Niger's military reports killing at least five "armed bandits" in a remote Saharan region still largely outside state control more than 10 years after the end of a rebellion by desert nomads. A defense ministry statement said soldiers seized three vehicles, automatic rifles, munitions and a rocket-propelled grenade launcher in the March 1 clashes near Ouraren in Arlit province, 1,280 kilometers northeast of the capital Niamey. Military sources said that armed men also attacked two public buses, injuring two passengers and robbing others that day on the road between the main regional towns of Arlit and Agadez. "Search operations" are said to be underway.

Voters in three dozen Vermont towns voted March 6 to call upon Congress to open an impeachment probe of President George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. Two towns, Clarendon and Dover, voted the measure down. Nearly a half dozen towns agreed to not take up, or table, the resolution. There are 251 towns in Vermont, but not all hold town meetings. Additionally, 20 towns passed measures calling for the immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq, and to care for them when they were back on US soil. Dover also rejected the troop measure.

In an obvious move to undercut the International Criminal Court, Sudan has announced that it will put three men on trial for atrocities in Darfur—including Ali Mohammed Abd-al-Rahman AKA Ali Kushayb, officially named as a suspect by the ICC. Sudanese authorities say the three are already in custody and their trials will start immediately in El Geneina. (NYT, March 7; AP, March 6) Meanwhile in a blow to the Darfur peace accord, gunmen kidnapped and killed two African Union troops, critically wounded a third, and stole their vehicle March 5 in Geraida, South Darfur. The AU said the assailants are believed to belong to the Minnawi faction of the Sudan Liberation Army, which signed the rather dubious "peace agreement" in May. (AP, March 7) In a sure sign of changing times, the US envoy to Sudan, Andrew Natsios, has announced he will travel to Tripoli this week for talks on getting Libya involved in efforts to broker an end the Darfur conflict. Natsios made the announcement to the press after two hours of talks with President Omar al-Bashir. Said Natsios: "We believe that it should be one track of negotiations, the one of the UN and AU. I’m leaving tonight to Tripoli to see Qadaffi about the Libyan role." (AFP, March 7)

A disturbing consensus seems to be emerging in Europe that the best reaction to genocide denial is to ban it. In addition to the many European laws against denying the Nazi Holocaust, Bosnia is now considering such a law for its own more recent genocide. And now Switzerland is prosecuting a Turkish writer for denying the 1915 Armenian genocide. From the Turkish daily Hurriyet, March 8:

Labor struggles are fast spreading in Iran at this critical moment—but it sure isn't winning much news coverage in the West. From the Italian news agency AKI, March 6:

Thousands of teachers staged a rally on Tuesday in front of the Majlis, the Iranian parliament, in Tehran asking Iranian education minister Mahmoud Farshidi to step down, their salaries to be raised and that colleagues fired for political reasons be reinstated. The protest, the second in just a week by teachers, was called by 30 teachers' unions. Last Saturday, an estimated 50,000 professors protested, threatening to block mid-term exams and to strike until their fired colleagues, as many as 1,500 only in Kurdistan, were given their jobs back.

On March 6, a suicide bomber killed more than 30 and wounded dozens in a cafe north-east of Baghdad, while a car bomb in the suburb of Saidiya killed seven Shi'ite pilgrims headed for the holy city of Najaf. Elsewhere in the capital, gunmen wounded six pilgrims on their way to the holy city of Karbala. In Hilla, south of Baghdad, a suicide bomber lured unsuspecting pilgrims with cakes, an age-old custom during the annual Arbaeen religious festival. Other gunmen fired on pilgrims from passing cars. More than 1.5 million went to Imam Hussein's shrine despite the violence which claimed some 140 lives and left 200 wounded on March 6 alone. Shi'ite political leader Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim joined pilgrims south of Baghdad and vowed that they would not be deterred. "Even Saddam, with all his institutions and strength, was not able to stand in the way of these masses," he told Furat TV. Arbaein (also rendered Arabaein, Arbaeen, Arba'een, Arbayeen, etc.) marks the end of the 40-day Ashura period commemorating the martyrdom of Imam Hussien bin Ali, the grandson of Prophet Muhammad. (The Guardian, The Age, Australia, Feb. 8; Indian Muslims, Feb. 7)

OK, Fox News may be touting this story for bad, Islamophobic reasons. One of the ironies of our times is that jingoistic propagandists like Fox are bashing US allies like Saudi Arabia, while "progressives" in the West are lining up with reactionary political Islam—even if it means cutting slack for US client states. Are we the only ones who feel like we're through the looking glass here? March 6:

Here we go again. We noted two years ago that the annual State Department human rights report for the Americas displayed a blatant double standard concerning US client Colombia and Axis of Evil junior affiliate Venezuela. The new report goes one better, actually singling out Venezuela and Cuba as having the worst human rights records in the hemisphere. The report says that as of the end of 2006, there were at least 283 political prisoners or detainees in Cuba and 13 in Venezuela. Barry F. Lowenkron, the assistant secretary of state for human rights, said the situation in Venezuela is worsening under President Hugo Chavez's government, which he characterized as "regressive." (AP, March 6)