Calling death row inmate Stanley Tookie Williams a "secret weapon" for helping black men stay out of gangs, the head of the NAACP traveled across California on Tuesday to rally support for clemency for the convicted killer.

Schwarzenegger will have a private clemency hearing in his office this Thursday, Dec. 8. If he does not grant clemency, Williams will be executed by lethal injection on Dec. 13 at 12:01 am.

Politically, Schwarzenegger will suffer serious political damage regardless of his decision. He can not avoid it, and his decision will either enrage the left or the right.

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The court in the Saddam Hussein trial allowed former U.S. attorney-general Ramsey Clark and another foreign defence lawyer to address the session Monday, reversing a ruling which led to a defence walkout.

"Reconciliation is essential," Mr. Clark told the court. "This trial can divide or heal. Unless it is seen as absolutely fair, it will divide rather than reconcile Iraq."

Makes sense to me. 

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 A German car salesman says that a year ago he was kidnapped in Europe, beaten and flown to a US-controlled jail in Afghanistan. Now the German government is collecting evidence to back up his story.

US defence of tactic makes no sense says legal expert

"Rendition doesn’t become a tool in the war against terror unless people are being sent to a place where they can be interrogated harshly."

Oh, it now appears Condi DOES admit it.

U.S. admits wrongful detention

The Bush administration has admitted it mistakenly abducted a German citizen on suspicions of terrorist links, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Tuesday after meeting with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in Berlin.

Last time I checked, kidnapping and torture are crimes. Will The White House now instruct the Attorney General to prosecute whoever did it? Not a chance.

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Former senior Bush White House officials negotiated anti-gay deal for Ford

Oh doesn’t this get interesting. The two Ford execs who sat down with the extremist gay-hating organization to work out the secret deal, who do you think they were? Why, two former senior Bush administration officials. Aren’t things getting interesting.

John Aravosis at AmericaBlog has continuing coverage on the noxious Ford agreement with the extreme right to stop advertising in LGBT media. He’s organizing hard against it, and as he points today, two days after the story broke, it’s already getting major media coverage. He’s not just reporting the news either, he’s playing a major role in leading the attack against Ford too, an excellent example of how blogs can play a major role in activism.

Tag: homophobia

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Wikipedia caught in podfather turf war

The simmering feud between podfathers Adam Curry and Dave Winer has exploded into a turf war, and Wikipedia’s credibility has been caught in the crossfire.

It’s not so much did Adam Curry slant a Wikipedia entry his way but that anyone can change Wikipedia entries and there’s no central editing review process. Thus, biases and deliberately slanted viewpoints can get posted and stay for months.

A real encyclopedia has a review process. Nothing is printed until ok’ed by the review board. Wikipedia has none of that. Edits are instantly printed with no review and, equally important, no fact-checking first.

I’m active in the ANSWER Coalition and thus know quite a bit about it. The Wikipedia entry on ANSWER seems biased to me, with almost as much coverage given to critics of ANSWER as to ANSWER itself. A real encyclopedia wouldn’t do that. They would not even give the appearance of an editorial slant.

Others have mentioned obvious bias in various Wikipedia entries. The problem is the lack of review. This is similar to Indymedia, who has an open publishing policy. Anyone can post to IndyMedia. And frequently does. Much as the semi-anarchists at Indymedia would wish it, open publishing does not guarantee coherent, accurate news and viewpoints. Quite the contrary, sometimes.

Wikikpedia needs a central review process. Yes, this would change the entire structure of the organization. But it’s becoming increasingly obvious that Wikipedia entries can not always be relied upon to be factual and unbiased. And if that’s true, then what’s the point of relying upon it for information?

Tag: Wikipedia

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Blair Watch asks

If Condi and Jack are telling the truth and detainees are not being sent to secret prisons or other regimes to be tortured…

Why are they sending them anywhere?

They also appear to have uncovered the unexpurgated version of Condi’s speech today.

That lily livered coward John McCain is stirring up trouble back home with his ridiculous demand that the CIA are banned from slapping those evil terrorist childkillers around a little bit. But don’t worry, America is a country of Laws, AND I AM THE LAW, so don’t forget it McCain and the rest of you commies - our very own VP for Torture is on your case.

The questions Condoleezza must answer

Could you explain why you believe these renditions are "permissible under international law"?

Amnesty International’s senior director of regional programmes, Claudio Cordone, said: "Flying detainees to countries where they may face torture or other ill-treatment is a direct and outright breach of international law with or without so called ‘diplomatic assurances’. These assurances are meaningless. Countries known for systematic torture regularly deny the existence of such practices."

You say that the US respects the sovereignty of other countries. On what basis do you fire missiles at suspects who are on foreign soil?

An unmanned, CIA Predator aircraft is believed to have killed an al-Qa’ida commander in Pakistan at the end of last week. In 2002, a Predator operating in Yemen airspace killed six al-Qa’ida suspects, including an American citizen, in a country considered to be at peace with the US. 

The biggest rogue nation on the planet is the USA, it would appear.

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U.S. Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., changed his stance on a 2001 bill after receiving a $5,000 donation from a lobbyist’s client who opposed the legislation, records show.

Burns is doing the ever popular memory loss routine, he can’t remember anything about the vote, darn it.

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Nearly 80 percent of people who responded to an Internet survey said they support the proposed introduction of an environmental tax which would levy an average of 180 yen per month on each household, the Environment Ministry said Sunday.

The tax, which the ministry hopes to introduce in fiscal 2006, would generate 370 billion yen in annual revenue to finance measures against global warming, such as forestation, according to the ministry.

White House spokesperson on environmental issues, Freon J. Bilgewater, said any such tax in the US would "hurt corporate profits" and put an "unfair burden on the wealthy" whose wealth could not then "trickle down to the peasants, er, public."  The press conference was then disrupted by members of a radical Left group who shouted that trickle down was akin to being "peed on."

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Rights groups seek inclusion of right to water in constitution

On the ongoing 2nd National Urban Water Sector Reform Project in Nigeria, which is being financed by a $200mWorld Bank loan, Mr. Babalobi called for its  review to "make it inclusive, people centred, transparent, participatory, and achieve the goal of delivering water to Nigerians at an affordable price."

 "Water must remain a public trust rather  than that a commodity to be traded by the private sector, to guarantee its access and affordability to the poor who used it  most”, said Mr. Babalobi.

The World Bank has a policy of forcing loans with onerous conditions on poorercountries, then demanding as terms of the loan that they they privatize the water. This helps the people not a whit, but certainly helps multinational corporations quite a lot.

We’re not talking bubble gum here, we’re talking water. It’s an indispensable part of life, and shouldn’t be for sale to the highest bidder.

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