• On Saturday, more than 100,000 turned out in the pale winter sunshine for a march in downtown Moscow against election fraud and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s plan to return to the presidency next month.

• Over 10,000 Bahrainis gathered on Sunday to begin a week-long sit-in protest in Meqsha, north of Bahrain, ahead of the one year anniversary of the revolution.

• Hundreds of flights in France were cancelled today, including 40 percent out of Paris’ Charles de Gaulle Airport, as unions ratcheted up pressure on day two of a strike over labor rights.

• Antiwar groups held rallies on Saturday in about 80 cities across the United States protesting a possible strike on Iran.

• In Singapore, two hundred foreign workers staged a sit-in on Monday morning in protest over unpaid wages.

• At least one activist died, and another 39 were injured on Sunday after police tried to break up a protest by indigenous groups—who have blockaded the Pan-American Highway for days—against the recent approval of mines and reservoirs in their region.

• In Canada, close to a thousand people marched through Prince Rupert’s streets on Saturday as part of a rally hosted by local first nations against Enbridge’s proposed Northern Gateway pipeline and the oil tanker traffic it would generate on British Columbia’s northern coast.

• At least 11 Occupy D.C. protesters were arrested Saturday just blocks from the White House as the U.S. Park Police evicted activists who had been sleeping in McPherson Square since October 1. On Sunday, police also cleared a second encampment at Freedom Plaza.

• In one of more than a hundred protests planned across Europe on Saturday, about 2,000 people marched in the Slovenian capital, Ljubljana against the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA).

• Some 20 residents of Khirbat al-Tawil village, south of Nablus in the occupied West Bank, went on a 24-hour hunger strike on Friday to protest against Israel’s occupation of their lands.

With the authorities in the Siberian city of Barnaul refusing to permit opposition protests since December 10, activists have deployed a creative tactic to voice their opposition to the recent disputed parliamentary elections.

According to the Guardian, rather than take to the streets themselves, and risk arrest or worse, they set up a public display of:

dozens of small dolls – teddy bears, Lego men, South Park figurines – arranged to mimic a protest, complete with signs reading: “I’m for clean elections” and “A thief should sit in jail, not in the Kremlin”.

This unorthodox action threw the police for a loop, who asked prosecutors to investigate its legality. As protest organizer Lyudmila Alexandrova said:

They tried to tell us our event was illegal – they even said that to put toys in the snow, we had to rent it from the city authorities.

It is this kind of overreaction that organizers should hope for. By revealing so clearly the absurdity of the state’s attempt to crackdown on dissent, while getting a laugh in process, actions like these will likely only galvanize the opposition.

To see more photos of the display, click here.

• Cairo and Alexandria witnessed a fresh wave of strikes and protests on Sunday, blocking roads and causing disruption to the work of the Ministry of Transport.

• On Monday, a week-long nationwide strike in Nigeria ended, after Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan announced in a televised address that fuel will be reduced in price.

• Kuwaiti riot police on Saturday used tear gas and batons to disperse hundreds of stateless demonstrators for the second day in a row and arrested dozens.

• About 4,000 Chinese workers protested over compensation and job security at a Sanyo plant in southern Shenzhen over the weekend in the latest outbreak of labor unrest in China’s manufacturing hub.

• In Oman, thousands of expatriate laborers working for one of the Muscat International Airport projects who have been on strike since Thursday protested in front of their company premises in Azaiba on Sunday. The government’s decision to ban the export of Omani fish to the UAE was “revoked” after over 400 fishermen held a sit-in at Khasab demanding the reversal of the decision on Saturday.

• Activists from a local peace group blocked entry to the main gate at the Navy’s West coast Trident nuclear submarine base Saturday for nearly a half hour in an act of civil resistance to nuclear weapons.

• Police detained a liberal opposition-party leader and another activist Saturday at a rally protesting alleged vote fraud in Russia’s parliamentary election.

• In Pennsylvania, nearly 300 students from two Chester high schools walked out of classes Friday, demanding an end to the financial crisis jeopardizing their school year.

• After five days of a sit-in protest, workers at a lingerie store in Ireland have won their battle for back pay.

• A flash mob of youngsters performed at the crowded Model Town market on Friday afternoon in Delhi as a way of celebrating Lohri with a message against corruption.

• In the largest protests Syria has seen in months, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets Friday in a display of defiance to show an Arab League observer mission the strength of the opposition movement. Despite the monitors’ presence, forces loyal to President Bashar Assad still killed at least 22 people.

• Thousands of Hungarians took to the streets yesterday to protest a new constitution which critics say increases the power of the government over previously independent institutions, ranging from the church and media to the courts and even the central bank.

• Russian police arrested at least 60 people in the capital of Moscow on Saturday during anti-government protests.

• Thousands of protesters converged on a train station in central China, angered over collapsing illegal investment schemes that residents said the government had failed to staunch.

• As part of an action called Occupy the Caucus, 12 protesters, including a 14-year-old girl, were arrested for blocking the doors to the Iowa Democratic Party headquarters on Thursday. Eighteen more arrests followed on Saturday and one on Sunday.

• A dozen anti-Wall Street protesters who had taken over a foreclosed home in Oakland to house formerly homeless individuals were arrested on Thursday.

• More than a dozen Muslim community leaders boycotted an interfaith breakfast organized by Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Friday to protest reported police surveillance of Muslim areas since the September 11, 2001 attacks.

• Large crowds of Yemenis rallied in major cities Sunday, demanding the outgoing president be put on trial for the deaths of protesters.

• Dozens of activists against gender segregation boarded buses serving Jerusalem’s ultra-Orthodox Jews on Sunday to protest the unwritten rule that women sit at the back.

• Thousands of angry Shia protesters staged a sit-in outside the Sindh Governor House in Karachi, Pakistan on Sunday night to protest the targeted assassination of their community leader.

• Around 8,000 people protested in Moscow and Saint Petersburg on Sunday against what they say were rigged parliamentary polls that handed victory to Vladimir Putin’s ruling party.

• Hundreds of thousands of Yemenis demonstrated Friday across the country rejecting an amnesty given to President Ali Abdullah Saleh against prosecution in a deal that eases him out of office.

• Three Hungarian television employees are holding a hunger strike seeking the dismissal of managers they say are responsible for censorship and restricting news coverage in state-owned media.

• Cyprus’ airports and government offices shut down Thursday in a daylong strike by civil servants and air traffic controllers to protest a wage freeze and other austerity measures they say were unfairly taken without their say.

• Thousands of building cleaners from the local chapter of the Service Employees International Union convened at Essex County College in downtown Newark on Thursday before taking to the streets in solidarity for better working conditions and a new contract.

• On Thursday, hundreds of anti-government protesters in Bahrain tried to enter the highway for a sit-in during an anti-government protest, but were dispersed after riot-police fired tear gas and grenades at them.

• About 150 cooks, servers, janitors, housekeepers and dishwashers stopped serving the 1% today at the California Club by walking off the job in a one-day strike in protest of a potential six-month wage freeze.

• On Thursday, a hardy group of mothers staged a breastfeeding flash-mob demonstration in the UK to declare their right to feed their babies in public.

• Hundreds of students from five Seattle-area high schools walked out of classes Wednesday to protest Washington state’s cuts to education funding.

• In India, leaders and hundreds of workers of the Wapda Hydro Electric Labor Union held a big rally and staged a sit-in on Wednesday to protest against the privatization of thermal power houses, billing and reading departments in the country.

• Arab and Bedouin Israelis held a state-wide general strike on Sunday as several thousand demonstrators gathered at the Prime Ministry to express their outrage at a government plan that would relocate Negev Bedouins out of their homes into impoverished townships.

• In cities all across Russia, unauthorized demonstrations were ongoing Sunday after anti-Putin protesters escalated their dissent in Moscow at a massive rally on Saturday as tens of thousands marched for free elections.

• On Sunday, Syrians in some regions observed the opposition’s call for a general strike, despite reports that police in the capital forced shop owners to reopen.

• After leading scores of protesters inside of Durban climate talks on Friday, Greenpeace activists posed as representatives of wealthy corporations on Sunday to call attention to the beneficiaries of failed action at the ICC.

• Bangkok, Thailand saw a rare second rally in two days Saturday as a throng of marchers engaged in a ‘fearlessness walk’ reiterated their objections to laws that punish those who speak out against the monarchy.

• A flash mob erupted in a Pittsburgh Target on Saturday as Occupy organizers briefly flooded the store in protest of the company’s hiring policies.

• For the second day in a row, hundreds of Indian teachers in Bangalore boycotted classes on Friday in protest of low wages.

• Demonstrations condemning the NATO airstrike in Pakistan have been ongoing for two weeks across the country, and were sparked anew after prayers Friday.

• Tens of thousands of Yemenis took to the streets again Friday chanting ‘no partnership with the murderers’ after a new Cabinet—half filled with pro-regime politicians—was announced.

• In the Dominican Republic on Thursday, hundreds of activists rallied against the government’s practice of confiscating or annulling birth certificates for those of Haitian descent.

Allegations of electoral fraud have sparked protests throughout Russia. As many as 6,000 people took to the streets of Moscow Monday night; several hundred protesters, including well-known blogger and anti-corruption activist, Alexey Navalny, were arrested in Moscow and St. Petersburg (According to the BBC there were close to 600 arrests in Moscow alone). “The reaction to last weekend’s fraud-tainted parliamentary elections has been like nothing I have seen since the early 1990s,” wrote Maxim Trudolubov, an editor at the daily business newspaper Vedomosti.

Though discontent with the Kremlin and ruling party, United Russia—dubbed the “party of crooks and thieves” by Navalny—has boiled over in recent weeks (most notably when Vladimir Putin was booed after taking the stage at a mixed martial arts event), few expected parliamentary elections would be the catalyst for large-scale demonstrations. The opposition has called for a follow-up protest on Saturday to take place in Revolution Square, just several hundred feet from the Kremlin. Demonstrations are also being planned in over 60 Russian cities from Saratov in the south to Siberia. Pro-Kremlin rallies are also being organized and many fear a broader crackdown is imminent.

The mood has shifted dramatically in Russia over the last year. Opposition movements from the Defenders of the Khimki forest to RosPil, Navalny’s anti-corruption whistleblowing website, have gained large followings. At the same time Putin’s seeming invincibility has begun to fade. (However, he remains a popular political figure in Russia. Recent figures from the independent Levada Center show him with roughly 60 percent support, a number just about every international leader would envy.) His announcement in September that he would run for president next year, though hardly a surprise, was met with a growing sense of fatigue and frustration. The very real prospect of Putin remaining in power for another 12 years—he can run for two consecutive six-year terms—has simply emboldened the opposition.

Rather than accept the deal struck between Medvedev and Putin and offered to the people as a kind of fait accompli the Russians are voicing their discontent. What seemed to be just a lot of online chatter in recent months has suddenly spilled into the streets.

“This new protest wave is by no means limited to opposition parties,” wrote Yevgenia Albats, editor of The New Times, an independent monthly news magazine. “It has drawn in young people, who used to have little interest in politics. When the Medvedev-Putin tandem decided in September that the prime minister would become president and vice versa, young people were deeply offended that their opinion was not solicited. All at once, a generation understood it had two options: to leave the country, or to start the struggle.”

Young people have not only been offended by the ruling tandem’s top-down decision but by the way the authorities have attempted to control public discourse. The Internet has largely been an open and unregulated space in Russia. Bloggers don’t face the same kind of scrutiny or legal restrictions imposed on mass media. Even before the election, videos of outright bribery—buying votes—were posted and widely circulated online. On Sunday, evidence of ballot stuffing and literally hundreds of cases of electoral fraud were captured on cameras and smart phones and beamed around the country. So when United Russia received a disappointing fifty percent of the vote—what the Kremlin may have assumed would insulate them from allegations of fraud—people didn’t buy it. They could see for themselves that the vote was rigged and, in all likelihood, the party in power had received far less support.

At the same time a coordinated Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack on several websites—most of them in some way affiliated with the opposition, from the liberal radio station Echo Moscow to the independent election monitoring organization, Golos—was viewed as being launched by United Russia. “The attack on the website on election day is clearly an attempt to inhibit publication of information about violations,” Echo Moscow editor-in-chief Alexei Venediktov wrote on Twitter. So the elections turned into a double affront: the vote was stolen and one of the few public spaces available for open discourse sabotaged.

It’s unclear where Russia’s opposition movement is headed or how the authorities will respond to sustained protest and growing public frustration, especially in the run-up to presidential elections in March. Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev has called for a re-run of the elections, which he has said “do not reflect the people’s will.” Meanwhile Navalny, the popular blogger and opposition figure who has made his political ambitions clear, was among those arrested Monday night and sentenced to fifteen days for defying a government official. News of his arrest spread quickly and by the early hours of the morning thousands were watching a live video feed of protesters demanding that he have access to a lawyer. In Russia, it seems, defiance is no longer limited to the relatively safe precincts of the web.

• Building on the largest opposition rally in years Monday, Russian protests spread to more cities on Tuesday as demonstrators denounced federal election results—resulting in hundreds of arrests.

• On Tuesday, thousands of young Yemenis in Sanaa continued their sit-in, despite President Saleh’s signed agreement that he would step down, declaring that their revolution is far from over. This followed demonstrations which erupted on Sunday, as residents of Taiz marched in protest of immunity provisions given to the outgoing President.

• Greenpeace activists infiltrated a French nuclear plant Monday and hung a banner on a reactor building in an attempt to expose nuclear national security weaknesses.

• Dozens of Occupy D.C. members were arrested late Sunday in an act of civil disobedience when they refused to dismantle a structure that they were building for shelter.

• Thousands protested at the UN Climate Conference in Durban, South Africa on Sunday, calling for a strong international plan to address climate change.

• Animal rights advocates in Taipei, Taiwan gathered by the hundreds on Sunday, condemning the conditions of animal shelters throughout the country.

• In India on Sunday, thousands marched and several began a hunger strike to show their support for the decommissioning of a damn in the interest of protecting local farmers.

• Kashmir witnessed protests and sit-ins on Saturday as residents of Srinagar decried the police’s use of pepper guns in breaking up demonstrations the day before.

• On Saturday, secular Tunisians held a counter-rally in front of Parliament, opposing a group of Islamists who were calling for female university students to wear a full-face veil.

• Thousands in India blocked train tracks Saturday, agitating for compensation to be given to victims of the industrial accident at Bhopal in 1984.

Members of the Free Syrian Army at a safehouse on northern Lebanon's border with Syria.

Mass uprisings against oppressive governments put the regime’s soldiers in a precarious situation. When ordered to repress the rebelling populace, they can obey those orders to apply military action against largely peaceful demonstrators, wounding and killing many, as has been happening in Syria for months. The soldiers are then clearly tools of oppression and betrayers of their freedom-seeking countrymen.

Many soldiers with a deep sense of honor and love of their country or religion will decide they can no longer do that. Disobedience by soldiers requires great bravery. Disobeying Syrian soldiers have been summarily executed. Nevertheless, others continue to refuse to kill peaceful fellow citizens who seek only freedom.

On occasion, some brave soldiers have both disobeyed and survived. What are they to do in order to serve the cause of freedom?

Some defecting soldiers have turned their weapons against their former fellow soldiers, perhaps believing that is the most powerful action they can take against the oppressing regime. But, perhaps it is not.

When defectors choose to use their limited military capacity in that way, the oppressing regime will then not hesitate to order its remaining massive military force to be applied against those defectors. The targeted defectors will soon discover that their limited military capacity is no match for the far superior greater military capacity of the oppressing regime.

As happened in Libya, an appeal for foreign military assistance can then be expected.

The foreign military aid may or may not come. If it does, the control of the conflict has been placed in foreign hands. Foreign hands serve foreign interests. The military conflict may nevertheless continue for some time. Massive civilian casualties and widespread destruction are guaranteed, as happened in Libya.

Assuming a military victory against the regime, the intervening foreign powers will be in a position to exert major influence. This is to be avoided.

Where such a shift to military conflict has not occurred, and the oppressing regime is facing a strong nonviolent struggle movement, the regime may be facing possible collapse. Its survival may depend on keeping its soldiers reliable, for which the regime may therefore be willing to risk a lot.

Although the obedience of soldiers is rarely an issue in a strictly military conflict (soldiers under fire normally obey orders to fire back), a nonviolent struggle, as in Syria, is different. The regime’s troops have for months been ordered to kill strictly nonviolent protesters. Significant numbers of soldiers have already refused to do so, and some have been summarily executed.

The reliability of many of Assad’s remaining soldiers cannot be guaranteed. Syria may be facing a similar situation to Libya before foreign military intervention derailed the beginning of what might have become a powerful nonviolent struggle.

We do not know what really happened in Libya, but there are suspicions. With its survival at stake, the regime likely feared that at some point the troops might mutiny in response to orders to continue killing peaceful demonstrators. How could the regime prevent that? Key persons in the Libyan regime may have reasoned in the following way:

If the people power struggle had remained peaceful, as did largely the struggles in Tunisia and Egypt, the regime’s soldiers may have become unreliable in large numbers. The army being the most important single remaining source of power for the shaky regime, this could have caused fear of collapse of the Libyan regime. It is known that Kaddafi and his son Saif al-Islam predicted a civil war. Days later that became possible. How so? may be asked.

It is plausible, not a fact, that the fear of mass defections of their troops could have led the regime to take a risk. Confident that it could defeat a rebel military clash, the regime may have attempted to create the civil war it needed to ensure the army’s loyalty.

But, how to do this?

A possible way could be to provide the rebels with an option some of them could not refuse. What if they had on their side a general, complete with soldiers and weapons? The earlier choice of nonviolent struggle could then quickly dissolve in favor of “realism.” All that could be provided by a loyal general willing to act as a high level agent provocateur.

Such a Libyan general did defect with troops and weapons. The resistance movement did shift to military conflict. The general was later killed in a rebel military camp. Only the unanticipated foreign military intervention prevented the loyal Libyan military from defeating the weaker rebel military force.

In Syria, the soldiers who now serve the Assad regime appear to be the main source of the remaining power of the regime. A democratic victory therefore mainly depends on removing those soldiers as reliable agents of repression.

Again, soldiers who are shot at will almost always shoot back. Defecting Syrian soldiers who fire their weapons at the regime’s soldiers therefore are not weakening the regime. Tragically, however unintentionally, they are actually helping the Assad regime to retain the army for repression. The regime’s reliable army could then wipe out the weaker rebel soldiers and the Assad regime would be preserved at least a bit longer.

The counsel to Syrians that defecting soldiers should not kill Assad’s troops is not moralistic advice. It is rooted in historical experience.

A similar situation occurred in the First Russian Revolution. In late 1905, when the whole of Russia was in in the grip of massive general strikes and defiance against the tsarist autocracy. Some of the tsar’s troops had already mutinied and the mass of the tsar’s hitherto loyal army troops was on the verge of disobedience against orders to put down the revolution by extreme repression.

Then, in order to teach the revolutionaries the necessity of violence, Leninists instigated a shift from a nonviolent general strike in Moscow into violent attacks on the tsar’s troops. The wavering mass of troops now obeyed orders to shoot and thereby again became reliable troops for the autocracy.

The tsar’s regime, which had been disintegrating in the face of the mass nonviolent repudiation, regained strength, and survived for another twelve years, until it was destroyed by the predominantly nonviolent revolution of February 1917. (For details, see my Waging Nonviolent Struggle, pgs. 82-88 and references.)

Defecting Syrian soldiers now have a choice. Instead of shooting at the regime’s troops, as some have done, they need to be loyal to the people-power struggle for freedom. They can help the regime’s other soldiers also to defect from the Assad regime.

Thereby, they can take the army of repression away from Assad. Their action can end both the repression and the regime.

• Hundreds of people have gathered in Cairo’s Tahrir Square to protest against the recent expansion of the Egypt’s emergency law, amid palpable anger over the military’s handling of transition from autocratic rule.

• Eighteen people were killed today in Syria by security forces following Friday prayers, as scores of demonstrators are reported to have gathered in important cities and towns demanding an end to Bashar al-Assad’s rule and chanting “Death rather than humiliation.”

• Tens of thousands of Yemenis held a protest in the  southern city of Taiz on Friday, a day after security  forces opened fire at demonstrators leaving 10 people dead.

• Thousands of workers at Freeport-McMoran’s gold and copper mine in eastern Indonesia kicked off a monthlong strike Thursday to protest low wages, bringing production and shipments to a standstill.

• On Tuesday, about 50 activists protested drones outside the new London offices of General Atomics as part of the Day of Action by the ‘Stop the Arms Fair Coalition’ against DSEi (Defence & Security Equipment International) on its opening day.

• About 50 transit workers and union leaders barged into an MTA office building in downtown  Brooklyn Monday morning for a brief but boisterous protest rally over wages and benefits.

• Oil workers went on strike on Tuesday, halting construction of Colombia’s Bicentennial  Pipeline, which will be the country’s longest once completed.

• In Boulder, Colorado, more than 60 homeless people and activists took part in a protest and flash mob on Wednesday to raise awareness about the issue of homelessness.

• On Monday, locals protested in front of the municipality of Carthage calling for the halt of construction on the archeological site in Tunisia as a reaction to the resumption of activities in the site.

• Prospective homeowners in the Russian city of Krasnoyarsk are demanding apartments or their money back — and have gone on hunger strike to push their point.

In an effort to challenge a ridiculous Russian law that prohibits anyone from campaigning for a candidate for office without a permit, Nemstov handed out fliers that said, “Vote against everybody.” As the New York Times reports:

The police were not amused.

They arrested him, charged him with illegal agitation, which is punishable by a fine, and confiscated his fliers.

Mr. Nemtsov, whose subversive political stunts have landed him in police custody many times, called the arrest “absurd.” He said it proved the government had no intention of allowing unfettered political expression ahead of parliamentary and presidential elections this fall and next spring.

Furthermore, he said, the Supreme Court has ruled that unregistered individuals have a right to publicly express opposition to all candidates.

“It is my human right to proclaim any idea I want besides violent overthrow of the state,” he said in an interview after he had been released. “They just want to frighten the opposition. That is all. This is not an election, this is a fraud, a Putin-style fraud.”

• In New Jersey, protesters with the environmentalist group Greenpeace flew a hot-air aircraft around the Portland Generating Station to protest the coal-burning power plant's emissions yesterday morning.

• Tens of thousands of Syrians surged onto the streets to stage anti-government protests in defiance of an escalating military crackdown Friday, amid signs that the international community is still unwilling to call directly for President Bashar al-Assad’s departure.

• A few hundred protesters gathered Friday in Cairo's Tahrir Square, calling for a civil state and an end to military rule.

• A few dozen opposition activists gathered outside a subway station near the Kremlin on Friday to protest the arrest of Left Front leader Sergei Udaltsov for taking part in an unsanctioned rally July 31.

• Weeping parents have been demonstrating in the Sri Lankan capital, Colombo, asking what has become of close family members who have disappeared.

• More than 60 waiters, busboys and other workers at the Loeb Boathouse in Central  Park went on strike Tuesday, vowing to picket outside the tourist attraction and  city landmark until they're allowed to form a union.

• On Monday, about 50 opponents of the abolition of free access to the Internet in Czech libraries, which the Interior Ministry is pondering as an austerity measure, held a protest meeting in front of the ministry.

• Thousands of teachers from across the country gathered near the White House on Saturday for the Save Our Schools march to protest the Obama administration’s education policies that are centered on standardized tests.

• Syrian security forces backed by tanks and snipers launched a ferocious assault Sunday on defiant cities and towns, killing at least 70 people and possibly many more as the regime raced to crush dissent ahead of Ramadan.

• Russian police detained dozens of anti-government activists in Moscow and St. Petersburg on Sunday—the latest in a series of protests that Russian opposition leaders call on the last day of every month with 31 days. The date is a reference to the 31st Article of the Russian Constitution, which guarantees freedom of assembly.

• Tens of thousands of Israelis took to the streets nationwide on Saturday to protest rising housing prices in the largest turnout in a grassroots movement that began two weeks ago and is demanding steps from the government to ease the burden.

• About 1,000 deaf Sri Lankans took to the streets of capital Colombo on Friday to demand equal rights, social recognition and more sign language translators.

• Thousands of casino workers protested outside Resorts Casino Hotel in Atlantic City, New Jersey on Thursday, denouncing steep pay cuts most employees had to take when new owners bought the casino last year.

• Tens of thousands of protesters turned out in cities across Yemen on Friday to call for the ouster of President Ali Abdullah Saleh in a remarkable show of determination after six months of demonstrations and armed clashes that have failed to topple the embattled leader.

• Tens of thousands of demonstrators marched outside Bahrain’s capital Manama on Friday to protest against the results of a “National Dialogue” they said had failed to bring real democratic reform in the Gulf island kingdom.

• Hundreds of thousands of Syrians defied a violent government crackdown Friday, insisting they will not be terrified into submission through bullets, mass arrests and more than four months of attacks by security forces. At least five people were killed, activists said.

• Alpha Natural Resources Inc. halted blasting operations on Coal River Mountain for hours Wednesday as it searched for two mountaintop removal mining protesters with the group Radical Action for Mountain People’s Survival who erected platforms in trees 80 feet above ground within 300 feet of a blasting site. They are now on day three of the tree sit.

• Russian police beat and arrested activists trying to save Khimki Forest from being destroyed by the controversial Moscow-St.Petersburg Motorway project.

• 1,000 cyclists took part in a rally on Wednesday night in Toronto to protest the City’s decision to remove a number of bike lanes.

• Union workers at the world’s top copper mine, Chile’s Escondida, started a 24-hour strike on Thursday over a series of wage contract demands that if not met could lead to an indefinite work stoppage.

• Several hundred protesters are rallying in Cairo and other cities, keeping pressure on Egypt’s military rulers and government to uproot and try former regime officials.

• Twenty students in Chile are on a hunger strike to support demands for improvements to the country’s education system.

• About a thousand Turks and Kurds demonstrated in central Istanbul on Thursday, calling for peace and an end to Turkey’s longstanding Kurdish problem.

• Greek taxi drivers blocked ports and airports on the popular tourist islands of Crete and Corfu on Thursday, in a strike to protest government plans to open up their trade to competition.

• 34 people were arrested during a march to the statehouse in Nairobi on Tuesday, where demonstrators attempted to petition the President to sack corrupt senior government officials.

• Hundreds of union and nonunion workers protested in front of the Grand Hyatt hotel in San Francisco on Thursday to protest the abuse of workers and a clause in their contract that takes away their right to go on strike. 80 people were cited for civil disobedience.

• Tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets across Yemen on Sunday, demanding that a transitional presidential council be created to replace embattled President Ali Abdullah Saleh and that his sons and relatives leave the country.

• Thousands of Greek demonstrators have begun gathering in front of the parliament in Athens at the start of a 48-hour general strike to protest against deep budget cuts demanded by international lenders as the price for more financial aid.

• Spain’s “indignant” activists began their last and longest protest march on Saturday, leaving from the northeastern city of Barcelona to cover 650 kilometres on their way to a major Madrid rally on July 24.

• Tens of thousands of people demonstrated around Morocco both for and against a proposed new constitution on Sunday, just a week before it is to be voted on in a referendum.

• About 3,000 people marched through downtown Montreal on Saturday to call for an end in Quebec to shale gas exploitation and a technique known as “fracking” that has triggered strong opposition from environmental groups.

• Thousands of people joined hands on Saturday across beaches from Florida to California to form a human chain to protest offshore oil drilling and promote clean energy.

• Police arrested 12 D.C. voting rights activists in front of the White House Saturday afternoon.

• Hamas prisoners being held in Israeli jails on Monday began a hunger strike after seven of their number were put in solitary confinement.

• Seoul National University student council members ended their 28-day sit-in against the university’s privatization plan on Sunday after 40 of 61 students voted to accept a tentative agreement between the council and the university.

• Russian police have arrested and charged up to 14 LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans) activists who were attempting to hold a demonstration in St Petersburg.

• Last Wednesday, Zimbabwe’s public workers began an indefinite strike to press the cash-strapped coalition government of President Robert Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai to more than double wages.