MISSION CREEP: US Military Presence Worldwide
Click "more" to view a map animation that uses Pentagon worldwide troop data from every half-decade since 1950, plus 2007, the latest year for which the data is available. These numbers are often fuzzy: Some deployments are classified, others are temporary, and just because the Defense Department claims 30 US troops in Indonesia last year doesn't mean 1,500 didn't pass through on training missions. Even so, the map, and the associated research, should give you a good feel for what the Pentagon is up to around the world.

Angst Follows Olympic Torch from Beijing to Vancouver
The 29th summer Olympics cast renewed light on China's treatment of ethnic minorities in Tibet, and as the games wind down, a similar, if less pronounced set of controversies will follow the torch to Canada when Vancouver hosts the 2010 winter games.

Guatemala Appoints Mayan Ambassador to Indigenous People
In the midst of increasing conflict between Guatemala's indigenous people and transnational corporations, Mayan elder Don Alejandro Cirilo Perez Oxlaj was appointed Aug. 9 as Indigenous Peoples Ambassador for Guatemala by President Alvaro Colom.

Filep Karma and Yusak Pakage, Prisoners of Conscience
For peacefully raising a flag, Filep Karma and Yusak Pakage may spend the next decade or more in prison in Indonesia. On December 1, 2004, some 200 people participated in a nonviolent ceremony outside Abepura in Papua Province during which the Morning Star flag, a symbol of Papuan independence, was raised in commemoration of the declaration of Papuan independence in 1962. The commemoration is celebrated annually by some Papuans. While approximately 200 people took part in the December 1 ceremony, hundreds more local people watched from the edge of the fields.

International Day of the World's Indigenous People
By resolution 49/214 of 23 December 1994, the General Assembly decided to celebrate the International Day of the World's Indigenous People on 9 August every year during the International Decade of the World's Indigenous People. In 2004 the Assembly proclaimed a Second International Decade by resolution 59/174. The goal of this Decade is to further strengthen international cooperation for the solution of problems faced by indigenous people in such areas as culture, education, health, human rights, the environment, and social and economic development.

INDIGENOUS PEOPLE: U.S. and Canada Found Guilty of Racism
The international community now fully recognizes the native peoples’ right to protect their lands and live distinct lifestyles. Yet, most of the world’s 370 million indigenous peoples continue to face abuse and injustices at the hands of state authorities and commercial concerns.

The Humanities in the Digital Age
Bruce Cole, Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, delivered welcoming remarks to participants at the 2008 WebWise Conference on Libraries and Museums in the Digital World in Miami Beach, Florida on 6 March 2008. In his remarks, he discussed the effect that digital technology is having on humanities scholarship and access, and described the Endowment’s efforts in the realm of the “digital humanities.”

Animating the Archive
Derived from ancient Greek αρχειου (“government”), the late Latin word “archive” has come in the modern era to refer not just to public records but also to the entire corpus of material remains that the past has bequeathed to the present: artifacts, writings, books, works of art, personal documents, and the like. It also refers to the institutions that house and preserve such remains, be they museums, libraries, or archives proper. In all of these meanings, archive connotes a past that is dead, that has severed its ties with the present, that has entered the crypt of history. The essay explores the ways in which Internet 2.0 offers new possibilities for institutions of memory: novel approaches to conservation and preservation based not upon limiting but multiplying access to the remains of the past; participatory models of content production and curatorship; mixed reality approaches to programming and informal education that expand traditional library and museum audiences; and enhanced means for vivifying and for promoting active modes of engagement with the past.

Diplomatic Efforts Seek to Mend Damaged US-Bolivia Relationship
Three weeks after pro-President Evo Morales leaders in the Cochabamba region officially expelled all personnel connected to the U.S. Agency for International Development for the agency's role in ''conspiring against the Morales government'' and then announced that all U.S. Embassy staff were also not welcome for the same reasons, U.S. and Bolivian officials met in July to discuss these problems, the extradition of former Bolivian officials wanted there for murder and issues relating to U.S. funding of the war on drugs.

May I Suggest ....
Gwyneira Isaac's book, ''Mediating Knowledges: Origins of a Tribal Museum,'' chronicles the unique creation process and history of the A:shiwi A:wan Museum and Heritage Center in Zuni, N.M.