Schneier on Security: Analysis of the Witty Worm: "Here's a very interesting analysis of the Witty Worm from March 2004. Among other things, the researchers found the initial infection point (patient 0). They also believe that the attack was, at least in part, a deliberate cyber-attack on the U.S. military; an army base was deliberately targeted in the worm's hotlist."

Emphasis mine.

(Via Schneier on Security.)

Salon.com News | Inquiry finds some Quran "mishandling": "U.S. officials have substantiated five cases in which military guards or interrogators mishandled the Quran of Muslim prisoners at Guantanamo Bay"

...

"'None of these five incidents was a result of a failure to follow standard operating procedures in place at the time the incident occurred,' Hood said."

(Via Salon.)

Inmates Alleged Koran Abuse: "Detainees told FBI interrogators as early as April 2002 that mistreatment of the Koran was widespread at the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and many said they were severely beaten by captors there or in Afghanistan, according to FBI documents released yesterday.

The summaries of FBI interviews, obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union as part of an ongoing lawsuit, include a dozen allegations that the Koran was kicked, thrown to the floor or withheld as punishment. One prisoner said in August 2002 that guards had 'flushed a Koran in the toilet' and had beaten some detainees."

(Via Washington Post.)

Bolton's Supporters Fail to Cut Off Senate Debate - New York Times: "- Senate supporters of John R. Bolton failed this evening to gain a vote on his confirmation to be United Nations ambassador, as Mr. Bolton's opponents mustered enough backing to keep the debate over his candidacy alive.

The vote was 56 to 42 to shut off debate, or invoke cloture, but 60 were needed under Senate rules to stop the debate and move to a confirmation vote.

The Senate Republican majority leader, Bill Frist of Tennessee, said the Senate would vote again on June 7, after the lawmakers return from their Memorial Day recess."

(Via NY Times.)

The Nation | Blog | The Daily Outrage | Newsweek Was Right: Part II | Ari Berman: "No sooner does Newsweek retract its Koran desecration story then a flurry of news reports attest to just what Newsweek seemed to be reporting.

'Dozens have Alleged Koran's Mishandling' read a Los Angeles Times headline from Sunday. 'They tore it and threw it on the floor,' former detainee Mohammed Mazouz said of guards at Guantanamo Bay. 'They urinated on it. They walked on top of the Koran. They used the Koran like a carpet.'

Defense Department shill Lawrence DiRita claims that prison guards were instructed to respect Muslim religious rituals after the prisons for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay were first built in early 2002. But between 2002 and mid-2003 the International Red Cross received 'multiple' reports from detainees that American interrogators had abused the Koran. 'We raised the issues in our reports and verbally over a lengthy period of time,' ICRC spokesman Simon Schorno said last week. 'We talked to many detainees, not just one person.' The FBI also knew of similar accusations at the time."

(Via The Nation Weblogs.)

The Nation | Blog | The Daily Outrage | 20,000 Dead-Enders | Ari Berman: "Virtually everything the US military has said about the Iraqi insurgency has been untrue. Maybe that's because--as a new report from the Project on Defense Alternatives (PDA) shows--US military actions aimed at defeating the insurgency have served the exact opposite purpose by boosting its size and energizing its recruiting base.

Military assessments of the number of hard-core fighters quadrupled from 5,000 to 20,000 last July, as the number of attacks launched by insurgents jumped from 10 to 13 per day in early summer 2003 to 50 this May. Six hundred Iraqis have been killed since the new Iraqi government took power a month ago. 'The upsurge in violence during April and May indicates that neither the US military nor the nascent Iraqi security forces have managed to increase their capacity to control the country,' the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London concluded this week.

'A paradox haunts our counterinsurgency effort,' says PDA's Carl Conetta. 'US forces have succeeded tactically again and again, but insurgent activity remains four or five times as great as it was in early summer 2003. Public discontent is the medium in which the insurgents swim. And without it, could not persist.'"

(Via The Nation Weblogs.)

The “Blade” Cuts Compassion From His Agenda: "Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, formerly known as Bush’s ‘Blade,’ recently exhibited a stunning lack of compassion. The AP writes, ‘Daniels rejected the request of a convicted murderer for a reprieve of his execution so he could donate part of his liver to an ailing sister.’ While Bush was arguing yesterday that ‘America must pursue the tremendous possibilities of science... while still fostering and encouraging respect for human life in all its stages,’ Daniels was instead promoting his own distorted version of a ‘culture of life’ by not granting a short stay of execution for one life that could possibly save another."

(Via Think Progress.)

People of Faith:

"An Indianapolis father is appealing a Marion County judge's unusual order that prohibits him and his ex-wife from exposing their child to 'non-mainstream religious beliefs and rituals.'

The parents practice Wicca, a contemporary pagan religion that emphasizes a balance in nature and reverence for the earth.

Cale J. Bradford, chief judge of the Marion Superior Court, kept the unusual provision in the couple's divorce decree last year over their fierce objections, court records show. The order does not define a mainstream religion."

...

"In case this isn't 100% clear, this isn't a dispute between the former couple, this is a dispute between the divorced couple and the judge."

(Via Eschaton.)

Bragging Rights: "What Josh Marshall says. Instead of hand-wringing about what they need to do the Democrats should be out there bragging about the fact they've stopped George Bush from trashing Social Security."

(Via Eschaton.)

Salon.com News | "Fair and balanced" -- the McCarthy way: "As the debate over fairness and balance in public broadcasting rages on, there's a curious historical connection to be found between two men at the forefront of the current conservative crusade and a famous radio broadcaster from 50 years ago. How the three crossed paths -- and the way they practiced journalism -- put some of the debate into sharper focus."

...

"Tomlinson's charge of liberal bias runs counter to two nationwide polls conducted by the CPB in 2002 and 2003, which found little concern among Americans about bias in public broadcasting. The CPB is a federally funded agency that serves as an umbrella organization for public radio and television. Created by Congress, its purpose is both to help raise money and awareness for public broadcasting and to protect it from political pressure. But now the CPB itself has become the source of such pressure."

(Via Salon.)

AlterNet: Goodbye To Intelligence: "Few have more at stake in the expected Senate approval of John Bolton to be U.S. representative at the U.N. than the remnant group of demoralized intelligence analysts trained and still willing to speak truth to power. What would be the point in continuing, they ask, when--like so many other policymakers--Bolton reserves the right to 'state his own reading of the intelligence' (as he wrote to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee)?

Given his well-earned reputation for stretching intelligence beyond the breaking point to 'justify' his own policy preferences, Bolton's confirmation would loose a hemorrhage of honest analysts, while the kind of malleable careerists who cooked intelligence to 'justify' the administration's prior decision for war on Iraq will prosper. I refer to those who saluted obediently when former CIA director George Tenet told them, as he told his British counterpart in July 2002, that the facts needed to be 'fixed around the policy' of regime change in Iraq"

(Via AlterNet.)

Iraq: "Do you approve or disapprove of the way George W. Bush is handling the situation with Iraq?"

Dates	Approve	Disapprove	Unsure
4/13-16/05	39	56	6
3/21-22/05	39	53	8
2/24-28/05	45	50	5
1/14-18/05	40	55	5

(Via PollingReport.com.)

Mad as hell, switching to Mac: "In the coming weeks I'm going to keep a diary of an experiment my company began at 6 p.m. April 29, 2005 - an experiment predicated on the hypothesis that the WinTel platform represents the greatest violation of the basic tenets of information security and has become a national economic security risk. I do not say this lightly, and I have never been a Microsoft basher, either. I never criticize a company without a fair bit of explanation, justification and supportive evidence.

I have come to the belief that there is a much easier, more secure way to use computers. After having spent several years focusing my security work on Ma, Pa and the Corporate Clueless, I also have come to the conclusion that if I'm having such security problems, heaven help the 98% of humanity who merely want a computer for e-mail and multimedia."

(Via /.)

Bush Insults Muslims Across the World: "Bush says 'I dont think a photo inspires murderers' he continued 'These people are motivated by a vision of the world that is backward and barbaric'  He went on to attack their ideology and say that it is hard for the western world to comprehend such a view of the world. In his statements regarding the photographical insults and humiliations recently put down by a wayward soldier on Saddam Hussein, he has effectively insulted the entire  Muslim world.  Those living in the east and in the west.  By refering to the resistace figters in the Middle East as 'these people'  he takes away and humanity assigned to them by any other leader.  In the days of segregation the African Americans were refered to as those people, and occasionally you still hear a group of people who is ethnically different from some one refered to as those people.  That in itself is an insult.  Saying that the way they see the world is backward and barbaric takes the insult a step further.  While many of the people in the western world may not understand the ways of life in the Middle East I dont believe that it is hard for us to comprehend them, it is just a basic case of ignorance."

(Via Technorati: Politics.)

V-T Day?: "Lots of folks are more than a little fond of drawing comparisons between World War II and whatever you care to call the conflict that began on September 11, 2001. Last week a Salon letter-writer dropped a factoid that set me back on that analogy: Using the World War II schedule, if 9/11 was Pearl Harbor, then the war should have ended last Friday."

(Via Reason Online: Hit and Run.)

From Senate strife, a center takes hold | csmonitor.com: "On its face, their agreement simply averts a change in Senate rules on debate over nominees. But the deal's impact goes beyond the courts.

Although it can hardly be said that a dozen centrist renegades now rule Capitol HIll, this week may have witnessed the birth of a new Senate, in which rank and file members have rising clout. The dynamic could affect everything from President Bush's agenda to the tenor of America's red-blue political divide. At the very least, it gives new impetus to centrist bids to challenge the White House and party leaders on issues ranging from Social Security and fiscal discipline to revision of federal policy on stem-cell research."

(Via Christian Science Monitor.)

Wonkette - The Self-Deception of Bill O'Reilly: "'Nor do I think Bill O'Reilly is in a position to abuse families of survivors of 9/11, given his own ethical shortcomings.'
Howard Dean
Meet The Press
05/22/05

'Dean's assertion yesterday that I had done damage to the families of 9/11 victims is simply bizarre.'
Bill O'Reilly
The O'Reilly Factor
05/23/05

'Get out of my studio before I tear you to fucking pieces!'
Bill O'Reilly to Jeremy Glick whose
father died in the WTC attack
The O'Reilly Factor (after segment ended)
02/04/03"

(Via The Nation Weblogs.)

Bush Touts Social Security Plan: "President Bush brought his campaign to revise Social Security to this Upstate New York town Tuesday, telling an audience of supporters, 'There are some good ideas that I put on the table' that Congress has been reluctant to engage."

Note that his own party has a majority in both houses.

(Via A Section.)

Salon.com Politics: "In the wake of the filibuster compromise reached Monday night, it now appears that John Bolton, President Bush's contentious pick for the United States' next ambassador to the United Nations, will finally get a vote in the Senate and be confirmed.

That despite the fact that Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, wrote to his colleagues in the Senate yesterday urging them to vote against Bolton's nomination."

fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck

(Via Salon.)

the deal sucks: "Democrats 'compromised' when they blocked far fewer of Bush's nominees than the Republicans did Clinton's.

They 'compromised' when they failed to make the case that Janice Brown is an extremist nutjob, and Priscilla Owen a corrupt corporate hack.

They 'compromised' when Ben Nelson and the other quislings put their own career options ahead of the good of the country or their party.

(the rest of the post is at skippy)"

(Via Night Light.)

AlterNet: Drug Deal: "If Congress ratifies Bush's controversial CAFTA bill, pharmaceutical companies will be in for a windfall -- and the casualties will be poor AIDS patients."

...

"CAFTA's intellectual property protections will give monopoly-like status to high-priced, brand-name drugs in poor markets; potentially killing off generics in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Honduras and the Dominican Republic, and preventing millions of AIDS patients from being able to afford the meds they need."

(Via AlterNet.)

AlterNet: Scottie Goes Ballistic on Newsweek: "McClellan, George W's mouthpiece to the media, piled up a mountain of ironies when he lashed out at Newsweek recently for its piece about the desecration of the Quran by US guards at Guantanamo Bay prison. Scottie was outraged, he said, because Newsweek editors initially refused to retract the story after finding a factual flaw in it. Filled with righteous indignation, McClellan lectured reporters about standards of truth, about relying on only one source, and about credibility.

Hoo-boy...where to start? How about with the entire pack of lies that the Bushites used to plunge American troops into the war and ongoing occupation of Iraq? Even though the White House has now been forced to admit that it couldn't find any Weapons of Mass Destruction or a link between Al Qaeda and Saddam--we still have received no retraction of their story or apology for damaging US credibility all around the world.

Also, you might recall that the Bushites' untrue story about a 'mobile biological weapons lab' in Iraq was not only based on a single source, but the source was a guy that US intelligence never interviewed!"

(Via AlterNet.)

The Nation | Blog | ActNow! | Where's the Evidence? | Peter Rothberg: "The girls are currently being held without charge while undergoing legal proceedings closed from the public and the media in which they do not have access to the evidence used against them. Few details about the arrests have been released. What we do know, however, suggests that the charges could well be unfounded and propelled more by anti-terrorist hysteria than by actual evidence. Adding to this suspicion, an FBI official recently told the New York Daily News that, 'Nobody here believes they are wanna-be suicide bombers.'"

(Background for prior post.)

(Via The Nation Weblogs.)

The Nation | Blog | ActNow! | Freedom Restored | Peter Rothberg: "I'm delighted to report that the two teenage girls detained without charge and held in a Pennsylvania detention center for six weeks after being called would-be suicide bombers despite any supporting evidence have been released. Many thanks to all Nation readers who responded to this blog and sent letters in their support. This is a small victory in the fight against the prosecutorial excesses allowed by the PATRIOT ACT and a huge victory for the girls, their families and their supporters."

(Via Salon.)

Salon.com News | Charter schools outperform public schools: "California's charter schools are 33 percent more likely to meet their academic goals than traditional public schools, a study released Wednesday found.

Classroom-based charter middle schools stood out in particular, with 81 percent meeting the state-set goals for student improvement, compared with 54 percent of traditional schools, according to EdSource, a Palo Alto-based nonpartisan organization that studies public education."

...

"California's charter school law, approved in 1992, allows for public schools that are free from many state regulations, in hopes that greater flexibility will bring academic gain."

(Via Salon.)

Salon.com News | McCain vs. Frist: "When Sen. John McCain stood before the microphone Monday night and announced the moderates' deal that averted the nuclear option, Majority Leader Bill Frist was nowhere to be found. He wasn't at the press conference. He wasn't a party to the deal. Despite orchestrating the showdown over the filibuster, Frist was left out of the compromise, looking like a fringe player in McCain's show.

If the confrontation over judicial nominees was an early battle among Republicans with an eye on the next presidential election, McCain, a leading centrist candidate, faced off against Frist, who is positioning himself as the conservative's conservative. And by any measure, McCain clearly won. But the filibuster drama may have exposed a larger truth about GOP efforts to succeed George W. Bush in 2008 -- neither McCain nor Frist is well-positioned to win the Republican nomination."

(Via Salon.)

essays & effluvia: The Big Filibuster Lie: "'Examine the numbers and the reality of the current Senate standoff looks quite different from the spin. On the face of it, it looks like it is the Democrats that are being stubborn by threatening to filibuster judicial nominees.

The reality: The numbers show something different, the Senate agreed to approve all but 1.5% of judicial nominees, and the Republicans are threatening to change one of the fundamental checks and balances on government to have things 100% instead of 98.5% their own way."

(Via Technorati.)

Salon.com News | Senators avert showdown over filibusters: "Averting a showdown, centrists from both parties reached agreement Monday night on a compromise that clears the way for confirmation votes on many of President Bush's stalled judicial nominees, leaves others in limbo and preserves venerable Senate filibuster rules.

'In a Senate that is increasingly polarized, the bipartisan center held,' said Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn.

'The Senate is back in business,' echoed Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., one of 14 senators who signed the two-page memorandum of agreement, which cited 'mutual trust and confidence.'

Under the terms, Democrats would agree to oppose any attempt to filibuster — and thus block final votes — on the confirmation of Priscilla Owen, Janice Rogers Brown and William Pryor. There is 'no commitment to vote for or against' the filibuster against two other conservative nominees, Henry Saad and William Myers."

(Via Salon.)

Alliance@IBM/CWA Local 1701 - The Union for IBM Employees: "If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand.
It never did and never will. . ....-- Fredrick Douglass --"

IBM Europe employees are striking in protest of layoffs, which normally wouldn't be in my politics blog, but hell if that isn't a good quote.

(Via /.)

The Nation | Blog | ActNow! | Standing Against Big Media | Peter Rothberg: "I'm just back from St. Louis, where Free Press staged its second National Conference on Media Reform. Bringing together more than 2,000 of the country's most dedicated and innovative media activists and content producers with dozens of bold-face progressive names for three days of panels, meetings, strategy sessions and parties, the conference showed both the strengths and weaknesses of what now must be called an actual media reform movement.

The most obvious problem was the lack of significant representation of the vibrant non-white media movements in the US. But this conference was better on that front than the last, and the paucity of black and brown faces at the confab made it difficult for attendees and organizers to avoid this elephant in the room.

Other than the composition of the crowd, what most struck me was everyone's seriousness. Not just the panels and seminars but even the conversations in the hallways and bars spoke of fervor and conviction. People really care about creating independent media. The range of innovative projects on display and up for conversation was awesome. I could pen a year's worth of ActNow posts just by highlighting all the great ideas I heard over drinks on my first day in St. Louis."

(Via The Nation Weblogs.)

David Sanger: Two Time Loser on Kilju and Kumchang-ri?: "Daniel Sneider of the San Jose Mercury-News observes similarities between recent allegations of nuclear test preparations near Kilju and the 1998 revelation that North Korea was constructing an underground nuclear reactor and reprocessing facility near Kumchang-ri—a claim that turned out to be false"

(Via ArmsControlWonk.com.)

The Nation | Blog | The Daily Outrage | First PBS, Now NPR | Ari Berman: "The conservative coup underway at PBS is spilling over to NPR.

The changes sought by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting's (CPB) conservative chairman, Ken Tomlinson, and his majority Republican board include redirecting money away from news and toward music programming, the appointment of two ombudsman with conservative ties and an examination of NPR's Middle East coverage for evidence of bias.

Why the need for such a shake-up? Maybe because CPB board member Cheryl Halpern is a former chairwoman of the Republican Jewish Coalition whose family has business interests in Israel. Another board member, Gay Hart Gaines--who once ran Newt Gingrich's political action committee and together with Halpern raised $800,000 for the Republican Party since 1995--'talked about the need to change programming in light of a conversation she had with a taxi driver about his listening habits,' the New York Times reported yesterday."

(Via The Nation Weblogs.)

Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall May 18, 2005 02:51 PM (Printable Format): "Whether you call it the 'nuclear option', the 'constitutional option' or whatever other phrase the GOP word-wizards come up with, what 'it' actually is is this: the Republican caucus, along with the President of the Senate, Dick Cheney, will find that filibustering judicial nominations is in fact in violation of the constitution.

(Just to be crystal clear, what the senate is about to do is not changing their rules. They are about to find that their existing rules are unconstitutional, thus getting around the established procedures by which senate rules can be changed.)

Their reasoning will be that the federal constitution requires that the president makes such nominations 'by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate' and that that means an up or down vote by the full senate.

Nobody believes that.

Not Dick Cheney, not any member of the Republican Senate caucus.

For that to be true stands not only the simple logic of the constitution, but two hundred years of our constitutional history, on its head."

(Via DNC: Kicking Ass.)

May 19, 2005: You must be kidding: "Robert Novak today:

But [Howard Dean] has been talking to party gatherings across the country, and his intemperate language at these outings contradicts the notion that he has been kept under control…. National chairmen are supposed to fire up the troops, but Dean's rhetoric crosses a line. [Emphasis added.]

Robert Novak last week:

HUNT: Bob, why would Senator Frist refuse an offer to break the deadlock?

NOVAK: Because the whole system (INAUDIBLE) you're not going to have — like going to a concentration camp and picking out which people go to the death chamber."

(Via DNC: Kicking Ass.)

US Public Confidence on Iraq Plummeting: "

A new Harris Interactive poll

shows that US public confidence in the Iraq venture is falling rapidly.

Question: How confident are you that U.S. policies in Iraq will be successful?

May 2005
Confident: 25%
Not confident: 54%
Not sure: 20%"

(Via Informed Comment.)

DFV Leader Publishes Op Ed in Roanoke Times: "Kathy Welch, a Democracy for Virginia leader from Blacksburg (and host of the Blacksburg DFA Meetup) published a great op ed piece in today's Roanoke Times on the 'so-called liberal media', here in Virginia and nationally.  An excerpt:

Until May 13, the news pages of The Roanoke Times failed to report what's circulated the globe for weeks: notes from a July 2002 meeting among high-ranking British officials, revealing that the Bush administration knowingly cooked the intelligence on WMDs and more.

But lying about sex, now that's worth front-page coverage, years of media time and more than $50 million.

Even conservative William Kristol has admitted there's no such thing as a 'liberal media' (according to Joe Conason in his book, 'Big Lies')."

(Via Democracy for Virginia.)

the latest news: "Following the Red Cross's statement that pictures of Saddam in his underwear were a violation of his right to privacy and of international law, we learn from MSNBC that 'the US military condemned the publication and order an investigation.'   So the military would have us believe that they suffer from incompetence and a breakdown of discipline, rather than that they've committed yet another violation of the Geneva Convention in their inept psy-ops war.  Kinda pathetic when you have to keep pleading incompetence as a defense."

(Via Night Light.)

PressEsc - Sri Lanka man mentions human rights, escapes police torture: "The Hong Kong based AHRC has received accolades for carrying out a relentless campaign to expose instances of torture in custody in Sri Lanka and bring the perpetrators to justice.

But the police officers in Sri Lanka privately blame human rights organizations for obstructing their efforts to combat the crime wave that’s sweeping the island nation.

‘On the one hand AHRC claims that we are responsible for the deteriorating law and order situation in the country,’ one officer said on the condition of anonymity. ‘On the other, they blame us for using heavy handed tactics to fight crime. What are we to do?’"

(Via PressEsc.)

Unipolar and Multipolar World Orders Are Unworkable by Derek Kelly: "On a more theoretical level, the constitutional foundation of the USA, and the many months and years of discussion by its founders over two hundred years ago leading up to the formation of the new country, was based on the realization that absolute power is abusive and, if unchecked and unbalanced, can lead to gross corruption. One only has to look at the current occupant of the White House to see the wisdom of that observation, for today, intoxicated by an illusion of absolute power, Bush, strutting and stuttering, has exercised his power as absolutely and ruthlessly as any tyrant, past or present. 'L'etat c'est moi...I am the ultimate arbiter of innocence or guilt; I am the final court of appeal for whomever I decide, American citizen or not, should be incarcerated, without bail or trial or accusation, for as long as I decide. I decide who should live or die. No law constrains me. No International Treaty limits me, in fact nothing constrains me to do as I please, certainly not a rubber-stamp Congress and a weak and compliant citizenry.'

Unipolarity is in fact a narcissism, a collective personality disorder. Narcissists are self-centered and make their needs and interests paramount over all others. They are insensitive to others, rationalize everything they do, and have a pathological need to control. It is quite evident that the US is in the grips of a collective narcissistic disorder, led by a man with malignant narcissism – grandiose in claims, manipulating others for its own purposes, and believing its own press releases."

...

"But not a bipolarity as in the old days, maybe a new bipolarity based on Mutually Assured Competition, MAC instead of MAD, between the US and China.

Yes, the US continues to believe that it is head and shoulders above any possible competitor. Yes, China with its long tradition of modesty and contempt for insufferable braggarts proclaims that it is only a "developing" county. But if we look at the facts, we see a different picture. Yes, the US has a 10 trillion dollar economy and close to 300 million people, while China has a 7.199 trillion dollar economy (including Taiwan and the autonomous regions), with more than four times the population. But those 7 trillion dollars can buy 70 trillion dollars worth of goods in China – where one dollar can buy what 10 or more dollars can buy in the West – and many other places in the world outside of the so-called "developed" countries in the West. Yes, if we compare the economies in terms of US dollars, China seems weak. But if we compare them in terms of buying power and productivity, China has many times the economy, and power, of the US."

(Via Lew Rockwell.)

AlterNet: Keeping an Iron Grip: "George 'The Liberator' Bush brought democracy to Iraq, right? He certainly takes every opportunity to tell us so, pointing to that country's newly-elected government that, he says, now is the sovereign authority in charge of Iraq's destiny.

But... how sovereign are they, really? For example, can you imagine considering our own USofA to be a sovereign democracy if--get this--a foreign power had total control of our CIA? If a nation does not control its own secret intelligence agency, it is not sovereign. So, guess who controls the Iraqi Intelligence Service? The CIA!"

(Via AlterNet.)

PressEsc - FBI admits to persecuting political activists: "The FBI was forced to disclose documents that showed the bureau and local police engaging in intimidation of political activists today.

The documents were released after the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a series of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to obtain them.

The FBI is engaged in a well organized campaign of intimidating and improperly investigating law-abiding human rights and advocacy groups, the documents reveal.

‘Since when did feeding the homeless become a terrorist activity?' ACLU Associate Legal Director Ann Beeson asked. 'When the FBI and local law enforcement target groups like Food Not Bombs under the guise of fighting terrorism, many Americans who oppose government policies will be discouraged from speaking out and exercising their rights.'

In response to widespread complaints from students and political activists who said they were questioned by FBI agents in the months leading up to last summer’s political conventions, the ACLU filed FOIA requests in six states and the District of Columbia in December 2004 on behalf of more than 100 groups and individuals.

To date, the ACLU has received fewer than 20 pages in response to the FOIAs."

(Via PressEsc.)