From the Grassroots Palestinian Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign, June 16th, 2005 (online at Stop The Wall):

Villagers of Marda Continue To Resist Settler Bypass Road

Thirty villagers were injured today during clashes with Occupation Forces in Marda, in the east of Salfit district. Villagers were demonstrating against the theft of their lands by the Apartheid Wall and the Jewish-only bypass road system that together will almost completely encircle the village.

Several hundreds villagers marched to lands in the northwest of Marda, which are being confiscated and uprooted by the Occupation for the route of a new settler bypass road. They were attacked on the way by Occupation Forces who fired tear gas, sound bombs and rubber bullets into the crowds of demonstrators.

Another escalation is reported in the persecution of the Mapuche indigenous people of Chile: the imprisonment of the editor of a Mapuche magazine on six-year-old charges related to a land occupation, effectively preventing him from travelling to Canada for a meeting of Native journalists. This June 16 account is from Reporteros Sin Fronteras (RSF) and the International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX):

Almost completely overlooked by the world media, the insurgency of the Naxalites, India's Maoist guerillas, has been simmering since the 1960s, and now shows signs of gaining ground, as indicated by this June 17 report from the Indian news agency Rediff:

Naxalism: 13 states discuss strategy
A one-day meeting of top officials of 13 Maoist-affected states to chalk out strategies to tackle Naxalism commenced in Hyderabad on Friday.

Perhaps embarrassed by outgoing chief Tom Ridge's admission that the color coded terror alert was raised for political reasons (USA Today, May 10), the Homeland Security Department appears to be slowing in some of its most egregious (or ambitious) new programs. Plans to require 27 allied countries to issue new passports with chips encoded with biometric data have been put off for a year, although by this October they will have to start issuing passports with tamperproof digitized photos. Allied governments had protested the chip-embedded passports, and Homeland Security may be rethinking the idea. (AP, June 16)

Police arrested 11 men June 15 on charges of belonging to a Syrian-based group that recruits suicide bombers to attack U.S. troops in Iraq. Authorities said the recruiting network has ties to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. More than 500 heavily-armed police held predawn raids in six cities to grab the men.

The conspiranoiacs are going to be salivating over this one. For all their relentless insistence that the entire government is controlled by The Conspiracy, nothing makes them giddier than a whiff of vindication from The Establishment. Too bad the poorly-named "9-11 skeptics" will never exhibit any skepticism over these claims...

Even as the White House is opposing measures to reduce emissions in the new energy bill (NYT, June 15) and stands accused of cooking science on global warming, comes this comforting news:

'Record Volume Rise' in World Energy Consumption
By Thomas Catan
Financial Times.com

Tuesday 14 June 2005

World energy consumption surged 4.3 per cent last year, the biggest percentage rise since 1984 and the largest volume increase ever, according to new figures from BP, the oil company.

The Mexican daily El Norte reports June 15 that drug gangs in army-occupied Nuevo Laredo swapped insults this week with rival gangs and federal authorities over the police VHF channel. Hundreds of soldiers and federal police agents took over the town and suspended the local police force June 12 to curb a drug war between the local Gulf Cartel and foes from the state of Sinaloa. "We're going to kick shit out of all the stupid feds and the Sinaloans," said a voice on the radio reported to be that of a member of the Zetas, a band of renegade elite army troops turned Gulf cartel enforcers. Other voices, reportedly those of Sinaloan enforcers, dubbed the Zetas "sons of whores" and called federal agents "idiots." The foul-mouthed banter prompted one federal agent to chide the cartels for fighting among themselves "like kids." They snapped back with a torrent of abuse and told him to "get back to work," according to the report.