According to Mitt Romney, it’s not Wall Street you have to worry about, it’s Sesame Street.
This is hilarious.
Very Distressing: Charles Taylor, Liberian Ex-president, Had CIA Ties
Former Liberian President Charles Taylor, currently on trial.
When I think of Charles Taylor, I think of “blood diamonds.”
And I am relieved that Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is currently President of Liberia, a country still recovering from the slave trade.
Still recovering from the devastation wreaked by Europe and the Americas.
So I was distressed to learn this week that Charles Taylor, currently on trial for Crimes Against Humanity, was at one point employed by the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency.
Liberia’s Charles Taylor, the first African head of state to be prosecuted for war crimes by an international tribunal, used to work with the CIA, according to a report in the Boston Globe from this week.
The report, based on information uncovered through a Freedom of Information Act request made six years ago, said that Taylor had a relationship with the US spy agency for years, although the details of what he actually did were unclear.
“The Pentagon’s response to the Globe states that the details of Taylor’s role on behalf of the spy agencies are contained in dozens of secret reports – at least 48 separate documents – covering several decades,” the US newspaper said.
“However, the exact duration and scope of the relationship remains hidden.”
A spokesperson for the ICC told the Globe that the Taylor-CIA relationship was unrelated to his charges at the court.
The Globe report backed up long-standing rumours of Taylor’s work with the CIA, which confirmed a relationship with Taylor beginning in the early 1980s.
Even though this happened during the Reagan administration, this still gives me no pride.
Charles Taylor?
Think “blood diamonds.”
And mass executions.
Taylor is accused of 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity on claims that he armed Sierra Leone’s Revolutionary United Front (RUF) in exchange for illegally mined, so-called blood diamonds.
How the War on Drugs Became a Race War (MSNBC Video)
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How the war on drugs became a race war, from the Dylan Ratigan Show on MSNBC.
US Marines Identify ‘Urination’ Troops (Raw Video)
At least two of four US Marines shown in a video appearing to urinate on Taliban corpses have been identified, a Marine Corps official has told the BBC.
The video, which was posted online, purports to show four US Marines standing over the bodies of several Taliban fighters, at least one of whom is covered in blood.
These soldiers did nothing to honor the traditions of the United States Marine Corps.
They did not act as the honorable warriors who serve this country so well.
Washington Post: Growing Wealth Widens Distance Between Lawmakers and Constituents
The growth of income inequality has tracked very closely with measures of political polarization, which has been gauged using the average difference between the liberal/conservative scores for Republican and Democratic members of the House.
“The proximity of these trends is uncanny,” according to a 2003 paper by researchers Nolan McCarty, Keith T. Poole and Howard Rosenthal. “Remarkably, the trends of economic inequality and elite political polarization have moved almost in tandem for the past half-century.”
Excellent commentary on this from Eric Byler at Coffee Party USA.
Hint to Obama Haters: “Obamacare” is Paid For, Year-by-year
From Paul Krugman at the NYTimes (for those of you who work for Fox News and have no degrees in economics, he has a NOBEL PRIZE in economics):
I assume that this is coming from some right-wing source. But you know, the CBO has a web site, and it’s easy to check this; there’s a convenient summary of the estimates here. .And, well, the estimates say that the reform is fully paid for:
Oh, and it’s paid for year by year, too — whatever you may have heard about 10 years of taxes paying for 6 years of coverage, or whatever, they’re basically lies.
Holy Sh*t: Pakistan Arrests C.I.A. Informants Who Aided Bin Laden Raid
The lede for this one goes to the New York Times, from the caption used for the picture above:
Instead of going after those who helped Osama bin Laden to live in this Abbottabad compound, Pakistan arrested those who assisted in the raid that killed him.
Oh, shit.
Pakistan’s top military spy agency has arrested some of the Pakistani informants who fed information to the Central Intelligence Agency in the months leading up to the raid that led to the death of Osama bin Laden, according to American officials.
Pakistan’s detention of five C.I.A. informants, including a Pakistani Army major who officials said copied the license plates of cars visiting Bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in the weeks before the raid, is the latest evidence of the fractured relationship between the United States and Pakistan. It comes at a time when the Obama administration is seeking Pakistan’s support in brokering an endgame in the war in neighboring Afghanistan.
At a closed briefing last week, members of the Senate Intelligence Committee asked Michael J. Morell, the deputy C.I.A. director, to rate Pakistan’s cooperation with the United States on counterterrorism operations, on a scale of 1 to 10.
“Three,” Mr. Morell replied, according to officials familiar with the exchange.
The fate of the C.I.A. informants arrested in Pakistan is unclear, but American officials said that the C.I.A. director, Leon E. Panetta, raised the issue when he travelled to Islamabad last week to meet with Pakistani military and intelligence officers.
Pakistan is no ally of the United States of America.
More.