The government of the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca apologized for the first time June 15 for a police raid on striking teachers in the central plaza of the state capital one year ago that led to Mexico's worst political unrest in years. Oaxaca Government Secretary Manuel Garcia Corpus issued the statement on behalf of Gov. Ulises Ruiz, whose refusal to negotiate with the strikers sparked the crisis. "The government of Ulises Ruiz gives the people of Oaxaca a public apology for the events that arose after the 14th," Garcia Corpus told the government news agency Notimex, refering to the police raid of June 14, 2006. (AP, June 15)

Supposed Jemaah Islamiyah leader Abu Dujana was arrested June 9 by Indonesia's elite anti-terrorist Detachment 88 in a raid in the southern Java town of Yogyakarta, authorities say. The reportedly Afghan-trained Dujana is accused of assisting and harboring Jemaah Islamiyah militants Ali Ghufron, now on death row for leading the October 2002 Bali bombings; Azahari Husin, who was killed in a police raid in 2005; and the fugitive Noordin Moh Top. He is also accused of moving arms and supporting militants in conflicted Sulawesi. Additionally, authorities also they have uncovered evidence that Dujana repeatedly wired money to the Philippines, and assert a link to Islamist insurgents on Mindanao. (Balita News, June 15)

From the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), June 13:

The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the shooting of a Mexican journalist who had received death threats in connection with his investigation of the slaying of a U.S. journalist during violent street protests last fall in the southern city of Oaxaca.

The UN is expected to release a report shortly that will shed light on human rights violations of migrants in the United States. The report will be presented to the Human Rights Council by Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Migrants Jorge Bustamante, who conducted a controversial fact-finding mission in the US from April 30 to May 17. The visit was arranged to investigate concerns including arbitrary detention, separation of families, substandard conditions of detention, procedural violations in criminal and administrative law proceedings, racial and ethnic discrimination, arbitrary and collective expulsions and violations of children’s and women’s rights. [UN press release, May 17]

From ZNet, June 12—George Monbiot's latest in his series of exchanges with Alexander Cockburn over the question of global warming:

The Conspiracy Widens
So at last, and after only seven requests, we have some references. And, to no gasps of surprise, they reveal that the "papers" on which Alexander Cockburn bases his claim that carbon dioxide doesn't cause global warming have not been published in peer-reviewed scientific journals. In fact they have not been published at all.

The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) guerillas have declared a unilateral cease-fire, while still maintaining the right to "self-defense" against Turkish forces. "We are renewing our declaration to halt attacks against the Turkish army," said PKK official Abdul Rahman Chaderchi, speaking in northern Iraq, AP reported. "We want peace and we are ready for negotiations. But if Turkey decides to attack our bases inside Turkey or inside Iraqi Kurdistan, then this unilateral cease-fire will be meaningless. If we are attacked, we will fight back and we have the ability to confront any Turkish aggression." (IraqSlogger, June 12)

Leave it to Bollywood. Someone actually went and did it. At least "Springtime for Hitler" was satire. This wasn't, I don't think. Yesterday I was eating lunch at one of the fast-food curry joints in Little India (Lexington Ave. in the 20s) and the song-and-dance romantic extravaganza on the video screen was a (presumably unintentionally) surreal offering called Lucky, No Time for Love, that got more disturbingly bizarre the longer I watched. It is actually set in present-day/near-future Russia, but the visual references are all straight outta the Final Solution. Near as I could tell (the dialogue is in Hindi without subtitles, tho I'm not sure that even makes much difference) it concerns a Hot Young Thing named Lucky (Sneha Ullal) and her older Prince Charming (Salman Khan), the offspring of Indian diplomats caught up in the chaos when a fascist uprising breaks out, and their struggle to escape the country as Russia plunges into civil war. They find the time to repeatedly break into spontaneous song and dance while trudging endlessly through war-ravaged snowclad landscapes and fleeing and fighting off jack-booted Russo-Nazi thugs. (Prince Charming inexplicably has all the martial and acrobatic skills of a James Bond, tho I don't think we are ever told he is a secret agent.) This trailer emphasizes the goo-goo-eyes mushy scenes and dance routines, giving only fleeting glimpses of the cheerfully grim sets that dominate the second half of the film—including concentration camps and terrified peasants being forcibly transfered to God-knows-where in cattle cars. In fact, the big climax is Lucky's rescue by Prince Charming from a sealed box-car full of deportees with long white beards, babushkas and teary-eyed children. (Hey, as long as Hot Young Thing gets away, who cares about the rest?)

In what is being hailed as a landmark decision, a 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals panel ruled 2-1 that the federal Military Commissions Act doesn't strip Ali al-Marri, a legal US resident, of his constitutional right to challenge his accusers in court, and that the government must allow him to be released from military detention.