We do our best to capture all the main headlines, but often important stories fall through the cracks of both mainstream and independent media. This is an attempt to give a few of those stories the coverage they deserve. A wide range of topics are touched upon in the communiqué, from revolutionary to stories that give us the sense of destitution.
Families Pay as U.S. Agents Fire Tear Gas Into Mexico: Border Patrol agents are firing tear gas and powerful pepper-spray weapons across the border into Mexico to repel what the agency says are an increasing number of attacks by assailants hurling stones, bottles and bricks. The counteroffensive has drawn complaints that innocent families are being caught in the cross-fire. United States officials say the new tactics may spare lives. In March, an agent shot and killed a 20-year-old Mexican man whose arm was cocked; that fatality occurred in Calexico, Calif., where attacks with stones have soared. And two years ago, an agent fatally shot a stone thrower at the San Diego-Tijuana border. Mexico’s acting consul general in San Diego, Ricardo Pineda Albarrán, has insisted that United States authorities stop firing onto Mexican soil. Mr. Pineda met with Border Patrol officials last month after the agency fired tear gas into Mexico. The agency defended that action, saying agents were being hit with a hail of ball bearings from slingshots in Mexico. (San Diego Tribune)
Some Chavez Allies Slow to Shed luxuries: Hugo Chavez constantly urges his supporters to reject “savage capitalism,” but allies of Venezuela’s president have been slow to embrace his socialist values — and some are struggling to explain their consumption of luxury goods. Information Minister Willian Lara often wears Tommy Hilfiger jackets, although they are red — the color of Chavez’s ruling party. And Luis Acosta, the pro-Chavez governor of Carabobo state, argued last year that authorities can purchase expensive cars without sacrificing their revolutionary ideals. Such statements — and shows of opulence among some of Chavez’s closest allies — prompted the socialist president to later reprimand supporters for failing to shed their materialist ways. Threatening to impose new taxes on luxury goods in October, Chavez said: “What kind of revolution is this? The Whisky Revolution? The Hummer Revolution? No, this is a real revolution!” (AP)
Once Volatile, Crossing Is Opening With a Whisper: As of 12:01 a.m. on Friday, the border between Poland and Germany, one of the most violently contested frontiers on earth, is being thrown open. Yet, for the most part, the barriers are coming down more with a whimper than a bang. The Poland-Germany border has been violently contested for centuries. Along the 280-odd miles of the border — from the German town of Zittau in the south, where the German and Polish dividing line ends at the border of the Czech Republic, to the Polish port city of Szczecin in the north — what is most striking is the relative indifference to the change. For centuries, Poland was Europe’s marching ground — when it was not dismembered and wiped off the map by some combination of Germany, Austria and Russia. The kingdom of Poland battled the Teutonic Knights as far back as the Middle Ages, and Hitler’s blitzkrieg in September 1939 lives on in the minds of the elderly and the imaginations of the young. (NY Times)
GAO:Sanctions Against Cuba Are Excessive: The year-long GAO study looked at the effects of restrictions the administration imposed on travel and trade with Cuba in 2004, tightening already stringent sanctions imposed in the early 1960s. The new measures included elimination of small “personal use” allowances for Cuban products and reduced the amount of money Cuban Americans could send to relatives on the island as well as the permitted frequency of their visits there. A ban on spending any money in Cuba effectively prohibits Americans without Cuban family members from traveling there. Cuba is one of five countries the United States designates as state sponsors of terrorism, the report noted that no U.S. license is required for travel to Iran, North Korea, Sudan or Syria, and there are no restrictions on personal remittances of funds to those countries.
Bush Deflects Questions on C.I.A. Tapes: The president, fencing good-naturedly with reporters at a White House news conference, parried a question that suggested there was ambiguity in his earlier statements that he had no recollection about the existence or destruction of the tapes. President Bush deflected questions on Thursday about the destruction of C.I.A. interrogation tapes, saying that he will withhold comment until investigations into the affair are complete. The recently disclosed destruction by the C.I.A. of the interrogation videotapes is the latest controversy over the Bush administration’s anti-terrorism policies. Critics of the administration, including Democrats who control both Houses of Congress, have wondered aloud whether the destruction of the tapes indicated that the C.I.A. had something to hide. (NY Times)
CIA Drug Planes Caught in Mexican Stand-Off: CIA-connected Gulfstream business jet which was carrying more than 4 tons of cocaine as well as an yet-unspecified amount of heroin, in the jungle outside of Merida in Mexico’s Yucatan on September 24th of this year. Last week the Director of Civil Aviation in the Yucatan, Jose Luis Soladana Ortiz, was assassinated on his way to work. The murders and multi-ton drug busts are part of a continuing “Mexican stand-off” between rival Mexican drug cartels allied with dueling factions contesting across Mexico’s unsettled political landscape, a contest which has resulted in more than 1500 murders already this year. The two CIA-connected airplanes—the recent Gulfstream business jet (N987SA) and a DC9 airliner (N900SA) eighteen months ago—which sallied forth from St. Petersburg-Clearwater International Airport only to be busted in the Yucatan carrying multi-ton loads of cocaine, may owe their ignominious fates to being caught in the middle of the jungle. (MadCow)
Bolivia’s Leader Says States’ Dispute Can Be Resolved: At 6 a.m. in this city 11,900 feet above sea level, the corridors of the presidential palace are bitingly cold. Aides huddle in overcoats near space heaters. Soldiers clasping rifles with bayonets stand guard with chattering teeth. This is when President Evo Morales starts his days, which have become filled with tension recently as the eastern region of this country — the hot lowlands — puts in motion a process to seek far greater autonomy from his government. Yet just days after putting the armed forces on alert, Mr. Morales said in an interview on Wednesday that he believed it was possible to negotiate a solution to the impasse that would preclude using troops or declaring a state of emergency. (NY Times)
Slave Labour That Shames America: Three Florida fruit-pickers, held captive and brutalised by their employer for more than a year, finally broke free of their bonds by punching their way through the ventilator hatch of the van in which they were imprisoned. Once outside, they dashed for freedom. When they found sanctuary one recent Sunday morning, all bore the marks of heavy beatings to the head and body. One of the pickers had a nasty, untreated knife wound on his arm. Police would learn later that another man had his hands chained behind his back every night to prevent him escaping, leaving his wrists swollen. The migrants were not only forced to work in sub-human conditions but mistreated and forced into debt. They were locked up at night and had to pay for sub-standard food. If they took a shower with a garden hose or bucket, it cost them $5. Their story of slavery and abuse in the fruit fields of sub-tropical Florida threatens to lift the lid on some appalling human rights abuses in America today. (Truthout)
Statement Hints at Castro’s Retirement: Fidel Castro indicated Monday in a statement read on state television that he was willing to hand over the reins of Cuba’s government to a younger generation of leaders. But his statement remained silent on whether he was speaking hypothetically or had a transition plan in mind. Despite much excitement this week over one ambiguous sentence in a letter about global warming in which Castro indicated he will not hold back Cuba’s younger leadership, Castro already has settled into a kind of reflective semiretirement. Island life has hardly changed under his brother, and the elder Castro has retained a vibrant role in Cuban politics, penning several essays a week and showing up sporadically in official photographs and prerecorded messages. (AP)
Mexico Remembers 1997 Indian Massacre: It’s been nearly a decade since pro-government villagers armed with guns and machetes slaughtered 45 men, women and children in the neighboring hamlet of Acteal — a massacre that remains emblematic of Mexico’s human rights failures. At the time — Dec. 22, 1997 — Chiapas was the battleground where Zapatista rebels were trying to build support for their armed insurrection against the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which had ruled Mexico for seven decades. The army and the ruling party’s local governor were determined to hold them back. Authorities said the killings were motivated by a land dispute between residents of the two Tzotzil Indian communities. Victims’ families say the killings were motivated by politics, with state officials providing weapons and paramilitary training for the more conservative village in a bid to crush the Zapatistas. (AP)
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For more exposure to reality, check out GNN’s other weekly roundups. Mwm’s If you knew…, ShiftShaper’s Labor News Roundups, and Mercenary’s East is East.