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:

From Scripps Howard, Aug. 12:

The vast ice cap that covers Greenland nearly three miles thick is melting faster than ever before on record, and the pace is speeding year by year, according to global climate watchers gathering data from twin satellites that probe the effects of warming on the huge northern island.

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.