BANGKOK, Thailand -- Counterfeit identification cards of U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, Drug Enforcement Administration, Interpol, airline cabin crew and other officials are openly sold in the street for $25, produced in a few hours, and can include anyone's name and photo.

Freshly printed, mint condition, plastic ID cards -- based on genuine U.S. and international documents -- are available at souvenir stalls on tourist-packed Khao San Road near Bangkok's fabled Grand Palace and Temple of the Emerald Buddha.

Big signs plastered with dozens of counterfeit cards are erected each day on the walking street among stalls and shops offering inexpensive Thai food, clothing, jewelry, airline tickets, massages, tattoos, music and video discs, a Burger King, banks, beauty parlors and other goods and services.

Amazed and amused customers, from all over the world, browse through thick folders of pictures showing hundreds of different counterfeit cards including California, Texas, New York and other U.S. and foreign driver licenses, plus Air France, Lufthansa, Qatar Airways and other international "Cabin Attendant, Cabin Crew" staff cards.

The Japanese government has raised the emergency at the Fukushima nuclear plant to level seven, from a level five. This puts it at the highest level, as was Chernobyl.

Grossman and others have been advocating raising the emergency level as a first step for weeks. Professor of journalism at the State University of New York/College at Old Westbury, Grossman is author of "Cover Up: What You Are Not Supposed to Know About Nuclear Power" and "Power Crazy."

He said today: "Finally, the Japanese government is acknowledging a little reality. But the sad fact is that the Fukushima disaster is beyond a level seven disaster, it's off the books. You have multiple reactors and cooling pools.

Grossman just wrote the piece "Fukushima Nuclear Disaster at One Month: The Explosion of Nukespeak,'" which states: "The classic book on disinformation on nuclear technology is 'Nukespeak,' published in 1982. It is dedicated to George Orwell, author of '1984,' and written by Stephen Hilgarten, Richard C. Bell and Rory O’Connor.

It’s been nearly a decade since the PATRIOT Act became law in America. It’s time to put an end to the ongoing abuses under its draconian powers.
Government surveillance has invaded the privacy of innocent Americans en masse. The FBI has used national security letters to seize mountains of private records while gagging the recipients. And the “material support” provision has dramatically eroded First Amendment rights—as demonstrated by raids last fall targeting peaceful activists across the Midwest.

Having endured ten years of invasive and unconstitutional surveillance, we finally have a realistic opportunity to change this law—but only if members of Congress hear from concerned constituents across the country.

From April 18 through May 1, your congressional representatives will leave DC for two weeks and return to your area. Don’t let them leave without hearing your voice.

A battle for the heart and soul of American democracy is being waged in this country. But it might not be the battle you�re watching.

While most news outlets have focused on a possible federal government shutdown, an even more sinister attack on democracy is being waged in Wisconsin.

The battle may come down to a single and unusual race: the contest between incumbent state Supreme Court Justice, David Prosser, and his challenger, Assistant Attorney General Joanne Kloppenburg.

While judges are supposed to be nonpartisan, in reality, as we all learned the hard way in the presidential election of 2000, those who sit on the bench wield a great deal of political power.

In Wisconsin, the stakes couldn�t be higher, politically. Wisconsin�s activist Republican Gov. Scott Walker has already pushed through some radical -- and possibly illegal -- legislation that will surely be challenged in the courts in Wisconsin. The State Supreme Court will likely be asked to rule on that legislation and related issues.

Whatever the strategic — and humanitarian — considerations behind NATO/U.S. intervention in Libya, a larger force utterly indifferent to both, and seldom sufficiently newsworthy to merit mention, unites tyrant and rescuer and keeps the world tangled in an endless cycle of hellish violence far beyond the scope of the conflict that generates it.

I’m talking about the global arms trade, for which wars large and small, whatever their cause, whatever their “legitimacy,” are necessities without which the goods would not move. They’re also more than that, but not the sort of thing we salute or honor with granite statuary.

“This” — the Libyan no fly zone — “is turning into the best shop window for competing aircraft for years. More even than in Iraq in 2003,” said Francis Tusa, editor of the UK-based newsletter Defense Analysis, quoted in a recent Reuters article by Tim Hepher. For instance, enforcement of the no fly zone pitted two European-made jet fighters, the Typhoon and the Rafale, against one another for world leaders to view, and France, Tusa pointed out, “is particularly desperate to sell the Rafale.”