So who was behind this one? Takes place near Peshawar's main Sunni mosque, but also near the city's Shi'ite community center, and during the Shi'ite holy month of Moharram. Some people specualte these ongoing outrages are a CIA conspiracy. But if so, the Agency has been very busy indeed—as we have pointed out again and again and again. From the UAE's Gulf News, Jan. 28:

At least 15 people were killed, including two senior police officers, when a parcel bomb ripped through a market in northwestern Pakistan late yesterday, police and officials said.

And speaking of Dick Cheney... From McClatchy Newspapers, Jan. 25:

WASHINGTON - Vice President Dick Cheney exerted "constant" pressure on the Republican former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee to stall an investigation into the Bush administration's use of flawed intelligence on Iraq, the panel's Democratic chairman charged Thursday.

Of course everyone wants us to think its really about the Jews. From The Raw Story, Jan. 26:

An analysis released by a Democratic senator found that Vice President Dick Cheney's Halliburton stock options have risen 3,281 percent in the last year, RAW STORY can reveal.

The Pentagon recently posed Colombia as a "good model" for the war on opium in Afghanistan. But Hamid Karzai, to his credit, is displaying greater concern for the health of his own land and people than top US Latin American ally Alvaro Uribe. From Reuters, Jan. 26:

KABUL, Afghanistan - Rebuffing months of U.S. pressure, Afghan President Hamid Karzai decided against a Colombia-style program to spray this country's heroin-producing poppies after the Cabinet worried herbicide would hurt legitimate crops, animals and humans, officials said Thursday.

This sad story is all the more telling given that the "Salvador option" reveals El Salvador as a test war for Iraq—with the sinister John Negroponte a key architect of both. The failure of the Times to even mention this obvious connection is more telling still. Marc Lacey writes for the New York Times, Jan. 26, emphasis added:

A glimmer of hope is that the outcry following the slaying of Hrant Dink is coming from Turks as well as Armenians. Perhaps his death will not have been in vain—or will there be an inevitable backlash? From the UK-based Turkish newspaper Londra Toplum Postasi, Jan. 25:

Hundreds of anti-water privatization activists gathered outside El Salvador’s Legislative Assembly this week to back legislation that would "increase [water] coverage, quality and sustainability and guarantee access… for low-income families." They presented a new proposal entitled "The Potable Water and Sewage Sub-sector Law" for legislative approval. The alternative proposal was developed by a number of civil society organizations in close consultation with communities struggling for access to clean water.

The Honduran government reversed its decision to take over oil storage terminals in attempt to lessen oil prices for the Central American country’s impoverished population. The reversal, announced last Friday, followed a threat by U.S. Ambassador Charles A. Ford, who said that "the consequences of this situation could be serious."