On Aug. 31, Judge Maxine M. Chesney of the US District Court for the Northern District of California in San Francisco issued a temporary restraining order preventing the Social Security Administration (SSA) from sending "no-match" letters to companies whose employees' names do not match the Social Security numbers they used when they applied for their jobs. The letters were scheduled to be sent on Sept. 4 to about 140,000 employers with at least 10 workers whose names and Social Security numbers don't match. Chesney's order also prohibits the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from implementing a new rule, set to go into effect Sept. 14, under which the affected companies would have to resolve any discrepancies within 90 days or face sanctions, including fines.

Shades of the Niger Delta in Yemen. From Reuters, Sept. 1:

ADEN - A Yemeni tribe has freed two foreign engineers and their Yemeni driver, a government source said on Saturday, after the military threatened to storm the area to secure their release.

It seems the US has been inadvertently arming the PKK these past four years since the Iraq invasion—the same quasi-Maoist Kurdish separatist group that is seeking to secede from NATO ally Turkey and is on the State Department "foreign terrorist organizations" list. Has Washington been playing the Kurds for fools, or the other way 'round? From AFP, Aug. 30:

300 police backed up by helicopters beseiging a small rural town? Starting to look like counterinsurgency in Calabria. From the New York Times, Aug. 31:

Fears of Mob Feud Lead to Arrest of 32 in Italy
ROME — The Italian police carried out a major raid on Thursday, arresting 32 people, in part to stop a deadly feud between warring crime families. The arrests were linked to the fatal shooting of six men outside a pizzeria in Germany this month.

We got sick just reading about it. Good news the New Zealand cops turned it down. Bad news that it exists. From NZ's The Press, Aug. 15:

Police pass on acquiring 'vomit torch'
It is enough to make you sick – a crime-fighting flashlight that makes a culprit vomit.

When Pfc. Lynndie England was convicted two years ago, we called her a scapegoat. Now, a military jury at Ft. Meade has found Lt-Col. Steven Jordan—the only officer to be court-martialled over the Abu Ghraib case—guilty of disobeying an order to keep silent about the abuse investigation. But they simply reprimanded him, sparing him a prison term. A day earlier, Aug. 28, he was acquitted of failing to control lower-ranking soldiers who abused and sexually humiliated detainees at the prison near Baghdad in autumn 2003. (The Scotsman, Aug. 30) Contrast the treatment dished out to his subordinates. From AP, Aug. 29:

Our August issue featured the story "Iran: The Anti-Imperialist Case Against Nuclear Power" by Reza Fiyouzat, a reprint from the online journal Dissident Voice, arguing that nuclear development under an undemocratic regime such as Tehran's merely plays into Washington's interventionist designs. "Imperialism feeds on oppressed, un-represented people," Fiyouzat writes. "To the extent that the Iranian regime stifles its own people and their potentials, to the extent that Iranian people's well-being is undermined by their government, they as a whole are more likely to be swallowed up by the plans and designs of the imperialists. Empowered people are the best defense against imperialist aggression." Our August Exit Poll was: "Is it incumbent on anti-imperialists in the West to support Iran's right to develop nuclear power, as some on the left argue? Or is it possible to oppose imperialist designs on Iran while still maintaining a consistent position against nuclear development anywhere in the world?" We received the following responses:

Two residents, including an 11-year-old boy, are dead following riots at the village of Cubulco in Guatemala's Baja Verapaz department. Protesters torched the home of the mayor, Rolando Rivera, and the village remains occupied by a large detachment of the National Civil Police (PNC) and elite Special Police Forces (FEP). Police used tear gas in clashes with residents who responded with Molotov cocktails. The deaths apparently occurred when Rivera's private security force opened fire on protesters. The protests were sparked by Rivera's plans to renovate the town's central park two weeks before the municipal elections, in which he is running again with the right-wing Patriot Party (PP). (Prensa Libre, Aug. 28) Forty have been murdered nationwide in political violence during the presidential campaign now underway, in which a leading candidate is the PP's Otto Perez Molina, a former military intelligence chief who promises a security crackdown under the slogan of "The Iron Fist." (The Telegraph, Aug. 26)