Historic Judgment on British Army in Iraq

Strasbourg judge: “Those who export war ought to see to the parallel export of guarantees against the atrocities of war”

European Court Issues Historic Judgment on British Army in Iraq

7 July 2011 - The highest court in Europe – the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights – has this morning handed down one of its most important judgments ever, involving the alleged ill-treatment and unlawful killing of Iraqi citizens by UK Armed Forces. See the European Court’s official press release (attached to this email). Public Interest Lawyers (PIL), which represents the Applicants in the case as well as hundreds of other Iraqi civilians, welcomed the judgment.

The immediate ramifications for the Ministry of Defence are highly significant. The Court’s ruling means that a whole host of Iraqi victims, previously prevented from accessing justice, are now finally to seek redress for their abuse. For the first time, they will be able to go to the High Court in London and force Liam Fox, the Secretary of State for Defence, to order a public inquiry into the actions of British soldiers in their cases. The cases the MoD now must face include the following: read more>>>

Press Release: Historic Judgment on British Army in Iraq

Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights

Playing For Change | Satchita

Satchita We are proud to share this original Song Around the World, that takes us on a musical journey from Brazil to India. Get ready to smile, dance, and feel the love of the world uniting through the power of music.

Satchita is featured on our new CD/DVD, PFC 2. Please share this video with everyone you know, and together we will change the world one song and one heart at a time!!

Murdock Brit Phone-Hacking Scandal: Families of War Dead!

Not going to add much to this except the first thoughts I've had since this was breaking across the pond.

What the hell has the FOX been doing here?

And now with this coming out:

Phone-hacking scandal escalates as British Legion severs ties with News of the World

What was that constant cheer leader and their minions, still, of these present long running invasions and occupations, as well as Huge supporters of the policies ordered and carried out by the previous administration, doing in relation to our soldiers families if they had no regard for the British families of the Fallen?!

Armed forces charity ditches newspaper as campaigning partner, saying it was 'shocked to the core' by hacking claims

7 July 2011 - Families of members of the armed forces killed in Afghanistan and Iraq have expressed disgust at the revelation they were targeted by Glenn Mulcaire, a private investigator who worked for the News of the World.

The latest disclosures prompted the Royal British Legion to drop the newspaper as its campaigning partner, saying it had been "shocked to the core" by the claims. The servicemen and women's charity said it had suspended all relations with the News of the World and was reviewing its advertising budget with News International, which also publishes the Sun and the Times.

The media group is at the centre of a huge political storm following days of shocking revelations about phone hacking, including news that the paper intercepted voicemails left on a phone belonging to the murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler and targeted the phones of families of the victims of the 7/7 attacks.

The latest allegations were "very distressing", the stepfather of a British soldier who was killed in Iraq told BBC Breakfast. Jim Gill, stepfather of Second Lieutenant Richard Shearer of the 1st Battalion, Staffordshire Regiment, who was killed in Iraq in July 2005 by a roadside bomb, said his family had suspected their phone was being hacked but they had not yet been contacted by police. {read more}

Screw the congressional tepubs and their rabid supporters, I'm callin for an FBI investigation,any DoJ involvement and possible Federal Congressional Hearings on Rupert Murdock's holdings in this Country, especially his propaganda channel and any tepubs who might have known, on or off their payroll!

Truth slippery in Exxon oil spill reports

Can't stand companies or corporations that are reported to be making Huge Profits not having the preventive maintenance, worse case scenario crews and equipment etc., needs in place nor the technology to understand what's exactly going on in those companies, as a construction professional tradesman for years who's seen the stagnation or cut backs in same over the years, tain't like they can't afford it nor their investors pony up, after all the workers know what's going on but those wages and benefits are stagnant or falling!!
What do the top executives do exactly all day long to deserve those Huge Comp Packages and growing business write offs?!?!

July 6: Rachel Maddow updates the news on the ExxonMobile oil spill in the Yellowstone River in Montana.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Green Sector and China's Workers

Not here across that other big pond, we who had started moving into alternatives, some forty years back, have sections of the population and their representatives, led and financed by the corporate interests, still trying to hold those brakes they slammed on back than, as to advancing economic growth and our once leadership in many area's and issues.

65% of workers interested in green sector: poll

July 5, 2011 - Almost 65 percent of Taiwan workers are interested in the green energy sector, which has become growingly important, a survey conducted by 1111 Jobs Bank revealed yesterday.

Meanwhile, respondents cited the photovoltaic and LED industries as having the biggest growth potential, 1111 said.

Growth in the green energy industry has been detected ever since the government listed it as one of the six emerging markets it will help promote, 1111 said.

The survey was released in a news conference yesterday in Taipei, attended by 1111 officials as well as Oh Chia-jui, director general of Bureau of Energy under the Ministry of Economic Affairs.

According to the poll, 36.62 percent of workers hold a favorable view of the photovoltaic industry, while 25.35 percent are positive about the LED sector.

Meanwhile, 64.79 percent of workers are interested in the green energy sector, due to the following reasons: the fact that green energy is a global trend; the fact that the world is mired in an energy crisis, and a desire to contribute to global efforts to reduce carbon emissions. {read more}

'Patriotism' in the Tepublican Camp? Think Not!

Especially related to their elected Representatives handlers, the big money, the corporations, wall street, the banks, them at the top who have more then enough cash to control but not to invest in growth and the Countries economy for all!

This Cornyn makes a real good 'brownshirt soldier' for the collective, not for policy for this country but the power hungry commanders that give the orders, ask him a question you get the same answers in those very old and well practiced talking points.

Listen ,once again, to the same speak given for the past decade plus and refined over the previous some two decades previous.

AIR DATE: July 5, 2011
Sen. Cornyn to Obama: Take Tax Increases Off the Table

SUMMARY
President Obama announced Tuesday that he will host bipartisan congressional leaders at the White House for continued talks on a deal to reduce the nation's deficit and raise its debt limit. Judy Woodruff discusses the negotiations with Republican John Cornyn of Texas, who sits on the Senate Budget and Finance committees. Transcript

I give Judy Woodruff allot of credit, she tried asking the questions a couple of different ways but kept getting the same responses and you could see that she understood that was the way this interview was going to continue no matter how long they took it.

In the interview we get this from this brownshirt representative not of the people:

SEN. JOHN CORNYN: Well, one of the reasons they are sitting on that cash -- and, yes, they become a whole lot more efficient by laying people off, increasing automation, and various things within their companies -- but they're sitting on that cash because they don't know what's going to happen in terms of tax rates and in terms of regulation, in terms of what the health care costs are going to be from the president's health care bill that they didn't anticipate and didn't factor into their business model.

So apparently he doesn't mind the high unemployment numbers nor the fact that his business community stays confused after a decade plus of the huge tax cuts at the top, the huge wealth reaped in that decade plus, the many write offs that congress gives them and the lax regulatory over site especially when they controlled it all.

Now as to the 'patriotism' these tepublican representatives, and their supports, still boggles the mind that after all that's happened people call themselves republican and vote that way, show by their lapel flag pins.

SEN. JOHN CORNYN: Well, I think that's -- there's really two parts to that, Judy. One is to reduce the overall business tax rate, hopefully to make us more competitive globally, as I read President Clinton reiterated today.

It just makes sense, if it's cheaper to do business here in the United States, then jobs will be created here. If it's cheaper to keep that cash and to create jobs abroad, that's what businesses will do because it makes economic sense.

But, again, I think the last thing I would think you would want to do, when the recovery is so anemic and when the private sector is sort of sitting on the sidelines because they don't know what the costs of doing business are going to be, tax rates, regulatory policy, that I think we need to find a way to relieve that anxiety by saying, you know what? During a fragile economic recovery, just like last December with the expiring tax rates, the president agreed, this is not a time to raise taxes.

Well, it's not still not a time to raise taxes with 9.1 percent unemployment.

They don't care if their handlers jump ship on the Country and the people they represent, and yes you tepublican supporters that's you and yours, and ship business and jobs over-sea's, hell they even give them tax breaks on the profits for doing so as well as on the private jets to globe trot to their off shore offices.

Still none has answered the questions of why the job market collapsed, along with everything else after the bush tax cuts and why companies haven't been creating jobs by investing here in expansion or new, the once envied and respected innovative workforce and our products on the planet, in this continued economic collapse after they were extended, it the only selling point, false, they use when the word 'tax' in mentioned.

As Congressional representatives they showed their stripes when they controlled the all, two wars off the books, and lost billions, with no bid contracts for their growing private military control and army, no to rare mention of the needs of those sent nor the veterans of, , still after a decade plus no demand for sacrifice by the country!

If there's multi millions to give the top executives, voted on by the big investors who have nothing to do with product production nor innovations, and we only hear about the CEO's comp., as well as corporate write offs on top of the huge tax cuts, then there's plenty to give to those who really are doing the work!!!!!!

Marine: 'We're Starting To Fall To The Wayside'

For over forty years now whenever I hear the loud demands, especially by the elected representatives of the people, for tax cuts my first thought has always been the long underfunded Veterans Administration and related to our wars of choice, second is the ever growing, with no objection, defense budgets year to year!

The Long Deja-Vu's, Korea and Vietnam, all over again, Continues

July 5, 2011 - A very small number of Americans are now serving in the military — less than 1 percent. Some are looking for direction; others are inspired by a sense of patriotism or by a family member who served in an earlier war. In the series Who Serves, NPR looks at the troops who have made a decision few others have — to fight in America's wars.

Just after dawn one day last month, Sgt. Jon Moulder led his patrol of Marines out of Combat Outpost Reilly — basically a collection of tents and sandbags and razor wire — and headed down a dusty road in Afghanistan's Helmand province.

Moulder is a short, compact Marine from Nashville, Tenn. He's on his fourth combat tour, split evenly between Iraq and Afghanistan.

That's meant a lot of time away from home.

"Yeah, it's this whole family thing, deploying and keep leaving," Moulder says. "I have my personal views and opinions on things."

snip

Moulder's had his share of near misses. And for him, and many of the Marines, the question is whether it's all worth it.

Last month in Washington, the debate was about how many troops to bring home.

When asked whether he felt that people back home care about the war, Moulder says, "I think we're starting to fall to the wayside."

"This has been going on for so long," he adds. "Hell, you know, it's America's longest conflict running to date. ... We're kind of like the bastard children of our generation. Starting to become unwanted," Moulder says.

He's feeling forgotten. And that's after having survived four roadside bomb explosions. He's suffered a concussion — he's having trouble sleeping and he's seeing a counselor about post-traumatic stress. {read more}
Listen to the Story

There's even less 'Sacrifice' by the country, especially by the wealthy reaping the booty of the war profits, and has been the many years of these conflicts then was the decades coming out of Korea and Vietnam!

45th Birthday of U.S. Freedom of Information Act

Eight Federal Agencies Have FOIA Requests a Decade Old, According to Knight Open Government Survey

Oldest Pending Request Now 20 Years Old,
Still on Referral Among Multiple Agencies

National Security Archive Marks 45th Birthday of U.S. Freedom of Information Act,
Exposes Backlog Problems, Posts 45 Examples of FOIA Impact

Washington, D.C., July 4, 2011 - Forty-five years after President Johnson signed the U.S. Freedom of Information Act into law in 1966, federal agency backlogs of FOIA requests are growing, with the oldest requests at eight agencies dating back over a decade and the single oldest request now 20 years old, according to the Knight Open Government Survey by the National Security Archive at George Washington University (www.nsarchive.org).

The Knight Survey of the oldest requests utilized the FOIA to examine the actual copies of the oldest requests from the 35 federal agencies and components that process more than 90 percent of all FOIAs. It shows that the oldest requests in the U.S. government were submitted before the fall of the Soviet Union. These unfulfilled requests – some are for documents that are themselves more than 50 years old – are victims of an endless referral process in which any agency that claims “equity” can censor their release.

The Freedom of Information Act requires agencies to process and respond to a request within 20 business days, with the possibility of a ten-day extension under “unusual circumstances.” In his March 19, 2009 government-wide memo on FOIA, Attorney General Eric Holder declared that “long delays should not be viewed as an inevitable and insurmountable consequence of high demand.” Despite this, the Knight Survey shows that some FOIAs remain marooned for decades. {read more}

"Bright's Passage" a Song becomes a Novel

AIR DATE: July 4, 2011
From Josh Ritter, a Song That Became a Debut Novel

SUMMARY
"Bright Passage" the debut novel by singer-songwriter Josh Ritter, details a young man's return home from World War I. Jeffrey Brown and the musician-turned-novelist discuss his first work of fiction. Transcript

Watch the full episode. See more PBS NewsHour.

"Bright’s Passage": Josh’s debut novel

America the Baffled:

Must be somethin in that tea!!

One in Four Americans Doesn't Know The Country From Which We Broke Free

4 July 2011 - Why are we celebrating again? Turns out that's a question many Americans can't answer.

Put away your books and take out a sheet of paper. We're going to have a quick history quiz.

* From which nation did the U.S. declare independence?

* In what year did we declare our independence?

Easy questions, right? Not for some Americans. A Marist Poll points out that, as we celebrate the Fourth of July with fireworks and barbecues, some Americans may be blindly taking part in the festivities. The poll shows that only 76% of Americans know that the U.S. declared its independence from Great Britain. And an even smaller number knows when. Only 58% could point out that the year of our nation's freedom was announced in 1776. {read more}

Whelp, so much for that modern higher education industry and leavin no child behind!!

Older Americans were more likely to give correct answers, as were men when compared to women.

No offense to the ladies but that comment as to women brings two to mind rather quickly, the hockey puck and her twin sister the congressional dingbat!

"The Interrogator:"

A CIA insider's crisis of conscience

In a secret prison, a true believer in the war on terror realized he was tormenting an innocent man

Jul 3, 2011 - "The situation had become Kafkaesque," writes Glenn Carle toward the end of "The Interrogator: An Education" his new memoir. Boy, he ain't kidding; the author of "The Trial" and "The Metamorphosis" would have appreciated this narrative on any number of levels. Carle worked for the CIA for 23 years, in Africa, the Balkans and Latin America, among other locales, but the focus of his book is the several-month period he spent questioning a suspected leader of al-Qaida in two countries he is not permitted to name.

There's quite a lot Carle isn't allowed to say in "The Interrogator." Many lines and words on these pages have been masked with black bars to indicate what "the Agency" forbade him to publish. "I have written this book literally a dozen times over," the author notes in his afterword, explaining that he was willing to address "legitimate" CIA concerns when it came to revelations about its "sources and methods." {read more}

Salaries: The HUGE Divide

The why: Investors, who have nothing to do with what they're invested in, reward the Execs because they're Not hiring, keeping wages stagnant or falling and chopping benefits while squeezing the workers they still have to perform more work!!!!!!!!

The total failure of the free market capitalism and the country that once was!!

Salary of Top American Executives Up 23 Percent in 2010

July 3, 2011 - While the recovery remains stubbornly slow, with 14 million people still looking for work, things are definitely looking up for those few at the very top of the economic ladder.

CEO pay went up an average of 23 percent in 2010, while wages for rest of us rose a meager one-half-percent, according to a new report prepared for the New York Times.



The report, which was prepared for the New York Times by Equilar, an executive compensation data firm, found that the median CEO salary was $10.8 million.

The report found that the chief executive of DirecTV was paid $33 million last year. The head of Occidental Petroleum was paid $76 million. Viacom's chief topped all CEOs at $84.5 million, after signing a new long-term contract that included one-time stock awards.

In comparison, the average American worker made $752 a week in late 2010, according to the New York Times, up only 0.5 percent from a year earlier. {read more}

Young Navy Vet Sits in Jail on 4th of July

Navy photographer spurns deal, will spend July 4 in jail

July 1, 2011 - A U.S. military veteran of Iraq and Guantánamo on Friday spurned a government offer of pre-trial probation and instead faced the prospect of the Fourth of July in a Miami lockup while awaiting a federal passport fraud trial later this month.

Navy Reserves Petty Officer 2nd Class Elisha Leo Dawkins, 26, has been confined to the downtown federal detention center since soon after he returned from the Guantánamo detention center earlier this year.

There he served as a Navy photographer, chronicling the lives of war-on-terror captives, apparently unaware that the U.S. immigration service had targeted him for deportation to his mother’s native Bahamas when he was 8 years old.

Before Guantánamo he enlisted in the Army and served in Iraq, in 2007, and came home to an honorable discharge.

“He’s an American soldier,” said Clark Mervis, Dawkins’ court-appoint attorney. “He’s going to be in an American jail on the Fourth of July under circumstances that are unjust. He fought for this country.”

snip

The veteran’s plight has caught the attention of Democratic Rep. Federica Wilson of Miami because Dawkins went to elementary and high school and played sports in her district before joining the Army. Florida Sen. Bill Nelson, also a Democrat, has been asking questions, too, because the case illustrates dysfunctional communications between federal agencies, which were supposed to be repaired after the 9/11 attacks. {read more}

Read more of this story at MiamiHerald.com, with photo's

Iraq's Children

Think also the children of Afghanistan, all born into and growing up in the carnage surrounding them, think some won't seek retaliation, blowback!

IRAQ: A bad place for children

For Iraq to achieve the MDGs, over 400,000 undernourished Iraqi children would have to receive adequate food, while nearly 700,000 would have to be enrolled in schools (file photo)

4 July 2011 (IRIN) - Decades of war and international sanctions have turned Iraq into one of the worst places for children in the Middle East and North Africa, with around 3.5 million living in poverty, 1.5 million under the age of five undernourished and 100 infants dying every day, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) warns.

The government can and should do more for children, said Sikander Khan, the outgoing UNICEF representative in Iraq, in a 30 June interview with the UN Assistance Mission to Iraq.

“It is the responsibility of the government to support parents by investing in health and education and other basic needs for all children… Central government can also take a significant step by making additional investments in its most deprived children."

Iraq, he added, was unlikely to achieve most of the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), six of which relate to children. “Unfortunately, despite all efforts, the attainment of most of these goals in Iraq by 2015 is distant,” Khan said.

To achieve the MDGs, over 400,000 undernourished Iraqi children would have to receive adequate food, while nearly 700,000 would have to be enrolled in schools. Child mortality would also have to be reduced by 100,000, while about three million others need decent sanitation. {read more}

American Way: Have War, Underfund Results Of, Ignore Those Sent!

The results of the long underfunding, since Korea, and oh so easy to lay blame on the agency supposedly funded by the oh so patriotic masses who don't serve and through their representatives they hired, of the Veterans Administration covering issues from the record keeping, as we enhance the needs by waging wars mostly of choice, to the resting place in the National Cemeteries of the mostly ignored, fallen and veterans of after returning home, brothers and sisters who serve.

This is but one more example of the total lack of Demand for the Country to Sacrifice as they demand the sacrifices by the soldier and their families!

'The veterans' cemetery that America forgot'

Most of the grave markers in the Philippines cemetery have been half-buried for 20 years.

A private guard walks along soil-covered grave markers at Clark Veterans Cemetery at the sprawling Clark Economic Zone, a former U.S. Air Force base in Dau, Pampanga province in northern Philippines, in this July 1, 2011 photo

7/3/2011 - Walking along the rows of tombstones here offers a glimpse of the wars America has fought and the men and women who waged them.

But most of the grave markers have been half-buried for 20 years, and there is little hope that the volcanic ash obscuring names, dates and epitaphs will be cleared any time soon.

Clark Veterans Cemetery was consigned to oblivion in 1991, when Mount Pinatubo's gigantic eruption forced the U.S. to abandon the sprawling air base surrounding it.

Retired U.S. soldiers, Marines and sailors volunteer to keep watch, relying on donations to try to maintain the grounds, but they lament that they're short on funds to fix things, and that Washington is unwilling to help.

"It's the veterans' cemetery that America forgot," Vietnam War veteran and ex-Navy officer Robert Chesko said.

snip

It holds the remains of 8,600 people, including 2,200 American veterans and nearly 700 allied Philippine Scouts who saw battle in conflicts from the early 1900s to the resistance against brutal Japanese occupation troops in WWII.

Clark's dead also include military dependents, civilians who worked for the U.S. wartime government and at least 2,139 mostly unidentified soldiers whose marble tombstones are labeled "Unknown."

As America marks Independence Day, the veterans caring for the cemetery renewed their calls for Washington to fund and take charge of the work.

"People celebrate on the Fourth of July but they forgot the 8,600 who helped make that freedom happen," said former Navy Capt. Dennis Wright, who saw action in Vietnam and is now a business executive. {read more}

And on this, especially related to the VA's National Cemeteries care and over site of, we get a recent movement by at least one group in the oh so patriotic, and oh so family values 21st century christian crowd, the American Family Association, with no demand in the past decade plus to sacrifice as to the veterans of, seeking the removal of a director of the National Cemeteries, ignoring the fact that soldiers serve the Country and Constitution and not a single religious ideology nor a political party ideology, with this:

VA Bans Mention of God at Funerals for Vets

Send an email to U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki. Ask him to 1) stop his department's religious discrimination and 2) relieve Director Ocasio of her duties.

No need to give their link to this online letter writing campaign to send to Gen Shinseki, and others, nor the message within the intolerant and lacking concern for many veterans families in the gibberishness of the short letter. Reason I'm even mentioning this is it does exactly what I thought it would, I erased their message and put my own words of support for the General and Ocasio within, quickly after I received a grifter fund raising request from this groups leader, an auto response after sending:

As you are aware, America is in the middle of a raging culture war that will decide the future of our country. Your involvement in this war is paramount to the foundation which is being laid for the next generation.

Paul wrote to believers in Corinth, "Be on your guard; stand firm in the faith; be [people] of courage; be strong." (1 Cor. 16:13)

Please consider supporting us with a donation of any amount: https:...............
Sincerely,

Tim

Tim Wildmon, President
American Family Association

Won't Sacrifice but find nothing wrong, in those tiny religious family value minds, to readily ask for donations to support this Tim Wildmon, self described righteous president, and whoever else is in league with him while also probably getting funds from the Koch brother and Rove types for political messaging!

Meanwhile, while still grossly underfunded especially related to our Defense Budgets and wars of choice, General Shinseki has taken on many many issues related to the Veterans of these recent theaters, that weren't mentioned as they were waged, as well as long standing issues ignored by the country as to us older veterans and Especially, as to this subject, has been rehabilitating and expanding some National Cemeteries around the Country, building new and much needed National Cemeteries in more local communities in states around the country and upgrading, finally, the record keeping with the new technology that should already have been followed thus saving money instead of spending needed resources in constant catch up. Still no Demand for Sacrifice from the Country, but I bet this Tim Wildmon gets some ducats in his grifter coffer!!

This Week on War News Radio: The Art of War

July 1st, 2011 - The Art of War: First, we hear about the therapeutic benefits of art for returning veterans. Then, we learn about a new exhibit focusing on soldiers’ orthopedic injuries. Finally, we talk with the founder of the Graffiti of War Project, which collects service members’ art left on the walls and buildings in the battlefields of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Kuwait. But first, a roundup of this week’s news.

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‘Some Will Call Me a Torturer’

The World waits, and watches, for accountability, while we still condemn others!

CIA Man Reveals Secret Jail

July 1, 2011 - Admitting that “some will call me a torturer” is a surefire way to cut yourself off from anyone’s sympathy. But Glenn Carle, a former CIA operative, isn’t sure whether he’s the hero or the villain of his own story.

Distilled, that story, told in Carle’s new memoir "The Interrogator", is this: in the months after 9/11, the CIA kidnaps a suspected senior member of al-Qaida and takes him to a Mideast country for interrogation. It assigns Carle — like nearly all his colleagues then, an inexperienced interrogator — to pry information out of him. Uneasy with the CIA’s new, relaxed rules for questioning, which allow him to torture, Carle instead tries to build a rapport with the man he calls CAPTUS.

But CAPTUS doesn’t divulge the Qaida plans the CIA suspects him of knowing. So the agency sends him to “Hotel California” — an unacknowledged prison, beyond the reach of the Red Cross or international law.

Carle goes with him. Though heavily censored by the CIA, Carle provides the first detailed description of a so-called “black site.” At an isolated “discretely guarded, unremarkable” facility in an undisclosed foreign country (though one where the Soviets once operated), hidden CIA interrogators work endless hours while heavy metal blasts captives’ eardrums and disrupts their sleep schedules. Afterward, the operatives drive to a fortified compound to munch Oreos and drink somberly to Grand Funk Railroad at the “Jihadi Bar.” Any visitor to Guantanamo Bay’s Irish pub — O’Kellys, home of the fried pickle — will recognize the surreality.

But Carle — codename: REDEMPTOR — comes to believe CAPTUS is innocent. “We had destroyed the man’s life based on an error,” he writes. But the black site is a bureaucratic hell: CAPTUS’ reluctance to tell CIA what it wants to hear makes the far-off agency headquarters more determined to torture him. Carle’s resistance, shared by some at Hotel California, makes him suspect. He leaves CAPTUS in the black site after ten intense days, questioning whether his psychological manipulation of CAPTUS made him, ultimately, a torturer himself.

Eight years later the CIA unceremoniously released CAPTUS. (The agency declined to comment for this story.) Whether that means CAPTUS was innocent or merely no longer useful as a source of information, we may never know. Carle spoke to Danger Room about what it’s like to interrogate a man in a place too dark for the law to find. {read more}

Fossil fuel companies and the Koch brothers

Fossil fuel companies and Koch brothers pour cash on climate change 'skeptic' Willie Soon

Jun 30, 2011 - Astrophysicist and climate "skeptic" Willie Wei-Hock Soon says he's never been influenced by money from fossil fuel companies and climate change deniers like the Koch Brothers in his research. He "would have accepted money from Greenpeace if they had offered it," he told Reuters Tuesday. It was Greenpeace's Freedom of Information Act request that turned up more than $800,000 in energy company money for research that Soon conducted.

Soon works for the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Although he has in the past received research money from MIT and NASA, since 2002, none of his funding has come from academic or similar sources. As shown in the table above, his top funders have been Southern Company, a coal giant; the American Petroleum Institute; the Koch Foundation, which opposes new pollution regulations; and Exxon-Mobil, the oil behemoth that has for two decades paid researchers to come up with data showing climate change is not happening. Data that, putting the most charitable interpretation on it, distort what the vast majority of climate scientists say.

Soon has written that polar bears aren't at risk from Arctic melting because Arctic melting isn't happening, solar variability is the key reason for any climate change that is happening, and most recently, that mercury from coal burning isn't a hazard worth regulating. He is in no way an objective researcher, as proved by Greenpeace's investigation showing his opposition to the findings of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change IPCC: {read more}