Anti-draft protest, Medellín

Under the slogan "Servicio Militar: Y Mi Vida, Que?" (Military Service: What About My Life?), the Colombian anti-war group Red Juvenil (Youth Network) held a rally attended by thousands of of young people at Medellín's Atanasio Girardot stadium Feb. 12. The rally was held partly to celebrate the Jan. 26 release of Carlos Andrés Giraldo Hincapié, a conscientious objector from Yondó, Antioquia department, from forced military service. Giraldo Hincapié was press-ganged into the army at the village of La Soledad in August 2006 and taken to Casabe Military Base, in what Red Juvenil calls a violation of his freedom of conscience. (Red Juvenil, Feb. 13; War Resisters International, July 18, 2007)

Just two weeks after saying he hoped oil prices would "stabilize" at under $100 a barrel, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez this week threatened to send them soaring to $200 a barrel in response to his growing dispute with Exxon. Chávez called Exxon's threat to freeze the assets of Venezuela's state oil company PDVSA part of Washington's "economic war" against his government, and vowed that Venezuela would not be intimidated. "They will never rob us again, those bandits of ExxonMobil, they are imperialist bandits, white collar criminals, corruptors of governments, over-throwers of governments, who supported the invasion and bombing of Iraq and continue supporting the genocide in Iraq," he said on his weekly TV show "Aló Presidente" Feb. 11.

US Defense Secretary Robert Gates arrived in Iraq Feb. 10 just before the first anniversary of the troop "surge." Gates said in Baghdad that he supports a pause in troop draw-downs from Iraq after about 30,000 soldiers have been sent home by July. His comment that the security situation in Baghdad remained "fragile," was emphasized by two car bombings that left 19 people dead. "I think that the notion of a brief period of consolidation and evaluation probably does make sense," he told reporters after a two-hour meeting with the US commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus. The 157,000-strong US force is officially on track to come down from 19 brigades to 15 by July, a reduction of at least 20,000 troops plus another 7,000 to 10,000 members of support units. (AFP, Feb. 12)

UN armored vehicles patrol East Timor's capital Dili under a state of emergency following an attack that critically wounded the President José Ramos-Horta Feb. 11. Ramos-Horta, who shared the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize (with Bishop Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo), was shot in the chest and stomach on the road in front of his house in an apparent coup attempt. His guards returned fire, killing wanted rebel leader Alfredo Reinado. Ramos-Horta was airlifted to an Australian hospital where surgeons said he was "extremely lucky to be alive" after they operated for three hours to remove bullet fragments and repair chest wounds. Gunmen also attacked Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao's motorcade an hour later, but he escaped unhurt.

Local schoolteacher Felipe Hernández Yuena was detained Feb. 5 in the municipal government building at Venustiano Carranza, a conflicted town in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, accused of "sedition and riot." Showing bruises on his face, arms and abdomen, Hernández Yuena said that while in custody he was beaten and tortured by masked men he believed were from military intelligence, who questioned him about whether recent anti-NAFTA protests in the state capital, Tuxtla, were organized by the clandestine Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR). (La Jornada, Feb. 7)

Jan Eliasson, UN special envoy for Darfur, warns that deployment of peacekeeping forces continues to be stalled and that rebel groups show little willingness to enter peace talks. (NYT, Feb. 9) Meanwhile, the ongoing carnage barely gets headlines anymore. This Feb. 8 Reuters account rated less than two column-inches at the bottom of page 5 in the following day's Times:

Sudanese government aircraft, army and militia attacked three towns in West Darfur state on Friday, causing heavy civilian casualties, Darfur rebels and witnesses said.

Matthew Wald reported for the New York Times Feb. 6. that the US Energy Department is subsidizing two Russian nuclear institutes at Nizhny Novgorod that are building key parts of the Bushehr reactor in Iran that Washington has spent years trying to stop. One institute, the Scientific Research Institute of Measuring Systems, is providing control systems for the Iranian plant; the other is providing hundreds of pumps and ventilation fans. Russia has agreed to take back the spent fuel from the Bushehr plant, so the plutonium cannot be recovered by the Iranians. The Energy Department is subsidizing the institutes under the Initiatives for Proliferation Prevention, set up after the collapse of the USSR to maintain control of Soviet nuclear expertise and technology.

Clearing vast tracts of land for biofuels production would hinder—not help—the effort to slow global warming, according to two new studies published in the journal Science. Although such fuels emit less greenhouse gases than fossil fuels, clearing forests and other native ecosystems releases carbon dioxide from plants and soil through fire or decomposition. Additionally, cropland absorbs less carbon than the native ecosystems it replaces.