On Dec. 21, police agents from Chile's militarized Carabineros Special Forces attacked the Mapuche community of Juan Paillalef in Cunco commune in the 9th region (Araucania). The attack came as community members were protesting a decision by the Ministry of Public Works to widen and pave a road through Mapuche land without following required legal procedures. Police used tear gas, clubs and firearms against community members and badly beat lonko (chief) Juana Rosa Calfunao Paillalef; some children were among those injured in the raid.

The "Other Campaign," a tour of Mexico by leaders of the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), set off from the Chiapas village of La Garrucha on New Years Day—the anniversary of the Zapatistas' 1994 uprising. Rebel leader Subcomandante Marcos, at the head of a procession of hundreds of Zapatista rebels (masked but unarmed), departed from the village on a black motorcycle with a Mexican flag tied to the back. (Xinhua, Jan. 2)

On December 16 the Mexican League for the Defense of Human Rights (LIMEDDH) reported that a campesino active in the environmental movement in the southern state of Guerrero, Diego Bahena Armenta, hasn't been seen since November 8, when he was kidnapped by eight hooded men in a Nissan van without license plates as he was working with his nephew cleaning the road near the Riscalillo ranch, in Zihuatanejo municipality. His family reported his disappearance immediately to the state police but has received no information on him.

A group of 25 US Catholic peace protesters held a three-day fast starting on Dec. 12 near the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to protest the situation of 500 male Muslim detainees held there for three years as "enemy combatants." The group began the 66-mile walk from Santiago de Cuba to Guantanamo on Dec. 7 and arrived near the base Dec. 11.

From the front page of the New York Times, Dec. 28, via Bellaciao:

Defense lawyers in some of the country’s biggest terrorism cases say they plan to bring legal challenges to determine whether the National Security Agency used illegal wiretaps against several dozen Muslim men tied to Al Qaeda.

Tensions are mounting between Russia and Ukraine over the former's massive hike in the price of natural gas it sells to the latter. Ukraine has until now received cut-price gas in return for allowing Russia to pipe fuel across its territory to western Europe. But Gazprom, the state-owned Russian fuel company, has announced it is raising the price for gas supplied to Ukraine by more than 400%.

A very enlightening piece from the Dec. 28 Christian Science Monitor, "Kremlin reasserts control of oil, gas" by Fred Weir, points to Moscow designs to reassert its power in Eurasia, and possibly eventually on the global stage. This, in turn, sheds much light on why the US is really in Iraq...

More than 3,500 Congolese soldiers, supported by 600 UN troops and helicopter gunships, launched attacks Dec. 24 on guerillas operating in the eastern Ituri region of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Sixteen government troops and some 35 guerillas are reported killed in fighting near the city of Beni in Nord-Kivu province. An Indian blue beret peacekeeper was killed and four of his colleagues wounded when their camp was hit by a guerilla rocket-propelled grenade. But 300 Nepalese peacekeepers and 1,500 government troops captured the guerilla-held village of Nioka, 50 miles north-east of Bunia, the main town in Ituri district. The guerilla militia the operation was launched to uproot, the ADF/NALU (Allied Democratic Forces/National Army for the Liberation of Uganda), is seeking the overthrow of President Yoweri Museveni's regime in Uganda, across the eastern border.