Two Chilean Mapuche prisoners were admitted to a hospital after 72 days of a liquids-only hunger strike. Corrections authorities denied that the prisoners’ lives were in danger.
Bill Weinberg‘s purge from WBAI-New York for his political dissent is protested in a NY Daily News editorial, “Noncommercial, counterculture icon WBAI radio spirals into self-destructive 9/11-conspiracy madness.”
Deadly blasts that targeted government buildings in Fuzhou, Jiangxi province, are being blamed on a peasant farmer who waged a legal struggle for years after his home was destroyed to make way for a new expressway.
West Bank settlers reportedly set fire to Palestinian agricultural lands near Nablus after being evicted by Israeli troops from nearby Joseph’s Tomb, which they again attempted to occupy.
Iran cheers protesters in Egypt, Yemen and Bahrain while apparently backing the repression in Syria—just as the US cheers protesters in Syria while backing the repression in Egypt, Yemen and Bahrain.
NATO air-strikes in Helmand and Nuristan provinces left scores of civilians dead, local officials said. The outrage comes amid reports that the US has opened secret talks with the Taliban.
Prime Minister Maliki broached keeping troops in Iraq after the Dec. 31 deadline—three days after thousands of followers of radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr held a militaristic rally in Baghdad to demand complete withdrawal.
Thousands of Aymara protesters took over the city of Puno, demanding an end to a Canadian silver mining project. Peasants from the Bolivian side of the lake have joined the barricades, and the city remains shut down.
Colombia’s mineral code was struck down by the supreme court, citing insufficient protection for indigenous rights. But ecologists fear new environmental protection provisions could be left out of the new bill.
President Obama signed a four-year extension of the Patriot Act minutes before it was set to expire—following three days of filibustering by Sen. Rand Paul over concerns about gun rights and privacy.
The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit affirmed a lower court’s decision that Yemeni Guantánamo Bay detainee Musa’ab Omar al-Madhwani is lawfully detained for being part of al-Qaeda.
Colombia passed a Victims and Land Restitution Law to compensate victims of the armed conflict. Yet paramilitary terror continues to claim lives across the country as peasants mobilize to reclaim usurped lands.
