Brazil's government is facing an outcry from rights groups and social movements following a violent Jan. 22 eviction of a favela (informal settlement) that the media have dubbed the "Massacre do Pinheirinho." Some 2,000 troops from the Military Police of São Paulo (PMSP) and the Metropolitan Civil Guard (GCM) of the city of São José dos Campos, in the São Paulo state, invaded the settlement known as Pinheirinho following an order for repossession of the land issued by the state court. Backed up by armored cars and helicopters, the troops evicted an estimated 6,000 from the community on the outskirts of São Paulo city. The troops descended on the site without warning, using tear gas, rubber bullets, and truncheons to disperse frightened residents. But apparently well-drilled to resist eviction, some residents quickly donned improvised weapons and homemade body armor and attempted to block the police advance. The images widely circulated on Brazilian social media, leading to widespread protests in support of the evicted residents.

Protesters wearing orange jump-suits and black hoods marched in Washington DC Jan. 11 to mark 10 years since the opening of the military prison at Guantánamo Bay. The grimly attired demonstrators marched down Pennsylvania Ave. from the White House, past the Capitol building, before finishing at the Supreme Court. Thrity-seven members of Witness Against Torture were arrested in a civil disobedience action at the White House, refusing to move when ordered to clear the sidewalk by National Park police. The first detainees arrived at the Guantánamo facility on January 11, 2002—20 men seized as "enemy combatants" in Afghanistan. Nearly 800 prisoners were to pass through the military detention center over the next decade.

Amid growing tensions in the Persian Gulf, the US and Israel are preparing to hold the largest missile defense exercise in the history of the Jewish state. Last month, Lt.-Gen. Frank Gorenc, commander of the US Third Air Force, based in Germany, visited Israel to finalize plans for the upcoming exercise, expected to see the deployment of several thousand US soldiers in Israel. The drill will include establishment of US command posts in Israel and IDF command posts at European Command headquarters in Germany.

Residents in Cajamarca, Peru, held a 24-hour general strike Nov. 11, with protestors erecting roadblocks to halt traffic on the Cajamarca-Bambamarca highway. Students from the National University of Cajamarca took over the campus, and almost all urban transport unions, teachers and shops joined the strike. The action was called to demand that the Yanacocha Mining Corp. abandon its development of a giant gold mine at the community of Conga, which residents say will threaten vital water sources. The mine project will destroy four mountain lakes. The company has pledged to replace them with reservoirs—an offer rejected by local residents and municipal governments.

Thousands of protesters blocked the Port of Oakland Nov. 2, bringing work there to a halt. "Maritime operations are effectively shut down at the Port of Oakland," port authorities said in a statement. "Maritime area operations will resume when it is safe and secure to do so." Protesters, who streamed across a freeway overpass to mass at the port gates, stood atop tractor-trailers stopped in the middle of the street. Others climbed onto scaffolding over railroad tracks as a rock band played using amplifiers powered by stationary bike generators. Protesters also blocked streets near City Hall. The general strike was called by Occupy Oakland and supported by residents, a few small businesses, teachers and nurses with the California Nurses Association. The Oakland Education Association (OEA) executive board unanimously endorsed Occupy Oakland's "General Strike/Mass Day of Action" call, urging members to participate by "taking personal leave to join actions at Frank Ogawa Plaza, doing informational picketing at school sites, and holding teach-ins on the history of general strikes and organizing for economic justice." The general strike is the first event of its kind in Oakland since 1946.

Under the slogan "From Tahrir Square to Times Square," the Occupy Wall Street movement reports demonstrations in over 1,500 cities across the globe Oct. 15, including over 100 US cities from coast to coast. In New York, 74 were arrested as police attempted to block thousands of marchers behind barricades in the Times Square area, where the protesters had marched from the Financial District. In the evening, hundreds of protesters converged on Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village, staying until police arrested 14 for violating the park's curfew after midnight. Another 24 were arrested after they entered a nearby Citibank, with the aim of closing their accounts en masse. Management said they called police after the protesters did not respond to a request to leave. (Fox News, Oct. 14; Daily News, New York Post, WSJ, Oct. 15)

World War 4 Report editor Bill Weinberg, in the second Internet edition of the Moorish Orthodox Radio Crusade, discusses the emerging struggle for post-Qaddafi Libya and the potential for ethnic war as Arabs are pitted against Tuaregs and Berbers. He also looks at Western Sahara—North Africa's forgotten conflict—where the struggle of the Sahrawi people against the Moroccan occupation presaged the Arab Spring.

The indigenous Telengit people in Russia's Altai Republic (see map) are turning to the international community to help stop a new gas pipeline to China that would cut through their sacred lands and a UN-recognized World Heritage Site. When first announced in 2006 by Russian President Vladimir Putin, the 2,700-kilometer Altai Pipeline was slated to be complete by the end of 2011, but construction is only about to begin now due to cost disputes. Cultural Survival warns that the pipeline would bisect the Ukok Plateau, sacred to the Telengit, and the Golden Mountains of Altai, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, as well as Kanas National Park in China's Xinjiang province, one of that country's last undeveloped wilderness areas.

The Israeli government is under heat now also from citizens who are normally indifferent to its immoral conduct. After a successful boycott of cottage cheese that forced the producer to put down the prices, hundreds of Israelis are now taking to the streets in protest of lack of affordable housing, building a tent town on Tel Aviv's fashionable Rothschild Boulevard. Rents in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and most other large cities are so high that even people with average salaries cannot afford them. For example, a three-room apartment in central Tel Aviv is around 7,000 NIS (about $2,000). The average salary in Israel is 8,698 NIS, and minimum wage in Israel is 4,100 NIS.

After a temporary suspension to allow for Peru's presidential elections to take place in the southern Puno region, local Aymara activists announced June 10 that they will resume their strike civil strike indefinitely, and thousands immediately joined roadblocks on the main highway to Bolivia near the border town of Desaguadero. The protesters are no longer just demanding cancellation of Bear Creek Mining's concession at the local Santa Ana Mining Camp and repeal of President Alan García's Supreme Decree 083-2007 of Nov. 29, 2007 which approved the project, but also the dropping of charges against numerous community leaders that have been brought following last month's unrest in the region. Aymara leader Walter Aduvirii pledged that the protest campaign will radicalize unless demands are met. The national government has agreed to open talks with the protesters, and 58 community leaders have been chosen from the Puno provinces of Chucuito and El Collao to travel to Lima this week to meet with members of the Council of Ministers, or cabinet. The government has agreed to a 14-month suspension of the Santa Ana project while talks proceed. (Mariátegui blog, June 11; RPP, La Republica, AFP, Global Voices, June 10; Los Andes, May 26)

Persistent rumors that private Israeli security companies are recruiting mercenaries for embattled Libyan dictator Moammar Qaddafi were given new credence by a May 2 report on the Zurich-based International Relations and Security Network (ISN) website. Although the report itself cites unnamed "reports," it for the first time names a particular Israeli firm which is said to have been contracted by the afflicted Tripoli regime:

South Sudan is witnessing a sharp rise in armed conflict—with less than three months to go before the formal independence of the fledgling nation. Heavy fighting has killed some 1,000 and displaced an estimated 100,000 since southerners voted overwhelmingly for independence in January, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. The fighting is centered in Unity and Jonglei states, near the border with the North (see map). The most recent clashes have pitted the southern armed forces of the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) against a breakaway SPLA faction led by Peter Gadet, who has taken up arms against the South Sudan government. (Reuters, May 11; IRIN, April 26)

Fighting between protesters and government loyalists raged into a second day in Egypt Feb. 3, with clashes continuing for control of Cairo's Tahrir Square. The Health Ministry said five people have been killed and 835 injured over the past 24 hours. Army troops finally moved in to create a buffer zone between the clashing demonstrators early in the day, but pro-regime militants later broke through the lines to hurl stones and protesters. Opposition leaders say they will go ahead with plans for a massive demonstration on Friday, their designated "departure day" for Mubarak.

Chanting slogans from a student strike at the University of Puerto Rico (UPR), on Jan. 21 a group of students and activists interrupted a talk that conservative Puerto Rican governor Luis Fortuño Bruset was giving at Valladolid University Law School in Valladolid, Spain. The activists said they were Puerto Ricans living in Spain who wanted the international community to know about Gov. Fortuño's "destruction" of the UPR, and "the repression, the criminalization and abuse of power against the student demonstrators." A group of students has been on strike at several of the university's campuses since December to protest an $800 surcharge on tuition at the large public university.

From War Resisters League, Dec. 17:

Whose stories are we telling about the war in Afghanistan?
On the day following the White House report on the war in Afghanistan that names the war as a qualified success and calls for the US to "stay the course," we must lift up the alternative stories and reports of this near-decade of occupation, including yesterday's Veterans for Peace action at the White House.