From Upside Down World, June 7:

About 300 demonstrators protesting the slow pace of land reform invaded the Brazilian Parliament Building June 7. The protesters vandalized the pristine building and destroyed a car waiting to be raffled off to Congressional staff member. Security officers called in by Speaker of the House Aldo Rebelo battled protesters who tried to enter the main floor of the Congress, while it was in session.

Received by email:

The Congress of South African Trade Unions issues statement supporting CUPE resolution

The President, Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Ontario, June 6, 2006

Brother Sid Ryan,

On behalf over 1,2 million South African workers organized under the banner of COSATU I greet you in the name of worker internationalism. It is this solidarity, since the formation of the very first union and across space and time, often in the face of harsh repression, that provided vital moral succour and allowed workers to strengthen their resolve against oppression and exploitation.

Violent student protests in the historic town of Merida in Venezuela's high Andes seem to have accrued little international coverage. This very opinionated account from the very pro-Chavez Venezuela News Bulletin, May 31:

Riots and 'guarimbas' are running wild in southwestern Merida State, led by the delinquent student leader, United States CIA and "opposition" stooge Nixon Moreno.

Bush just has two years to go. Will he really get around to invading Venezuela? Chavez isn't hedging his bets. From Reuters, June 3:

CARACAS - Venezuela received a shipment of 30,000 new Russian rifles on Saturday, weeks after Washington restricted U.S. arms sales to Caracas over concerns about President Hugo Chavez's ties to Cuba and Iran.

Evo Morales sticks it to the landed elite. He saves the announcement for a trip to Santa Cruz, the section of the country which had threatened to secede if he nationalized the gas (as he has now done). A none-too-subtle message. And the land barons immediately talk of forming paramilitaries. This should be interesting... From Reuters, June 4:

SANTA CRUZ - Bolivia's leftist president, Evo Morales, took a first step on Saturday toward handing over a fifth of the country's territory to poor farmers, a day after angry landowners vowed to form self-defense groups.

From La Jornada, June 6, via Chiapas95 (our translation). Amazingly, this seems to have made no international media. Now, how did this guy survive to go on a hunger strike after being nailed to a cross?

Veracruz, June 5. An eldrely sympathizer of the ecologist organization Greenpeace crucified himself in the historic center of this city to protest the "silent complicity" of the three levels of government before the destruction of the forests and mangroves in Veracruz [state] and the contamination of the rivers and lagoon systems.

From the Global Justice Ecology Project, June 6:

Protesters Arrested After Disrupting Negroponte in Vermont
by Orin Langelle and Anne Petermann/Global Justice Ecology Project

St. Johnsbury,VT--National Intelligence Director John Negroponte's Commencement Address to the graduating class of private St. Johnsbury Academy was disrupted twice by protesters inside the auditorium where the ceremony was being held.

On May 4 the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the ACLU of Georgia released documents on investigations by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) into the US human rights group School of the Americas Watch (SOA Watch). The group organizes massive demonstrations each year outside Fort Benning, Georgia, to call for the closing of the US military's Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC, formerly the US Army School of the Americas), a training school for Latin American soldiers whose graduates include many of the worst human rights violators in Latin America.