From Madison's Capital Times, March 18:

Wisconsin will blaze a trail in April when, for the first time, voters will go to the polls as part of a statewide effort to pass referendums opposed to the war in Iraq.

Sarah Ferguson writes for the Village Voice, March 19:

Seventeen demonstrators were arrested Sunday for blocking traffic as part of a funeral procession intended to transform Times Square into a "Zone of Mourning" on the third anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

The Zapatista "Other Campaign" continues to advance across central Mexico, drawing attention to local struggles. In Guanajuato, Subcommaner Marcos was denied entry to the state prison, the Social Rehabiliation Center (CERESO), where he sought to visit political prisoners, on the grounds that he refused to remove his ski mask. In a press conference outside the prison, Marcos accused both Guanajuato governor Juan Carlos Romero Hicks and Mexican vice president Ramon Muñoz of ties to the ultra-right paramilitary network El Yunque. (La Jornada, March 14; Marcos statement, March 13)

Tens of thousands of Mexican miners went on strike from March 1 to March 3 at 70 companies in at least eight states--Hidalgo, Coahuila, Guerrero, Chihuahua, Queretaro, Michoacan, Guanajuato and Mexico state--in a wildcat action protesting local conditions and government intervention in the National Union of Mine and Metal Workers of the Mexican Republic (SNTMMRM).

From EFE, March 16:

Bolivia’s attorney general filed charges Thursday against three ex-presidents and eight former energy ministers for signing contracts with foreign petroleum firms that violated the laws of the Andean nation. The accusations are directed against Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, Jorge Quiroga and Carlos Mesa.

Another escalation in the ongoing struggle in West Papua. From AP, March 20:

Calm returned to Papua Province yesterday after three days of tension following a deadly protest against a massive US-owned gold mine in the eastern Indonesian province.

Just in time for Iran. Note the closing quote. From the AP, March 18:

US President George W. Bush renewed his administration's strike-first policy against terrorists and other US enemies and rebuked Iran over allegations it is secretly amassing nuclear weapons.

March 16, the first day that Iraq's fragile new parliament formally met, was met not only with a new US offensive in the Samarra area that the Arab press is already comparing to Fallujah (Khajeel Times, UAE, March 19) but, perhaps more importantly, a social explosion in Kurdistan, which has heretofore been a relative haven from the chaos in the rest of Iraq. Illustrating the depth of disgust with the Kurdish leadership, it came on the anniversary of the Halabja massacre, and left the official monument to the victims destroyed. Most Western press accounts have not noted that the repressive violence from the PUK security forces left at least four Kurdish youth dead. This account from Kurdish Media: