From EFE, April 29 via ServIndi (our translation):

QUITO - The government will investigate an alleged massacre of indigenous people in the Amazon, at the hands of presumed armed madereros [pirate loggers], in a dispute over a forest zone, the local press reported today.

From El Universal, May 4 via the Chiapas95 archive:

A state judge on Wednesday exonerated a Michoacan police officer accused of shooting and killing a striking steel mill worker last month, despite video footage showing the officer firing his rifle toward the workers.

From the online Radio Sabotaje, late on May 5:

Marcos has just arrived in Atenco with 4,000 individuals representing students, workers, farmers, teachers and and community organizations. Mexican mainstream media is reporting agression on the part of the marchers - the truth appears otherwise. The Other Campaign will stay in Mexico City indefinitely. A peaceful meeting is scheduled in Atenco tomorrow at 12 noon.

The April 30 march in Washington, organized by the Save Darfur Coalition, brought out some heroes of the left, like George Clooney, but also some that the hard left loves to hate, like Elie Wiesel and Samantha Power. While policy-makers equivocate, trying to sound tough against the genocide while actually doing not a thing to stop it, the radical left remains largely silent on Darfur: the atrocities there are not being carried out by US imperialism or its proxies, and the solutions most often proposed involve some degree of US military intervention. There is indeed a strong case that another Western military adventure would be a very problematic "solution" at best—but the anti-war left, afraid of losing popularity, doesn't even bother to make that case. As usual, it is being just as dishonest as the government it claims such moral superiority to.

With Darfur in the headlines, if not the minds of our policymakers, it is generally forgotten that armed attacks, forced deportations and even slavery continue against Black African peoples throughout the Sahel. On Tuesday, May 9, at 7:30 PM, the Libertarian Book Club's Anarchist Forum will present a discussion in New York's Greenwhich Village on "Ethnic Cleansing and Slavery in Contemporary Africa," with an emphasis on Mauritania, Sudan and Darfur. The featured speaker will be Abdarahmane Wone of the African Liberation Forces of Mauritania (FLAM), which has been attempting to resist and expose the system of slavery in that country for a generation.

The US is under review by the UN Committee Against Torture in Geneva, and spin control is the name of the game. State Department legal counsel John Bellinger testified out of both sides of this mouth today, saying the US upholds the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhumane and Degrading Treatment—but that it doesn't apply in Afghanistan, Iraq or Guantanamo. He also denied that Justice Department memos had dumbed down the definition of torture—as if this cat wasn't already long out of the bag. From South Africa's News24, May 5:

It has now been reported everywhere that Zacarias Moussaoui, upon being sentenced by a federal jury to life imprisonment, shouted, "America, you lost... I won!" Obviously, he had been rehearsing the line for months, and was prepared to use it regardless of the sentence. Actually, the jury's rejection of the death penalty was a victory for the best values of the United States, and a defeat for the forces of pathological polarization, whether of the GWOT or jihad variety. The symbiotic, even incestuous relationship between al-Qaeda and the White House is illustrated (once again) by the fact that both Moussaoui and federal prosecutors were pulling for the death penalty: Moussaoui to finally acheive the glorious martyrdom he was cheated out of; Bush and the Justice Department to establish a precedent for a capital sentence in a terrorism case.

Will this mean the end of Atenco's status as a rebel "autonomous municipality"? And how will the Zapatistas, already on "red alert" in response to the repression, respond to this escalation? This is very ominous timing for Fox, with the new explosion in Atenco coming on the heels of wildcat strikes and Subcommander Marcos urging Mexico's workers to seize the means of production at the national Mayday march. The taking of Atenco also comes on the eve of Cinco de Mayo—which will afford left-nationalists the opportunity to bait Fox as betraying the fatherland to foreign interests, and glorify the rebel peasants as defenders of Mexican sovereignty. From Reuters, May 4:

SAN SALVADOR ATENCO, Mexico - Thousands of riot police firing tear gas forced their way into a rebellious town near Mexico City on Thursday and freed fellow officers taken hostage in a riot that left one person dead.

Scores of police in body armor swept into the fractious farming town of San Salvador Atenco, 15 miles (24 km) north of Mexico City, and hauled off bleeding protesters amid peasants armed with sticks, machetes and gasoline bombs.