Winning international headlines July 20 was the seizure by the Free Syrian Army (FSA) of Albu Kamal, one of the three major crossings on the border with Iraq, after a brief battle. (Al-Arabiya, July 21) The FSA is linked to the Istanbul-based Syrian National Council (SNC), whose leaders this week visited the United Nations in a bid for international support. (World Policy blog, July 19) The SNC is clearly being groomed by the West, and is generally portrayed in the media as the sole leadership of the Syrian revolution. However the SNC/FSA is but one of several coalitions struggling to bring down the Assad regime.

One person was killed and 23 wounded as Colombia's army retook a base that had hours earlier been occupied by protesters in Cauca department July 17, local indigenous authorities said. Special forces troops were sent in to clear the 1,000 protesters armed with sticks who briefly took control of the "Berlin" army base, located in war-torn Toribio municipality. Photos showed Nasa indigenous protesters armed with sticks physically ejecting soldiers from the base. National Police backed up the army troops to evict the protesters, firing tear gas. Nasa indigenous authorities said army troops also opened fire. Defense Minister Carlos Pinzón, while not confirming the death, said the troops had "the right to defend themselves…if the indigenous initiate an aggression." President Juan Manuel Santos denounced the takeover of the base via Twitter, saying, "I do not want to see a single indigenous in the military bases." And: "Make no mistake. We will not allow attacks on those who defend us. Everything has a limit."

In the eighth YouTube edition of the Moorish Orthodox Radio Crusade, World War 4 Report editor Bill Weinberg discusses the cultural survival struggles of the Quechua of Peru and the Tuareg of Mali—the first threatened by global capitalism, the second by the global jihad, in a demonstration of the paradoxical unity of opposites.

Brazil's indigenous affairs agency FUNAI issued a statement July 5 affirming the validity of a May 2010 ruling of the First Regional Federal Tribunal in Mato Grosso state that called for the return of usurped lands of the Xavante indigenous people. FUNAI demarcated the 165,000 hectares as Xavante indigenous territory in 1992, but ranchers and soy producers now in possession of the lands in question challenged creation of the reserve, to be called Marãiwatsede, near the towns of Cuiabá and Alto Boa Vista. The Xavante were pushed from their lands by Brazil's military government in 1966, and the Marãiwatsede area is now one of the most completely deforested areas of the Amazon Basin. When Xavante led by chief Damião Paridzané held protests at the Rio+20 Summit on Sustainable Development last month to pressure for return of their lands, local ranchers in the Marãiwatsede territory launched an uprising, blocking roads and burning bridges.

Oil prices rose by over dollar to approximately $103 a barrel July 16 after a US Navy ship fired at a fishing boat off the United Arab Emirates (UAE), killing one on board and injuring three. The fishing boat reportedly failed to heed warnings. No link to Iran was claimed in the incident, but it came two days after an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps naval commander boasted that Iran has the capability to blockade the Strait of Hormuz. Iran's parliament is currently considering a bill calling for the strait to be closed until sanctions are lifted. (Reuters, The Nation, Pakistan, July 16) The UAE has meanwhile just completed a new overland pipeline that strategically bypasses the Strait of Hormuz. Abu Dhabi, one of the UAE states, has started exporting its first crude from the new pipeline, shipping the oil from the sheikhdom of Fujairah to a refinery in Pakistan. (Bloomberg, July 16) (See map.)

On the morning of July 14, a group of 45 activists invaded Scottish Coal's Mainshill Open Cast Coal Site near Douglas, South Lanarkshire, Scotland, and shut it down for the day. Machines and equipment were occupied and all work at the site was halted completely. This is the first action at Take Back the Land!—a protest camp in the Douglas Valley that activists hope to maintain for the next week. Activists say the British government has approved expansion of the mine without the consent of local communities in South Lanarkshire. (Coal Action Scotland, July 14) UK Coal has meanwhile threatened to close Britain's largest coal mine Daw Mill in Arley, near Coventry, England, jeopardising 800 jobs, if it cannot reach a new agreement with unions on pay and working conditions. (The Independent, March 15; The Guardian, March 14)

Fighters of the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO) and allied Islamist factions pushed Tuareg rebels of the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) out of their last foothold in northern Mali, the town of Ansogo, about 100 kilometers north of Gao, on July 12. For the first time since the rebellion pushed Malian government forces out of Azawad in April, the entire region is now completely in Islamist hands. The remaining MNLA fighters are believed to have fled into Niger. Islamist militants have surrounded Gao with landmines, making it almost impossible to enter. But Britain's Guardian newspaper says it has obtained film footage depicting foreign Islamists patrolling Gao, dragging the bodies of senior Tuareg insurgents through the town behind pick-up trucks and conducting public whippings of three young people for "offenses" under sharia law, including smoking and having sex outside marriage.

Newly announced plans by China's central government for the "resettlement" of the last remaining nomads over the next five years have sparked protests in Inner Mongolia, with traditional Mongol herders accusing authorities of the illegal expropriation of grazing lands for development projects. At least four protests by Mongol herders have been reported over the last month. The most recent protest took place on July 2 in Imin Sum (Yimin Sumu in Chinese; "Sum" is equivalent to township), Eweenkh Banner (Ewen Keqi in Chinese; "banner" is equivalent to county), Hailar district. According to an appeal letter to the New York-based Southern Mongolian Human Rights Information Center (SMHRIC) written by the Imin Sum protesters, local herders have lost large tracts of their grazing lands to government projects including highway and rail line construction, mining and power plants. The process began in 1984 when Chinese state-run company Hua Neng Coal Electricity developed up a coal mine on local grazing lands.