Winter fund drive exceeds minimum goal!
Thanks to a donation from a reader in New York City, we have exceeded our winter fund drive goal of $2,000. The total now stands at $2,250. If any other readers want to thusly encourage us, please feel free…!
The Andes
Colombian army kills FARC leader “Alfonso Cano”
Colombian army forces announced that they have killed Guillermo Leon Saenz AKA “Alfonso Cano”—supreme leader of the FARC guerillas. Initial reports that he was killed an in airstrike contradict forensic evidence of multiple bullet wounds.
Africa
HRW charges abuses in China’s Zambian mines
China’s embassy in Zambia denied charges in a new Human Rights Watch report of oppressive health and safety conditions and anti-uinion practices at Chinese-owned copper mines in the southern African country.
Watching the Shadows
Gitmo prisoner can be indefinitely detained despite acquittal: prosecutors
US prosecutors argued that even if suspected USS Cole bomber Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri is acquitted by a military tribunal, the US government has the authority to detain him at Guantánamo until the end of the hostilities in the US war on terror.
Palestine
Israel responds to UNESCO vote with new West Bank settlements
The Israeli government said it will move ahead with “sensitive housing projects” in East Jerusalem and the West Bank as a rebuttal to UNESCO’s decision to grant Palestine full-member status. The US meanwhile cut funds to UNESCO.
North America
Protests shut down Port of Oakland
Thousands of protesters blocked the Port of Oakland Nov. 2, bringing work there to a halt, as the city’s teachers and nurses and many businesses honored a general strike call. Protesters also blocked downtown streets, and seized an abandoned building near City Hall. Police only intervened in the wee hours of the next morning, evicting the occupied building, using tear-gas and rubber bullets and arresting some 80.
Photo: Climate Connections
Watching the Shadows
Gitmo detainee lawyers claim US policy violates attorney-client privilege
Lawyers defending detainees at Guantánamo Bay said that Joint Task Force Gitmo staff intercept attorney-client privileged communications, violating the law and making it impossible for them to do their jobs.
North Africa
Algeria: Sahrawi refugee camps targeted for anti-terror militarization
Algeria is sending military forces to the border with Western Sahara after a group of Spanish and Italian aid workers were kidnapped from the Polisario-run refugee camps at Tindouf by supposed al-Qaeda militants.
Southeast Asia
Philippines: mineral interests to get their own militia force?
Indigenous and peasant communities in the southern Philippine island of Mindanao are protesting the armed forces' proposal to allow mining companies to establish their own militia force to secure their operations.
Africa
Tanzania: “extinct” tribe wins land rights
Tanzania’s last remaining hunter-gatherer tribe won an unprecedented victory over development interests who claimed they were extinct, acquiring a certificate of “customary rights of occupancy” to their communal lands in the Great Rift Valley.
East Asia
New fission detected at supposedly “cold” Fukushima reactor
Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) said it had begun injecting water and boric acid into Reactor No. 2 at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, after detecting signs of fission which had supposedly achieved a “cold shutdown.”
North Africa
NTC chooses US-trained “technocrat” as Libya’s new prime minister
Abdurraheem el-Keib—a dual US-Libyan citizen and veteran of the energy industry, described favorably as a “technocrat” by the Washington Post—was elected prime minister of Libya by leaders of the National Transitional Council.