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

On Aug. 9 the US Justice Department's Office of the Inspector General (OIG) released a 237-page report on the killing of Puerto Rican nationalist leader Filiberto Ojeda Rios in the western town of Hormigueros on Sept. 23, 2005, by agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The OIG concluded that Ojeda had fired on the FBI agents first and that they were justified in returning fire and in waiting 18 hours after Ojeda was hit before entering his house to check his condition. But the report says the agents should have considered surrounding the house and forcing Ojeda out with tear gas and should have made a greater effort to negotiate a surrender. (Harford Courant, Aug. 10; FBI press release, Aug. 9)

On Aug. 3, some 600 demonstrators, including many people of Palestinian and Lebanese descent, marched in Bogota to protest Israel's military aggression against Lebanon. The march was called by the Platform of Colombians in Solidarity with Palestine and Lebanon, a coalition of leftist parties and labor and grassroots organizations. When the marchers arrived at the Israeli embassy, an officer of the diplomatic police in charge of security for the building ordered two of his agents to take down a demonstrator who was trying to spray-paint "Free Palestine and Lebanon" on the building facade. A brief clash ensued, and after it had ended a group of mounted riot police from the Mobile Anti-Riot Squad (ESMAD) arrived with a tank and attacked demonstrators with tear gas and water cannons.

Despite the ceasefire, Israeli soldiers fanned out across the Litani river, and between 10 - 30,000 may remain in Lebanon, creating certain logistics problems. According to Ha'aretz, Aug. 14:

IDF general: Soldiers may steal food from south Lebanon stores
"If our fighters deep in Lebanese territory are left without food our water, I believe they can break into local Lebanese stores to solve that problem," Brigadier General Avi Mizrahi, the head of the Israel Defense Forces logistics branch, said Monday.

From La Jornada, Aug. 10 via Chiapas95 (our translation, links added):

Iguala, Guerrero -- During the term of Vicente Fox, the Mexican government has not complied with recommendations of the UN to instate consitutional reforms on the rights of indigenous peoples, as mandated under the San Andres Accords, decried the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights and fundamental freedoms of indigenous peoples, Rodolfo Stavenhagen.

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.

Online at Media Monitors, but forwarded to us from Gush Shalom (which we like a lot better):

What the Hell has happened to the Army?

So what has happened to the Israeli army?

This question is now being raised not only around the world, but also in Israel itself. Clearly, there is a huge gap between the army's boastful arrogance, on which generations of Israelis have grown up, and the picture presented by this war.

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: