On Sept. 14, the House of Representatives voted 283-138 in favor of a bill calling for construction of 700 miles of double-layered fencing along several sections of the 2,000-mile US border with Mexico: around Tecate and Calexico, California; along most of the Arizona stretch; and in heavily populated areas of Texas and New Mexico. All but six House Republicans joined 64 Democrats in approving the bill. The bill requires the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to prevent "all unlawful entries" into the US within 18 months after the bill is enacted; urges DHS to allow Border Patrol agents to forcibly disable fleeing vehicles; provides for more cameras, ground sensors and unmanned aerial vehicles; and orders a study on security at the northern border with Canada to determine whether a fence is needed there. (Los Angeles Times, Washington Times, Sept. 15) The fence measure was already included in HR 4437, which passed the House last Dec. 16. The nearly 2,000-mile US-Mexico border currently has about 75 miles of fencing. (Washington Post, Sept. 15)

Hundreds of thousands of Mexicans marked Independence Day on Sept. 16 by holding a massive meeting, which they called the "Democratic National Convention" (CND), in Mexico City's main plaza, the Zocalo. The crowd voted up plans to carry on a nonviolent struggle against Felipe Calderon Hinojosa, official winner of the July 2 presidential election, who is to start his six-year term on Dec. 1. The convention declared center-left candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador the "legitimate president" of Mexico and announced that he will be inaugurated on Nov. 20, the 96th anniversary of the start of the 1910 Mexican Revolution.

On Sept. 6, Chile's Senate voted 20-13 with two abstentions against a bill introduced by Socialist senator Alejandro Navarro which would have granted conditional release to jailed Mapuche activists. In May, four Mapuche political prisoners ended a 70-day hunger strike on the promise that the bill would be approved. Navarro said the bill sought to "correct an injustice" imposed on the Mapuche activists when they were given harsh sentences under a widely criticized anti-terrorism law. (Adital, Sept. 11; La Nacion, Sept. 6; El Mostrador, Sept. 6)

Kyrgyzstan briefly surfaced in the headlines following the case of Air Force Major Jill Metzger of North Carolina, assigned to the US base at Manas, who managed to escape after being kidnapped Sept. 5. But the US media pays little heed to the growing signs of a looming social explosion in Central Asia, where the Pentagon has maintained a large presence since 9-11. Taalaibek Amanov writes for the Institute for War & Peace Reporting, Sept. 14:

Freedom's on the march in the USA's closest South Asian ally. From the UK's Independent, Sept. 12, via Common Dreams:

In a setback for women's rights in Pakistan, the ruling party in Islamabad has caved in to religious conservatives by dropping its plans to reform rape laws.

From AP via Qatar's The Peninsula, Sept. 15 (link added):

PARIS — Al Qaeda has for the first time announced a union with an Algerian insurgent group that has designated France as an enemy, saying they will act together against French and American interests.

US researchers writing in the peer-reviewed journal Science maintain that more than 200,000 people have died in Sudan's Darfur conflict, much higher than most previous estimates. Says Dr. John Hagan of Northwestern University: "We've tried to find a way of working between those overestimations and underestimations. We believe the procedures we have used have allowed us to come to very conservative and cautious conclusions which we used to try to identify a floor to these estimates—a floor figure of 200,000. We do not believe it is possible or defensible to go below in estimating the scale of this genocide."

As populist leaders in Bolivia and Venezuela are determined to nationalize their oil industries, Colombia's government is insisting on a privatization plan for its state-run oil company. By selling off 20% of Ecopetrol, Colombia hopes to net some $5 billion and finance new exploration to boost production, according to Armando Zamora, president of the National Hydrocarbon agency. He warns that if more crude isn't discovered soon, Colombia will begin importing oil in 2011, with devastating results for the government's finances, which depended on Ecopetrol for 7% of last year's $41 billion budget. In 2005, Ecopetrol had sales of close to $6.5 billion. The Colombian government is expected to release details of the sale in the coming weeks.