The following was reported by Amit Cohen in the center-right Israeli paper Ma'ariv in Hebrew on Sept. 19:

Abu Mazen instructed his general "Slaughter them"
The clip [shown at the Ma'ariv link] apparently shows a meeting in Abu-Mazen's [President Mahmoud Abbas] bureau in Gaza in which members of the preventive security force identified with [Fatah strongman in Gaza] Muhammad Dahlan participated. When meeting the older gentleman dressed in black uniform, Abu Mazen asks him "are you the head of the preventive security force." When the answer is in the affirmative Abu-Mazen says one word, "slaughter [them]"

History is being made in Burma, as some 100,000 protesters led by Buddhist monks marched through Rangoon Sept. 24, the largest demonstration since a 1988 pro-democracy movement was brutally crushed by the military regime. Surreptitiously shot photographs and videos show thousands of civilians marching with the monks; audio recordings document shouts of "Do-aye!"—"It is our task!"—a slogan also heard in 1988. Protesters raised the political ante Sept. 22 when more than 500 marched past the home of detained democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, where she greeted them in her first public appearance in more than four years. (SMH, Sept. 25) In a media footnote, dozens of activists protested Sept. 25 against a visit to Rangoon by India's Petroleum Minister Murli Deora to discuss energy cooperation, including new contracts between Indian and Burmese firms for three deep-water gas exploration blocks. The protesters, who included school children, held placards reading "Hey, Murli Deora, Don't Go For Gas, Go For Democracy" and "India Stop Supporting Burmese Military Rule." Said a written statement from the protesters: "It is a shame for the world's largest democracy to send its cabinet minister to Burma for reasons of exploiting more natural gas from the country at the time people and monks are protesting against the fuel shortages and economic hardships in Burma." (Reuters, Sept. 24)

In an unusual move, the US State Department has protested the police sweeps of opposition politicians in Pakistan over the weekend. "Some of this is troubling and we've certainly told the Pakistanis," Condoleezza Rice told Reuters. The detainments come as Pakistan's Supreme Court is hearing challenges by critics of strongman Pervez Musharraf, who say he is not eligible to stand in scheduled presidential elections. Police clashed with protesters outside the court in Islamabad Sept. 24. (BBC, Sept. 24) That same day, high-level talks opened between Pakistan and Iran on an Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) pipeline to export natural gas from the Islamic Republic to the Subcontinent. (Tehran Times, Sept. 25)

Here's a rather perverse irony. Amid all the war hysteria over Iran's nuclear ambitions, a US utility has ordered a new nuclear plant for the first time since the 1979 Three Mile Island accident. Of course this time they are promising that "innovations" will avoid the cost overruns that plagued the industry in its last big thrust of development in the '70s. (They are not even particularly talking about the health and safety concerns, alarmingly.) But note that this time it is a utility in New Jersey which wants to build the reactors in Texas—a fruit of the deregulation regime imposed in the last 20 years, which effectively bars utilities from generating electricity for local consumption. As we argued after the 2006 Queens blackout, this new regime exaggerates the dangers of the system by eroding public accountability. And with all the horrors in the headlines these days, this summer's radiation leak at a commercial reactor in Niigata, Japan, barely registered a blip—although reporter Matthew Wald does, to his credit, at least work in a parenthetical reference to the Niigata accident in this New York Times account, Sept. 25:

Not for the first time. From AFP, Sept. 24:

UNITED NATIONS — Iranian pro-democracy activists strongly oppose any military attack on their country but want the world to condemn Tehran's human rights violations, Iranian dissident journalist Akbar Ganji said in a petition seen Monday.

On Sept. 14, dozens of immigrant workers from Haiti marched through several localities in the northwest of the Dominican Republic to demand their basic rights. The protesters, most of them undocumented agricultural workers, held signs showing newspaper articles about oppressive working conditions in the plantations. The protest was intended to be part of international observances of the Week of the Immigrant, according to the Jesuit Regino Martinez, coordinator of the organization Border Solidarity. After the march, the workers, accompanied by their wives and children, gathered in the Catholic church in Ranchadero, Montecristi province, where Martinez celebrated a mass. (El Universal, Mexico, Sept. 14 from EFE; AlterPresse, Sept. 18 from EFE)

On Sept. 21 the Mexican government's National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) urged President Felipe Calderon Hinojosa to start "the gradual withdrawal" of the military from a high-profile anti-crime campaign he launched at the beginning of the year. The CNDH based its recommendations on its finding that 78 soldiers, including a colonel and a general, had been involved in human rights violations during the campaign; the abuses included rape, torture, arbitrary detention and murder.

Employment and wages declined in Mexican maquiladoras (tax-exempt assembly plants producing for export) during the 2000-2006 administration of former president Vicente Fox Quesada, according to a report by Huberto Juarez Nunez, an economics analyst at the Distinguished Autonomous University of Puebla (BUAP). Employment in the sector is now at about 1.21 million, down some 135,000 from the number in 2000. The assembly plants are weak even in comparison to the rest of Mexican manufacturing, which grew only 0.6% in the first three months of this year; the maquiladoras declined by 0.1% in the same period.