Penang, Malaysia | May 8

BBC - A religious court in Malaysia has allowed a Muslim convert to leave the Islamic faith, in what is being hailed as a landmark ruling.

Penang's Sharia court ruled that Siti Fatimah Tan Abdullah was free to return to Buddhism, following the collapse of her marriage to a Muslim man.

Nick Juliano | May 7

Raw Story - The few cases that have gone before a judge all have prompted the FBI to back down, ACLU lawyer Melissa Goodman said.

The FBI has withdrawn an illegal National Security Letter seeking information from an online library and has lifted a gag order that until Wednesday prevented any discussion of the information request.

Lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union and Electronic Frontier Foundation helped the Internet Archive push back against what they say was an overly broad and unlawful request for information on one of its users. The FBI issued its National Security Letter in November, but ACLU, EFF and Archive officials were precluded from discussing it with anyone because of a gag order they say was unconstitutional.

After nearly five months of haggling, the FBI eventually withdrew its NSL, which requested personal information about at least one user of the Internet Archive. Founded in 1996, the archive is recognized as a library by the state of California, and its collections include billions of Web records, documents, music and movies.

Sara Jean Green | Seattle, WA | May 6, 2008

Seattle Times - Following up on this post, it appears that the men taking pictures on a Ferry from Seattle were tourists not terrorists:

Two ferry riders sought by FBI last summer were just tourists
By Sara Jean Green

Last summer, the FBI launched an international search for two men after crew members and riders on a Washington State Ferry reported their unusual behavior — namely that they were taking pictures below deck, in areas that don't hold much interest for most tourists.

A ferry captain snapped their photo, which was passed along to the FBI.

This takedown of Naomi Klein's books is exceptional. I'd post about it, but it would pretty much be a whole bunch of quotes from the article and me simply adding, "yeah!" Or "indeed!" Or some such. Here's one for you, however:

. But the damage done by Chicago School thinking had less to do with the unleashing of acquisitiveness than with the stupefaction of thought. People indoctrinated in a ‘radical anti-state agenda’ would obviously not be well prepared for the challenge of restoring order in post-Saddam Iraq . . . It was not the utopian project of creating an ideal market that was the original sin of the war planners, as Klein argues, but the failure to appreciate the difficulty of building even a minimal state capable of monopolising violence. Without such a state, needless to say, nothing resembling a free market could survive.

I'm not a fan of Klein's arguments--although my father is--and I think Holmes' essay is a good corrective. Her ideas are too easy intellectually, as Holmes amply proves.

While I don't approve of arranged marriages or child abuse, I don't think the State of Texas did the right thing by invading Warren Jeff's ranch and then separating children from their mothers in masse, as was done.

If crimes were comitted, the guilty should pay, but the state can't issue blanket indictments that assume everyone in the place was party to crimes alleged to have been comitted without supporting evidence.

If the state has evidence of child abuse, it should target individual offenders. I am reasonably certain that the majority of women in this case have broken no law and I know damn well the children haven't.

Another thing I find so ironic about Ezra Pound (and Yeats to a lesser degree) is how culturally conservative they were. As John Tytell writes in his biography of Pound,

"They all shared the fear that democracy would gradually erode all cultural standards."

It was a valid fear--if the present is any indicator. But the irony (that word again, I know) is that Pound and the Modernists, Imagists and Vorticists--but not so much Yeats--were so responsible for unleashing all the energies that freed art from its neoclassical and neoromantic constraints.

Pound said, "make it new," and we moderns have done our damnedest to obey by tearing down whatever stood in our way, be it decency, craftsmanship, standards--all in the name of freedom.

But there is a war between creativity and freedom on the one hand and the dark forces of the far right (or the far left) in the arts--such as Stalinist art and Fascist art and the impulses behind them, which are similar to those of the builders of the Pyramids, Versailles and other enduring forms of public, monumental art. This versus the pure freedom to create, which I embrace, which we must all embrace regardless of the results, if we are to be free.

Paradox? Irony? Or just the rough energies driving history forward?

Not a day goes by without mention of the phrase “tipping point”, and with good reason. Different variations of this phrase include “critical mass”, “precipice” and the ever popular “day of reckoning”. The truth is alarming when one considers how many times these phrases are used, and used correctly. Our nation and the World are facing challenges that need to be addressed, and addressed as swiftly as possible. The human race can no longer pass off the responsibility of meeting challenges by doing nothing while we put the onus of problem solving onto our children and grandchildren. The time of band-aids and temporary short term fixes in regard to our most pressing problems is just about over. This planet is poised to reap the rewards that have come about from choosing half measures and politically acceptable “solutions” that are not solutions at all, but rather compromises expressly designed to placate the people, while protecting political, economic or religious interests.

Adam Liptak | April 22

NYT - The United States has less than 5 percent of the world’s population. But it has almost a quarter of the world’s prisoners.

Indeed, the United States leads the world in producing prisoners, a reflection of a relatively recent and now entirely distinctive American approach to crime and punishment. Americans are locked up for crimes — from writing bad checks to using drugs — that would rarely produce prison sentences in other countries. And in particular they are kept incarcerated far longer than prisoners in other nations.

State Secrets
A government misstep in a wiretapping case.
by Patrick Radden Keefe April 28, 2008

One Friday afternoon in August, 2004, a Washington, D.C., attorney named Lynne Bernabei received a package from the Department of the Treasury. The government was investigating one of her clients, the American branch of a Saudi charity called the Al Haramain Islamic Foundation, which had been active in fifty countries. Al Haramain had come under scrutiny, as had many other Islamic charities, after the attacks of September 11, 2001, and Treasury Department investigators believed that Al Haramain’s American branch, which was based in Oregon, had connections to Al Qaeda. In response to a request from Bernabei for evidence against her client, the government had turned over two sets of documents, primarily media reports that referred to other branches of Al Haramain. None of the materials demonstrated a direct connection between the Oregon branch and Al Qaeda.

Bernabei asked for any classified evidence the government might have, arguing that it was impossible to rebut evidence that she couldn’t see. When a third batch of evidence arrived, that August afternoon, the cover letter noted that the enclosed materials were “unclassified,” so Bernabei didn’t give much thought to the last item, a four-page document stamped “Top Secret.” “My impression was that it might have been something that was declassified,” she told me recently.

As an Internet Organizer for Progressive Future, I've been busily spreading the otherwise buried reports of the atrocities and abuses committed by military contractors in Iraq. As outraged as they made me, I had to wonder why these stories failed to reach the mainstream American public. Now I know why.

In an extensive article on the front page of Sunday's New York Times, David Bartow exposes how the Pentagon recruited, groomed, prepped and, one may go so far as to say, bribed a team of "military analysts." This team consisted of retired military men, defense lobbyists and private contractor representatives, who were then unleashed upon the mainstream media to deliver manipulated testimony on the war. Highlights of the detailed investigation of the Pentagon's highly strategized manipulation of war reporting are as follows:

The political situation in the United States is different at this particular time than in any other time that I have witnessed in my 57 years on this planet. This is the only time in my life that I can ever remember when the right and the left agree more with each other than the so-called “centrists’” of the GOP and the Democratic Party. Those that lean left, like myself, are afraid of losing their civil liberties, afraid of the corporate control of the mainstream media, afraid of the government’s surveillance of our personal activities, afraid of violations of the second amendment when it comes to gun ownership and are thoroughly disgusted with the governments clampdown on our 1st Amendment rights on free speech. When we see protesters tasered and sprayed with tear gas, hit by rubber bullets and clubbed, as in what happened at the G8 meetings in Washington, something is definitely wrong in this republic.

Ever criticize a politician in writing? How about a backroom political operator? A CEO? Or even a company's shoddy products? Canada stands alone in the Western democratic world in that it still allows public persons and corporations to use libel law to silence their fair critics. The result is often libel chill, as the CBC piece that ran last night on The National, featuring among others myself and Kate Holloway, details.

Worse, our courts are still unclear how to apply libel law to the Internet.

As I've written about before, (see here) I'm being sued by Green Party of Canada creditor and former campaign manager Wayne Crookes over links and articles other people wrote which I had the misfortune of reposting in a Yahoo Group forum. During the Green Party of Canada's 2006 internal election I kept a wiki which had a link to a candidate's web page, which had on it somewhere a link to a wiki which had on it somewhere some content Crookes objects too (I still don't know what!). For this, he is also suing me, though, to date, he's not sued the candidate.

If Wayne Crookes (the plaintiff) gets his way, entire sites could be forced offline simply for linking to another site which somewhere on it has content someone claims is libelous.

Crookes is also using Wikipedia and (ironically) the OpenPolitics.ca wiki. For a great piece about the OpenPolitics case, see fellow ProgBlogger Chris Tindal's excellent The Silliness of Suing a Wiki which is a piece explaining why suing a wiki is ridiculous.

Crookes responded by suing that author as well. Read it and see if you can figure out what is libelous.

Done? According to Crookes, nothing written in that piece is libelous -- except it has some links he doesn't want published.

And now, for linking to it, he can sue me (again!) as well. And if you link to this post, you can now get sued.

Or so he argues.

read more after the jump

New York Times, April 7

One of the dismal hallmarks of the Bush administration’s conduct of the war on terror has been its obsession with avoiding outside scrutiny of its actions, including by the federal courts. In particular, it has attacked habeas corpus, the guarantee that prisoners can challenge their confinement before a judge. The administration is doing so again in an important Supreme Court case concerning the habeas rights of American citizens held abroad. The justices should rule that the detainees have a right to review by a United States court.

This election is killing me. I have never felt quite the same way about any presidential election. There have been times when I was lukewarm toward many of the Democratic hopefuls, but that doesn’t begin to describe how I feel today. Lukewarm would be a definite improvement over the way I feel, in fact I would welcome lukewarm. It would be akin to the way a hunter would welcome a roaring fire after he came in from the artic, after falling through the ice and trudging miles through a blizzard in wet, icy garb. That picture describes the way I feel about the prospects of voting for the choices that have been offered.

See article at link for more in-article links
March 28th, 2008
Holdfastblog
Yahoo! China helps crack down on Tibetans

The Observers, a publication of France 24 TV, has documented Yahoo! China and MSN posting banner ads and prominent photos of Tibetans the Chinese government have identified as “most wanted” in connection to recent protests inside Tibet.

Unbelievable video of beatings outside UN building

Steve Watson
Infowars.net
Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Disgusting video footage of New York cops clubbing and arresting peaceful Tibetan protesters who were merely walking down the street has gone relatively ignored beyond Youtube.

While stories emerge out of China every day of police beating and killing Tibetan protestors in the streets, the same sort of behavior by cops in America tells its own story.

The footage was shot at a free Tibet peaceful assembly in New York on the 14th of March.

Good Friday penance took on a new meaning for Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, as she found herself calling presidential candidates Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Barack Obama (D-Ill.) to apologize for the huge egg laid by State Department employees who viewed the passport files of all three Presidential candidates, in separate incidents dating back to last summer.

Besides playing the piano passably well, what is it that this woman has actually accomplished in Washington? Okay, there was that creative writing project editorial she wrote for the New York Times about those elusive weapons of mass destruction, “Why We Know Iraq is Lying.”

Excuse me if I offend anyone in this article, but I would like to know what happened to the Democratic Party? I always thought of Democrats as those that supported Unions, workers, the middle-class, civil liberties and silly things like that. One thing I was also taught to do was to follow the money when it comes to whom really is supporting who in things such as criminal enterprises and of course, politics. I have been around for a while now, and I believe that I’m just as aware of what’s happening in my own country as anyone else. In fact, I believe that I’m really more aware of what’s happening than most. I am a voracious reader and I have a lot of time on my hands and I actually try to dig behind the rhetoric I hear. What I have found amazes me.

It just goes to show that some people will never “get it”. The Progressive Press has whipped up a cauldron of molten ire against George W. Bush’s statement that the war in Iraq was “worth it”. My God, how could he say such a thing? The Progressive Press remarks; “Doesn’t he know that almost 4,000 Americans and untold Iraqi’s have died in a quagmire? Doesn’t he realize that the cost of this war is in the trillions? Doesn’t he realize that we are no closer to victory than we were five long years ago?”

Sure he does. He just doesn’t really care. He feels that as long as the defense contractors are making windfall profits along with Halliburton and their subsidiary KBR, and are getting gigantic no-bid contracts, and the Federal Reserve pours trillions of dollars at interest into the economy, making the bankers rich, and as long as the oil companies can get their hands on that Iraqi oil, the world is a great place. If you believe that he sees anything as wrong or right, you have a problem with your perception.

This sounds a lot like democracy, a small 'd' democrat, to me:

“I am voting because I didn’t vote in the two previous elections,” said xxxxx xxxx xxxx, 27. “As a result, people I don’t like were elected and their policies have affected my life.”

You'd be surprised where it comes from. Then again, as Agonistas, maybe not.

Apparently the House did the right thing, passed the FISA bill, stripped retro-telecom immunity from the bill and played a nice little parliamentary trick, thus punking Bush, the Bluedogs and Senate Republicans. Well played.

Kevin Johnson | March 6

USA Today - Law enforcement requests for postal info granted

U.S. postal authorities have approved more than 10,000 law enforcement requests to record names, addresses and other information from the outside of letters and packages of suspected criminals every year since 1998, according to U.S. Postal Inspection Service data.

In each of those years, officials approved more than 97% of requests to record the information during criminal inquiries. In 2004, 2005 and 2006, the most recent year provided, officials granted at least 99.5% of requests, according to partial responses to inquiries filed by USA TODAY under the Freedom of Information Act.

Postal officials have closely guarded the warrantless surveillance mail program, used for decades to track fugitives and to interrupt the delivery of illegal drugs or other controlled substances such as explosives. In other government surveillance, such as most wiretap programs, a judge approves requests. In this one, the USPIS' chief inspector has authority to grant or deny a request.

The Postal Service handles 214 billion pieces of mail each year. Correspondence and packages transported by private carriers, such as FedEx and UPS, are not subject to the surveillance.

Kim Zetter | Calgary | March 5

Wired - It's taken two and a half years to get a ruling but the privacy commissioner in Alberta, Canada, has ordered a Calgary nightclub to stop scanning the driver's licenses of people who patronize the bar and to destroy all information that the club has collected on patrons through scanning.

In August 2005, a bar patron named Nyall Engfield filed a complaint with the privacy commissioner against the Tantra Nightclub in Calgary, after employees at the club scanned his ID. The club owners claimed that the scanning discouraged potential troublemakers from entering the bar or acting out once inside, since they knew they could be easily identified.

Robert O'Harrow Jr. & Ellen Nakashima | Washington | March 6

WaPo - Authorities to Gain Fast and Expansive Access to Records

Several thousand law enforcement agencies are creating the foundation of a domestic intelligence system through computer networks that analyze vast amounts of police information to fight crime and root out terror plots.

As federal authorities struggled to meet information-sharing mandates after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, police agencies from Alaska and California to the Washington region poured millions of criminal and investigative records into shared digital repositories called data warehouses, giving investigators and analysts new power to discern links among people, patterns of behavior and other hidden clues.

There is far too little poetry in the world these days, especially in America.

This poem by Charles Wright about Orpheus, Eurydice and Charon is very nice, as the Orpheus myth is one of my favorites:

Orpheus walked, the poets say, down to the black river.
Nobody recognized him,
Of course, and the boat came,
the gondola with its singular oarsman,
And the crowd got in, a thousand souls,
So light that the boat drew no water, not even a half-inch.
On the other side, the one paved road, and they took it.
Afterward, echoes of the great song webbed in their ears,
They took the same road back to the waiting gondola,
The two of them,
the first to have ever returned to the soot-free shore.
The oarsman's stroke never faltered, and he hummed the song
He had caught the faint edges of
from the distant, marble halls.
It won't work, he thought to himself, it won't work. And it didn't.

Please post your favorite poems, or discuss any poem you like. Even your own--if you must.