A new system for ensuring accurate election tallies, which MIT researchers helped to develop, passed its first real-world test last Tuesday.

Britain's Ministry of Defense has launched an investigation into new claims that soldiers sexually abused Iraqi detainees and subjected them to mock executions, hooding, and used dogs to incite fear--interrogation methods that were also used by US soldiers and personally approved by former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. The charges come on the heels of Britian's complete withdrawal from Iraq last summer. The allegations by former Iraqi detainees include one in which a 16-year-old Iraqi boy claims he was raped by two British soldiers on an army base. One of the victims has likened the alleged abuse to the torture and sexual humiliation that took place in Iraq’s notorious Abu Ghraib prison, which was run by US forces.

Some critics say a civilian trial -- instead of a military tribunal -- for self-proclaimed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his accomplices could end up targeting the Bush administration and its anti-terror policies.

After eight years of war, we’re losing – only to have turned Afghanistan and Pakistan into terroristic turmoil.

Statements in the congressional record by more than a dozen lawmakers were ghostwritten, in whole or in part, by Washington lobbyists working for Genentech, one of the world’s largest biotechnology companies (subsidiary of Swiss company, Roche). E-mail messages show that the lobbyists drafted one statement for Democrats and another for Republicans. The lobbyists, employed by Genentech and by two Washington law firms, were remarkably successful in getting the statements printed in the Congressional Record under the names of different members of Congress.

"... Schakowsky’s three day visit from November 10-12 included meetings with family members of victims that have died directly from violence from the coup, media outlets such as Channel 36 and Radio Globo that have been attacked for honestly reporting on the resistance movement, and also a visit to the Brazilian Embassy where ousted President Zelaya and approximately 40 others have taken refuge for the last 53 days. The Chicago Congresswoman commented on her opportunity to hear a recording of some of the sounds bombarded into the Embassy and see the blinding lights set up outside, in addition to the crane set up for the military to spy into the Embassy. ... As to the human rights abuses ... the State Department looks the other way. From that same November 12 State Department press briefing: QUESTION: A follow-up on Honduras. What does the U.S. think about the human rights situation there right now? There have been mass arrests, curfews, an emergency decree, and a ban on protests and media closures for three weeks during the presidential campaign. Does that undermine the electoral process, in the view of the U.S.? MR. KELLY: Regarding the – well, first of all, our real priority here is to see this accord implemented step by step. We’ve only gotten through step one, and we need step two and step three to be implemented. Regarding the – these reports, I’m actually not aware of these reports of any actions to – you say ban rallies and – no, I’m not just aware of those reports. I think that we would need to have more details about it for us to really comment on it. "

THE dead at Fort Hood had not even been laid to rest when their massacre became yet another political battle cry for the self-proclaimed patriots of the American right [who proclaimed that] Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan was a terrorist. Joe Lieberman announced hearings to investigate the Army for its dereliction of duty on homeland security. Peter Hoekstra vowed to unmask cover-ups in the White House and at the C.I.A. It’s quite possible that some of what this crowd says is right . Yet the mass murder at Fort Hood didn’t happen in isolation. It unfolded against the backdrop of Obama’s final lap of decision-making about Afghanistan. In a week of horrific news, it was good to hear at the end of it that Obama is dissatisfied with the four Afghanistan options he has been weighing so far. The more time he deliberates, the more he is learning that he’s on a fool’s errand with no exit. If we have learned anything concrete so far from the massacre at Fort Hood, it’s that our hawks, for all their certitude, are as utterly confused as the rest of us about who it is we’re fighting in Afghanistan and to what end.

While the national debate over immigration may be a ways off, an assortment of evangelical Christian organizations are already at odds over the issue. In early October, the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) -- which has over 40 member organizations and is made up of nearly 30 million U.S. evangelicals -- passed a resolution endorsing "comprehensive" immigration reform. In no time, Mark Tooley of the Institute on Religion & Democracy pounced.... "The Bible does not offer a blueprint for modern legislation, but it can serve as a moral compass and shape the attitudes of those who believe in God," the NEA resolution stated....IRD's Tooley later told OneNewsNews -- the news service of Rev. Donald Wildmon's American Family Association, that "The NAE has in the recent past become outspoken on environmentalism and global warming, and then condemn[ed] the U.S. for what it calls 'torture' in its interrogation of terror detainees. And next, [the NAE] plans to adopt a petition regarding nuclear disarmament."

Attorney General Eric Holder announced Friday that some top al-Qaeda 9/11 conspirators will be tried by jury in New York not far from the scenes of devastation that they had wrought. Predictably, Republican critics vowed to fight the decision, since they much prefer to hold people forever without trial while torturing them, sort of the way some English kings did in North America before there was that pesky American constitution. In fact, on a whole range of issues, the contemporary Republican Party is a party of medieval romanticism. Its disquisitions on when the human person begins are theological in character and rooted in assumptions even a lot of medievals would have questioned. Its faith that bankers would never steal from us and so do not need to be regulated is a form of mysticism that medievals would have applied to saints. And its fascination with arbitrary arrest and imprisonment and with torture more recalls the star chambers of yore than the deliberations at Philadelphia over 200 years ago.

From outside our borders, the climate crisis doesn't look anything like the meteors or space invaders that Todd Stern imagined hurtling toward Earth. It looks, instead, like a long and silent war waged by the rich against the poor. And for that, regardless of what happens in Copenhagen, the poor will continue to demand their rightful reparations. "This is about the rich world taking responsibility for the damage done," says Ilana Solomon, policy analyst for ActionAid USA, one of the groups recently converted to the cause. "This money belongs to poor communities affected by climate change. It is their compensation."

under the [Senate] health committee proposal, certain standards governing the nature and extent of covered benefits would apply only to policies sold inside the exchanges. All of those factors contribute to the possibility that insurers might offer cheaper, less comprehensive policies outside the exchanges and entice healthier people to leave the new markets. That would leave the exchanges responsible for sicker people who are more expensive to insure. Similarly, outside the exchange, the bill drafted by the Senate Finance Committee would not regulate the marketing of individual coverage, nor would it require that health plans be rated based on quality and price. Even within the exchanges, there could be limits to consumer protections. The health committee bill would not explicitly guarantee consumers the right to an external appeal when a health plan refuses to pay for medical services. The right to an external appeal is a hallmark of the health-benefits program for federal employees, which [supposedly] has served as a model for the proposed exchanges.

The global food crisis has prompted various rich countries to start buying up land in the poorer world to secure their food supplies. As well as affecting domestic food supplies in the countries affected, Sue Branford says it could be a time bomb for the world’s ability to cope with climate change. -- The day that the food starts to run out in the world may come far more quickly than most of us imagine. At present, there are more than a billion people going hungry even though there is no shortage of food. The very poor don’t eat enough because they don’t have enough money. The underlying problem is one of social inequality, of the highly skewed distribution of financial resources in the world. -- Over the next century much worse food shortages may emerge. The climate crisis is already arriving far more quickly than scientists expected and proving far more dangerous. For a while, many scientists believed that the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would be partly compensated for by an increase in plant growth, caused by the greater availability of CO2. But now it seems that carbon fertilization, as it is called, will not happen or will happen far less reliably than was once imagined. --- And the world destroys its biodiversity at its peril, for it is hugely important to have genetically varied populations and species-rich natural and agricultural ecosystems, particularly at times of environmental stress. - Biodiversity plays a crucial role in supplying the raw materials and the genes that make possible the emergence of the new plant varieties on which we all depend. Such new varieties will be urgently required as the world heats up.

Obama's announcement to try 9/11 defendants would be commendable if it applied to all, rather than some, detainees.

I am afraid of what Thanksgiving tells us about both the dominant culture and much of the alleged counterculture. -- Here’s what I think it tells us: - As a society, the United States is intellectually dishonest, politically irresponsible, and morally bankrupt. - This is a society in which even progressive people routinely allow national and family traditions to trump fundamental human decency. - It’s a society in which, in the privileged sectors, getting along and not causing trouble are often valued above honesty and accountability. - Though it’s painful to consider, it’s possible that such a society is beyond redemption. - Such a consideration becomes frightening when we recognize that all this goes on in the most affluent and militarily powerful country in the history of the world, but a country that is falling apart -- an empire in decline. -- Thanksgiving should teach us all to be afraid. --- However we decide to proceed, we can’t ignore the ugly ideological realities of the holiday. - My fear of those realities is appropriate but facing reality need not leave us paralyzed by fear; instead it can help us understand the contours of the multiple crises -- economic and ecological, political and cultural -- that we face. -- The challenge is to channel our fear into action. I hope that next year I will find a way to take another step toward a more meaningful honoring of our intellectual, political, and moral obligations.

A Goldman Sachs report projects earnings per share and stock values of the five largest insurance companies under four different health care reform scenarios. It is an excellent example of how vampires think, and shows us which facets of the reform proposals are most frightening precisely because they represent true reform. They are: cuts to Medicare Advantage, regulations that disallow exclusions for pre-existing conditions and recision, and finally, the odious public option.

I know you're in a tough spot. It would be bad enough if you only had to get Ben Nelson, Evan Bayh, Mary Landrieu, and Blanche Lincoln on board, but anyone who has to kiss Joe Lieberman's derriere deserves a congressional medal of honor. But Harry, you really need to take on future health-care costs. The House bill fails to do this. The public option in the House bill is open only to people without employer-provided health insurance. That will be too small a number to have bargaining clout to get good deals from drug companies and medical providers. And it will mainly attract people who have more expensive medical needs, which is why the Congressional Budget Office decided it would cost more than it would save. You also know a public insurance option that's open to everyone would cut future health costs dramatically by imposing real competition on private for-profit insurance plans. That's why the private insurers hate the idea. Even if states were allowed to opt out of this robust public option, the big states would almost certainly opt in, giving it the scale needed to negotiate great deals from drug companies and medical providers. This would put pressure on any state that opted out because their citizens would soon discover they're paying far more. [Note: Good suggestions, even if I don't agree with everything this author says.]

"Claims that British soldiers recreated the torture conditions of Abu Ghraib to commit the sexual and physical abuse of Iraqi civilians are being investigated by the Ministry of Defence. "

The current U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, General Karl W. Eikenberry, who was top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan from 2005 to 2007, has told President Obama he opposes sending more troops. .... snip ... When the RAND Corporation held a forum on Afghanistan recently on Capitol Hill, Zbigniew Brzezinski claimed that it was uncontroversial that US troops had to stay in Afghanistan. I pointed him to polls of Americans, and he replied that Americans get fatigued and don't know any better.

Privately, GOP sources acknowledge that they failed to anticipate the political consequences of a “no” vote on the amendment. And several aides said that Republicans are engaged in an internal blame game about why they agreed to a roll-call vote on the measure, rather than a simple voice vote that would have allowed the opposing senators to duck criticism.

Chomsky takes on a critic. "Noam Chomsky interviewed on the BBC program HARDtalk, during his tour of the United Kingdom in Nov. 2009."