It is going to be a long, cold winter. That is what meteorologists are warning throughout the country. AccuWeather.com’s Long Range Forecasting Team says the United States should be preparing for “another brutal one” this season, with the Midwest bearing the brunt of the assault.

For most in the northern parts of the country, preparing for winter means making sure your oil tank is full, checking your storm windows or sticking sheets of plastic over your windows and plugging any new drafts. But, this year, it might be time to take the fight to stay warm to Washington, D.C.

Why? Because inside that cold, cold Beltway, they are spending money on war instead of keeping Americans warm! Sounds simplistic? Well, listen to this.

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• South Korean protesters calling attention to the women forced into sexual slavery during WWII reached their thousandth weekly demonstration on Wednesday. Marking the occasion, a statue honoring the victims was erected in front of the Japanese embassy.

• Chicago activists progressively interrupted a school board meeting on Wednesday in an act of nonviolent resistance—eventually forcing the board members to retreat out of the room—in protest of proposed changes to low-income schools.

• Demonstrators opposed to the Keystone XL pipeline staged a ‘human oil spill’ in front of Speaker John Boehner’s office in Washington D.C. Wednesday.

• Portugal’s top trade union confederation CGTP on Monday launched a week of protests against the government’s austerity policies.

• Employees of the Lahore College for Women University in Pakistan held a boycott of classes for the second day on Tuesday, demanding better terms for school workers.

• Thousands of taxi drivers in Guinea Bissau went on strike Tuesday to call for an end to police extortion.

• Disabled persons in Athens held a rally on Tuesday to oppose further austerity measures being considered by the Greek government.

• Inmates at seven Kyrgyzstan prisons coordinated a hunger strike on Tuesday to agitate for better living conditions and meals.

• Around 200 Los Angeles high school students walked out of classes on Tuesday and marched several miles to stage a sit-in at district board meeting, decrying cuts to school budgets.

• Thousands of public sector workers in Cyprus staged a three-hour stoppage Tuesday in protest over government moves to freeze salaries for two years as part of an austerity drive to avoid an EU bailout.

• A network of progressive South Korean Christian groups began a four day hunger strike on Monday to protest vote buying and corruption in the country’s largest Protestant association.

Slowly the room grew crowded on Thursday at the Cultural House in Turmequé in Boyacá, Colombia, which hosted around 750 farm workers coming together to define their strategy against the mining industry that is soon to arrive in their municipality. The message has been spreading across the valley, and people are worried: their lands will be expropriated and they will be forced to take work as coal miners, facing all the health risks that come with doing so. They didn’t ask for this to happen. Without warning, the local and national governments granted a Mexican company the rights to exploit their own people. And those in Boyacá are not alone in this fight; their case is just one among many like this throughout South America.

To the governments of countries like Chile, Argentina, Peru, Bolivia and Colombia, mining, biofuel and agricultural projects seem like a panacea for confronting economic crises and generating revenue. Although there are some cases of more sustainable development, many contracts given to national and foreign companies for extracting resources brings only short-term employment, along with long-term environmental and social consequences.

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• Some 5,000 protesters shut down operations at Oakland’s busy port and blocked traffic on Wednesday in demonstrations against economic inequality and police brutality that turned tense as the night wore on.

• Security forces in Bahrain used tear gas and armored vehicles to drive back hundreds of protesters who advanced toward the heavily guarded Pearl Roundabout—once the center of pro-reform demonstrations in the Gulf nation—on Friday morning after a funeral procession for the 78-year-old father of an opposition leader.

• Despite government promises two days ago to pull back from intense confrontations with protesters, Syrian security forces fanned out in force after Friday prayers, surrounding mosques to prevent demonstrations and using gunfire to disperse crowds. At least 15 civilians were reported killed.

• At least 16 people were arrested Thursday while protesting outside the New York City headquarters of Goldman Sachs. Among those arrested were journalist Chris Hedges and the performance artist and activist Reverend Billy.

• About 30 protesters occupied part of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s office in Washington DC on Thursday to protest Republican opposition to President Obama’s jobs bill. The protesters were from a new group called “OurDC.”

• Social activist Anna Hazare ended his 19-day vow of silence Friday with a clarion call to campaign against India’s ruling Congress party in the upcoming state assembly elections if his “Jan Lokpal,” or citizen’s ombudsman bill, is not passed during Parliament’s winter session that begins later this month.

• 2,000 church members marched through strategic locations in the Nigerian city of Abakaliki today to protest the slow pace of development and the level of poverty currently plaguing citizens. They also chanted choruses and brandished their brooms which they said symbolized spiritual cleansing of the state.

• Protesters scaled a drilling rig at a hydraulic fracturing site in northern England on Wednesday after a report links the controversial gas drilling process to two minor earthquakes.

• Israeli naval vessels intercepted the two Gaza-bound boats aiming to break Israel’s blockade on Friday afternoon.

The latest wave of international Palestinian solidarity action is underway, as 27 people from five countries sail through international waters in the Mediterranean on their way to Gaza with an estimated $30,000 of humanitarian assistance. Departing from Turkey, the flotilla is comprised of two boats: The MV Saorise, whose passengers include delegates, parliamentary representatives and activists from Ireland, and the Tahrir, an international delegation comprised of solidarity workers and journalists hailing from Canada, USA, Australia and Palestine.

The Freedom Waves flotilla is the international community’s most recent effort aimed at penetrating the punishing and illegal naval blockade of Gaza, which has effectively imposed isolation, imprisonment and impoverishment upon the region and its people. According to Egyptian correspondent Hassan Ghani, tweeting from aboard the Tahrir, “Turkish coastguard was visible as #freedomwaves departed from Turkish shores, but did not approach, kept distance. Darkness now.”

To learn more about Freedom Waves, I contacted the Ramallah-based media office of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM). They responded to some of my questions by email earlier today:

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• A dozen men in suits, including the Yes Men’s Andy Bichlbaum (middle-left) and Mike Bonanno (middle-right), marched with hidden placards last week after announcing at Occupy Wall Street’s General Assembly that they were about to take part in a highly arrestable action. As the police, who overheard the announcement, prepared to make arrests, the suits lifted their hidden placards, revealing the message: “Brokers and Police for the Occupation.”

• While Occupy Wall Street protesters braved snow, sleet and rain in New York this weekend, scores of protesters in Portland, Oregon and Austin, Texas were arrested after refusing police orders to disperse.

• Hundreds of students staged an anti-government rally in eastern Sudan on Sunday, protesting against poverty and rising food prices, witnesses said.

• Workers at the world’s third-largest copper deposit, Chile’s Collahuasi mine, ended a partial strike begun early on Saturday after reaching an agreement with management over bonus payments.

• Air France cancelled one in five flights on Sunday after cabin crew stopped work for a second consecutive day to protest against employment conditions.

• More than 30 farmers who staged a sit-in Thursday in front of the Myanmar government housing department in Yangon to protest the unfair confiscation of their land. Seven people were arrested, despite the government’s stated commitment to democratic reforms.

• Activists say Syrian security forces have killed at least 44 people, as large protests calling for a no-fly zone to protect civilians and soldiers deserting the army were held across the country on Friday.

• More than 30,000 Israelis marched in Tel Aviv Saturday night to express anger over the high cost of living. Thousands more protested in Jerusalem.

• Galvanized by the Occupy Wall Street movement, protests began in New Zealand, touched parts of Asia, spread to Europe, and resumed at their starting point in New York with 5,000 marchers decrying corporate greed and economic inequality in Times Square. Meanwhile, 24 people were arrested at a Manhattan Citibank branch while trying to close their accounts.

• Police arrested around 175 demonstrators at the Occupy Chicago camp in a downtown park early on Sunday, hauling them away in vans and buses even as protesters vowed to carry on their campaign against economic inequality.

• Yemeni security forces used live rounds as well as tear gas and water cannons to disperse thousands of people attempting to march on the city center in Sanaa from their stronghold in Change Square. At least 16 people were killed.

• The dissident group Ladies in White sent a message of defiance to the Cuban government on Sunday, having men join them for their weekly protest march for the first time since forming in 2003. It is also believed to be the first time in decades men had taken part in a public protest in Cuba.

• Author, commentator, civil rights activist and Princeton University professor Cornel West was arrested while protesting on the steps of the Supreme Court on Sunday about corporate influence in politics.

• Activists with the October 2011 Stop the Machine protest in Washington’s Freedom Plaza gathered outside the Supreme Court yesterday to draw attention to corporate influence in politics. Nineteen people were arrested, including author, commentator, civil rights activist and Princeton University professor Cornel West.

• Anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan was among 19 demonstrators arrested during an anti-Wall Street protest in Sacramento, California yesterday.

• More than 2,000 Tunisians have marched in favor of a secular state that allows press freedom and other rights. The demonstration is a response to protests and violence by Islamist extremists.

• Organizing for Occupation, a coalition of housing advocacy groups, disrupted a Brooklyn foreclosure auction on 60 homes last Thursday with a singing protest.

• Hundreds rallied in the disputed Iraqi town of Khanaqin on Sunday to demand the reversal of a central government ruling barring the flag of the autonomous Kurdish region in official buildings.

The first thing Wangari Maathai did after being notified that she had won the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize was to plant a tree in her backyard. She said she did this whenever she celebrated something.

Maathai died of ovarian cancer this past Sunday in Nairobi. This is a moment for mourning but also for celebration of a life lived full on: challenging poverty, empowering women, resisting exploitation, cultivating democracy, and advocating for the integrity and sustainability of the planet.

She tied all these dimensions of her life together through both the simplicity and complexity of planting trees. Since 1977 her Green Belt Movement planted 40 million of them throughout Africa.

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A lot of people have seemed impatient that the movement now occupying Liberty Plaza near Wall Street has not stated an explicit demand. What a visit to the plaza reveals, though, is that what really matters is not a what at all, but a how.

• 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.