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AP reports that the Taliban wild man in charge of blowing up two giant, 1,500-year-old statues of Buddha in 2001 -- an unconscionable crime against culture, against history, indeed, against humanity -- has been duly elected to parliament, where he will add his wise voice to the guidance of policy in the regime of warlords, druglords and virulent extremists installed by Bush.

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We don't have to burn any books.

The Nazis in the 1930s were forced to waste precious time and money on the inoculation of the German citizenry, too well-educated for its own good, against the infections of impermissible thought. We can count it as a blessing that we don't bear the burden of an educated citizenry. The systematic destruction of the public-school and library systems over the last thirty years, a program wisely carried out under administrations both Republican and Democratic, protects the market for the sale and distribution of the government's propaganda posters. The publishing companies can print as many books as will guarantee their profit (books on any and all subjects, some of them even truthful), but to people who don't know how to read or think, they do as little harm as snowflakes falling on a frozen pond.

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The Sept. 18 elections for the Wolesi Jirga (Lower House) show that warlords and ex-Taliban commanders won over half of the seats in the new parliament. Many of those elected are among the most extreme human rights abusers in the country; certainly not what President Bush imagined when he began his “global democratic revolution”. Now, former jihadis, Islamic fundamentalists, and warlords will control a majority of the seats in Parliament ensuring that the security of the Afghani people will continue to be at risk.

For all practical purposes, the country has returned to its brutal pre-Taliban days where the nation was divided into fiefdoms controlled by regional warlords. Many of the candidates participated in the civil war during the 1990’s that devastated much of the country. They are now in a position to challenge the power of the central government and obstruct efforts to further integrate the country.

Some of the Taliban leaders who won spots in the new government are Wakil Mutawakil, former Foreign Minister for the Taliban, and Maulavi Qalamuddin, the head of the Dept. for the Prevention of Vice and the Promotion of Virtue; the fanatical agency that enforced Sharia Law through severe forms of punishment and physical abuse. It is widely believed that Tehran is directly supporting the more extreme members in the fledgling parliament. This tells us that Iran is developing a base of political support in Afghanistan as it has in Iraq. Ironically, the US is currently defending Iran-friendly regimes in both countries it has chosen to invade.

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For the first time since the fall of the Taliban's Islamic government four years ago, a journalist has been convicted by a Kabul court under the country's blasphemy laws.

Ali Mohaqiq Nasab, the editor of "Women's Rights," a monthly magazine for women, was sentenced on Saturday to two years in prison by Kabul's primary court. The sentence will automatically be reviewed on appeal.

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His torturers in Morocco took a razor blade to Benyam Mohammed al-Habashi's genitals and told him to admit he had dined with top al-Qaeda officials, human rights attorney Clive Stafford Smith told about 300 people in Philadelphia yesterday.

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Proposed legislation in Australia would make it a crime for one parent to tell the other that their child had been detained under anti-terror laws.

If a youth aged between 16 and 18 was detained, one parent would be informed and allowed to visit daily during the detention, which could last for two weeks without charge.

But if the chosen parent was the father, for example, and he told the mother where the child was, he could be jailed for up to five years.

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The American Civil Liberties Union today made public an analysis of new and previously released autopsy and death reports of detainees held in U.S. facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan, many of whom died while being interrogated. The documents show that detainees were hooded, gagged, strangled, beaten with blunt objects, subjected to sleep deprivation and to hot and cold environmental conditions.

“There is no question that U.S. interrogations have resulted in deaths,” said Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director of the ACLU. “High-ranking officials who knew about the torture and sat on their hands and those who created and endorsed these policies must be held accountable. America must stop putting its head in the sand and deal with the torture scandal that has rocked our military.”

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The United States has warned Nicaraguan politicians that millions of dollars of aid will be withheld from the country if any moves are made to oust the president, Enrique Bolaños. In a move that has echoes of US intervention in the country's politics in the 80s, the US deputy secretary of state, Robert Zoellick, is in the capital Managua this week to head off the possibility of the Sandinista leader, Daniel Ortega, returning to power.

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Afghan farmers prevented from growing poppies under a British-led eradication programme have been forced to hand over their daughters to drug traffickers to settle their debts

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The arrival of a new baby at Grozny’s Central Maternity Hospital is often far from the joyous occasion it should be. Babies are born sick more often now than ever before, some made ill by the effects of environmental contamination.

Doctors say more than half the babies delivered there have serious illnesses - that’s around 1,100 in the first half of 2005 alone. Nationwide, the statistics are just as grim, with every fifth baby born with health problems such as pneumonia or defects of the heart and nervous system.

For the past 10 years, the small Russian republic of Chechnya has been fighting a fierce and bloody battle for independence.

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Karzai won re-election last October by appealing to voters' fears of the warlords who now control huge swaths of the country, but after he was back in office, he brought several of the most ruthless warlords into his cabinet. Then, U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad endorsed the decision, saying six months ago that the "decision to give a role to...regional strongmen is a wise policy."

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A detainee on a hunger strike at the U.S. prison for terrorism suspects at Guantánamo Bay wants a judge to order the removal of his feeding tube so he can be allowed to die, one of his lawyers said Tuesday.

Fawzi al-Odah of Kuwait asked his lawyers during a meeting last week to file court papers seeking the removal of his feeding tube "out of desperation" over his imprisonment without charges, attorney Tom Wilner said.

"He is willing to take a stand if it will bring justice," Mr. Wilner said.

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Amid all the natural and political disasters it faces, the White House is certainly tireless in its effort to legalize torture. This week, Vice President Dick Cheney proposed a novel solution for the moral and legal problems raised by the use of American soldiers to abuse prisoners and the practice of turning captives over to governments willing to act as proxies in doing the torturing. Mr. Cheney wants to make it legal for the Central Intelligence Agency to do this wet work.

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U.S. human rights groups have denounced before the U.N. Human Rights Committee that there are perhaps dozens of secret detention centres around the world where Washington is holding an unknown number of prisoners as part of its "war on terror".

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JANIS KARPINSKI: Well, we have to start at the very top, and the original memorandum directing interrogation -- harsher interrogation techniques and the departure from the Geneva Conventions starts at -- Alberto Gonzales was one of the people who made the recommendations to the President. I don't know if he talked about each detail of that departure or what that may imply, but I do know that the Secretary of Defense signed a very lengthy memorandum authorizing harsher techniques to be used in Afghanistan and specifically at Guantanamo Bay. This was the global war on terrorism. This was a prisoner of a different kind. You needed to get down at the same level as they were to be effective.

And those techniques migrated from Guantanamo Bay, with General Miller, to Iraq and were implemented at Abu Ghraib. So clearly, the Secretary of Defense; Secretary Cambone, his assistant who sent General Miller to Iraq with very specific instructions on how to work with the military intelligence people; General Fast, who was directing interrogation operations and giving instructions to Colonel Pappas on how to proceed and how to be more effective; General Sanchez, because this was his command, and he knew what General Fast was doing, and he knew what Colonel Pappas was doing, to the point that Colonel Pappas made a comment one time that he thought maybe he had a bruise on his chest because Colonel -- General Sanchez had repeatedly poked him in the chest telling him to “Get Saddam! Get Saddam!” and use whatever he needed to use to get the information.

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Ottawa engineer Maher Arar was tortured while in custody in Syria three years ago and he still suffers from the aftereffects of his treatment, a fact-finder appointed by the Arar inquiry concludes in a report released Thursday.

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"Cindy Sheehan has been arrested with about 25 other people because she was demonstrating without a permit in front of the White House," said lieutenant Phil Beck of the US Park Police.

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The Marines call it a necessary evil — taking over houses and buildings for military use. For the Iraqis who become unwilling hosts, it can be anything from a mild inconvenience to a disruption that tears apart lives.

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America's Central Intelligence Agency is being accused of hiding and interrogating some of its most important al- Qaeda captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe.

The secret facility is part of a covert prison system set up by the CIA nearly four years ago that at various times has included sites in eight countries, including Thailand, Afghanistan and several democracies in Eastern Europe, as well as a small center at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, current and former intelligence officials and diplomats from three continents, have told The Washington Post.

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Jumah Dossari had to visit the restroom, so the detainee made a quick joke with his American lawyer before military police guards escorted him to a nearby cell with a toilet. The U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had taken quite a toll on Dossari over the past four years, but his attorney, who was there to discuss Dossari's federal court case, noted his good spirits and thought nothing of his bathroom break.

Minutes later, when Dossari did not return, Joshua Colangelo-Bryan knocked on the cell door, calling out his client's name. When he did not hear a response, Colangelo-Bryan stepped inside and saw a three-foot pool of blood on the floor. Numb, the lawyer looked up to see Dossari hanging unconscious from a noose tied to the ceiling, his eyes rolled back, his tongue and lips bulging, blood pouring from a gash in his right arm.

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A man once considered a top al-Qaida operative in Southeast Asia escaped from a US-run detention facility in Afghanistan and cannot testify against the soldier who allegedly mistreated him, a defence lawyer involved in a prison abuse case said.

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But to act as if the international uproar lead by the Bush Administration, more specifically the pro-Israeli elements within the administration, is a sincere endeavor to unmask the truth and bring Hariri's murderers to justice is to succumb yet to another mockery as sizeable as that of Iraq's alleged WMDs.

The Bush Administration, which began 'rallying' the international community to isolate, sanction and mull over military action 'as a last resort' against Syria, is itself a barefaced violator of human rights, a burden felt almost exclusively by Arab and Muslim nations. Coincidently, as American diplomats are now stampeding to bring 'the perpetrators of Hariri's killing to justice' as phrased by the State Department - administration officials are pressuring Congressional lawmakers to exempt the CIA from a proposed ban on the "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment" of anyone held by US authorities, mostly Arabs and Muslims.

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Are we a society that now calls this justice? Dr. Rafil A. Dhafir was sentenced to 22 years in federal prison on Thursday, October 27th, 2005 for sending humanitarian aid to starving Iraqi civilians through his charity Help the Needy. Dr. Dhafir is an esteemed member of the Muslim community here in Syracuse, New York, and he is respected nationally and internationally. His sentencing follows 31 months of detention without bail and a 17-week trial. The government presented its case in minutia ­ 7 government agencies investigated Rafil Dhafir for 5 years. The defense called one witness for 15 minutes. One of Dr. Dhafir¹s lawyers commented in summation that the only government agency not represented was the Fish and Wildlife Service. The 60-count indictment included International Emergency Economic Powers Act, IEEPA, violation, money laundering, wire fraud and Medicare fraud, and the government won conviction on every count except one where they had mistakenly listed the wrong bank.

I believe it is impossible to overstate the message that has been sent to the Muslim community via this detention, prosecution and sentencing. It says, in no uncertain terms: ³If we can get Rafil Dhafir, we can get anyone². It also lets them know that a pillar of their society can be felled without so much as a call for equal justice from the non-Muslim community. Even as a person who is not Arab or Muslim, these messages frighten me. I have spent my entire life secure in the knowledge that my civil rights would be respected, as a consequence of attending this trial I no longer believe that to be true.

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