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Each political note has its own anchor in case you want to link to it.
Google is providing information on people's searches to the US government -- about everyone, not just about specific people for whom the government gets search warrants.
Repression under China: the full story of the Chinese attack on fleeing Tibetans.
Amnesty International reports on bloggers imprisoned by various governments for their political views.
Greg Palast teaches Americans to recognize situations where the right thing to do is "cut and run".
Cheney explicitly endorsed a form of torture.
NBC rejected TV ads for Dixie Chicks film because it criticizes Bush.
NATO forces killed dozens of civilians in Afghan attack. NATO 3~claims they were mostly Taliban fighters, but the evidence suggests that is not true.
No people like to see their compatriots killed by foreigners; they only way this won't make them hate those foreigners is if they greatly appreciate those foreigners' help. In Afghanistan, public opinion is already moving towards the Taliban; the kind of public support that would lead the public to stand for this is already lost. Trying to deny what happened only makes its effect worse, since it adds lying to the list of crimes.
Computerized voting is not just vulnerable to cracking, it's fundamentally unreliable. And, even worse, voter-verified paper ballots have a serious practical problem: voters don't check them.
Perhaps voter education will suffice to make voter-verified paper ballots work. But it does seem that the idea of using computers for voting is a bad idea.
When memory researcher Elizabeth Loftus took the stand in Scooter Libby's trial to testify to the fallibility of human memory, prosecutor Fitzgerald embarrassed her by demonstrating her failures of memory.
Does that weaken her testimony, or support it?
Bush has announced a plan to withdraw most of the Americans from the Bush forces, and have the "Iraqi" army take over most of the fighting to maintain the occupation of Iraq.
The plan is contingent on their being capable of doing so, which seems unlikely. So I think Bush's intention is to mislead Americans into expecting that he will withdraw the troops, while preparing the excuse for not actually doing so.
Some European countries are banning the wearing of veils.
Several issues of freedom come into this on different sides. On one side, there is the general freedom to dress as you wish. On the other, there is freedom from intimidation and pressure to bow down to religious bullying.
However, I am disturbed by the demand that "people in public be identifiable", because this is part of the basis for the total surveillance state that is gradually being assembled.
In the UK, vast majorities condemn the war in Iraq, while 60% now call for pulling the UK's contingent out of the Bush forces.
Deregulation of electricity, which was pushed by Enron and then exploited by Enron, has been a disaster, and Bush is trying to perpetuate it.
Higher electricity prices are not in themselves a bad thing as long as these prices don't go for windfall profits. The US should tax electricity more, to raise prices and thus encourage conservation.
The government of Syria has crushed the movement for human rights and democracy by pointing to Iraq as an example to prove they are bad. This weekened the movement to the point where Assad felt comfortable crushing it.
Poor Syrians -- they made the fundamental mistake of believing Bush. He said that his conquest of Iraq was a plan to establish freedom and democracy there, intending to fool the American public, and ironically fooled the Syrian public too.
Let no one make the mistake of judging freedom or democracy by the conduct of the US today.
A British man faces execution under Pakistan's system of Islamic courts, after a secular court concluded that the police were framing him for murder.
"Islamic law" is another name for cruelty and injustice which are not entitled to hide behind religious freedom.
Nicaragua has adopted a law banning abortions even at the cost of killing a woman. Around 400 women per year are expected to be killed by this.
Islam is not the only religion that kills.
The money spent by Bush on "reconstructing Iraq", what part was not siphoned off by business executives, was mostly spent on housing foreign workers, leaving little funds for actual rebuilding.
Such inefficiency is almost inevitable when occupying forces try to "rebuild" a country whose population hates them. In this way, as in other ways, Iraq would be better off today under the well-organized and stable despotism of Saddam Hussein than under the more violent yet less stable despotism of King George.
US houses are getting more energy-efficient -- for their size. But they are also getting bigger, which overwhelms the efficiency gains.
In Colombia under Bush's deputy Uribe, union organizers, teachers and student leaders face indefinite imprisonment and assassination.
Former Coca Cola workers in Venezuela are blockading the plants, demanding pay they are owed. If the company does not pay them it may be expropriated.
A British man who helped his wife commit suicide was given a suspended sentence.
To help others escape from a life of torture should not be punished at all.
A UK minister has admitted that the occupation of Iraq has spurred Islamic radicalism. He claims that this admission is an attempt to "reach out" to young Muslims.
He needs to realize that just admitting a mistake is not sufficient for forgiveness. You have to at least try your best not to keep making the mistake. Otherwise the "admission" is just manipulation.
Hezbollah used cluster bombs too.
Maybe Israel and Hezbollah can sign a treaty not to use them.
Commentary: as Bush continues the war just so that the retreat from Iraq will be the next president's "responsibility", the Democratic party offers nothing better.
Israel admits using phosphorus bombs during war in Lebanon.
The UK is accused of blocking negotiations to ban cluster bombs.
If that is true, it is probably obeying orders from the US, which is among the principal makers of cluster bombs.
Watch out: European countries are planning to use the Galileo location system to track everyone's car.
There is absolutely no need for "road pricing", because the increase in gasoline taxes--and improved mass transit--that we must implement in order to prevent global disaster should suffice to end congestion in cities too.
Half the civilian deaths in Iraq are due to a shortage of doctors and medical supplies. This shortage is due to the violence and destruction caused by the Bush invasion.
The US has won more supporters than Venezuela in a contest for a security council seat, demonstrating that it has more influence over other countries than Venezuela has.
I find it encouraging that as many as 77 countries openly oppose US pressure.
Osama bin Laden continues to campaign for the Republican Party.
Bush's Iraqi government is trying to keep civilian death figures secret. This is the standard Bush regime response to embarrassing failure, just as it was the standard Soviet response.
The article is misleading when it describes the Iraq Body Count as an "estimate" of the number of civilian deaths in Iraq. That project counts deaths in specific reported incidents, and explicitly says that this is not an attempt to estimate the total.
This misrepresentation, which I have seen in other mainstream media articles as well, has the effect of creating a false impression that Iraq Body Count constitutes evidence against higher figures which really do try to estimate the total number of civilian deaths, thus falsely discrediting them.
B'liar's government wants to make it easier to block freedom-of-information requests, using processing costs as an excuse.
The costs of handing these requests are insignificant compared with the costs of the wrongdoing that transparency can prevent.
When the Social Democratic Party was in power in Germany, it adopted right-wing economic "reforms" that have spread poverty.
This is a consequence of the competition between countries to attract businesses. Instead of "free trade" treaties, countries should sign treaties where they all commit to similar measures to reduce poverty, protect the environment, and protect public health, thus preventing business from playing each country against the rest. (This is essentially the idea of the Simultaneous Policy campaign.)
As part of the War on Integrity, Bush placed a mining company manager in charge of mine safety.
Most of the auditors working for the US House of Representatives to investigate fraud in spending Hurricane Katrina relief funds have been fired.
The Bush forces are so desperately short of men that they have to deploy soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder.
The Bush forces have failed to end the sectarian violence in Baghdad. (They cannot do so, because the causes of this violence are a structural result of their own intervention.) Bush made the surprising admission that the situation resembles the quagmire of Vietnam.
The more the Bush forces get worn down, the harder it will be for Bush to try to conquer some other country. Thus, the Iraqi resistance is keeping other countries safe from invasion.
It is also the case that this damages the US capability to defend against a hypothetical attack. But the US is much more likely to attack other countries than to be attacked; therefore, on the balance, its weakness is a good thing.
Henry Porter's speech: how Bliar has masterminded the greatest attack on liberty (in the UK) in the last hundred years.
Support the campaign to pressure Target to stop selling PVC.
Richard Armitage, Bush regime official until 2005, now effectively admits defeat in Iraq, and the nasty attitude that the Bush regime has shown the rest of the world.
Bush has neglected to upgrade the US electric power net as demand for electricity surges.
I think taxes should be increased on electric consumption, to encourage conservation. This will help reduce global warming as well as avoiding the need for blackouts.
The coral reefs of Madagascar have been mostly denuded of live coral. It is probably caused by global warming. Some corals can survive at today's elevanted temperatures, but given another degree or two, they might die also.
The US secret service pulled a student out of class to interrogate her at school about an art project.
Legionnaires' disease is spreading due to global warming.
Another signal admission from a UK military commander: that the invasion of Iraq put Afghanistan on the path to being lost to the Taliban.
A US citizen who was kidnaped in Iraq, along with Romanian journalists that he was accompanying, faces execution for supposedly aiding the kidnaping. There is apparently no evidence that he participated in the crime, but Bush wants him dead anyway, and some Bush forces agent went to his trial where he falsely claimed to represent the Romanian government.
Fires and the worst drought in 100 years wake Australia up to the reality of climate change.
Drought like this will be common world-wide if we do not reduce CO2 emissions.
The UK plans for increased air travel even as it claims to be planning to cut CO2 emissions, but that is impossible.
UK ministers personally cause lots of wasteful CO2 emission by flying when they could have taken the train.
As recognition of growing defeat in Iraq spreads among the public and in the US and UK governments, Bush and Bliar still refuse to admit any doubt that they are winning. They are extreme liars, whose approach to inconvenient facts is to deny them and hope their denial is louder than the reality.
Baker may be heading for a solution along the lines of what I have proposed.
Some Indian states have passed laws abolishing religious freedom to stop Dalits from converting to Buddhism. They are following the example of Dr. Ambedkar, their great leader, who converted to Buddhism 50 years ago.
The more I read about Dr. Ambedkar, the more I admire him. He promulgated a rationalist variant of Buddhism, which Buddhism in India (by Gail Omvedt) suggests may be what the Buddha actually taught, before superstition seeped in to it from mainstream Indian thought.
A wise suggestion to the UK (and everywhere else): raise taxes on airline tickets, to prevent an increase in air travel.
This will also avoid the need for lots of expensive airport construction.
Sgt Clousing explains why his conscience forced him to desert from the Bush Forces. He now faces a court martial, for the sake of his self respect.
For more information see here
Orhan Pamuk, who was prosecuted by Turkey for talking about the genocide of the Armenians, received the Nobel Prize for Literature.
The French law making it a crime to deny the genocide of the Armenians may be well intentioned, but it is censorship, and I will not condone it merely because I disagree with the views being censored. To deny the genocide of the Armenians damages human rights, but censorship of such views damages them even more.
Bolivia's deposed president is allowed to live in the US, while those who want him to face justice are denied entry.
Is Humanity wise enough to invest 1.6 trillion dollars per year now, to avoid 6 trillion dollars per year in losses due to global warming a few decades from now?
Bush wants to send 9 Guantanamo prisoners back to the UK, but only if they are kept under permanent surveillance and restrictions. The UK objects to that requirement, saying there isn't evidence against these prisoners to justify it.
From this information, I cannot be sure whether either of the two countries' positions is honest or an excuse. But the UK position shows some signs of being an excuse.
Bliar has already twice adopted policies of imposing restrictions without trial on foreigners legally resident in the UK, first actual imprisonment, then a severe form of house arrest, and he gives the police 101% support when they shoot and even kill people who are then determined to be totally innocent, so I can't believe he would object to putting 9 more people under house arrest even if he is sure they did nothing to justify it. He launched a war that has killed hundreds of thousands just to please Bush, so why wouldn't he arrest (or kill) 9 more people to please Bush?
See these previous notes:
101% support
House Arrest
600,000 killed in Iraq.
It appears that most of the prisoners in Guantanamo are not guilty of any crime. That is why Bush doesn't want them to have their day in court.
Here is information about these prisoners.
One of them claims to have made a false confession because he was afraid his injured leg would be untreated and he would lose it. It is to America's terrible shame that it has acted in such a way as to make such accusations entirely credible. False confessions are quite common even among ordinary criminal suspects in ordinary jails, so this should not be treated as implausible.
See this previous note about false confessions.
An Irish jury found five anti-war protestors not guilty of attacking a US airplane.
Here's what these activists have to say about their future plans.
The TSA is not very competent (see other link), but it is doing a great job of protecting us from 4-year-old terrorists.
I suspect that the name "Sam Adams" was put on the no-fly list by the previous King George, who considered him subversive, and has not been removed since.
The Sarbanes-Oxley law was adopted to prevent corporate executives from swindling stockholders. Executives are lobbying to get rid of the law. I guess they want to lie to their investors once more.
They are making the usual shallow argument about competing with other countries. In this case, they must be competing to be the country that allows the most lying to investors.
Whenever business makes such an argument, it is an instance of the harm that "free trade" policies do. By allowing businesses to move too easily from country to country, they also put business in the position to make countries compete for who can bow down the most. The proper conclusion to draw is that we must put limits on capital migration, limit "free trade", until business no longer has the power to do that.
Salman Rushdie says that Islamic fanatics are crushing the tolerant form of Islam that he grew up with, and that their aim is to impose an Islamic state on the whole world.
I believe there is a hard core that wants this, but if the US stops imposing dictatorships and occupation on the Islamic world, I am sure that hard core will get a lot less support for aggressive activities.
Not In Our Name calls for teach-ins about the Bush regime across the US on Oct 26-30. Contact them if you want to organize one.
The UK plans a patently unjust policy of punishing drivers if they used marijuana days previously.
Constable Hughes misrepresents the plan when he talks about punishing drivers for being "under the influence" of an illegal drug. If they really did that, it would be legitimate.
Israeli air attacks have tested a new US weapon that kills within a smaller radius than ordinary explosives, using toxic metal.
Perhaps they hope that this weapon will reduce the number of bystanders that they kill with these raids. However, it won't avoid killing family members traveling in the car with the target that they ought to have arrested instead.
Meanwhile, the weapon is reported to leave a carcinigenic residue. So it could kill a larger number bystanders, but they will be "deniable".
The Palestinians of Al Khader, blocked by Israeli checkpoints from selling their grapes, held a protest -- giving the grapes away to passing cars. For this, the army attacked them.
Israel blocks Palestinians from traveling for medical care, and uses the threat to block them as a way to recruit informers.
The army also arrests and attacks journalists, then lies to construct an excuse. They fear the truth.
One Palestinian's tale of torture.
The more Arabs become willing to talk peace with Israel, the more Israel imposes preconditions to make sure no negotiations occur.
The UK foreign minister criticized the Guantanamo prison; even sycophantic regimes have trouble swallowing it.
Anna Politkovskaya's last, unfinished article describes how the Russian government tortures Chechens to make them confess to supposed "terrorism".
It sounds like Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.
China is trying to silence the climbers who saw Chinese troops shoot Tibetans.
16 Afghans were released from Guantanamo. It took four years for King George's men to determine that there was never any reason to arrest them. One of them says that nearly all the prisoners there are innocent, and that torture continues.
Imprisonment of the innocent is a regular, normal result of imprisoning people without a real, fair trial.
Bush forces casualties are at the highest level since they destroyed the city of Fallujah, as resistance attacks continue to increase.
When asked about her fondest wish, if Democrats take control of Congress, Nancy Pelosi mentioned only side issues. Nothing about ending the occupation of Iraq. Nothing about restoring the Bill of Rights. Nothing about making the US a nation that really does not torture.
The things she proposes to do are good, but they won't stop the US from being a force for evil in the world.
The UK security service appears to spin the evidence that it secretly presents in deportation hearings. It tried to spin the same evidence in two contradictory ways in two deportation hearings, and through good luck, it was caught out.
Since the odds of getting caught are small, such spinning must be quite common. It is the spinning, not the getting caught, that is wrong.
Bliar's probable successor, Gordon Brown, appears to be more of the same "war on terror" (war on civil liberties).
It is absurd to suggest that Europe avoid being anti-American, because that is impossible. The principal enemy of the US ideals of freedom and democracy is the US government; to support either one is to oppose the other. Whichever side you're on, you're anti-American in some sense.
Europeans should take the side of freedom and democracy, which means opposing the US government until it is no longer in a position to do harm in the world.
A Nato commander warned that Afghanistan may "swing to the Taliban" in six months.
An airport in Europe has a test program: requiring all passengers to wear RFID tags.
Here is more information about the system. It is designed to treat people like sheep.
This system must be superfluous for security, since the existing systems are supposed to prevent passengers from going where they are not supposed to go. In other words, this system doesn't make sense in its own terms.
To track people inside an airport is not particularly dangerous to civil liberties, since people are required to identify themselves just to get in. The danger I see is that this will get people accustomed to being treated like sheep (even more than existing airport security does), paving the way for the universal total surveillance that the Bush and Bliar regimes clearly want.
Rep. Foley wanted to retire (by not running for reelection) and become a lobbyist -- a common practice which is a form of corruption. But Karl Rove pressured him to run again, saying he would have "more success as a lobbyist" if he did so. For officials to offer someone "more success as a lobbyist" is also corruption.
I've written a new song parody: Guantanamero.
1/5 of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans in the US are at least partly disabled.
Philosophy professor Robert Redeker published an article warning of a campaign of intimidation subjecting Europe to Islamic demands. This angered Islamic fanatics, who want to kill him; his cowardly newspaper Le Figaro apologized for the article (shame on them!). Here's a translation of the article.
Redeker didn't insult Muslims, or make fun of their religion (though people have a right to do either of those things). Instead he addressed real issues of Islam seriously and directly. The events following the publication of his essay demonstrate the truth of his accusations about Islam's behavior today.
I do not entirely agree with Redeker; I think he excuses Christianity too much. Christian fanatics continue to attack the use of contraception as well as scientific knowledge and research. But that is a side issue.
The head of the British Army says that the presence of UK troops in Iraq as part of the Bush forces makes things worse -- in Iraq and elsewhere.
Bush congratulated the Iraqis for being "willing to tolerate" a high level of violence to be free.
He's right: the strength of the Iraqi resistance shows that Iraqis are willing to use violence to free themselves from the violent occupation of the invader. But I didn't expect Bush to congratulate them for this.
A play made from the diaries of Rachel Corrie was not presented in New York City due to intimidation.
And then again in a school in Miami.
However, a different group in New York City has more courage.
It is not yet certain whether North Korea really tried to explode a nuclear bomb, or, if so, whether it worked.
In New Zealand, Ahmed Zaoui was imprisoned as a terrorist suspect. However, he has since received bail, and will have a court hearing to determine whether he should remain in New Zealand.
This makes a good contrast with the arbitrary imprisonment that the US practices and that the UK has tried to practice.
Inequality Without Growth, Pain Without Gain.
More cartoons about Mohammad have provoked more protests from Muslims who believe they are entitled to silence disapproval of their religion.
Anyone who tries to silence a critical opinion deserves to be buried under a heap of mocking cartoons. If people publish enough cartoons mocking Islam, eventually Muslims will learn to live with it.
Many leading scientists have denounced the Bush regime for trying to gag and distort science.
Contrast the current US policy of imprisonment without trial with the US policy after World War II that even Nazi leaders had to get a fair trial.
Bush's anti-labor NLRB has arranged to deny millions of Americans the right to belong to unions.
The world's rivers and aquifers are already starting to run dry...and if we don't cut down carbon emission, it will get much worse.
A new scientific study estimates that Bush has killed 600,000 Iraqis.
Bush is a parallel killer, much worse than a serial killer. What must we do to prevent him from killing again?
The article is inaccurate when it says that Iraq Body Count estimates the number of civilians killed in Iraq. It reports the bodies that it counts, without trying to estimate how many others there may be.
The principal journalistic critic of Putin was assassinated on Putin's birthday.
The Bliar regime is accused of holding back information about the killing of journalist Terry Lloyd, just as the Bush forces held back information from him which could have prevented his death.
Odious debt is a term for borrowing done by oppressive governments, imposing repayment burdens that can last decades afterward. Now there is a movement to hold the lenders responsible for encouraging these borrowers, arguing that they own the people all that they "repayed".
The US Navy defense lawyer who defended a Guantanamo prisoner all the way to the Supreme Court (and won there) has been forced into retirement. They say this isn't a punishment, but it will surely make other Navy defense lawyers hesitate to do a good job.
Videojournalist Imad Bornat was arrested and wounded by Israeli police while he was covering the regular Bil'in protest. The police then lied to justify it.
Robert Fisk explains how Islamic terrorism is the natural result of decades of systematic Western violence, duplicity and oppression across the Muslim world.
The West now uses the response, terrorism, to justify continuation of the stimulus that provoked and provokes it-- as well as for denying the freedom of its own people.
Using Trident missiles to carry non-nuclear warheads could trigger an accidental nuclear war.
Humanity is using up its natural capital by consuming resources 23% faster than the Earth generates them. This cannot go on for long -- if we don't cut down intentionally, resources we depend on will disappear, with fatal results.
Human encroachment on elephant society -- including killing most of the older elephants -- is driving them crazy.
The Bush regime wants to make ISPs keep information about their customers. This will make it easier to track down anyone that the regime does not like.
"Child pornography" is one of the favorite excuses for many kinds of surveillance and control measures that attack everyone's human rights.
The statement that this would "keep the information in the companies' hands" is deceptive, given the laws that allow the police to collect such information en masse with hardly any limits. The phrase "other lawful process" is designed to slip this past you without your realizing what it really means.
Israeli "settlers" took advantage of the recent war as a cover to convert new settlement "outposts" into real settlements. These are ostensibly illegal, but in fact the government supports them.
Israel's many forms of attack on Palestinians make more sense in terms of strategy than in terms of the good faith that most Western commentators presume.
The tense circumstances created by Israel's policies have driven Palestinians into fighting each other. Is that an accident, or a plan?
In the past, Syria demanded preconditions to negotiate with Israel. Now that Syria makes no preconditions, Israel has added some.
Chinese troops shot and killed unarmed Tibetans trying to flee Tibet.
9/11 widows blast Bush administration for covering up their responses to advance warnings about the 9/11 attacks.
Arms manufacturers are trampling export laws by selling parts separately to embargoed countries.
Mexican troops seem to be preparing to attack the protestors in Oaxaca who have driven out their corrupt governor.
The March to War: Naval build-up in the Persian Gulf and the Eastern Mediterranean.
The last few thousand wild tigers are being killed to sell to superstitious Chinese. Laws against poaching are doing no good, because they are not enforced.
Perhaps what is needed is to spread a rumor in China that eating tiger makes men impotent.
A lawsuit by the Sierra Club made the Defense Department stop blocking wind power development in the US.
I think the most interesting point here is the narrowminded and misplaced focus: protecting Americans from hypothetical attacking airplanes by leaving everyone vulnerable to drought, plagues, and inundation.
The US Navy is sending ships out of port, just as it would if it were preparing to attack Iran.
The US support for terrorism, its manifest desire to control some of the world's richest oil regions, its contempt for human rights and its disrespect for democracy all support the conclusion that the US should not have nuclear weapons.
Forecast for 2100: desert! If your land isn't submerged by the rising sea, it is likely to be bone-dry.
Republican voters think torture is ok but inviting someone to have sex is horrible. And yet sex is one of the Bush regime's approved tortures: used in Abu Ghraib, and now legalized by Congress. If torture is sex, does that make it wrong?
It is normal for humans of age 16 to have sex, and normal for other sexually mature humans to find them attractive. There's nothing wrong with Foley for that. What Foley did may have been wrong for a different reason--if the pages felt they didn't dare say no to him because of his position. (You may know whether this was the case; I don't, because I mostly ignore sex scandals.)
In Nigeria and Chad, as oil is pumped out for the great profits of the oil companies, most people live in grinding poverty and get none of the wealth of the oil. The governments are corrupt, and the oil companies help corrupt them.
Ten Reasons You Will Not Recognize America in Ten Years
I used to consider such articles to be wild projections, but very little of this one is projection -- nearly all of the article is about past events already documented. It is a good summary of many reasons why the United States is today's evil empire, just as the Soviet Union once was.
The Christian fanatics' bill to make it nearly impossible for teens to go to another state for an abortion was blocked in the Senate, thanks to public pressure.
Amy Goodman interviews Senator Leahy about the guilt-by-fiat law.
An entire Baghdad police brigade was demobbed for "allowing sectarian death squads to move freely."
I suspect that is an understatement. It is well known that the Iraqi death squads which "dress in police uniforms" are really police. I suspect that the death squads that this brigade "allowed" to move freely are part of the brigade.
I also think this action, being just a tiny part of what the Bush forces would have to do to make their rule legitimate, won't alter anything -- not even the prevalence of death squads in the police.
Green Party candidates including Rep. Stensenbrenner's opponent were among those arrested at a peace demonstration outside his office.
How the guilty-by-assumption prisoners bill shreds human rights, rule of law, and the US constitution.
The US already holds 14,000 prisoners with no rights, and there is nothing now to stop it from reaching 100,000.
At least this makes the situation simpler. The United States is an evil empire of torture, the enemy of human rights all across the world. The question of whether it has any redeeming qualities is irrelevant now.
The Australian government scheduled a "review" of its laws that criminalize dissent in a loose way. When the panel called them too broad, the government disregarded it.
Australia has essentially abolished human rights, just as the US would later do.
According to Woodward, Saudi Arabia has promised to lower oil prices for the election, hoping that shallow-minded Americans will vote based on the gasoline price on election day.
In states where judges are elected, campaign contributors buy court decisions.
Global warming is causing ecological changes that are destroying northern forests. This contributes to further global warming, raising the threat of runaway warming.
As part of the War on the Environment, the Bush regime has blocked NOAA scientists from speaking to the public about global warming.
As part of the War on Integrity, officials deny having gagged the scientists, but there is proof.
Massive amounts toxic waste from Europe is disposed of in Africa, where the governments are corrupt or nonexistent, and it kills people.
Government thugs handcuffed children and killed the family dog during a $60 marijuana raid.
The police response is essentially a rejection of all ethical responsibility for their actions: "No matter what we do, it is never our fault, always that of people who break laws." (This also presumes that breaking laws is wrong.)
Boycotts of Israeli institutions are spreading. These boycotts demand that Israel obey international law.
The Israeli peace group B'tselem accused the Israeli government of war crimes for its attack on the Gaza electric plant.
The flimsy justification that the government offers would be equally valid as an excuse for rocket attacks against major Israeli cities. They too contain civil infrastructure that supports military activity.
Green Party candidates were arrested in a protest in Wisconsin.
The Revolt of the [Retired] Generals.
Two witnesses confirm that Diebold secretly patched voting machine software just before the 2002 election, whose existence Diebold formerly denied. The Georgia secretary of state seems to be persuing the matter lackdaisically.
6 in 10 Iraqis are in favor of attacking the Bush forces. 4/5 share my view that the Bush forces provoke violence more than they prevent it.
The HP spying scandal is a tiny part of the Big Brother corporate-state nexus.
Reporter Brenda Norrell was fired by Indian Country Today because she complained about the important stories they refused to cover -- or covered one-sidedly.
Of course, higher-profile newspapers do such things too. But their reporters are rarely ready to complain in public.
Safia Amajan, Afghan women's rights campaigner, was shot on the street by the Taliban. The government had denied her a bodyguard, so she went on with her work.
Civil war is raging in Iraq's Diyala province, and the Sunnis are winning overall, despite the presence of a Shi'ite "Iraqi" division that opposes them. They are forcing Kurds and Shi'ites into exile, and setting up an oppressive Islamist regime.
I'm sure many Sunnis don't like that regime, but they must feel compelled to support it because the only choice is to be massacred by Shi'ites.
The bill for imprisonment without trial of foreign prisoners makes it a crime to rape or torture them -- but it has a narrow definition of rape, and a narrow definition of torture.
Bush's War on the Environment suffered a setback: a court ruled against his attempt to open up large forest areas for logging.
However, he avoided another setback, as the EPA rejected calls from its own scientists (and public health organizations) to substantially reduce particulate pollution.
Colombian senator Gustavo Petro says the army killed 100 civilians in recent years, to present them to the press as "guerrillas who were killed in battle".
English auto-translation.
The UN condemns a Swiss vote to detain failed asylum-seekers.
International accords on the right of asylum were adopted after to World War II, during which many civilians were killed by the Nazis after other countries refused to allow them in. It appears to me that the world is moving back to that.
The National Book Festival sounds like a nice thing, but it is a "public/private partnership", which means that it benefits from government sponsorship while the private parties maintain effective control. These private parties include Laura Bush. As a result, it is limited to politically safe books.
A number of CIA and other US officials condemn the Republican torture plans. And, hooray to them, they put moral issues first.
The European Commission demands that Luxemburg cease its subsidy for renewable electric power generation, saying that this "distorts the market". This is a sick idea of priorities.
Foods and cosmetics contain nanomaterials, but there has been very little study of whether they are safe.
One or two more degrees Centigrade of global warming will make the Earth as hot as it was 3 million years ago. Back then, sea level was 80 feet higher, and it is likely to end up that way again sooner or later.
Newsweek's cover story this week was supposed to be "Losing Afghanistan", but they didn't dare show Americans such bad news, so they put a puff piece on the cover instead. I don't know whether the article ran in the magazine, but here it is.
Congressman Kucinich warns that Bush might launch a war against Iran in October.
I previously wrote that this was a danger of a nuclear war, but a reader pointed out that the bunker-busters Kucinich mentioned could be non-nuclear. However, others in the past have pointed to US government decisions that seemed to lean towards using nuclear weapons to attack Iran. A nuclear attack is conceivable, but so is a non-nuclear attack.
US citizens: support the Let America Vote Act, which would require all voters to be given the option of paper ballots.
A Republican general retired so he can condemn the Bush regime's approach to the war in Iraq.
The article uses Rumsfeld as a scapegoat for his superiors, and refuse to entertain any doubt about the legitimacy of invading Iraq. Nonetheless it is interesting for what it does say.
US citizens: call your senators and tell them to vote against the bill that would stop prisoners from going to court if they are tortured--or if they are innocent.
Please call again even if you have called before.
Bush was warned by the CIA before invading Iraq that this would boost Islamic radicals. CIA's recently-retired top expert on radical islamists says the occupation of Iraq is "part of the problem".
The IRS is investigating a Liberal church for a guest preacher's sermon which talked about Bush and Kerry.
The sermon certainly criticized Bush; judging from this article, I think it criticized Kerry too (though I can't be sure of that). If that is true, then it appears the sermon didn't really endorse or oppose a specific candidate-- which would suggest that the IRS is applying a double standard.
Can anyone verify what the sermon actually said about Bush and Kerry?
Western garbage is exported to Africa and burnt in incinerators, sometimes poisoning thousands of people at a time.
In Baghdad, people pass wounded men lying on the street and don't dare try to help them.
Poor Maya farmers in Guatemala have occupied the land of a foreign-owned nickel mine, demanding farmland. The mine has caused deforestation and environmental damage that affects the neighboring communities, which (of course) have not been properly compensated, because the ruling elite supports foreign corporations against poor citizens.
Glaciers in Alaska are shrinking-- faster than previously believed.
Now the US congress is starting to look for ways to give lip service to reduction of global warming, as long as it doesn't involve any real inconvenience.
Brazilian plans to expand biofuel production threaten the rain forest: it will be cut down to expand farms.
Charges of "denigrating Turkey" were dropped against novelist Elif Shafak, one of whose fictional characters mentioned the genocide of the Armenians, but the law remains on the books and writers keep facing such accusations.
Bush and senate Republicans have agreed on details of torture rules, in a bill intended to deny prisoners the right of habias corpus.
This article explains more.
Without the right of habias corpus, there will be nothing to restrain the Bush regime from imprisoning people based on fabricated evidence, evidence obtained by torture, or no evidence at all. When prisoners cannot talk to a lawyer, their guards can often get away with torturing them even if it is ostensibly illegal.
Here's an example, made possible by the lack of habias corpus in Bagram air base.
Why do the Republicans do this? They must hate our freedoms.
The government of Germany is under pressure to demand the arrest of CIA agents accused of kidnaping a German.
I don't think this is enough to teach the US government a lesson. Germany should order all US troops out of Germany promptly, and announce that it will downgrade diplomatic relations with the US if anything like this happens again.
The US threatened to bomb Pakistan "back to the stone age" to demand it cease supporting the Taliban.
It may have been justified, as a way to end Pakistan's military support for Islamic extremism.
A trial in the UK illustrates Bliar's abolition of another of the human rights for which the UK was famous: the right to remain silent without prejudice. Now the judge encourages juries to infer, from a refusal to give evidence, that the suspect is guilty.
Several European countries are systematically fingerprinting children. Some are starting to organize resistance in their schools.
Bush, having worn down the army, is now wearing down the National Guard. Thus, Iraq is protecting other countries from invasion.
This also has the unfortunate potential effect of preventing intervention where intervention would be called for on humanitarian grounds, such as Darfur. In practice, though, this makes no difference; Bush would never support intervention for such reasons.
See the report of the Bush Crimes Commission.
California has sued car manufactures over the harm done by exhaust including CO2.
Blair's minister for surveillance and control gave a speech asking British Muslims to spy on each other for the government. He was roundly rebuked.
What decent person would want to report the apparently suspicious act of his neighbor, when this might result in said neighbor's being raided and shot in the middle of the night, and then charged with some other offense when he turned out to be no terrorist?
The only way British Muslims will try to suppress extremism is if they feel that Islamist extremists are wrong, the British government is right, and that non-terrorists who are erroneously suspected will be treated justly. Blair's policies make this impossible. They alienate non-radical Muslims, even as they promote the extremism that reflects Blair's own contempt for our freedoms.
Manuel Bravo, imprisoned and facing deportation with his son from the UK, committed suicide so his son would not be deported.
Bravo was from a political opposition family, and feared he and his son would be tortured if sent back to Angola. Despite this, the UK rejected his plea for asylum. The Bliar regime is trying all sorts of measures to reduce the number of people who get political asylum in the UK, and this includes randomly rejecting valid requests when they can.
Hugo Chavez's Address to UN: After Bush speaks, it smells of sulfur.
Greg Palast interviews Hugo Chavez.
The Bush Department of Education illegally pressured states to adopt reading textbooks published by Bush cronies.
20% of Iraqi children don't go to school, for fear of violence, and teachers are fleeing.
Previously secret US court complaints describe the continuing torture of prisoners in Guantanamo. (The specific descriptions are the crucial parts.)
Bush forces soldiers called torture their "choir"-- a choir of Iraqis moaning in pain.
A British soldier in the Bush forces has plead guilty to charges of torturing Iraqi prisoners.
The British Army is doing the right thing by prosecuting these brutes, but we have to remember that such crimes do not happen because these people started out as monsters. These are normal people who found themselves in a situation that brings out this side of people-- and most of the Bush forces soldiers have been influenced by this more or less. This is the predictable result of an occupation where troops regard the whole population as "the enemy".
Presidents Chavez and Ahmadinejad signed cooperation agreements and made statements of mutual support against the US.
Iran's government is more or less democratic, but does not respect human rights. Dissidents have been imprisoned and newspapers closed. However, I won't criticize Chavez for making whatever alliances he can. When the US was in a war against aggression and it could not be sure of winning on its own, it made an alliance with the Soviet Union.
Torture is rampant in Iraq today, including the prisons run by the Bush forces. It didn't end with the exposure of Abu Ghraib.
A Canadian court ruled that there is no reason to suspect torture victim Maher Arar of any crime or disloyalty.
Arar was kidnaped by the Bush regime and sent to Syria for torture. Even if it were legitimate to torture real criminals or real terrorists, that excuse would not apply to him.
More coverage at here.
In the 2002 election, Diebold surreptitiously installed a patch in its voting machines in Georgia, without telling state officials, only in counties full of Democratic voters. Then Max Cleland lost the election despite polls putting him well in the lead. There were already suspicions that Diebold rigged the election, and this new information adds to the suspicion.
However, voters are fighting back against electronic voting machine cheating. 27 states have requirements for paper ballots. But some states, such as Florida and Ohio, have laws designed to make election fraud easy. To restore democracy in the US will require the Federal government to step in and enforce the constitutional requirement that states have democratic governments. That will require a Supreme Court which is inclined to demand democracy in substance, not just formal democracy as an excuse for despotism.
Although the US appeared to win the Afghan war, it let this victory slip out of its grasp through not really trying to win the peace.
What the article does not mention is the underlying reason for this: Bush really wanted to invade Iraq instead.
BP announced a scheme to allow drivers to pay for activities to reduce CO2 emissions and cancel out the effect of their driving.
A weakness in this scheme is that drivers who make this contribution and then feel "Now I'm not contributing to global warming" may be led to feel it is ok to burn more gasoline.
The amount of effort needed to cancel the effect of burning gasoline is proportional to the amount you burn. So the right way to do this program would be as an alternative way to buy gas. But it shouldn't be just an alternative-- it should be the only way.
A lawsuit on behalf of Guantanamo prisoner Shaker Aamer describes how he has been tortured there, physically and psychologically.
Bush was compelled to move the prisoners out of secret CIA prisons because CIA agents were afraid they would be prosecuted for breaking the law.
There were protests around the world for action to
protect the people of Darfur.
McCain's version of the bill about Guantanamo prisoners, like Bush's
version,
would strip prisoners of the right to challenge their
imprisonment in court.
If either version of the bill passes, it will be a shameful sore on
the United States of America.
Bush blocked a US congressional move to put pressure on Sudan over
Darfur.
As Spain faces decreasing rainfall due to global warming,
wasteful irrigation is rapidly draining its aquifers.
The European Union subsidizes agriculture, so a lot of this
irrigation simply isn't needed.
Human beings have a right to sufficient clean water to live; but
businesses (and non-subsistence farms qualify as businesses) should
have to pay market prices for the public's water.
Gaza: Children Killed in a War the World Doesn't Want to Know About.
Regarding the second article on this page, I think that these demands
(recognize Israel and renounce violence) are unjust when applied only
to one side. Israeli fighters commit far more violence, and Israel
effectively refuses to recognize Palestine. The world should apply
these demands to both sides. We could start by demanding both sides
renounce the various forms of indiscriminate violence that they are
accustomed to use.
Lopez Obrador, denied the recount that would have shown whether he won
Mexico's presidential election, has announced the formation of a
'parallel government'.
The US media refer to Lopez Obrador as the "defeated" candidate, using
the same word we would apply to someone who ran in an honest election
and was honestly defeated. This is misleading, to say the least,
since we don't know who really won. In context, it forms the final
stage in a common technique for misleading the public: the
This one has three stages:
the Mexican authorities ran the election improperly
(this has
been proved); the Mexican court certified the results in disregard
of this proof; finally, the media pretend that Lopez Obrador had lost a fair
contest. It is quite smooth, but it is less effective in Mexico than in the
US: millions of Mexicans are not fooled.
A senate committee rejected Bush's torture plans, to affirm the Geneva
Conventions.
However, both versions of the bill deny prisoners in prisons such as
Guantanamo
the right to go to court.
This means that any sort of abuse could flourish even if ostensibly prohibited.
A list of torture techniques that the CIA wants to use has been
published.
"Sound manipulation" is apparently a euphemism for ear-splitting noises
(which can cause permanent hearing damage as well as being painful).
Sleep deprivation, keeping prisoners painfully cold, and
forcing them to stand until it hurts, are
clearly torture. Sleep deprivation was Stalin's favorite torture technique.
Torture Is Torture: Bush's 'Program' Disgraces All Americans.
The IMF and World Bank surely chose Singapore for their meeting
because it would not allow any public protests. (Singapore is a
democracy in form but does not respect human rights.) But Singapore
went further and denied entry to some accredited participants.
The result is a scandal--just what the IMF deserves every time.
Policies that crush the poor, such as making children pay to attend
public school, are the IMF's normal work.
Southern Lebanon is losing its harvest because the fields and trees
are full of unexploded cluster bombs. Israeli fighters fired them
indiscriminately without bothering about specific targets.
Mercury pollution is
affecting every ecosystem, but it can be
reversed.
Exxon funds many organizations to spread fake science casting doubt on
global warming, including one organization originally founded to deny
the dangers of tobacco smoke.
For more information:
The Competitive Enterprise Institute and Alexis de Tocqueville
Institution were also funded by Microsoft to say repeat things about
free software and give them an undeserved veneer of respectability.
Diebold
voting machines open with the same key that opens
many hotel minibars.
The "Iraqi" government plans to dig a trench all the way around
Baghdad,
supposedly to prevent intersectarian violence.
I don't see how this would be effective, since there are both Sunnis
and Shi'ites in Baghdad.
The UK is withholding a lot of money from the World Bank to
oppose its pressure for privatization.
(I'll have to admit that the Blair regime is doing one good thing.)
US citizens: phone or write your congressman and senators to oppose
the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, which would define boycotts and
protests against meat and fur companies as "terrorism". There is
no legitimate need for any part of this bill.
As part of Bush's War on the Environment, the EPA plans to close labs
and fire scientists.
Melting ice has driven polar bears onto land where they have
nothing to eat. Underweight, the females don't have enough fat to last last
through the summer. This probably means no more polar bears will be born.
Go see the last generation of polar bears now, before they are gone.
Mike Ruppert, who has presented the case for Bush regime involvement
in the 9/11 attacks, reports on the persistent government attacks on
his organization, as a result of which he has gone into exile and
called for overthrow of the US government.
I share Ruppert's view that the US government has forfeited its
legitimacy, but I cannot see any hope in the idea of a revolution.
The only Americans who might plausibly overthrow the US government are
right-wing military fanatics, and they would hardly restore the
democracy and human rights we have lost. Just as the Bush occupation
has made most Iraqis long for the days of Saddam Hussein's despotism,
which most of them hated at the time, I think that a revolution in the
US could make us long for the bydone days of the Bush regime.
The White House refused to receive the Bush Crimes Commission's report.
Arctic ice is melting faster and will disappear in a few
decades at the present rate. (But further warming could easily
speed this up.) Without ice,
the arctic will absorb more heat from the sun,
causing even more warming.
Hansen says we have 10 years to save Earth as we know it, but nobody
really knows. We might have 20 years. It could be too late already.
Uri Avnery:
Help! Peacemongers!
If peace were established between Israel and Palestine, I think the
big losers would be the religious fanatics that use the conflict to
boost their own power: Presidents Bush and Ahmadinejad, and Al Qa'ida.
NATO asked for more troops for Afghanistan,
but no country offered to send more.
Charges against Greg Palast were dropped. He faced possible
imprisonment for photographing an oil refinery.
Rep. Murtha blames Rumsfeld for the US Army's decay.
Since Bush's invasion of Iraq was a crime, not merely a fumble, the
question of who is responsible for doing a bad job of it is secondary.
What is most interesting here is the response of the government
spokesman who says that it is insulting to suggest that the army has
problems.
One of the advantages democracy is supposed to provide is that
problems get discussed, and then addressed; but the Bush regime shares
the "don't you dare say there's a problem" attitude that plagued the
Soviet Union and still plagues China.
Global warming is having
effects visible around the world, and some
are looming disasters.
The Bush regime is trying to
twist intelligence to justify attacking Iran
just as four years ago it twisted intelligence to excuse the already-planned
invasion of Iraq.
Many in Gaza are now starving because Israel has closed the
borders.
After Israeli attacks destroyed the main electric generation station,
the water supply and sewage treatment don't function. This could
lead to epidemics.
The general Israeli approach towards Palestinians is to
make their
life unbearable until they flee. In other words, ethnic cleansing is
the goal. Here's an example:
When Palestinians complain to the police about settler violence, 90%
of the time
no charges are brought. And that's not counting the times
they can't get the police to take the report.
The
police also engage in gratuitous violence against Palestinians.
Do you think the guilty parties will be punished?
Israel uses Palestinian teenagers (many under 16) for slave labor
in prison. They get two meals a day.
I presume that Israel uses adults for prison slave labor too. But
this practice is not unique. Countries from the US to China have
found that prison slave labor makes it easy to imprison large numbers
of people.
A lawsuit in Colorado seeks to ban use of computerized voting machines.
Blair has banned a small "peace camp" which 10 families of soldiers
killed in Iraq wanted to set up near the Labor Party conference.
A blueprint for capping global warming (in case it isn't already too late).
Ohio approved a policy of listing people as "sex offenders"
without going through a criminal trial.
This policy of denying people their legal rights without the usual
safeguards is called a "rule" because, apparently, the legislature did
not deign even to adopt it as a law. It ought to be a no-brainer that
this is unconstitutional; but with several negative-brain Republicans
on the Supreme Court, it may not be able to do the right thing in
no-brainers.
Most Americans now join Europeans in condemning the "War on Terror".
Putting RFIDs (spy chips) into
every DVD will make it possible for
movie companies to keep track of all users (as well as tighten the
coils of digital restrictions management).
Iran
closed the leading reformist newspaper for "blasphemous articles"
and "insulting officials".
The Blair regime is
planning to promote the policeman who was in
charge of the operation that shot and killed an innocent man a year
ago.
Blair says he gives the police "101% support" for their violence
against the public.
5 former soviet republics have signed a nuclear-free treaty. The US
doesn't like this, since it wants to put nuclear weapons in some of
them.
Students demonstrated the
insecurity of Diebold voting machines by
creating a virus that can spread from machine to machine, falsify
election results, and then erase itself.
The
International Atomic Energy Agency called a US report on Iran's
nuclear program "outrageous & dishonest".
The
CIA found out in 2002 that Saddam Hussein was not friends with Al
Qa'ida,
but passed upward only reports that the administration liked to hear.
The
FCC destroyed a draft report about media concentration in 2004.
Presumably someone didn't like the conclusions.
Several states are
suing the US government to demand CO2 emission
standards for autos. (Bush, in his War on the Environment, has told
the EPA not to do this.)
Democracy Now held a confrontation between 9/11 skeptics (makers of
the video Loose Change) and defenders of the official explanation.
We can be sure that a plane hit the Pentagon because many people in
the area saw it hit. I think the theory of explosives in the WTC
buildings is plausible. It isn't proven-- but proof is too much to
demand of unofficial investigations carried out against government
interference. We must demand a thorough independent investigation,
not just of the physical questions, but also of the suspicious actions
of various government officials, the stock options, etc.
Widespread American disapproval of Bush and his war, and his theft of
our democracy,
is not turning into passionate protest.
Some of the news magazines that cover Washington
function as ways for lobbyists to print ads for members
of Congress to read.
The
Senate is considering a bill to allow essentially unlimited
warrantless wiretapping.
This bill would in effect declare the constution's prohibition of
"unreasonable searches" to be meaninglss words.
Monsanto tried to
shut down research into a possible danger from its
genetically modified crops. Meanwhile, genetically modified crops
have in fact caused various dangers.
I should point out that it is very unlikely that any given unusual
protein would cause a long-term disease. The prion protein that
causes mad cow disease is a misfolded variant of one that is normally
found in the cow brain. The proteins found in genetically engineered
plants are probably not similar to anything in animal brains. If that
were the only possible danger (which it isn't), I'd be willing to bet
on the safety of these crops; but that would in no way excuse trying
to suppress research into the possibility.
Reportedly
13 million people have formally resigned from the
Chinese Communist Party and its affiliated organizations.
I challenge the US to match this: for 3 million Americans
(approximately the same fraction of the population)
to quit the Republican Party and its affiliated organizations.
Thanks to Blair, double jeopardy has returned to England.
The man convicted just now had confessed to murder, and appears to be
guilty. I am not sorry for him as an individual. However, it would
be folly to think that such opportunities to do good with this law
will appear frequently; in the future, criminals who are acquitted
will know in the future not to confess.
Meanwhile, the same law will enable the state to repetitively
prosecute any suspect-- guilty or innocent-- as long as "new
evidence" can be obtained or manufactured. You could spend your whole
life being repeatedly tried.
An Israeli commander, now demobilized, says that Israel dispersed over
a million cluster bomblets across Lebanon and "covered entire towns".
The Israeli government responses quoted in the article are interesting
examples of the way governments deny actions that ought to cause
outrage. We are told that Israel "obeys international laws" (the same
way the Bush regime "does not torture"), as a supposed substitute for
the facts that would enable us to determine whether that claim is
true.
Then we are told that the firing of these weapons was a "response" to
enemy fire-- which tells us nothing about what the Israeli army
actually did, only that they are willing to stretch the term
"response".
Religious fanatics in Pakistan
thwarted the attempt to reform rape
law. Women there do not dare report being raped, because the report
is likely to result in their being convicted of adultery.
This illustrates the injustice and evil of Islam. People have a right
to believe whatever they wish, but practicing it is another matter:
putting Islamic Law into practice is a crime against humanity.
Several people have been sentenced to death in Pakistan for blasphemy.
The Israeli bombing of Lebanon has created the
biggest oil spill ever
in the Eastern Mediterranean. The oil has affected the coasts of
three countries, including a nature reserve where endangered species
live.
Professor Steven Jones has been suspended from teaching
as a reprisal for his statements about why the WTC towers
collapsed.
The university's excuses are an attempt to distract attention from the
enormity of taking reprisals against professors' political statements.
For instance, casting doubt on the certainty of his conclusions is a
red herring. Suppose he's wrong: would that justify reprisals against
his job? Certainly not!
This illustrates the threat that Bush and his supporters pose
to freedom of speech in the US. Americans must not let the
threat posed by foreign terrorists distract them from the bigger
threat posed by corrupt domestic despots.
The evidence I know of provides reason to suspect that parts of the
Bush regime participated in the attacks on the World Trade Center, but
is not sufficient for certainty. To ascertain the answer we need a
thorough and independent investigation with the power to subpoena Bush
regime officials including Cheney and Bush. Short of a proper
investigation, the best anyone can do is present evidence and
arguments that are less than conclusive. Reprisals against people who
do indicate an intent to suppress the truth.
Canada is proposing an agreement with the US that would
give the White House a
$450-million slush fund.
Journalist Greg Palast faces Federal criminal charges--for taking a
photo of an oil refinery whose exhaust pollutes the air right next to
a camp for New Orleans refugees.
These bans on photography, which have also been applied to public
places such as bus