Testimony in the trial of Peru's ex-strongman Alberto Fujimori charges that his administration negotiated amnesty for an army death squad in exchange for keeping secret the government's involvement in two massacres in which 25 were killed. The claim comes from Pedro Supo, a former leader of the "Grupo Colina" death squad, run by the Army Intelligence Service (SIE).

In an interview published in [Bogota's] El Tiempo on December 22, [j]ournalist Yamid Amat asked: "What was it that the Attorney General's office discovered and is investigating in the Chocó?" and [Colombian] Attorney General Mario Iguarán replied: “The tragedy of the communities in the Jiguamiandó, Curvaradó [and] Domingodó river basins. In the '80s they suffered through the presence of the FARC and in the '90s that of the self-defense groups and the Castaño family. There are accusations that the self-defense groups threw people off their lands to eradicate the guerrilla groups. But there are indicators that these expulsions were not exactly to get rid of the guerrilla, but to take control of land that was owned by the community. After receiving hundreds of testimonies, carrying out judicial investigations at the palm oil companies, in banks, notaries and in the Registry public offices, the Attorney General's office just opened a formal investigation into the representatives of these companies." Read the full interview in Spanish here.

Financial support is urgently needed for the satellite TV station that is broadcasting voices for the secular and democratic reconstruction of Iraq!
Financial difficulties are hitting Sana TV, an Iraqi satellite TV station, which is covering the people’s struggles to end the occupation and reconstruct a secular and democratic Iraq.

From Bush's final State of the Union address, via the New York Times:

Ladies and gentlemen, some may deny the surge is working, but among the terrorists there is no doubt. Al Qaeda is on the run in Iraq, and this enemy will be defeated...

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez Jan. 27 urged his allies to form an "anti-imperialist" military alliance to defend Latin America from potential attack by the United States. Speaking on his weekly TV program Aló Presidente, he called upon Bolivia, Cuba and Nicaragua to unite with Venezuela and "work to form a joint defense strategy and start joining our armed forces, air forces, armies, navies, national guards, and intelligence forces. Because the enemy is the same, the empire... Anybody who messes with one of us will have to mess with all of us because we will respond as one."

Tens of thousands of public school teachers in the Teachers' Federation of Puerto Rico (FMPR), the country's largest union, are set to go on strike sometime after Feb. 1 in defiance of the Puerto Rican government and parts of the labor movement. Teachers have set up strike committees in schools, and some say participation is higher than during a strike in 1993. In Ponce some 600 FMPR members blocked streets in a recent pro-strike demonstration, while more 500 teachers picketed in front of school board offices in Caguas.

This year the World Economic Forum (WEF), an annual meeting of business and political leaders in Davos, Switzerland in late January, was focused on a financial crisis that shook world stock markets Jan. 18-21—the worst in 60 years, according to one participant, US financier George Soros. Other participants tried to minimize the dangers that a likely US recession would pose for emerging economies. The present crisis "isn't the first and won't be the last," said Mexican central bank president Guillermo Ortiz. But according to former World Bank economist Joseph Stiglitz, winner of the 2001 Nobel prize for economics, Mexico's economy isn't more resistant than in the past to contagion from the US, a situation made worse by the fact that the majority of banks in Mexico are now subsidiaries of US banks. (La Jornada, Jan. 24, 26 from AFP, DPA, Reuters)

As of Jan. 27 Chilean activist Patricia Troncoso Robles had rejected an Interior Ministry offer to ease her prison conditions if she would end the hunger strike she started 109 days earlier to demand the release of 20 indigenous Mapuche prisoners and an end to the military's presence in Mapuche territories. Troncoso's father, Roberto Troncoso, and a mediator, Conference of Bishops president Alejandro Goic, said the government offered a transfer to a prison work and study center, with Sunday releases after six months at the center. But Troncoso Robles demanded an immediate easing of conditions for Mapuche prisoners Jaime Marileo and Juan Millalen and a resolution of the prisoners' situation by March.