The April 28 suicide car blast in Karbala occurred at a checkpoint on an approach to the city's golden-domed Al-Abbas shrine, amid crowded shops and restaurants near the Shi'ite holy site. "Once again the dark forces and terrorists have targeted the city of Karbala," Abdulaal al-Yasiry, head of the Karbala Provincial Council, told state Iraqiya television. "Security forces do not have adequate training... The terrorists have started to come up with creative attacks so that it’s impossible for police to uncover them." Karbala is one of Iraq’s best protected cities because of its holy status. Nonetheless, a suicide car bomber killed 40 people at a crowded bus station in the same area on April 14 (prompting the Sadr faction to pull out of Iraq's government). (Gulf Times, April 29) Karbala and Shi'ite pilgrims were also massively targeted during the Ashura celebrations once again this year. In the wake of this latest atrocity, the various factions are once again blaming each other. How long before the government finally collapses—at which point we can start "officially" calling this a "civil war"? From The Star, South Africa, April 30:

We agree that there is something utterly perverse about the fact that the Darfur genocide is now entering its fifth year, as the world stands by and watches. And of course the vast majority of those participating in the Global Day for Darfur actions are well-intentioned. But a part of what makes the situation perverse is the increasingly surreal spectacle of celebrity and "Holocaust Industry" (TM Norman Finkelstein) exploitation of the genocide. That Yad Vashem, Israel's official Holocuast memorial, can moralize about Darfur while remaining silent about the oppression of the Palestinians far closer to home only confirms our cynicism. From Haaretz, April 30:

So much for all the incessant Republican balther about how "We're fighting them in Iraq so we don't have to fight them here at home." The terrorists love the GWOT. It is their biggest recuiting and propaganda tool, their very lifeblood. For yet another consecutive year, the State Department finds a dramatic increase in global terrorist attacks. Of course the biggest increase is in Iraq. By Republican "logic," this means the terrorists are so busy there they don't have the time or resources to attack the US "homeland." Or has Iraq, on the contrary, become a recuiting and training ground—by al-Qaeda's own admission a "university of terrorism"? And in any case, is Iraqi blood somehow worth less? The GWOT is, by the State Department's own statistics, making the world a more dangerous place. But this analysis, from the warmakers themselves, will not stop it—because, as we have repeatedly argued, it is not about protecting American (much less merely human) lives, it is about preserving US global hegemony. From McClatchy Newspapers, April 27:

The Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas Human Rights Center (Frayba), based in the Highlands of Mexico's conflicted southern Chiapas state, has issued a new report charging that 13 years after an armed uprising in the state, the roots of the conflict still prevail. The report, "Armed Conflict and its Actors in 2006," finds a resurgence of paramilitary activity, especially attacks on Zapatista communities and attempts to evict them from their lands. The Zapatistas have observed a truce since shortly after their New Years Day 1994 rebellion. Noting that the Zapatistas have concentrated over the past year on an unarmed civil initiative, the "Other Campaign," the report protests that "Military...actions have intensified against...social protest and...organizations that have opted for the construction of a civil and pacific national movement." The report finds that a de facto "state of exception" has persisted in Chiapas despite federal administrations in Mexico City coming and going.

The Mexican senate has passed a package of reforms to Article 139 of the Federal Penal Code modeled on anti-terrorist legislation in the United States—above the objections of the left-opposition PRD, PT and Convergence, whose legislators assailed the changes as "criminalizing social protest." Under the changes, any act of violence aimed at influencing government policy is classified as terrorism, with a penatly of six to 40 years in prison. (La Jornada, April 27)

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has announced details of an arms build-up which he says will include a sophisticated missile defense system. "We're going to have a tremendous air-defense system, and with with missiles capable of reaching 200 kilometers," Chavez said during a televised speech April 27 at a military academy in Caracas. He boasted the plan "will convert Venezuela into a nation truly invulnerable to any external threat, invulnerable to any plan of aggression."

Iran's Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, on a tour of Latin America, stopped in Nicaragua April 23, where President Daniel Ortega expressed his support for Tehran's nuclear program. "All countries should be allowed to access peaceful nuclear technology and this right is not just for some countries," Ortega said. "What my country is against is using nuclear energy for military purposes, like the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II." Without explicitly saying that the phrase came from Ortega, Iran's Press TV said the Nicaraguan leader called for lifting the state of "nuclear apartheid." (Press TV, April 23)

Gov. Ulises Ruiz of Oaxaca has called upon Mexican military authorities to investigate a new guerilla group which has announced its existence the in conflicted southern state. In a message posted to the website of the Spain-based Documentation Center for Armed Movements (CDMA), the Popular Revolutionary Brigade of the South (BPRS) announced its existence and support of the demands of Popular People's Assembly of Oaxaca (APPO), a civil coalition demanding the ouster of Gov. Ruiz. The BPRS said that a "decadent political system" is forcing the people to turn to armed struggle, accusing Ruiz of "ignominy and unheard-of barbarity." (ADN Sureste, April 26; Xinhua, Vanguardia, April 25)