• Pakistani cricket star-turned-opposition politician Imran Khan drew as many as  100,000 people to a rally in Lahore Sunday, where Khan  lambasted the country’s leading political figures as well as the United  States.

• It was announced today that a flotilla made up of a Canadian and an Irish ship is en route to Palestine to break the siege on Gaza.

• Tens of thousands of protesters in the Yemeni  capital Sana’a took to the streets Sunday demanding the release of  fellow demonstrators arrested by government security forces since February.

• Thousands of Egyptians demonstrated on Monday in Cairo’s Tahrir Square to protest the military’s recent detention of prominent blogger Alaa Abd El Fattah on charges of inciting violence and sabotage.

• On Monday, fresh demonstrations were held in Jayapura demanding Indonesia take formal and legal responsibility for ongoing human rights abuses in West Papua, most recently the brutal attack on the Third Papuan People’s Congress (KP3) earlier this month.

• The abandoned Hotel Madrid, which was taken over by an unknown number of squatters on October 16 after a mass rally in the capital organized by the 15-M movement, opened its doors on Monday to the first person to take up the group’s stated strategy of “freeing up spaces for common use.”

• In the Philippines, over 500 inmates in Compostela Valley held a noise barrage and hunger strike over the slow resolution of their cases.

• About 100 people gathered outside the Michigan League Monday afternoon to protest Eric Cantor, the U.S. House of Representatives majority leader and a Virginia Republican.

• Dressed in their colorful traditional attire, some 200 Wixáritari or Huichol men, women and children traveled 20 hours from western Mexico to protest in the capital last week to demand a stop to the activities of foreign mining companies in the high desert of San Luis Potosí in the central state of that name.

• Last Friday, hundreds of indigenous leaders, fishermen and riverine people from the Xingu River basin who had gathered to permanently occupy the Belo Monte Dam construction site in a peaceful protest to stop its construction in Altamira, located in the state of Pará in the heart of the Brazilian Amazon were evicted.

• Hundreds of thousands of Yemenis gathered in cities and towns across the country yesterday to protest what they consider President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s latest attempt to avoid stepping down.

• In Egypt, student unions of 20 public universities protested Tuesday in support of professors’ call for academic independence.

• On Monday, the sacked teachers and staff of the National University in Bangladesh held a rally and staged a sit-in demonstration on the campus in Gazipur.

• About two-dozen anti-BART protesters marched along San Francisco’s  Market Street Monday evening in the fifth consecutive weekly rush-hour  demonstration organized by the hacker group “Anonymous.”

• In India, around 7,000 residents from coastal areas of Idinthakarai and other villages observed a massive hunger strike on Sunday to protest against the Koodankulam Nuclear Power Project (KKNPP).

• In Pakistan, dozens of squatters staged a sit-in on Sunday in a protest against the demolition of their houses on Saturday by district administration to clear the land for construction of a road.

• Several thousand Slovak teachers rallied yesterday in the capital Bratislava to protest low salaries.

• In the Philippines, eight political prisoners, including a woman, started an eight-day hunger strike in Iloilo on Tuesday as part of a nationwide protest to demand the release of all political detainees in the country.

• Almost the entire police force of a small town in southern Spain went on sick leave yesterday in a dispute over payments.

With newly retired General David Petraeus sworn in as the head of the Central Intelligence Agency last week, we are reminded, as the New York Times put it back in April when he was appointed to the position, that this is only “the latest evidence of a significant shift over the past decade in how the United States fights its battles — the blurring of lines between soldiers and spies in secret American missions abroad.” This shift of the agency’s function from gathering “intelligence” (we wish) to carrying out murderous operations has been going on steadily, and we all know what it means: torture has been enshrined as a regular feature of our military enterprise. CIA personnel regularly torture prisoners, regularly cover up much, but not all, of the evidence for these heinous crimes against humanity, and have, up to now, been winked at by the public and Congress for the part that comes to light.

Of course, this shift intensified after 9/11, and the tenth anniversary of that horrific day has given us an occasion to really revisit what it means. We should be aware that no people can survive such degradation of their most basic values. When the CIA/US Army shifts more and more to paramilitary operations it shifts more and more out of the few safeguards that were erected around  modern militaries to prevent them from carrying out grave abuse. It makes them look more like the death squads of Central America and Colombia than a democratic institution.

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• In the largest civil disobedience protests in the environmental movement’s recent history, 50 more people were arrested Thursday outside the White House in a protest against the Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline. Since Saturday, 322 people have now been arrested.

• Seven hundred transport workers blocked a main road in western Sydney yesterday to demand new federal work safety laws.

• Some retrenched workers of the Ghana Cotton Company (GCC) in Bolgatanga are on hunger strike and they and their colleagues on Thursday reiterated their appeal to government to ensure that their severance awards are paid them.

• Police arrested undocumented students who were holding a demonstration Wednesday outside the immigration offices in Los Angeles against Secure Communities, a controversial  immigration enforcement program.

• Police turned away a half-dozen protesters on Wednesday who had occupied Rep. Paul Ryan’s Kenosha office since last week.

• Around 100 lawyers in Syria defied Bashar al-Assad’s regime as it continues a violent crackdown against country-wide protests, by holding coordinated sit-ins outside bar associations in at least four regions of the country on Tuesday.

• The Pakistani city of Karachi was brought to a standstill on Tuesday after a “day of mourning” strike was called by a political party to protest against weeks of violence.

• Greek tourism workers walked off the job Tuesday in a 24-hour strike over government pension cuts, as dozens demonstrated outside three luxury hotels in the Greek capital to protest the cutbacks.

• In San Francisco, authorities arrested 45 people Monday during another protest against BART, the operators of the Bay Area train system.

• In New York City, an 82-year-old resident of Brooklyn facing foreclosure was allowed to stay in her house last Friday after more than 200 people gathered in front of her home to block the eviction.

Refugee Camp in Kabul. (Photo: Jacob George)

It’s a bit odd to me that with my sense of geographical direction I’m ever regarded as a leader to guide groups in foreign travel. I’m recalling a steaming hot night in Lahore, Pakistan when Josh Brollier and I, having enjoyed a lengthy dinner with Lahore University students, needed to head back to the guest lodgings graciously provided us by a headmaster of the Garrison School for Boys. We had boarded a rickshaw, but the driver had soon become terribly lost and with my spotty sense of direction and my complete ignorance of Urdu, I couldn’t be any help. My cell phone was out of juice, and I was uncertain anyway of the needed phone number. I bumped and jostled in the back seat of the rickshaw, next to Josh, as we embarked on a nightmare of travel over unpaved, rutted roads in dizzying traffic until finally the rickshaw driver spotted a sign belonging to our school – the wrong campus, we all knew – and eager to unload us, roused the inhabitants and hustled us and our bags into the street before moving on.

We stood inside the gate, staring blankly at a family that had been sound asleep on cots in the courtyard. In no time, the father of the family scooped up his two children, gently moving them to the cot he shared with his wife so that Josh and I would have a cot on which to sit. Then he and his spouse disappeared into their humble living quarters. He reappeared with a fan and an extension cord, wanting to give us some relief from the blistering night heat. His wife emerged carrying a glass of tea for each of us. They didn’t know us from Adam’s house cat, but they were treating us as family – the celebrated but always astonishing hospitality that we’d encountered in the region so many times before. Eventually, we established with our host that we were indeed at the wrong campus, upon which he called the family that had been nervously waiting for our errant selves.

This courtyard scene of startling hospitality would return to my mind when we all learned of the U.S. Joint Special Operations (JSO) Force night raid in the Nangarhar province, on May 12, 2011. No matter which side of the Afghanistan/Pakistan border you are on, suffocating hot temperatures prevail day and night during these hot months. It’s normal for people to sleep in their courtyards. How could anyone living in the region not know this? Yet the U.S. JSO forces that came in the middle of the night to the home of a 12-year-old girl, Nilofer, who had been asleep on her cot in the courtyard, began their raid by throwing a grenade into the courtyard, landing at Nilofer’s head. She died instantly. Nilofer’s uncle raced into the courtyard. He worked with the Afghan Local Police, and they had told him not to join that night’s patrol because he didn’t know much about the village they would go to, so he had instead gone to his brother’s home. When he heard the grenade explode, he may well have presumed the Taliban were attacking the home. U.S. troops killed him as soon as they saw him. Later, NATO issued an apology.

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• More than 300,000 people took part in demonstrations across Israel on Saturday night calling for “social justice,” a blanket term covering demands for reforms in housing, taxes, healthcare, childcare, and education.

• Forty-five thousand Verizon Communications Inc. workers from Massachusetts to Washington, D.C., went on strike Sunday after negotiations fizzled over a new labor contract for more than a fifth of the company’s work force.

• Tens of thousands of opponents of embattled Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh held rallies across the country following prayers on Friday.

• Thousands of protestors largely drawn from Pakistan Justice Party staged a sit-in protest in front of country’s Parliament in Islamabad on Saturday evening to protest corruption, unemployment and US drone strikes.

• Israeli forces targeted three separate rallies across the West Bank on Friday, firing tear gas at participants and lightly injuring dozens.

• In Jordan, dozens of activists staged a sit-in following Ramadan evening prayers on Friday night in front of Salt city’s cultural center, protesting what they concidered government stalling in impementing nesessery political and economic reforms.

• Thousands of demonstrators angry about the government’s austerity program briefly reoccupied a central Madrid plaza on Saturday after police withdrew following widespread outrage at officers’ handling of a protest two days earlier.

• The pro-LGBT activists from GetEqual Texas braved the Houston sun on Saturday to protest outside Reliant Stadium, where Governor Rick Perry and thousands of  Evangelicals were holding an unabashedly political “day of prayer,” “The Response.”

• Nepalese riot police arrested teachers affiliated with temporary teacher struggle committee during a sit-in protest in front of the education ministry in Kathmandu on Thursday.

• Two months after they launched a movement against the economic crisis and soaring unemployment, thousands of Spain’s so-called “indignant” protesters converged on Madrid again on Saturday.

• Several Syrian towns observed calls for a general strike on Saturday, a day after protests in which at least nine people were killed by security forces.

• Ecuador’s largest circulation daily newspaper has run a blank front page to  protest a $40m libel ruling imposed for running a column critical of President  Rafael Correa.

• More than 2,000 workers at the world’s largest private copper mine have gone on strike in Chile to protest reductions in their production bonuses.

• On Saturday, about twenty people rallied and marched in downtown Santa Cruz in solidarity with prisoners at Pelican Bay who have ended their hunger strike and declared it a success

• Thousands of labor activists staged a protest rally in downtown Seoul on Saturday, demanding that strike-bound Hanjin Heavy Industries & Construction Co. withdraw its decision to cut hundreds of jobs.

• On July 20 and 21, 300 workers from the Guizhou Dazhong Rubber Company in China held a sit-in to protest their bosses’ embezzlement of government resources and exploitation of workers’ interests, and to ask the authorities to address the problems.

• Political prisoners around the country started a nationwide hunger strike campaign last Thursday to pressure President Benigno Aquino III to release political prisoners and declare a clear human rights policy.

• In Kenya, hundreds of truck drivers in Kisumu went on strike last Wednesday to protest the increased carjacking incidents.

• In Pakistan, Voice for Baloch Missing Persons (VFBP) staged a sit-in demonstration in front of the Commissioner Office on Thursday for the safe and immediate recovery of missing Baloch political activists.

• Hundreds of thousands of protesters flooded the streets across Yemen on Sunday to demand the ouster of President Ali Abdullah Saleh on the anniversary of his rise to power in  1978.

• Dozens of tents have been erected in Tel Aviv, with plans for further encampments in other Israeli towns and cities, to protest high house prices.

• Several Indian and Pakistani citizens Saturday gathered near Rajghat, Delhi and formed a human chain on Saturday to protest the July 13 Mumbai blasts that left at least 19 people dead and injured 130.

• Journalists at the BBC walked off their jobs Friday to protest planned job cuts as a result of lower government funding.

• Greenpeace activists dressed as polar bears occupied the Edinburgh offices of Cairn Energy on Monday as the environmental group stepped up the pressure on the company over its Arctic exploration plans.

• Around 2,000 farmers, backed by student groups and academics gathered in front of the presidential office in Taipei late on Saturday to protest government proposals that would make it easier for farm land to be forcibly turned over to developers.

• Around 200 people gathered at the Jordan Press Association headquarters earlier today to denounce an attack on journalists by riot police on Friday.

• Greek taxi drivers blocked roads to Athens’ airport and main harbor today, holding up thousands of tourists at the start of a two-day protest against plans to liberalize their trade.

• Several hundred people attended a protest march against the EU-IMF austerity programme in Dublin on Saturday.

• A small group of mass transit activists against freeway expansion unfurled a banner overlooking the 405 Freeway in Los Angeles on Sunday that read “L.A. Beyond Cars.”

• On Friday, nearly 100,000 Yemenis protested in a main square of the capital, demanding the president’s ouster in the biggest rally since Ali Abdullah Saleh left for Saudi Arabia after he was wounded in an attack on his palace.

• Thousands of Shiite Bahrainis rallied Saturday answering a call from their largest opposition group, Al-Wefaq, in the first demonstration since a mid-march crackdown on Shiite-led pro-democracy protests.

• Thousands of Syrians demonstrated all over the country on Friday, especially in smaller cities and rural towns. Some 7000 came out in downtown Homs. Troops fired on crowds and responded with brutality against protesters.

• On Sunday, Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf (PTI) staged a sit-in in Quetta to protest against the safe passage allowed to NATO supplies through Pakistan.

• On Sunday, at least 15,000 Greeks protested in front of parliament over the government’s economic policies and called for mass participation in a general strike this week.

• In Peru, Aymara activists announced on Friday that they will resume their strike civil strike indefinitely, and thousands immediately joined roadblocks on the main highway to Bolivia near the border town of Desaguadero.

• On Friday, thousands of college students and supporting citizens continued a protest, which has brought people to the streets every night over the last month, demanding South Korean President Lee Myung-bak fulfil his presidential election pledge to cut tuition fees by half, and provide solutions for youth unemployment.

• About 20 pro-independence demonstrators have kept an all-night vigil at a colonial fort in Puerto Rico to protest during President Barack Obama’s visit to the island.

• Some 500 Indian inmates ended a two-day hunger strike at the CRS No. 5 prison in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas after officials granted their demand for better conditions.

• Over 80,000 people took to the streets of Athens late Sunday on the 12th consecutive day of protests against the government’s draconian austerity measures. Some 3,000 people also gathered in Greece’s second largest city, Thessaloniki, according to the police.

• Syrians poured into the streets on Friday in some of the largest antigovernment protests yet despite the shutdown of much of Syria’s Internet network. At least 96 people have died over the past three days in the continued crackdown on protests against President Bashar al-Assad.

• In Israel, thousands of people rallied in Tel Aviv to denounce Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s opposition to a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders. It was one of the largest pro-peace rallies Israel has seen in years.

• Up to 23 people were killed and over 350 wounded on Sunday when Israeli forces opened fire on Palestinian demonstrators stormed the border area from Syria.

• The March on Blair Mountain, with more than six hundred people setting out from Marmet, West Virginia on a fifty-mile, five-day journey began today to protest mountaintop removal, strengthen workers’ rights, and support investment in sustainable jobs for Appalachia.

• A two-day sit-in staged to protest against drone attacks concluded on Sunday with a warning to the relevant authorities that supplies to Nato forces in Afghanistan would be blocked if drone attacks continued.

• At least 30 people were injured when Indian police used teargas and batons to break up a mass anti-corruption protest led by India’s most famous yoga guru on Sunday.

• Approximately 250 supporters —including many veterans—converged on Saturday at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas to rally for the release of alleged whistleblower U.S. Army Private Bradley Manning.

• Sri Lanka’s powerful Buddhist clergy demonstrated Friday urging the president to restore rights of workers and students days after a violent police crackdown on a labour protest killed one factory worker.

• Three gay rights activists, including a former Democratic Senate candidate, were arrested last Thursday for their protest on the floor of the North Carolina House of Representatives.

• Fourteen students were arrested at the University of Washington on Wednesday evening on charges of criminal trespass after they refused to leave a building that was closed, as part of the ongoing protests over the UW’s contract with food-services provider Sodexo.