Hundreds of Nicaraguan women marched in Managua on Sept. 28 to demand that the government of President Daniel Ortega Saavedra veto a new law establishing a prison sentence of one to three years for anyone who performs any type of abortion, and one to two years for any woman who consents to the procedure. Calling for civil disobedience and chanting "They didn't respect our lives, we won't respect their laws," the protesters marched to the headquarters of the leftist Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), which Ortega leads. The marchers, who carried coffins and images of crucified women, also protested in front of the Supreme Court of Justice and the National Assembly. The march was organized by the Autonomous Women's Movement as part of the Day of the Decriminalization of Abortion in Latin America and the Caribbean.

More than 100,000 Costa Ricans marched against the pending Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) in the capital, San José, Sept. 30, chanting "Costa Rica is not for sale!" Some were dressed as skeletons, or wore masks of President Bush and handed out fake dollar bills, lampooning US trade policies. It was the largest protest in the recent history of Costa Rica, a country of 4 million.

On Sept. 25 the Ways and Means Committee of the US House of Representatives voted to approve the US-Peru Free Trade Agreement (FTA, or TLC in Spanish), moving the agreement closer to approval by the full Congress. The bilateral trade accord was negotiated by the government of US president George W. Bush, a Republican; Congress is dominated by the opposition Democratic Party. The Peruvian Congress ratified the treaty in 2006 despite strong opposition from campesino, indigenous and labor groups.

Tens of thousands of people mobilized throughout Argentina on Sept. 20 to demand that human rights witness Jorge Julio Lopez, who disappeared on Sept. 18, 2006, be returned alive. More than 20,000 people marched in Buenos Aires from the Congress to the Plaza de Mayo; marches also took place in La Plata, Rosario and Cordoba. The Memory, Truth and Justice Encounter, which organized the Buenos Aires event, read a document at the Plaza de Mayo declaring: "With the struggle we have achieved the repeal of the impunity laws and the ongoing trials of more than 300 human rights violators; with the struggle we won the sentencing of Miguel Osvaldo Etchecolatz to a life sentence in a common prison until the end of his days, and that for the first time a court recognizes that there was a genocide in our country. The price the genocidal murderers want to make us pay for these victories is the kidnapping and disappearance of one of the witnesses of that trial, our comrade Jorge Julio Lopez." (Argentina Indymedia, Sept. 20)

Our September issue featured the story "The Israel Lobby & Global Hegemony: Revisited" by WW4R editor Bill Weinberg, arguing that "Israel replicates the historical cycles of Jewish scapegoating by serving as imperialism's proxy." Refuting the thesis of John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt in their new book, The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, Weinberg contends that the Iraq adventure is fundamentally a war for control of oil. "Yet even the anti-war left increasingly chases after shadows like the supposed Zionist conspiracy, abandoning principles of anti-imperialism," Weinberg writes. He accuses Mearsheimer and Walt of belonging to a tradition of "nativist xenophobia," and warns that the eventual backlash against Israel could come in "an orgy of anti-Jewish hatred which will only play into the hands of Israel's advocates of 'transfer,' finishing off the work of ethnic cleansing that began in 1948." Our September Exit Poll was: "Mearsheimer and Walt: Heroic truth-tellers or right-wing conspiracy theorists?" We received the following responses:

A commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guards died after an ambush on Sept. 20 by Ahwazi militants. Mehdi Bayat was killed near the Revolutionary Guards base in Hamidiyah, near Ahwaz City in western Khuzestan province, where Iran's Ahwazi Arab minority have launched a struggle for autonomy or independence. Bayat was a commanding officer responsible for training members of the Bassij militia in Khaffajiyah. The town of Khaffajiyah has witnessed a number of disturbances by Ahwazi Arab groups which have been brutally put down by the Revolutionary Guards' elite Ashura Brigades.

Former US Federal Reserve chief Alan Greenspan famously spills the beans in his new memoir, The Age of Turbulence: "I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil." (London Times, Sept. 16) On her blog Sept. 25, Arianna Huffington lauds leftist icon Naomi Klein for calling out Greenspan on this point in a Sept. 24 interview with him on Democracy Now: "Are you aware that, according to the Hague Regulations and the Geneva Conventions, it is illegal for one country to invade another over its natural resources?" (Contrast Ann Coulter's "Why not go to war just for oil? We need oil! What do Hollywood celebrities imagine fuels their private jets? How do they think their cocaine is delivered to them?")

From the Center for Constitutional Rights, Sept. 24:

On September 24, 2007, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) submitted a petition to the Supreme Court asking it to intervene in the case of Libyan Guantánamo client Abdul Ra'ouf Al Qassim and prevent his transfer to Libya, where he would likely be tortured and possibly killed.