Residents of San Juan Jáchal, in Argentina's northwestern province of San Juan, are mobilizing in the wake of last month's cyanide spill at Barrick Gold's Veladero mine, under the slogan of "A Spring without Barrick or Cyanide." In the first protest roadblock the province has seen, demonstrators on Oct. 22 took over an access road leading to the mine, with a banner reading "HELP! BARRICK KILLED THE HOPES OF THE FARMERS!" The blockade was broken up that night by federal police troops at 4 AM, with 23 arrested. The local committee "Jáchal No Se Toca" (Hands Off Jáchal) issued a statement decrying the "violence and brutality" of the army attack. The Sept. 13 spill of a million and a half liters of cyanide-contaminated water affected the local Río Jáchal. (InfoBae, Oct. 23; Radio Lavaca, Buenos Aires, Oct. 22)

Dr. Hashem al-Azzeh, who died on Oct. 21 after suffering excessive tear-gas inhalation in Hebron's Old City, was the latest victim of the Israeli settlement policies he spent most of his life struggling against. The 54-year-old activist and medical doctor was one of a few Palestinians who chose to remain with his family in Tel Rumeida, a neighborhood in central Hebron that over the course of decades has seen most of its Palestinian residents pushed out by aggressive Israeli settlers. After experiencing chest pains in his home, he found himself trapped. His family called an ambulance, but it was unable to reach him due to a series of Israeli army checkpoints along the nearby Shuhada Street, his niece Sundus al-Azzeh told Ma’an News Agency. Hashem began to walk toward the checkpoint at Bab al-Zawiya, where fierce clashes were underway as Palestinians protested the shooting of a Palestinian teen-ager [near Nablus]  the night before. Once there, however, Sundus said that Israeli soldiers stopped him from moving on, and he soon found himself engulfed by tear gas. Unable to breath, he collapsed. He was rushed to Hebron's governmental hospital, but doctors were unable to save him. A doctor told Ma'an that Hashem had a history of cardiovascular disease, but it was tear-gas inhalation that killed him. Sundus said she was at his side when he passed away—it was the first time she had seen someone die.

The European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) on Oct. 19 filed a criminal complaint against a high-ranking CIA official for mistreatment of Khaled el-Masri, a German citizen who was detained and allegedly tortured for four months in 2003. El-Masri was on vacation in Macedonia when he was mistaken for Khalid al-Masri, a suspect in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. El-Masri was then transported to Afghanistan where he was detained and questioned for four months under the direction of Alfreda Frances Bikowsky. At the time, Bikowsky was deputy chief of the Central Intelligence Agency's Bin Laden Issue Station. ECCHR asserts in the complaint that the US Senate Torture Report ties Bikowsky to el-Masri's detention, and ECCHR requests that the German federal prosecutor investigate.

There was brief media splash last month after Germany's ZDF TV reported that the US is planning to replace 20 nuclear bombs deployed at Büchel airbase. According to the reports, the current B61 bombs are to be replaced this year with B61-12s, a newer version that is said more accurate and less destructive (potentially making their use more "thinkable"). Alarmingly, reports indicated that the new variants can also be fired as missiles, while B61s had to be dropped from aircraft. Moscow of course immediately responded by threatening "countermeasures"—including deployment of Iskander ballistic missiles to Russia's Baltic Sea enclave of Kaliningrad. (The Telegraph, Reuters, Sept. 23; Washington's Blog, Sept. 23)

Cuban street artist Danilo Maldonado AKA "El Sexto," known for his satirical graffiti, was released Oct. 21 after 10 months in prison for "disrespect toward government officials"—which holds a penalty of three years, although he was never formally charged. "We are very happy to learn that in the end he is being freed," said Amnesty International's Robin Guittard. "He's just an artist who tried to do an art show, to use his legitimate right to freedom of expression. That should never lead people to be sent to prison. That's a very cold reminder of what's the situation of freedom of expression today in Cuba." The artist's mother, Maria Victoria Machado, added: "A government that doesn't let itself be criticized starts to lose credibility." Maldonado received the Human Rights Foundation's Vaclav Havel International Prize for Creative Dissent this past April. Amnesty in September declared Maldonado Cuba's only "prisoner of conscience," although the group said it was considering other cases.

An oft-noted failing of the dreaded "mainstream media" is their tendency to bogus neutrality—as when they give climate-change denialists equal weight with representatives of the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change. We hope we don't smell something similar in coverage of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's wildly fictional comments asserting that the idea for the Nazi Holocaust originated not with Adolf Hitler but the Mufti of Jerusalem. Here is the offending text, according to the Israeli Prime Minister's Office:

The oil refinery city of Baiji was taken from ISIS Oct. 21 by Iraqi security forces and their Shi'ite militia allies. Key to the fighting was the Popular Mobilization Units or Hashid al-Shaabi militia. (Long War Journal, Oct. 19) After driving ISIS forces from the city, the PMU reported the discovery of at least 19 mass graves containing "365 bodies of Daesh terrorists"—the Arabic acronym for Islamic State. It was not clear how long the bodies had been buried there or how they were identified as ISIS fighters. (AFP, Oct. 21)

A Kurdish lawyer in Turkey will face trial at a later date for comments he made about the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), when he said the group was not a terrorist organization but a political movement. Tahir Elci was detained on Oct. 20 and released later that day, but he is not permitted to leave the country and must report regularly to the police. In an interview for CNN Turk, Elci stated that even if the PKK's actions sometimes are of a terrorist nature, it has widespread support. The PKK, a separatist group launched in 1984, is considered a terrorist group in Turkey, the US and the EU. Terror propaganda laws in Turkey make being a "terror apologist" punishable with prison time.