On the morning of May 26, a car bomb exploded in Madrid, causing proprty destruction and leaving 50 with mostly minor injuries. Phone calls to media outlets immediately before the explosion warned that it was coming and claimed responsibility in the name of ETA, the armed Basque separatist organization. (Berria, Bilbao, May 26)

Hours later, Arnaldo Otegi, leader of the outlawed Basque separatist party Batasuna and a former member of the Basque regional parliament, was arrested. He is being held in solitary confinement after being charged with belonging to a terrorist organisation and of forming part of the leadership of ETA.

A week after calm started to return to Uzbekistan (see out last blog post), signs of simmering unrest continue, and the geopolitics of the conflict are starting to become clearer... Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Newsline (RFE/RL) reported May 23 that hundreds protested in Korasuv, the border town which had been briefly seized by Islamists in a seemingly spontaneous uprising. The protest was quickly broken by security forces. Arrests of suspected Islamists also continue.

We applaud Human Rights Watch for continuing to document the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan even as it has fallen off the media radar screen. But we question their assumption that Karzai "needs more support from the US," given that it is his own security forces that are doing much of the killing...

Afghanistan: Violence Surges
Karzai Needs More Support from U.S.

(New York, May 24, 2005) -- Afghanistan's security situation has deteriorated significantly in recent weeks, with a spate of political killings, violent protests, and attacks on humanitarian workers, Human Rights Watch said today. The instability comes as President Hamid Karzai visits the United States this week.

The same day Amnesty International released its annual report with unprecedented criticism for the US, comes this chilling release from Human Rights Watch:

Pakistan: US Citizens Tortured, Held Illegally
Human Rights Watch

Tuesday 24 May 2005

FBI participated in interrogations despite apparent knowledge of torture, abduction.

U.S. FBI agents operating in Pakistan repeatedly interrogated and threatened two U.S. citizens of Pakistani origin who were unlawfully detained and subjected to torture by the Pakistani security services, Human Rights Watch said today.

Amnesty International's 2005 annual report, released today, accuses the US government of damaging human rights worldwide with its attitude to torture and treatment of detainees, which granted "a licence to others to commit abuse with impunity." The report criticizes the ongoing lack of a full independent investigation into abuses against detainees in US custody in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay. The report finds US-led coalition forces in Iraq have engaged in "unlawful killings, torture and other violations," while Afghanistan is slipping into a "downward spiral of lawlessness and instability."

Although it has recieved little coverage elsewhere, the Cuban daily Ahora reports today that on May 20, Bush received a Cuban-American delegation at the White House led by Luis Zúñiga Rey of the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF), presumably to discuss the Posada Carriles affair. The article calls Zúñiga a "terrorist," and quotes Percy Alvarado, AKA Agent Frayle, a Guatemalan who infiltrated anti-Castro terror groups for Cuban state security: "Zúñiga told me, face to face, that it was necessary to be violent and cold-blooded, calculating and merciless, to overthrow Fidel and the Revolution. I can still see him that November night in 1993, when he proposed sinister plans by the CANF to set off powerful bombs in Havana’s Hotel Nacional and in a famous restaurant in that city."

Posada Carriles - the 77-year-old former CIA asset and accused terrorist - was charged last week with illegal entry into the US and is being detained by the Homeland Security Department at Florida's Homestead Air Force Base. US authorities have remained silent on whether he will be extradited to Venezuela to face terrorism charges. (Prensa Latina, May 18) (See our last blog post on the affair)

Yesterday, Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez publicly broached breaking diplomatic ties with the US if Washington refuses to extradite. "If they don't extradite him (Mr Posada Carriles) in the time allowed in our agreement, we will review our relations with the United States," Chavez said in his regular Sunday TV programme. Washington has up to 60 days to consider Venezuela's extradition request under a 1922 treaty between the two countries.

Robots seem to be gaining reproductive rights even as women are losing theirs.

Robots at Cornell University are making copies of themselves without human intervention. In principle, the machines will thus be able to repair and reproduce themselves autonomously in remote environments. "Our self-replicating robots perform very simple tasks compared with intricacies in biological reproduction," said engineer Hod Lipson, a Cornell assistant professor. "But we think they demonstrate that mechanical self-reproduction is possible and not unique to biology."