Serrano was the second PRI politician killed in as many days last week. On Sept. 15, Eduardo Castro Luque, newly elected to the Sonora state legislature, was shot full of nine bullets in front of his home in Ciudad Obregón. The twin slayings came when the country was on high alert for Independence Day celebrations, with extra troops deployed to conflicted states to head off terror attacks on the festivities. The PRI, a once-entrenched political machine, returns to power after 12 years in opposition, when president-elect Enrique Peña Nieto takes office in December. (LAT, AP, Sept. 21; WSJ, El País, Spain, Sept. 20; EFE, AP, La Jornada, Sept. 15)

Four protesters were killed in Benghazi Sept. 21 and over 20 wounded when citizens moved against militia groups in the eastern Libyan city, storming and occupying their bases. Hundreds of weapons were pilfered, and vehicles set ablaze. Among those seized was the headquarters of Ansar al-Sharia, the Islamist militia linked to the attack on the US mission in the city that killed the ambassador and three other US personnel. The stage was set for confrontation when Ansar al-Sharia called a rally of its own supporters in the city's central Shajara Square after the "Save Benghazi" rally—to oppose the lawless militias that continue to operate with impunity in the city—had been called for the same time and place. "Ansar al-Sharia have done this deliberately," said Bilal Bettamir, an organizer of the Save Benghazi rally. "We have been planning our march for the past week, and they made their decision yesterday. They knew all about it." But the jihadists apparently retreated as some 30,000 advanced on the plaza after Friday prayers, chanting "No, no, to militias," with banners reading "The ambassador was Libya's friend" and related slogans. After rallying in the square, groups of protesters started to overrun the militia bases. The four were killed while attempting to occupy the base of the Raf Allah al-Sahati Brigade, another Islamist militia.

The Italian Court of Cassation on Sept. 19 upheld the convictions of 23 former CIA officers for the 2003 kidnapping and rendition of Egyptian terror suspect Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr. Former Milan CIA station chief Robert Seldon Lady was originally sentenced to eight years in prison, while 22 other Americans were sentenced to five years after they were all tried in absentia. In 2010 an Italian intermediate appellate court increased Lady's sentence to nine years while increasing the sentences of the other 22 defendants to seven years. The Court of Cassation upheld the sentences of nine and seven years.

Much of India was shut down Sept. 20 in a Bharat Bandh—an all-India general strike—called by opposition parties to protest new neoliberal economic measures by the center-left United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government. The bandh was most widely observed in Calcutta and Bangalore, which were virtually paralyzed. The Confederation of Indian Industry estimated losses of over $2 billion to the national economy. At issue was the UPA government's decision to hike fuel prices and allow foreign direct investment (FDI) in the retail sector—which the opposition charges will allow foreign-owend box-store chains to squeeze out local businesses. WalMart, reacting swiftly to the government announcement, has already announced plans to open outlets in India in the coming months. 

Japan's cabinet on Sept. 19 failed to approve recommendations of a special government-appointed panel to phase out nuclear power by 2040, in a move openly portrayed in the country's media as a capitulation to pro-nuclear businesses interests. The panel had called for a 40-year limit on the lifespan of nuclear power plants, no new plant construction, and no expansion of existing nuclear power facilities. The cabinet decision came on the same day that Japan launched a new body to oversee the industry, the Nuclear Regulation Authority, which replaces the existing Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency. But critics say the new agency lacks any greater powers than the old one, and protest that its head, Shunichi Tanaka, who oversaw decontamination efforts at Fukushima, is a nuclear industry insider. 

Well, US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has moved on from Japan to New Zealand, where has has secured an agreement to reinstate naval cooperation with the Kiwis. This was broken off in 1985, when New Zealand banned nuclear weapons from its territory, thus closing its ports to nuclear-armed or nuclear-powered US warships. The US shortly retaliated by suspending its defense pact with New Zealand, and barring the Pacific nation's warships from US ports or bases. Now Panetta in Auckland just announced that the ban has been lifted, and military cooperation will be restored. Although New Zealand remains officially a nuclear-free zone, which means nuclear-armed US ships will continue to be barred, that looks like it could be next to go. "While we acknowledge that our countries continue to have differences of opinion in some limited areas, today we have affirmed that we are embarking on a new course in our relationship that will not let those differences stand in the way of greater engagement on security issues,’" Panetta said. (VOA, Sept. 21; NYT, Sept. 20)

It was pretty surreal to hear Leon Panetta warning of an actual war between China and Japan, arriving in Tokyo just as the two Asian powers are facing off over contested islands in the East China Sea. What made it so incongruous is that despite the obvious lingering enmities from World War II (which for China really started in 1937, or maybe even 1931), in the current world conflict that we call World War 4, warfare is explicitly portrayed even by Pentagon planners as an instrument of globalization—bringing the light of "free markets" and "integration" to benighted regions of the globe that continue to resist their lures. Warfare is now "asymmetrical," posing a single superpower and its allies against "terrorists" and insurgents, or at the very most against "rogue states." The old paradigm of war between rival capitalist powers has seemed pretty irrelevant for the past generation. In the Cold War with the Russians, the superpowers manipulated proxy forces while the US aimed for strategic encirclement of the rival power. In the New Cold War with China that is now emerging, the US again seeks strategic encirclement, and while there aren't any proxy wars being waged (no contemporary equivalent of Vietnam or Angola or Nicaragua), Japanese and South Koreans should beware of their governments being entangled in Washington's containment strategy—as Panetta's own comments acknowledge, games of brinkmanship can get out of control. And, as we noted, even as he made his warning, he was in Japan to inaugurate a new anti-missile radar system, ostensibly designed to defend against North Korea, but certain to be perceived in Beijing as a part of the encirclement strategy...

Authorities from four countries cooperated in a months-long operation that led to the arrest Sept. 18 of Daniel Barrera AKA "El Loco"—dubbed the "last of the great capos" by Colombia's President Manuel Santos—on a street in San Cristóbal, a town in Venezuela's western Táchira state. Barrera was apprehended while making a call from a phone booth, allegedly after one of his relatives had given up his location. The arrest followed four months of cooperation between Colombia's National Police, the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the UK's MI6 and Venezuela's National Anti-Drug Office (ONA). According to Colombia's defense minister, Juan Carlos Pinzón, the kingpin had been in Venezuela for the past eight months and was running his business while moving between several towns near the Colombian border.