funny if it werent so fundamentallybelligerent. after the intense repression that marked thefinal world cup protest last week, there was a protest on tuesday to free the19 activists being held temporarily and accused though not formally charged of criminal conspiracy. theprotest was bigger and louder than most of the actions during the world cup(around 1000 people showed up), and though the riot cops came out in force,they mostly managed to restrain themselves: there was no tear gas, no rubber bullets, and apparently noteven any arrests. toward theend of the march, word got out that a habeascorpus motion had been accepted and that 12 of the prisoners would bereleased the next day, and that four ofthe cops caught on video beating the shit out ofprotestors and stealing their stuff were going to be taken into administrative custody.protest is not a crime:the new de rigeur facebook profile picture for the local activist set (by amnesty international)this news kicked offdays of bureaucratic confusions and contortions. the habeas corpuswrits were initially challenged and then upheld, but the actual paperworksomehow took more than 24 hours to find its way to the right people, so the 12people scheduled to be released on wednesday only got out early on thursdaymorning, when their 5-day arrests should already have expired. almost as soon as they were released,state prosecutors announced that they would release a new dossier file a newmotion to arrest all of them again on friday. that motion apparently went through without any delays forpaperwork, and the 12 are now considered fugitives (along with 6 others who managed to avoid the initial arrests). meanwhile, 5 more prisoners are still being held indefinitely, alongwith 2 underage prisoners, who are still in custody but not subject to criminalprosecution. before being leaked to the press, the new charges against the 19 activists were classified,which sent their lawyers on a bureaucratic goose chasethe accusations keepgetting more grandiose and the numbers keep shifting there were originallysupposed to be 60 arrest warrants, with more possibly on the way which hasunderstandably created a pretty constant sense of fear among most of riosactivists. with different stateagencies and public officials competing with each other to either vilify orliberate our friends, its difficult to how large the anti-activist dragnetwill extend or what consequences will be attached to what actions. the recently-leaked police dossiermakes some pretty outlandish claims (for example, that a local anarchist coalitionwas plotting to blow up the rio de janeiro state legislature), and to my mind,its tone is eerily similar to ai-5,the 1968 declaration of martial law that signaled a major turning point for theworse in brasils dictatorship. (iwont go into detail about that in a blog post, so youll either have to takemy word for it, or wait for my phd thesis in about three-ish years).as new warrantscirculate, raising the prospect that more prominent activists will be subjectto arbitrary imprisonment, comparisons between between current political circumstancesand the 21 years (1964-85) of full-on military dictatorship keep coming up. thesecomparisons have been common for a long time brasil, in part because so many ofthe faces of the political and