It’s getting very foily out there.

TOLEDO, OH — Mayor Carty Finkbeiner on Friday ordered some 200 members of Company A, 1st Battalion, 24th Marines from Grand Rapids, Michigan, out of Toledo just before the unit was supposed to start a weekend of urban warfare training downtown.

The mayor’s spokesperson, Brian Schwartz said, “The mayor asked them to leave because they frighten people. He did not want them practicing and drilling in a highly visible area.”

Link

Have we solved any of these problems? If not, then our discussion of which candidate – Obama, Paul, Clinton, Huckabee, Romney – doesn’t mean anything. Seriously, if this isn’t fixed what are we talking about? Just checking. I’m off to buy a yurt.

Like in other places and times in Asia, the Fear of the Black Man takes on different forms, and is expressed in different degrees and brutalities. You think we need to be careful of our police state here? Get a load of this very scary scene from a macbre, high speed techno action flick complete with Tarantinoesque levels of violence. I don’t think they got to eat chicken and breakdance back at the station either. Time to jump on the Boycott the 2008 Olympics Bandwagon, Folks:

Beijing Vice: a brutal bust reveals the strong arm of the Chinese law
Tuesday, September 25, 2007 11:55 AM
By Melinda Liu

Where have all the foreign drug dealers gone? Ask the men in black. Beijing expats are buzzing about a weekend crackdown in Sanlitun that struck many of us as more brutal than the norm. (Yes, here brutal can be the norm.) With Beijing pouring controversial investments into Africa — and preparing to host the 2008 Summer Olympics — you’d think officialdom would want to avoid incidents perceived to have racist and repressive overtones. Like rounding up dozens of black men — reportedly including the son of a Caribbean ambassador — and beating many of them in public during a drug raid. Pan Yali (an expat who’s using his Chinese name due to fear of retaliation) filed this eyewitness account about the bust:

One sees shocking things in China. Sometimes they are also not surprising. That they are not surprising may be one of the most disturbing things of all.

Saturday night, I hesitantly pedaled into a small street in Sanlitun, the bar area most popular with expats in Beijing. It is a shoddy, miniature replica of some of the most unappealing carnival-esque streets in the world, the Fourth Circle of Western expat-in-Asia bar hell, a circus that Bosch would appreciate. Two weekends ago, an Australian architect — a former contestant on the TV show Big Brother — ordered a drink at a bar here at 3 AM, then slumped over his table, and never woke up. (Drugs or foul play were suspected, but police dropped the case for lack of evidence.) Tonight the entire cast of characters was out in force: drunken foreigners, the locals who “love” them, the shady bar owners, the homeless children and their decrepit pimps, the flower-sellers and the African drug dealers.

And then, the young men in unmarked black jumpsuits wielding batons.  Read more 

No link, but I’m curious about what you all think. Apparently there are bills in the Senate, pushed by Republicans and not really oppossed so strongly by Democrats, to condemn MoveOn for the “Betrayus” ad. Because it “hurt the troops” or some nonsense. The excuses the Democrats are coming up with for why they can’t stop it are pretty lame, and they may even offer their own version as a “compromise.”

If it passes, it’s another step towards creating the environment in which just being progressive is enough to get you on government-backed blacklists. Jobs, loans, various civil rights…these things can go away for some of us, when there are legal frameworks in place that separate us from “decent Americans.”  Read more 

Forgive me if this has already been posted, but I just noticed it and I’d like to talk about it a little. Woody notes a Truthout piece about the mercs in Iraq which now outnumber our troops.

The number of U.S.-paid private contractors in Iraq now exceeds that of American combat troops, newly released figures show, raising fresh questions about the privatization of the war effort and the government’s capacity to carry out military and rebuilding campaigns.
More than 180,000 civilians - including Americans, foreigners and Iraqis - are working in Iraq under U.S. contracts, according to State and Defense department figures obtained by the Los Angeles Times.  Read more 

I don’t believe it. I mean I do but … damn. He’s loyal to his serfs – I’ll give him that.

President Bush spared former White House aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby from a 2 1/2-year prison term in the CIA leak case Monday,  Read more 

Wonderful that Nancy’s site has a blog, and YouTube videos.

Horrifying that Republican operatives who happen to be lawyers are asserting that the executive—let’s not use the word President, since that word applied in our Constitutional system—can interpret the law, and then not publish the interpretation.

Shit, do these guys think the White House is Versailles?  Read more 

Let’s hope so. Glenn Greenwald does some cold calculation (what we need):

Continued unchallenged Republican control of our government for two more years will wreak untold damage on our country, perhaps debilitating it past the point of no return. There is only one viable, realistic alternative to that scenario: a Democratic takeover in six weeks of one or both houses of Congress. Even that would be far from a magic bullet; the limits imposed by Democrats even when they are in the majority would be incremental and painfully modest. But the reality is that this is the only way available for there to be any limits and checks at all.

In the real world, one has to either choose between two more years of uncontrolled Republican rule, or imposing some balance — even just logjam — on our Government with a Democratic victory. Or one can decide that it just doesn’t matter either way because one has given up on defending the principles and values of our country. But, for better or worse, those are the only real options available, and wishing there were other options doesn’t mean that there are any. And there are only six weeks left to choose the option you think is best and to do what you can to bring it to fruition.

What Glenn said.  Read more 

There’s been a great deal of the use of the word “fascism” this week, and for a change, it’s not coming from blogs like this one. I’ve been trying very hard to avoid the kindergarten sandbox throwing match that is KosHitler vs The Nasty Republicans, but a recent Atrios post compels me to jump in. Mind you, my hands have been dirty for quite some time, as a review of my own writing at Corrente demonstrate rather clearly. When it comes time for us to throw things, trust me when I say sand won’t be my only weapon.  Read more 

You all already know this, but it’s still a chilling litany:

State Secrets Privilege Shuts Courthouse Doors
The state secrets privilege has been invoked by the Bush Administration with greater frequency than ever before in American history in a wide range of lawsuits that the government says would threaten national security if allowed to proceed.

In virtually every case, the use of the privilege leads to dismissal of the lawsuit and forecloses the opportunity for an injured party to seek judicial relief.

Most recently, a lawsuit brought by Khaled El-Masri, a German citizen who alleged that he was kidnapped by the CIA and tortured over a five month period, was dismissed (pdf) after the CIA invoked the “state secrets” privilege.

The dismissal was not based on a finding that the allegations against the CIA were false.

“It is in no way an adjudication of, or comment on, the merit or lack of merit of El-Masri’s complaint,” wrote Judge T.S. Ellis, III in a May 12 order.

In fact, “It is worth noting that … if El-Masri’s allegations are true or essentially true, then all fair-minded people… must also agree that El-Masri has suffered injuries as a result of our country’s mistake and deserves a remedy,” he wrote in the order dismissing the case.

“Yet, it is also clear from the result reached here that the only sources of that remedy must be the Executive Branch or the Legislative Branch, not the Judicial Branch,” he suggested.  Read more