AlterNet
Buried in Appendix M of the Army Field Manual, the Guantanamo virus is spreading, and eradicating it will require all of us to spread the word.
By Jeffrey S. Kaye, AlterNet
Posted on January 7, 2009, Printed on January 7, 2009
In early September 2006, the U.S. Department of Defense, reeling from at least a [...]

talkingpointsmemo: Too Close For Comfort…FBI agents doing the background check on Bill Richardson apparently started bumping into their colleagues who were investigating those pay-to-play allegations in New Mexico.

reuters: FBI plans large hiring blitz of agents, experts…Wanted by the FBI: agents, language specialists, computer experts, intelligence analysts and finance experts. The FBI said on Monday it [...]

h/t: Covert History
AfterDowningStreet.org
Submitted by davidswanson on Thu, 2009-01-01 01:13.
By Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Marvin, US Army Special Forces (Retired), Author of “Expendable Elite - One Soldier’s Journey Into Covert Warfare”
Immediately after commanding the memorial tribute at Yuma Proving Ground, Arizona, in honor of President John F. Kennedy on the day he was assassinated, I volunteered for [...]

The Washington Independent
Daphne Eviatar
via: SOTT
As every lawyer knows, language matters. Bill Clinton was famously impeached because his definition of “sexual relations” didn’t include oral sex – a definition that Republican lawyers didn’t agree with.
So does it matter if the interrogation techniques that were used, authorized and encouraged by senior officials in the US government for [...]

UK: Drug Resistance Superflu
…The potent virus, which is more likely to trigger serious complications in patients, is a strain of the previously known H1N1 influenza virus, but cannot be treated with the most common flu drug, Tamiflu.

New Russian law ends jury trials for ‘crimes against state’…President Dmitry Medvedev signs the controversial measure with little publicity. [...]

http://www.salon.com….
Glenn Greenwald
Wednesday Dec. 31, 2008 07:56 EST
(updated below - Update II)
While fiercely loyal establishment spokespeople such as The Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus continue to insist that prosecutions are only appropriate for common criminals (”someone breaking into your house”) but not our glorious political leaders when they break the law (by, say, systematically torturing people), the Bush administration has righteously decided that [...]

In Arizona, sheriff turns county meetings into an exercise in fascism…how would you like to live in a place where law enforcement actually arrests you for applauding briefly at a public county council meeting? Where they threaten and intimidate you just for showing up in the first place?

Biden not ‘ruling out’ Bush prosecution…US Vice President-elect [...]

By Faisal Abbas, Asharq Al-Awsat
Posted on December 25, 2008, Printed on December 25, 2008
http://www.alternet.org…
Asharq Al-Awsat, London — In this interview, Asharq Al-Awsat speaks to veteran American reporter Seymour Hersh, who, four years ago, exposed the now infamous prison abuse scandal of Abu Ghraib in Iraq at the hands of U.S. soldiers.
In 1969, Hersh brought to [...]

from Huff Po by Robert Scheer:
In the end, the shame of Vice President Dick Cheney was total: unmitigated by any notion of a graceful departure, let alone the slightest obligation of honest accounting. Although firmly ensconced, even in the popular imagination, as an example of evil incarnate–nearly a quarter of those polled in this week’s [...]

Glenn Greenwald, on “our” torture. This is well worth reading in full:
…our leaders, more or less out in the open, instituted a systematic torture regime with the consent of our key elite institutions and a huge bulk of the American citizenry, engaging in behaviors which, for decades, we insisted were inexcusable war crimes when engaged [...]