The Sept. 22 Daily News carries the front-page headline: "BIG APPLE TO BIG MOUTH: ZIP IT!" It gleefully quotes various New York politicians bashing Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez for calling Bush a "devil," including Sen. Chuck Schumer ("despicable and disgusting"), Gov. George Pataki ("The best thing he can do is go back to Venezuela and try to provide freedom for his people") and Rep. Charles Rangel ("I draw the line at allowing a foreign leader to come to my country and my community to personally insult my president"). The story also has further inflammatory quotes from Chavez's "rambling 90-minute rant" at Harlem's Mount Olive Baptist Church, where he was flanked by actor Danny Glover, City Councilman Charles Barron and author Cornell West. Reiterating the facile if obvious "devil" epithet, Chavez backed up the charge with the following comments:

Our one-time contributor Keith Harmon Snow has won an award from Project Censored for his article, co-written with David Barouski, "Behind the Numbers: Untold Suffering in the Congo" (ZNet, March 2006). Project Censored dubs the story "High-Tech Genocide in Congo," considering it the fifth most-censored story of the year. Snow and Barouski share the award with a writer called "Sprocket," who wrote an article entitled "High-Tech Genocide" for the August 2005 Earth First! Journal. Both articles concern the role of the mineral coltan, used in cellular telephones, to fund militias in the war-torn east of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Snow has also covered the coltan connection in his writing for WW4 Report (see "Proxy Wars in Central Africa," July 2004), and won a Project Censored award last year for his April 2004 story for WW4 Report, "State Terror Against Indigenous Peoples in Ethiopia." The coltan story is an important one which indeed warrants far greater exposure. However, in his Project Censored "Update" on the question, Snow makes a completely unwarranted attack on his former editors at WW4 Report—and, more importantly, undermines his own work by equivocating on the question of African genocide. The comments are online at Guerrilla News Network:

From the Mexican news agency APRO, Sept. 20 via Chiapas95 (our translation):

JALAPA - Protesting the failure of authorities to indemnify hundreds of families left homeless by a flood this past June, and to complete public works in the region, hundreds of indigenous people of the Sierra Soteapan closed the valves of the Yuribia Dam that supplies water to an important southern zone of Veracruz.

This report contains the usual condescension of mainstream (English-language) media accounts on the Zapatista movement. For instance, the Zapatista-led protests around the Atenco crisis earlier this year were quite significant, and dominated the news in Mexico before they were overshadowed by the even bigger protests sparked by the electoral dispute. This account indicates the potential for a mending of fences between the Zapatistas and Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), which seems poised to establish a parallel government. From AP, Sept. 21 via Chiapas95:

As if things weren't "interesting" enough in Somalia already, it looks like they are about to get much more so. The Taliban-style militia which has taken power in the capital, Mogadishu, seems to be waging a low-level war against the "official" but largely powerless government based in Baidoa—and pledges to resist troops from the East African multinational force known as IGAD, who are about to enter the country to back up the Baidoa government. Interestingly, IGAD's two leaders are Uganda, which is firmly in the US camp, and Sudan, which is widely perceived as an anti-Western "rogue state." This could indicate that Washington is succeeding (or at least believes its is succeeding) in domesticating the Khartoum regime as a proxy against its regional enemies. This would explain the recent peace deal between Uganda and the Lords Resistance Army, a brutal Christian fundamentalist guerilla group which the Islamic fundamentalists in Khartoum have backed to make trouble for Kampala. (New Vision, Kampala, Sept. 20) It would also explain the endless official foot-dragging, Bush's bluster notwithstanding, over Darfur. From AP, Sept. 19:

How many times a day do we have to say "A plague on both your houses"? First Saddam vows to "crush the heads" of Kurds testifying about his genocidal 1988 "Anfal" campaign. Then the judge in the case, Adullah al-Almiri, responds by re-assuring him that he was "not a dictator," which makes about as much sense as saying he didn't have a moustache. Not to be outdone in cynicism, Prime Minister al-Maliki promptly responds by having Justice al-Almiri summarily removed in dictatorial manner—thereby further compromising the case against the ex-dictator. And one of the charges against Saddam concerns lack of judicial independence under his regime! It seems Iraq's new bosses are starting to emulate their own much-demonized ousted tyrant.

From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Sept. 17, via Chiapas95:

Labor turmoil following disaster draws in USW
Accused by government of $55 million theft, leader of Mexican mine union flees to Canada with help of Pittsburgh-based labor giant

The horrific Pasta de Conchos mining accident sparked a leadership crisis in Mexico's mammoth mine and steelworkers union, and officials with United Steelworkers of America are taking sides.

A textbook case in how Venezuela's Hugo Chavez is viewed differently by the Imperium and the global south. First this, from the Voice of America, Sept. 20, on day two of the annual UN General Assembly debate:

Chavez brought his anti-U.S. campaign to the world body Wednesday. He called on like-minded world leaders to stand up to what he called "American imperialism," which he said is a "threat to the survival of the human race".