Daily Report
Turkey cooperates with Iran against PKK
Turkey's military is cooperating with Iran by sharing information and coordinating strikes against PKK guerillas in northern Iraq, commander of the Turkish Land Forces Ilker Basbug said on June 5. "We are sharing intelligence with Iran, we are talking, we are coordinating," CNN-Turk TV quoted Basbug as telling reporters on the sidelines of a security conference in Istanbul. "When they start an operation, we do, too. They carry out an operation from the Iranian side of the border, we from the Turkish side... We haven't done it for one or two months but we would do it if necessary." (AP, Hurriyet, June 5) Such claims have been heard before.
West Bank: Israeli forces again attack anti-wall protest
Israeli forces again violently broke up a peaceful demonstration against the construction of the separation wall in the West Bank village of Nil'in June 8, shooting a foreign cameraman with a rubber-coated bullet. Three protesters were injured and three arrested, including a foreign solidarity activist. The coordinator of Ni'lin's popular committee against the wall, Salah Al-Khawaja, said village farmers lay on the ground to stop Israeli bulldozers from digging up the fields and erecting the wall section planned there. According to Al-Khawaja, the farmers succeeded in stopping the work for one hour. He said bulldozers have uprooted 90 trees in the village in just three days. (Ma'an News Agency, June 8)
PFLP, DFLP announce initiative for united Palestinian left front
From the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, June 5:
On May 29, 2008, three Palestinian Left organizations, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and the Palestine People's Party, announced the inception of a Palestinian Left Front.
1,800 arrested in ICE "fugitive" sweeps
On June 2, ICE announced that its eight fugitive operations teams in the New York/New Jersey metropolitan area had arrested a total of 491 immigrants during a month-long operation in May. Out of the total 491 people arrested, 347 were what the agency calls fugitive aliens—people who have failed to comply with (and sometimes are unaware of) prior deportation orders, or who have been reentered the US after having been deported. ICE said 207 of these 347 "fugitives" also had criminal records. ICE officers arrested 76 other immigrants with criminal records and 68 other people the agency described as "immigration violators" (people present in the US without permission from the federal government).
Ecologists blast Rome food summit
From the Global Forest Coalition, June 5:
A Black Day for the Environment: False Solutions to Food Crisis will Escalate Starvation,
Accelerate Climate Change and Devastate Biodiversity
Rome — The Global Forest Coalition, a worldwide coalition of environmental NGOs and Indigenous Peoples' Organizations, has called World Environment Day 2008 a black day for the environment, now that it appears the FAO Summit on World Food Security will fail to agree on an immediate halt to all forms of support for agrofuels. Instead, countries like the U.S. seem eager to exploit the current human tragedy for the promotion of a new 'Green Revolution,' which will have devastating impacts on both the climate and biodiversity.
Venezuelan foreign minister disses "criminal" Negroponte
Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolás Maduro June 2 told reporters that US Deputy Secretary of State John D. Negroponte—leading Washington's delegation to the 38th session of the Organization of American States general assembly in Medellín—is "a little official with a criminal record." Then, before the assembly, he accused Washington of sponsoring a campaign to "spread violence in the region." Maduro was reacting to Negroponte's remarks earlier that day that the Colombia's FARC guerillas "sought refuge in Venezuela." Without naming Venezuela, Negroponte asked Colombia's neighbors to help prevent guerillas from taking shelter on their soil. The US "categorically rejects" the Maduro's epithets, said US delegate to the OAS Héctor Morales. (El Universal, Caracas, June 3)
Mexican lawmakers oppose Mérida Initiative rights conditions
At the 47th US-Mexico Interparliamentary Commission, held June 6 in Monterrey, Nuevo León, Mexican politicians from all of the three leading parties protested the imposition of human rights conditions on aid recently approved by Washington under the Mérida Initiative, popularly known as "Plan Mexico." Ruth Zavaleta of the left-opposition Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), president of the Chamber of Deputies, joined with Sen. Santiago Creel Miranda of the ruling conservative National Action Party (PAN) in decrying the conditions as patronizing and hypocritical. They were joined by Nuevo León Gov. José Natividad González Parás of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), who also spoke out against construction of the border fence. (El Universal, Mexico, June 7)
Chiapas: army occupies Zapatista communities in "anti-drug" ops
On June 4, a detachment of some 200 Mexican army troops and federal police in a convoy of ten vehicles led by an armored personnel carrier occupied several communities around the Zapatista settlement of La Garrucha, on the edge of the Chiapas rainforest, on an ostensible marijuana eradication mission. The Zapatista Good Government Junta (JBG) "El Camino del Futuro," based at La Garrucha, said residents mobilized to defend their homes with sticks, machetes and slingshots as troops spread out to the corn fields, taking photographs and "intimidating the population." The troops found no marijuana, but reportedly warned that they would return in 15 days.
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