Auto­ex­ploita­tion. Eugene Volokh links to news that police have brought up a Latrobe, PA, res­i­dent on child porn charges for cir­cu­lat­ing pho­tos of a 15-year-old girl on the Inter­net. Which sounds like good news… except the per­son they’ve charged is the 15-year-old girl, who uploaded the pho­tos her­self. Now, I don’t know the details; prob­a­bly the girl could use a lit­tle coun­sel­ing if, at that age, she’s shoot­ing strangers in chat rooms pics of “her­self in var­i­ous states of undress and per­form­ing a vari­ety of sex­ual acts.” But it seems a touch bizarre to pun­ish her for exploit­ing… her­self. [Hit & Run]

Vic­tim­less crimes have been pop­u­lar with the gov­ern­ment for years, but this is the first time I’ve heard of them charg­ing a “vic­tim” with the crime that she was sup­pos­edly the vic­tim of.

Maybe None of Them are Ter­ror­ists. Con­sider this the­o­ret­i­cal pos­si­bil­ity: if no weapons of mass destruc­tion have been found in Iraq, is it also pos­si­ble that there are no al-Qaida ter­ror­ists in Guan­tá­namo? It seems far fetched, put so bluntly. If only by chance, it would seem likely that some of the detainees might be ter­ror­ists. The US sec­re­tary of defense, Don­ald Rums­feld, argues that the inhu­mane incar­cer­a­tion, the secrecy and the abuse of any prin­ci­ples of jus­tice are all jus­ti­fied by the fact that these pris­on­ers are the hard­est of hard cases. But given what we know of those who have been released, the refusal of the US to open the evi­dence to chal­lenge, and the secrecy that sur­rounds the prison and all who lan­guish there, the propo­si­tion is worth con­sid­er­ing. And since none of us have been allowed to know much, it is worth lis­ten­ing to those who know a lit­tle more.

Out of more than 600 peo­ple, only six have been des­ig­nated for trial. Nearly 100 detainees have been released with no more expla­na­tion than had been given for their deten­tion. One Afghan detainee was handed $100 by a US mil­i­tary offi­cer as he arrived at Kabul air­port, as though he were a taxi dri­ver being tipped for car­ry­ing his bags. (link)

The com­par­i­son with Iraq is par­tic­u­larly apt. This is an admin­is­tra­tion that we know either uses com­pletely unre­li­able intel­li­gence or is lying to the Amer­i­can peo­ple. They’ve pre­sented “evi­dence” before that doesn’t prove what they claim it proves. How far has the rot spread? Shouldn’t we try to find out? [Al-Muhajabah’s Islamic Blogs]

This raises a good ques­tion. Given what we know about the Feds grab­bing hun­dreds of inno­cent peo­ple after 9/11 and later releas­ing them, I would be at all sur­prised if most of the so-called ter­ror­ists are actu­ally innocent.

Iraqis Drag Four Corpses Through Streets [AP World News]

The author of the arti­cle noticed the sim­i­lar­ity to events in Somalia.

Report: iTunes Pepsi Promo. It ends today! [Mac­In­Touch]

The pro­mo­tional Pepsi bot­tles never did appear in Los Ange­les. I saw them in Austin dur­ing my trip there last week, but I didn’t have any luck with the four bot­tles I pur­chased there.

Hero of Peace and Cap­i­tal­ism. The great Kiyoshi Amemiya of Hitachi, the busi­ness­man who–after see­ing the hor­rific results of US land­mines in Cambodia–built the world’s first mine-clearing machine, which he gives away, but will not sell to any mil­i­tary. (Link thanks to Aaron Gunn) Read… [LewRockwell.com Blog]

Does pas­sen­ger screen­ing sys­tem tar­get dis­senters?. I was there when it hap­pened. Our fact-finding group from TransAfrica Forum had just returned from Venezuela and was wait­ing for our bag­gage to be unloaded from the plane at the Miami Inter­na­tional Air­port. We had cleared immi­gra­tion with no prob­lem and were almost ready for con­nect­ing flights after a gru­el­ing week­long tour.

For some unknown rea­son he has been flagged. (link)

There have been a lot of sto­ries float­ing around about activists and crit­ics of the Bush admin­is­tra­tion hav­ing trou­ble when­ever they fly. Fun fact: Glover has endorsed Kucinich for pres­i­dent and done a lot of cam­paign­ing for him. [Al-Muhajabah’s Islamic Blogs]

It’s not just Com­mu­nist actors hav­ing trou­ble, either. As I wrote a few weeks ago, pro-freedom writer Frank Ney isn’t just sub­ject to harrassment–he’s not allowed to fly at all.

Coun­tert­er­ror­ism (by Gov­ern­ment) is Impos­si­ble. The gov­ern­ment can spend many years and bil­lions of dol­lars pre­vent­ing attacks that have already occurred by doing things it might have wished it had done years or decades ago. But note that there has been no dis­cus­sion at all of the actual poli­cies that every­one knows inspired the attacks and made them eas­ier to carry out.

Just to men­tion a few: the sta­tion­ing of troops in Saudi Ara­bia, the sanc­tions against Iraq, the con­tin­u­ing inter­ven­tion in the ever-lasting Israel-Palestine con­flict, the prop­ping up of sec­u­lar dic­ta­tor­ships all over the Arab world, the rais­ing up and fund­ing of Islamic rad­i­cals to counter Soviet influ­ence in Afghanistan, and the reg­u­la­tory pro­hi­bi­tions in the US against per­mit­ting air­lines to man­age their own secu­rity issues. The US gov­ern­ment can­not pur­sue all these poli­cies and then react in shock when it turns out that some peo­ple exploit them with vio­lent intent.

Many observers of these poli­cies pre­dicted that some­thing along these lines would take place. You don’t need to be a “coun­tert­er­ror­ism” bureau­crat to see it. The response to the events of 9–11 around the world was very telling. While the world felt awful for Amer­ica, most every­one (except Amer­i­cans) believed that some­thing like this was inevitable. As for who was respon­si­ble, the ene­mies of the US have become count­less. The government’s response was to make ever more ene­mies, which is what the recent US pol­icy in Iraq has done. [Lud­wig von Mises Insti­tute]

From

this Mil­lion Moms Meetup page: [high­road]
bq.
“I am very con­cerned about pro­lif­er­a­tion of small arms among the
peo­ple most likely to mis­use it: police offi­cers, Trea­sury, BLM and
FDA employ­ees. I’d like MMM to address that press­ing prob­lem.” — Oleg
Volk
[End the War on Free­dom]

Free­dom of the Press in Lib­er­ated Iraq. U.S. solid­ers shut down an Iraqi oppo­si­tion news­pa­per. The ban, from the office of Iraqi strong­man Paul Bre­mer, is sup­posed to last 60 days. [Hit & Run]

This sort of thing is likely to be rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the sort of “democ­racy” the Feds plan to create–everyone will be free to vote, but the only can­di­dates allowed will be those who the US gov­ern­ment approves of.

I’ve posted my notes from REAL World 2004 in a Stuffit file. The notes are in a “Tin­der­box” doc­u­ment, so if you want to read them and don’t already have Tin­der­box you’ll need to down­load the demo version.