cia torture

American Psychological Association Bolstered C.I.A. Torture Program, Report Says – JAMES RISEN

The American Psychological Association secretly collaborated with the administration of President George W. Bush to bolster a legal and ethical justification for the torture of prisoners swept up in the post-Sept. 11 war on terror, according to a new report by a group of dissident health professionals and human rights activists. The report is the first to examine the association’s …

California Vineyard

Big Wine Fails To Dry Farm During California’s Relentless Drought – Shepherd Bliss

(Sonoma County, in the heart of California’s Redwood Empire): California Governor Jerry Brown spent this year’s Earth Day at the elite Iron Horse Winery in the Sebastopol countryside. It was a great photo opportunity and promotion for the winery. Iron Horse is known for donations to President Bill Clinton and other politicians, with whom it has cozy relationships, and from whom …

weather-chaos

Hotter and Wetter: Report Finds Global Warming Driving Extreme Weather – Lauren McCauley

It’s not just your imagination. The punishing heat waves, record snowfall, and 500-year floods, which seem to be occurring with increasing frequency, are doing just that, thanks to global warming. According to a study (pdf) published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change, these extreme weather events are clearly attributed to human-induced climate change and will only worsen as average temperatures tick higher …

Inglorious Goobers: Progressives Line Up to Defend Clinton Corruption – CHRIS FLOYD

It’s amusing to see how our staunch progressives — who believe so deeply in a level playing field and fair play, who railed so vociferously against crony capitalism back in Bush-Time — are now twisting themselves in knots to dismiss the stories about that long-festering font of corruption, the Clinton Foundation. Suddenly, what was once evil and corrosive — peddling …

Drone

Obama’s drone warfare: Assassination made routine – Patrick Martin

Perhaps the most extraordinary aspect of President Obama’s announcement Thursday that two hostages of Al Qaeda, an American and an Italian, were killed in a US drone missile strike in Pakistan is the lack of any significant reaction from official political circles or the media. There was a certain amount of tut-tutting in the press and expressions of sympathy for …

Big Bank ‘Crime of the Century’ Results in Guess What? No Jail Time for Anyone – Deirdre Fulton

While corporate watchdogs hailed the record $2.5 billion settlement paid by Deutsche Bank to U.S. and U.K. authorities for its rate-rigging role in the massive LIBOR scandal, some noted that the fine—while large—suggests that some institutions are still considered “too big to jail.” Authorities announced Thursday that Germany’s biggest bank would pay $2.5 billion in penalties, a record for cases involving interest …

Hillary Clinton2

Cash Flowed to Clinton Foundation as Russians Pressed for Control of Uranium Company – JO BECKER and MIKE McINTIRE

The headline in Pravda trumpeted President Vladimir V. Putin’s latest coup, its nationalistic fervor recalling an era when the newspaper served as the official mouthpiece of the Kremlin: “Russian Nuclear Energy Conquers the World.” The article, in January 2013, detailed how the Russian atomic energy agency, Rosatom, had taken over a Canadian company with uranium-mining stakes stretching from Central Asia …

tution-vs-other-price-indices

Money in Politics Is Darkening the Future for Millennials – Katie Rose Quandt

The Atlantic called millennials the “unluckiest generation,” and there’s no denying today’s young adults had the misfortune of graduating into a recession. Slatecalculated that stagnant incomes and mounting student loans are putting young people “deep in a hole.” If you include those who have given up searching, the unemployment rate for 18-29 year-olds reached 15 percent last September. And aDemos poll found alarming rates of young …

psychotropic

One-Third of Seniors with Dementia Are Being Given Antipsychotics

—even though such toxic drugs are not approved to treat dementia! A report [1] from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that nearly one-third of older adults with dementia who spent more than 100 days in a nursing home were given antipsychotics through Medicare’s prescription drug program in 2012. We previously reported that a similar situation exists with brain-damaged veterans [2]—and even with infants and young …

water

China’s struggle for water security – Giles HEWITT

Way back in 1999, before he became China’s prime minister, Wen Jiabao warned that water scarcity posed one of the greatest threats to the “survival of the nation”. Sixteen years later, that threat looms ever larger, casting a forbidding shadow over China’s energy and food security and demanding urgent solutions with significant regional, and even global, consequences. The mounting pressure …