Mexico's military seized $26.2 million in cash believed to belong to members of the Sinaloa Cartel Sept. 14. The soldiers also found guns and two bags of marijuana in the weekend raid at the house in the city of Culiacán—as well as documents naming a member of a gang allegedly led by Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada, an associate of fugitive Sinaloa cartel kingpin Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman.

Our suspicion that the putative "success" of the "surge" is an illusion—and that the (relative) decline of violence in Iraq is simply due to the fact that the sectarian cleansing has been largely effected—is now backed up by satellite data. From the high-tech trade journal Physorg.com, Sept. 19:

We have argued before: "Classical" anti-Semitism and contemporary anti-Arab racism (and Islamophobia) are genetically linked phenomena. The fallacy is that just because one exists, the other doesn't. On the contrary, the prominence of one should be seen as evidence that the other isn't far behind. Here's more evidence. From Reuters, Sept. 17:

In a major gathering ignored by US mass media, thousands of migrants met in Spain from Sept. 11 to 14 to articulate a set of demands directed at governments across the world. Meeting at the Third World Social Forum on Migration, delegates represented organizations from more than 90 nations.

Spain's supreme court ruled Sept. 18 to ban the Basque Communist Party (EHAK-PCTV) on the grounds that it is linked to the ETA armed separatist group and the successor party of the Batasuna, which was declared illegal in March 2003. A week earier, the court banned the Acción Nacionalista Vasca (ANV) party following a court order by the Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon, calling for "liquidation of everything related to that party." (ThinkSpain, Sept. 19; eitb24, Sept. 16)

A Danish appeals court Sept. 18 convicted six people of selling t-shirts to aid the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). A seventh defendant was acquitted. Most of the defendants were linked to a company, Fighters and Lovers, that made and sold shirts with the logos of both groups, which are on the European Union's list of terrorist organizations. Two defendants were sentenced to six months in prison and the other four received suspended sentences. (NYT, Sept. 19)

Reports in the Nigerian press indicate that the European Union, Russia and China are all wooing the government for rights to build the proposed $21 billion Trans-Saharan Gas Pipeline project, which would export gas from the Niger Delta to Europe through Niger and Algeria. The sources claimed that the EU, which had previously displayed skepticism on the project, renewed its interest following fears that Gazprom, the Russian gas monopoly, has approached Nigeria over the contract—and could thereby tighten its grip on European energy supplies. The pipeline project was first proposed by former President Olusegun Obasanjo, but has met with skepticism due to ongoing unrest in the Niger Delta, Sahel and Maghreb. (BBC World Service; Punch, Nigeria, Sept. 18)

The UN General Committee, which sets the agenda for the General Assembly, voted unanimously Sept. 18 to approve a Serbian resolution calling for a review of Kosova's declared independence. The resolution, opposed by the US and UK, next goes before the General Assembly. If approved there, Kosova's independence would go before the International Court of Justice (ICJ).