A communique in support of prisoners from the village of San Salvador Atenco, being held at Santiaguito prison in Mexico state. Via Chiapas95, Aug. 1 (our translation):

SANTIAGUITO PRISONERS DENOUNCE ATTACK BY GUARD AGAINST POLITICAL PRISONER

published by Radio Pacheco

Prisoners' letter, July 31
The aggression has begun again, this time against our companero David Medina Neri, a 42-year old man who was beaten by a guard today. Supposedly it's the guards' job to protect us from the aggression of other inmates, but now it turns out that the blows we receive come from them. Our companero David is sick and we know that any sickness hits people harder as they get older. He was lying down because he had the flu and a fever when the guy began kicking his right leg that had been hurting a few days before. He jerked him up and shoved him out of the cell, cursing at him all the while. The guard was told that we who were arrested at Atenco have a protective order that forbids that kind of treatment. It had happened once before when they tried to take our companero Arturo Sanchez Romero's shoes. The guard began to yell at us that he didn't give a shit about Atenco or protective orders, that they were just bullshit. Some of the companeros began to argue with him about what he was doing and he left as soon as he could.

From the Spanish news service EFE via Chiapas95, Aug. 1 (our translation):

Women of the Popular Assembly of the State of Oaxaca (APPO) today took by force the installations of the [state-owned] Oaxacan Television and Radio Corporation, which operates one television channel and two radio stations, detaining for several hours some 80 workers.

Indigenous Middle Eastern Jewry, from Lebanon, Morocco, and Iran, have issued recent condemnations of the Israeli assaults on Lebanon and Palestine.

The first here is from the Jews of Lebanon website. Lebanese Jewry goes back to 1000 B.C., and did not empty out in 1948, as many Middle Eastern Jewish populations did, most emigrating to Israel. The bulk of Lebanese Jewry left during the Lebanese civil wars from 1975-92. There are some 100 members of the community remaining today.

We hate to say it, but we sure called this one. Now to all of you who told us the anti-Semitism in The Passion of Christ was just a product of our paranoid imaginations—how would you like your crow prepared? We hate censorship, but it is hard not to be releived that the world will be spared this hypocritical exercise, which was designed purely to allow a Jew-hater deniability. Now maybe he will unleash an anti-Mexican tirade next, so we can be similarly spared this cultural vampire's upcoming film in the Maya language. From Stuff.co, Aug. 2:

We have noted a growing number of Turkish writers to face prosecution for their words. The latest is, especially perversely, charged in connection with a work of fiction. From The Guardian, July 24:

In Istanbul, a writer awaits her day in court
Bestselling novelist Elif Shafak is the latest writer to face trial for "insulting Turkishness". She tells Richard Lea about her work, the charges that have been brought against her, and how the Turkish language has become a battleground.

Note, of course, that her work was banned. From Middle East Times, July 31:

ANKARA -- Duygu Asena, a renowned Turkish journalist and writer who devoted much of her work to promoting women's rights, has died at the age of 60 after battling a brain tumor for the past two years, the Anatolia news agency reported.

Brian Tokar of Vermont's Institute for Social Ecology writes:

Murray Bookchin, the visionary social theorist and activist, died during the early morning of Sunday, July 30 in his home in Burlington, Vermont. During a prolific career of writing, teaching and political activism that spanned half a century, Bookchin forged a new anti-authoritarian outlook rooted in ecology, dialectical philosophy and left libertarianism.

As hundreds of thousands or even millions of supporters marched and rallied in and around Mexico City's giant Zocalo plaza on July 30, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO), presidential candidate of a center-left coalition in Mexico's July 2 elections, called for a "permanent assembly" until the Electoral Tribunal of the Judicial Branch of the Federation (TEPJF) orders a recount of the vote. He asked his supporters to set up encampments in the Zocalo and at 47 other points in the capital but to behave in an organized and peaceful manner. "Andres Manuel, hang in there; the people are rising up," the crowd chanted.