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.

Mexicans get holiday cheer, pain on ice: Thousands of Mexicans are skating, wobbling and often falling on a giant ice rink set up by the tropical capital’s government to bring some holiday cheer to this massive, chaotic metropolis. The rink in Mexico City’s main square measures 34,445 square feet — twice the size of a professional hockey rink and nearly five times as big as the one at New York’s Rockefeller Center. Mayor Marcelo Ebrard inaugurated it Saturday night and by Monday, more than 5,000 skaters glided across its surface. The rink is free and the city provides skates to those who don’t have them — which is most in an area where winter temperatures are often near 70. The center-left mayor has pledged to transform the metropolitan area of 21 million people into a model of urban renewal. (AP)

Chavez: Plan may have been too ambitious: Humbled by his first electoral defeat, President Hugo Chavez said Monday he may have been too ambitious in asking voters to let him stand indefinitely for re-election and endorse a huge leap to a socialist state. The defeated reform package would have created new types of communal property, shortened the workday from eight hours to six, created a social security fund for millions of informal laborers and promoted communal councils where residents decide how to spend government funds. Chavez’s humble acceptance of the election should once and for all end his dictator status among many of the uninformed. (AP)

Germany seeking to ban Scientology: The interior ministers of the nation’s 16 states plan to give the nation’s domestic intelligence agency the task of preparing the necessary information to ban the organization, which has been under observation for a decade on allegations that it “threatens the peaceful democratic order” of the country. The Scientologists have long battled to end the surveillance, saying it is an abuse of their right to freedom of religion. (AP)

On Mortgage Relief, Who Gains the Most?: At least one thing is clear about President Bush’s plan to help people trapped by the mortgage meltdown: it is an industry-led plan, not a government bailout. The Greenlining Institute, a housing advocacy group in California that began raising alarms about subprime loans nearly four years ago, estimated that only 12 percent of all subprime borrowers and only 5 percent of minority homeowners would benefit from the rate freeze. The Center for Responsible Lending, a nonprofit group that supports homeownership, said the freeze would help only about 145,000 people. (NY Times)

Europeans unlikely to meet UN Darfur goal: European nations look unlikely to meet an urgent U.N. call to provide military helicopters for a peacekeeping force planned for Darfur, saying their armies are already stretched by missions in Afghanistan, Kosovo and other hot spots. More than 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million uprooted from their homes in Sudan’s western Darfur region since a rebellion broke out in 2003, and many European governments have said they support deploying the peacekeeping force. Despite the verbal support, no one has offered any of the 24 helicopters sought by U.N. officials. (AP)

Group touts seaweed as warming weapon: Slimy, green and unsightly, seaweed and algae are among the humblest plants on earth. A group of scientists at a climate conference in Bali say they could also be a potent weapon against global warming, capable of sucking damaging carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere at rates comparable to the mightiest rain forests. The seaweed research, backed by scientists in 12 countries, is part of a broad effort to calculate how much carbon is being absorbed from the atmosphere by plants, and figure out ways to increase that through reforestation and other steps. Such so-called “carbon sinks” are considered essential to controlling greenhouse gases, which trap heat in the atmosphere and are blamed for global warming. While the lion’s share of attention to carbon sinks has been on forests, the seaweed scientists say the world should look to the sea, where nearly 8 million tons of seaweed and algae are cultivated every year. (AP)

CIA destroyed interrogation tapes CIA has confirmed that it destroyed at least two video tapes showing the interrogation of terror suspects. According to the intelligence agency, the tapes were destroyed to protect the identity of CIA agents and because they no longer had intelligence value. But civil liberties lawyers have refused to accept this, saying the CIA previously denied such tapes existed. They say the move appears to be an attempt to destroy evidence that could have brought CIA agents to account. (BBC)

The Dollar Trap: Certainly there are few examples of a major power also simultaneously in a state of permanent debt to the rest of the world over the long term. Now, that is the case with the United States. The decline in the greenback, which has lost a quarter of its value against all other currencies since 2002 and 40 percent against the euro, reflects the deterioration in the premier global economy’s financial situation. The Bush presidency, in what is not the least of paradoxes, has profoundly contributed to that situation through unrestrained recourse to deficit funding, notably since the 2001 attacks, to finance military expenditures. The consequence – enormous quantities of dollars issued – has finally undermined the currency’s value. (AP)

Old Havana Gets a Lift, but Many Cubans Yet to Benefit: Everywhere there are construction crews gutting buildings and rebuilding the interiors. The sounds of jackhammers mix with the sounds of traditional Cuban music. The renovation has only gone so far, and tens of thousands of people are still trapped in squalid buildings just blocks from the refurbished zones, giving rise to grumbling among some residents that the renovation amounts to a Potemkin village for visitors. They point out that few Cubans can afford the $7 drinks at the Floridita, and by law Cubans cannot stay in the restored hotels, even if they could afford the rates of $150 a night. (NY Times)

Mexico Opposes US Troops on its Turf: Mexican Foreign Minister Patricia Espinosa reiterated on Thursday that her country opposes the presence of US troops or agents in its territory to take part in the struggle against drug trafficking. Espinosa referred to agreements with Washington as part of Plan Mexico, also known as the Merida Initiative as they were the result of a meeting in that city between Presidents George W. Bush (US) and Felipe Calderon (Mexico). A delegation of US senators who recently visited Mexico said that the US Congress will discuss the promised allocation of funds by July 2008. (AP)

Trucks Power China’s Economy, at a Suffocating Cost: Every night, columns of hulking blue and red freight trucks invade China’s major cities with a reverberating roar of engines and dark clouds of diesel exhaust so thick it dims headlights. Trucks are the mules of this country’s spectacularly expanding economy — ubiquitous and essential, yet highly noxious. Trucks in China burn diesel fuel contaminated with more than 130 times the pollution-causing sulfur that the United States allows in most diesel. Tiny particles of sulfur-laden soot penetrate deep into residents’ lungs, interfering with the absorption of oxygen. Nitrogen oxides from truck exhaust, which build all night because cities limit truck traffic by day, bind each morning with gasoline fumes from China’s growing car fleet to form dense smog that inflames lungs and can cause severe coughing and asthma. (NY Times)

CIA Venezuela Destabilization Memo Surfaces: The memo sent by an embassy official, Michael Middleton Steere, was addressed to the Director of Central Intelligence, Michael Hayden. The memo was entitled ‘Advancing to the Last Phase of Operation Pincer’ and updates the activity by a CIA unit with the acronym ‘HUMINT’ (Human Intelligence) which is engaged in clandestine action to destabilize the past referendum and coordinate the civil military overthrow of the elected Chavez government. (CounterPunch)

Cuban Five Public Event in Tijuana, Mexico, on Friday December 7th 2007: A solidarity event for the release of five Cuban anti-terrorist fighters unfairly imprisoned in United States will be run in the border city of Tijuana, Mexican state of Baja California. The meeting is attended by Irma Sehwerert, deputy to the Cuban National Assembly and mother of Rene Gonzalez, one of the Cuban Five, as well as Silvia Lozano, from the presidency of that legislative body. The solidarity campaign with the island will continue December 8-9 in Tijuana with a Union Conference, prepared by US-Cuba Labor Exchange organization and attended by delegations from Cuba, Venezuela, Canada, Mexico and United States. (BanderaNews)

Felipe Calderón presented Plan Mexico to U.S.: Members of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and Party of Democratic Revolution (PRD) have both opposed Plan Mexico, which entails US participation in the national anti-drug fight, threatening the country’s sovereignty. They oppose the $500 million that Washington promised for the fight against drugs calling it the “Colombianization of Mexico.” Major guerilla factions throughout Mexico have also expressed disdain for the plan. Their fear is that the money will be diverted to anti-guerilla projects in Mexico’s southern region, fearing a likely scenario to that of southern neighbors Guatemala, El Salvador. Both of whom battled US backed dictatorships in long bloody civil wars, and have major human rights violations including genocide commited by government forces.
Opposed as well are Mexican leftists and intellectuals, whom fear a strong US backed military/police-state. The signs of which are already being witnessed. On recent journey’s within Mexico, I personally can testify to noticing several changes. One cannot travel between major cities without several roadblocks conducted by the Mexican army, carrying their symbolically American M-16’s and machine gun “nests” on either side of the road. (Jornada)

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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.