From El Universal, Dec. 18:

Over 2,000 women marched through Oaxaca City on Sunday calling for Gov. Ulises Ruiz's ouster and the immediate release of the more than 200 members of the Oaxaca People's Assembly (APPO) detained since the street battles on Nov. 25.

Our December issue featured the story (reprinted from our sibling publication Toward Freedom) "Nuclear-Free Central Asia: A Model for the Korean Peninsula?" by Rene Wadlow. It noted a real glimmer of hope in the terrifyingly bleak world situation: the repudiation of the logic of nuclear proliferation by the governments of a highly restive and militarized part of the planet. The Central Asian nuclear-free zone is bad news for the nuclear ambitions of super-powers (which seek to station atomic weapons in the region), as well as "rogue states" (which seek accomplices in their efforts to build atomic weapons) and terrorists (always happy to have more atomic weapons infrastructure to raid or pirate, especially in unstable regions). It is good news for the rest of us—the overwhelming majority of humanity. We can only hope that the two Koreas follow the Central Asian example.

From Nunatsiaq News, principal newspaper of Nunavut, the autonomous territory of the Inuit people in Canada's far north (links added):

The effort to link climate change with human rights has suffered a setback. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights won’t consider a petition that alleges that the United States government is violating the human rights of Inuit by refusing to limit its greenhouse gas emissions.

Mexico's new (and still-contested) President Felipe Calderon, touring Chiapas on Dec. 14, announced new steps to beef up border control and fight organized crime, drug trafficking and illegal immigration. Accompanied by Public Security Secretary Genaro Garcia Luna and Chiapas Gov. Juan Sabines, Calderon spoke before a gathering in the town of Tuxtla Chico on the Guatemalan border. "Along with overcoming poverty and creating jobs, I'm convinced that the government has the obligation and the ability to achieve a secure border while guaranteeing human rights for everybody," said Calderon. "I see no contradiction in that." Specific measures will include the creation of a new border security force consisting of state and federal enforcement officers, and a guest worker program that will grant temporary visas to Guatemalan agricultural workers. Calderon also indicated that the federal government will crack down on Central Americans living illegally in Chiapas. "Beginning next month, a program will be put into operation that will review the migratory status of those who are already in the zone," he said. (El Universal, Dec. 15)

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)