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LIMA (Reuters) - President Alejandro Toledo on Thursday declared a state of emergency in Peru's central jungle after Shining Path guerrillas killed eight policemen amid an upsurge in violence from the Maoist group. The emergency decree bans public gatherings and gives police and military the right to search houses and make arrests without warrants. The rebels killed eight policemen in an ambush on a police vehicle out on routine patrol in the remote Huanuco region on Tuesday, some 220 miles northeast of Lima. The group that led one of Latin America's bloodiest insurgencies in the 1980s and early 1990s has...

Lima, Oct 18 (EFE).- Peru's Abimael Guzman, the founder of a Maoist guerrilla movement-cum-death cult that sometimes dynamited the bodies of just-murdered functionaries and hanged canines from lamposts as warnings to "capitalist dogs," also had his soft, sappy and romantically poetic side. The man known by his fanatic followers as "President Gonzalo" revealed some of his secrets in a hand-written ode dedicated to his wife, who died in 1988 under mysterious circumstances. A video seized in 1992 by the security forces, after Guzman's arrest, shows the wake of Augusta La Torre, better known as "Comrade Norah" and the Shining Path's...

LIMA, Peru, Aug. 18, 2005 – Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is slated to meet here today with Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo and his new defense minister to show support for Toledo's democratic initiatives and further bolster on what a senior defense official traveling with the secretary called the warmest defense relationship between the two countries in 40 years. Rumsfeld and Toledo are expected to discuss ways to build on Toledo's progress in cracking down on narcotics trafficking, cooperating with its neighbors in countering threats to the region, and modernizing Peru's armed forces and their obsolete 1970s-era Soviet equipment. The leaders...

Watching the Economy Crumble Paul Craig Roberts Wednesday, Aug. 10, 2005 The United States continues its descent into the Third World, but you would never know it from news reports of the Bureau of Labor Statistics' July payroll jobs release. The media give a bare-bones jobs report that is misleading. The public heard that 207,000 jobs were created in July. If not a reassuring figure, at least it is not a disturbing one. On the surface, things look to be pretty much OK. It is when you look into the composition of these jobs that the concern arises. Of the...

The United States continues its descent into the Third World, but you would never know it from news reports of the Bureau of Labor Statistics' July payroll jobs release. The media give a bare-bones jobs report that is misleading. The public heard that 207,000 jobs were created in July. If not a reassuring figure, at least it is not a disturbing one. On the surface, things look to be pretty much OK. It is when you look into the composition of these jobs that the concern arises. Of the new jobs, 26,000 (about 13 percent) are tax-supported government jobs. That...

LIMA, Peru -- Maoist Shining Path insurgents ambushed and killed three Peruvian policemen in a remote jungle area known for guerrilla activity, officials said Monday. The officers were driving Sunday evening in the Huallaga Valley about 205 miles northwest of Lima when more than 70 rebels sprayed their SUV with semiautomatic weapons fire, police said. The officers were shot to death as they fled the vehicle, which was then looted and set ablaze, police said. Sunday's attack was the first on police in the former guerrilla stronghold since June, when two officers and a marine died in a similar ambush....

CALLAO, Peru (AP)The first public trial of Shining Path rebel leader Abimael Guzman fell apart on Monday as the second of the three judges presiding over the case stepped down citing a conflict of interest.

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. Oct 7 - A new report found that layoffs reached an eight-month high in September, while new hiring rose only slightly. Employment consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. said companies announced 107,863 layoffs in September, 45 percent more than in August. The figure was the largest since January, when employers laid off 117,556 workers. Meanwhile, employers hired only 16,166 new workers, compared with 132,105 in August. The computer, transportation, telecommunications and consumer products industries were particularly hard hit by the cuts. "Historically, the period from September 1 through December 31...

Watching the screaming fanatics last night who tried to disrupt President Bush's convention speech reminds me of scenes in the movie The Dancer Upstairs when the fanatics of a movement based on Peru's leftwing Shining Path screamed "VIVA EL PRESIDENTE EZEQUIEL!!!" One particular moment in the movie was when the seemingly normal dance instructor, when revealed as a follower of the Shining Path type movement, dropped her previously calm demeanor to scream fanatically and with a twisted face, "VIVA EL PRESIDENTE EZEQUIEL!!!" I beleve that as the Democrat ticket starts to go down and tubes and especially after they lose...

KATHMANDU : The blockade declared by Nepal's Maoist rebels of the ancient capital, Kathmandu, echoes the tactics of Peru's shadowy Shining Path militants -- the ruthless movement upon which they model themselves. Like the Shining Path rebels, who waged an over decade-long battle to forge a peasant revolution in the South American nation, Nepal's Maoists seek to rule the countryside and now are boldly attacking big towns and even the capital. The group launched their struggle in 1996 to overthrow the monarchy and feudal caste-ridden system, and to turn the Himalayan country of 26 million, one of the world's 10...

LIMA, Peru, June 24 (Reuters) - Some 30 Shining Path rebels killed one soldier in an attack on a military patrol in Peru's Andean region, the second fatal assault on state security forces this month, the army said on Thursday. Rebels attacked soldiers guarding an asphalt factory on Wednesday in the remote highland town of Cangari 360 miles (575 kms) southeast of Lima, an army spokeswoman told Reuters. "One soldier was killed in the attack," she said, adding that there were no reports of injured officers. The Maoist-inspired Shining Path, which has largely been dormant since the 1992 capture of...

LIMA, Peru, June 5 (Reuters) - Peru's Shining Path rebels killed two policemen and a naval officer and injured several others in an ambush in the country's central jungle region, the Interior Ministry said on Saturday. Rebels shot at a police vehicle on patrol on Friday as it crossed a bridge near the jungle town of Aguaytia, 310 miles (500 kms) northeast of Lima, killing two policemen and injuring another, the ministry said. Rebels then set the police car on fire, it added. A naval officer was also killed after rebels ambushed another patrol in the area -- a drug...

Cheerleaders for TerrorismBy Erick StakelbeckFrontPageMagazine.com | June 17, 2003 Two groups whom Islamic terrorists can count on for sympathy and support are radical lawyers and their counterparts in American law schools. Lynne Stewart is a hero of the National Lawyers Guild and a sought-after campus lecturer. While out on bail under indictment for colluding with a terrorist leader, she has been a sought-after speaker for law school audiences who relish her attacks on Attorney General John Ashcroft as a modern-day fascist and on her country for its imperialist and racist policies. Stewart made national headlines in April 2002 when she...

AYACUCHO, Peru (Reuters) - Colombia's largest rebel group is growing coca -- the raw material for cocaine -- over the border in northern Peru, an area that has not typically been used to grow coca, Peruvian Defense Minister Roberto Chiabra said on Friday. "There is an increase in cultivation of coca leaf in our territory which requires an operation (to prevent it)," he said during a visit to the southern city of Ayacucho. "If we allow it to grow, it's going to create a big problem because we know it's a source of funds for the FARC," he added, referring...

There is revolution in the air in South America once again, with thousands of Marxist guerrillas operating in Colombia, and signs in Peru of a resurgence of the Shining Path, a militant Maoist group which seeks to install a peasant revolutionary authority. The Shining Path has never been that friendly to journalists, so trying to make contact is very difficult. In Lima I met members of left-wing parties that have traditionally had links with the Shining Path, and put out the word that I wanted to contact the guerrillas who in the early 1990s brought Peru to its knees. When...

"What's the president's name?" "I don't know." "Do you know what Peru is?" "No." These were the surprising answers of a native Ashaninka released by the Peruvian police from the remnants of the guerrilla group Shining Path in the country's central jungle. All of those rescued, scores of children as well as adults and elderly, displayed severe symptoms of malnutrition, infections and parasitic infections due to the peripatetic and inhumane treatment during years in the heights of the Vilcabamba mountain range and deep in the rainforest. The police also retrieved hundreds of natives that were hiding from the "Senderistas," having...

Peruvian soldiers captured a leader of the Shining Path rebel group after a clash in the Andes in which four guerrillas were killed and an officer wounded, the government said on Sunday. "The blow the remaining Shining Path members must be feeling in the Ene and Apurimac area must be very strong because he was the No. 2," Defense Minister Aurelio Loret de Mola told reporters. The Ene and Apurimac valleys, some 312 miles (500 km) southeast of Lima, are considered the last bastion of Shining Path. The rebel movement, once one of Latin America's bloodiest, died down after the...

Peru's Shining Path rebels, who have begun launching attacks there again after lying low for years, are "taxing" illegal logging and drug-smuggling operations on the jungle border with Brazil to raise funds, a top Brazilian policeman said on Monday. Members of the Maoist group also cross the isolated border into Brazilian jungle towns to get supplies or to find women, said Mauro Sposito, head of the Brazilian federal police's Amazon drugs squad. One of Latin America's most ruthless rebel groups at the height of its struggle, Shining Path has been largely dormant since the capture of its leader Abimael Guzman...

Flush with drug money, rebels linked to IRA are stretching their tentacles across South America, reports Jeremy McDermott in Lima Carlos agreed to meet in a hotel in central Lima. There was no question of a real name or any photographs. "Carlos" joined the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or Farc, Colombia's Marxist rebels, more than 16 years ago and served four years on the front lines. Now he has moved to the Peruvian capital, but he is anything but retired. Instead he is working clandestinely in Peru, as Farc builds up a support base and establishes relations with the...

Standing amid his medals and gold-encrusted ceremonial sword, Gen. Roberto Clemente Noel, now retired, says his wartime past is full of heroism and sacrifice. The way he sees it, his work as military chief in the Peruvian highlands during a barbarous civil conflict in the 1980's stopped rebels from toppling the state. Stepping into the study of his elegant colonial-style home, General Noel showed off proclamations in his honor and his book, "Testimony of a Soldier," in which he defends himself against accusations of vast human rights abuses. "I am proud of the work I have done," said General Noel,...