Teachers from the Section 22 union local in Mexico's divided southern state of Oaxaca launched blockades and occupations of government offices throughout the state Feb. 20, demanding that their members be allowed back into 250 schools where authorities have installed teachers from the rival, newly-formed Section 59. (APRO, Feb. 21) In Oaxaca City, followers of the Popular People's Assembly of Oaxaca (APPO) occupied the offices of the state Government Secretary in solidarity with the Section 22 teachers. APPO followers also seized government offices at more than 20 locations around the state. (El Universal, Feb. 22) Violence was reported in Juchitan, where hundreds of Section 22 and Section 59 teachers battled with rocks and clubs for control of a local school. (APRO, Feb. 20; La Jornada, Feb. 21) As of Feb. 23, the protesters remained in control of several government offices throughout the state, but Government Secretary Teofilo Manuel Garcia Corpus said force could be used to remove them. (La Jornada, Feb. 23)

Dick Cheney in Australia he gave an interview to the national ABC network's PM program Feb. 23, in which he invoked Anglo racial solidarity in the most blatant terms—and raised the threat of a new Caliphate stretching from Spain to Indonesia. The PM headline, actually not quoting Cheney verbatim, invoked a "terrorist caliphate." The relevant passage follows.

The latest entry in the wave of dangerously specious terror cases is giving us deja vu. Like Jose Padilla, Daniel Maldonado is a Latino convert to Islam. Like John Walker Lindh in Afghanistan, he is accused of bearing arms for Islamist forces in Somalia, but seems to have not actually done any fighting. He is from small-town New Hampshire, of all places. Most tellingly, if his statements are to be believed, he is a case study in how extremist jihadism and the near-official climate of Islamophobia merely fuel each other in a vicious cycle. From the Eagle Tribune of North Andover, MA, Feb. 23:

Arab Monitor calls the brief detainment by US forces of a son of Shiite leader Abdul Aziz al-Hakim "a message to SCIRI," the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq. Washington has got to be uneasy that its allies in Iraq are the faction traditionallly backed by Iran. Maybe this was an intentional ritual humiliation to show who's really boss. Feb. 23:

The US denies it, of course, but the evidence seems pretty convincing. From AP, Feb. 23:

BAGHDAD - U.S. troops battled insurgents in fierce fighting that killed at least 12 people in the volatile Sunni city of Ramadi, the military said yesterday. Iraqi authorities said the dead included women and children.

The Taliban is prepared for an ambitious spring offensive, the military leader of the Islamist milita boasted in a new interview with AlJazeera TV. "The attack is imminent," said Mullah Dadullah. "The number of Taliban mujahedin who are ready to launch the spring battle has reached 6,000." He added that the Taliban have prepared tunnels where their fighters are hiding as they wait for the opening of the offensive. He also said the Taliban force wold grow as NATO sends more troops to Afghanistan, predicting it will reach 10,000 fighters. "The more the number of Jewish and Christian soldiers who fight us increases, the more the Afghan people will be encouraged to join us." (DPA, Feb. 22 via Qatar's Gulf Times, Feb. 23)

The New York Times' increasingly questionable Michael R. Gordon has yet another report Feb. 23 (with Mark Mazzetti) based largely on anonymous sources. But this one, "U.S. Used Bases in Ethiopia to Hunt Al Qaeda in Africa," is just telling us what an astute reading-between-the-lines could have gleaned from previous reportage from the Horn of Africa. It does, however, have some vindicating tidbits for those of us who were prematurely correct in warning of a US proxy war in the Horn. Here are the relevant parts, emphasis and interjections added:

We noted that the current (Feb. 22) issue of The Economist has an uncharacteristically favorable article on Eritrea, saying it can "help or hinder progress in the Horn." The same issue has an equally uncharacteristic slap at the rival Ethiopian regime, asking "Should the West go on helping a repressive Ethiopia?" It starts out with an outline of aid projects in Ethiopia, as if "the West's" only interest in Africa was fighting poverty. Only at the very end does it mention the strategic struggle in Somalia which is driving the West's alliance with Addis Ababa. This is pretty indicting, but we smell empty hand-wringing—or, at best, a warning that Meles Zenawi may not prove to be a stable proxy in the long run... An excerpt from The Economist: