As of Dec. 22 the US government had sent the Argentine human rights group Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo a completely declassified copy of a 1982 US State Department memo discussing the abduction of the babies of alleged leftists during Argentina's 1976-1983 military dictatorship. The document undercuts any claims by former members of the ruling junta that the abductions were not systematic or that the military rulers were unaware of the crimes. The human rights group had asked the US for the memo so that it could be used in trials of former de facto president Gen. Reynaldo Bignone (1982-83) and others.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR, or CIDH in Spanish) has withdrawn a 2010 order for the Guatemalan government to suspend operations at the controversial Marlin gold mine, according to a Dec. 19 press release from the Canadian mining company Goldcorp Inc. The action follows a petition by the Guatemalan government saying its monitors had determined that "no proof exists that there is any situation presenting a threat of serious or imminent harm to persons or that there is a probability that any damage will materialize, and therefore there does not exist a situation of extreme seriousness or urgency to avoid irreparable harm to persons as a result of operations at the Marlin mine." (Goldcorp, Dec. 19, via the Wall Street Journal's Market Watch)

Mexican environmental activists Eva Alarcón and Marcial Bautista were reportedly still alive as of Dec. 21, two weeks after their Dec. 7 kidnapping from a bus in the southwestern state of Guerrero. According to Francisco Saucedo—an adviser to their group, the Guerrero-based Organization of Ecologist Campesinos of the Sierra de Petatlán and Coyuca de Catalán (OCESP)—officials of the state government supplied the information during a meeting with Alarcón's daughter, Coral Rosas, and Bautista's daughter, Victoria Bautista, but said that giving out more information might cause problems.

After eight months of mobilizations, strikes and campus occupations, on Dec. 22 Chilean university and secondary students held their last protest of the 2011 school year, a march through the streets of downtown Santiago. As in previous demonstrations, there were clashes with the carabineros militarized police, who said the students didn't have a permit for the protest; some 10 youths were arrested. With an estimated 1,000 to 4,000 participants, the final mobilization was tiny in comparison with the hundreds of thousands of students, teachers and supporters that had marched in the months before.

It continues to amaze and demoralize us how many so-called "progressives" are gushing over Ron Paul because he talks a good anti-war game. A case in point is Philip Weiss of the popular anti-Zionist blog Mondoweiss. Weiss starts out by acknowledging the loads of ugly racist garbage that Paul printed in his newsletter over the years—usually under his own by-line. But he still writes:

In the fifth YouTube edition of the Moorish Orthodox Radio Crusade, World War 4 Report editor Bill Weinberg interviews Andrew Kliman of the Marxist-Humanist Initiative, author (most recently) of The Failure of Capitalist Production: Underlying Causes of the Great Recession, who argues for Marx's law of the Long-Term Falling Rate of Profit, and analyzes both the potentials and limitations of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

From now through the first week of January, World War 4 Report will be on semi-hiatus, with a low level of activity, while editor and chief blogger Bill Weinberg takes a well-earned stay-at-home vacation and sees to some personal matters. If you appreciate our daily offerings, please take this opportunity to support our year-end fund drive, so we can hit the ground running when we get back, with refocused energies—and hopefully having reached our goal of $5,000. Thanks for reading, and for your support.

We don't share the right-wing "libertarian" politics of Reason magazine, and we generally don't like atrocity pornography. But in a stroke of grim genius on Dec. 22, Reason juxtaposes photos of two disfigured survivors from the Af-Pak theater. The first you probably haven't seen before: a girl named only as Shakira, who was one year old in 2009 when her village in Pakistan's Swat Valley was targeted for a drone strike. Two other infants were killed in the attack; she survived, her face burned almost to the skull. A Pakistani emigre in Houston has managed to fly her there for special surgery, but a CNN account tells us: "She will never look fully normal." Can you guess what comes next...?