There is ironic timing to Barack Obama's winning of the Nobel Peace Prize. Hours after getting the nod from the Nobel committee, he convened his war council in the White House Situation Room for talks on his military strategy in Afghanistan. (AFP, Oct. 9) Gen. Stanley McChrystal, US commander in Afghanistan, has sent alternative proposals with requests for more troops ranging from 40,000 to 60,000. (WSJ, Oct. 9) Obama is said to have ruled out de-escalating the Afghan war to a counter-terrorism effort aimed at al-Qaeda rather than the Taliban. (AlJazeera, Oct. 7) Other reports indicate Obama is willing to consider a role for the Taliban in Afghan's security forces as the price of peace. (The Telegraph, Oct. 9)

An Oct. 7 New York Times story, "Leader Ousted, Honduras Hires U.S. Lobbyists," notes that "several former high-ranking officials who were responsible for setting United States policy in Central America in the 1980s and '90s" are re-emerging to mobilize support for the de facto regime of Roberto Micheletti in Honduras. Three named are Otto Reich, Roger Noriega and Daniel W. Fisk. Reich is quoted saying in recent Congressional testimony: "The current battle for political control of Honduras is not only about that small nation. What happens in Honduras may one day be seen as either the high-water mark of Hugo Chávez's attempt to undermine democracy in this hemisphere or as a green light to the spread of Chavista authoritarianism."

It looks like we are in for a replay of the ugly flap that ensued following the anti-Semitic attacks in Venezuela earlier this year. The usual story: the conservative Jewish establishment makes charges against left-populist forces that may or may not check out; they are parroted without further corroboration by the mainstream media; they are summarily dismissed without further corroboration by left-wing commentators. Those of us who instinctively root for the left but cut no slack for Jew-baiting are left wondering what to believe. The below Oct. 4 report is from Ben Fox of the Associated Press, with our commentary and annotation interspersed:

As of Oct. 4 Hondurans' free speech and assembly rights remained suspended under a 45-day state of siege declared by de facto president Roberto Micheletti a week earlier. The general secretary of the Organization of American States (OAS), Chilean diplomat José Miguel Insulza, was scheduled to visit Tegucigalpa on Oct. 7 with a delegation of about 10 foreign ministers to negotiate a resolution to the crisis that began more than 100 days earlier with a June 28 military coup against President José Manuel Zelaya Rosales. The deposed president has been staying in the Brazilian embassy since his surprise return to the country on Sept. 21. (Agence France Presse, Oct. 4)

Members of the independent Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME) were guarding the Mexico City facilities of the state-owned Central Light and Power Company (LFC) to make sure the federal government could not "throw the switch and blame the workers," union president Martín Esparza Flores said after a labor forum in the capital on Oct. 3. The union charged on Sept. 29 that President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa's center-right administration was contemplating a quasi-military occupation of the plants within a week on the pretext that the SME was planning to cause a blackout. The LFC provides power for the Federal District, and México, Morelos, Puebla and Hidalgo states.

Four Puerto Rican union leaders chained themselves to the gates of the Fortaleza, the governor's official residence, in San Juan on Sept. 28 to protest plans to lay off 16,970 of the island's 180,000 public employees. About 30 other unionists set up what they called a "Camp of Dignity and Shame" outside the 16th-century fortress. After a brief scuffle, police agents dispersed the group, which included members of the General Workers Union (UGT) and Robert Pagán, president of Local 1996SPT of the US-based Service Employers International Union (SEIU). No arrests or injuries were reported. Pagán promised that this was just the first of "dozens of civil disobedience actions" against the layoffs.

Brazilian organizations delivered an open letter to the United Nations Information Center in the Itamaraty Palace in Rio de Janeiro on Oct. 5 opposing the continued presence of Brazilian troops in Haiti. Afterwards the activists held a solidarity event with hip-hop presentations in the Largo Carioca plaza in downtown Rio. The UN Security Council is expected to renew the mandate for the Brazilian-led United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), now five years old, sometime before Oct. 15.

Peru's Indigenous Affairs Department, INDEPA, has discovered evidence of an uncontacted tribe in a remote region of the Amazon. The evidence, including 38 abandoned fishing huts, fires, and food remains, was collected during a visit to the Las Piedras River in Madre de Dios region by an INDEPA team in mid-August. Peru's President Alan García has denied the existence of such tribes, saying they have been "invented" by environmentalists opposed to oil exploration.