French officials announced June 29 that they have armed rebels in Libya, in an attempt to break the stalemate in a conflict that has stretched longer than many policy-makers anticipated. France dropped guns, rocket-propelled grenades and other munitions in Libya's western Nafusa Mountains (heartland of the Berber insurgency) in early June to help rebel forces who were at the time under threat from Qaddafi's military, a French military spokesman told reporters. (WP, June 29)

Our last issue featured the story "The Two Wars in Libya: Revolutionary Struggle and NATO Intervention" by Art Young of Green Left Weekly, arguing that progressives in the West can support the first while opposing the second. We also ran the story "Libya and the Left" by Seth Weiss, special to World War 4 Report, who asks whether it is possible to support the rebels without supporting their call for military assistance. Our May Exit Poll was: "Is NATO's Libya war a necessary humanitarian intervention or bloody imperialist aggression?" We received the following responses:

Activists preparing the new aid fllotilla to the Gaza Strip charge that Israel sabotaged one of their boats at the Greek port of Piraeus. In a statement, Scandinavian organizers said "hostile divers" had cut the propeller shaft of the Juliano, a ship shared by Swedish, Norwegian and Greek activists. They said the damage can be repaired and that it will not affect plans to sail for the Palestinian territory toward the end of the week. The 10-ship flotilla has already been delayed by administrative problems with Greek port authorities that activists blame on Israeli diplomatic pressure.

Naitonal Police troops and soliders fired on a crowd of protesters staging an occupation of the airport at Juliaca, in Peru's conflicted southern region of Puno, leaving six dead and at least 37 injured. Protesters had succeeded in setting one of the terminals on fire when security forces started shooting. The protesters were Quechua campesinos from the neighboring province of Azángaro, who are demanding remediation of the local Río Ramis following its pollution by small-scale mining operations in the area of Ananea district, San Antonio de Putina province. The National Confederation of Communities Affected by Mining (CONACAMI) condemned the killings as "ethnocide and genocide...against the protests of the original Quechua people, defenders of life." (La Republica, June 25; CONACAMI, Mariátegui blog, June 24)

Bolivia is to start delivering increased volumes of natural gas to Argentina though a new pipeline starting at the end of this month, the state company YPFB said June 21. The newly built Integration Gasduct Juana Azurduy (GIJA) will augment two older pipelines, connecting to a Northeastern Pipeline currently under construction in Argentina. Built by the Kaiser–Petrosur consortiumat a cost of $32 million, the GIJA will have a capacity of 27.7 million cubic feet per day, making Argentina a close second to Brazil as an importer of Bolivian natural gas. (El Diario, La Paz, June 27; La Prensa, La Paz, June 22; Platts, June 21; Platts, Feb. 28)

In a June 21 ceremony designed as part of the Aymara New Year festivities, Bolivia's President Evo Morales signed a new law designed to move the Andean nation toward food sovereignty by encouraging small-scale agriculture and the stockpiling of basic grains. The Law for the Productive Communitarian and Farming Revolution (RPCA) is aimed at guaranteeing the right to food to all Bolivians and improving conditions for the campesino sector. "This law is historic, because for the first time it has been developed from below to above with the social organizations, such as the Bartolina Sisa women, CONAMAQ, the CSUTCB, with the legislative and executive organs," said Viceminister of Rural Development Víctor Hugo Vásquez.

Angry parents held a hundreds-strong march in Japan's Fukushima city June 26 to demand greater protection for their children from radiation more than three months after the start of the world's worst nuclear disaster in 25 years in the northern prefecture. The parents won a victory last month, when a protest campaign pressured the government to lower the limit for radiation exposure for children at schools, and to offer money for schools to remove topsoil in playgrounds with too much radiation. But also June 26, government officials met with local residents in a televised meeting at Saga, on Kyushu island, to try to convince them that it is safe to restart the prefecture's Genkai nuclear power plant. Since the Fukushima disaster, 35 of Japan's 54 nuclear reactors have been temporarily shut down. (Reuters, AFP, June 26; Asahi Shimbun, June 14)

On June 20, the Court of Appeals in the city of Puerto Montt, Chile, ordered a halt to all construction and permitting processes for the controversial HidroAysén five-dam mega-project while a case against the project is pending. The case, jointly filed on June 9 by citizens and congress members, charges that HidroAysén’s environmental review, which was approved by authorities last month, was arbitrary, illegal, and violated constitutional rights of local inhabitants. The case would normally be heard by the Court of Appeals in Coyhaique, the capital city of the Aysén Region—where the dams are slated to be built, where the approval was granted, and where the appeal was filed. However, several of the justices who sit on the appeals court there recused themselves from the case due to conflicts of interest, and the case was moved to the neighboring region of Los Lagos. (See map.)