A one-day general strike protesting plans to lay off 16,970 of Puerto Rico's 180,000 public employees in November shut down all state-owned enterprises and the island's schools and colleges on Oct. 15; most private businesses reportedly remained open remained open, and ports and airports were said to be functioning normally. There were protests throughout Puerto Rico, with tens of thousands of people converging on San Juan's Plaza Las Américas, the biggest shopping mall in the Caribbean.

On Oct. 12 tens of thousands of indigenous people in the region marked 517 years since the arrival of European colonizer Christopher Columbus by protesting around current issues such as the seizure of traditional lands by businesses and the damage to the environment from mining and oil drilling.

In case after case since 9-11, the feds have have created specious terror scares by recruiting marginal wing-nuts for fictitious conspiracies through the use infiltrators (read: provocateurs) posing as al-Qaeda operatives—and the media have utterly failed to challenge this unscrupulous entrapment. Now exactly the same tactic has been used against a veteran technician at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and the Energy Department's Livermore Labs who is accused of "espionage"—even though the guy who lured him to pass on information was himself a federal agent! And the foreign government in this pseudo-plot wasn't Iran or North Korea, but our supposed ally Israel. From Bloomberg, Oct. 19:

A two-judge panel of the UK's High Court ruled Oct. 16 that US intelligence documents containing details pertinent to torture allegations by a former detainee at Guantánamo Bay should be made public. The former detainee, Binyam Mohamed, 31, says Britain's domestic intelligence agency, MI5, knew he was being tortured when it worked with the CIA on his case after he was arrested in Pakistan in 2002 and taken to a prison in Morocco. The Foreign Office said it would appeal the ruling, delaying any release. Mohamed, who was born in Ethiopia, was flown to London in February from Guantánamo on the grounds that he was a legal resident in Britain before leaving for Afghanistan and Pakistan in 2001. (NYT, Oct. 16)

Tens of thousands demonstrated in the center of Rome Oct. 17 against the Italian government's immigration policy—and especially a new law introduced by the Berlusconi cabinet which creates the specific criminal offense of "illegal immigration." Protesters carried signs reading "No to Racism and the Criminalization of Immigration," "No Expulsion of Immigrants" and "Berlusconi, Leave!" The event, which commemorated the 20th anniversary of the first pro-immigrants' rights demonstration in Italy, was organized by trade unions and leftist political parties. "After 20 years, racism has not yet been defeated. It still creates victims and is fuelled by the policies of the Berlusconi government," the official call read. (Romea, Oct. 19)

Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Arizona's Maricopa County is vowing to defy a federal order to halt immigration round-ups. On Oct. 16, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) told Arpaio to stop using the authority of the federal 287g program—which deputizes local law enforcement to help federal agents target undocumented immigrants—in his Phoenix street sweeps that have primarily led to arrests of people who haven't committed any serious crimes. Arpaio publicly refused as he headed a 12th major anti-immigration operation through the metro Phoenix county that day.

Demonstrator Imer Boror, 19, was killed by police gunfire and two were wounded as indigenous protesters blocked entry points into Guatemala's capital on Oct. 12, Dia de La Raza. Roads were also blocked at several other points around the country. Juana Mulul, leader of the "Day of Dignity and Resistance" protests, told AFP the direct action campaign "is purely in defense of Mother Earth and our territory." After the violence, President Alvaro Colom agreed to appoint a special panel to meet with indigenous leaders to discuss their demands. Aparicio Pérez of the Campesino Unity Committee (CUC) said representatives would ask the government to cancel mining, hydroelectric and industrial concessions because "multinational companies are taking over natural resources, which have long been the source of life for rural families." (AFP, Oct. 13)

The seventh summit of the Latin American anti-imperialist bloc ALBA concluded Oct. 17 in Cochabamba, Bolivia, with resolute support for ousted Honduran president Manuel Zelaya, strong opposition to planned US military bases in Colombia—and an agreement to form a new international currency to make the region less dependent on the dollar. The new currency, named the sucre after José Antonio de Sucre, who fought for South America's independence alongside Simon Bolívar, is slated to be issued in coin form in 2010.