First, there was the report in the Mexican media on July 29 that an investigation by officials from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police into the murder of U.S. independent journalist Brad Will affirmed the conclusions drawn by the Mexican Federal Attorney General’s Office (PGR) regarding his death. The PGR, contrary to all available evidence, claims Will, shot in Oaxaca in 2006, was killed at close range by a anti-government protester. The media reports raised more questions than they answered. For example, why was the RCMP investigating this, and why, as evident from the reports, did they carry out such a clearly laughable investigation?

These questions and more were answered when Brad Will’s family released a statement soundly debunking the so-called RCMP report. As it turns out, there was no official RCMP investigation. It was merely three retired RCMP officers who did an “investigation” which the Mexican government then presented to the media as an official RCMP report. Today, Physicians for Human Rights – a group that actually did investigate Brad’s murder – issued a press release that similarly called into question the veracity of the ex-RCMPers report. James Stephen, Phil Ziegler and Gary Buerk certainly have some serious rebutting to do if they don’t want to be tarnished as integrity-free hacks-for-hire. Although I’m sure there’s always a market for those types.

The conclusions of another “investigation” regarding Oaxaca were released Tuesday by Mexico’s Supreme Court. They took it upon themselves to investigate the actions of the state and federal governments who brutally repressed the 2006 uprising. Unsurprisingly, the Supreme Court found the use of force – which left 27 dead and hundreds injured, arrested and tortured – to be legitimate. This is the same court which found the murders and mass rapes by police that occurred in Atenco in 2006 to be unworthy of investigating either.

But one question remains – why all these reports stating how the Mexican state is not at fault for the atrocities of 2006 in Oaxaca? The answer can be found in Plan Mexico, aka the Merida Initiative. The three-year, $1.4 billion aid (mostly military) package to Mexico and Central America has a human rights requirement for Mexico. Yearly, the U.S. State Department must certify Mexico’s respect for human rights and the Congress must approve that certification. If that doesn’t happen, then Mexico loses 15% of the Plan Mexico funds. Of course, Mexico gets the other 85% no matter how many people it tortures and kills, but it could do it much more effectively if it got 100% of the funds.

Also, later this month both Clinton and Obama are to visit Mexico to see how the U.S.’s hegemonic efforts under the tutelage of Felipe Calderon are holding up. The family of Juan Manuel Martinez Moreno – the Oaxacan social activist being framed by Mexico for the murder of Brad Will – is requesting an audience with Obama in Mexico City. The Mexican government would of course rather avoid this and any other scrutiny of its human rights record, while at the same time receiving all the Plan Mexico funds. So the timing of the non-RCMP and Supreme Court reports saying that everything is fine in Oaxaca is no surprise.

However, it appears that their efforts have all been for naught. For while Clinton’s State Dept. dutifully certified Mexico’s human rights record this week, even though human rights complaints have risen 600% under Calderon’s regime, Senator Leahy on Wednesday blocked the certification from being voted upon in the Senate, basically saying he doesn’t believe the State Dept. Maybe Amnesty International got to him. This means that, at least for the time being, the Mexican government will only have 85% of the Plan Mexico funds at its disposal to deploy against the social movements demanding justice and an end to impunity. Which, given that Plan Mexico shouldn’t exist at all, is still appallingly too much.

Matías was kidnapped as he left the newspaper to go home on the evening of 25 October. His abductors beat him and terrorised him for hours, simulating an execution, asking him how he preferred to die and variously threatening to drag him along the ground behind their car, cut off his genitals, rape him or behead him. They also threatened his family members, saying they had been “located.”

He was released the next morning some 30 km outside Oaxaca in Tlacolula de Matamoros, without his car and without his papers, which his abductors also took from him.

Matías does much reporting on the social movement in Oaxaca, usually giving it fair, if not occasionally favorable, coverage. According to Reporters Without Borders, he also is a contributor to a radio station and on it has criticized the PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party), the party which has ruled Oaxaca for almost 80 years.

This is not the first attack against Noticias or its reporters, which for several years has been the lone local mainstream media outlet which is critical of the state government. Mexico is also the most deadly country in the Americas for journalists.

On November 19, 2004, masked gunmen took over Noticias‘ warehouses and printing presses, holding it for several days and murdering a 19 year old.

On June 17, 2005, Governor Ulises Ruiz, with the help of a state congressman and a PRI-controlled union called the CROC (Revolutionary Confederation of Workers and Peasants), fomented a fake strike against Noticias in an attempt to shut it down. Union members, paramilitaries and local police blockaded the building with 31 Noticias employees inside, cutting off the electricity, phones and water. After a month, the thugs raided the building, dragging out the 31 employees and destroying the offices.

On August 9, 2006, during the rebellion in Oaxaca, two armed, masked men entered the offices of Noticias, shooting equipment and people, wounding two employees.

This year, on January 16, two Noticias reporters received death threats from Rubén Marmolejo Maldonado, aka “El Dragón,” a leader of porros (paid thugs), who has instigated numerous conflicts on the campus of the state university in Oaxaca (UABJO) as well as organizing attacks against the APPO (Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca). He has been denounced by the Chair of the Law and Social Sciences Departments of UABJO of working for the state government.

And now Pedro Matías has been kidnapped and tortured. While this event should be seen as another occurrence of government repression against Noticias, it also has a place in the increasingly tense climate of repression against the social movement which has been escalating these past couple of weeks. Oaxaca has seen the October 16 arrest of three APPO members for the October 27, 2006, murder of Brad Will, the issuing of more that 300 more arrest warrants, and the October 25 warrantless raid and trashing of a house belonging to CODEP, a group aligned with the APPO, by the AFI, Mexico’s equivalent of the FBI.

Things may only get worse as the anniversary-laden month of November approaches. November 2 marks not only the Day of the Dead but also the unsuccessful 2006 Federal Preventive Police (PFP) attack on the barricade of Radio Universidad. And November 25 is the two year anniversary of the massive and brutal PFP, paramilitary, state and local police attacks against the APPO. Clearly, the government of Oaxaca is trying to preemptively intimidate and frighten a rebellious populace that it still very much fears.

These tactically successful actions were organized by Direct Action to Stop the War (DASW), a grouping of activists and affinity groups who functioned and made decisions in a decentralized, non-hierarchical, consensus-based manner. First coming together in late 2002, DASW organized in the months leading up to the invasion of Iraq planning actions for “Day X” when the war started. DASW lasted until 2004 and mobilized for direct actions locally against war profiteers such as Bechtel, Chevron and Lockheed Martin, and nationally, such as at the Miami meeting of the Free Trade Area of the Americas in 2003 and the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York City.

With the fifth anniversary of the war and occupation of Iraq looming, several Bay Area activists began having informal conversations about creating an action that was something more than what much of anti-war activism in the US has been reduced to — a police-facilitated march and rally. These conversations quickly turned into a packed, 50+ person meeting at AK Press in Oakland on January 6, where the group decided to take on the name Direct Action to Stop the War. Many present were heavily involved in the first DASW, and given the orientation of the new formation — being decentralized, non-hierarchical, and consensus-based — it seemed an appropriate continuity to establish. Since then, those involved have been working hard on all the facets that go into organizing a series of actions, as well as looking to lay groundwork for the future.

Early on, it was consensed that DASW would organize an initial series of three direct actions: one on February 5, the day of the presidential primaries in California, the second on March 15 at the Chevron refinery in Richmond in the East Bay, and the third on the fifth anniversary of the war, March 19, with multiple actions at multiple locations in downtown San Francisco.

Refusing to get caught up in the charade that is the electoral process and with the perspective that popular mobilization, not politicians, will end this war, DASW’s first action will be held in both San Francisco and Oakland at 5 PM on “Super” Tuesday, February 5. In Oakland, people will meet at Frank Ogawa Plaza and head toward Barack Obama’s nearby campaign headquarters. The meeting point in San Francisco is UN Plaza, with Hillary Clinton’s offices nearby. The actions are not targeted at Clinton and Obama specifically, they just happen to be the only candidates with offices in the Bay Area. With the media and campaigns placing such importance on this day, these direct actions offer a prime opportunity to assert that the world, the US and the Bay Area demand the unconditional and immediate end to the war and occupation of Iraq and reject the repackaged version of the same old US imperialism currently on offer from the major candidates.

Saturday, March 15, will feature a rally and direct action in Richmond at Chevron’s refinery. Not only has Chevron profited massively off the war on Iraq by refining stolen Iraqi oil and pushing Iraq to privatize its oil fields, but it daily spews cancer and asthma-causing pollution into the adjacent working class communities of color. In a time when the world is in peril due to global warming, Chevron is seeking to expand its Richmond refinery over the objections of the residents but with the blessing of the local government. DASW is teaming up with the West County Toxics Coalition, Greenaction and others to demand an end to Chevron’s war profiteering abroad and poisoning of people at home. An 11am rally will be held at Judge G. Carroll Park (W. Cutting Blvd & S. Garrard Blvd) and at 1pm there will be a nonviolent direct action at the Chevron refinery (841 Chevron Way). Periodic shuttles from the local Richmond BART station will carry people to and from the sites.

These two actions will increase momentum for Wednesday, March 19, the fifth anniversary of the beginning of the war on Iraq. On that day, Direct Action to Stop the War will be coordinating a series of direct actions, in which we will blockade the offices of government agencies and war-profiteering corporations in downtown San Francisco. We believe that taking direct action is central to the success of the anti-war movement. These past five years have proven the anti-war movement unequivocally correct in opposing an imperial war of aggression with a cost astronomical both in lives and resources. Five years have left more than 600,000 Iraqis dead, according to a Johns Hopkins study, along with more than 3,900 U.S. soldiers. US Office of Management and Budget data states that $2.8 trillion has been spent on the military since 2003. Rather than spend this money on the priorities of the people — universal health care, rebuilding the Gulf Coast or fully funding schools in working class communities — this immense amount of resources has been spent destroying the country of Iraq, and paying well-connected US corporations to make a pretense of building it back up again. We believe that it is time for us to take direct action against the organizations responsible for this war, and make it absolutely clear to them that they can continue to expect this kind of popular resistance until the war is brought to an end.

The past five years have also shown that the ruling elite, whether Democrat or Republican, have no interest in ending a war that has made their corporate backers rich. And it has shown that relying on permitted marches alone as the main expression of anti-war opposition will not effect change. Thus DASW is organizing a framework for multiple direct actions at multiple locations in downtown San Francisco on March 19. People are urged to take the day off work or school and hit the streets at 7:30am. Talk to your friends, form affinity groups, pick a target and plan an action. Or show up at Market and Sansome to plug into an action or for frequent “war machine tours of shame.” There will be actions for all risk levels and DASW will be conducting direct action trainings in the lead up to March 19 as well as legal support afterwards.

These series of actions are just the beginning. DASW is organizing with an eye toward helping build a broad, radical anti-war movement. Those who make up DASW also recognize that the war on Iraq is an extension of the war at home against working people, communities of color, women, the queer and gender non-conforming communities. Conscious of the privilege many of us have, we are working intently to see not only how the framework DASW has set up can be of use to these communities, but more importantly how DASW can support their struggles in addition to its own organizing efforts.

As momentum builds towards Feb. 5, March 15, March 19 and beyond, DASW welcomes the involvement of likeminded groups and individuals in planning these actions and encourages those outside of the San Francisco Bay Area to step it up as well.

For more information on Direct Action to Stop the War visit www.actagainstwar.net, e-mail takedirectaction@riseup.net, or call (510) 984-2566.