From Al-Jazeera, Oct. 27:

Niger has suspended its plans to deport thousands of ethnic Arab nomads to Chad.

The central African country's cabinet decided against carrying out the deportations after neighbouring countries spoke out against the plan, the country's communications minister said on Friday.

Villagers seized three Shell Oil platforms in the Niger Delta region Oct. 25, forcing a halt of production at each. A nearby Chevron platform was also closed. Members of the Kula community invaded the facilities, accusing the company of not following through on promises to provide aid. While the delta region is a key source of Nigeria's national wealth, it remains one of the country's poorest. Negotiations are underway, but the platforms remain under occupation. (AP, Oct. 26)

Remember the two immigrant girls who got caught up in a bogus suicide-bomber scare in the New York metro area last year? An update on one in the Oct. 26 New York Times says a great deal about the general global predicament. Adama Bah is caught between official Islamophobia in the United States and reactionary political Islam in her native Guinea—like, to a degree, all of us.

Adama Bah’s schoolmates were jubilant when she returned to 10th grade at Heritage High School in Manhattan in May 2005 after six weeks in a distant juvenile detention center. Her release put to rest the federal government’s unexplained assertion that Adama, a popular 16-year-old who wore jeans under her Islamic garb, was a potential suicide bomber.

We have recently been warning of the imminent emergence of a Taliban state in central Iraq. Today the New York Times op-ed page catches up with us. From "What Osama Wants" by Peter Bergen, a senior fellow of the New America Foundation and author of The Osama bin Laden I Know: An Oral History of Al Qaeda's Leader, Oct. 26:

A total withdrawal from Iraq would play into the hands of the jihadist terrorists. As Osama bin Laden’s deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, made clear shortly after 9/11 in his book Knights Under the Prophet's Banner, Al Qaeda’s most important short-term strategic goal is to seize control of a state, or part of a state, somewhere in the Muslim world. "Confronting the enemies of Islam and launching jihad against them require a Muslim authority, established on a Muslim land," he wrote. "Without achieving this goal our actions will mean nothing." Such a jihadist state would be the ideal launching pad for future attacks on the West.

Historian Allen Barra provides some all-too-revealing historical perspective on the New York Times op-ed page, Oct. 26:

One hundred twenty five years ago, three lawmen - Marshal Virgil Earp and his brothers Wyatt and Morgan - and their friend Doc Holliday walked down Fremont Street (today Highway 80) in the silver-mining boom town of Tombstone, Arizona, and into a lot behind the OK Corral to confront four "cow-boys" (as cattle thieves were then called), the brothers Ike and Billy Clanton and Tom and Frank McLaury.

About a dozen heavily-armed police, some wearing ski-masks, raided the homes of environmental activist Carlos Zorrilla, executive director of the NGO Intag Defense and Environmental Conservation DECOIN, and his neighbour Roberto Castro on Oct. 17, according to reports from the Intag Solidarity Network and the Ecumenical Human Rights Commission of Ecuador (CEDHU).

Mexico's President Vicente Fox, trying to put a good face on things as he leaves a bitterly divided country as his legacy, boasted to a meeting of businessmen at the National Chamber of Industry that the crises of Chiapas and Atenco were essentially resolved, and that the Oaxaca crisis would be soon. He asserted that the new Mexico City airport opposed by the Atenco farmers would be built. (La Jornada, Oct. 24) Regarding Chiapas (a conflict Fox had pledged to resolve "in 15 minutes" on the campaign trail in 2000), presidential spokesman Ruben Aguilar Valenzuela asserted, "There has been no act of violence in Chiapas in six years." (Milenio, Oct. 25)

The Popular People's Assembly of Oaxaca (APPO) issued a "call for a popular peaceful insurrection" Dec. 1 if the state's governor, Ulises Ruiz, has not stepped down by then. The call steps up pressure on president-elect Felipe Calderon, already facing pledges from the left-opposition to resist his Dec. 2 inauguration with civil disobedience actions. Under the slogan "Si Ulises no se va, Calderón no pasará" (If Ulises does not go, Calderon will not pass), APPO pledged to organize a general strike throughout the state of Oaxaca. The statement said that even if the state's striking teachers vote to return to classes, new strikes will extend to other labor sectors. The statement also demanded federal criminal charges against Ruiz for the assassinations of several APPO activists since the movement for his ouster was launched earlier this year. (La Jornada, Oct. 25 via Chiapas95)