According to the Associated Press, residents of the town of Dongzhou, China, in Guangdong province, are accusing the Chinese government of covering up a massacre that took place on December 6. Members of the small farming community told reporters that 20 villagers were killed when police opened fire on protesters demonstrating against the government's confiscation of their land for a power project.

The South China Morning Post reported that residents of Dongzhou say they have been offered money to give up the bodies of the dead to authorities in an attempt to cover up the killings. According to residents, Chinese authorities surrounded the city and no one was allowed to leave. They said police with guns and shields were roaming the streets looking for protesters on Friday. Also reported in the South China Morning Post was a story which confirmed that police have been using photos of the demonstrators to track down activists.

This latest mass protest was one of a growing number of clashes with authorities over the confiscation of land for factories, power plants and shopping malls. Some farmers have accused government officials of stealing money meant to compensate families for their land. The Chinese government reported that over 70,000 confrontations occurred between authorities and rural populations last year. --Mark Taylor-Canfield

The World Trade Organization talks in Hong Kong last week fell apart. Just like Cancun, and Seattle before it.

The hangup, to nobody's surprise, was the demand by developing countries that the E.U. and US end their domestic agricultural subsidies, and the stubborn refusal, particularly by the E.U., to do so. The talks also featured running police battles with South Korean farmers and other anti-WTO protesters all week. Anything that eviscerates the WTO is a triumph for humanity, and it's particularly sweet that the industrialized North, which rigged the WTO in the first place as a way to allow its corporations to pillage developing economies, is now alarmed by the prospect of having to follow its own odious rules. --G.P.

In the neighborhood, incidentally, but not at the WTO talks (wonder why?), was outgoing Port of Seattle commissioner Paige Miller, who was sent on a taxpayer-funded farewell junket to China after voters rejected his bid for Seattle City Council. Another reminder of why the Port of Seattle is the most corrupt public agency in our state.--G.P.

After a meeting with Sen. John McCain, Pres. George Bush announced last week that he would not, as previously threatened, veto the military budget bill if it included a provision banning torture.

Bush saw the handwriting on the wall when even the loony-tunes House last week passed a nonbinding resolution supporting the McCain amendment by an overwhelming 308-122, far more than would be needed to override a presidential veto. The Senate had already passed the McCain measure, 90-9.

That military budget bill also included, among other bad things, the repulsive Graham amendment that strips away all habeas corpus rights and access to U.S. courts for Guantanamo Bay prisoners and other so-called "enemy combatants," meaning, once again, that they can legally be held forever, without prisoner of war protections or any access to due process. It also rendered moot pending Guantanamo cases in federal court and a Supreme Court challenge to Bush's military tribunal system.

The torture deal should end Dick Cheney and the Bush administration's ugly defense of the right of the US to torture. Given how narrowly the White House would prefer to define "torture," and the continuation of both the practice of rendition and the support of Iraq policing by a Shiite-dominated Interior Ministry widely accused of torture, the issue is still far from over. But at least we have reached a powerful consensus--finally--that when the US does such things, it is abhorrent. Right, George?

Wrong. Turns out that before Bush reached his "compromise," the Army, under the orders of Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, quietly approved a 10-page secret addendum to the Army field manual expanding permissible interrogation techniques, a move that one Pentagon official described as "a stick in McCain's eye." McCain's chief of staff minced no words in describing the move as "politically obtuse" and undertaken without "one molecule of political due diligence." Exactly which torture techniques are now included as being "legal" are anyone's guess, since the new manual is classified.

It will be interesting to see if McCain, or any other Congresscreature, is willing to take this one on, or if they're content with their little moral victory. For example, Ed Markey (D-MA) is peddling something called the "Torture Outsourcing Prohibition Act," which would prohibit rendition to countries the State Department has concluded practice torture. The Republican congressional leadership, naturally, is blocking the bill. --G.P.

The Senate last Friday failed, by a 52-47 vote (needing 60 to pass), to break a filibuster led by Democratic Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold to block extension of the USA PATRIOT Act. The act, which expires Dec. 31, is now dead from Jan. 1 until (at least) Congress returns from holiday break.

Feingold, who was the only senator to vote against the PATRIOT Act when it was passed in 2001, deserves the enormous gratitude of the American people. But let's remember: this victory would not have happened, and would not happen in the future, if Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist was allowed to follow through on his "nuclear option" threats to abolish the filibuster as a parliamentary option. Frist is making such threats again these days, in conjunction with the battle next month to confirm the dreadful Samuel Alito for the US Supreme Court. The ability of a large minority to block bad legislation or nominations is an absolutely vital check and balance against a reckless majority--as we've just seen.

We also need to remember that this by no means ends the civil liberty abuses being committed in the name of the War of Terror. There were two separate reports last week--Wednesday on MSNBC, and Sunday in the New York Times--that the Department of Defense and the National Security Agency (respectively) have been spying domestically on US citizens, including anti-war activists. The Times actually sat on their story for a full year at the White House's request--for which they should be ashamed.

Remember, also, that this victory on the PATRIOT Act would not have been possible six months ago. It was made possible by Katrina, Iraq, and President Bush's plummeting poll numbers, all of which gave centrist Republicans and Democrats the courage to buck the White House and do the right thing. If these senators had been more cowed by the White House, the bill's fundamental flaws wouldn't have mattered--just like in 2001. --G.P.

This is why the PATRIOT Act is a bad idea: (From Agence France-Presse on 12-8-05)

"Stockholm--A watchlist of possible terror suspects distributed by the US government to airlines for pre-flight checks is now 80,000 names long, a Swedish newspaper reported, citing European air industry sources.

"The classified list, which carried just 16 names before the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York and Washington had grown to 1,000 by the end of 2001, to 40,000 a year later and now stands at 80,000, Svenska Dagbladet reported.

"Airlines must check each passenger flying to a US destination against the list, and contact the US Department of Homeland Security for further investigation if there is a matching name.

"The list contains a strict 'no fly' section, which requires airline staff to contact police, and a 'selectee' section, which requires passengers to undergo further security checks..." --G.P.

And, from the 12-9-05 New York Times:

"More than 8,000 people have been mistakenly tagged for immigration violations as a result of the Bush administration's strategy of entering the names of thousands of immigrants in a national crime database meant to help apprehend terrorism suspects, according to a study released on Thursday. ...

"The study found that the national crime database was wrong in 42 percent of the cases in which it identified immigrants stopped by the local police as being wanted by domestic security officials..." --G.P.

This month's fatal shooting in Miami of airline passenger Rigoberto Alpizar by federal air marshals is yet another tragic reminder--as if any more of these incidents are needed--that law enforcement agents need good, and repeated, training in how to deal with the mentally ill.

According to Alpizar's wife, Rigoberto suffered from bipolar disorder, had been off his medications during his travels, and had been acting erratically while in the terminal boarding area. When Alpizar tried to bolt from the plane while it was still loading and failed to heed marshals' orders to stop, they opened fire.

Of course, this also would never have happened if the Bush administration had not decided to put armed marshals on airplanes. But the broader point is that police and other law enforcement have become our society's front line every day in dealing with the mentally ill who, all too often, slip through health care and other safety nets and act out on the streets.

Occasionally, those encounters are fatal--and usually they don't need to be. Law enforcement is a tough job, sometimes requiring split-second decisions. But the ability to distinguish between criminal intent and a relatively harmless mental meltdown is essential these days. Hopefully, the inquiry into Alpizar's death will ask whether the marshals who fired the fatal shots had any clue what the throes of bipolar disorder look like.--G.P.

Mumia Abu-Jamal, the famous or notorious (depending on your point of view) African-American journalist and activist on death row since 1982 for the 1981 murder of a Philadelphia policeman, won a major legal victory this month in the federal Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia.

The Third Circuit has agreed to hear arguments on three claims by Abu-Jamal that his original 1982 trial was fatally flawed: an illegal exclusion of qualified African-American jurors from the jury, an improper prosecution summary that implied the jury could convict without Abu-Jamal being guilty beyond a reasonable doubt; and the clear anti-defense bias of the late Judge Albert Sabo, who presided at both the original trial and in Abu-Jamal's 1995 appeal. The ruling came as a surprise, since the defense had only filed a Third Circuit appeal on one of the three items, the racially biased jury composition. If any of the three items are upheld by the Third Circuit, it could lead to a new trial and the introduction of exculpatory evidence that has been excluded from Abu-Jamal's case for decades.

Particularly in the 1990s, Abu-Jamal's case became a cause celebre among progressive activists, even as Philadelphia police and their allies pressed hard to end the appeals process and execute him. Details of the original shooting are murky; both sides point to compelling evidence to buttress their conclusions of Abu-Jamal's guilt or innocence. In recent years, Abu-Jamal has been less visible, his crusade for freedom hurt by police counterattacks, by the endless and confusing appeals processes, and by Abu-Jamal's association with MOVE and other fringe leftist groups, associations that have led even some progressives to conclude that Abu-Jamal's case was suspect.

Mumia Abu-Jamal may or may not be innocent. But it's clear that, in the corrupt and racially charged Philadelphia of the early 1980's, he never received anything even close to a fair trial. Hopefully, after all these years of tireless advocacy by Abu-Jamal and his supporters, maybe now he'll get one. --G.P.

After two weeks, the global warming conference in Montreal (please, can we stop using the White House weasel phrase "climate change"? We know what the problem is. We can say it.) came to an end, and the conclusion was both uplifting and discouraging. Uplifting, because 155 countries, including all but two of the industrialized countries--Australia and the US. naturally--came to an agreement to launch talks aimed at replacing (and presumably toughening) the Kyoto Protocol when it expires in 2012. Discouraging, because the Bush administration's representatives not only refused to consider even nonbinding talks, but were so horrified by the concept they rudely walked out on the proceedings.

Of all of the Bush administration's crimes--over 100,000 and counting killed by the effects of an illegal invasion, the corruption, the tax cuts for the wealthy, the middle class job losses, the response to Katrina, the ballooning foreign trade deficits and federal debt, the failure to prevent 9-11, and on, and on--history will pass the harshest judgment (if it's around to pass any judgment at all) on the Bushies' refusal to do anything about global warming. While the rest of the world struggles to do something--more slowly and sporadically than needed, but making progress all the same--the US. consuming by far the most resources, spewing by far the most carbon emission, has actually gone backwards. For eight of the most critical years, during what may be the last possible window to start to do something effective before the atmosphere starts heating itself and the problem is beyond humanity's ability to solve, the U.S. has stubbornly refused to even admit there is a problem. Bush, as a consequence, may in the end be responsible for nothing less than the end of the species. That's a staggering statement. But global warming affects the future of humankind in so many different fundamental ways, starting with the availability of food and water (and the likelihood of violent competition for same), that it's hard to overstate how grim the outcome is if we do nothing.

That's what Bush has done: nothing. Kyoto is unquestionably flawed, But by some estimates the only way the world can slow global warming enough to avoid an atmospheric point of no return is by cutting emissions 90 percent by the year 2030. That's 25 years we have left. Twenty-two, if you figure Bush will do nothing to slow US emission growth for the next three. Some cities and states (notably California) are trying to meet Kyoto standards on their own, but it's not nearly enough. The federal government needs to take action, and the federal government, unfortunately, is run by religious fanatics, hostile to science and amenable to the end times, who want to make sure before Revelations kicks in that their oil industry buddies get even richer. For that, they're willing to risk killing us all.

Utterly unforgivable. --G.P.

Word is the spineless DC leadership of the Democratic Party is hopelessly divided over who among them should give the reply to Pres. Bush's upcoming State of the Union address. That should be easy: the answer is, "none of them." The honor should go instead to Jack Murtha, the courageous, Pentagon-friendly Pennsylvanian who single-handedly (and finally) made Iraq a real issue on Capitol Hill.

Whether or not you agree with his demand for immediate troop withdrawal from Iraq (and I do), Murtha is exactly what the Democrats need: someone credible who is perceived as having the integrity to take political risks for something he believes is good for the country. This is what the public craves from our ostensible opposition party, and it's exactly what would-be Democratic standard-bearers do not offer--pols like John Kerry, Joe Biden, Joe Lieberman, and (gag) Hillary Clinton, all of whom want to become president in 2008. They do not stand for anything but themselves, and this is exactly why poll after poll shows that Democrats still are not held in much more regard than the party of the most criminally corrupt and inept administration in US history.

Get Murtha out front. He has the credibility and the honesty to dismantle whatever whoppers Bush will be telling in the State of the Union this time around. And then pay attention to what he's doing, and why people respect him so much. I don't idolize Murtha--he has his faults--but he is a leader. Get it? --G.P.

Paul Berendt, Chairman of the state Democratic Party, announced this month that he is stepping down from his post effective Jan. 28, 2006.

Berendt, the longest serving state Democratic chair in the country, is the antithesis of his Republican counterpart, Chris Vance. While Vance is a blowhard who leads his party ever further astray from electability, Berendt has quietly built a party apparatus that dominates most statewide elections and that now controls both houses of the state legislature, the governorship and most other elected state offices, both Senate seats, and a solid majority of Congressional districts. Berendt was also the driving force behind the Democrats' successful defense of Gov. Christine Gregoire's narrow electoral victory against legal challenge. The defense, however, and its legal bills left the party $600,000 in debt, and Berendt's successor will need to do something about that debt.

The biggest other challenges facing the state Democrats in 2006 will be to re-elect Sen. Maria Cantwell (who, at this early stage, is comfortably ahead in the polls), and to retain their slim margin of control of the state legislature. Whoever succeeds Berendt--and the competition for his job will be fierce--will inherit a party that's in pretty good shape compared to most states.--G.P.

Interesting names are surfacing as potential appointees to fill out Jim Compton's Seattle City Council seat until November 2006, when a special election will put someone on council to finish Compton's term until November 2007. Jim Compton's resignation from Seattle City Council means a lot for the composition of city council. For starters, it puts Richard Conlin's presidency in jeopardy, leaving the council once again deadlocked 4-4 between Conlin and Jean Godden. And it opens a whole can of worms as to who will replace Compton.

Conventional wisdom is that the council will pick someone safe, who won't rock the boat. The prototype, of course, is Richard McIver, the last person appointed in such circumstances, when John Manning resigned in 1996. McIver has been a stunningly inert warm body on council ever since, and the career bureaucrat is exactly the sort city council is likely to turn to again.

Early council gossip says there's a strong sentiment against picking a failed council candidate--Dwight Pelz, Casey Corr, and Paige Miller are (fortunately) unlikely to get the nod. Past candidates like Darryl Smith and Robert Rosencrantz (both of whom would very much fit the status quo profile) are also in that category. Rumors have also floated the names of two former councilwomen, the dreadful Sue Donaldson and the maddeningly inconsistent Tina Podlodowski. (Where's Judy Nicastro?)

A progressive is unlikely to get the appointed position, but that doesn't mean progressives shouldn't apply--any sort of buzz around this process, such as gaining public support or being a finalist, could help launch a November candidacy even if they don't win the appointed seat. This means you: Sharon Tomiko Santos, Lisa Herbold, Velma Veloria, Phil Tallmadge, Alice Woldt, Dick Kelly. Even Al Runte.

Housing activist John Fox, Gossett aide Cindy Domingo, and other prominent local progressives convened an unsuccessful effort earlier this year to recruit a progressive opponent to Mayor Greg Nickels. Fox says the same group will reconvene in early January to talk about backing someone for Compton's seat. --G.P.

Abramoff update: Interesting note last week about the subpoenaing of the bank records and other information of California businessman Brent Wilkes by Ronnie Earle, the Texas prosecutor going after former House Majority Whip Tom DeLay.

Wilkes, it turns out, has some interesting friends. He was one of four unindicted coconspirators in the bribery case of disgraced former Republican congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham. And he hired for his lobbying Alexander Strategy Group, a DC outfit run by former DeLay aides Edwin Burkham and Tony Rudy. Alexander Strategy Group hired Christine DeLay, wife of Tom, for $115,000 from 1998-2002 to determine the favorite charity of each congressperson. (Nice work if you can get it.) And Alexander in turn took many of its other clients from Jack Abramoff, the disgraced Republican superlobbyist now at the heart of several interlocking scandals.

Wilkes' private jet company was also hired on three separate occasions by DeLay. And both Wilkes and Abramoff were major donors to Texans for a Republican Majority, the DeLay PAC at the heart of the indictments that DeLay illegally funneled corporate money into Texas legislative races--hence Earle's subpoenas.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post on Dec. 12 had an extensive chart laying out how much Abramoff gave to both Republicans and Democrats, collectively and individually. The Post lists the top 20 Congressional recipients of Abramoff largesse, and clocking in at #9 is none other than Democratic Sen. Patty Murray. Murray, on the lucrative Senate Appropriations Committee, is the second-ranked Democrat on the list, trailing only Rhode Island's Patrick Kennedy of the House Appropriations Committee. Patty bagged $49,480 from Abramoff and his clients between 1999-2004. From 1994 to 2001, Abramoff worked in the D.C. lobbying office of Seattle-based law firm Preston Gates Ellis.

Last week both Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) and, reversing himself under heavy pressure, Sen. Conrad Burns (R-MT), agreed to give back $67,000 and $150,0000 (respectively) in Abramoff donations. Both have been linked to the Abramoff scandal. This raises an obvious question: isn't it about time to pressure Murray to give back her money, too?

Finally, an amusing note: syndicated libertarian columnist Doug Bandow resigned from the Cato Institute after it was revealed that he took money from Abramoff to write columns favorable to Abramoff and his clients. Turns out that when D.C. journalists are for sale, it's not just politicians doing the buying.

For those interested, I've written a pretty comprehensive (5,000 word) summary of who's who in the various Abramoff scandals--you'll need it as a scorecard as this scandal explodes through Congress in 2006. Some four dozen Congresscreatures have been confirmed as taking money from Abramoff or his clients at about the same time they took legislative action favorable to Abramoff or his clients. "The Abramoff Primer" was posted Dec. 10 on the ETS! blog (http://www.feedthefish.org/etsblog/).

Do you get the feeling all of these Republican weasels are in bed with one another? The stench from Capitol Hill is just overwhelming. --G.P.

Remember Cassini? Of course not--it's now on the outer fringes of the solar system. Cassini was the 1997 NASA launch that drew worldwide protests for its first-ever use of plutonium-powered nuclear energy as its power source. Critics worried that if Cassini exploded on launch or in the atmosphere--which NASA launches certainly do from time to time--the release of plutonium, the deadliest substance known to humanity, in vaporized form into the upper atmosphere could literally lead to anything from increased cancer rates to endangering all life on Earth. It takes only one-millionth of a gram of vaporized plutonium to kill a human being.

Well, Cassini didn't blow up--most missions don't--and the issue was promptly forgotten. But I bring you this brief history lesson today because NASA is quietly at it again. Karl Grossman, a journalist and prominent Cassini critic, reports that "On January 11, the window opens for a launch from Cape Canaveral of a rocket lofting a space probe with 24 pounds of plutonium fuel on board."

The "New Horizons" mission has exactly the same problems, and risks, that Cassini did. And NASA is planning more: a succession of plutonium-powered space vehicles over the next decade. Better (solar) alternatives are available, even in deep space. So why risk it? Because NASA is also a military agency, controlled by the Pentagon as well as the White House, and there are a lot of people in both the Pentagon and the White House who like the idea of normalizing the use of anything nuclear.

Even if it threatens all life on earth. --G.P.

Just a reminder: many of these shorts, and many more besides, have already appeared in the new ETS! blog at http://www.feedthefish.org/etsblog/ (or just follow the link in the right-hand column of the www.eatthestate.org home page). In the last two weeks I've posted 32 entries to the blog--many of them breaking stories we simply don't have room for in our biweekly editions of ETS! Check it out! --G.P.