Bill Weinberg

Bolivia: conspiracy against constitutional reform?

From Prensa Latina, Aug. 14:

LA PAZ -- Bolivian government denounced indications of a conspiracy by economic power groups against the Constituent Assembly to open works in the southern city of Sucre on Tuesday.

Bolivia halts hydrocarbon nationalization

From AP, Aug. 14:

LA PAZ -- Bolivia's decision to suspend a plan to nationalize its oil and gas industry has reinforced doubts about the ability of its state-run energy company to manage the country's gas reserves.

Chiapas mushroom poisonings point to ecological crisis

We noted one year ago a heart-rending case of indigenous peasants in Mexico's southern state of Chiapas dying after eating a stew of apparently poisonous mushrooms. The peasants were driven by hunger and failed harvests to gather wild mushrooms (which have little nutritional value in any case). Another such tragic case was reported earlier this month, with the ominous conclusion that the mushrooms of Chiapas are mutating—explaining how indigenous inhabitants who know the local flora intimately could make such a fatal error. From AP, Aug. 4:

Cuba Five appeal denied

In a 10-2 decision released late on Aug. 9, the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, Georgia, turned down an appeal on behalf of the "Cuban Five," a group of Cubans sentenced to lengthy prison terms in 2001 for allegedly seeking to carry out espionage in the US. Their lawyers said the Cubans shouldn't have been tried in Miami, where sentiment against Cuba's leftist government made a fair trial impossible. A three-judge panel of the same appeals court sided with the Cuban Five in a decision exactly one year earlier, on Aug. 9, 2005, but the full court overturned that ruling on Oct. 31 and, in an unusual move, agreed to have all 12 members hear the appeal

Chiapas: Acteal killers get 25 years

From El Universal, Aug. 12 via Chiapas95:

SAN CRISTOBAL DE LAS CASAS, CHIAPAS -- A judge has imposed long prison terms on 50 indigenous defendants convicted of carrying out one of the most heinous crimes in past decades - the 1997 butchering of 45 other indigenous people, mostly women and children, as they prayed in a southern hamlet. Despite the sentences announced Thursday, the motive for the slaughter and its possible instigation by erstwhile authorities remain shrouded.

2nd Circuit upholds subway searches

One year after the hysteria that followed the London bombings, we are treated to yet another terrorist scare emanating from the UK, with the alleged plot to blow up airliners mid-flight by mixing combustible liquids, supposedly discovered in the nick of time. While that dominates the headlines (much more so, note, than the real terrorist carnage in Mumbai, which generated barely a media flicker compared to the significantly less deadly London attacks), buried in the inner pages of even the New York papers comes another turn of the screw they started tightening a year ago. From the New York Daily News, Aug. 12:

Lopez Obrador takes case to NYT op-ed page

Lopez Obrador, the leftist presidential candidate who is leading militant protests in Mexico to challenge what he calls a fraudulent defeat in the July 2 elections, takes his case to the New York Times op-ed page Aug. 11:

Recounting Our Way to Democracy

by Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador

NOT since 1910, when another controversial election sparked a revolution, has Mexico been so fraught with political tension.

Oaxaca: escalation follows assassination of activist

Protesters held four people captive for hours Aug. 11, charging they were behind the assassination of a protester in the conflicted southern Mexican state of Oaxaca. The Federal Agency of Investigation said protesters were finally induced to turn the captives over to its agents at a local television station that had been seized by the protesters. The protesters demand the four be charged in the death of Jose Jimenez, 50, who was killed the previous day during a march by the Popular Assembly of the State of Oaxaca (APPO) calling for the resignation of Gov. Ulises Ruiz. The shots were fired from a house as the march of some 8,000 protesters passed; protesters later set fire to the house. Jimenez, a mechanic and the husband of a striking teacher, was dead on arrival at hospital. APPO, which accuses the governor of using force to repress dissent and rigging the 2004 election to win office, charged Ruiz was behind the shooting. The governor denied the allegations and condemned the violence. (Seattle Times, AP, Aug. 12; La Jornada, Aug. 11) The Oaxaca state government has threatened to arrest all APPO leaders. Four have already been arrested, and APPO charges three more were "disappeared" the night of Aug. 10 (La Jornada, Aug. 11) One of the arrested APPO leaders, German Mendoza Nube, is a paraplegic who suffers from diabetes. Witnesses say he was beaten with a rifle butt when he was arrested by plainclothes state police. (La Jornada, Aug. 10)

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