The ongoing indigenous uprising in Ontario perculates up into the New York Times, Aug. 17. The Times gets a B for at least including some historical context, but a failing grade for consistency, having largely ignored this crisis for months, and finally slapping it in their "Journal" slot, for off-beat "local color" stories. They could have got an A for historical context if they were more accurate—the Six Nations (also known as the Iroquois or Haudenosaunee Confederacy) were officially neutral in the American Revolution, and the campaign of ethnic cleansing that George Washington ordered against them (led by Gen. John Sullivan) was in response to guerilla activity by the Mohawk chief Joseph Brant and his band of partisans—not the Confederacy as a whole. The Times also fails to inform readers that the British had effectively won Indian sympathies by promising to halt settler colonization west of the Appalachians—as we have noted.

The 9,500 workers at Volkswagen's giant plant in the state of Puebla went on strike Aug. 18 after rejecting the company's offer of a 4.5% pay raise coupled with demands for increased "labor flexibility." Talks remained stalled on Aug. 19, but the workers reportedly expected the strike not to last more than 72 hours, as was the case in 2004.

Some 60 masked and mostly armed men, including "porros" (provocaterus) and municipal police, took over the local office of the Oaxaca daily newspaper Noticias in the town of Santa Cruz Amilpas Aug. 20. The municipal government is in the hands of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), but nine days earlier, a group loyal to the Popular People's Assembly of Oaxaca (APPO), which is demanding the resignation of the state's PRI governor, Ulises Ruiz, had seized control of the town hall. (La Jornada, Aug. 21 via Chiapas95)

From AP via the Houston Chronicle, Aug. 21:

Volunteers plan to man Texas border

SAN ANTONIO — Hundreds of volunteers plan to keep watch over the Texas-Mexico border near Laredo beginning Sept. 11, aiding the U.S. Border Patrol's effort to stop illegal immigration.

From New Jersey's Herald News, Aug. 16, also online at DeleteTheBorder.org:

Detainee report 'too damning' to release?

Nearly eight months after the Department of Homeland Security said it would issue the first official report on the treatment of immigrants in federal detention, immigrant-rights advocates are wondering what's taking so long.

On Aug. 15, at the Adalberto United Methodist Church in Chicago's Humboldt Park neighborhood, immigrant activist Elvira Arellano told supporters she would not report to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) office that day for deportation, as she had been ordered to do by 9 AM. Instead, she announced she would take sanctuary in the church, with the support of the pastor and her fellow parishioners, in an effort to remain in the US with her seven-year-old son, a US citizen. (Chicago Tribune, Aug. 15)

Sometimes you have to look at your opponent's propaganda to get a realistic sense of your own side's weaknesses—call it an inoculation against groupthink. A case in point is this Aug. 21 analysis of the recent court ruling on the Bush telephone surveillance program from TCS Daily (for "Technology, Commerce, Society"). For the suppoedly "libertarian" wing of the free-market right, these guys show little outrage at government snooping. But this piece does reveal why the Detroit district court's ruling is ultimately a weak defense of freedom. The note of "optimism" that this piece ends on is worrisome. Emphasis added.

Hard to say if this is more bizarre or terrifying. Talk about the banality of evil. What about the evil of banality? From Reuters, Aug. 21:

MUMBAI, India - A new restaurant in India’s financial hub, named after Adolf Hitler and promoted with posters showing the German leader and Nazi swastikas, has infuriated the country’s small Jewish community.