The final capitulation of King Gyanendra to a militant pro-democracy movement that has made common cause with the Maoist guerillas is closely followed by The Rising Nepal website. The king, who had seized dictatorial absolute power last February, reached an agreement with the opposition Seven-Party Alliance (SPA) and on April 27 appointed Nepali Congress Party president Girija Prasad Koirala as prime minister. The following day, Parliament met for the first time since it was suspended in last year's royal coup. SPA leaders called on the citizenry to continue to act as the vanguard of the hard-earned democratic restoration at a mammoth mass meeting at Kathmandu's amphitheatre, and urged participation in an upcoming constituent assembly. The guerillas of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) have announced a three-month unilateral cease-fire. CPN(M) Chairman Prachanda said his army will halt all offensive military operations and work towards serving the people in its zones of control.

From the Village Voice, April 28:

No Justice, No Work
Immigrants tap May Day's radical roots

by Sarah Ferguson

It has been called "A Day Without Immigrants."
"The Great American Boycott."

And down in Mexico: "Nothing Gringo."

But whatever you call it, the range of actions planned for May 1 to protest House bill HR 4437 and other punitive immigration measures circulating in Congress shows just how diverse and energized this movement to defend the rights foreign-born laborers has become.

Another (very tentative) glimmer of hope in the battle for your privacy rights. From AP, April 25:

WASHINGTON -- An appeals court on Tuesday returned the criminal case against an Islamic scholar to a trial judge to determine whether the Bush administration's domestic spying program was used to gather evidence against him.

As we (and others) have argued, one of the aims of Operation Iraqi Freedom was likely to jack up the price of oil, giving a salutary boost to industry expansion plans, facilitating Western corporate colonization of the Caspian Basin (beating the Russians to the punch) as well as the opening of the purely ancillary ANWR. But here is a sure sign that things are getting out of control, even from Bush's hubristic perspective. If the price of oil breaks $100/barrel, it could threaten already-waning public enthusiasm for the Republicans and their wars. Bush had to open the Strategic Reserves after Katrina; analysts may now "welcome" his decision to stop pumping into them to free up more oil for the market and ease prices, but it strikes us a reckless gamble--which could backfire with the next escalation in the Middle East (say, US military action against Iran...) From the New York Times, April 25:

From Newsday, April 26:

Nine New York City firefighters sued the city and its fire pension fund yesterday saying they were denied disability pensions even after the department told them their breathing disorders sustained at Ground Zero had left them unfit to serve.

New Yorkers are supposed to be celebrating this break in the long impasse which has stalled reconstruction at Ground Zero. And indeed Larry Silverstein's megalomania and greed have been an appalling spectacle. But, as we have repeatedly emphasized, rebuilding a skyscraper at the WTC site is a very bad idea, just as building the original Twin Towers was a very bad idea. The WTC helped transform New York from a working-class city of neighborhoods and industry to a sterile administrative clearinghouse for global finance and a culturally-cleansed playground for the rich. The new (and Orwellianly-named) "Freedom Tower" will only accelerate this process. And, obviously, as a hubristic symbol of American power, the old WTC invited terrorist attacks; so (we hate to say it) will the Freedom Tower--as is explicitly acknowledged by the unprecedented heavy hand given to the NYPD and security concerns generally in its very design. WW4 Report officially dissents from the celebrations. From Reuters, April 27:

From New York's Jewish Week, April 28:

As the world’s largest chasidic sect mourns the death this week of the Satmar Grand Rebbe Moshe Teitelbaum, the bitter, litigious — and sometimes violent — feud between two of his sons shows no sign of cooling.

In a flurry of courtroom motions, rabbinic rulings and shoving matches on Tuesday and Wednesday, the dispute rapidly shifted from designated succession toward a new struggle between two men, each claiming he is now the new rebbe.

Writes David Wood of Newhouse News Service, April 26 (emphasis added):

WASHINGTON -- If Iran succeeds in building nuclear weapons, it will be paid for in part by American drivers.

With oil prices and global oil consumption at near-record levels, the radical Islamist government in Iran is raking in more than $68.4 billion a year in oil revenues, helping it finance its nuclear program and underwrite terrorist operations against American soldiers in Iraq and elsewhere across the Middle East.

And with global oil markets sucked dry of excess by growing oil consumption in the United States and China, even a small disruption in the flow of oil would drive prices through the roof and stagger the world's economies.