US Torture: Voices from the Black Sites - The New York Review of Books
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22530

An article by Mark Danner from The New York Review of Books, April 9, 2009

We think time and elections will cleanse our fallen world but they will not.

Mark Danner obtains Red Cross report on CIA Black Sites - US behavior toward detainees = "torture"

Mark Danner obtains confidential ICRC report on CIA torture.

the toread tag is becoming more aspirational all the time

Manliness, heroes, & national character - a harrowing account of our own failures: http://tr.im/jII7 (Read 2 the end!) (via @jayrosen_nyu) [from http://twitter.com/CircleReader/statuses/1617944525]

New York Review of Books

2 of 2 essays by Mark Danner

NY Review of Books review referring to Feb 2007 Red Cross study on torture, referred to by Rahm Emanuel

Mark Danner NY Review of Books April 3009

I wrote earlier today about Holder's decision to "review" whether criminal prosecutions are warranted in connection with the torture of Terrorism suspects -- that can be read here -- but I want to write separately about the release today of the 2004 CIA's Inspector General Report (.pdf), both because it's extraordinary in its own right and because it underscores how unjust it would be to prosecute only low-level interrogators rather than the high-level officials who implemented the torture regime. Initially, it should be emphasized that yet again, it is not the Congress or the establishment media which is uncovering these abuses and forcing disclosure of government misconduct. Rather, it is the ACLU (with which I consult) that, along with other human rights organizations, has had to fill the void left by those failed institutions, using their own funds to pursue litigation to compel disclosure. Without their efforts, we would know vastly less than we know now about the crimes

The Report highlights how depraved were the interrogation practices - and how unjust it is to immunize U.S. leaders.

The Report highlights how depraved were the interrogation practices - and how unjust it is to immunize U.S. leaders

America’s spy agencies want to read your blog posts, keep track of your Twitter updates — even check out your book reviews on Amazon

America’s spy agencies want to read your blog posts, keep track of your Twitter updates — even check out your book reviews on Amazon. In-Q-Tel, the investment arm of the CIA and the wider intelligence community, is putting cash into Visible Technologies, a software firm that specializes in monitoring social media. It’s part of a larger movement within the spy services to get better at using ”open source intelligence” — information that’s publicly available, but often hidden in the flood of TV shows, newspaper articles, blog posts, online videos and radio reports generated every day. Visible crawls over half a million web 2.0 sites a day, scraping more than a million posts and conversations taking place on blogs, online forums, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter and Amazon. (It doesn’t touch closed social networks, like Facebook, at the moment.) Customers get customized, real-time feeds of what’s being said on these sites, based on a series of keywords.

Palantir Technologies has designed what many intelligence analysts say is the most effective tool to date to investigate terrorist networks. The software's main advance is a user-friendly search tool that can scan multiple data sources at once, something previous search tools couldn't do.

Palantir Technologies has designed what many intelligence analysts say is the most effective tool to date to investigate terrorist networks.

Maine Learning Results

Maine Department of Education Regulation

THE GUIDING PRINCIPLES – The knowledge and skills described in the Maine Department of Education Regulation 132 support Maine students in achieving the goals established in Maine’s Guiding Principles. The Guiding Principles state that each Maine student must leave school as: A clear and effective communicator; A self-directed and lifelong learner; A creative and practical problem solver; A responsible and involved citizen; and An integrative and informed thinker. For the complete detail of the Guiding Principles, click on one of these links:

MLR

Good for planning (and general common sense)

Questi sono alcuni dei risultati di un'inchiesta portata avanti per due anni dal Washington Post. Dice @riotta su twitter che non ci sono scoop, però.

Great piece of journalism from Washington Post: Top Secret America, A hidden world, growing beyond control. http://is.gd/dyx7L #Terrorism

Interesting.

The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work.