Are we terrified yet? From AP, Sept. 29, emphasis added:

BAGHDAD - Al-Qaida in Iraq's leader, in a chilling audiotape released Thursday, called for nuclear scientists to join his group's holy war and urged insurgents to kidnap Westerners so they could be traded for a blind Egyptian sheik who is serving a life sentence in a U.S. prison.

Freedom's on the march in America's NATO ally and GWOT partner. Perhaps someone will have some well-chosen words for the current US president in the guestbook at Monticello. From the Al-Jazeera, Sept. 27:

A Turkish court has fined an elderly man 10,000 Turkish lira ($6,700) for criticising the prime minister in a visitors' book at the former home of Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey.

Freedom's on the march in liberated Iraq. From the New York Times, Sept. 29:

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Ahmed al-Karbouli, a reporter for Baghdadiya TV in the violent city of Ramadi, did his best to ignore the death threats, right up until six armed men drilled him with bullets after midday prayers.

From the Reuters, Sept. 30:

BAGHDAD - Iraq’s government shut down the capital with a one-day curfew on Saturday, ordering all cars and pedestrians off the streets and giving no reason for the measure.

From CBC, Sept. 21:

A North American security meeting was secretly held in Banff last week, attracting high-profile officials from the United States, Mexico and Canada.

Shops, gas-stations, hotels and restaurants shut down as part of a 48-hour strike seeking to pressure the federal government to intervene in the Oaxaca crisis Sept. 28, triggering long lines as residents stocked up on supplies. Meanwhile, followers of the Popular People's Assembly of Oaxaca (APPO) declared a "maximum alert," reinforced their street barricades and readied piles of Molotov cocktails. (The Guardian, Sept. 29)

Ominous news, and a different perpective from our usual left-wing Mexican sources like La Jornada and APRO. Will the Popular People's Assembly of Oaxaca be put down by armed force before the December presidential transition? Whatever antipathy may exist between the PAN-led federal government and the PRI state government the People's Assembly opposes, we should have known better than to think Fox would allow Calderon to begin his term with a state of parallel power persisting in the Oaxaca's capital. From the conservative MexiData:

We again point out the surreal irony that Pakistan, the closest US ally in the region, is serving as a staging ground for the anti-US insurgency in Afghanistan. This report indicates that the actual Taliban leadership which was chased out of Afghanistan almost exactly five years ago has seized power in Pakistan's border region of Waziristan. And we also point out the intractable nature of the problem: if Musharraf seriously moves to oust the Taliban there, he will almost certainly face a tribal insurgency war in Waziristan, and may even face a coup attempt from the pro-Islamist elements of his own military. From Newsday, Sept. 27 (emphasis added):