Today in the News

Thought I'd try something a bit different today and round up some headlines that caught me eye. In no particular order, here they are:

Anti-war protesters entered in criminal database, prevented from crossing the US/Canada border. Because dissent is treason, and treason is a crime.

Britain 'on-board' for US strikes on Iran. Gordon Brown shows he really is no different from Tony Blair (as though there were any doubt. Democracy has been very effectively short-circuited.) They're not even bothering to keep up the pretense of taking out the nuclear facilities anymore - Iran being ten years away from a nuke - so the justification now is (what else?) terrorism.

Supporters fear Ed Brown is being tortured. In case you don't know (I'm guessing you don't) Ed Brown is a guy who refused to pay income tax, fortified himself in his house, and spent six months taunting the Feds and sounding off about how the income tax is an unconstitutional tool of oppression. Which it is. So the Feds lied their way into his house, pretending to be supporters (there were a lot of supporters), arrested him and his wife, and they haven't been heard from since. That was a few days ago. They should be in the hands of prison authorities by now, but for some reason, they're not. There's precedent for this, by the way. Ever heard of Congressman Hansen? Nasty buggers, those IRS guys.

In related news, a blogger who'd been covering the Ed Brown case had the Feds pay him a visit, on the pretense that he'd been advocating violence against a judge involved in the case. Only problem? He never did. Which they could have told by reading his blog. Unless of course dealing with threats was just a pretext to make a few of their own....

Keeping on the theme of torture, a freelance reporter in Afghanistan claims to have been tortured by US forces. That's the danger of criticizing while Muslim, I suppose....

It looks like the Democrats are - and here's a surprise - going to roll over on wiretapping like they have on everything else. Not that the Bush regime gives a flying fuck about congressional approval of it's unconstitutional actions, but still, this should serve as a reminder that both parties are corrupt to the very core. There is no succor to be found in Washington.

Not that the Russians have it much better. Gary Kasparov has decided that as computers have caught up with and surpassed human abilities in chess, he'll compete in politics instead. He was on 60 minutes recently, talking about his plans to take on ex-KGB overlord Vladimir Putin.

A Sheriff's Deputy in Milwaukee goes off the deep end when his girlfriend, and others, call him a 'worthless pig'. Since he had an assault rifle, six people died in the resulting argument (the seventh and final person at the ill-fated party is still in the hospital.)

A German citizen gets a CIA sponsored tour of black interrogation sites, and now that he wants some of his own back the Supreme Court is telling him to take a hike. Guess they figure he should be grateful they didn't accidentally kill him, and just leave it at that.

The Iraqi government wants US$136 million in blood money from Blackwater, US$8 million for each Iraqi citizen shot by its thugs, er, security guards. That's a lot of money for an Iraqi life, but hey, we're talking a company with hundreds of billions in no-bid contracts.

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