Instapundit posts today about the Vatican's increasing support for the Palestinians and his concern that it is rooted in anti-semitism. The photo he includes with his post is one of those that speaks a thousand words--without some other explanation--which we haven't heard. Instapundit says he has written on this before, here, and so has the Guardian, here.

Slavery did not end in 1865. A century and a half later, slavery is still with us. Here's a sad tale about a boy named Francis that illustrates the point. We can't retell his story and do it justice, so go over and read it. Then consider this:

The truth is there are more slaves now than at any time in history — 27 million — many of them living in bondage in Sudan, which has been ravaged for 20 years by a civil war between the largely Muslim population of the north and the Christian population of the south. But there are also slaves in Pakistan, China, Burma, India and the rain forests of Brazil, to say nothing of the 40,000 to 50,000 mostly sex slaves imported into the United States each year.

...Slavery is now a tool of modern war, as opposed to an instrument of racial or economic horror. In Sudan, the jihad — or holy war — that the Islamic fundamentalists have been waging against the people to the south is what is driving the slave trade. Francis' master did not pay a dime for him on the day he was taken from the market. The boy was simply part of the spoils of war. In the age of terrorism, slavery — far from being obsolete — is just another weapon.

Finally, Francis embodies a significant moral dilemma now facing the world at large. Namely: Is it immoral to buy slaves in order to win their freedom?

What is the going rate for a human life these days in Sudan? The answer is as unreal as the whole situation — between $30 and $35 a slave, less than dinner and a movie on any given night in America.

Is it right for modern-day abolitionists to participate economically in the world's largest slave trade? You bet it is.

In addition, the U.S. government should do everything we can to make it clear to the Sudanese government in the north — that is even now bombing villages and stealing more small boys from their mothers — that this too is part of our war on terrorism.

This is anything but a feel-good article, but it's one that needs to be read.

More on the Chicago jail beatings and coverup from Chicago Tribune investigative reporters Steve Mills and Maurice Possley today: The Chief Investigator says he sent report to the jail's director, Ernesto Velasco.

The chief investigator of an alleged mass beating of prisoners at Cook County Jail in 1999 says he was pressured to clear guards of wrongdoing, but eventually delivered a report sustaining charges to then-jail executive director Ernesto Velasco, who has said he was unaware of the report.

The account from Charles Holman, a veteran internal affairs investigator at the jail, contradicts the account of Velasco, who told a House committee hearing last week that he never saw Holman's report and did not know the investigation had been completed. ...

He said Velasco came up to him and inquired about the nearly 12-inch-tall stack of documents. Holman said he told the jail director that it was his report of the beating allegations.

"He asked me about the outcome," Holman said. "I said we sustained quite a few charges. I told him out of my own mouth."

Velasco not only denied ever seeing the report, but also speaking to Holman about it. As we wrote earlier, Velasco has been nominated by the Governor of Illinois to head the Illinois Department of Corrections. His nomination is now on hold until more is learned about Velasco's knowledge of and response to the report on these jail beatings.

At least 49 inmates told investigators they were beaten, but the report sustained brutality allegations only against Richard Remus, the head of the SORT unit. In an interview, Remus denied beating anyone. Other SORT officers also denied the brutality claims, according to a spokeswoman for Sheahan. The report sustained violations against nine other officers, including one superintendent, and ruled as "inconclusive" charges against 40 other officers--meaning the charges could neither be proved nor disproved.

We think it's time for a change in Illinois. The Governor should follow the lead of Los Angeles which hired Bill Bratton as Police Chief and select an uncompromised, principled outsider to lead the Department of Corrections.

From Politics in the Zeros:

Bush announces "Constitution update" committee

"The President today announced the formation of a special task force to determine how the Constitution could be "streamlined and modernized" to protect citizens from "the increasing possibility of terrorism".

Sure to come under scrutiny are troublesome areas dealing with freedom of speech and assembly; which, according to a advisor close to Mr. Bush, are "sloppily written, too broad in scope, handcuff the police, and allow the evildoers to escape."

While some may deem this to be controversial, the advisor continued; "we also need to seriously examine whether trials are always neccessary once a person has been arrested, especially if we claim national security interests and do not divulge why they were arrested or where we are holding them."

Are you sure that was satire? This op-ed by Former Attorney General Ramsey Clark talks about Bush's push to silence free speech

During the barely two years of his presidency, George W. Bush has revealed an unprecedented, uncompromising obsession for war that threatens peace and economic stability around the world. ....

President Bush has authorized and approved assassinations, summary executions and murders — and boasted of them, in his State of the Union message in January. "All told, more than 3,000 suspected terrorists have been arrested in many countries, and many others have met a different fate ... let's put it this way, they are no longer a problem for the United States and our friends and allies."

He has authorized and condoned bribery, coercion and retaliation to obtain his war ends.

Fundamental human rights and civil liberties protected by international law and the U.S. Constitution have been violated within the United States against both citizens and aliens and abroad by illegal arrests, secret detentions, false criminal charges, and interference with rights to assemble, protest and speak.

He has drastically undermined U.N. authority, threatening it with irrelevancy, coercing it to follow his command and acting independently and in defiance of the U.N. Charter.

Ramsey Clark met with Saddam Hussein last week. He notes that the Bush Administration criticized Dan Rather's recent interview with Saddam. And he asks,

How are the people of the world to accept these threats? Are they terrorism as prelude to genocide?

President Saddam Hussein told Dan Rather, "We will die in Iraq."

If death is by U.S. violence, what will come after?

While the military says they were prepared for suicide attempts by detainees at Guantanamo Bay, psychologists say conditions at the prison are partially to blame:

In the course of one week in mid-February, three detainees tried to kill themselves, raising the number of suicide attempts to 19 since detainees were brought to the island in January 2002. Nine of those attempts have been recorded since mid-January.

The suicide attempts -- most by hanging using clothes or bedsheets -- involve 16 detainees. Three have made multiple attempts. None of the suicide attempts has been successful, though at least one detainee is in serious but stable condition at the base hospital.

... experts in correctional psychology say the problem is likely heightened by the hopelessness and stress some of the detainees may experience because of a long confinement with no foreseeable end, and by prison rules that forbid contact with families and lawyers.

What did the military expect when they made plans to lock people up indefinitely, thousands of miles from their home countries, without giving them the protection of prisoner of war statutes, access to lawyers, telephone contact with family members, or even charging them with a crime?

"As far as they know, they're going to be there forever," said Michael Ratner, president of the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights. "It must give people a sense of desperation. . . . This is like a Devil's Island."

Particularly when you add in the stress resulting from the military's "aggressive interrogation techniques." How does this bode for U.S. servicemen and women who will be undoubtedly be captured in hostile countries once the war officially begins? Typical of the way this country operates, those who cooperate with their captors will receive favorable treatment. What about the non-terrorist captive who has no information with which to barter? He's apparently out of luck.

The detainees are held in one-person cells inside three maximum-security blocks -- known as Camps I, II and III -- which replaced the open-air holding pens, known as Camp X-Ray, that were used when detainees arrived on the island. An undetermined number of detainees who have cooperated with interrogators will be transferred sometime this month to a fourth prison building, a new minimum-security facility capable of holding as many as 200 inmates. It has large, communal housing bays and common rooms where detainees can gather to play games or socialize, according to Army Lt. Col. Bill Costello, a spokesman for the joint military task force that runs the prison.

Once again we are being kept in the dark. Officials won't disclose the nature of the suicide attempts or the identities of those detainees who attempt it. They won't discuss the size of their medical staff. Or whether they are going to change their interrogation methods. But they want us to believe they have a handle on it. We're not buying it--any more than we buy their explanation that many of the suicide attempts are fake and manipulative. We hope the human rights organizations keep pressing for details. "No comment" is simply not an acceptable response.

It turns out that the FBI has been recruiting and protecting violent informants for years.

For decades, in cities from coast to coast, FBI agents recruited killers and crime bosses as informants and then looked the other way as they continued to commit violent crimes.

When the practice first came to light in Boston - unleashing an ongoing investigation that has already sent one agent to prison for obstruction of justice - FBI officials in Washington portrayed it as an aberration.

But AP interviews with nine former FBI agents - men with a combined 190 years of experience in more than 25 bureau offices from Texas to Chicago and from Los Angeles to Washington - indicate the practice was widespread during their years of service between the late 1950s and the 1990s.

Link via Unlearned Hand, who sagaciuosly comments,

Some of the arguments made by the agents resemble arguments made in defense of torture and other such means:

"You have to weigh the odds of whether killing one or two people is better than killing a whole planeload," said Wesley Swearingen, whose service as an agent from 1959 to 1977 included tours in Los Angeles and Chicago.

Combine an institutional willingness to look the other way with the war on terrorism (and the proposed Patriot Act II), and a dangerous stew could be brewing.

The ACLU is on top of things, as always. Click here to learn what the proposed Patriot Act sequel contains, and to send a fax to Congress sharing your opinions on it.

If there was ever a group that deserves a donation for its yeoman work the past year and a half, it's the ACLU. Give what you can.

Here is the link to the Feb. 28, PBS trancript of Bill Moyers' interview with Nat Hentoff . [via Take Back the Media].

Sometimes students cut right to the quick of things. That's what we think about Nick Huggler, and his commentary in the Oregon State Daily Barometer, titled Justice should be blind, not a mystery:

Republicans love Estrada. They go nuts for Estrada. If there were a new state brought into the Union, perhaps Costa Rica, Senate Republicans might consider naming it Estrada. Miguel Estrada is the poster child for the Republican outreach to the Latino community....

The courts are not an idle political tool where the risk of a mystery justice can be taken. Courts are more and more actively coming to bear on environmental policy, the right to privacy, a woman's right to choice, the detainment of suspected terrorists and the guidelines of speech and democracy that guide this nation and protect its hold on freedom. It is important to know where an appointed justice will stand, regardless of what side of the aisle he played on before he was brought to the bench.

It is unconscionable that the administration would resist the requests of the senators. Judicial nominations are not the place for politics to be played, but are instead the place for full disclosure and an open discussion -- as we are hiring justices for life. Miguel Estrada should be the first to ask the White House to turn over his memos, and he should answer all of the questions posed to him.

In these times of tension, this is the first of many chances given to show some real cooperation in Washington and to do the government's business as it should be done -- with an eye on a better future and the chance to make the country better each day.

[link via How Appealing]

All these stories in the breaking news section of the Sunday London Times, and more:

UN confirms Iraq missile destruction

UN inspectors says Iraq has begun destroying its Al Samoud 2 missiles and agreed to a timetable to scrap the rest of them within a matter of weeks. UN spokesman Hiro Ueki said the procedure went more slowly than expected because the rockets were so sturdy, but four missiles were destroyed. Ueki said two interviews -- with a biological weapons expert and with a missile engineer -- were conducted on Friday night, the first since February 7. Deputy chief inspector Demetrius Perricos said other interviews were under way, although he gave no further details.

Turkish vote on US troops overruled

A vote by the Turkish parliament to allow in 62,000 US troops in readiness for a war against Iraq has been overruled by the speaker. Bulent Arinc ruled that a majority of legislators present had not voted in favour, and closed parliament until Tuesday. The decision is a serious blow to the US. The vote was 264-250 with 19 abstentions, four short of a simple majority. The bill's rejection is likely to seriously increase tensions with the United States which had been expecting a positive vote.

Americans want UN backing for war

Almost half of US citizens believe war should be launched on Iraq only with the backing of the UN, according to a new poll. Some 44% of Americans polled for BBC1's Panorama said there should be a unanimous UN mandate before military action, against 31% who were ready to see war waged without UN backing. US President George Bush has made clear that he reserves the right to lead a "coalition of the willing" against Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, with or without the support of the UN.

How difficult would it be for you to prove your innocence, particularly if you were in a foreign country and the FBI said it was after you? For this 72 year old Englishman, on a wine-tasting vacation in South Africa, it was pretty tough--he spent 20 days behind bars in Durban, due to the FBI's mistake.

The FBI's conduct in the case sounds pretty bad to us- they never even went to interview the Englishman they had caused to be imprisoned.

"My criticism of the FBI is extreme," said Bond during a news conference after his release. "America is meant to be a humane country, but under no circumstances did they behave in a humane way."

So, if you think people who are arrested must have done something wrong or else they'd be able to explain things and go home, this is a powerful lesson it doesn't always work that way. We can only imagine the horror of spending 20 days in a South African jail at the age of 72--because no one would listen to us when we protested our innocence.

The problem with Houston's crime lab is growing fast.

"Prosecutors have ordered new DNA testing on evidence used to convict 10 more people, four of them now on death row, after an independent audit uncovered widespread problems at the Houston police lab." "Harris County District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal has said several hundred cases perhaps as many as 400 will be retested. Twenty-one had been ordered by Saturday, including seven involving death row inmates."

One of the main problems with the Houston lab was that holes in the roof leaked water, possible contaminating the DNA samples and compromising the testing. But for a state audit in December, this might have gone unreported. As a result of the audit, DNA testing was suspended at the lab.

Sooner or later, if it hasn't happened already, an innocent person is going to be put to death. Not only does Texas lead the country in number of executions, but if Houston were a state, it would come in second. This should be the final straw to imposing a moratorium on the death penalty in Texas.