On June 3, Mexican telenovela star Ofelia Medina, who has launched the group Mujeres Sin Miedo (Women Without Fear) to support those arrested in the protests at San Salvador Atenco, held a press conference to announce that 24 of the prisoners had completed 30 days on hunger strike. (statement June 3)

On June 2, two convoys of Mexico state police entered Atenco in a brief incursion which was protested as an attempt to intimidate the residents. (La Jornada, May 4)

Here is a pretty good indication that the US is losing control of the client state it has set up in Iraq—which, in turn, is afraid of losing control of Iraq. And, since Maliki and his gang are more loyal to Tehran than Washington, this means the invasion of Iran can't be far behind... From The Jurist, June 2:

Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has decared a state of emergency in Basra, where battles are raging both between Shi'ite and Sunni militias, as well as among rival Shi'ite militias. Nearly 140, mostly Sunnis but also Shi'ites and members of the security forces, were killed in Basra in May. (Boston Globe, June 1) The vying Shi'ite factions include not only the Sadr and Badr militias, but the regionally powerful Fadilah movement. (CSM, June 2) Fadilah is apparently a schism from Moktada al-Sadr's mainline Sadr movement. It is led by Najaf-based Ayatollah Muhammad Yaqubi, and appears to be even more hardline. (Juan Cole's Informed Comment, Sept. 24, 2005) Amid widespread attacks and forced expulsions, the proportion of Sunnis in Basra has declined from 40% to 15% since the fall of Saddam, according to the official Sunni Endowment in Southern Iraq. (Al-Jazeera, June 1)

Doug Ireland writes of an "anti-gay pogrom" underway in Iraq, for In These Times, May 31:

Shiite death squads in Iraq are carrying out a campaign that targets gay men for murder. This so-called “sexual cleansing" is happening under the nose of the U.S. military—but American authorities in the Green Zone have refused to do anything about it.

Remember those innocent days when terrorists were radical leftists rather than Islamic fundamentalists? The Greeks do. From Ekathimerini, June 1 (links added):

Culture Minister Giorgos Voulgarakis had informed the heads of police and the Public Order Ministry about an increase in threats against him six days before Tuesday’s bomb attack, sources said yesterday as authorities suspect the involvement of far-left group Revolutionary Struggle.

The ascendance of the center-left Romano Prodi as Italy's new prime minister in the narrow (and contested) April elections will apparently mean at least a phased withdrawal of Italian troops from the US-led mission in Iraq, depriving Bush of one more European ally in his Mesopotamian adventure. It will not, however, mean a withdrawal from the NATO-led mission in Afghanistan. On the contrary, Italy may be expanding its troop presence there. From the Pakistan Tribune, June 2:

For a second consecutive night yesterday, French police battled hundreds of Muslim youth in the Paris suburbs of Clichy-sous-Bois and Montfermeil. (Seattle Times, June 1) This makes headlines; the ongoing institutionalized racism that fuels these periodic eruptions does not. From Turkey's Zaman, June 1:

Half of those being detained in French prisons are said to be Muslims.
A Le Monde news article wrote that according to a poll run by Religions World magazine, although Muslims constitute 7-8 percent of the French population, 50 percent of all prisoners are Muslim immigrants.

What a breath of fresh air! The website Screw Loose Change reports that Gedeon and Jules Naudet, the French film-makers who captured images of the first plane striking the World Trade Center on 9-11, have sent a "cease and desist" letter to the makers of the all-too-popular (though transparently bogus, to anyone with a modicum of critical reasoning skills) conspiracy video Loose Change, taking the lugubrious vultures to task for appropriating their footage to advance irresponsible claptrap, and threatening litigation if they don't back down. For the moment, the video has been removed from the Loose Change website.