Feature Archives

On December 15th, Mahmoud Abbas, the Fatah president of the Palestinian Authority, announced that he will dissolve the recently elected parliament and call new presidential and parliamentary elections. Abbas aide Yasser Abed Rabbo told Associated Press that the president would set the date within a week, and that new elections would be held within three months.

Many see the move as an unconstitutional attempt to unseat the Hamas-led government that threatens to precipitate a full-scale civil war between supporters of Hamas and Fatah. Clashes between the two groups has been increasing in recent weeks.

On November 28, 2006, the bodies of thirteen children were found washed up on a Western Sahara beach after their small boat sank in the Atlantic ocean. Another 20 children are still missing.

Moroccan officials in occupied Western Sahara have been encouraging young people to migrate to Spain where they are led to believe they will be well treated. A spokesman for the migrant advocacy group Alter Forum said that up to 40 boats carrying about 18 children each leave Boujdour, Western Sahara every month for Spanish shores. The children are attempting to escape from one of the worst human rights environments in the world

On Sunday December 10th 2006, Chile’s former military dictator Augusto Pinochet died. The news sparked spontaneous demonstrations in Santiago and other Chilean cities as thousands poured into the streets to celebrate. The retired army general, who was 91 years old, came to power in a CIA-backed coup against the elected government of Salvador Allende in 1973. Pinochet’s regime was responsible for the murder or disappearance of thousands of left-wing activists, trade unionists, students and others.

Deaths and disappearances continue in the state of Oaxaca. Participants in the Oaxacan social movement only expect the conditions of repression to worsen, especially with the entrance of Felipe Calderon of the PAN (National Action Party) into presidency. The PFP conducted a massive roundup of people on Saturday night, which resulted in at least 3 people killed and another 25 disappeared. In the same twenty four hours, a hotel worker said that he came across a group of PFP officers who boasted to him that they had already killed 13 people, and that the press would never know because the bodies had been disappeared. Read more
December 6th: Reportback: Oaxaca: A Portrait of Rebellion, San Francisco

Leftist Rafael Correa, a 43 year-old middle-class economist, beat billionaire banana magnate Alvaro Noboa in Ecuador’s runoff presidential election on November 26, capturing two-thirds of the vote. Ecuador now joins Bolivia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Chile and Brazil in electing leftist chief executives within the last year. During the campaign he said “It is necessary to overcome all the fallacies of neoliberalism,” and that he advocates “Socialism for the twenty-first century.”

On November 30th, The Federal Preventative Police expanded its operations into the surrounding towns around Oaxaca City. Today they have conducted a raid into Zaalchia, 11 kilometers outside of Oaxaca City and numerous other towns. Read More

On November 29th, Radio Universidad was handed over to the administrators of Benito Juarez Autonomous University. As part of an agreement with APPO, the University will now handle security for the station. This week, outgoing Mexican President Fox said that he would use a hard hand against the movement in Oaxaca.

There was a Oaxaca reportback, November 30th, at Bound Together Books in SF. December 1st was an international day of solidarity with APPO. There was a protest at 2pm in Oaxaca. There also was an all-day protest at the Mexican Consulate in Sacramento. On December 6th, Barucha Calamity Peller, who has contributed to Indybay from Oaxaca will give a reportback "Oaxaca: Portrait of Rebellion," at 8pm at Station 40 in San Francisco.

On November 23rd, sectarian warfare in Iraq escalated after more than 200 people died and at least 250 were wounded in Baghdad, in the deadliest single day of attacks since the US invasion in 2003.