From AP via Qatar's The Peninsula, Sept. 15 (link added):

PARIS — Al Qaeda has for the first time announced a union with an Algerian insurgent group that has designated France as an enemy, saying they will act together against French and American interests.

US researchers writing in the peer-reviewed journal Science maintain that more than 200,000 people have died in Sudan's Darfur conflict, much higher than most previous estimates. Says Dr. John Hagan of Northwestern University: "We've tried to find a way of working between those overestimations and underestimations. We believe the procedures we have used have allowed us to come to very conservative and cautious conclusions which we used to try to identify a floor to these estimates—a floor figure of 200,000. We do not believe it is possible or defensible to go below in estimating the scale of this genocide."

The political trajectory of Oriana Fallaci speaks to one of the funamental political dilemmas on the planet at this strange juncture. The daughter of an Italian anti-fascist militant, a veteran Vietnam war correspondent, a survivor of the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre in Mexico, longtime lover of a martyred opponent of the Greek military dictatorship—she nonetheless joined the anti-Islam and anti-immigration chorus after 9-11. While large sections of what we call the "idiot left" rush into an "anti-imperialist" alliance with political Islam, others (especially in Europe) rush into the equally unsavory xenophobe and Islamophobe camp in the name of defending secularism and feminism. From The Guardian, Sept. 15:

The website "Haiti Xchange" recalled in September 2001:

Long before this year's tragedy, September 11 was already a date associated with terror for Haitians: on that day in 1988 a group of armed men linked to the military dictatorship attacked the church where then-priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide was holding mass. They murdered dozens, and burned the church to the ground; Aristide barely escaped. In 1990 Aristide ran for president in Haiti's first-ever democratic election, with radical promises to raise minimum wage, strengthen national industry, and tax the wealthy, who traditionally escaped this burden. He won two-thirds of the vote, but was never able to accomplish his mission as president: an elite-backed military coup ousted him in September 1991, after only seven months in office. In the following three years the military regime raped, tortured, and killed thousands of his supporters. Well over a hundred thousand Haitians fled by sea or crossed the border to the Dominican Republic.

The level of death squad activity in Iraq appears to far outstrip that in El Salvador 20 years ago, from which the so-called "Salvador Option" takes its name. But there was no equivcation about the fact that there was a civil war going on in El Salvador, while everyone seems intent on denying this obvious reality in Iraq. Why is that? From Reuters, Sept. 17:

Baghdad: Iraqi police found 47 more bodies of death squad victims dumped in Baghdad overnight, they said on Saturday, after Washington said it was diverting troops from other parts of Iraq to secure the embattled capital.

From the Federation of Worker Councils and Unions in Iraq (FWCUI):

1. On Sunday [Sept. 3], hundreds of health sector workers held a strike in Nasiriyah city, 370 Km south of Baghdad and in Umara city 370 Km South-east of Baghdad. They raised demands of higher average salaries and repayment of contagious disease compensation (similar to dangers of work benefit). This sector was frozen for periods after the occupation. The strike continued for 3 days during which the workers received nothing but promises. None of the demands were met afterwards. One of the strike organizers, Jassim Muhammed, stressed the willingness of the workers to hold a sit-in for the coming days in front of the officials’ buildings in order to express their dismay of the authorities’ neglect for their demands.

From the Federation of Worker Councils and Unions in Iraq (FWCUI):

Oil Sector Unionists Meeting in Baghdad

54 trade unionists and worker activist from the central oil sector (Baghdad and vicinity) held a meeting on Monday, September 4th in the hall of the Institute of Oil in Baghdad. They were representatives of many departments and companies of oil and gas production and industry, and other oil projects, pipelines and refineries. The leadership of FWCUI took part in the discussions and decisions of the assembly after having it planned previously.

Note that even as he asks Congress to legalize torture, Bush plans to hawk what he calls his "freedom agenda" before the UN next week. The obligatory Orwell reference here would seem almost superfluous. We hope. Sarah Ferguson writes for the Village Voice, Sept. 15:

Bush Bash Is On: Cops Give Go-Ahead to U.N. Protest March
Looks like anti-war activists will get to be within shouting distance of President Bush when he delivers his speech before the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday.