John Mohawk, a leading scholar and spokesman for the Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy (Haudenosaunee), died at his home in Buffalo, NY, on Dec. 12. Mohawk was an international voice for the soveriegn and territorial rights of the Iroquois Confederacy, a functioning system of government that predates the founding of the United States by some 600 years, and for the cultural survival of indigenous peoples worldwide.

From the Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq (OWFI), Dec. 15:

To: Kurdistan Regional Government

International Campaign to remove Article No 7 from the Kurdistan regional constitution!

Article 7 of the proposed constitution for Kurdistan is an open threat to the rights and freedoms of the people.

On Dec. 12, some 1,000 US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents carried out simultaneous dawn raids at six meat processing plants in six states and arrested a total of 1,282 immigrant workers, most of them Latin American. (AP, Dec. 12, 14; ICE news release, Dec. 13) The raids took place on a day celebrated by Mexican Catholics as a day of action honoring the Virgin of Guadalupe. Many of the arrested workers had attended an early Mass before their shifts to celebrate the day. (Rocky Mountain News, Denver, Dec. 13)

The Mexican federal government has announced some moves to de-escalate the situation in Oaxaca, including the "gradual" withdrawal of Federal Preventative Police from the state capital's central plaza, which they have occupied since Oct. 29. Some 140 arrested protesters who have been detained at a federal prison in distant Nayarit state are also to be transferred to facilities in Oaxaca, and some released. The state's Gov. Ulises Ruiz, for his part, announced the resignation of his governance secretary (and state leader of the Institutional Revolutionary Party), Heliodoro Diaz Escarraga, who has been identified by the protest movement as the mastermind of the "death squads" which have claimed several lives in the conflicted state over the past six months. He will be replaced by Teofilo Manuel Garcia Corpus, former leader of the Agrarian Reform Commission in the state House of Deputies. However, no progress is reported on the central demand of the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca: the resignation of Gov. Ruiz. (Proceso, Dec. 11 via Chiapas95)

From AP, Dec. 14 via Chiapas95:

MEXICO CITY -- A group of about 300 Mazahua Indians briefly seized a water treatment plant on Mexico City's western outskirts Wednesday and temporarily cut off one of the main sources of water for the metropolis of 18 million people, the National Water Commission said.

From The Telegraph, Dec. 14, emphasis added:

Saudi Arabia would respond to an American withdrawal from Iraq by funding and arming Sunni insurgents to prevent them being massacred by Shia militias, the kingdom has told the White House.

Another turn of the screw. From AlJazeera, Dec. 13, emphasis added:

A Guantanamo prisoner who won a landmark US Supreme Court ruling in June lost his bid to challenge his detention when a federal judge dismissed the case because of a new anti-terrorism law signed by George Bush, the US president.

Another sign of de-escalation in Oaxaca? From AP, Dec. 11:

OAXACA - A labor group allied with the government of the southern state of Oaxaca announced on Monday that it was ending a controversial, 1 1/2-year blockade of the offices of Noticias, a newspaper frequently critical of state authorities.