The Colombian armed forces committed 955 extrajudicial executions between July 2002 and June 2007, according an investigation [online at Latin America Working Group] carried out by a coalition of 11 Colombian human rights organizations and released this month. Of these killings only two have resulted in a judicial conviction. The number of killings by Colombia's armed forces represents a 65% increase over the previous five-year period from 1997 to 2002.

From the Alternative Information Center, Oct 16.

The general secretary of Peace Now, Yariv Oppenheimer, did his reserve military duty at a checkpoint in the Jordan Valley, deep in the occupied Palestinian territories, acting just like any other good Israeli soldier.

From the NYC civil service paper The Chief-Leader, Oct 19:

Thompson and Israel

To the Editor:

The undersigned trade-union activists disagree with New York City Comptroller William C. Thompson and the Jewish Labor Committee, who have joined the witch-hunt against British unions for boycotting Israel (The Chief, Sept. 7).

From AP, Oct 19:

Glass Monument to Che in Venezuela Shot
CARACAS, Venezuela — A glass monument to revolutionary icon Ernesto "Che" Guevara was shot up and destroyed less than two weeks after it was unveiled by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's government.

New Zealand's Maori Party harshly protested the Oct. 15 police raids on Maori activists in which 17 were arrested. "This action has violated the trust that has been developing between Maori and Pakeha and sets our race relations back 100 years," party leader Pita Sharples charged, using the Maori word for New Zealanders of European descent. He called the raids "storm trooper tactics" by a police force that consistently targets the indigenous population.

Award-winning journalist Bill Weinberg will give a report-back in Missoula, MT, this week from an international conference on building solidarity with the Iraq Freedom Congress (IFC) held in Tokyo this past summer. The IFC is a coalition of trade unions, women's organizations, neighborhood assemblies and other civil society groups which have come together to oppose the US-led occupation and demand a secular government in Iraq. The IFC is leading a campaign against the pending law that would privatize Iraq's oil, and has established self-governing zones, which both occupation forces and sectarian militias are barred from accessing, in neighborhoods in Baghdad and Kirkuk. Recently, their leaders have been targeted for attack by US forces. The Japanese anti-war group Zenko last year raised $400,000 for the IFC to start its own satellite television station, Sana TV, which began broadcasting in April. Can anti-war forces in the US similarly organize effective political and material support for Iraq's civil resistance?

From SOA Watch, Oct. 12, via Upside Down World:

We are very excited to share that President Evo Morales announced Tuesday that Bolivia will gradually withdraw its military from the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), formerly known as the School for the Americas (SOA). Bolivia is now the fifth country—after Costa Rica, Argentina, Uruguay and Venezuela—to formally announce a withdrawal from this brutal military training school.

Local Colombian officials have accused two US soldiers, Michael J. Cohen and César Ruiz, of sexually assaulting a 12 year-old girl on Aug. 25. The soldiers are stationed at the Tolemaida Airbase near Melgar, Tolima, as part of Plan Colombia. According to witness statements collected by local authorities and published in El Tiempo [Oct. 8], at 4 AM, the soldiers entered the base with a young girl they had met at the "Ibiza" nightclub in Melgar earlier that evening. The girl claims that Ruiz assaulted her in the car on the way to the base and later lent his apartment to Cohen, who reportedly raped her. The pair later left the girl in the central park in Melgar in front of several witnesses.