Army Pfc. Lynndie England, whose smiling poses in photos of detainee abuse at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison made her the face of the scandal, was convicted Sept. 26 by a military jury at Ft. Hood, TX. England, 22, was convicted on one charge of conspiracy, four charges of maltreating detainees and one charge of committing an indecent act. She was acquitted on a second conspiracy charge. The jury of five male Army officers took about two hours to reach its decision. Her case now moves to the sentencing phase, to be determined by the same jury. She faces a maximum 10 years in military prison.

England's trial is the last for a group of nine Army reservists charged with abuse of prisoners at Iraq's Abu Ghraib. Two others have been convicted and the remaining six made plea deals. Several of those soldiers testified at England's trial.

Chris Thompson writes for East Bay Express in Oakland, CA, Sept. 21:

War Pornography
US soldiers trade grisly photos of dead and mutilated Iraqis for access to amateur porn. The press is strangely silent.
If you want to see the true face of war, go to the amateur porn Web site NowThatsFuckedUp.com. For almost a year, American soldiers stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan have been taking photographs of dead bodies, many of them horribly mutilated or blown to pieces, and sending them to Web site administrator Chris Wilson. In return for letting him post these images, Wilson gives the soldiers free access to his site. American soldiers have been using the pictures of disfigured Iraqi corpses as currency to buy pornography.

A reference in a recent post on ethnic politics in eastern Anatolia to "the two Kurdish dialects of zaza and kurmanci" prompted the following letter from a reader, which we produce verbatim:

Zaza(Sassaniden)'s are not Kurds and not Turks

We fight for our liberty !
We fight against Turkish and Kurdish Fascism !
We fight against Turkish and Kurdish SS !

thes artickle is not correckt: http://classic.countervortex.org/node/352

Reports Sarah Ferguson in the Village Voice Sept. 25:

Controversy is raging in Paraguay, where the U.S. military is conducting secretive operations. 500 U.S. troops arrived in the country on July 1st with planes, weapons and ammunition. Eyewitness reports prove that an airbase exists in Mariscal Estigarribia, Paraguay, which is 200 kilometers from the border with Bolivia and may be utilized by the U.S. military. Officials in Paraguay claim the military operations are routine humanitarian efforts and deny that any plans are underway for a U.S. base. Yet human rights groups in the area are deeply worried.

Citing a new report concluding that global warming threatens New Mexico's water supply, state and local officials are joining with environmentalists in demanding immediate steps to address the issue. The report, Less Snow, Less Water, was released Friday by the New Mexico Public Interest Research Group. The study concludes that due to rising global temperatures, precipitation that used to fall as snow is increasingly falling as rain in the West. Government snowpack-measurement records going back to 1961 indicate that snowpack levels have been below average for 11 of the past 16 years in the Colorado River Basin and for 10 of the past 16 years in the Rio Grande Basin, the study says.

Violence—generally held to be drug-related—is spreading across Mexico at an alarming pace. The Pacific resort of Acapulco, in the conflicted southern state of Guerrero, has seen some 30 killings this year—many in the disco and restaurant zone frequented by tourists. The incidents have included grenade attacks on police stations and the killing of several officers, although no tourists have been injured. More than 100 federal police agents have been stationed in the city to combat crime and disrupt the drug gangs' turf wars. (Hartford Courant, Sept. 25)

On Sept. 15 a state judge in Zihuatanejo in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero ordered the release of Felipe Arreaga Sanchez, a leader in the campesino environmental movement who had been held in prison since November 2004. Judge Ricardo Salinas Sandoval ruled that there was insufficient evidence for the state's charge that Arreaga was involved in the 1998 killing of Abel Bautista, son of timber boss Bernardino Bautista Valle. Arreaga left the prison in Zihuatanejo a half hour after the ruling. The state had five days to appeal the decision.