About a dozen heavily-armed police, some wearing ski-masks, raided the homes of environmental activist Carlos Zorrilla, executive director of the NGO Intag Defense and Environmental Conservation DECOIN, and his neighbour Roberto Castro on Oct. 17, according to reports from the Intag Solidarity Network and the Ecumenical Human Rights Commission of Ecuador (CEDHU).

Mexico's President Vicente Fox, trying to put a good face on things as he leaves a bitterly divided country as his legacy, boasted to a meeting of businessmen at the National Chamber of Industry that the crises of Chiapas and Atenco were essentially resolved, and that the Oaxaca crisis would be soon. He asserted that the new Mexico City airport opposed by the Atenco farmers would be built. (La Jornada, Oct. 24) Regarding Chiapas (a conflict Fox had pledged to resolve "in 15 minutes" on the campaign trail in 2000), presidential spokesman Ruben Aguilar Valenzuela asserted, "There has been no act of violence in Chiapas in six years." (Milenio, Oct. 25)

The Popular People's Assembly of Oaxaca (APPO) issued a "call for a popular peaceful insurrection" Dec. 1 if the state's governor, Ulises Ruiz, has not stepped down by then. The call steps up pressure on president-elect Felipe Calderon, already facing pledges from the left-opposition to resist his Dec. 2 inauguration with civil disobedience actions. Under the slogan "Si Ulises no se va, Calderón no pasará" (If Ulises does not go, Calderon will not pass), APPO pledged to organize a general strike throughout the state of Oaxaca. The statement said that even if the state's striking teachers vote to return to classes, new strikes will extend to other labor sectors. The statement also demanded federal criminal charges against Ruiz for the assassinations of several APPO activists since the movement for his ouster was launched earlier this year. (La Jornada, Oct. 25 via Chiapas95)

In his tour of Mexico's northern state of Sonora, Zapatista Subcommander Marcos made public the existence of "forced labor camps," where mostly indigenous migrant laborers from Chiapas, Oaxaca, Guerrero and southern Veracruz live in "inhuman conditions" and "virtual slavery."

File under "Well, duh." From Reuters, Oct. 22:

HOUSTON - Halliburton Co , the world's No. 2 oilfield services group, on Sunday posted a 25 percent rise in earnings, beating Wall Street forecasts, on robust spending by producers on oil and gas output, particularly in North America.

Can you say deja vu? How about chutzpah? From BBC, Oct. 24:

North warns against Ortega vote

Ex-White House aide Oliver North—at the centre of a 1980s scheme to finance Contra rebels in Nicaragua—has warned the country not to return to the past.

Thousands of people marched in San Juan, Puerto Rico on Oct. 8 to demand the release of four Puerto Rican political prisoners being held in US jails. Oscar Lopez Rivera, Carlos Alberto Torres and Haydee Beltran Torres have been jailed for over 25 years; they were arrested in the early 1980s for alleged involvement in the Armed Forces of National Liberation (FALN), a pro-independence group. Lopez Rivera, Torres and Beltran are serving stiff sentences for "seditious conspiracy" and other charges: 55 years, 78 years and life in prison, respectively. Jose Perez Gonzalez is serving a five-year sentence for acts of vandalism during the May 1, 2003 celebration marking the US Navy's departure from the Puerto Rican island of Vieques.

Paraguayan foreign minister Ruben Ramirez announced on Oct. 2 that in 2007 Paraguay will stop granting US troops immunity from prosecution. The change in policy is an effort to coordinate policies with the other member nations in the Mercosur economic bloc--Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and most recently Venezuela.