A package of amendments to Egypt's constitution was overwhelmingly approved in a nationwide referendum March 27—but with only 27% turn-out due to a popular boycott. The country's leading rights group, the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights, put the figure even lower, estimating that only 2-3 percent of the electorate had voted five hours before polls closed. Ironically, Hosni Mubarak praised the vote: "I would like to stress that democracy is not achieved only through the constitutional and legal texts, but by the real expansion of grassroot participation."

Masked men on a motorcycle opened fire on an army vehicle in the Bajaur region of Pakistan's Tribal Areas March 26, killing five members of the military's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), including a major and an assistant director. Bajaur, one of Pakistan's seven federally administered tribal zones bordering Afghanistan, was the scene of an air-strike on a school in October 2006 that killed 80 people. In January 2006, a purported CIA missile strike in the same area, reportedly aimed at al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, killed 18 people.

The New York Times' March 24 review of a new exhibit on the Abraham Lincoln Brigade at the Museum of the City of New York is a depressingly sinister and hypocritical piece of propaganda. Entitled "The Spanish Civil War: Black and White in a Murky, Ambiguous World" by Edward Rothstein, the piece pokes smarmy fun at the heroic and paints the critical precursor struggle to World War II with a bogus moral equivalism. Rothstein comes close to a fascism-wasn't-so-bad-after-all position, which is particularly frightening when so many of its characteristics (aggressive wars, secret prisons) are once again in evidence.

The aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis entered the Persian Gulf March 27, where it will conduct a joint exercise with the Dwight D. Eisenhower, which has been in the Gulf since October. The air wings of the two carrier groups will conduct a joint exercise while surface ships will hold exercises in anti-submarine, anti-surface ship and mine warfare. The Stennis is escorted by the guided-missile cruiser USS Antietam.

Abdul Malik, an al-Qaeda suspect accused of involvement in terrorist attacks in Kenya in 2002 has been handed over to US custody by Kenyan authoirites and transported to Guantanamo Bay due to the "significant threat" he represented, said Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman. He said Malik has admitted involvement in a hotel bombing and for trying to shoot down an Israeli jetliner with 271 people on board. The attack on Mombassa's Hotel Paradise, a resort popular with Israeli tourists, killed over a dozen people. Malik is the first detainee to be transferred to Guantanamo since September 2006, when 14 al-Qaeda suspects arrived from secret US prisons overseas. Whitman said Malik was held at US military prisons before being taken to Guantanamo, not secret CIA prisons. (AlJazeera, March 27)

Two suicide car bombs exploded near the home of a tribal leader in the Abu Ghraib district west of Baghdad March 27, killing the sheikh's son and several other people. Sheikh Thahir al-Dari, whose home was targeted, is the head of the al-Zobaie tribe and belongs to a group opposed to al-Qaeda. Salam al-Zobaie, Iraq's deputy prime minister who survived an assassination bid last week, belongs to al-Dari's tribe. (AlJazeera, March 27)

More than 18,000 Afghan refugees in Pakistan have returned home since the UN High Commissioner foor Refugees (UNHCR) started this year's voluntary repatriation to Afghanistan, officials announced March 23. "They have been given a grace period from March 1 to April 15 to repatriate voluntarily with assistance," UNHCR said, adding that Afghans who did not register during the 15-week period and thus do not have Proof of Registration (PoR) cards, will be considered illegal migrants and will be subject to prosecution. UNHCR says there are still some 2.15 million Afghan citizens in Pakistan. (UNHCR press release, March 23)

The March English edition of Le Monde Diplomatique has an in-depth story on the state of the world's oil industry, "Hydrocarbon nationalism: States claim back their energy reserves," which sheds much light on the underlying imperatives for the Iraq adventure. The critical point: Outside of the US and northern Europe, oil production is now generally 60% or more state-owned. Russia was manipulated down to 30-odd percent under Yeltsin, but Putin (by rather draconian means) has boosted it back over 50%. This is one reason Iraq is so crucial: if the US still gets its way somehow, it will be the first significant reversal of this trend. Relevant passages: