Ten prostitutes in the Bolivian highland city of El Alto sewed their lips together Oct. 24 as part of a hunger strike to demand that the mayor reopen brothels and bars ordered closed after angry protests by residents. Some 30 more are participating in the hunger strike, fasting inside a local medical clinic. "We are fighting for the right to work and for our families' survival," Lily Cortez, leader of the Asociación de Trabajadoras Nocturnas de El Alto (Association of Nighttime Workers of El Alto), told local television. "Tomorrow we will bury ourselves alive if we are not immediately heard. The mayor will have his conscience to answer to if there are any grave consequences, such as the death of my comrades." Prostitution is legal and government-regulated in Bolivia, but El Alto Mayor Fanor Nava says he is responding to a popular mandate in his move to shut the brothels. The sex workers are also demanding an investigation into recent arson attacks on bars and brothels in the city, and have threatened to march naked through the streets of La Paz, the nearby national capital. (Reuters; La Gaceta, Tucumán, Argentina, Oct. 25; AFP; La Razón, La Paz, Oct. 24)

With all the focus on the crisis over Kurdish separatist rebels taking refuge in northern Iraq, largely overlooked are the multiple reasons that Turkey's Kurds have to be discontented. We noted two years ago the pressures on eastern Turkey's peoples from the Ataturk Dam. Now more Kurdish lands are being expropriated for the Ilisu Dam, as noted by a recent European fact-finding mission to Anatolia. From Kurdish Media, Oct. 23:

With an Iraqi delegation in Ankara to discuss the standoff over PKK rebels in northern Iraq, Turkish war planes and helicopters reportedly bombed guerilla bases within Iraq's borders Oct. 26. However, even as the state-run Anatolia news agency reported the air-strikes, top military commander Gen. Yasar Buyukanit said that day that Turkish leaders will wait until Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan meets President Bush in Washington on Nov. 5 before deciding whether to mount a cross-border offensive into Iraq. "The armed forces will carry out a cross-border offensive when assigned," private NTV quoted Gen. Yasar Buyukanit as saying. "Prime Minister Erdogan's visit to the United States is very important. We will wait for his return." Turkey's deputy prime minister Cemil Cicek said his government has demanded the extradition of Kurdish rebel leaders based in Iraq's north. Asked what the US military was planning to do, Maj. Gen. Benjamin Mixon, commander of US forces in northern Iraq, said: "Absolutely nothing." (AP, Oct. 27)

Predictably, a front-page Wall Street Journal story Oct. 25 bashes native plant advocate Richard Halsey of the California Chaparral Institute as a culprit behind the devastating Southern California fires that have left half a million displaced. The article also approvingly cites LA County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky blasting the California Coastal Commission for adopting Halsey's sentimental ideas. Writes the Journal: "In the 15 or so wildfires that have ravaged hundreds of square miles in Southern California in the past few days, chaparral has been the primary fuel. Whipped by strong winds, the fire has spread across this vegetation, consuming some 1,500 homes along the way."

The "Old Order" Amish of the Pennsylvania Dutch country still refuse to use automobiles. Maybe they have the right idea. From AP, Oct. 22:

INDIANAPOLIS -- A tire blowout may have caused a van carrying passengers from an Amish community to flip over on a highway, killing three children and two adults, police said Monday. Eleven others were injured in the crash.

This Patrick Cockburn report is entitled "Baghdad may be unable to stop attacks by PKK fighters," but the more relevant question may be whether the regional Kurdish government which is the real power in northern Iraq has any real desire to—or if they don't have more sympathy for the PKK than for Turkey (or USA). From the UK Independent, Oct 24:

We've already had to warn the heroic Buddhist dissidents of Burma and colonized Uighur people of China's far west against allowing themselves to be exploited as propaganda fodder by the Bush White House. Now it seems we have to warn the Dalai Lama—whose official website boasts the text of his Oct. 17 Capitol Hill acceptance speech upon being awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. It is truly perverse to witness a single news story in the Los Angeles Times that day in which Bush defends his decision to attend the ceremony for the Dalai Lama (and to hold a private schmoozing session with him at the White House a day earlier)—while calling the Armenian genocide bill "counterproductive" meddling in Turkish affairs! This double standard should clue the Dalai Lama in that he is being used. Turkey is a strategic ally that Bush needs keep on good terms to stabilize Iraq—and, at this moment, to restrain from threatened military incursions into Iraqi Kurdistan. China is an imperial rival in the critical scramble for Africa's oil—and the key nation now falling under the rubric of the 1992 Pentagon "Defense Planning Guide" drawn up by Paul Wolfowitz and Scooter Libby which said the US must "discourage advanced industrial nations from challenging our leadership or even aspiring to a larger regional or global role."

President Bush already has called the GWOT "World War III." Now he again invokes the phrase—but in a more conventional sense, arguing that it looms in the future if Iran devlops the atomic bomb. Of course, a pre-emptive attack to (ostensibly) prevent Iran from getting the bomb is a surer and faster route to global conflagration. Additionally, as we have repeatedly noted, more sophisticated minds count the GWOT as World War 4, arguing that the Cold War was World War III. Note that Bush also scapegoats Iran for the high price of oil—which actually has more to do with the mess that he himself created, with similar propaganda, in Iraq. From the pan-Arab al-Bawaba, Oct. 17: