Nothing says "confess!" like the threats of the secret police: America's Other War: On Liberty (Dan Gillmor)

The feds are using thuggish tactics to extort convictions in cases with alleged terrorism connections. Today's Wall Street Journal reports on incredible pressure facing the defendants in the suburban-Buffalo case involving Yemeni Americans. Here's a quote from the story:

"Last week's guilty pleas came after the government threatened the defendants with "enemy combatant" status -- which meant their cases would have been pulled out of court, and the men handed over to the military for indefinite incommunicado confinement, according to prosecutors and defense lawyers. Prosecutors also threatened to bring a new indictment that would have included treason charges, which carry a potential death penalty, and weapons charges which automatically would have added 30 years to prison sentences, the lawyers said. The two defendants who pleaded guilty last week face a maximum of 10 years in prison.

"Several experts on criminal law said the threat of enemy-combatant status to extract a guilty plea amounts to an unfair threat, since if imposed it would leave defendants with little chance of mounting a defense. John G. Douglass, a former federal prosecutor and law professor at the University of Richmond in Virginia, said, "If the government is using that as a tool in plea bargaining, then we have in fact reached a troubling stage in our criminal-justice system."

    

SARS Update: US holds plane in virus scare (BBC, which has a very good package of SARS stories)

An American passenger plane has been quarantined at a California airport after four people on board reported symptoms similar to a deadly pneumonia that has spread across the globe, airline officials said.

The news comes as an expert warned that the disease - which is thought to have originated in the Far East - could be more contagious than previously thought.

It also claimed two more lives in Canada on Tuesday, bringing the number of deaths worldwide to 64, while more than 1,800 people have been infected.

American Airlines Flight 128 from Tokyo is being held on the tarmac at San Jose International Airport after two passengers and two crew members complained of feeling unwell, airport officials said.

    

Es Habeas Corpus? Free Mike Hawash! (Free Mike Hawash, via Talk Left & Boing Boing)

"e;On Thursday morning, March 20, a long-time employee of mine, Mike (Maher) Hawash, was arrested outside Intel's Hillsboro offices and taken into custody by the FBI and members of the Joint Terrorism Task Force. We later learned he was being "detained" as a material witness. Simultaneously, FBI agents in bulletproof vests and carrying M-16s woke Mike's wife and three children in their Hillsboro home, searched it for four hours, and presented Mrs. Hawash with a grand jury subpoena.

"e;All of the court documents in this case are sealed. Mike was held incommunicado from his wife and attorneys for several days. When they did contact him, neither he, his attorneys, nor anyone else knows why he is being detained."e;

    

Hasid Trip: 15 Are Accused of Involvement in a Multinational Drug Ring (NYTimes)

Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn said yesterday that they had broken up a multinational ring that laundered tens of millions of dollars in proceeds from the sale of cocaine and ecstasy. Fifteen men were arrested yesterday in New York, Miami, Houston and Israel, prosecutors said. Court papers describe an import-export operation with branches in the Netherlands, Colombia, Florida and Texas, and Swiss bank accounts swollen with cash smuggled in and out of the United States in parcels labeled "jewelry."

The operation was run by Natan Banda, 31, who lives in Brooklyn and in Kiryas Joel, a Hasidic community in Rockland County, N.Y., according to a complaint unsealed yesterday. Drug traffickers would call Mr. Banda on one of two cellphones designated the blue phone and the red phone and arrange to give him money in amounts of hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars, which he would have converted into numerous small-denomination checks, the court papers say.

Yudel's Line: ivdu et Hashem b'simcha -- serve God with joy, says the Psalmist. I'm wonder whether the Ba'al Shem Tov would agree with the Born-again tee-totalling recovered drunk drivers who are leading us through the current Prohibition. Then again, Jewish law condoned marital sodomy centuries before the American states decided to ban it as a "crime against nature."

    

April Fools? A Weather Report

Snow. Snow falling today. Not much, just a dusting. But doesn't anyone in charge remember that it's April? Or that just a couple days ago it was sunny in the high 60s?

And don't try telling me that it's an April Fool's joke. Last night -- March 31, may I note -- there was an intense, though brief, flurry that covered the lawn in white.

Happy Passover, all!

    

Pork Barrel Security: A Red-Blue Terror Alert (Paul Krugman, NYTimes)

"In its main grant programs, the Homesland Security department makes no attempt to assess needs. Instead, each state receives a base of 0.75 percent of the total, regardless of its population; the rest is then allocated in proportion to population.

This is a very good deal for states with small populations, like Wyoming or Montana.

It's a very bad deal for states like California or New York, which receives only 4.7 percent of the money.

And since New York and other big urban states remain the most likely targets of another major attack, it's a very bad deal for the country."

    

Who Ever Said Editing a Web Directory is Easy? Yahoo links to Communist Anti-Zionism (A YudelLine Original!)

Here's what I found on my My.Yahoo.Com home page this morning:

Yudel's Line: The "Hidden History of Zionism" (link not supplied, since I don't want to pass my Google karma on to Serbs) turns out to the typical anti-Semitic mixture of half-truths and lies. The author, Ralph Schoenman, seems to have a long-time connection to the Communist Party; he currently spouts a variety of conspiracy theories, stretching from JFK to 911. Ralph Schoenman seems to get a great deal of play from his youthful work with Bertrand Russel; the specifics of which have been the subject of a libel suit or two.

The Balkan Unity site, whose reprinting of the 1988 book is linked to by Yahoo, is apparently connected to the Communist Internationalist League - KDE (trotskyists), according to its anti-Freedom-for-West-Timor page.

For the record: I have nothing against such material being availabe on the web, or accessible through search engines: Ultimately, freedom of publication is only good to minority groups and minority ideas, such as Jews and Zionism.

In publishing a less-than-thorough web directory, however, Yahoo is on thinner ground. And while posting a link in its Judaism/Zionism/Opposing_Views category may be appropriate, whoever put it on its Front Page Web Site Tracker for the Judaism category made some sort of mistake. (Alas, however the Web Site Tracker section works, it seems not to be a complete list of all sites added to Yahoo in that category.)

Anyway, that's my initial take on Yahoo and Ralph Schoenman.

(Did I mention that Ralph Schoenman is patronizing to Muslims and Arabs? Isn't that Orientalist conceit at the heart of the consipiracy theories that insist Saudis couldn't destroy the Twin Towers, that such a clever, well-planned act could only be carried out by Jews? I know if I were a member of Al Queida, I'd be deeply insulted by assertions such as those of Ralph Schoeman....)