Israeli forces carried out a series of raids in the West Bank the night of Dec. 5. Soliders invaded the village of Beit Sira, near the Green Line west of Ramallah, conducting house-to-house raids and seizing more than 20 Palestinians. (Ma'an News Agency, Dec. 5) Israeli forces also invaded Jenin refugee camp, firing bullets and sound grenades, breaking into several houses, and seizing four Palestinians. (Ma'an, Dec. 5) That same night, Fatah-allied Palestinian security forces detained eighteen Hamas supporters in in Nablus, Jenin, Tulkarem, Salfit, Ramallah, and Hebron. (Ma'an, Dec. 5)

An unpublished UN map leaked to the London Times in Kabul illustrates risk levels across the country for staff and aid workers with color shadings, revealing a sharp deterioration in security over the last two years. A similar map from March 2005 indicated only a strip along the Pakistan border and areas of mountainous Zabul and Uruzgan provinces in the south as too dangerous for aid workers. Now nearly all the ethnic Pashtun south and east is a no-go zone deemed "high" or "extreme" risk, and such pockets are also emerging in the north. (London Times, Dec. 5)

Perhaps the revolt against the hypertrophy of the technosphere has finally begun. We've already noted the rebellion at a Druze village in Israel against the local siting of a cellphone antennae, and the strike by New York City taxi drivers against the mandatory fitting of their cars with GPS. On Nov. 27, the New York Times' City Room blog reported on the case of Judge Robert M. Restaino of municipal court in Niagra Falls, NY, who in a fit of what the city's Commission on Judicial Conduct called "inexplicable madness," threatened to arrest all 70 people in his courtroom unless a cell phone that had gone off was turned over. Perhaps such draconian measures are called for, although a general abolition would be far preferable. On Dec. 4, the Times reported a startlingly hopeful development from the English countryside:

A we've noted before, the National Intelligence Estimate—a body made up of analysts from 16 US spy agencies—appears to be in the corner of the "pragmatist" wing of the ruling elites. Its new report, "Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities," finds Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and has not resumed it, despite initiating the uranium enrichment program at the Natanz facility. The front-page headline in the New York Times Dec. 4 calls the finding a "major reversal." USA Today states: "The estimate reverses claims the intelligence community made two years ago that Iran appeared 'determined to develop' a nuclear weapons program."

Basque activists arrested in the so-called "18/98" case began appearing before a judge in Bilbao Dec. 4, following a sweep that prompted angry protests over the weekend. Spain's High Court issued 46 arrest warrants for members of the Basque civil groups Ekin, Orain, Xaki and Fundación Joxemi Zumalabe, after a finding by magistrate Baltasar Garzón that they are fronts for the armed organization ETA. (EiTB24, Spain, Dec. 4) Thousands marched against the arrests in Bilbao Dec. 1, in a rally led by leaders of outlawed organizations, including the Batasuna party. (EiTB24, Dec. 2)

Canada's federal court ruled on Nov. 29 that the US breaches the rights of asylum seekers under the United Nations Refugee Convention and the Convention Against Torture. Justice Michael Phelan cited the example of Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen who was detained in September 2002 by US immigration officials at JFK Airport in New York while in transit to Canada and deported to Syria, where he was tortured for 10 months under a policy later identified as "extraordinary rendition."

A US Border Patrol official confirmed on Nov. 13 that agents investigating human smuggling on commercial bus lines arrested more than 100 illegal immigrants in the area of Twin Falls, Idaho, over the past week. The number of people arrested was later confirmed to be 108. Alex Harrington, spokesperson for US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in Havre, Montana, said the ongoing operation was not coordinated with unconfirmed reports of repeated strikes over the past week by immigration agents at other locations, including malls and a bank.

On Nov. 29, shock troops from the Military Police of Sao Paulo state in Brazil invaded the Elizabeth Teixeira encampment of the Movement of Landless Rural Workers (MST) in the Tatu Forest Plot in Limeira municipality near Campinas. The police agents destroyed makeshift homes and violently evicted the 250 families living on the encampment, which has been occupied by the MST since April 21, 2007. The police operation left some 30 people injured, some of them hit by police rubber bullets. MST leader Gilmar Mauro and Jose de Arimateia, coordinator of the encampment, were among those injured. The National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform (INCRA) had promised the MST that there would be negotiations to prevent an eviction. The MST blames the state government and the local authorities of Limeira for the police operation. (Adital, Nov. 29 from Prensa MST; Agencia Brasil, Nov. 29)