Read the fine print. "Five Muslim immigrants from South Jersey were convicted today of plotting to kill American soldiers, a crime that prosecutors said demonstrated how Al Qaeda was using the Internet to recruit, train and incite supporters for attacks in the United States and around the world." So states the lead paragraph in the Newark Star-Ledger's Dec. 22 coverage of the verdict in the Fort Dix pseudo-conspiracy case. Except that it's the usual bait-and-switch: al-Qaeda had absolutely nothing to do with it...

On Dec. 12 a judge in Mexico's Coahuila state ordered the release of Carlos Pavón Campos, political affairs secretary of the National Union of Mine and Metal Workers of the Mexican Republic (SNTMMRM), on 5.611 million pesos bail (about $426,600). Pavón Campos had been held for eight days; he was arrested Dec. 4 on charges of defrauding union members. On Dec. 15, it was reported that another SNTMMRM leader, Vigilance and Justice Council president Juan Linares Montufar, had been denied bail on charges in a similar case. The union's general secretary, leader Napoleon Gómez Urrutia, is also charged; he fled to Vancouver in 2006 but continues to direct the union. The original charges reportedly included officials of the Scotiabank, but no action seems to have been taken against them. (La Jornada, Dec. 13, 15)

From Dec. 15 to Dec. 17 Latin American and Caribbean countries held overlapping meetings of several regional groups in Costa do Sauipe, a luxurious tourist complex near Salvador in the eastern Brazil state of Bahia. The overall intention was to increase regional cooperation and integration in response to a growing world economic crisis and the waning influence of the US.

On Dec. 10 a Haitian court sentenced journalist Joseph Guyler Delva to one month in prison for alleged defamation and public insults against former senator Rudolph Boulos. Delva and his lawyer were not present at the trial, since it had been postponed several times. As of Dec. 18 Delva was free pending an appeal. On Dec. 15 he wrote that over the previous three weeks he had received a number of death threats, including two that mentioned Boulos' name.

In an interview this month with the left-leaning Mexican daily La Jornada, Cuban National Assembly president Ricardo Alarcón said that Cuba isn't counting on a major shift in US policy towards Cuba when Barack Obama becomes US president on Jan. 20. Alarcón, who lived in New York 1966-1978 as Cuban ambassador to the United Nations, noted that "many of my friends...people of what was the American New Left in other times" had wept at Obama's victory celebration in Chicago on Nov. 4. "I understood their hope," he told reporter Blanche Petrich, but "I know that we can't expect a big turning point with respect to Cuba."

Mexican President Felipe Calderón said Dec. 19 his government "does not and will never negotiate" with the drug lords, and vowed to press ahead with his military crackdown on the cartels. Drug-related deaths have doubled this year, to more than 5,300, despite the deployment of 36,000 troops across the country. Mexico has also extradited a record 85 criminal suspects to the US so far this year. Mexico extradited 83 in 2007 and 63 in 2006, but still refuses to extradite anyone who could face the death penalty. (AP, Dec. 21; AFP, Dec. 20)

A Canadian mining company intends to sue El Salvador's government for several hundred million dollars if it is not granted permission to open a widely unpopular gold and silver mine that scientists warn would pollute local water supplies. Pacific Rim Mining Corp., through its Nevada-based subsidiary Pac Rim Cayman LLC, filed a Notice of Intent Dec. 9 under provisions of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) that allow corporations to sue governments over laws and decisions that put public interests ahead of corporate profits.

At 4 AM on Dec. 16, indigenous leader Edwin Legarda Vázquez was killed by the Colombian army as he was driving a pickup truck belonging to the Regional Indigenous Council of Cauca (CRIC), in which his partner, Aida Quilcué often traveled in. CRIC leader Quilcué gained national stature for her role in the indigenous rights campaign that mobilized thousands throughout Colombia this fall.