US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) continued the second phase of its "Return to Sender" interior enforcement operation July 12-20 with raids through the state of Oklahoma and the metropolitan areas of Chicago, Illinois; Louisville, Kentucky; and Kansas City, Missouri. The same operation brought the arrest of 154 immigrants in a July 10-14 sweep through three Ohio cities. In the first phase of Return to Sender, 2,179 immigrants were arrested nationwide from May 26 to June 13. The operation targets immigrants who have final orders of deportation.

A letter from Israeli filmmakers to Palestinian and Lebanese filmmakers
Israeli Filmmakers - Friday, 21 July 2006, 15:21

We, the undersigned Israeli filmmakers, greet the Arab filmmakers who have gathered in Paris for the Arab Film Biennial. Through you, we wish to convey a message of camaraderie and solidarity with our Lebanese and Palestinian colleagues who are currently besieged and bombarded by our country’s army.

On July 21, Israeli reserve officer Yonatan Shapira, a helicopter pilot and signer of the pilots' letter refusing to perform assassinations in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories, spoke out against Israel's attack on Lebanon on Democracy Now! The following quote is part of a debate between Shapira and a member of what Democracy Now! oddly refers to as Israel's "peace party," Meretz. Only one of six members of the Knesset from Meretz has expressed opposition to Israel's attack on Lebanon:

Another sacrifice for the American way of life. From the New York Post, July 20:

'3-TIME DWI' MOM KILLS PRIEST, 79

July 20, 2006 -- A beloved Long Island priest taking an evening walk was killed by a hit- run, serial drunken driver on a leafy East Hampton street, police said yesterday.

As if the facts in the headline aren't bad enough, note also the armed attacks on the Sunni religious establishment. It is starting to seem more and more like Bush's blundering into Iraq will have only succeeded into plunging the country into a genocidal situation. From AP, July 20:

Killers slit throats of mom, 3 children
Baghdad family had fled to Basra to escape threats

BAGHDAD -- Assailants slit the throats of a mother and her three children Wednesday in southern Iraq, where the family had fled to escape threats that they had cooperated with the Americans.

From CNN, July 20:

Lebanese refugees pour across Syrian border
YABOSS, Syria — As many as 50,000 refugees from Lebanon poured through one border crossing into Syria alone Thursday, officials said, as the desperate and displaced fled to escape Israel's bombing campaign.

We have already noted the deep denial about the reality of sectarian civil war in Iraq which pervades both the pro-war right and the anti-war left. Finally, we are beginning to see the limits of willful self-delusion in the painfully obvious face of unrelenting massacre. Patrick Cockburn, writing for the UK's Independent July 19, sees not only a civil war already well underway, but a the approach of a genocidal threshold...

From La Jornada, July 18, translation via Chiapas95:

Government prevents Subcomandante Marcos' radio appearance

by Hermann Bellinghausen

Subcomandante Marcos' appearance on the airwaves of Radio 620 this Monday was prevented "by the pressures of the Mexican Presidency, the Secretariat of the Interior, the Senate, and those gentlemen from the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE), who consider themselves referees", denounced the conductors of 'Politica de Banqueta' during the last broadcast of the program. The show hosts as well as numerous in-calling listeners and a protest in front of the radio station, condemned this "act of censorship", which was also considered an "attack" against the liberty of expression.