• On Friday, heads of state from across Latin America and the Caribbean flew into Venezuela for the inaugural meeting of the Community of Latin America and Caribbean States or CELAC. The group is designed to counter US influence and improve regional ties.
• On Friday, the ruling party in Guyanaproclaimed its fifth straight presidential election win; in a vote the opposition parties’ claim was rigged. The PPP/C took some 49% of votes cast, narrowly losing its parliamentary majority for the first time in 19 years. On Friday, the opposition marched in protest and held a 10 minute silent sit-in near the headquarters of the Elections Commission demanding explanations of discrepancies in the results.
• On Thursday, the United States passed a bill that declares the entire country as a battleground and allows the military to operate with impunity. On Friday, police in Tampa arrested 29 Occupy Tampa protesters when they refused to leave a downtown park. Protesters in DC began constructing a wooden building on Saturday in the local park during the Occupy DC protests. Police demanded they disassemble it on Sunday, arresting several people who refused. Several Occupy Portland protesters were also arrested over the weekend for refusing to leave a park area. An interesting report declared that contrary to popular belief, military spending in the US doesn’t create jobs, it actually costs them. On Tuesday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called upon world governments to stop persecuting homosexuals, even though only 21 states outlaw discrimination based on sexual orientation and same sex marriage is illegal in the majority of the country; while a new report found that more than half of bribes reported in the US since 2007 were made by individuals associated with the government and that over 25% of all reported bribe demands were valued at more than $50,000 USD.  On Wednesday, thousands of Occupy demonstrators shut down part of K Street in Washington DC, home of lobbying in the nation’s capital; police in San Francisco arrested some 70 people during an overnight raid on that city’s Occupy movement; Occupy protesters began rallying around homeowners as they tried to resist evictions from foreclosed homes across the country; protesters sat in congressional offices at Capitol Hill; and the US called for closer international cooperation to prevent

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