Hundreds of thousands of Mexicans marked Independence Day on Sept. 16 by holding a massive meeting, which they called the "Democratic National Convention" (CND), in Mexico City's main plaza, the Zocalo. The crowd voted up plans to carry on a nonviolent struggle against Felipe Calderon Hinojosa, official winner of the July 2 presidential election, who is to start his six-year term on Dec. 1. The convention declared center-left candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador the "legitimate president" of Mexico and announced that he will be inaugurated on Nov. 20, the 96th anniversary of the start of the 1910 Mexican Revolution.

On Sept. 11 US magistrate Norbert Garney in El Paso, Tex., ruled that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) should release Cuban-born Venezuelan national Luis Posada Carriles under supervision. Garney's decision is a recommendation, and he sent it to district judge Philip Martinez, who can decide to accept or reject the ruling. Posada is a longtime "asset" of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) who is wanted in Venezuela for allegedly planning the 1976 bombing of an Cubana de Aviacion airliner, in which 73 people died.

On Sept. 6, Chile's Senate voted 20-13 with two abstentions against a bill introduced by Socialist senator Alejandro Navarro which would have granted conditional release to jailed Mapuche activists. In May, four Mapuche political prisoners ended a 70-day hunger strike on the promise that the bill would be approved. Navarro said the bill sought to "correct an injustice" imposed on the Mapuche activists when they were given harsh sentences under a widely criticized anti-terrorism law. (Adital, Sept. 11; La Nacion, Sept. 6; El Mostrador, Sept. 6)

Now that's the way to prove the Pope is wrong and Islam is a religion of peace! Way to go, guys! From Reuters, Sept. 17:

Gunmen killed an Italian nun at a children's hospital in Mogadishu on Sunday in an attack that drew immediate speculation of links to Muslim anger over the Pope's recent remarks on Islam.

Yet more evidence that Central Asia, increasingly wary of US military designs in the region since 9-11, is radically tilting away from Washington. Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan all opened their territories to US forces after 9-11, and Tajikistan, with its 1,000-mile border with Afghanistan, was particularly critical as a staging ground for the October 2001 offensive against the Taliban. Today only Kyrgyzstan still hosts significant US forces—and Tajikistan is holding joint manoeuvres with China. But also note that despite all the supposed tension between the US and China, the preceived enemy and justification for flexing military muscle in the region is identical: radical Islam. From DPA, Sept. 15:

More grisly news from the amusingly eccentric despotism of Saparmurat "Turkmenbashi" Niyazov. It is good to see the outside world paying attention to what goes on in this hermetically-sealed dictatorship, but this case raises the usual dilemmas. Journalist Ogulsapar Muradova was affiliated with the US-funded Radio Liberty, and Turkmenbashi's defenders will doubtless portray this as being complicit with US designs to destabilize the regime, or at least pry it open for freer corporate access to its formbidable gas and oil resources. But should the penalty for this be death—and, more importantly, what option do independent journalists have in Turkmenistan? Have the Independent Media Centers attempted to give them any support? The IMCs don't appear to have a single outlet in all Central Asia. A search of the main IMC website turns up nothing on Muradova's case, although some affiliates, such Indymedia UK at least noted his arrest. From Al-Jazeera, Sept. 16:

We can feel George Bush cringing. Why did Sacha Baron Cohen have to pick on Kazakhstan of all places, which the US sees as a strategic bulwark against both Russian and Islamist influence in Central Asia, and which Dick Cheney and his pals hope to turn into the next Saudi Arabia? But which, ultimately, is worse: Cohen's politically incorrect humor, or the White House's accomodation of Kazakhstan's sleazy dictatorship? From the UK's Daily Mail, Sept. 12:

Kyrgyzstan briefly surfaced in the headlines following the case of Air Force Major Jill Metzger of North Carolina, assigned to the US base at Manas, who managed to escape after being kidnapped Sept. 5. But the US media pays little heed to the growing signs of a looming social explosion in Central Asia, where the Pentagon has maintained a large presence since 9-11. Taalaibek Amanov writes for the Institute for War & Peace Reporting, Sept. 14: