It looks like Nicaragua may be poised to once again become strategic to US interests in the western hemisphere—just as the Sandinistas seem poised to take the presidential elections. Can you say deja vu? From BBC, Oct. 4:

Nicaragua has announced plans to build a waterway linking the Pacific and Atlantic that would carry bigger ships than the existing Panama Canal.

From Newsday, Oct. 3:

Man run over on Queens Blvd. dies

A Queens man run over by a hit-and-run driver Monday night while walking home from religious services died today, as police recovered the vehicle they believe was involved.

Maybe we should thank al-Qaeda for prompting the authorities to carry out this survey. From AP, Sept. 22:

WASHINGTON - Anti-terrorism officials conducted a helicopter survey of New York City's radiation sources in preparation for a so-called “dirty bomb” attack - and discovered a Staten Island park with dangerously high levels of radium, a new report found.

Subcommander Marcos and other delegates from the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) returned to Mexico City from Chiapas Sept. 29 to continue their national tour. In October and November they are scheduled to meet with suporters in the states of Nayarit, Sinaloa, Baja California, Baja California Sur, Chihuahua, Sonora, Zacatecas, Nuevo Leon, San Luis Potosi and Tamaulipas. (El Universal, Oct. 2) Immediately upon their return to the Mexico City area, they held a rally in the conflicted village of San Salvador Atenco with supporters of the Frente de Pueblos en Defensa de la Tierra to demand the release of the group's members being held as "political prisoners." (Milenio, Oct. 1)

Secondary school teachers in Mexico's conflicted southern state of Chiapas carried out a 72-hr strike in solidarity with the struggle in neighboring Oaxaca, and to support Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's challenge to the supposed fraud in the presidential election and to oppose the "imposition" of right-wing candidate Felipe Calderon. (El Universal, Oct. 2)

Mexican rebel leader Subcommander Marcos is remaking himself as a writer of political pulp fiction in collaboration with famed crime thriller scribe Paco Ignacio Taibo II. Interesting how a genre that generally plays to the law-and-order right in Gringolandia plays to the revolutionary left in Mexico, where the political elite is more overtly criminal. The new tome, The Uncomfortable Dead also has an all-too-plausibe theory about who the man really is in those relentless Osama bin Laden videos. Is this really political satire, or do Marcos and Taibo know something we don't? A book review by Patrick Anderson, "Marx Brothers Marxists," from the Washington Post, Oct. 2:

Protesters fortified street barricades and prepared petrol bombs Oct. 1 as Mexican navy helicopters buzzed over Oaxaca City for a second day, sparking rumors that federal forces were planning to retake the city center, which has been occupied by the protesters for over four months. But President Vicente Fox's Government Secretary Carlos Abascal, insisted the helicopters and military planes seen over the weekend were on routine supply runs.

As Lynne Stewart awaits sentencing, the New York Times Sept. 29 portrayed her as uncharacteristically contrite...

Lawyer in Terror Case Apologizes for Violating Special Prison Rules
Lynne F. Stewart, the once brashly defiant radical defense lawyer who was convicted in a federal terrorism trial last year, has acknowledged in a personal letter to the court that she knowingly violated prison rules and was careless, overemotional and politically naïve in her representation of a terrorist client.