tuesday reads

Meet war criminal John Kiriakou.


A Houston, Texas woman says she was gang-raped by Halliburton/KBR coworkers in Baghdad, and the company and the U.S. government are covering up the incident.


Two car bombs rammed into the office of the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) and the country's constitutional court in upmarket areas of Algiers.


Scott Horton: Undermining Military Justice


Larry Johnson: Disentangling Torture TapeGate

Kevin Drum

Let me get this straight. The White House had been in the loop for two years. The CIA had received letters from both the Justice Department and congressional leaders arguing that the tapes shouldn't be destroyed. The CIA's top lawyer had been involved for the entire time. And yet we're supposed to believe that, in 2005, a mid-ranking agency lawyer suddenly decided the tapes could be destroyed and the head of the clandestine branch then gave the order to do so without anyone else being involved? Really? Does anyone actually believe this story?

Attempts to find out what Congress actually knew about the 2002 torture of detainees held by the CIA are running right into the brick wall of classification. Only this time, it's not just CIA stonewalling that's keeping the facts concealed. Members of Congress are quick to put the classification muzzle on themselves.


The New Jersey Senate voted Monday to make the state the first in the country to repeal the death penalty since 1976, when the United States Supreme Court set guidelines for the nation’s current system of capital punishment.


Time Hackers

The Stupid, It Burns!

Iraq needs a Pinochet

monday reads

Glenn Greenwald: Democratic Complicity in Bush’s Torture Regimen


The UN climate talks seeking a new pact on global warming hit a potential problem today when the US said it was unwilling to approve a draft agreement setting firm targets for cuts to carbon pollution.


The rainy season is over and the Niger Delta is lush and humid. This southern edge of West Africa, where Nigeria's wealth pumps out of oil and gas fields to bypass millions of its poorest people, is a restless place. In the small delta state of Akwa Ibom, the tension and the poverty has delivered an opportunity for a new and terrible phenomenon that is leading to the abuse and the murder of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of children. And it is being done in the name of Christianity.


A gunman killed two staff members at a missionary training center early Sunday after being told he couldn't spend the night, and about 12 hours later four people were shot at a busy megachurch in Colorado Springs.


Steadily lengthening delays in the resolution of Social Security disability claims have left hundreds of thousands of people in a kind of purgatory, now waiting as long as three years for a decision.


Tengrain Presents...Chimpy McStagger in...Pants on fire


Winter Soldier