There's violence in Afghanistan this weekend, as prison inmates seized control of a wing of Policharki Prison. This is the high security prison where the U.S. plans to transfer 110 of the Guantanamo detainees....including those who haven't been charged with a crime.

The rioting started Saturday night when prisoners refused to put on new uniforms, delivered in response to a breakout last month by seven Taliban inmates disguised as visitors, Hashimzai said. Prisoners forced guards out of a cell block housing about 1,300 inmates, said Abdul Salaam Bakshi, chief of prisons in Afghanistan. He accused al-Qaida and Taliban inmates of inciting other prisoners. "All the problem is inside the prison," Bakshi said. "We want to peacefully solve this problem."

The prison is well-known for its inhumane conditions:

The Independent today has an article titled Iraq's death squads: On the brink of civil war :

Most of the corpses in Baghdad's mortuary show signs of torture and execution. ....Hundreds of Iraqis are being tortured to death or summarily executed every month in Baghdad alone by death squads working from the Ministry of the Interior, the United Nations' outgoing human rights chief in Iraq has revealed.

Here are today's incidents of violence in Iraq. Among them:

BAQUBA - Three gunmen opened fire on a crowd of teenage boys playing soccer in a drive-by shooting in the Iraqi town of Baquba on Sunday, killing two youngsters and wounding five in what a police official said was a sectarian attack.

BAGHDAD - Six people were killed and 38 wounded in a mortar attack on the southern Baghdad neighbourhood of Dora on Sunday, police and hospital sources said. It was not clear who fired the mortars.

BAGHDAD - Two U.S. soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb in western Baghdad on Sunday, the U.S. military said, bringing the number of U.S. personnel killed since the invasion in March 2003 to at least 2,290.

The Scotsman has obtained a previously unreleased copy of the police report of President Bush's bicycle accident in Scotland when attending the G-8 summit -- the one where he hit a cop. Aside from demonstrating he can't talk, pedal and wave at the same time, here's what it shows (Note that Bush is referred to in the report as a "moving/falling object."

It was "about 1800 hours on Wednesday, 6 July, 2005" that a detachment of Strathclyde police constables, in "Level 2 public order dress [anti-riot gear]," formed a protective line at the gate at the hotel's rear entrance, in case demonstrators penetrated the biggest-ever security operation on Scottish soil.

The official police incident report states: "[The unit] was requested to cover the road junction on the Auchterarder to Braco Road as the President of the USA, George Bush, was cycling through." The report goes on: "[At] about 1800 hours the President approached the junction at speed on the bicycle. The road was damp at the time. As the President passed the junction at speed he raised his left arm from the handlebars to wave to the police officers present while shouting 'thanks, you guys, for coming'.

by TChris

Gov. Ernie Fletcher in Kentucky is at it again. As TalkLeft noted here, Fletcher used his pardon power to block the prosecution of state officials who were indicted for making illegal patronage appointments to state positions without regard to qualifications. Fletcher also purported to pardon anyone else who might be indicted in the future.

Whether the grand jury can continue to issue indictments is an issue before Kentucky's Supreme Court. Some might think that Fletcher is rigging the outcome by appointing two judges to sit on the case as replacements for two justices who recused themselves.

"It is unprecedented for the governor's office to choose the judges in its own case," [Attorney General Greg] Stumbo said in a statement.

Whatever the outcome of Bush's warrantless NSA surveillance program, it seems clear that government surveillance of our communications and even our social networks is only going to increase. The New York Times reports on recent "shopping trips" by NSA officials to Silicon Valley to purchase new data-mining tools.

On the wish list, according to several venture capitalists who met with the officials, were an array of technologies that underlie the fierce debate over the Bush administration's anti-terrorist eavesdropping program: computerized systems that reveal connections between seemingly innocuous and unrelated pieces of information. The tools they were looking for are new, but their application would fall under the well-established practice of data mining: using mathematical and statistical techniques to scan for hidden relationships in streams of digital data or large databases.

Susie at Suburban Guerrilla -- using three of my all-time favorite tunes, particularly Volunteers.

A hundred thousand dead in Iraq. A little girl, drenched in her family's blood and screaming into the night. Naked men made to crawl like dogs, forced to listen to the cries of their wives and sisters being raped in the next cell. Icebergs melting, workers sickened and dying of poison at their jobs, bodies of the elderly floating in the chemical soup that used to be New Orleans and one f**king lie after another.

These greedy b**tards. These immoral motherf**kers.

If you're not outraged, there's something wrong with you. And if you're outraged, you need to do something. It's a moral f**king imperative.

We are the body politic.

Check out these photos of this underground pot farm in Tennessee.

This grow was underneath a house in a cave. The entrance was through a secret hydraulic door in the garage that led to a concrete ramp that went about 50 yards into the ground. Inside the cave was living quarters and a secret escape hatch that led you through a tunnel that exited via another hydraulic door that opened up a rock on the outside.

The house was raided last year. [Via Crim Prof Blog.]

by TChris

In this post, TalkLeft wondered who else might be taken down with Randall "Duke" Cunningham. Mitchell Wade, former president of MZM Inc., a firm that does intelligence work for the military, admitted yesterday that he bribed Cunningham and unnamed Defense Department officials. His confession widened the scope of the corruption investigation.

The new admissions, including details that identify Reps. Virgil H. Goode Jr. (R-Va.) and Katherine Harris (R-Fla.) as recipients of illegal campaign contributions, are contained in Wade's agreement to plead guilty to four criminal charges stemming from his role in the Cunningham probe.

Wade admitted that he illegally funneled more than $80,000 in contributions to Goode and Harris, hoping they'd earmark federal funds for MZM. Prosecutors say they have no evidence that Goode or Harris knew the contributions were illegal, but "wouldn't say whether Goode and Harris or the MZM employees who made the illegal donations for Wade are subjects of the investigation."

by TChris

You'd think that when the police set a guy's head on fire, that would be punishment enough.

A man whose head caught fire when police simultaneously zapped him with pepper spray and a Taser gun during his arrest last summer faces prison time after being sentenced on a drug charge in the same incident.

The electricity from the Taser ignited the pepper spray, setting Lloyd King's head on fire.

by TChris

TalkLeft has frequently written about detainee abuse at Bagram (coverage collected here). The NY Times reports today that the population of the detention facility in Afghanistan has quiety increased while the world's attention has focused on detainees in Guantánamo.

[S]ome of the detainees have already been held at Bagram for as long as two or three years. And unlike those at Guantánamo, they have no access to lawyers, no right to hear the allegations against them and only rudimentary reviews of their status as "enemy combatants," military officials said.

The Times reports that the military is holding some detainees in Afghanistan to avoid legal protections that might be available to Guantánamo's detainees. About 500 prisoners are now held at Bagram under conditions that are more extreme than those at Guantánamo.

With more than 20 hours spent on planes to and from Amsterdam this past week, I had a lot of time to read books and watch movies on my laptop. Here are some of the best:

Crashing the Gates by Markos of Daily Kos and Jerome Armstrong of MyDD. This Nation review says it all:

Crashing the Gate: Netroots, Grassroots, and the Rise of People-Powered Politics is both of the blogosphere and beyond it. Writing with the outrage of outsiders and the access of insiders, the two bloggers analyze a Democratic Party they find oddly complacent despite its losing record and tarnished reputation. They argue that the party's most consequential problem is not branding but its sclerotic leadership, quarrelsome coalitions and anachronistic fundraising methods [...]

In the end, Armstrong and Zúniga have written the rare polemic that focuses more on fostering innovation than defending a particular worldview. They decline to outline a progressive policy agenda and humbly reject attempts to anoint themselves leaders of their website communities, let alone the netroots. Instead, they are trying to develop a decentralized progressive movement that draws strength from its members and has no traditional leaders to be co-opted. It is an admirable vision of "people-powered politics," and one that the Democratic Party sorely needs.

The current violence in Iraq was anticipated before Bush decided to take down Saddam. As these articles suggest, Bush and his confederates knew what would happen and they went ahead with their invasion plans anyway. They are responsible for this mess.

Gates of Hell Will Open If US Attacks Iraq, Say Arab States
Published on Friday, September 6, 2002 in the Times/UK

THE United States was told last night that a war to oust President Saddam Hussein would "open the gates of Hell" in the Middle East. The chief of the Arab League, Amr Moussa, issued the warning after a meeting in Cairo of the foreign ministers from 20 Arab states. He urged Iraq, however, to readmit weapons inspectors in co- ordination with the United Nations.

The ministers issued a resolution calling for a "complete rejection of threats of aggression against some Arab countries, in particular Iraq". Their statement did not specifically refer to weapons inspectors, but Mr Moussa said that the ministers had agreed that they must be allowed back as part of an overall solution.