A recent Reuters headline declares, "Darfur Death rate drops elow crisis level---UN" (June 28, 2005). It is likely that this will signal to many that the Darfur crisis is gradually being brought under control and that as bad as things have been, they are now likely to get better. But what has the UN actually said? And what are the realities of human mortality in Darfur?

An intelligence unit of the California National Guard monitored anti-war protesters who gathered at the state Capitol on Mother’s Day, the June 26 San Jose Mercury News reported. The article noted that press staff of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger had given the Guard unit advance notice of
this demonstration.

The latest example of chutzpah from Bush and co. is the announcement that Joseph Kelliher, a former policy adviser with the Department of Energy who currently serves as a commissioner on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the agency that controls the country's natural gas industry, hydroelectric projects, electric utilities, and oil pipelines and has played a critical role in the deregulation of those industries, will be named by the White House Thursday to chair FERC.

Although economic and political unrest historically have been a significant challenge for Argentine governance, the 2000-2001 debt crisis has remained unsurpassed in its scope and impact on its links to the U.S. When President Carlos Menem transformed the Argentine economy from a state-dominated protectionist model to free market capitalism beginning in 1989, the future appeared bright.

OVER the next few months, Iraqis will face a key challenge, says Iraqi Communist Party politburo member Mohammed Jassem al-Labban. It is whether or not a future Iraq will possess the legal basis for democracy and civil rights.

Bush is sticking to the lies that he included in the formal letter and report that he submitted to the United States Congress within 48 hours after having launched the invasion of Iraq.You want to sacrifice?... Take ten minutes and answer Congressman Conyers' letter. Did you know that 128 Congress Members and 560,000 of the rest of us have signed it?

At the invitation of U.S. Labor Against the War, a delegation of six Iraqi labor leaders representing three of that country’s major labor organizations toured the United States between June 10 and June 26, 2005.

Yesterday, during his weekly television program Aló Presidente, Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez announced the second stage of the Mission Mercal with the approval of an addition $295 million.

Several thousand workers in the Pilbara in Western Australia ignored government threats and kicked off the ACTU’s week of protest against the Howard government’s anti-union laws on Monday this week.

Note: "This column is 200 words shorter than usual because Billy Hunter lost 25% of it in the NBA’s new Collective Bargaining Agreement...The Stern Agenda of a sanitized, 21st century NBA loved and supported by alums of both Bob Jones University and the Belmont Street Projects alike, is a Park Avenue pipe dream, and something we should oppose."

The Israeli government approved on Sunday a law to deny Palestinians married to Israeli citizens the permanent stay visa in Israel, and expel all those staying illegally from Israel.The Israel law is targeting mainly Arab families, where Arab Israeli citizens have married Palestinians from the occupied territories, and live together inside Israel.

THE clamping down of internal emergency on June 26, 1975 and its operation over the next 19 months represents one of the darkest periods in the political history of India. For all practical purposes, the Indian Constitution was kept in suspense, parliamentary democracy was trodden brutally underfoot, and an authoritarian rule proclaimed.

Despite public opposition, the Bush administration and the congressional Republican leadership plan a big push to pass the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) in the next few days and weeks. The trading partners governed by CAFTA would be the United States, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Honduras, Costa Rica, and possibly the Dominican Republic.

A bipartisan House bill (HR 1814) to end the ban on travel to Cuba may come up for a vote this week. Proposed by Reps. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) and William Delahunt (D-MA), this bill orders that "the President shall not regulate or prohibit, directly or indirectly, travel to or from Cuba by United States citizens or legal residents, or any of the transactions incident to such travel that are set forth in subsection."

The pilgrims were tenacious and industrious. Their work ethic remains one of the enduring values of America. But their escape for freedom was not for liberty. It was for purity. Ironically, out of this dark, intolerant society came America’s purest value – idealism.

Karl Rove, who serves as Bush’s key political strategist and unofficial minister of propaganda, hit a particularly low note, even by his standards, last week. At Conservative party meeting in New York, Rove said "conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers."

Here is another of our occasional book round ups consisting of short notices of works we have not been able to fully review. These are essentially meta-reviews (reviews of book reviews). If any of our readers are inspired to read one of these books and wish to write a full review for us, please contact pabooks@politicalaffairs.net.

People on Main St. have rejected the idea that Social Security needs to be fixed, despite the claims of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. Democrats in Congress are responding to that grassroots opposition, an expression of progressive family values.