From Reporters Without Borders via AllAfrica, May 25:

Reporters Without Borders has called for the immediate release of Abdel Fettah Ould Ebeidna, managing editor of the daily newspaper "Al-Aqsa", who was sent to prison in Nouakchott on 24 May 2007 because of a libel complaint against him by a businessman.

US and Iranian diplomats met in Baghdad for their first formal direct talks in more than a quarter of a century May 28, to discuss the security situation in Iraq. Washington's ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker called the proceedings "businesslike." (LAT, May 28) Meanwhile in Iran, authorities summoned the Swiss Ambassador Philippe Welti to complain that a US espionage network organizing sabotage and subversion campaigns has been discovered.

Egyptian police arrested three Muslim Brotherhood candidates to the upper house of parliament as they campaigned in the Nile Delta province of Dakahlia May 27, bringing to 63 the number of Brotherhood members detained in the province since Egypt's largest opposition movement said it would run in the June 11 elections. At least one of the candidates, Khaled el-Deeb, was charged with belonging to a banned group, illegally using religious slogans for his election campaign and campaigning outside an alotted time period. (Al-Bawaba, May 28)

When Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI two years ago, we pointed out that he had been the Vatican's pointman on dialogue with the "Traditionalist" schism that rejects the Vatican II reforms. Now it seems he may be ready to give the Traditionalists what they want—healing the breach with the schism, but making Catholicism more obscurantist and less appealing at a time when it is under assault from Islam and Protestantism (not, alas, from secularism and rationalism, as His Holiness seems to think). From AP, May 28:

Well said. Fortunately the Iraqwarit blog has liberated this text from the New York Times' elitist pay-per-view policy. From Paul Krugman's column, Memorial Day, May 28:

Trust and Betrayal
"In this place where valor sleeps, we are reminded why America has always gone to war reluctantly, because we know the costs of war." That’s what President Bush said last year, in a Memorial Day ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery.

Those were fine words, spoken by a man with less right to say them than any president in our nation’s history. For Mr. Bush took us to war not with reluctance, but with unseemly eagerness.

Since his election as Nicaragua's president last November, Daniel Ortega of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) has pledged to end his country's participation in the IMF, weighed in for Iran's right to nuclear power, and announced new drives for rural literacy and development. Our May issue featured the story "The Return of Plan Puebla-Panama: the New Struggle for the Isthmus" by WW4 REPORT editor Bill Weinberg, noting how Nicaragua has become pivotal in a race between two regional development plans for Central America: the US-backed PPP, which aims at building the infrastructure to facilitate CAFTA; and the populist Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), pushed by Venezuela's Hugo Chávez. Tensions are rapidly escalating between Nicaragua and the US allies in the region—Honduras, Costa Rica and, most significantly, Colombia. We also featured the retrospective "Sandinista Redux: Nicaragua Sticks It to Tio Sam —Again!" by Michael I. Niman of Art Voice weekly in Buffalo, NY, which looked back at the US destabilization campaign against Nicaragua the last time Ortega was in power in the 1980s. Our May Exit Poll was: "Were you obsessed with Nicaragua in the '80s? Are you feeling nostalgic since Daniel Ortega's resumption of power? C'mon, tell the truth." We received the following responses:

Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez called on Pope Benedict XVI to apologize to the indigenous people of Latin America for his comments on the evangelization of the region. During an official visit to Brazil last week, the Pope defended the evangelization of the indigenous people of Latin America, claiming that Christianity had not been "imposed" upon them. Chavez disputed this in a speech Friday night, calling on his nation to challenge the old capitalist hegemony and create a new society.

Busloads of people surrounded the Salvador del Mundo monument in front of the Canadian Embassy in San Salvador today to protest the Canadian Government’s role Central American mining, and specifically in the 29 mining projects currently active in El Salvador. The event was the culmination of the Central American Alliance against Metallic Mining conference held last weekend in Cabañas, El Salvador, where the Canadian "Pacific Rim" company is currently operating.