On Nov. 21, US District Judge Thomas Hogan in Washington declared a mistrial in the terrorism and hostage-taking trial of Juvenal Ricardo Ovidio Palmera Pineda, a high-level leader and former negotiator for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), better known by his nom de guerre, Simon Trinidad. Palmera was arrested in Ecuador on Jan. 2, 2004, and extradited from Colombia to the US on Dec. 31, 2004.

Sarah Ferguson writes for the Village Voice, Nov. 26 (with some very gruesome photos of the autopsy online):

The family of slain Indymedia journalist Brad Will has renewed its call for an independent investigation of his shooting, which occurred while Will was covering protests in Oaxaca, Mexico. Family members accused authorities in Oaxaca of attempting a "ludicrous" cover-up after the Oaxaca state attorney general, Lizbeth Caña Cadeza, alleged earlier this month that Will was shot by the protesters he'd gone to Mexico to film.

Protesters trying to force out the Oaxaca state governor set fire to government buildings in two days of street fighting that began on the night of Nov. 26, when masked youths broke away from a march by about 4,000 people and hurled rocks and gasoline bombs at the federal police camped out in the city's central square. Police drove off the attackers with tear gas and water cannons, then advanced in massed ranks to drive protesters from a camp at a smaller plaza two blocks away. Bands of youth engaged police throughout the downtown area, pushing shopping carts loaded with rocks and gasoline bombs. Courts and other government offices in the city's historic colonial buildings were gutted by flames. Three hotels were also reportedly attacked with firebombs, and some 20 private vehicles were torched. (AP, Nov. 27)

You know, we hate to disillusion Nursultan Nazarbayev, but his authoritarian state really doesn't need Borat to give it a bad name. ISCKON is the "Hare Krishna" movement, rather than mainstream Hindus, but that doesn't make this episode smell much better. Neither does the fact that (as Press Trust of India notes) India's reactionary BJP is predictably exploiting the issue. From the Indo-Asian News Service, Nov. 22:

It is vindicating that French complicity in the 1994 Rwanda genocide is finally coming to light. But it was actually Paris' tit-for-tat of a judicial order for the arrest of Rwandan military officers following Rwandan charges of French support for the genocidaires that pushed the affair into the headlines by provoking Kigali to expell the French ambassador. The French judge has also called for Rwanda's President Paul Kagame to face a UN tribunal for his alleged role in the plane crash that sparked the genocide. Some 25,000 rallied in support of Kagame in Kigali following the judge's call. (Jurist, Nov. 23). Now, is it possible that Kagame's forces really did shoot down the plane? Of course it is—just like it is possible that a lone Communist named Marinus van der Lubbe burned down the Reichstag in 1933. And if it is true, it will be just as meaningless—notwithstanding the claims of the French Rwanda-revisionists and their useful idiots.

Now this is pretty depressing. Pakistan finally moves to overturn the atrocious anti-woman Hudood ordinances, under which women are punished for "adultery" if they report a rape. The Islamist opposition links backlash against this long-belated bit of progress with (legitimate) calls for democratization. This exemplifies how the US can do no good in this part of the world: the State Department doubtless pressured the Musharraf dictatorship to do away with the Hudood ordinances, to give Washington's GWOT ally a minimally plausible imprimatur of secularism. But because it happens in the context of a military regime being pressured by its imperial patron, this allows the would-be jihadist totalitarians to dress up their clerical reactionary agenda as a pro-democracy struggle. And even elements of the idiot left in the West get confused. From the Pakistan Tribune, Nov. 25:

Now here's an hilarious conundrum for the idiot left that cheers on reactionary Islamism as heroic anti-imperialism. Are we supposed to oppose this garbage when conservative Christians do it in the US, but support it when conservative Muslims do it in Turkey? From Reuters, Nov. 23:

From BBC, Nov. 23:

Drivers who get stopped by the police could have their fingerprints taken at the roadside, under a new plan to help officers check people's identities.