ANDRES CONTERIS Conteris is in the Brazilian embassy in Honduras, where Honduran President Manuel Zelaya has taken refuge. Conteris is the director of the Program on the Americas for Nonviolence International. He worked as a human rights advocate in Honduras from 1994 to 1999 and is a co-producer of “Hidden in Plain Sight,” a documentary…

CLARK NEWHALL Executive director of Health Justice, Newhall is a doctor and a lawyer. He said today: “Thursday the House Democrats released their version of healthcare reform. While we have been pushing for a debate on the House floor for single payer, and been calling for the representatives to keep the Kucinich [Amendment]. … It…

Matthew Hoh, the first U.S. official known to resign in protest over the Afghan war, stated in a Washington Post forum Wednesday: “I found that the majority of those who were fighting us and the Afghan central government were fighting us because they felt occupied. … We cannot justify the deaths of our young men…

A top U.S. official in Afghanistan has resigned in protest of the war, the Washington Post reports. “I have lost understanding of and confidence in the strategic purposes of the United States’ presence in Afghanistan,” Matthew Hoh, the senior U.S. official in Zabul province, said in his letter of resignation. Many Afghans, he wrote, are…

Beginning Wednesday, protests are expected in 19 cities at offices of insurance companies. The Mobilization for Health Care for All said in a statement that it “has seen almost 900 people sign up to risk arrest at a health insurance office in the past four weeks. … Participants in the sit-ins will walk into the…

MALALAI JOYA, via Sonali Kolhatkar Joya is author of the new book A Woman Among Warlords: The Extraordinary Story of an Afghan Woman Who Dared to Speak Out. Now 31, Joya was the youngest ever woman elected to the Afghan parliament in 2005. She has just begun a tour of North America. She recently wrote:…

ELIZABETH GOULD and PAUL FITZGERALD In Washington D.C., until Saturday, Gould and Fitzgerald recently wrote the book Invisible History: Afghanistan’s Untold Story. They began covering Afghanistan in 1981 for CBS and produced the documentary “Afghanistan Between Three Worlds” for PBS. They said today: “Opinion here indicates that the administration is behind the runoff, expects Karzai…

REESE ERLICH, PETER COYOTE Available for a limited number of interviews, Erlich and Coyote wrote the just-published piece “The Murders at al-Sukariya” for Vanity Fair after visiting Syria. Vanity Fair summarizes the piece: “On October 26, 2008, U.S. helicopters stormed a farm near the Iraq-Syria border in order to assassinate leading al Qaeda operative Abu…

“ZOYA” via Sonali Kolhatkar Twenty-eight-year-old Zoya is a member of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan. Because RAWA is an underground organization, members like Zoya do not reveal their real identity for fear of being persecuted. She said today: “Neither Hamid Karzai nor Abdullah Abdullah deserve to be in a second round of…

NOMI PRINS Prins, a former investment banker turned journalist, is author of the new book It Takes a Pillage: Behind the Bonuses, Bailouts, and Backroom Deals from Washington to Wall Street. ROBERT WEISSMAN President of Public Citizen, Weissman said today: “Wall Street is mocking us. The giant Wall Street firms likely would be out of…