In a 10-2 decision released late on Aug. 9, the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, Georgia, turned down an appeal on behalf of the "Cuban Five," a group of Cubans sentenced to lengthy prison terms in 2001 for allegedly seeking to carry out espionage in the US. Their lawyers said the Cubans shouldn't have been tried in Miami, where sentiment against Cuba's leftist government made a fair trial impossible. A three-judge panel of the same appeals court sided with the Cuban Five in a decision exactly one year earlier, on Aug. 9, 2005, but the full court overturned that ruling on Oct. 31 and, in an unusual move, agreed to have all 12 members hear the appeal

From El Universal, Aug. 12 via Chiapas95:

SAN CRISTOBAL DE LAS CASAS, CHIAPAS -- A judge has imposed long prison terms on 50 indigenous defendants convicted of carrying out one of the most heinous crimes in past decades - the 1997 butchering of 45 other indigenous people, mostly women and children, as they prayed in a southern hamlet. Despite the sentences announced Thursday, the motive for the slaughter and its possible instigation by erstwhile authorities remain shrouded.

One year after the hysteria that followed the London bombings, we are treated to yet another terrorist scare emanating from the UK, with the alleged plot to blow up airliners mid-flight by mixing combustible liquids, supposedly discovered in the nick of time. While that dominates the headlines (much more so, note, than the real terrorist carnage in Mumbai, which generated barely a media flicker compared to the significantly less deadly London attacks), buried in the inner pages of even the New York papers comes another turn of the screw they started tightening a year ago. From the New York Daily News, Aug. 12:

Lopez Obrador, the leftist presidential candidate who is leading militant protests in Mexico to challenge what he calls a fraudulent defeat in the July 2 elections, takes his case to the New York Times op-ed page Aug. 11:

Recounting Our Way to Democracy

by Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador

NOT since 1910, when another controversial election sparked a revolution, has Mexico been so fraught with political tension.

Protesters held four people captive for hours Aug. 11, charging they were behind the assassination of a protester in the conflicted southern Mexican state of Oaxaca. The Federal Agency of Investigation said protesters were finally induced to turn the captives over to its agents at a local television station that had been seized by the protesters. The protesters demand the four be charged in the death of Jose Jimenez, 50, who was killed the previous day during a march by the Popular Assembly of the State of Oaxaca (APPO) calling for the resignation of Gov. Ulises Ruiz. The shots were fired from a house as the march of some 8,000 protesters passed; protesters later set fire to the house. Jimenez, a mechanic and the husband of a striking teacher, was dead on arrival at hospital. APPO, which accuses the governor of using force to repress dissent and rigging the 2004 election to win office, charged Ruiz was behind the shooting. The governor denied the allegations and condemned the violence. (Seattle Times, AP, Aug. 12; La Jornada, Aug. 11) The Oaxaca state government has threatened to arrest all APPO leaders. Four have already been arrested, and APPO charges three more were "disappeared" the night of Aug. 10 (La Jornada, Aug. 11) One of the arrested APPO leaders, German Mendoza Nube, is a paraplegic who suffers from diabetes. Witnesses say he was beaten with a rifle butt when he was arrested by plainclothes state police. (La Jornada, Aug. 10)

What a conundrum. The Pakistani state has long cultivated Lashkar-e-Taiba to make trouble in India-controlled Kashmir. But now it seems to have gotten out of control, and Islamabad, under pressure from Washington, has been induced to crack down. Yet every measure against the militants (who doubtless still have their sympathizers and adherents in the apparatus) brings Pakistan closer to an Islamist coup. Is the world ready for a nuclear-armed Taliban? From Reuters, Aug. 10:

Note that this is being portrayed openly as a tit-for-tat to counter-balance the scheduled execution of those convicted in the Bali bombings. Note also that the Indonesian military itself has been accused of enflaming the Sulawesi violence through proxy militias. And note that the Pentagon has openly broached intervention in the Sulawesi conflict. From Asia News, Aug. 10:

Received from the Iraq Freedom Congress:

Lets Make Zaafaranyia a Safe and Peaceful Town

For decades, people in the town of Saafaranyia, like all other Iraqi cities lived together in peace away from any kind of hatred and it was an example for humanism and peace. Recently criminal hands have reached this town trying to destabilize it using sectarian incite which rip the society into pieces and turn cities to a front for sectarian fight. Recently many leaflets have been distributed threatening families, ordering them to leave their houses.