Oil prices rose Nov. 19 after suggestions from the Riyadh OPEC summit that member nations are considering ditching the dollar. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called the dollar a "worthless piece of paper." Venezuela's Hugo Chavez added: "The dollar is in free fall, everyone should be worried about it. The fall of the dollar is not the fall of the dollar — it’s the fall of the American empire." That led to a reaction from Saudi Arabia. "OPEC shouldn’t be used as a political organization," Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal said at the event's closing press conference. "Oil should be a tool for development and not a tool for conflicts." (London Times, NYT, Nov. 19)

Pakistan's atomic weapons are secure, Muhammad Khurshid Khan, deputy director of Islamabad's Strategic Plans Division, told a meeting of nuclear counter-terrorism specialists in Edinburgh Nov. 20. "There's nothing to worry about the safety and security of Pakistan's nuclear weapons," Khan told the meeting sponsored by the IAEA, emphasizing that the people guarding the weapons "are not the fundamentalists." (Bloomberg, Nov. 20)

Just as the Peru Free Trade Agreement has passed the US House of Representatives, efforts to pass a similar agreement with Colombia hit an embarrassing snag. Sandra Suarez, the special envoy Colombian President Alvaro Uribe sent to Washington in July to usher the FTA through Congress, stepped down Oct. 30, stating in her resignation letter that she'd failed her government and that the agreement is dead. Although her letter didn't mention it it, the day she resigned a former intelligence chief for Colombia's Administrative Security Department (DAS), Rafael Garcia, testified to a Colombian government Commission of Investigation that Suarez collaborated with leaders of the AUC paramilitary network, and with the governors of Cesar and Magdalena departments to establish AUC control over key Colombian territory. The two governors are in prison for their own links to the outlawed paramilitary network. (United Steelworkers International president Leo W. Gerard for The Hill Blog, Nov. 9)

The rural community of Cutumay Camones, in Santa Ana department, El Salvador, is demanding justice following a series of violent attacks by the national police and army troops. On Oct. 12, security forces invaded Cutumay Camones, using tear gas and rubber bullets against community members, including children and elders, for protesting against the construction of a garbage dump they say will contaminate local water sources. The scene was repeated on Oct. 25, when a TV journalist was also attacked. National Civilian Police authorities have removed the officers implicated in the attack on the journalist, but community leaders are demanding further measures.

Testimony has begun in the trial of seven Mam Maya villagers who sought dialogue with Goldcorp/Montana Exploradora mining company in Guatemala. The seven villagers were among a group of 28 who approached Goldcrop's local facility in Sipacapa municipality on Jan. 10, demanding talks regarding the impacts of the nearby Marlin mine. The villagers testify that the company rejected calls for dialogue, and sent private security officers to disperse them. Security officers attempted to abduct one person, fired gunshots and threw rocks at the group. Following the attack, over 600 villagers peacefully blocked the road into the mine, a protest which lasted 12 days.

A statement by Las Abejas, the Fray Bartolomé de las Casas Human Rights Center and other civil organizations in conflicted Chiapas state finds that the Mexican national state "is responsible for the Acteal massacre" of Dec. 22, 1997. The statement says the terror campaign in the highland municipality of Chenalhó really began Aug. 19, 1996, with the assassination of six youths who were part of the support base of the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN). The statement says "the massacre was the product of a deliberate and directed State policy to exterminate the EZLN, its support base and any organization of civil society whose demands were uncomfortable for the government." (La Jornada, Nov. 4)

Army helicopter gunships continue to pound neo-Taliban positions in the Swat and Shangla districts of Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province, in an operation which has taken some 100 lives this week. Officials said a Taliban commander known as Matiullah was killed in the air-strikes on Nov. 15. Maulana Fazlullah, the militant movement's fugitive frontman, is said to have led the dead commander's funeral prayers. But the militants succeeded in capturing the police headquarters in Matta and Alpuri, seats of Swat and Shangla, respectively. The New York Times showed a masked gunman, identified as a follower of Fazlullah's Movement for the Enforcement of Islamic Laws, standing guard outside the Matta police station with an armed personnel carrier under his watchful eye. This represents a significant expansion of the militant movement deeper into Pakistan from the Tribal Areas along the Afghan border, its traditional base. With the local constabulary and paramilitary Frontier Corps overwhelmed, Islamabad has sent some 2,000 army troops into the region since July, but they have failed to stop the militants from spreading their area of control. (Daily Times, Pakistan, Nov. 17; NYT, Asian News International, Nov. 16)

A glimmer of hope—but it's pretty terrifying that this was under consideration, even by the supposedly enlightened Chief William Bratton. Some of us remember the mass detention of Southern California Muslims by immigration authorities in 2002. From AFP, Nov. 16:

LOS ANGELES — Police in Los Angeles have abandoned a controversial anti-terrorism plan that would have created a compute database of the city's Muslim population, media here reported Thursday.