Indigenous leaders in Peru's Amazon region of Madre de Dios Sept. 13 issued a joint statement rejecting a Hunt Oil contract on their traditional territories. Antonio Iviche, president of the Native Federation of the Río Madre de Dios (FENAMAD), warned that if Hunt Oil doesn't quit the territory within a week, indigenous communities will physically expel them. The statement was released following a meeting with Hunt representatives at FENAMAD's offices in the regional capital, Puerto Maldonado. Hunt is currently opening trails in preparation seismic exploration within the local indigenous reserve, while FENAMAD has gone to court seeking an injunction to halt the work. The controversy comes as dialogue between Peru's national government and Amazon indigenous leaders continues in Lima in the wake of a rainforest uprising that left several dead in June.

In the early 1960s, Hugo Blanco launched Peru's first agrarian reform, as an initiative of self-organized campesinos in the valleys of La Convención and Lares in Cuzco department, where an oppressive feudalistic share-cropping system had been in place for generations. When this movement to take back the land was met with repression, he formed a campesino self-defense militia which was the first armed struggle of the radical left in Peru. Captured and sentenced to life in prison in 1962, he was released and exiled following the populist military coup of Gen. Juan Velasco eight years later. He returned to Peru to participate in crafting the new constitution when civilian rule was restored in 1978. In 1980, he was a presidential candidate, and was serving as a senator with the United Left party when he again had to flee the country with Alberto Fujimori's suspension of democratic rule in 1992. He today publishes the journal Lucha Indigena, and is a leading voice in support of the indigenous movement in Peru's Amazon.

This reporter ran into his first bit of trouble since arriving in Peru two weeks ago while leaving Arequipa for Lima the morning of Sept. 1. The only bus that left at the time I needed to go was also the cheapest—which I knew meant it would stop at every village and crossroads to pick up passengers. It was rickety, dirty and cramped, and packed full of Peruvian budget travellers—including three middle-aged Quechua women in traditional dress. One of them was openly sobbing as she hugged a relative good-bye at the station; being away from home and family was obviously a frightening prospect for her. We finally departed an hour late, after every seat had been sold. Then, to my dismay, we were halted at a checkpoint just outside the city by agents of the Fiscalía—the special investigative police...

Like their counterparts in Pakistan, Afghanistan's Taliban demonstrate once again that they aren't above blowing up their cannon fodder at mosques—during Ramadan—to enforce their supposedly purist version of Islam. Now didn't we hear somewhere, "Do not fight them at the Holy Mosque"? We've got a word of advice for these jokers: read the Koran. From the LA Times, Sept 3:

As National Police marched in a parade at the Plaza de Armas in the southern Peruvian city of Arequipa for the Santa Rosa de Lima celebration Aug. 30, peasant cooperatives from the region rallied in the middle of the square and later held their own march to protest government plans to turn state lands over to Chilean agribusiness interests. At issue are some 475 hectares of state-owned lands at Valle de Majes that the government proposes to sell to Grupo Layconsa, which is already producing artichokes for export to the US at nearby Pampabajas. "We are the owners of our lands, not the Chileans," says protest leader Luis Calderón Lindo, asserting that Layconsa is controlled by Chilean investors.

This upcoming 9-11 anniversary will mark eight years that World War 4 Report has been publishing. We have only kept it going because nobody else is doing it, and we consider it vital: a daily digest of the GWOT news from around the world, with exacting journalistic standards and a progressive neither/nor perspective equally unsparing on imperialism and the jihad. But we have to face the fact that is has utterly failed to accrue a significant readership—at least in numerical terms.

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has ordered embassies to use a photo of Adolf Hitler's 1941 meeting with the Mufti of Jerusalem to counter international criticism over a Jerusalem settlement project, a senior official told AFP July 22. "The foreign minister ordered the distribution of the photo to all embassies abroad as a response to the Shepherd Hotel incident in order to prove a well-known point that the mufti collaborated with Hitler," the official said on condition of anonymity. Foreign Ministry staff apparently opposed the move.

On July 25, the day after the vote, an opposition party claimed there had been violations in the presidential and parliamentary elections in Iraq's self-ruled Kurdish region. The opposition front called Goran ("Change") is seeking to shake up the political establishment in Iraq's three Kurdish-ruled provinces that have been dominated by two parties for decades. Early projections suggest the KDP and PUK retain their parliamentary majority, while the Goran list scored big in the city of Sulaimaniyah, a stronghold of the PUK led by Iraqi President Jalal Talabani. Change is led by Nosherwan Mustafa, a former PUK insider who broke with the party.