Black citizens have reported a disturbing 350% increase in interracial high-fiving since January 20

Holder Vows To End Raids On Medical Marijuana Clubs

 

 

by Ryan Grim

 

Attorney General Eric Holder said at a press conference Wednesday that the Justice Department will no longer raid medical marijuana clubs that are established legally under state law. His declaration is a fulfillment of a campaign promise by President Barack Obama, and marks a major shift from the previous administration.

After the inauguration, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) continued to carry out such raids, despite Obama's promise. Holder was asked if those raids represented American policy going forward.

"No," he said. "What the president said during the campaign, you'll be surprised to know, will be consistent with what we'll be doing in law enforcement. He was my boss during the campaign. He is formally and technically and by law my boss now. What he said during the campaign is now American policy."

The exchange takes place at about the 25:00 mark here.

Holder's declaration is a high point for the movement to legalize medical marijuana, which has been growing for decades despite federal hostility.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/26/holder-vows-to-end-raids_n_170119.html

Stimulus

Time to rethink US sanctions on Cuba: top Republican senator

 

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The time is right for reevaluating US sanctions on Cuba, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee says in a new report, calling for allowing Cuba to buy US goods on credit, US media reported Sunday.

Republican Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana's opinions are attached to a report due to be released Monday that could add fuel to momentum toward change in almost five decades of US policy seeking to isolate Cuba, the Americas' only communist country.

The United States and Cuba do not have full diplomatic relations. And Washington has had a full economic embargo on Havana since 1962.

Former US president George W. Bush in recent years however allowed Cuba to purchase US food, as long as it was purchased in cash. US food sales to Cuba have surged, but US farm producers would sell much more if Cuba could get credit for its purchases.

The report due out Monday stops short of recommending an end to the US embargo, The Washington Post reported.

Lugar supports "lifting Bush administration restrictions on travel and remittances to Cuba, reinstituting formal bilateral cooperation on drug interdiction and migration, and allowing Cuba to buy US agricultural products on credit," the Post said.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has promised a "review" of Cuba policy without providing details.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090222/pl_afp/uscubapoliticssanctionsdiplomacy;_ylt=ArhURdqV3.jZZQCWIXlYPY.yFz4D

Yes We Scan

Prepared Statement of Carl Malamud

When FDR was elected president, Augustus E. Giegengack, a working printer and regular leather apron man was inspired to public service, aspiring to be be appointed Public Printer of the United States, head of the Government Printing Office.

Augustus E. Giegengack

Give it up for Gus in this 3-part New Yorker Series.

Giegengack didn't know FDR, he didn't run in those circles. In WWI, he was the printer for Stars and Stripes, later on he ran operations for other print shops. So, to make his case, he went on the Rotary Club circuit in up-state New York and gave talks about his vision for the GPO. At the end of each talk, Augustus asked people to send him their letters of endorsement. Pretty soon he had a pile of 200 letters.

Gus Giegengack took those letters, bound them up real pretty, and sent them to the White House. He got the job, and went on to become the greatest public printer since Ben Franklin, printer to the pre-united states.

Gus had the gumption to go for the gold, and I am inspired by his example to tell you my vision for the GPO, an agency which opened its doors the day Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated, an agency which has worked to "Keep America Informed" for 148 years.

If I were given the honor to be nominated by the President and the further honor to be confirmed by the Senate, my platform for revitalizing the GPO and rebooting .gov is spelled out in in a detailed series of policy papers submitted to the Presidential Transition Team.

Please allow me to highlight a few of the items that I think we all need to pay attention to, and I invite you to contact me so we can continue to talk about these issues. Publication is a two-way street, and I hope this is the beginning of a long-term dialogue about the public domain and how the United States of America presents itself to the world:

Carl Malamud

To endorse Carl Malamud for the office of Public Printer of the United States, comment on any blog post or, send your endorsement or any questions directly to Carl by email:
     carl@media.org
or by twitter:
     @carlmalamud

Thank you for your support.

1. America's Operating System. The Government Printing Office serves all 3 branches of government and prints the Official Journals of Government. GPO should lead the effort to make all primary legal materials produced by the U.S. readily available. [ more ]

2. Librarians. Librarians are the bedrock of the public domain and the defenders of our fundamental right to access knowledge. GPO should work even more closely with our libraries and reform the Federal Depository Library Program to support them better. [ more ]

3. Jobs. As commodity printing goes the way of the PDF file and the copy machine, GPO must retrain and refocus its workforce, working with the unions and the employees so we may face the challenges of the future. If nominated and confirmed, I would work to establish a United States Publishing Academy, reviving the grand tradition of GPO being in the lead for workforce development, vocational training for students, and educating the rest of the U.S. government on how to print and publish effectively. [ more ]

4. Security. GPO produces passports and other secure documents. The current design for passports uses an RFID chip, which means that an American can be picked out of a crowd merely by having a passport in their pocket. If nominated and confirmed, I would ask security expert Bruce Schneier to form a Blue-Ribbon Commission to reexamine the design of passports and other secure documents so we can better protect the privacy and security of all Americans.

Benjamin Franklin

Learn about Ben Franklin
—Our 1st Public Printer—
at the Library of Congress.

5. Jobs. The GPO workforce includes some of the best master printers, bookbinders, and other professionals of the publishing profession. With our cultural institutions, writers and other artists, and using the historical archives of the United States, the GPO should create more materials for the public domain, both as fully produced books as well as freely available master files for others to use and remix. [ more ]

6. Rebooting .Gov. There is no reason why the U.S. Government should not be one of the top 10 destinations on the Internet! GPO should work with the rest of the U.S. Government to radically change how we present information on the Internet. Some of the initiatives would include installing a cloud for .gov to use, enshrining principles of bulk data distribution into legislation, and a massive upgrade in the government's video capabilities. [ more ]

7. Full Transparency. GPO serves all 3 branches of government. As the nation's service bureau, GPO must be fully transparent in its own financial affairs and should be a forceful and effective advocate for the public domain. Most importantly, the GPO must be fully transparent to its clients—the Congress, the Executive Branch, and the Judiciary. If nominated and confirmed, I would pledge to serve on the front lines of customer service, working to understand the needs of our clients and the public.

http://yeswescan.org/

Mardi Gras Obama

A carnival float caricaturing U.S. President Barack Obama lifting the Statue of Liberty is seen during the traditional carnival parade in Mainz, Germany, on Monday.

Authors´ Guild vs. reality: Kindles and read-aloud

Posted by Cory Doctorow

 

In yesterday's New York Times, Author's Guild president Roy Blount Jr. rails against the Kindle's text-to-speech feature, opining that it infringes copyright because it provides a "derivative work" by creating audio editions of your textfiles. Blount says that eventually, text-to-speech will be so darned perfect, the audiobook market will be destroyed by it, so he aims to do something about it right now.

He doesn't actually say what that thing is. Presumably, he'd like Amazon to simply remove the feature. But if you take Blount at his word, then we can only assume the feature will spread to other platforms -- does he think that iPhones shouldn't be able to read your email to you as you jog? And if it can read your email, what's to stop it from reading your ebooks? Blount implies that there's a simple solution to his technological problem, but if you truly believe that it should be illegal to ask software to produce audio of copyrighted works, then Blount's lining himself up to fight the entire future of technology that can convert text to speech.

Continuing to take Blount at his word, let's assume that he's right on the copyright question, namely, that:

1. Converting text to speech infringes copyright

2. Providing the software that is capable of committing copyright infringement makes you liable for copyright infringement, too

1. is going to be sticky -- the Author's Guild is setting itself up to fight the World Blind Union, phone makers, free software authors, ebook makers, and a whole host of people engaged in teaching computers to talk.

But 2. is really hairy. If Blount believes that making a device capable of infringing copyright is the same as infringing copyright (something refuted by the Supreme Court in Betamax in 1984, the decision that legalized VCRs), then email, web-browsers, computers, photocopiers, cameras, and typewriters are all illegal, too.

Time and again, the Author's Guild has shown itself to be the epitome of a venal special interest group, the kind of grasping, foolish posturers that make the public cynically assume that the profession it represents is a racket, not a trade. This is, after all, the same gang of weirdos who opposed the used book trade going online.

I think there's plenty not to like about the Kindle -- the DRM, the proprietary file format, both imposed on authors and publishers even if they don't want it -- and about Amazon's real audiobook section, Audible (the DRM -- again, imposed on authors and publishers even if they'd prefer not to use it). But if there's one thing Amazon has demonstrated, it's that it plans on selling several bazillion metric tons of audiobooks. They control something like 90 percent of the market. To accuse them of setting out to destroy it just doesn't pass the giggle-test.

One of the most powerful weapons in the publishing industry's arsenal is that it isn't the record or film industry. By and large, publishing is undertaken by bookish people who love books and bookselling and readers and writers. By and large, writers get a decent deal from their publishers -- especially relative to recording artists; most writers don't have to sign over their copyrights, don't have the promotion of their books deducted from their royalties, etc. By and large, publishers don't sue tool-makers or accuse readers of being crooks.

Unlike the record and film industries, who seem bent on doing everything in their power to build the moral case for ripping them off -- to convince the public that they are a passel of greedy, clueless technophobes who deserve to have their industries killed, if only to protect the 21st century from them -- there are very few people who feel this way about publishing and authorship.

Unless, that is, groups like the Authors' Guild continue to make us all out to be cut from the same cloth as media execs like Universal Music's Larry Kenswil, who once bellowed "FAIR USE IS THE LAST REFUGE OF THE SCOUNDREL" at me from a stage at the RSA in London.

Dear Mr Blount: you don't represent me. You don't represent the future of authorship. You and your group are jeopardizing the future of authorship and of society with your petty little grabs and ridiculous posturing. Cut it out before someone gets hurt.

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/02/25/authors-guild-vs-rea.html

Poll: Majority Doesn’t Want Obama To Be Bipartisan

Greg Sargent's blog

You routinely hear it asserted that the public wants bipartisan comity in Washington, but some striking numbers buried in the internals of the new New York Times poll find that in the current context, precisely the opposite is true:

Which do you think should be a higher priority for Barack Obama right now — working in a bipartisan way with Republicans in Congress or sticking to the policies he promised he would during the campaign:

Working bipartisan way: 39%

Sticking to policies: 56%

So a sizable majority wants Obama to pursue his policies with our without Republican support. Meanwhile, a huge majority says that Republicans should emphasize working with Obama in a bipartisan way over pursuing their policy ideas:

Which do you think should be a higher priority for Republicans in Congress right now — working in a bipartisan way with Barack Obama and Democrats in Congress or sticking to Republican policies?

Working bipartisan way: 79%

Sticking to policies: 17%

I'm not sure I've ever seen poll numbers suggest this clearly that the public has no interest in bipartisanship for its own sake. The public doesn't seem to care about the preoccupations of process-obsessed Beltway pundits, and seems to be looking at the "bipartisanship" question through the prism of what they want their leaders to accomplish in policy terms.

http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/president-obama/poll-majority-doesnt-want-obama-to-be-bipartisan/

Anti "clean coal" short by the Coen brothers

U.S. Energy Department Cannot Account for Nuclear Materials at 15 Locations

By Katherine McIntire Peters

WASHINGTON -- A number of U.S. institutions with licenses to hold nuclear material reported to the Energy Department in 2004 that the amount of material they held was less than agency records indicated. But rather than investigating the discrepancies, Energy officials wrote off significant quantities of nuclear material from the department's inventory records.

That's just one of the findings of a report released yesterday by Energy Department Inspector General Gregory Friedman that concluded "the department cannot properly account for and effectively manage its nuclear materials maintained by domestic licensees and may be unable to detect lost or stolen material."

Auditors found that Energy could not accurately account for the quantities and locations of nuclear material at 15 out of 40, or 37 percent, of facilities reviewed. The materials written off included 20,580 grams of enriched uranium, 45 grams of plutonium, 5,001 kilograms of normal uranium and 189,139 kilograms of depleted uranium.

"Considering the potential health risks associated with these materials and the potential for misuse should they fall into the wrong hands, the quantities written off were significant," the report says. "Even in small quantities normally held by individual domestic licensees, special nuclear materials such as enriched uranium and plutonium, if not properly handled, potentially pose serious health hazards."

Auditors also found that waste processing facilities could not locate or explain the whereabouts of significant quantities of uranium and other nuclear material that Energy Department records showed they held. In another case, Energy officials had no record of the fact that one academic institution had loaned a 32-gram plutonium-beryllium source to another institution.

http://gsn.nti.org/gsn/nw_20090224_7895.php

Clinton's U.S. bond push could fill China's jails

by AMITY SHLAES

The Obama administration is too young to be cynical. Yet one of its leading figures has just struck a deal so cynical as to qualify as Nixonian.

That's the deal Hillary Clinton struck with the Chinese leadership.

The new secretary of state materialized in Beijing to ask the Chinese to shore up the tottering American economy by buying more U.S. bonds. On her way there, she made clear what we trade for China's economic support: The U.S. will henceforward downgrade human-rights priorities.

The ongoing push for such rights in China, she told reporters, "can't interfere with the global economic crisis, the global climate crisis and the security crisis." (Read: can't interfere with bond auctions.)

The U.S. has long been uneven in its attitude toward China's abuse of its own citizens. Still, Clinton's move constitutes a devastating shift. It is a special betrayal for the hundreds of lawyers, journalists and rights advocates whom U.S. presidents, Democratic and Republican, encouraged to take the lead in reforming their country.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&refer=columnist_shlaes&sid=a4wok76PhtdA

A million dollars a day

Denver's Rocky Mountain News publishing last edition

The Rocky Mountain News, Colorado's oldest newspaper and a Denver fixture since 1859, will publish its last edition today, and industry analysts said it won't be the last to be pulled under by financial woes.

By The Washington Post and The Associated Press

Rocky Mountain News employees react Thursday as executives announce its closing,

which will leave Denver a one-newspaper town.

The Rocky Mountain News, Colorado's oldest newspaper and a Denver fixture since 1859, will publish its last edition today, and industry analysts said it won't be the last to be pulled under by financial woes.

E.W. Scripps officials said Thursday that closing the Rocky, which has won four Pulitzer Prizes in the past decade, leaves Denver, like most U.S. cities, a one-newspaper town. The officials said the newspaper lost $16 million last year and the company was unable to find a buyer.

These are dark days for the newspaper business. Hearst threatened this week to close the San Francisco Chronicle unless major budget cuts are imposed or a buyer is found, and is prepared to close the Seattle Post-Intelligencer if it cannot be sold before April. Gannett is looking for a buyer for the Tucson Citizen in Arizona.

Four owners of 33 U.S. daily newspapers have sought Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the past 2 ½ months. This past weekend, there were separate bankruptcy filings by New Haven (Conn.) Register publisher Journal Register Co. and by the owners of The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008791505_rocky27.html

Yet another modest proposal to save papers

by MIKE HENDERSON

...the proposal:

The federal government would create an agency pertaining to online news organizations unaffiliated with other media entities (print, television, radio, etc.). It could be that such a gesture would be made easier given an administration led by a president far more cyber-savvy than any of his predecessors (combined). The agency, a minimal bureaucracy in size and budget, could be called the Federal Journalism Administration. It would have just three functions: to collect revenue, to audit online-only news organizations and to distribute revenue, to wit:

Collection. The administration would receive money from two sources. Both are directly related to online news organizations; each makes billions not just by being conduits for entertainment but for conveying news and other information. The administration would receive all money from a 5 percent surcharge on the sales in the United States of all new computer hardware; it also would receive the 5 percent surcharge added to the fees we pay to Internet providers. (The latter could be allowed to set the surcharge at, say, 6 percent, keeping the extra 1 percent for their trouble.) A computer retailing for $800 would then cost $840; Internet service of $50 a month would cost $52.50 or $53.

Auditing and distribution. FJA auditors would determine the amount of money distributed to online-news organizations (definition pending) according to a formula including volume of traffic to a news website and percentage of original, staff-produced content. An online-only P-I might carry 100 percent original content and might, because of this, generate a high volume of traffic to the site. If so, it would qualify for more of the distributed money than, say, Crosscut.com (which -- full disclosure -- I have written for since the site first posted in April of 2007). This is because Crosscut, as it now exists, has a lot of linked content to go with its original journalism. Those at recently launched news organizations such as Crosscut would have the incentive to enhance quality by striving to provide a growing percentage of original content.

It's worth noting that such a plan would tend to reward news organizations monetarily precisely as they have been remunerated for the better part of two centuries. The unalterable formula for fiscal success has been that advertising (generating perhaps 80 percent of newspapers' revenue) grows with circulation and circulation is a function of quality (or the perception of quality: some like The New York Times; others prefer the Post). Staffers at this online-only P-I, then, like those at Crosscut, would have the incentive to produce quality because it would bring more traffic to the website and thus generate more from the FJA pot of distribution funds.

Such a cyber P-I also would be welcome to create and maintain its own stream of advertising revenue. Gone, of course, would be a lot of the expense of production and distribution (ink, paper, delivery trucks, etc., now provided to the P-I by the Times under service/revenue/cost-sharing terms of a joint operating agreement).

Would such a plan produce enough money to save 150 journalists' jobs at the P-I? It might. The U.S. Department of Commerce indicates that $150 billion was spent on computer hardware in 2007. At about the same time PEW/Internet reported that 150 million individuals in the U.S. subscribed to online services. If 90 million American homes have Internet service, then Americans may be paying $5 billion a year for the utility. Conservatively, then, such a plan might generate -- fairly painlessly and cleanly -- as much as $7.5 billion a year to help support online-only journalism. Paying 150 quality journalists each $60,000 a year (benefits included) each is $9 million, less than a third of what Alex Rodriquez is slated to make this baseball season.

How many other online-only news enterprises could be supported with the rest of the $7.5 billion? Well, divide it by $70,000. The sum would support about 107,000, interesting given that the American Society of Newspaper Editors reported less than a year ago that there were at the time only 52,000 working journalists in the U.S. A lot of them make a lot less than $60,000 a year; many facing unemployment would gladly accept less.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/401558_hendersononline27.html

The last newspaper to fold

Support the Troops

Johann Hari: Despite these riots, I stand by what I wrote

The answer to the problems of free speech is always more free speech

by Johann Hari

 

Last week, I wrote an article defending free speech for everyone – and in response there have been riots, death threats, and the arrest of an editor who published the article.

 

Here's how it happened. My column reported on a startling development at the United Nations. The UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights has always had the job of investigating governments who forcibly take the fundamental human right to free speech from their citizens with violence. But in the past year, a coalition of religious fundamentalist states has successfully fought to change her job description. Now, she has to report on "abuses of free expression" including "defamation of religions and prophets." Instead of defending free speech, she must now oppose it.

I argued this was a symbol of how religious fundamentalists – of all stripes – have been progressively stripping away the right to freely discuss their faiths. They claim religious ideas are unique and cannot be discussed freely; instead, they must be "respected" – by which they mean unchallenged. So now, whenever anyone on the UN Human Rights Council tries to discuss the stoning of "adulterous" women, the hanging of gay people, or the marrying off of ten year old girls to grandfathers, they are silenced by the chair on the grounds these are "religious" issues, and it is "offensive" to talk about them.

This trend is not confined to the UN. It has spread deep into democratic countries. Whenever I have reported on immoral acts by religious fanatics – Catholic, Jewish, Hindu or Muslim – I am accused of "prejudice", and I am not alone. But my only "prejudice" is in favour of individuals being able to choose to live their lives, their way, without intimidation. That means choosing religion, or rejecting it, as they wish, after hearing an honest, open argument.

A religious idea is just an idea somebody had a long time ago, and claimed to have received from God. It does not have a different status to other ideas; it is not surrounded by an electric fence none of us can pass.

That's why I wrote: "All people deserve respect, but not all ideas do. I don't respect the idea that a man was born of a virgin, walked on water and rose from the dead. I don't respect the idea that we should follow a "Prophet" who at the age of 53 had sex with a nine-year old girl, and ordered the murder of whole villages of Jews because they wouldn't follow him. I don't respect the idea that the West Bank was handed to Jews by God and the Palestinians should be bombed or bullied into surrendering it. I don't respect the idea that we may have lived before as goats, and could live again as woodlice. When you demand "respect", you are demanding we lie to you. I have too much real respect for you as a human being to engage in that charade."

An Indian newspaper called The Statesman – one of the oldest and most venerable dailies in the country – thought this accorded with the rich Indian tradition of secularism, and reprinted the article. That night, four thousand Islamic fundamentalists began to riot outside their offices, calling for me, the editor, and the publisher to be arrested – or worse. They brought Central Calcutta to a standstill. A typical supporter of the riots, Abdus Subhan, said he was "prepared to lay down his life, if necessary, to protect the honour of the Prophet" and I should be sent "to hell if he chooses not to respect any religion or religious symbol? He has no liberty to vilify or blaspheme any religion or its icons on grounds of freedom of speech."

Then, two days ago, the editor and publisher were indeed arrested. They have been charged – in the world's largest democracy, with a constitution supposedly guaranteeing a right to free speech – with "deliberately acting with malicious intent to outrage religious feelings". I am told I too will be arrested if I go to Calcutta.

What should an honest defender of free speech say in this position? Every word I wrote was true. I believe the right to openly discuss religion, and follow the facts wherever they lead us, is one of the most precious on earth – especially in a democracy of a billion people riven with streaks of fanaticism from a minority of Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs. So I cannot and will not apologize.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-despite-these-riots-i-stand-by-what-i-wrote-1608059.html

Orwell in Babylon: Obama's War-Continuing "Withdrawal" Plan

Written by Chris Floyd   

It would be superfluous in us to point out that a plan to "end" a war which includes the continued garrisoning of up to 50,000 troops in a hostile land is, in reality, a continuation of that war, not its cessation. To produce such a plan and claim that it "ends" a war is the precise equivalent of, say, relieving one's bladder on the back of one's neighbor and telling him that the liquid is actually life-giving rain.

But this is exactly what we are going to get from the Obama Administation in Iraq. Word has now come from on high – that is, from "senior administration officials" using "respectable newspapers" as wholly uncritical conduits for government spin – that President Obama has reached a grand compromise with his generals (or rather, the generals and Pentagon poobahs he has inherited -- and eagerly retained -- from George W. Bush) on a plan to withdraw some American troops from the country that the United States destroyed in an unprovoked war of aggression. Obama had wanted a 16-month timetable for the partial withdrawal; his potential campaign rival in 2012, General David Petraeus, wanted 23 months; so, with Solomonic wisdom, they have now split the difference, and will withdraw a portion of the American troops in 19 months instead.

But the plan clearly envisions a substantial and essentially permanent American military presence in Iraq, dominating the politics and policy of this key oil nation – which was of course one of the chief war aims of the military aggressors in the Bush Administration all along. By implementing his war continuation plan, Obama will complete the work of Bush and his militarist clique. From the New York Times:

Even with the withdrawal order, Mr. Obama plans to leave behind a "residual force" of tens of thousands of troops to continue training Iraqi security forces, hunt down foreign terrorist cells and guard American institutions...

And a "senior military officer" dispatched to pipe the spin to the Los Angeles Times added another potential role for the remaining American troops: fighting Iraq's war for it. He was also refreshingly frank on the plan's ultimate intentions:

The senior officer said the troops also could help protect Iraq from outside attack, something the Iraqis cannot yet do.

"When President Obama said we were going to get out within 16 months, some people heard, 'get out,' and everyone's gone. But that is not going to happen," the officer said.

No indeed, that is "not going to happen." One of the most remarkable aspects of Obama's "war lite" plan is its brazen and absolute disregard for the agreement signed between the United States and the supposedly sovereign Iraqi government guaranteeing the complete withdrawal of all American troops by the end of 2011. Of course, this "agreement" was always considered a farce by everyone – except for the American corporate media, which kept reporting on the "tough negotiations," as if the pact would have any actual meaning in the real world. The agreement was vitiated by escape clauses allowing the Iraqi government to "request" a continued American military presence after the 2011 deadline; and considering that any Iraqi government in place in 2011 will be helplessly dependent on American guns and money to maintain its power, such a "request" has always been a dead certainty. So I suppose we must at least admire the Obama Administration's candor in dropping all pretense that U.S. forces are going to leave Iraq at any time in the foreseeable future.

http://www.chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/3/1709-orwell-in-babylon-obamas-war-continuing-qwithdrawalq-plan.html

Tibetan New Year Protests Around the World Today: Boycotting Losar.

Posted by Xeni Jardin

Today, February 25, 2009, is the date on which Tibetan New Year -- Losar -- begins. Many Tibetan exiles around the world are observing Losar in a different manner this year. Some are forgoing traditional observances to instead protest human rights abuses by the Chinese government inside Tibet. There are reports that Chinese authorites are effectively making Losar celebrations inside Tibet compulsory, and reactions have led to violent clashes.

Some links to coverage: a post about civil disobedience today from the exiled Tibetan poet Woeser. In the LA Times, China expects Tibet to celebrate, or else -- snip:

On Feb. 14, a 39-year-old Tibetan monk set off a furor when he walked through a public market in the Tibetan plateau's Lithang county carrying a photograph of the Dalai Lama and chanting, "No Losar." Hundreds of people reportedly joined the protests, which continued into the next two days, according to the Dharamsala-based Tibetan Center for Human Rights and Democracy. The group said that Chinese police detained 21 people, some of whom were badly beaten, and that the county has been locked down for the holiday.

Reports say that as many as 20,000 additional soldiers and paramilitary troops have been deployed in Tibetan areas and that in Qinghai province, village leaders were threatened with arrest if they urged people not to celebrate the holiday.

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/02/25/tibetan-new-year-pro.html

Do we still pretend that we abide by treaties?

by Glenn Greenwald

On Friday in Salon, Joe Conason argued that there should be no criminal investigations of any kind for Bush officials "who authorized torture or other outrages in the 'war on terror'."  Instead, Conason suggests that there be a presidential commission created that is "purely investigative," and Obama should "promis[e] a complete pardon to anyone who testifies fully, honestly and publicly."  So, under this proposal, not only would we adopt an absolute bar against prosecuting war criminals and other Bush administration felons, we would go in the other direction and pardon them from any criminal liability of any kind.

I've already written volumes about why immunizing political officials from the consequences for their lawbreaking is both destructive and unjust -- principally:  the obvious incentives which such immunity creates (and, for decades, has been creating) for high-level executive branch officials to break the law and, even worse, the grotesque two-tiered system of justice we've implemented in this country (i.e., the creation of an incomparably harsh prison state for ordinary Americans who commit even low-level offenses as contrasted with what Conason calls, approvingly, "the institutional reluctance in Washington to punish political offenders").  Rather than repeat those arguments, I want to focus on an issue that pro-immunity advocates such as Conason simply never address.

The U.S. really has bound itself to a treaty called the Convention Against Torture, signed by Ronald Reagan in 1988 and ratified by the U.S. Senate in 1994.  When there are credible allegations that government officials have participated or been complicit in torture, that Convention really does compel all signatories -- in language as clear as can be devised -- to "submit the case to its competent authorities for the purpose of prosecution" (Art. 7(1)).  And the treaty explicitly bars the standard excuses that America's political class is currently offering for refusing to investigate and prosecute:  "No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture" and "an order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture" (Art. 2 (2-3)).  By definition, then, the far less compelling excuses cited by Conason (a criminal probe would undermine bipartisanship and distract us from more important matters) are plainly barred as grounds for evading the Convention's obligations.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/02/16/treaties/index.html