This bulletin just came in from Wikileaks:

Wikileaks has released over 600 United Nations investigative reports, over 70 of which are classified. The reports expose sensitive matters from allegations of hundreds of European peace-keepers sexually abusing--and impregnating--refugee girls, to generals in Peru using Swiss bank accounts to engage in multi-million dollar procurement fraud.

A number of the reports have not only been marked "Strictly Confidential" but as an additional measure have had selected regions redacted before before internal distribution.  Often these redacted regions can be "unredacted" by simply "cut and pasting" the blanked area.  On the description page for each report, where possible, Wikileaks has provided a simple text version of the report that includes the redacted portions.  

Since the number of reports is subtantial we ask that journalists, bloggers and other investigators take responsibility for those those reports closest to the month and day of their date of birth before considering the material at large.

(Cross posted at The National Gadfly)

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"The true strength of rulers and empires lies not in armies or emotions, but in the belief of men that they are inflexibly open and truthful and legal. As soon as a government departs from that standard, it ceases to be anything more than "the gang in possession," and its days are numbered."(H. G. Wells, as quoted in the Gravel Edition of the Pentagon Papers.)

The enemies of democracy are the enemies of the rule of law.

"enemies both foreign & domestic..."

Our Presidents and our armed forces swear to protect the Constitution from this threat - with good reason.  The Constitution is the rule of law and it is the one thing that can prevent tyrants, thieves and murderers from the ruinous world of their unchecked greed and brutality.

(Cross posted at The National Gadfly)

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The Bush administration has found yet another way to waste taxpayer money while providing huge sums to private contractors.  According to a survey of activities in 2007 by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, about a third of the federal professional intelligence workforce now consists of contractors, mostly in the Washington, DC area.

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I just Stumbled! upon a video by a journalist for the Nation which had some disturbing things to say about our candidates and their position on private contractors in Iraq.

View it in the extended entry and then tell me what you think.

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I don't know if anyone is watching PBS, but I am watching a show on PBS that is describing a horiffic story about a US company, K*R, a subsidiary of Halli***ton, a large US company with government connections.

The show is about a process of human trafficking, and it spotlights the case of 12 missing workers. the show describes a process they used of getting - and keeping workers in Iraq. Its incredibly heartbreaking.

The show describes a process in which the people who buy the workers from Third World human trafficers for these contractors are insulated from liability. There appears to be a huge human pipeline that enables these companies to make huge profits because they pay their workers, who often come from South Asian countries and HAVE TO PAY BROKERS FOR THEIR JOBS.. very low wages, then base their contract prices on what similar workers would make in the US. they actually bragged about this! They took their passports when they entered Iraq so they could not leave.

The 12 people were kitchen workers - They were told they were going to be working in hotels in Jordan, but then they were instead brought to Iraq by people K*R described as 'subcontractors' and abandoned by the side of a highway where they were kidnapped by an Iraqi terrorist army, held for ransom, which it appears was ignored, and executed.

Is anyone watching this? Its a heartbreaking story.

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