At a Basra court hearing Nov. 10, all charges were dropped against Hassan Juma'a Awad, president of the Iraq Federation of Oil Unions. This is the second time criminal charges were thrown out by the court.  After the first dismissal in July, the Ministry of Oil and management of South Oil Company appealed the decision.  The appellate court reinstated the charges and sent the case back to the lower court for another hearing. The case arose as management's response to strikes and work stoppages organized by the oil workers in response to broken promises, mounting grievances, unremedied health and safety violations, increasing harassment of union activists and continued failure by management to respect worker rights to organize, bargain and strike when necessary guaranteed by international law and treaties.

The current expansion of the Panama Canal will allow close to 90% of the world's 370-vessel liquified natural gas (LNG) fleet to pass through by 2015, the Panama Canal Authority announced Oct. 30. Currently the canal can accommodate only 8.6% of the global LNG fleet. Voyages to Asia from the US will cost 24% less than longer routes, according to the authority. The US, now the world's top natural gas producer due to extraction from shale rock, is projected to  become the third-largest LNG exporter by 2020. Excavation to double the Panama Canal's capacity, which began in 2007, is said to be 64% complete. (Bloomberg, Nov. 4; Platts, Oct. 30; IBT, Sept. 20)

Bolivia's President Evo Morales said Oct. 28 that his country has achieved the conditions to obtain nuclear power for "pacific ends," and that Argentina and France would help "with their knowledge." He made his comments at the opening of a "Hydrocarbon Sovereignty" conference in Tarija. In May, Bolivia and Argentina signed an accord on nuclear cooperation. In an obvious reference to the United States, Morales anticipated political obstacles, saying that "some countries have [nuclear energy] but don't want to let others."

Hundreds of Brazilian unionists, teachers, students and leftists held a militant demonstration outside the Windsor Hotel in Rio Janeiro's Barra da Tijuca neighborhood on Oct. 21 to protest an auction being held there for rights to develop the Libra oilfield in the Bay of Santos. Denouncing the auction as a partial privatization of the country's largest source of petroleum, the demonstrators attempted to invade the hotel, confronting some 1,100 soldiers backed by agents of the National Security Force, and the federal, civil and militarized police. Protesters, some of them masked Black Bloc activists, fought with the agents, who responded with tear gas and rubber bullets. At least six people were injured, and a vehicle belonging to the Rede Record television network was set on fire.

Over the past year of growing violence and chaos in Pakistan, the Karachi Stock Exchange has surged more than 44%, placing it among the world's top-performing stock markets according to Bloomberg. (NYT, Oct. 3) On Sept. 29, a bomb placed in a Peshawar marketplace killed more than 40 and injured over 100. (BBC News, Oct. 1) On Oct. 3, Taliban militiants attacked the headquarters of local chieftain Nabi Hanafi Karwan in Spin Thall, Bulandkhel district, Orakzai agency, Federally Administered Tribal Areas. A car bomb and suicide attacker overwhelmed the guards, and gunmen followed, killing 17. Nabi Hanfi has been leading an anti-Taliban militia. (The News, Pakistan, Oct. 4; AP, Oct. 3) 

Moscow's state broadcaster Russia Today on Sept. 27 runs an interview with Bolivia's President Evo Morales from the network's Spanish-language affiliate, Actualidad, in which he called for Barack Obama to be tried for crimes against humanity and accused him of waging wars to secure US control of the world's energy resources. "[T]hey arranged for the president to be killed, and they usurped Libya's oil," he said—but it was clear his comments really concerned Syria. "Now they are funding the rebels that fight against presidents who don't support capitalism or imperialism," Morales told Actualidad's extremely problematic Eva Golinger. "And where a coup d'état is impossible, they seek to divide the people in order to weaken the nation—a provocation designed to trigger an intervention by peacekeeping forces, NATO, the UN Security Council. But the intervention itself is meant to get hold of oil resources and gain geopolitical control, rather than enforce respect for human rights."

Robin Wright, author of Rock the Casbah: Rage and Rebellion Across the Islamic World  (and a "distinguished scholar" at the United States Institute of Peace and the Wilson Center) has an op-ed in the New York Times Sept. 28, ingenuously entitled "Imagining a Remapped Middle East"—as if nobody ever has. Wright sees a portending breakdown of Syria into smaller entities—the oft-discussed Alawite mini-state on the coast and the inevitable Kurdish enclave in the north. But Wright predicts the separatist contagion spreading from Syria to the rest of the Middle East—using some of the most clichéd names imaginable, e.g. Iraq breaking into "Sunnistan" and "Shiitestan." (Note to "distinguished scholar" Wright: the "stan" suffix is of Persian origin, and very unlikely to be taken up by Arabs, of whatever sectarian affiliation.)

President Obama's speech to the United Nations on Sept. 24 displayed refreshing honesty: "The United States of America is prepared to use all elements of our power, including military force, to secure our core interests in the [Middle East] region... We will ensure the free flow of energy from the region to the world. Although America is steadily reducing our own dependence on imported oil, the world still depends upon the region's energy supply, and a severe disruption could destabilize the entire global economy." (American Forces Press Service, The Hill, Sept. 24) Although Syria was not the explicit context here, the speech also called the use of chemical weapons n Syria, "a threat to our own national security."