Secondary school teachers in Mexico's conflicted southern state of Chiapas carried out a 72-hr strike in solidarity with the struggle in neighboring Oaxaca, and to support Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's challenge to the supposed fraud in the presidential election and to oppose the "imposition" of right-wing candidate Felipe Calderon. (El Universal, Oct. 2)

Mexican rebel leader Subcommander Marcos is remaking himself as a writer of political pulp fiction in collaboration with famed crime thriller scribe Paco Ignacio Taibo II. Interesting how a genre that generally plays to the law-and-order right in Gringolandia plays to the revolutionary left in Mexico, where the political elite is more overtly criminal. The new tome, The Uncomfortable Dead also has an all-too-plausibe theory about who the man really is in those relentless Osama bin Laden videos. Is this really political satire, or do Marcos and Taibo know something we don't? A book review by Patrick Anderson, "Marx Brothers Marxists," from the Washington Post, Oct. 2:

Protesters fortified street barricades and prepared petrol bombs Oct. 1 as Mexican navy helicopters buzzed over Oaxaca City for a second day, sparking rumors that federal forces were planning to retake the city center, which has been occupied by the protesters for over four months. But President Vicente Fox's Government Secretary Carlos Abascal, insisted the helicopters and military planes seen over the weekend were on routine supply runs.

As Lynne Stewart awaits sentencing, the New York Times Sept. 29 portrayed her as uncharacteristically contrite...

Lawyer in Terror Case Apologizes for Violating Special Prison Rules
Lynne F. Stewart, the once brashly defiant radical defense lawyer who was convicted in a federal terrorism trial last year, has acknowledged in a personal letter to the court that she knowingly violated prison rules and was careless, overemotional and politically naïve in her representation of a terrorist client.

In response to a question from New York's African American Inner City Press during the UN General Assembly debates Sept. 20, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who is vying for a seat on the Security Council, said he would need more time to study the question of Darfur before recommending sending peacekeepers. Another Inner City Press report filed that day noted that Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir told reporters, "Everyone knows who is the real power behind the transition to a UN force... It's an attempt to dismember Sudan" and divide it into five pieces. When asked about all those demonstrating under the banner of "Save Darfur" that weekend, al-Bashir said that "Zionist organizations organized the rallies." Days earlier on Sept. 12, AP reported that Ismail Haj Mussa, a senior member of the Sudanese Parliament, told state-run Radio Omdurman that Secretary-General Kofi Annan and the United States are leading a conspiracy against his government, which "began as a political campaign in the UN and is now taking the form of a military intervention."

Our September issue featured stories on the question of 9-11 "conspiracy theory," including a skeptical look at the conspiracy industry and the so-called "9-11 skeptics" by WW4 REPORT editor Bill Weinberg. The September Exit Poll was: "OK, did Bush do it?" We received the following responses (beginning with the most long-winded and predictable one, just to get it out of the way):

From the New York Times, Sept. 29:

PORTOROZ, Slovenia — Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld agreed Thursday to put 12,000 American combat troops in eastern Afghanistan under NATO command, possibly as soon as next month, officials said.

Are we terrified yet? From AP, Sept. 29, emphasis added:

BAGHDAD - Al-Qaida in Iraq's leader, in a chilling audiotape released Thursday, called for nuclear scientists to join his group's holy war and urged insurgents to kidnap Westerners so they could be traded for a blind Egyptian sheik who is serving a life sentence in a U.S. prison.