Boy, does this ever speak to WW4 Report's existential dilemma! Your struggling writer recently griped: "The dumbing-down and contraction of print media generally has dried up much of the freelance market and forced me into self-publishing on the Net. The irony is that the hypertrophy of the Net has been a key factor in the decline of print media. So I have been forced into the arms of my enemy, so to speak. It seems to be like the Borg. Resistance is futile." It is very vindicating to see Jaron Lanier, one of the original cyber-utopians, eating crow in the New York Times Nov. 21, and admitting the Internet has been a bad deal for writers:

From the New York Times, Nov. 21:

The American military is sending an Iraqi photographer for The Associated Press it accuses of aiding the insurgency into Iraq’s criminal justice system, according to the American authorities and The A.P.

The Nov. 21 New York Times includes a profile of Venezuela's recently retired army commander-in-chief Gen. Raul Isaias Baduel, a longtime confidant of Hugo Chavez who led the paratrooper raid that restored him to power following the abortive 2002 coup d'etat, but has now publicly broken with the president and spoken out against his proposed constitutional reform. Apart from chavista calls to send Baduel to the "paredón" (execution wall), some of the rhetorical reaction against the general will recall the firestorm sparked on this blog last year over accusations of anti-Semitism in Bolivarian Venezuela:

Some 800 students from Mexican teachers colleges occupied the state legislature building in Chilpancingo, capital of the southern state of Guerrero, at about 3 PM on Nov. 14. The students—largely young women from 16 teachers colleges, chiefly those in Saucillo, Chihuahua, and Tamazulapan, Oaxaca—held the sit-in to support demands by students and alumni of Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers College in Guerrero for 75 teaching positions for alumni and for retention of the degree in primary education, which the state government has decided to abolish. The students said they had tried for months to arrange a meeting with Gov. Zeferino Torreblanca Galindo, of the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), to discuss their demands. The president of the legislature's governing committee, Carlos Reyes Torres, also of the PRD, called for the police to remove the protesters. At about 5 PM some 500 agents of the State Preventive Police (PPE), with air support from a helicopter, marched into the building and tried to remove the protesters. The confrontation lasted about two hours, with police hurling tear gas canisters and clubbing students, while the students hurled firecrackers at the agents.

Tens of thousands of protesters occupied the Gen. San Martin bridge, which links the Argentine province of Entre Rios to Uruguay, on Nov. 11 to protest Uruguayan president Tabare Vazquez's decision to let the Finnish company Botnia start operating a paper mill it has built in Fray Bentos, across the Uruguay River from Gualeguaychu, Entre Rios. Argentine environmental activists have been protesting plans for the mill for four years and have blocked traffic between the two countries at the San Martin bridge, at Concordia and at Colon.

On Nov. 13 Puerto Rican environmental activist Alberto de Jesus ("Tito Kayak") ended a week-long protest at a small island near San Juan with a spectacular escape from a police operation that included four launches, motorboats and a helicopter. De Jesus had occupied the top of a 200-foot-high crane; he and the environmental organization Friends of the Sea were attempting to block completion of the Paseo Caribe tourist complex on what they said was public land with historic value. The sit-in was opposed by a builders association and construction unions. There was at least one demonstration by Paseo Caribe supporters, and at least seven shots were fired at De Jesus during the week.

From the International Herald Tribune, Nov. 15, links and emphasis added:

Unorthodox sects face prosecution in Indonesia
JAKARTA — Indonesian human rights lawyers are again questioning the country's commitment to religious freedom after the recent arrests of several unorthodox Islamic leaders and the banning of their organizations.

An open letter to the world human rights community and Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, from PetitionOnline:

Delaram Ali is a woman’s activist who has been given a custodial sentence for 28 months with 10 lashes for taking part in a protest meeting in June 2006 in Iran. In an interview with the official newspapers she expressed her anger at the fact that the security guards were not penalized for beating and maltreating her. Delaram’s imprisonment has led to a mass protest action in Iran. Despite all the protests and the efforts of her solicitor, Mrs Shirin Ebadi, the Islamic regime condemned her to jail sentence.