For those who continue to follow events in Mexico's conflicted southern state of Chiapas, there is an increasingly surreal sense of being through the proverbial looking glass. On a national level, the leftist PRD candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is challenging his narrow defeat in the presidential race as fraudulent with massive protest movements; in Chiapas, Jose Antonio Aguilar Bodegas, the candidate of the PRI (which ruled Mexico through blatant fraud and corruption for 70 years) is attempting to emulate Lopez Obrador's example—claiming his victory was stolen by the PRD candidate! The conservative PAN (the party of President Fox and his apparent successor Felipe Calderon) is backing Aguilar Bodegas out of mutual enmity for the PRD—despite the fact that the PRI stole many electoral victories from the PAN in its long tenure in power nationally. Just to make the political bedfellows even stranger, Jorge Kanter—the notorious conservative rancher long held to be the mastermind of the White Guards, the brutal paramilitary force of Chiapas' landed oligarchy—has declared for the PRD candidate, Juan Sabines!

From Spain's El Pais, Sept. 9, via Chiapas95 (our translation):

The entrance of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD, leftist) into Mexico's institutional life, with the signing of an accord for reforms to the Law of Congress, is a bad sign for its ex-presidential candidate, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who maintains a resistance against the president-elect, Felipe Calderon, and the "invalid institutions." The governor of the state of Michoacan, the PRDista Lazaro Cardenas (son of the founder of the party), and that of Chiapas have recognized Calderon as the new executive.

From the Sept. 9 New York Times, buried at the bottom of page 4 (below a much larger "profile" piece on a New Age self-help book written by Slovenia's president). Links added.

Explosions Hit Indian Mosque, Stoking Fear of Further Violence 
NEW DELHI — A series of explosions struck in and near the largest mosque in a flashpoint textile town in western India on Friday, killing more than two dozen people, wounding more than 100 and raising the specter of renewed sectarian clashes.

Now, why should this story make the front page of the New York Times Sept. 9—above the fold, no less? Because the attack was near the US embassy? This is but the latest, and not even the deadliest, in a wave of such attacks in recent months—which have all been buried in the inner pages.

Suicide Bomber Kills 16 in Kabul Near Embassy

KABUL — A suicide bomber smashed his car into an American military vehicle just yards from the United States Embassy in downtown Kabul on Friday morning, killing as many as 16 people and wounding 29, Afghan and American officials said.

Turkish anti-terrorism police report they have captured four suspected al-Qaeda militants who were plotting to carry out a bomb attack in Istanbul. The raids, in the city's Bagcilar district, turned up two guns and explosive materials. Police said that the suspects came under suspicion after they held an illegal protest in favor of al-Qaeda on June 8, when the leader of "al-Qaeda in Iraq" Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed. (Zaman, Sept. 9)

The latest in Bush's 9-11 exploitation propaganda blitz. This is especially perverse given how the first responders have been shamelessly screwed by the federal government. The trick for New York activists is to find some way to protest this without seeming to disrespect the first responders (and to avoid the egregious errors of some of last Sept. 11's protests). From the Daily News, Sept. 8:

The White House has just released its 2006 National Strategy for Combatting Terrorism. The page on "Today's Terrorist Enemy" again acknowledges that al-Qaeda has only transformed over the past five years from a tight cadre organization around Osama bin Laden to a "transnational movement". Yet it says this while avoiding overt recognition of the obvious implication that this constitutes a massive expansion of al-Qaeda's numbers, power and reach (if not of Osama bin Laden's direct control), and that the Global War on Terrorism has only backfired horribly (if we are to accept its apparent aims as the intended ones.)

From New York's WNBC, Sept. 7:

Woman Killed In Queens Hit-And-Run
NEW YORK -- Police on Wednesday were searching for two men wanted in connection with a hit-and-run crash in Queens that left a woman dead. Yon S. Chong, 67, was hit by a pickup truck at 23rd Avenue and Northern Boulevard in Bayside around 2:30 p.m. Wednesday, investigators said. She was pronounced dead at the scene.