BANGKOK, Thailand -- Burma is apparently using photos sent to Web sites, TVs and other media to arrest protestors, while praising China's 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown which turned foreign news videos into virtual wanted posters to capture its dissidents.

"Residents say military trucks patrol neighborhood streets during the night with loudspeakers broadcasting warnings: 'We have photographs. We are going to make arrests!'" the respected, U.S.-funded, Thailand-based, Irrawaddy magazine reported on Wednesday (Oct. 3). Associated Press and other news organizations also reported the chilling quotes.

Burma's junta employed camera-wielding security forces during September's pro-democracy marches.

But the regime is probably also gleaning the faces of protestors from countless video and still photos shot in Rangoon by journalists, bloggers, and residents who used cell phones, email, and Web-sites to transmit pictures during more than two weeks of public marches.

The American Empire and the Commonwealth of God – A Political, Economic, Religious Statement. John Cobb, Richard Falk, David Griffin and Catherine Keller. Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, Kentucky, 2006.

Based solely on the title, this book appeared to be something that could have some strong revelations on the nature of the American Empire and its relationship with religion. Having read several books from the religious right, including the first volume of the “Left Behind” series (summed up as a compilation of Star Wars, Harlequin Romance, and end of times theology), I thought this volume might have a more rational approach than the fear mongering and devilish rhetoric that saturates the right wing material.

The leaders of today's Congress have made clear through numerous lobby visits that unless we can produce polls that show congressional elections in November 2008 hang on the question of impeachment, nobody's going to be impeached. Bush and Cheney can continue to ignore subpoenas, spy illegally, kidnap, torture, murder, and rewrite laws. They can launch another illegal war. They can rig the elections. They could barbeque babies on the White House lawn. It doesn't matter. They will not be impeached.

Never mind the whole question of whether future presidents and vice presidents will be expected to obey any laws. It's all about elections. The Democrats played this same game when Reagan was investigated in the Iran Contra scandal. The Democrats exercised restraint. In the end, they restrained themselves right into a defeat and created the Bush dynasty.

With the Senate embracing the reckless Kyl-Lieberman amendment, we've moved one step closer to attacking Iran. But there's still time for Congress to assert itself against yet another needless war with massive destructive potential. By defining Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps, a core branch of the Iranian military, as a  foreign terrorist organization, Kyl-Lieberman put the U.S. Senate on record as vindicating the Bush-Cheney line that Iranian proxies are part of a global conspiracy, linking Al Qaeda, Iraqi insurgents, Hamas, Hezbollah, and any other enemy the administration wants to list. The bill now makes it far easier for Bush to manufacture some Tonkin Gulf-style excuse, then use it to justify an attack. No wonder Senator Jim Webb called it Cheney's fondest pipe dream.

October 2nd will mark the birth anniversary of Human Rights Activist, Mahatma Gandhi and for the first time, the United Nations is officially proclaiming this day to be the International Day of Non-violence. Hopefully, on this day we can all spare a little of our time to reflect on how little we have all understood Mahatma Gandhi's message, after all everyday we seem to plunge into a worse state of affairs and drift away farther from Gandhi's respectable message; "I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent."

I wonder what it means to have an International Non-violence day. Does it mean that American soldiers, UN 'peacekeepers', Nato Forces, the Israeli military and Blackwater USA will put down their weapons for the day and reflect on the horrors that they are committing in the vague name of an international war on 'terror'? Does it mean that they will all continue killing as a few peaceful marchers around the world proclaim in total sanity, that the insanity that prevails is making it hard for peace-loving humans to coexist with this madness? Or those it mean, that the United