From a tweeter:
“Gaddafi didn’t get a trial”: tell that to Mansour Al-Kikhiya or Fathi Al-Jahmi or Hamed Al-Shuwehdi’s families #Libya #Justice
Oh, okay. I guess that goes for all murderers then, because they have victims and their victims received no due process. Accused of murder? Too bad, no trial for you! Don’t get accused, because if [...] Read more »

Part of a much longer and brilliant reflection:
This summer, I started hearing a new slogan: “Existence is resistance.” If you remain on the land, then the game isn’t over.  And if you can bring attention to the occupation, while you remain in place, so much the better.
In June, Alá Shelaldeh, the 13-year-old [...] Read more »

One afternoon three years ago, Francis Van Asten drove to the Mall of America, near Minneapolis, and started recording. First he filmed driving to the mall. Then he filmed a plane landing at the nearby airport, and then he strolled inside the mall and kept recording as he walked. He says [...] Read more »

For your information:

The Israeli parliament has passed a controversial law that will punish any Israeli individual or organisation boycotting West Bank settlements.
Rights groups say the legislation stifles freedom of speech and compromises Israeli democracy.
After failed attempts to delay debate, it was voted through 47-36.
It follows several Israeli calls to boycott institutions or [...] Read more »

From TPM:
If Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) keeps holding up the PATRIOT Act by insisting on voting on his amendments, it could have “dire consequences” for our nation’s national security, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) charged on the floor of the Senate Wednesday.
“When the clock strikes midnight tomorrow, we will be giving [...] Read more »

You know, when I got my latest mobile phone, I thought to myself, “It’s a nice model. Sure is a shame it doesn’t have more government on it.”
Mobile phone emergency alert system to launch in US
The system will allow the federal government and local authorities to reach people on their mobile phones to warn [...] Read more »

Digby is awesome, as usual:
But that’s not the worst story I’ve heard this week about police violence:
A Goodwater police officer shot a defendant twice inside the municipal courthouse Thursday after the man became unruly in response to a jail sentence, eyewitnesses said.
Struck by at least one bullet, the man, identified by [...] Read more »

From the BBC, regarding efforts by the hacktivist group Anonymous to crash websites hosted by the Tunisian, Egyptian, and Yemeni government regimes opposing protestors:
“If you aren’t prepared to go and throw rocks, then maybe you should think again about clogging up websites with traffic,” he added.
So says a security expert. Because throwing rocks, visiting [...] Read more »

This is ridiculous:
I was forwarded this email — it comes from a SIPA student at Columbia. Seems the ambitious young things studying IR and considering a foreign service careers are being warned not to touch Cablegate:
From: “Office of Career Services” <sipa_ocs@columbia.edu>
Date: November 30, 2010 15:26:53 ESTTo:
Hi students,
We received a call today from [...] Read more »

Remember that hugely controversial Arizona Immigration law?
But while the debate raged, few people were aware of how the law came about.
NPR spent the past several months analyzing hundreds of pages of campaign finance reports, lobbying documents and corporate records. What they show is a quiet, behind-the-scenes effort to help draft and pass Arizona Senate Bill [...] Read more »

Sigh. This is useful context on the pornography and groping from TSA. It’s context you almost never hear though, because the authorities are too busy saying “just trust us and shut up” to anyone who’ll listen. Of course we aren’t listening and can’t really be expected to trust the TSA/security agencies given their recent history [...] Read more »

The Transportation Security Agency now has x-ray machines that are invasive in the sense that they create unclothed images of those sent through them. They’re controversial enough that, if you’re randomly selected to use them, you can choose not to and instead submit yourself to a physical pat-down which includes contact with the groin and [...] Read more »

Let me quote from a BBC interview with Tony Blair:
Speaking on BBC One’s Fern Britton Meets programme, Mr Blair was asked whether he would still have gone on with invasion plans had he known at the time that there were no WMDs.
He said: “I would still have thought it right to remove him. I mean [...] Read more »

Another snippet from Natasha:
Prison healthcare is egregious, and I’ve read a number of stories about people dying or suffering terribly because of denial of care. But denying medical treatment to a pregnant woman in jail for traffic violations surely deserves a promininent place in the annals of prison inhumanity. It’s not quite at the ‘letting [...] Read more »

An interesting quote from his book, “The Assault on Reason”
When I first ran for Congress in 1976, I never took a poll during the entire campaign. Eight years later, however, when I ran statewide for the U.S. Senate, I did take polls and like most statewide candidates relied more heavily on electronic advertising to deliver [...] Read more »

This article on Wired was absolutely fascinating. Here’s a snippet:
Sorry, weirdos—I love you, but she has a point. Because of my work, many people—most of them strangers—track my various Flickr, Twitter, Tumblr, and blog feeds. And it’s true; I was going to be gone for a week on business. Did I really want to tell [...] Read more »

A truly, truly excellent and well-written two-part series (Part 1 | Part 2) posted on Michigal Liberal (a blog that’s unfortunately been taken over recently by a lot of auto-friendly whining) examines the legal basis - and growing threat - of permanent police checkpoints. In your neighborhood, on your street, in your apartment building. Thousands [...] Read more »

I’ve known this for a long time, and I imagine any half-witted would-be terrorist would as well. From an investigation by The Atlantic:
“The whole system is designed to catch stupid terrorists,” Schnei­er told me. A smart terrorist, he says, won’t try to bring a knife aboard a plane, as I had been doing; he’ll make [...] Read more »

Is it really okay for the government to do this? From ABC News:
Faulk says he and others in his section of the NSA facility at Fort Gordon routinely shared salacious or tantalizing phone calls that had been intercepted, alerting office mates to certain time codes of “cuts” that were available on each operator’s computer.
“Hey, check [...] Read more »

I dropped Verizon - mid-contract - and switched to Credo Mobile because of a little thing I like to call “not being spied on by my government“. Boy am I glad I did. Now I learn that Verizon’s fascism-loving isn’t restricted to the government in general, but to one party in particular. From the Washington [...] Read more »