Thousands of Argentine farmers blocked highways on May 8 to protest increased taxes on soy, a major export crop. The farmers had struck in March, halting shipments of grain throughout the country and presenting the center-left government of President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner with its biggest challenge since she took office in December. The new protests come after a 30-day truce failed to produce an agreement. Farmers said they planned eight days of protests; if these produce no results, they may continue the actions past May 15. Argentina is one of the world's major soy exporters, and the Chicago commodity exchange responded to the renewed strike with a rise in soy prices. (La Jornada, May 9 from Reuters)

The Jesuit Service for Refugees and Migrants reports that at least 1,693 Haitians were deported from the Dominican Republic in the first four months of 2008. The mass repatriations are "almost always marked by violations of the migrants' human rights," the group said, noting that some immigrants reported that soldiers released the Haitians who could afford to pay bribes. (Adital, May 9)

Foreign troops and not Haitian demonstrators killed Spanish journalist Ricardo Ortega in Port-au-Prince during a protest on March 7, 2004, according to the reporter's family. Haitian judge Bernard Saint-Vil has dismissed charges against the Haitian suspects in the killing, Ortega's parents, Jose Luis and Charo Ortega, told the media in Madrid on May 9; Saint-Vil reportedly blamed the foreign soldiers deployed in the country during the three months after then-president Jean Bertrand Aristide was removed from office on Feb. 29, 2004.

From Democratic Voice of Burma, May 10:

The Burmese military regime held its national referendum in most of the country today, despite criticism from those who said it should be prioritising assistance for the victims of Cyclone Nargis.

Award-winning journalist and World War 4 Report editor Bill Weinberg will present a video and discussion on the Iraq Freedom Congress (IFC), a new alliance of trade unions, women's organizations, neighborhood assemblies and student groups opposed to both the US occupation and the sectarian militias. The IFC is leading a campaign against the pending law that would privatize Iraq's oil, and has established self-governing zones, which both occupation forces and sectarian militias are barred from accessing, in neighborhoods in Baghdad and Kirkuk. Recently, their leaders have been targeted for attack by US forces. Solidarity efforts and coordinated actions are growing between Iraq's civil resistance and organized labor in the US—but more is needed.

Presidents Hugo Chávez of Venezuela and Rafael Correa of Ecuador warned of possible "contagion" in their countries by the autonomy movement in the eastern Bolivian province of Santa Cruz. "The central plan by the CIA and its lackeys in Venezuela is to take control of regional governments to carry out illegal referendums like the one held (Sunday in favor of autonomy) in Santa Cruz, Bolivia. But we will defeat that plan!" said Chávez.

From ElSalvadorSolidarity.org via Upside Down World, May 8:

On Friday May 2, Hector Antonio Ventura was assassinated in the community of Valle Verde, Suchitoto. Ventura was the youngest of the 14 political prisoners captured in Suchitoto on July 2, 2007. According to preliminary reports, Ventura was stabbed to death. Another victim, who was with Ventura, was attacked but survived. Reports say that the assailants were at least two men, who entered the back room of the house where Ventura and his friend slept and attacked them.

Baitullah Mahsud, an al-Qaida ally who leads the Taliban in Pakistan, pulled out of a peace deal with the government after it refused to withdraw the army from tribal lands on the Afghan border. Tribal elders in Pakistan's South Waziristan region have been trying to broker the deal. Mehsud has been accused of masterminding a wave of suicide attacks that have rocked Pakistan since mid-2007, including one that killed former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto (though Mehsud has denied involvement) in December. The peace talks were aimed at making permanent a five-week lull in a wave of suicide attacks that has killed more than 1,000 people in Pakistan since the start of 2007.

Eight thousand pages of documents related to the Pentagon's illegal propaganda campaign, known as the Pentagon military analyst program, are now online for the world to see, although in a format that makes it impossible to easily search them and therefore difficult to read and dissect. This trove includes the documents pried out of the Pentagon by David Barstow and used as the basis for his stunning investigation that appeared in the New York Times on April 20, 2008.

In 1994, the first year of Rudolph Giuliani's initial term as mayor of New York, 3,400 people were arrested for marijuana possession in the city's five boroughs. By 2000, that number had swelled to 51,500. This period and the ensuing years, which have seen a continuation of this policy under Mayor Michael Bloomberg—39,400 people were arrested in New York for pot last year—has been officially dubbed the "Marijuana Arrest Crusade" by Harry G. Levine and Deborah Peterson Small in a thusly-named report, subtitled "Racial Bias and Police Policy in New York City 1997-2007."