HERE’S MORE ON HONG KONG:

This month, the spark may have been lighted.

A half-million Hong Kong citizens protested on July 1 against a proposed bill that would bring communist-style suppression of dissent to the territory. Another protest was held on July 9 and then a third Sunday.

Many in the crowds sang “We Shall Overcome,” first in Cantonese, then in English, a bilingualism that reflects Hong Kong’s historic straddle between East and West.

As they did the 1989 pro-democracy protests in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, China’s autocratic rulers are now trying to douse this latest display of people power before it spreads to the 1.2 billion Chinese workers and peasants – perhaps even to Tibet – or further pushes the people of Taiwan away from thoughts of eventual reunification with the mainland.

These marches for freedom have forced Hong Kong’s already-unpopular chief executive, Tung Che Hwa, into political retreat. He first tried to water down the proposed security law; then he had to shelve it.

Most of all, he’s lost the respect of people who thought he would keep China’s promise that it would not meddle in Hong Kong’s affairs for 50 years, under an arrangement called “one country, two systems.”

Interesting times, as they say.

TO THE EXTENT THAT THIS STORY IS TRUE, it’s more support for the “flypaper theory” in which U.S. troops in Iraq are pulling terrorist attacks away from other targets:

DUBAI (Reuters) – A group claiming to be linked to the al Qaeda network said in an audio tape aired on an Arab television station on Sunday that they and not the followers of Saddam Hussein (news – web sites) were behind attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq (news – web sites).

“I swear by God no one from his (Saddam Hussein) followers carried out any jihad operations like he claims…they (attacks) are a result of our brothers in jihad,” said the unidentified voice on the tape which was broadcast by Dubai-based Al Arabiya television.

Can we believe this? Beats me.

IRAN UPDATE: Hossein Derakshan reports:

I don’t remember that Khatami has ever been under such a lot of pressure from everywhere. Aside from some intellectualls such as Abdolkarim Soroush and Mohsen Kadivar, whose recent open letters have been circulating among people in Iran, his own brother has wrote a letter to him, warning him of parallel security organizations’ methods of action against not only opposition, but even reformist activists and journalists. Maybe that’s why he has recently spoken about resignation again. He said that if people wanted him to go, he would step down.

The latest rumors is that hardliners are trying to arrest all influential reformist activists and based on their confessions under torture, accuse members of parliments of co-operating with Americans and cancel the whole parliment.

Stay tuned.

ZOGBYBLOG HAS MOVED to a new, non-Blogspot site. Adjust your bookmarks accordingly.

Nicholas Packwood’s Ghost of a Flea has a new home, too.

LOW POWER FM POSES NO SIGNIFICANT INTERFERENCE THREAT, according to a MITRE study reported by Jesse Walker over at Hit and Run.

Big broadcasters — and, most notably, NPR — have tried to shut out low power FM for years. This will make it harder, though I’m sure they won’t give up. But if Michael Powell takes the diversity-of-new-media argument seriously, he’ll get behind a drastic expansion of low-power FM now that the interference threat bogeyman has been exploded. As Walker notes:

If the study is taken seriously, it should open the door to a lot of new low-power radio stations, not just in the countryside but in the cities. The political moment for such a change may be ripe, given how many people in Congress are professing their discontent with media consolidation — a stance that, if sincere, should lead those politicians to support new sources of competition on the dial. Their response to this report will be a test of that sincerity.

I’m not holding my breath, though I’d love to have him prove me wrong on this.

I’M BACK. It was a nice trip. The InstaGrandmother is doing pretty well for 89, still living on her own, driving, and doing pretty much everything for herself, though she’s slowed down a bit in recent years. We had a very nice, quiet visit, playing cards, talking, and eating. I ignored the news, and didn’t even try to go online. That leaves me with some catching up to do (I swear that people send even more email when I go offline, even not counting Frank at IMAO’s spambots). I’ll try to plow through it when I get the chance.

I’M OFF to the Insta-Grandmother’s, to celebrate her 89th birthday. I’m taking the laptop, but I don’t think she even has touchtone service. Blogging will be intermittent at best until Sunday night. Be sure to note the story below, and to read the many fine blogs linked to the left.

Also, I managed to see Burning Annie, and I’ve posted a brief sort-of review over at GlennReynolds.com. Have a nice weekend until I get back!

THE SADDAM/OSAMA CONNECTION, DOCUMENTED. INTERESTING ARTICLE BY THE JUDGE I CLERKED FOR, Judge Gilbert S. Merritt of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, who has been in Iraq on a judicial-assistance mission with the ABA:

Through an unusual set of circumstances, I have been given documentary evidence of the names and positions of the 600 closest people in Iraq to Saddam Hussein, as well as his ongoing relationship with Osama bin Laden.

I am looking at the document as I write this story from my hotel room overlooking the Tigris River in Baghdad.

One of the lawyers with whom I have been working for the past five weeks had come to me and asked me whether a list of the 600 people closest to Saddam Hussein would be of any value now to the Americans.

I said, yes, of course. He said that the list contained not only the names of the 55 ”deck of cards” players who have already been revealed, but also 550 others.

When I began questioning him about the list, how he obtained it and what else it showed, he asked would it be of interest to the Americans to know that Saddam had an ongoing relationship with Osama bin Laden.

I said yes, the Americans have, so far as I am aware, have never been able to prove that relationship, but the president and others have said that they believe it exists. He said, ”Well, judge, there is no doubt it exists, and I will bring you the proof tomorrow.”

So today he brought me the proof, and there is no doubt in my mind that he is right.

The document shows that an Iraqi intelligence officer, Abid Al-Karim Muhamed Aswod, assigned to the Iraq embassy in Pakistan, is ”responsible for the coordination of activities with the Osama bin Laden group.”

The document shows that it was written over the signature of Uday Saddam Hussein, the son of Saddam Hussein. . . .

That is the story of the ”Honor Roll of 600,” and why I believe that President Bush was right when he alleged that Saddam was in cahoots with Osama and was coordinating activities with him.

It does not prove that they engaged together in any particular act of terror against the United States.

But it seems to me to be strong proof that the two were in contact and conspiring to perform terrorist acts.

Up until this time, I have been skeptical about these claims. Now I have changed my mind. There is, however, one big problem remaining: They are both still at large and the combined forces of the free world have been unable to find them.

Until we find and capture them, they will remain a threat — Saddam with the remnants of his army and supporters in combination with the worldwide terrorist organization of Osama bin Laden.

Read the whole thing. Those who know Judge Merritt — a lifelong Democrat and a man of unimpeachable integrity — will know just how significant this is.

UPDATE: I was in a rush when I posted this — literally getting ready to walk out the door — and neglected to thank Clayton Cramer for emailing me the link to this story, which I had entirely missed. I should also note that, although Judge Merritt is both smart and honest, he could of course be wrong, or deceived, here. I wonder, though, why this story hasn’t gotten more attention, given that it doesn’t seem to have been discredited anywhere.

BRITISH ASTRONOMER SIR MARTIN REES, whom I have taken to task in the past for his antipathy to space development, seems to have partially rethought his position in this article in Foreign Policy.

But only partially. Rees concludes with this paragraph:

Still, while I am optimistic about the ability of private enterprise to colonize the moon and lead us to Mars, I am less sanguine about what space pioneers will do once they establish a presence there. Will they be as scrupulous in preserving the natural environment as, say, the governments involved in the Antarctic project have been? Or will they simply exploit the planets they conquer, much as was done to the American West? Ultimately, how we get there is less important than what we do when we arrive.

Antarctica is, as I have suggested elsewhere, a lousy model for space — unless, that is, you’re a space scientist who wants space kept as your private (taxpayer-funded) playground. At any rate, as the experience of the Soviet Union — and of government-controlled land in the American West — illustrates, one generally finds that state managers are less scrupulous with regards to environmental matters than are private property holders.

ALEX KNAPP ON THE “BUSH LIED” MEME:

So what you’re left with is the Administration making a decision to rely on the word of British intelligence. In other words, they relied on a long-term ally and friend, whose military has conducted many joint operations with us and with whom intelligence is shared on a regular basis. The British still claim that their intelligence is correct. So the headline of this article is just completely inaccurate. But not only that, there is no indication that Mr. Bush himself had any knowledge of this discussion. In other words, the evidence that Bush lied? ZERO.

Heaven knows I’m no Bush supporter, but if this is the best the Democrats can do, then they’re going to keep losing for a long, long time. This was one sentence in one speech, people! The Bush Administration’s case for going into Iraq was a lot more than this statement. Hell, I wouldn’t even have remembered Bush had said it if it hadn’t sparked so much brouhaha. This was not a vital part of Bush’s case. It was hardly part of it at all.

Look, Bush is vulnerable on a lot of issues related to national security: overextension of troops, Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan, ties to the Saudis, a pathetic Homeland Security effort, the apparent willingness to go ahead and let N. Korea have nukes, and more. And what are the Democrats doing? Focusing their attention on this non-issue, and a little bit on the continuing conflict in Iraq (ie criticizing without offering any credible alternative–and “send in more troops” is not a credible alternative). But what the Democrats certainly are not offering is a credible foreign policy, particularly as regards terrorism. Instead, they offer petty, sniping bullshit.

Surely, the opposition party can do better than this. But instead, they’re so blinded by their hatred of Bush that they’re not accomplishing shit, nor are they offering any constructive alternative to his policies.

Damningly accurate criticism, especially from a guy who says he’s already decided not to vote for Bush on other grounds.

UPDATE: Howard Kurtz notes:

Bush is driving the Democrats and the liberals crazy. They don’t understand why everyone doesn’t see what they see. It’s not so much that they want to refight the war over the war — some supporting toppling Saddam — but this is obviously an opening they can use to tarnish the president’s image on a national security issue. The problem is, most folks don’t seem to care.

I think that people are tuning them out because their motivation is so transparent, and because they’ve piled on a bunch of issues like this, only to have them collapse one after another. It’s the whole “crying wolf” thing.

I don’t know why Day by Day isn’t in newspapers nationwide. On the upside, though, if it were I probably couldn’t post it here.

EUGENE VOLOKH CATCHES CBS IN NOT JUST ONE, BUT TWO LIES: Well, they’re more clearly lies than anything Bush said about WMD, anyway. As Volokh says, “Seems like there are potential credibility gaps all around here.”

Indeed.

UPDATE: CBS has changed the headline but it’s still false.

THE “ENUMERATED POWERS ACT” is currently before the House Subcommittee on the Constitution. It deserves more attention. Robert Prather is giving it some.

HERE’S MORE ON RACISM AND CRUSHING OF DISSENT at Cal Poly. (Here’s an earlier post on the subject, from InstaPundit.)

PETER BERKOWITZ WRITES ON prospects for democracy in Kuwait. He seems to think they’re not too bad.

IT’S ALL ABOUT OOIILLLL! It has to be, right? I mean, it just has to be!

WELL, THIS ISN’T A COMPLETE SHOCK:

President Jacques Chirac negotiated a secret deal to protect Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb general accused of Europe’s worst atrocities since the Second World War, according to evidence submitted to the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague.

M Chirac allegedly agreed to sabotage the extradition of Gen Mladic to face genocide charges for his role in the planned extermination of Bosnian Muslims, including the massacre of 7,000 men and boys in the UN safe haven of Srebrenica in July 1995.

Typical. And yet it’s the United States that gets savaged for a lack of commitment to international law. . . .

UPDATE: Heh:

French President Jacques Chirac, a vocal supporter of the International Criminal Court, the European Union, and the United Nations said today that France is a sovereign nation and international courts or tribunals are “suddenly a bad idea.”

A spokesman for Mr. Chirac said his new pronouncement has “no connection whatever” with yesterday’s revelation that the U.N. war crimes tribunal has received evidence that Mr. Chirac may have cut a deal to protect accused Bosnian Serb General Ratko Mladic.

Gen. Mladic, still at large, stands accused of war crimes resulting in the deaths of thousands.

“Globalism is overrated,” said a written statement from Mr. Chirac. “International tribunals and courts open the doors to political opportunists with anti-French agendas. This, I find, is suddenly a bad idea.”

Double-heh.

ED CONE WRITES ON LIBERTARIAN REVOLUTION in America.