From New York Newsday, Oct. 11, this harrowing report by staff writer John Riley from New Orleans' devastated Lower Ninth Ward:

Six weeks after the storm, no neighborhood in this ravaged city faces longer odds than the financially impoverished but culturally rich Lower Ninth -- and none better reflects the fault lines of race and class, nature and economics tangled together in the debate over New Orleans' future.

Another courageous strike by the heroic Iraqi resistance against the US occupation forces... oops, we mean against Shi'ite civilians. From AP, Oct. 5, via TruthOut:

A bomb exploded at the entrance of a Shiite Muslim mosque south of Baghdad as hundreds of worshippers gathered for prayers on the first day of Ramadan and for the funeral of a man killed in an earlier bombing. At least 25 people were killed and 87 wounded.

On Sept. 28 Robert Bonner announced he would retire as commissioner of Customs and Border Protection (CBP). He served for four years, first as head of US Customs, then as head of CBP after Customs was merged into the Department of Homeland Security in early 2003. (AP, Sept. 28)

From the Sept. 30 edition of the New York Bangladeshi community paper Bangla Patrika. Translated from the Bangla by the NY Independent Press Association:

Federal and local law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, raided the Darul Ulum Shady Brook, a Madrasha (an Islamic institution) run by Bangladeshis, located at Connecticut.

The Republican-controlled Senate voted Oct. 5 to impose restrictions on the treatment of terrorism suspects. Defying the White House, senators voted 90-9 to approve an amendment to prohibit the use of "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment" against anyone in US government custody. The amendment was added to a $440 billion military spending bill for the budget year that began Oct. 1. The proposal, sponsored by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), also requires all service members to follow procedures in the Army Field Manual when they detain and interrogate terrorism suspects.

Freedom's on the march in Afghanistan—freedom of opium kingpins to exploit the peasantry and make a killing. The opium economy has exploded since the country's "liberation" from the Taliban, and efforts by the Anglo-American-led occupation forces to crack down on it have only forced suffering peasants to sell their daughters to the drug lords to settle their debts. Reports have emerged (denied by the US) of aerial herbicide spraying to wipe out the crops—the same counter-productive method widespread in Colombia. A proposal by a European NGO to undercut the criminal networks by turning Afghanistan into a legal opium producer for the medical market, predictably, is dismissed by the US. From The Independent, Oct. 3:

Hamed Abderrahmane, a Spanish national freed in February from over two years in detention at the US base at Guantanamo, Cuba, was sentenced on Oct. 5 by a Madrid court to six years in prison for belonging to a "terrorist organization." Abderrahmane denied belonging to al-Qaeda and described himself as a "martyr."

Vice President Dick Cheney said that the US must be prepared to fight the War on Terrorism for decades. Speaking to US military personnel at the Association of the US Army in Washington DC, he said that the only way terrorists would win was if the US lost its nerve and abandoned Iraq and the Middle East. "Like other great duties in history, it will require decades of patient effort, and it will be resisted by those whose only hope for power is through the spread of violence," he said.