A militant group in Nigeria’s oil-rich Niger Delta kidnapped two German and four Nigerian workers of Bilfinger Berger Gas & Oil Services, a contractor firm for Anglo-Dutch oil giant Shell June 15. The workers were abducted around Warri by a group calling itself Iju-Warri, to press demands for social services such as water, roads and schools. (AFP, June 16)

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.

Kudos to Newsday, which (unlike the NY Times thus far) today notes the approaching one-year anniversary of Rasul v. Bush, the Supreme Court ruling that Guantanamo detainees are entitled to judicial review. It was hailed as a victory by civil libertarians at the time, yet detainees have had no access to the courts since then. Note that Newsday rightly uses the word "courts" to refer to the civilian judiciary and not the Pentagon's special "tribunals" for the detainees, which are laden with extraordinarily onerous restrictions, and are arguably a legal fiction. Here are some excerpts from Newsday's coverage:

Police in Zimbabwe fought running battles June 14 with residents of Makhokhoba, one of the oldest townships of the country's second city, Bulawayo as they demolished illegal structures. One woman stripped naked in protest after police destroyed her shack (a traditional African gesture of shaming men). A police spokesman said that more than 20,000 structures had been destroyed and 30,000 arrested in the three-week nationwide operation.

Western governments are flouting their own rules and contributing to grave human rights abuses by selling arms and weapons systems to Nepal, Amnesty International said in a statement today. The rights group accused the UK, US and India of supplying thousands of assault rifles to the Himalayan kingdom and said Belgium was selling machine guns and South Africa military communications equipment. "With the conflict poised to escalate, any further military assistance would be highly irresponsible," Amnesty said, appealing for a ban on arms sales to the kingdom.

NY Times columnist Nicholas Kristof is something of a mixed bag: he makes frequent noises like a Terror War hardliner and quasi-Ashcroftian freedom-hater, but (even if, perhaps, for some bad Arabophobe reasons) he was among the first to raise the alarm on Darfur, and stayed on top of the issue even as the Powers That Be sought to ignore it. Today he gets a big thumbs-up from us for bringing this egregious injustice in Pakistan to the world's attention:

Raped, Kidnapped and Silenced

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
New York Times
June 14, 2005

No wonder the Pakistan government can't catch Osama bin Laden. It is too busy harassing, detaining - and now kidnapping - a gang-rape victim for daring to protest and for planning a visit to the United States.