Kudos to Newsday, which (unlike the NY Times thus far) today notes the approaching one-year anniversary of Rasul v. Bush, the Supreme Court ruling that Guantanamo detainees are entitled to judicial review. It was hailed as a victory by civil libertarians at the time, yet detainees have had no access to the courts since then. Note that Newsday rightly uses the word "courts" to refer to the civilian judiciary and not the Pentagon's special "tribunals" for the detainees, which are laden with extraordinarily onerous restrictions, and are arguably a legal fiction. Here are some excerpts from Newsday's coverage:

Police in Zimbabwe fought running battles June 14 with residents of Makhokhoba, one of the oldest townships of the country's second city, Bulawayo as they demolished illegal structures. One woman stripped naked in protest after police destroyed her shack (a traditional African gesture of shaming men). A police spokesman said that more than 20,000 structures had been destroyed and 30,000 arrested in the three-week nationwide operation.

NY Times columnist Nicholas Kristof is something of a mixed bag: he makes frequent noises like a Terror War hardliner and quasi-Ashcroftian freedom-hater, but (even if, perhaps, for some bad Arabophobe reasons) he was among the first to raise the alarm on Darfur, and stayed on top of the issue even as the Powers That Be sought to ignore it. Today he gets a big thumbs-up from us for bringing this egregious injustice in Pakistan to the world's attention:

Raped, Kidnapped and Silenced

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
New York Times
June 14, 2005

No wonder the Pakistan government can't catch Osama bin Laden. It is too busy harassing, detaining - and now kidnapping - a gang-rape victim for daring to protest and for planning a visit to the United States.

Mexican federal army troops have taken control of the border city of Nuevo Laredo, and detained 41 local police for questioning. The crackdown comes after local police opened fire on federal agents sent in to investigate the murder of the newly-appointed police chief. A surge of drug-related violence in the city has claimed 45 lives this year.

Mexican President Vicente Fox launched "the mother of all battles" on the drug trade, sending hundreds of armed police to the border cities in March to restore order. But concerns about lawlessness were reignited last week with the killing of Nuevo Laredo's police chief, Alejandro Dominguez, a day after he took office.

Well, at least this makes the NY Times, even if they buried it on page 14. Thanks to TruthOut for forwarding it:

Some Held at Guantánamo Are Minors, Lawyers Say
By Neil A. Lewis
The New York Times

Monday 13 June 2005

Washington - Lawyers representing detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, say that there still may be as many as six prisoners who were captured before their 18th birthday and that the military has sought to conceal the precise number of juveniles at the prison camp.

A suicide bomber crashed his car into a US military patrol just outside Kandahar June 13, killing himself and wounding four US soldiers, one seriously. The US ambassador in Kabul, Zalmay Khalilzad, condemned such attacks as "cowardly acts of desperation, committed by criminals who move in shadows and hide in holes" and vowed to catch those responsible. (IHT, June 14)

David Horowitz' website Discover the Networks: A Guide to the Political Left is pretty funny, evoking what Richard Hofstadter called "the paranoid style in American politics." Its list of un-American "radicals" includes both George Soros and Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman (neither "leftists"), as well as Death Row celebrity Mumia Abu-Jamal and pro-death penalty ex-prez Bill Clinton. What isn't so funny is that Discover the Networks apparently exchanged links with a truly evil site called Target of Opportunity. The disingenuous "disclaimer" on this site is actually an explicit incitement to violence:

A top member of a banned Islamist group who predicted the fall of Morocco's monarchy and called for the setting up of a republic will go on trial this month. "I'm accused of attacking the monarchic regime and face three to five years imprisonment," said Nadia Yassine, daughter of Abdeslam Yassine, the spiritual leader of the Justice and Charity group. The group, which rejects violence, is seen as the main opponent to the North African monarchy. It has a strong following in universities and is popular in poor areas.

Nadia told a newspaper last week she expected the monarchy to collapse soon and that "Moroccans can live without King Mohammed." She also said the Moroccan constitution was "worthy of history's bin" and called for the setting up of a republic.