This from a mass e-mailing last Saturday by Peace Action:

Bush to lay wreath in honor of Gandhi

"National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley gave a press briefing Friday and announced that George Bush will lay a wreath in honor of Mohandas K. Gandhi when he goes to India this coming week...."

I think I may be physically ill. What a travesty/obscenity/farce/insult/joke (pick five). I doubt Dubaiya even knows who Gandhi was, much less what he did and what he stood for.

Mohandas, of course, would simply offer George his unconditional love, as he did for all oppressors. Me? I'm not quite that evolved... --Geov Parrish

Last month, King County Council Democrats Julia Patterson and Bob Ferguson introduced a civilian review system for the scandal-plagued King County Sheriff's Office (KCSO). At the time, newly elected Sheriff Sue Rahr (originally appointed to take Dave Reichert's place) came out against the plan, proposing to instead "study" KCSO's severe accountability problems with a new blue ribbon panel.

Last week, Rahr appointed her ten-person panel. And, not surprisingly, seven of the ten are either cops, lawyers, or officers of the court.

The message could hardly be clearer from Rahr: outsiders (i.e., true civilians) need not apply.

Most blue ribbon panels are comprised of insiders, of course, so Rahr's selection comes as no surprise. But the fact that it comes in the face of persistent allegations that KCSO cannot police its own, and with a civilian review proposal in the wing, it's particularly egregious for Rahr to stack the deck in this way. It's a deliberate act of resistance against all those who want to shine the light of accountability into some very dark KCSO corners.

Of course, one can never tell, and this is in response to the members' current occupations--not their resumes. They could surprise us, and come out with a strong report and recommendations.

But don't count on it.

--G.P.

On Jan. 20, an Austrian court handed down a decision in which a repellant man was given a repellent sentence in prison.

The case is that of 67-year-old David Irving, a widely discredited English historian known for his Holocaust revisionism. He gave two speeches to that effect in Austria in 1989. Austria has one of the toughest of the various European laws that make it a crime to question the official story of the Holocaust, and a warrant was issued for Irvin's arrest. Sixteen years later, when Irving finally went back to Austria for more public appearances, he was promptly arrested. The court sentenced Irving to three years in prison for his views.

As it often the case with laws that target people with unpopular views, this case was ideal for defenders of the Holocaust narrative. Of all the various historians who study (or want to study) things like whether six million Jews is an accurate count of those killed in Hitler's camps (a figure more or less randomly put forward after the war, and not supported by some forensic evidence), Irving is one of the least sympathetic. He is clearly an anti-Semite, and his views are far more extreme than those of other historians with an interest in the subject.

But Irving has a right to his views, and so does anyone else wishing to study the Holocaust. After 60 years, and with most survivors dying or dead, there is no conceivable reason for keeping this area of study--or, more specifically, one type of conclusion from that study--defined as a crime.

Irving's case is particularly worrisome in the context of the recent cartoon controversy, in which numerous European leaders defended newspapers' right to publish drawings offensive to Muslims. Why one standard for the sensibilities of Muslims, and another for Jews?

All speech should be unfettered by the state. It's how we gain new and clearer understandings of topics. The urge to censor has a long history, going back at least as far as the Church's efforts to prevent the scientific discoveries of the Renaissance from being publicized. The rationale then was about the same: it was offensive to someone. Well, too bad. People have rights to their opinions--even loathsome ones--and we lose far more by censoring (or encouraging self-censorship) of particular views than we do by being exposed to them. --G.P.

Another interesting story last week was the revelation, in a front-page P-I story, that several groups in the Seattle area have been among the hundreds of peace and other anti-Bush activist groups that have been spied upon by the FBI and other federal agencies in the wake of 9-11. The P-I story identified the Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action, Not in Our Name, and the Raging Grannies (!) as groups that were "monitored" by law enforcement personnel for fear they would commit civil disobedience when the Navy's warships came to town for SeaFair.

As it happens, we already knew some of this. Turns out Ground Zero's Glen Milner (who is waiting for a Coast Guard ruling in conjunction with just such a protest; see the posts on 12-02-05 and 12-15-05) is a whiz at procuring government documents through Freedom of Information Act requests and other means. Milner has long claimed that Ground Zero was monitored by law enforcement leading up to its various SeaFair protests.

Nonetheless, this is doubtless only the tip of the iceberg. It doesn't include "investigations" of left-leaning political groups by SPD, King County Sheriff's Office, Washington State Patrol, the Joint Anti-Terrorism Task Force, Secret Service, the NSA, and a host of other agencies. All of these "investigations" are united by one common theme: the idea that criticizing the policies of the Bush Administration is somehow a violent threat to national security.

It's not, of course. Such protests are not only harmless (in the sense of threatening lives), but are an essential part of a functioning democracy. We need more of this sort of direct action, not less. And if anyone "investigating" this publication is reading these words: FUCK OFF. Go home. And bone up, while you're at it, on the Bill of Rights. You might learn something. --G.P.

Good news from the courts: in response to an AP lawsuit, US District Judge Jed S. Rakoff in New York ordered the Pentagon to release the names of hundreds of current and former detainees at Guantanamo Bay. The Pentagon has said it will not appeal.

For over four years, the Bush administration has been resisting this step. Why? Because if we know who these people are, it might be possible for outside researchers to prove that many of these individuals are innocent, have no intelligence value, and don't belong in any prison, much less one that the UN has now labeled a routine practitioner of torture.

That's why the names are important. Good for Judge Rakoff. --G.P.

Of course, for every encouraging court story there's also a bad one. Last week the U.S. Supreme Court announced that it would hear a case on the constitutionality of Congress' law banning so-called "partial birth abortions" (a term used only by abortion opponents). Two circuit courts (the Second, in New York, and the Ninth, in San Francisco) have ruled the law unconstitutional, primarily on the grounds that it makes no provisions for protecting the health and life of the mother but also because it violates Roe v. Wade.

Alas, this will be the first abortion case heard by new justice Samuel Alito. And with Alito on the court, there are almost certainly the five votes necessary to uphold this law as constitutional. It is the beginning of the end of Roe v. Wade.

Of course, in many parts of the country it's already impossible to get an abortion. Particularly in rural areas, abortion providers are few and far between. And this week's passage of a South Dakota law (which the governor has promised to sign) essentially outlawing abortion is very much a sign of the times. The South Dakota law could well become the test case our new, Bush-stacked Supreme Court uses to end reproductive freedom in America. --G.P.

The outstanding investigative reporter Jason Leopold is reporting in TrouthOut.org that Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald now has his hands on 250 pages of White House e-mails that Fitzgerald has long suspected the White House of withholding. The White House "discovered" the e-mails two weeks ago.

What's in the e-mails? Apparently, conclusive evidence that the conspiracy to blow the secret CIA cover of operative Valerie Wilson was originated by and run by Vice President Dick Cheney himself. Leopold reports that Cheney is up to his neck in this.

Might be a somewhat more compelling story than a hunting accident.... --G.P.

The whole controversy over the proposed purchase of a massive international port operator by Dubai Ports World, a company owned by the despotic emirate of the United Arab Emirates, is pretty amusing. Bush is getting politically hammered on this; a Rasmussen Report poll this week shows only 17% of Americans supporting the sale.

Bush is right--a company owned by Arabs poses no more threat than one owned by Brits (the company DPW is gobbling up). Bush is crying racism, and rightly so. But Bush can't have it both ways. He created the anti-Arab fear now eating him alive on the DPW sale, when he casually lumped all Arabs (and all Muslims) together as "terrorists" in his successful campaign to convince people that Saddam Hussein had something to do with 9-11. Now, a lot of Americans think all. Arabs, including a company owned by U.A.E., are a threat to national security.

But the real issue here isn't terrorism. It's free trade. Bush is hanging onto this sale so vehemently because his administration is in the midst of negotiating a free trade deal, similar to NAFTA, with the United Arab Emirates. A rejection of this sale would endanger that deal. Bush is willing to put his support for corporate largesse ahead of even his reputation on national security.

If you're going to criticize the purchase of six ports, you should criticize the purchasing or leasing of all of them--whether Long Beach, CA (owned by a company owned by the Chinese government, far more of a national security risk than U.A.E.), ports operated by American companies, or whatever. Public facilities should not be privatized. Period.

Most of America's ports have been, and it happened while nobody was looking. Hence, the alarm now. If you're going to argue national security, realize that no cost-conscious for-profit corporation is going to be as scrupulous about security as a publicly owned facility. And in every case, taxpayers built the infrastructure, taxpayers once owned the harbors. Ports have no business being owned by anyone else. --G.P.

Investigative journalist Dahr Jamahl has posted photos from the video footage released by the Australian network SBS of American torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. Warning: There's a reason American networks and newspapers haven't been showing this. Some of these images are truly horrifying--far worse than those in the originally released round of Abu Ghraib photos. If you're easily disturbed, stay away. Otherwise, although you're likely to be sickened by what's being done with our tax dollars, you owe it to yourself to check this out. Americans need to be confronted with the cold reality of what our foreign policy looks like. This is what it looks like. This is what we fund when we pay federal taxes. --G.P.

A new statewide coalition of GLBT activists and their allies has formed to counter Tim Eyman's initiative effort to overturn this year's historic gay civil rights law. The group, optimistically named Washington Won't Discriminate, has a new web site at which supporters can sign up for e-mail updates, volunteer, or donate. Check it out, and get busy--it will be very, very difficult to stop this initiative if experiences in other states or the fate of a similar pro-gay initiative here nine years ago are any indication. We need to start organizing on this one as soon as we can. --G.P.

In his pre-recorded, obviously edited "interview" on state propaganda television (i.e., FOX), Dick Cheney called the day he shot his hunting buddy "the worst day of my life." This is a man who nearly single-handedly launched an illegal, unprovoked invasion of a sovereign country, an invasion and subsequent war that has already led to the deaths of over one hundred thousand innocent civilians. What Cheney is saying, then, is that the well-being of a casual hunting acquaintance (his word) is worth far more to him than the lives of over one hundred thousand innocent people. It's harder to imagine a clearer snapshot of the thinking of a sociopath. An extremely dangerous one. Cheney is a war criminal. A monster. (His boss is little better.) And his handlers (including FOX) are playing Cheney's alleged remorse for all the human interest empathy and pathos they can squeeze out of it. You know what? With a lot of people it will work. It's like Ted Bundy feeling badly after slapping someone. Times several thousand. --G.P.