Sunday, December 18, 2005
Stumped: Condi Unable to Explain What Gave Bush Authority to Eavesdrop Without Warrant
This morning on Meet the Press, Tim Russert asked Condoleezza Rice a simple question: what is the specific statute that gives President Bush the authority to eavesdrop on Americans without a warrant?
She had no answer:
RUSSERT: What Democrats and Republicans in Congress are asking, what is the authority that you keep citing? What law? What statute? Where in the Constitution does it say that the President can eavesdrop, wiretap American citizens without a court order?
RICE: Tim, the President has authorities under FISA which we are using and using actively. He also has authorities that derive from his role as Commander in Chief and his need to protect the country. He has acted within his constitutional authority and within statutory authority. Now, I am not a lawyer and I am quite certain that the Attorney General will address a lot of these questions.
Rice said several times this morning that she’s “not a lawyer.” That is irrelevant. Rice was the National Security Advisor when President Bush authorized the NSA program, and said today that she was aware of Bush’s decision at the time. Shouldn’t she know why it was legal?
* * *
"I am the commander in chief, and the Constitution is just a goddamned piece of paper"
by Joe London
In a press release, after Bush's alarming revelation of having authorised secret eavesdropping on American citizens, Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) stated: " The President believes that he has the power to override the laws that Congress has passed. This is not how our democratic system of government works. The President does not get to pick and choose which laws he wants to follow. He is a president, not a king".
Exactly. That is a key concept, Bush is not a king, he is the president.
The president of the United States is obliged to respect the law and the Constitution, even if he may personally consider them "Goddamned piece of paper". Through a system of checks and balances, modern democracies guarantee that no abuse or arbitrary use of power is made. The law and the constitution are the covenant between the elected president and citizens. When a president, for whatever reasons, eludes those checks and balances through stealth actions, he behaves arbitrarily and a door is dangerously open to any unlawful excess.
When the president justifies his 30 secret authorizations to eavesdrop on American citizens (in violation of the 4th amendment) as a measure to protect citizens themselves, he misses the core concept of being a president in a democratic system. No claimed "good heart" and "good intentions" can be considered acceptable reasons to violate laws and the constitutional rights of citizens.
This is why Condoleezza Rice could not credibly reply to the simple question of "what is the specific statute that gives President Bush the authority to eavesdrop on Americans without a warrant?". Exactly because there is no statute.
If the USA wants to remain a democracy that is.
By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 18, 2005; A07
After a series of embarrassing disclosures, Congress is reconsidering its relatively lenient oversight of the Bush administration.
Lawmakers have been caught by surprise by several recent reports, including the existence of secret U.S. prisons abroad, the CIA's detention overseas of innocent foreign nationals, and, last week, the discovery that the military has been engaged in domestic spying. After five years in which the GOP-controlled House and Senate undertook few investigations into the administration's activities, the legislative branch has begun to complain about being in the dark.
On Friday, after learning that the National Security Agency was eavesdropping on conversations in the United States, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) said that the activity was "wrong and it can't be condoned at all," and that his committee "can undertake oversight on it."
That same day, the House approved a resolution that would direct the administration to provide House and Senate intelligence committees with classified reports on the secret U.S. prisons overseas.
Democrats have long complained about a dearth of congressional investigations into Bush administration activities, but their criticism has been gaining validation from others after the botched response to Hurricane Katrina, problems in Iraq and ethical lapses. [...]
[Read the whole article here.]
Saturday, December 17, 2005
From News24com:
Dublin - An Irish government body said on Friday it had received claims from nearly 15 000 people seeking compensation for abuse suffered in child care institutions, most of them run by the Roman Catholic church. [...]
priest scandal, upbringing & education, religion & mental illness, catholic hypocrisy
by Joe London
But then I was overcome by a sense of disgust at the thought that there does not seem to be one single day without a piece of news which reveals ever new iniquities of the Bush administration: pre-war intelligence deceit, torture, secret prisons, disrespect of international treaties, cronyisms, incompetence, corruption. News even mentioning Bush stating that "the constitution is just a goddamned piece of paper".
And now we learn of an illegal infringement of the privacy of American citizens.
More and more, the second mandate of the Bush administration is looking like a free rendition of Dante's Inferno, with ever new, endless, lower levels of faults and sins. Is there an end to this copious amount of slime?
And, note this, in this case even the media have been accomplices: the New York Times admitted they had held their report for one year, just because the White House asked them not to talk about it! It is becoming too much, a disgusting state of police in which even the media do what they are told by the power. If even the media stop being watchdogs, who is going to act as a watchdog of an administration that does not seem to respect any limit or ethics? Every day something new comes out.
"Terrorism" is being used as an excuse for military spending, suppression of liberties, and to push the agenda of obscure corporate-military powers (PNAC). But what is disgusting is also seeing the compliance of the media and of a paper like the New York Times.
Are people going to have a break? And has the time not arrived yet for a big, fat impeachment of the current 'merican prezzy?
Thursday, December 15, 2005
Historian Howard Zinn, author of "A People's History of the United States"
Interesting interview with historian Howard Zinn on Raw Story (click here).
Here an excerpt:
Zinn: I think the war is about several things... [not so much about oil as] about the availability of oil, because if we didn't control the oil, Iraq would have to sell the oil; they would sell it to us and to everybody else. The war isn't really about oil but about the price of oil which makes the loss of life even more horrendous.
The control of oil is certainly a major factor. All of our policies since the end of World War II have been based on the control of oil, hence the overthrow of Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran in 1953 over his nationalization of oil. Beyond oil, it's a matter of empire. Were the French in Indochina because of rubber? Yes, but that was only part of it. Did Mussolini go into Ethiopia because the Italians needed land? No, Mussolini wanted to restore the glory of the Roman Empire, and the United States is hellbent on creating the greatest empire in world history. It's oil, and it's empire and it's business.
And it's control. Wars create a situation where the ruling party is better able to control the situation, hence the Patriot Act, and war is an opportunity for profiteering.... I remember during the Vietnam war one of the great posters was done by a quite well-known artist Seymour Chwast, and the poster simply said in big letters: "War Is Good for Business: Invest Your Son." Very chilling, but true.
Raw Story: Do you think we can win in Iraq?
Zinn: The overall sense is not even it's a question of being a winnable war, it's a war we shouldn't win. If we were winning that wouldn't have made it right; the point is we shouldn't be there in the first place. We don't belong there. We invaded that country. It didn't attack us. It's as clear cut a case of naked aggression as you can find. People were sentenced to hang at Nuremberg in World War II for engaging in a war of aggression against other nations and that's what we've done in Iraq. Just reading about Tookie [who was executed by lethal injection in California]... and here is Schwarzenegger showing no remorse... Bush and Cheney and the whole White House group are responsible for the killing of millions of people. They have shown no remorse. So we are in a crazy world where this black man who may have killed four people twenty years ago is sent to prison and other people who are killing people daily right now are free. We've living in absurdity. [...]
[Read the whole interview here. Other topics are touched, including the role of media]
Tuesday, December 13, 2005
Girl's tips on coping when parents split up win book deal
By Ian Evans
Libby Rees, 10, wrote Help. Hope and Happiness, a book on how to cope with parent's divorce (photo from the Telegraph)
A GIRL who wrote tips to help children to cope when their parents divorce has won a publishing contract.
Libby Rees, who was nine when she wrote the book, was flown to Scotland with her mother to sign the deal after the company made an offer within 24 hours of receiving the manuscript.
Help, Hope and Happiness includes tips and hints as well as illustrations on the ways she used to cope with the separation of her parents 3½ years ago. Libby, now 10, said last night: “It’s very exciting. I couldn’t believe it when they said ‘yes’. I hope it helps other children.”
[...]
LIBBY’S TOP TIPS TO BEAT BLUES
Take a break Try to find some time to be alone. Enjoy a favourite film or book. This will give you some valuable time off from worrying
Phrase Think of a funny phrase which always makes you laugh!
Positive thinking Whenever anything happens try to look for the positive aspects. Try looking in the mirror, first thing in the morning and say out loud to yourself “I am better and better every day!” five times
An achievement Find something that you fear and try to overcome it, say for instance handling a spider
TGI Night TGI stands for Thank God It’s . . . then you fill in the day of the week which is good for you to have as a special night. It could be Friday because it is the end of the school week or maybe Tuesday because your favourite TV programme is on
Review your week Take some time out to review the week just gone and decide what worked well as well as what was a problem for you. Then think about how you could change the outcome
Let it all out Find a place where you can be all alone and let it all out. Scream, shout, stamp your feet, whatever you feel like doing. This physical activity will help you to release all the anger inside. Find a heap of sticks and stones and throw them
[read the whole article here]
by Joe London
Violence adds to violence, death adds to death, in a perpetual pernicious cycle.
How can those who survive rejoice for judicial acts which make them alikes of those they murder?
Is justice a process by which the pious and the righteous macabrely disguise themselves as criminals and with complacent aseptic rituals in lime-green execution chambers, without tribal dances but with barbaric satisfaction, kill other human beings, challenging their own fallibility, while perhaps invoking God?
You keep celebrating your greatness and myths, with an incessant mantra of hypnosis and self-indulgence, suggesting that God himself has a special spot for you, America.
But when you give to those who have already, and take away from the destitute, when you neglect to strengthen the levees that protect your children against the floods of poverty, despair, self-destruction and violence, and when, despite all this, you kill those who have not been lucky enough to grow in a sound and fertile soil of security and love, and deny that they might live, if only in a nine by five foot prison cell, pursuing a legal homicide instead, when you do all this, America, if God exists, he blesses those you kill, those you have failed to help, not the self-complacent and murderous justice of the fortunate.
by Joe London
If Stanley Tookie Williams were not the man he has become, the man who has written books against violence, helped thousands of people to renounce gangs life and giving up violence, a Nobel Prize nominee for Peace and for Literature; were he still the thug and young criminal he was when he was condemned in 1981 for murder, even in this case I would say "save him".
Because no man can have the right to kill another man, claiming to administer justice in doing so. Because justice should not have anything to do with barbaric vindictiveness and "eye for eye and tooth for tooth". Because capital punishment clashes with any modern concept of sentence as a possibility of redemption. All this without mentioning the too frequent errors and misjudgements, and the differences in sentences according to whether the accused can afford a decent lawyer or not, and the fact that any crime is, without doubt, also associated to the chronic incapacity of society to give relief to vast masses of hopeless people who live in moral and economical poverty and without the same access to culture as others.
It just does not make sense to say thou shall not kill, and then make exceptions, if only for claimed justice, which being human is fallible anyway.
In 2004 the USA was the 4th country in the world for numbers of capital punishments, after China, Iran and Vietnam. What a company for a country which claims to be a nest for democracy and civilisation. Capital punishment is simbly barbaric and repulsive.
Stanley Tookie Williams is living his last few hours, unless any unpredictable fact occurs. Read a very interesting interview with him here.
Here you can find his The Tookie Protocol for Peace. On Amazon, here, a choice of books he has written.
Monday, December 12, 2005
The Guardian reports today that a group of American activists is fasting outside the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay to protest against the treatment of suspected terrorists detained at the base.
The U.S. government states that the detainees are treated humanly, however their status has been unilaterally defined as "enemy combatants", they are without trial and are not considered entitled to the same rights established under the Geneva Conventions (read here many reports on Guantanamo). The disrespect of International law appears an ordinary practice of the American government, as procedures like extraordinary rendition or the organisation of a network of secret prisons clearly show. A practice that gravely mines American credibility as an "exporter of democracy".
The group of activists now protesting against the treatment of Guantanamo detainees is named Witness Against Torture, and is largely Christian, the article reports. Obviously Christians cast in an altogether different mould compared to those who turn their eyes blind on the iniquities of the Bush administration.
Some call themselves Christians, attend church on Sundays with self-complacency while supporting illegal wars based on lies which kill tens of thousands of innocent people, and not caring if their government tortures or treats inhumanly or uses illegal weapons (white phosphorous), nor if it contributes to natural disasters through uncontrasted global warming. Moreover not caring about capital punishment or about the rejection of international treaties meant to protect women and children and cultural minorities. What do they call themselves Christians for?
Surely some will say the above is taken out of context. But without mentioning Freud, I think by now there is enough evidence to wonder whether the above statement somehow animate or not the actions of George W. Bush, the "compassionate" and "Christian" neo-con theo-president.
Sunday, December 11, 2005
George Bush: "The Constitution? Just a Goddamned piece of paper!"
Any doubts? The lies and the deceit of this administration which have led the US to wage an illegal, unnecessary war, have become more and more manifest, just like the attempts to thwart the very rights guaranteed by the Constitution.
But also watch the pictures above and reflect whether the temperament of the born-again, compassionate president appears or not plausibly compatible with defining the Constitution a "goddamned piece of paper".. Last August Capitolhillblue.com published another article revealing the Bush's "obscenity-filled oubursts at anyone who dares disagree with him".
What a commander-in-chief.
The Torture Administration
by Anthony Lewis
Hannah Arendt and many others have stripped us, since then, of confidence that people will resist evil in times of fear. When Serbs and Rwandan Hutus were told that they were threatened, they slaughtered their neighbors. Lately Philip Roth was plausible enough when he imagined anti-Semitism surging after an isolationist America elected Charles Lindbergh as President in 1940.
But it still comes as a shock to discover that American leaders will open the way for the torture of prisoners, that lawyers will invent justifications for it, that the President of the United States will strenuously resist legislation prohibiting cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of prisoners--and that much of the American public will be indifferent to what is being done in its name.
[Read the whole article here]
From The Guardian:
An Ethiopian claims that his confession to al-Qaeda bomb plot was signed after beatings, reports David Rose in New York
An Ethiopian student who lived in London claims that he was brutally tortured with the involvement of British and US intelligence agencies.
Binyam Mohammed, 27, says he spent nearly three years in the CIA's network of 'black sites'. In Morocco he claims he underwent the strappado torture of being hung for hours from his wrists, and scalpel cuts to his chest and penis and that a CIA officer was a regular interrogator.
[Read the whole article here]
ACLU says next deadline in Abu Ghraib photo case is Dec. 15
A judge could rule on whether to order the release of new photographs from the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison anytime after Dec. 15, an ACLU spokesperson told RAW STORY.
The 144 photographs and four videos, which have been seen by New Yorker journalist Seymour Hersh, are alleged to contain photographs of U.S. servicemembers involved in raping detainees, possibly underage. The photos and videos are in addition to an earlier set of photographs already released.
The Bush Administration has successfully blocked their release, first saying they needed time to anonymize those engaged in illicit behavior, and then seeking a permanent block, arguing the photos could endanger troops and civilians overseas.
The ACLU sued to have the photos released under the Freedom of Information Act, and won the last round in court.
Judge Alvin Hellerstein in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled that the Defense Department must release the images and videos, saying that suppressing them would only create more intrigue about their contents. The Department then appealed, and was granted an extension through Dec. 15. If their appeal is rejected, the Bush Administration could take the case to the Supreme Court.
"Suppression of information is the surest way to cause its significance to grow and persist," Judge Alvin wrote. "Our struggle to prevail must be without sacrificing the transparency and accountability of government and military officials. These are the values [the Freedom of Information Act] was intended to advance, and they are at the very heart of the values for which we fight in Afghanistan and Iraq. There is a risk that the enemy will seize upon the publicity of the photographs and seek to use such publicity as a pretext for enlistments and violent acts. But the education and debate that such publicity will foster will strengthen our purpose and, by enabling such deficiencies as may be perceived to be debated and corrected, show our strength as a vibrant and functioning democracy to be emulated."
A coalition of 14 media organizations and public interest groups organized by The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press have filed an supporting amicus brief in the case. The coalition includes CBS Broadcasting Inc., NBC Universal Inc., and The New York Times Co.
by Joe London
Sustained by that very life
of which he rejects the limit
the pious man contrives
or passively acquiesce to
beatific worlds of fancy
which soothe the narcissistic
anxiety that he, endowed
with conscience, might
be nothing more and nothing less
than insects killed for play
or under unwitting steps,
and smug he swaggers boasting
a soul invisible he claims
be hosted in his holy bosom,
bond to an eternal life,
sign of unequalled legacy divine
and primacy on earth, and so
dispels the only eternity
and chance of happiness at hand
which lie in every instant lived,
were he to actually consist in it
refraining from the pursuit
of a moment that yet is not,
in fear and constant dislocation
and absence from his self,
were he to not allow a growing
hollowness to carve his very being
until the feared and hated life end
together with his pavid dreams of greatness.
Saturday, December 10, 2005
This attitude can also be seen in Bush's position on global warming: he choses to ignore the clear dangers posed to future generations by global warming and climate change and to privilege the perceived interests of American corporations.
Bill Clinton has recently stated that George W. Bush is "flat wrong" in claiming that the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions to fight global warming would weaken the U.S. economy. With a "serious disciplined effort [...] we could meet and surpass the Kyoto targets in a way that would strengthen and not weaken our economies."
"There's no longer any serious doubt that climate change is real, accelerating and caused by human activities," Clinton also stated. "We are uncertain about how deep and the time of arrival of the consequences, but we are quite clear they will not be good."
But what Bill Clinton says are only facts: vulgar matter to be ignored for the Bush administration and its supporters, who privilege faith and ideology.
Besides, if truly 20 to 44% of American people believe Jesus Christ will come back in their lifetime (and I dare say many of these people will be Taliban-like-Christian fundamentalists voting for Bush, and maybe Bush himself), why bothering for global warming, right?
Friday, December 09, 2005
A girl was expelled from a Christian school for having kissed another girl (read here). Showing no empathy and disrespecting the girl's privacy, the school publicly outed the girl, moreover showing no knowledge of the most elementary notions of pedagogy and psychology.
I am sure that if the girls were found fighting and beating each other up, no such an action as extreme as expulsion would have been taken, but a kiss..... a kiss is obviously a crime in the sick mind of some Christian fundamentalists.
Freaking sexophobic Christian fundamentalists: they should get treatment.
The girl and her father are now suing the school, and judging from the article, they have many reasons to win the suit.
No truer words have been said in recent years than Harold Pinter's at his Nobel acceptance speech.
Excerpt:
[...]
Everyone knows what happened in the Soviet Union and throughout Eastern Europe during the post-war period: the systematic brutality, the widespread atrocities, the ruthless suppression of independent thought. All this has been fully documented and verified.
But my contention here is that the US crimes in the same period have only been superficially recorded, let alone documented, let alone acknowledged, let alone recognised as crimes at all. I believe this must be addressed and that the truth has considerable bearing on where the world stands now. Although constrained, to a certain extent, by the existence of the Soviet Union, the United States' actions throughout the world made it clear that it had concluded it had carte blanche to do what it liked.
Direct invasion of a sovereign state has never in fact been America's favoured method. In the main, it has preferred what it has described as 'low intensity conflict'. Low intensity conflict means that thousands of people die but slower than if you dropped a bomb on them in one fell swoop. It means that you infect the heart of the country, that you establish a malignant growth and watch the gangrene bloom. When the populace has been subdued - or beaten to death - the same thing - and your own friends, the military and the great corporations, sit comfortably in power, you go before the camera and say that democracy has prevailed. This was a commonplace in US foreign policy in the years to which I refer.
[...]
The United States supported and in many cases engendered every right wing military dictatorship in the world after the end of the Second World War. I refer to Indonesia, Greece, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Haiti, Turkey, the Philippines, Guatemala, El Salvador, and, of course, Chile. The horror the United States inflicted upon Chile in 1973 can never be purged and can never be forgiven.
Hundreds of thousands of deaths took place throughout these countries. Did they take place? And are they in all cases attributable to US foreign policy? The answer is yes they did take place and they are attributable to American foreign policy. But you wouldn't know it.
It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn't happening. It didn't matter. It was of no interest. The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It's a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis. [...]
Thursday, December 08, 2005
by Joe London
In his homily in the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the end of Vatican Council II, Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI lavished himself with the mouthfuls of self-indulgent, if debatable, moralism which can be expected from a Catholic pope, this time tackling the relationship of man with evil (read the article here).
"Man nurtures the suspicion that God, at the end of the day, takes something away from his life, that God is a competitor who limits our freedom and that we will be fully human only when we will have set him aside," Benedict XVI said.
By addressing humanity with a typical sweeping - and typically sly guilt-making - generalisation, Benedict seems to accuse each and every single man on earth of entertaining a wrong relationship with his own freedom. The underlying concept is that man should limit himself within the "laws of God". But wait: how can a poor mortal know what are the laws of God? Obviously, the laws of God would be those presented by God's self-appointed representative on earth, the Roman Catholic Church. The ever implicit stance of the Roman Catholic Church is that morality is external to the individual, originates from God but is present, in its highest form of perfection humanly possible, in the Catholic theology and praxis only. In other words, we are expected to believe that certain human beings - however gowned and solemn in posture, and skilled in singing in falsetto - possess the only truth and source of virtue by way of exclusivity, for the simple fact they say so.
A quick account of the history of the Roman Catholic Church, certainly not always pure and virtuous, would be sufficient to demonstrate how its positions have been morally evil in the past. In fact, this Pope too has "asked forgiveness" for past treatment of "Jews, heretics, women and native people". But do words of contrition mean that absolute and perfect truth and virtue is restored from now on? Certainly not. Just like errors have been made in the past, errors are being made in the present and errors will be made in the future. In the light of this, it would be absurd to presume that blind obedience to the Church's prescriptions be a guarantee of virtue.
In fact the very freedom of human beings, from external prescriptions - including those of any Church - is the only chance of progress, even in moral terms. That is why the words of the Pope, if interpreted as an implicit claim of moral primacy, are utterly wrong.
Surely nowaday's Roman Catholic Church is very wrong, medievally so, on a variety of topics: contraception, divorce, sexual matters, celibacy of priests, cover-ups of abuses.
Also, from a more general, philosophical, point of view, it has to be remarked that the Church's presumption of possessing the absolute truth is a gross fallacy, based upon metaphysical contrivances that are "human, all too human". Extolling blind obedience, either explicitly or implicitly, equals to humiliating the very nature of human beings as free-willed beings and sole makers of morality, moreover through artful deceit, however theatrically or theologically packaged the deceit may be.
Another statement of the Pope:
"There emerges in us the suspicion that the person who doesn't sin at all is basically a boring person, that something is lacking in his life, the dramatic dimension of being autonomous, that the freedom to say 'no' belongs to real human beings".
In this yet sweeping generalisation the Pope casts a negative light on the human freedom to say "no". But what freedom is left to humans if the right to say "no" is denied?
The "dramatic dimension of being autonomous" and the "freedom to say 'no'" are exactly features of human beings. Take that away and you will transform humans into sheep abandoned to the whims and will-to-power of other human beings. And abandoning oneself to the dissociated vision of life-hating, sexophobic, Church ministers in drag does not seem a good idea.
Leading a virtuous life, and proposing virtuous social policies, has nothing to do with the total adherence to Catholic prescriptions.
From the Guardian:
Pinter demands war crimes trial for Blair
David Fickling
Wednesday December 7, 2005
 |
 Nobel laureate Harold Pinter. Photograph: Max Nash/AP |
The 5,000-word speech excoriates the US government over Guantánamo Bay and its attempts to destabilise Nicaragua in the 1980s.
But he saves his most savage comments for the UK, described as "pathetic and supine" and a "bleating little lamb" tagging along behind the US in its support for the Iraq war.
"The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of international law," he said.
"The invasion was an arbitrary military action inspired by a series of lies upon lies and gross manipulation of the media and therefore of the public ... a formidable assertion of military force responsible for the death and mutilation of thousands and thousands of innocent people.
"We have brought torture, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, innumerable acts of random murder, misery, degradation and death to the Iraqi people, and call it 'bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East'." [...]
Read the whole article here.
Friday, December 02, 2005
He is the 1000th person executed since 1977, when capital punishment was resumed in the United States.
Manifestations against capital punishment have taken place in Italy. Below, in photographs from the Corriere della Sera, you can see the Colosseum, in Rome, lit in green as a sign of protest, and a manifestation in front of the US Embassy in Rome (the banner says "1000 times, shame!").
Only China, Iran and Vietnam held more executions than the United States of America in 2004, according to Amnesty International.
