Eclipsed from the headlines by the ongoing carnage, there is an active
civil resistance in Iraq that opposes the occupation, the torture regime
it protects, and the jihadi and Ba'athist 'resistance' alike.
Submitted by Bill Weinberg on Wed, 05/14/2008 - 03:32.
On May 9 the government of Mexican president Felipe Calderón Hinojosa accepted a seven-member mediation commission proposed by the rebel Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR) on April 28 to start a talks to end 12 years of conflict. The center-right government had initially rejected the proposed mediation commission, which would be made up mostly of leftists or left-leaning intellectuals; on April 29 the government proposed a direct meeting between the two sides in which the commission members would be "social witnesses" rather than mediators. The EPR responded with an angry communique released on May 7, dismissing the government's proposal as "perfidious, vulgar [and] cheating." The government then said it would accept the commission in order "to establish the principles of understanding and a process of dialogue."
The EPR emerged in a series of bloody attacks on police and military outposts in 1996. Afterwards the group was relatively quiet while various factions split off, but in July 2007 the EPR bombed pipelines belonging to the state oil monopoly, Petroleos Mexicanos (PEMEX), in a campaign for the release of two of its leaders, Edmundo Reyes Amaya and Alberto Cruz Sanchez, who were apparently detained in the southern state of Oaxaca on May 25, 2007. The release of the leaders is one of the main issues in the proposed talks.
The mediators include the writer Carlos Montemayor, who is the commission's spokesperson; anthropologist Gilberto Lopez y Rivas; Samuel Ruiz Garcia, bishop emeritus of San Cristobal de las Casas in the southeastern state of Chiapas; and human rights activist Rosario Ibarra de Piedra, a senator for the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). At a press conference in Mexico City on May 9, Montemayor said the commission planned meetings with the government in the near future and would communicate with the rebels through the media, which he called "the red telephone with all the sides involved." (La Jornada, Mexico, May 8, 10)
The inconvenient facts and unanswered questions surrounding the attacks are legion, but the endemic sloppiness of the self-styled "researchers" is delegitimizing the entire project of critiquing the "official version." The ostentatiously named "Truth movement" is not clearing the air, but muddying the water.
WW4 Report pamphlets
WAR AT THE CROSSROADS
An Historical Guide Through the Balkan Labyrinth
The Balkan region is intensely multicultural - a point of crossroads and clash for some of the world's major religions, cultural spheres, and economic systems. While there have been vicious wars in Balkan history, these have taken place in the context of manipulation by imperial powers and the self-serving local leaders who cater to them.
opensource technology and the people of May First
Mexico: rebel talks advancing
On May 9 the government of Mexican president Felipe Calderón Hinojosa accepted a seven-member mediation commission proposed by the rebel Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR) on April 28 to start a talks to end 12 years of conflict. The center-right government had initially rejected the proposed mediation commission, which would be made up mostly of leftists or left-leaning intellectuals; on April 29 the government proposed a direct meeting between the two sides in which the commission members would be "social witnesses" rather than mediators. The EPR responded with an angry communique released on May 7, dismissing the government's proposal as "perfidious, vulgar [and] cheating." The government then said it would accept the commission in order "to establish the principles of understanding and a process of dialogue."
The EPR emerged in a series of bloody attacks on police and military outposts in 1996. Afterwards the group was relatively quiet while various factions split off, but in July 2007 the EPR bombed pipelines belonging to the state oil monopoly, Petroleos Mexicanos (PEMEX), in a campaign for the release of two of its leaders, Edmundo Reyes Amaya and Alberto Cruz Sanchez, who were apparently detained in the southern state of Oaxaca on May 25, 2007. The release of the leaders is one of the main issues in the proposed talks.
The mediators include the writer Carlos Montemayor, who is the commission's spokesperson; anthropologist Gilberto Lopez y Rivas; Samuel Ruiz Garcia, bishop emeritus of San Cristobal de las Casas in the southeastern state of Chiapas; and human rights activist Rosario Ibarra de Piedra, a senator for the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). At a press conference in Mexico City on May 9, Montemayor said the commission planned meetings with the government in the near future and would communicate with the rebels through the media, which he called "the red telephone with all the sides involved." (La Jornada, Mexico, May 8, 10)
From Weekly News Update on the Americas, May 11