Senate Report Reveals That the CIA Torture Program Was Just As Bad As Feared

Photo: IKONOS/Space Imaging Middle East/Reuters/Corbis

The newlyreleased 500-plus-page executive summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee's torture report delivers a scathing critique of the CIA's post-9/11 interrogation programs, revealing previously unknown abuses, deceptions of the media, and attempts to avoid Congressional oversight.


Among the horrifying abuses detailed in the Senate report: Waterboarding, a torture mechanism that brings the subject to the verge of drowning, was far more popular than the CIA had let on; "rectal feedings" and "rectal hydrations" were used to strip detainees of any measures of autonomy; and a particularly damning segment of the report notes that the CIA did not punish an agent who killed a detainee in the course of interrogations. The summary is based on millions of documents surveyed over five years, and is just a fraction of the length of the full, still-classified, 6,000-page report.
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Thanks, GOP! Michigan Is Now A Theocracy And They're Coming For Your State Next

A new religious tyranny act has been fast tracked in Michigan, and is not waiting for the Senate to pass it.

Christian special pleading has hit my home state, and soon, it'll be coming to yours, too, in the wake of the November Republican sweep.

My state was the birth place of the Republican party, back when they were the good guys - back when they were the party of anti-slavery, when they had a progressive wing that included presidents like Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt. Michigan has always been seen as a blue state, but the truth is much different: we're mostly Detroit, Ann Arbor, Bay City, and to a lesser extent, Flint, surrounded by the very worst of Mississippi. READ MORE

Nazi party wrap disguised as Hanukkah wrapping paper at California store, woman says

Cheryl Shapiro demands Walgreens remove offensive wrapping paper after she claims swastikas adorn gift wrap sold for Hanukkah.

Cheryl Shapiro demands Walgreens remove offensive wrapping paper after she claims swastikas adorn gift wrap sold for Hanukkah.

She did Nazi that coming.

A California woman was outraged when she found what appear to be swastikas adorning Hanukkah gift wrap at a local Walgreens.

Cheryl Shapiro called her rabbi and then the manager at the Northridge, Calif., store, NBC Los Angeles reported.

"I really put my foot down because I was appalled by this," said Shapiro, who was with her grandson Saturday when she noticed the offensive logo apparently woven into a pattern on gold and blue wrapping paper. READ MORE

In 179 fatalities involving on-duty NYPD cops in 15 years

EXCLUSIVE: In 179 fatalities involving on-duty NYPD cops in 15 years, only 3 cases led to indictments — and just 1 conviction

A Daily News analysis of NYPD-involved deaths starts with the 1999 slaying of unarmed Amadou Diallo in a hail of bullets in the Bronx and ends with last month’s shooting death of Akai Gurley in a Brooklyn stairwell. Where race was known, 86% were black or Hispanic.

A Staten Island grand jury’s decision not to indict white NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo for the chokehold death of Eric Garner — a black father of six — stunned large swaths of the city and added fuel to a nationwide surge of protests over police killings.

But history shows the odds were always in Pantaleo’s favor.

A Daily News investigation found that at least 179 people were killed by on-duty NYPD officers over the past 15 years. Just three of the deaths have led to an indictment in state court. In another case, a judge threw out the indictment on technical grounds and it was not reinstated.

Only one officer who killed someone while on duty has been convicted, but he was not sentenced to jail time.

The analysis of the police-involved deaths begins with the 1999 slaying of unarmed Amadou Diallo in a hail of bullets and ends with last month’s shooting death of Akai Gurley, who police say was hit by a ricocheting bullet fired by a rookie cop in a darkened housing project stairwell in Brooklyn. Gurley was also unarmed.

The News found that since 1999: READ MORE

Video: Police lied. Mike Brown was killed 148 feet away from Darren Wilson's SUV

For 104 days, the police have lied and said Mike Brown was killed 35 feet away from Darren Wilson's SUV. It was actually 148 feet. This distance is essential to the defense and how Darren Wilson must demonstrate that he "reasonably feared for his safety." At the point in which Mike Brown ran half a football field away, how reasonable is it for an armed officer to fear anyone? On the afternoon of August 9, 2014, Officer Darren Wilson shot and killed Mike Brown, an unarmed teenager, in Ferguson, Missouri. Below is the first video filmed from Canfield Drive, where the shooting occurred, showing the exact measurement between where Darren Wilson's SUV was parked and Mike Brown died. After that, we methodically debunk the lie that Mike Brown was killed in close proximity to Darren Wilson's SUV. Our starting point, which is 17 feet behind the driver's side window of Darren Wilson's SUV, is this yellow fire hydrant next to the storm drain. READ MORE

French scientists have unveiled the genetic mechanism by which they believe two m

Paris (AFP) - French scientists said Tuesday they had found the genetic mechanism by which two HIV-infected men may have experienced a "spontaneous cure", and said it offered a new strategy in the fight against AIDS. Both men were infected by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), one of them 30 years ago, but never developed AIDS symptoms. The AIDS-causing virus remained in their immune cells but was inactivated because its genetic code had been altered, the scientists said. The change appeared to be linked to increased activity of a common enzyme named APOBEC, they theorised. The "apparent spontaneous cure" throws up an intriguing avenue for drug engineers, the team said in a statement. "The work opens up therapeutic avenues for a cure, using or stimulating this enzyme, and avenues for identifying individuals among newly-infected patients who have a chance of a spontaneous cure." The work, published in the journal Clinical Microbiology and Infection, was carried out by scientists at France's Institute of Health and Medical Research (Inserm). HIV replicates by invading human CD4 immune cells, which it reprogrammes to become virus factories. A rare group of people -- fewer than one percent of those infected -- are naturally able to rein in viral replication and keep the virus at clinically undetectable levels. They are known as "elite controllers", but the mechanism by which they keep the virus at bay remains a mystery. The French group looked at two such individuals, a 57-year-old man diagnosed HIV-positive in 1985, and a 23-year-old diagnosed in 2011, and sequenced their virus genomes. Though they remained infected, standard tests could not detect the virus in their blood. The team found that in both cases, the virus was unable to replicate in immune cells due to mutations in its genetic code. The researchers suggested spontaneous evolution between humans and the virus, a process called "endogenisation" that is believed to have neutralised other viruses in humans in the past. READ MORE

The Price of American Eugenics

Forty years later, only one state is making reparations for thousands of forced sterilizations. From the early decades of the 20th century until 1974, 32 states in the union mandated the sterilization of more than 65,000 citizens. At the behest of government eugenics boards, girls and women had their tubes tied or uteri removed, and boys and men their vasa deferentia snipped because they had been deemed unfit to reproduce. Still others came under the scalpel of private doctors, and this second group makes the calculations difficult—65,000 represents only the number of sterilizations where there was municipal paperwork. In 2013, the North Carolina General Assembly passed the Eugenics Compensation statute, and last week the state’s department of commerce began the long-awaited disbursement of financial reparations to victims of sterilization. Two hundred twenty living victims will receive checks of $20,000 each—220 checks, out of 768 claims. Between 1929 and 1974, North Carolina sterilized at least 7,600 people. However mortifying the disparity here, we must give the Assembly credit for passing legislation that no other state has so far brought to a vote; by contrast, California has kept positively mum about its own similar history, which accounts for a third of all American sterilizations. READ MORE