I was pleased to be asked to appear on the successful RT news program The Alyona Show earlier today. The interview was offered as a follow-up to an investigatory article published at Truthout last week, which showed that all protestations by Donald Rumsfeld and U.S. government authorities aside, the U.S. military did engage in torture remarkably similar to waterboarding, if not waterboarding itself. An accompanying article was also posted here at The Dissenter.

The Education Department plans to grant waivers for the No Child Left Behind law to states and school districts that “embrace reform.” This bypasses Congressional reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind law, and allows states and districts to get out from under the onerous burdens of the law, which has a deadline for 100% proficiency in reading and math by 2013-14, and which would close down schools that did not comply.

• Reading today’s market tea leaves.
• The riots spread in Britain.
• But I’m sure independents are very impressed!
• Another day, another lawsuit against Rummy.
• Right-wingers will be right-wingers.

The Wisconsin recalls start today.

Taj Mahal – Bourgeois Blues and Kenny Wayne Shepherd With Hubert Sumlin Live At Guitar Center’s King of the Blues

It’s hard to overstate the importance of tomorrow’s recall elections in Wisconsin.

What happens in Wisconsin isn’t just in Wisconsin.

A federal court has rejected former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s attempt to have a lawsuit dismissed that alleges he is responsible for authorizing the torture of two military contractors. The case, Donald Vance and Nathan Ertel v. Donald Rumsfeld, et al is one of two cases out of more than a dozen that allege Rumsfeld allowed torture to take place against US citizens in Iraq.

The dismissal means Rumsfeld has now lost two appeals against torture suits filed against him. Last week, a federal court in Washington, DC, released an opinion that upheld the other lawsuit moving forward against Rumsfeld, John Doe v. Donald Rumsfeld, et al, a case that alleges the former defense secretary had a role in the torture and illegal detention of a US citizen that was working in Iraq as a translator.

Forget the cover story of waterboarding-leads-to-courier-leads-to bin Laden. Sources in the intelligence community tell me that after years of trying and one bureaucratically insane near-miss in Yemen, the US government killed OBL because a Pakistani intelligence officer came forward to collect the approximately $25 million reward from the State Department’s Rewards for Justice program.

Up with People was a non-profit corporation, a counter to the counterculture, the voice of Nixon’s Silent Majority and it’s well-publicized busload of kids traveling the world and staying with host families delivered an experiment in a new life style, a freshly scrubbed version of hippies. Whether singing “Freedom Isn’t Free” at a barbed wire Berlin Wall checkpoint, showcasing their talents at Richard Nixon’s Inaugural, or performing in later years before groups of auto workers–who unknowingly would soon be laid off by the tour sponsor General Motors–Up with People was on message for the Establishment, spreading the word that being nice was nice, and the nicer you were to people, the more niceness would spread. And the world would live happily ever after.

What continues to unfold in Syria is a massive crime against humanity. The UN Security Council has unanimously condemned the violations against human rights and use force against civilians by President Bashar al Assad’s regime. But sending a US envoy to open lines of communication with the Syrian people and the Syrian government could further aggravate the situation in Syria.