As of Aug. 11, some 13 union leaders from the US and Canada had arrived in Cananea, in the northwestern Mexican state of Sonora, to show support for striking miners there. According to Sergio Tolano Lizarraga, general secretary of Section 65 of the National Union of Mine and Metal Workers of the Mexican Republic (SNTMMRM), the US delegation was headed by Manny Armenta, a United Steelworkers (USW) leader in Arizona, with unionists from New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada and Ohio. The strikers say they also have support from workers from nearby states and from both the conservative Congress of Labor (CT) and the more independent National Workers Union (UNT).

With 98.83% of the ballot boxes counted, Mexico's centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and the allied Green Ecological Party of Mexico (PVEM) had won all 25 districts in Aug. 5 legislative elections in the southern state of Oaxaca. The Alliance That Builds [Alianza Que Construye], the PRI-PVEM coalition, got 412,798 votes to 238,292 for the center-left For the Good of All coalition [Por el Bien de Todos], which is made up of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), the Workers Party (PT) and the Convergence party. The center-right National Action Party (PAN) of Mexican president Felipe Calderon Hinojosa came in third with 113,646 votes. Just 36.42% of the state's 2.4 million voters turned out for the election.

In the three days from Aug. 4 to Aug. 6, unknown assailants carried out three attacks against activists for the leftist Gathering for Guatemala (EG) party and two of its candidates in Sept. 9 national and local elections. The EG's presidential candidate is indigenous human rights activist and 1992 Nobel peace prize winner Rigoberta Menchu Tum, who is in fourth place in opinion polls.

El Salvador is sending its ninth contingent to join the US-sponsored occupation of Iraq on Aug. 7. The first Salvadoran troops joined the occupation in August 2003. The new contingent will have some 300 members, from the army's elite Cuscatlan Battalion; they are expected to serve until December. They replace a somewhat larger contingent of 380 soldiers currently stationed in Al-Kut; officials say the countries in the coalition occupying Iraq have decided on a gradual reduction of their forces. El Salvador is now the only Latin American country with troops in Iraq; five Salvadoran soldiers have been killed there in the last four years. (Univision, July 29 from EFE)

In a July report, Oxfam warns that while armed violence is the greatest threat facing Iraqis, the population is also experiencing another kind of crisis of an alarming scale and severity. Eight million people are in urgent need of emergency aid; that figure includes over two million who are displaced within the country, and more than two million refugees. Many more are living in poverty, without basic services, and increasingly threatened by disease and malnutrition. Oxfam finds: "Despite the constraints imposed by violence, the government of Iraq, the United Nations, and international donors can do more to deliver humanitarian assistance to reduce unnecessary suffering. If people's basic needs are left unattended, this will only serve to further destabilize the country."

This piece is far too optimistic and soft on Bush, but perhaps the writer wants the president to listen, and is phrasing his critique thusly. We think that's a lost cause, but the historical analogy is still worth considering. Richard Bulliet writes for the International Herald Tribune, Aug. 2:

Bush and Napoleon
What does George W. Bush share with Napoleon Bonaparte? Perhaps only one thing. Both men launched spectacular attacks on Arab countries, won stunning initial victories, and then became bogged down in a hopeless military occupations.

Did you happen to see this one? From AP, July 31:

NASHVILLE — A proud enclave of Kurds has lived in this city for decades, starting businesses and soccer leagues, holding down good jobs and blending into the immigrant neighborhoods south of town. But now the Kurdish immigrant community has been shaken to see its young people joining a street gang that blends old-world customs and new-world thuggery. Police blame the gang for a string of rapes, assaults and home invasions. The gang calls itself Kurdish Pride and is made up of 20 to 30 teenagers and young adults.

At least 250 and perhaps up to 500 are dead in four coordinated truck-bomb attacks that devastated Tal al-Azizziyah and Sheikh Khadar, two northern villages outside the town of Qahataniya near the Syrian border in Iraq's Nineveh province, Aug. 14. Residents and rescue workers continue pulling the dead and wounded from the rubble of hundreds of clay homes that collapsed when the massive bombs exploded. At least 350 are wounded. Rescue workers set up tents along the highway between the cities of Dohuk and Mosul to house the wounded after health ministry officials announced that hospitals in Sinjar, the nearest city, were overwhelmed. The area of devastation in one of the villages measured a half-mile in diameter. Many bodies are so mangled that they cannot be recognized. Ziryan Othman, minister of health for the Kurdistan region, likened the devastation to a natural disaster.