I've made my first political donation for the 2008 cycle, $50 to Chris Dodd. I know some of the people working for him, and as of yesterday he's sticking his neck way the fuck out in the Senate to block a bill that would give telecommunications executives retroactive immunity for breaking the law in allowing the Bush Administration to eavesdrop on citizens without warrants. I'll let Glenn Greenwald explain why this is a Very Bat Thing™:

bq.. Just think about what is really happening here. AT&T's customers sued them for violating their privacy in violation of long-standing federal laws and for violating their Fourth Amendment rights. Even with the most expensive armies of lawyers possible, AT&T and other telecoms are losing in a court of law. The federal judge presiding over the case ruled against them -- ruled that the law is so clear they could not possibly have believed that what they did was legal -- and most observers, having heard the Oral Argument on appeal, predicted that they will lose in the Court of Appeals, too.

Frankly it's a bummer out there. American politics is stuck in a quagmire. This is why I trust Stoller as a proxy.

In the past year, nothing seemed more vital than this:

bq.. Internet geeks share a common style, and Ko Latt and his four friends would not be out of place in cyber cafés across the world. They have the skinny arms and the long hair, the dark T-shirts and the jokey nicknames. But few such figures have ever taken the risks that they have in the past few weeks, or achieved so much in a noble and dangerous cause.

Since last month Ko Latt, 28, his friends Arca, Eye, Sun and Superman, and scores of others like them have been the third pillar of Burma’s Saffron Revolution. While the veteran democracy activists, and then the Buddhist monks, marched in their tens of thousands against the military regime, it is the country’s amateur bloggers and internet enthusiasts who have brought the images to the outside world.

Armed with small digital cameras, they have documented the spectacular growth of the demonstrations from crowds of a few hundred to as many as 100,000. On weblogs they have recorded in words and pictures the regime’s bloody crackdown, in a city where only a handful of foreign journalists work undercover. With downloaded software, they have dodged and weaved around the regime’s increasingly desperate attempts to thwart their work. Now the bloggers, too, have been crushed. Having failed to stop the cyber-dissidents broadcasting to the world, the authorities have simply switched off the internet.

See, this is why I think there's something to be said for the New Freedom Movement: the Pirate Bay is the first site I've seen rocking the "free Burma" banner.

Monks and students in Rangoon, Burma (or Yangon, Myanmar as the dictators would have it) protesting their cruel military Junta. They're calling it The Saffron Revolution. We don't see much about this on the TeeVee, but Al Jazeera is on the scene. So was a Japanese photojournalist, who got himself murdered:

The last time this happened over there, the military killed a few thousand students. Hopefully it won't go down like that, but who knows. There's not much I can think of for people here to do for people there, but if you feel the cause of freedom, you can stay informed at least.

There's also this: US Campaign for Burma.

When it comes to information, the rules are changing:

Want to know a sign that the Big D is on the way? Watch the money:

bq. Canada's dollar traded almost equal to the U.S. currency for a second day amid optimism economic growth will be fueled by surging demand for the commodities... The currency rose above $1 yesterday for the first time since November 1976.

Currently it's a $0.999. Meanwhile, as atrios has noted, the Euro is closing in on a buck fiddy. Fed Chairman Bernake says the worst has yet to come:

bq. Losses from sub-prime mortgages have far exceeded "even the most pessimistic estimates", US Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke has said.

And then (via Franz) there's this:

bq. Saudi Arabia has refused to cut interest rates in lockstep with the US Federal Reserve for the first time, signalling that the oil-rich Gulf kingdom is preparing to break the dollar currency peg in a move that risks setting off a stampede out of the dollar across the Middle East.

I've been following all this in my own nerdy way, and it looks like most of the bullish pushback against claims of instability are evaporating. Our debt-based economy can't roll on much longer as currently configured.

The upside for me is that I work in an international market on a product that has a very strong European base, so all of a sudden I'm cheap labor to those people. Heck, I may be cheap labor to those socialists up in Canada soon.