BANGKOK, Thailand -- Throughout the sweltering night in Bangkok, Red Shirt protesters denounced the prime minister as a "puppet" of the military, and speculated about the government's next move after declaring a state of emergency.

"The army has a list of 70 Reds that they are about to hunt tonight!" a Red Shirt spokesman declared.

"Protect the leaders. Resist this illegitimate government. Do not give up any ground. But above all else, do not react with violence. That is what they want!"

Lalida Phanyang, a vocal Red Shirt activist, told her comrades: "Stay united, stay together, don't fight back" especially because there are "women and children among us" at their rally sites.

Red Shirts called for "reinforcements" to travel to Bangkok from elsewhere, especially their parched rural strongholds in Thailand's north and northeast.

Some Reds feared Thailand's U.S.-trained army would attack their rally sites before dawn.

I've been reading about the history of torture, including John T. Parry's new book "Understanding Torture: Law, Violence, and Political Identity." Parry gives a history of torture in Europe and the United States through the twentieth century, establishing its pervasiveness, and the repetitiveness of the excuses and legalistic machinations used to allow it. Parry sees torture as an absolutely normal activity in our society, but an activity that at least until now was always treated as an aberration, no matter how systemic. Parry even tries to suggest at times that torture is required, necessary, or "essential" for western democracies.

Alex is the former Tribal President of the Oglala Sioux Tribe of South Dakota. He lives on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation of South Dakota.

Alex bears the remarkable distinction of being the only person in the United States to successfully farm and complete a legal hemp crop within the borders of the USA since 1968. comment

I had the rare & unique opportunity to meet Alex while visiting the Indian Nations of the Pine Ridge Reservation last September. He graciously allowed me to photograph him, and some of his hemp plants while there.


Alex White Plume in front of some of his hemp crop.

The hemp that Alex grows is NOT the kind that gets you high. It is a mutated form of hemp that is THC FREE! This is confirmed by independent USDA laboratory testing done at the request of the DEA.

In the months leading up to the most recent protest in Washington, D.C. against the US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, activists and writers such as Cindy Sheehan and David Swanson have called for shutting down business-as-usual in the capital city. Comment

But on March 20, instead of a hundred thousand or even tens of thousands of protesters, it was evident from first-hand observation that the event drew, at most, a few thousand people.

Far from disrupting business-as-usual, the anti-war protest---which took place on a Saturday--seemed to blend in with the flow of tourists and locals enjoying the warm, sunny weather in our nation's capital. On that weekend, far more prominent in mainstream news was the health-care reform showdown in Congress and the immigration reform rally which drew more than 200,000 people to the National Mall.

But some of the ordinary protesters who did show up advocate revolution or other ways of intensifying resistance against what they regard as imperialism and militarism.