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Four former Blackwater Worldwide security guards were convicted and immediately jailed Wednesday for their roles in a deadly 2007 shooting in Baghdad’s Nisour Square that marked a bloody nadir in America’s war in Iraq.A jury in Federal District Court found that the deaths of 17 Iraqis in the shooting, which began when a convoy of the guards suddenly began firing in a crowded intersection, was not a battlefield tragedy, but the result of a criminal act.The convictions on murder, manslaughter and weapons charges represented a legal and diplomatic victory for the United States government, which had urged Iraqis to put their faith in the American court system. That faith was tested repeatedly over seven years as the investigation had repeated setbacks, leaving Iraqis deeply suspicious that anyone would be held responsible for the deaths.

One defendant, Nicholas A. Slatten, a sniper who the government said fired the first shots, was convicted of murder. The others — Dustin L. Heard, Evan S. Liberty and Paul A. Slough — were convicted of voluntary manslaughter and using a machine gun to carry out a violent crime. A fifth contractor, Jeremy Ridgeway, previously pleaded guilty to manslaughter and cooperated with prosecutors.Jurors could not reach verdicts on several of the counts against Mr. Heard, but that will have little bearing on the sentencing. The machine-gun charges carry mandatory 30-year minimum prison sentences, more than the manslaughter charges. Mr. Slatten faces possible life in prison. No sentencing date has been set.

The trial was an epilogue to the story of Blackwater, which began as a police- and military-training facility in North Carolina and came to symbolize the country’s outsourcing of its wartime responsibilities.About 1,000 of Blackwater’s contractors guarded diplomats in Iraq. Others loaded bombs onto Predator drones. The company’s founder, Erik Prince, tapped retired Central Intelligence Agency officials for executive positions, and at one point, the C.I.A. hired Blackwater contractors to covertly track and kill Qaeda operatives worldwide, a program that was shelved before any killings were conducted. While the company’s security guards were involved in scores of shootings in Iraq, it was the 2007 incident in Nisour Square that helped cement Blackwater’s image as a company that operated with impunity because of its lucrative contracts with the American government. The company became the subject of several Justice Department investigations, all of which the company and its executives survived. But ultimately, public outrage over the shooting contributed to Blackwater’s demise. It lost its contracts and was renamed, sold and renamed again.

Last week charges of Desertion and Misbehavior Before the Enemy were recommended against Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl. Tragically, Sergeant Bergdahl was once again crucified, without evidence or trial, throughout mainstream, alternative and social media. That same day Sergeant Bergdahl was offered as a sacrifice to primarily Republican politicians, bloggers, pundits, chicken hawks and jingoists, while Democrats mostly kept silent as Sergeant Bergdahl was paraded electronically and digitally in the latest Triumph of the Global War on Terror, President Ashraf Ghani was applauded, in person, by the American Congress. Such coincidences, whether they are arranged or accidental, often appear in literary or cinematic tales, but they do, occasionally, manifest themselves in real life, often appearing to juxtapose the virtues and vices of a society for the sake and advancement of political narratives. The problem with this specific coincidence for those on the Right, indulging in the fantasy of American military success abroad, as well as for those on the Left, desperate to prove that Democrats can be as tough as Republicans, is that reality may intrude. To the chagrin and consternation of many in DC, Sergeant Bergdahl may prove to be the selfless hero, while President Ghani may play the thief, and Sergeant Bergdahl's departure from his unit in Afghanistan may come to be understood as just and his time as a prisoner of war principled, while President Obama's continued propping up and bankrolling of the government in Kabul, at the expense of American servicemembers and taxpayers, comes to be fully acknowledged as immoral and profligate.

Buried in much of the media coverage this past week on the charges presented against Sergeant Bergdahl, with the exception of CNN, are details of the Army's investigation into Sergeant Bergdahl's disappearance, capture and captivity. As revealed by Sergeant Bergdahl's legal team, twenty-two Army investigators have constructed a report that details aspects of Sergeant Bergdahl's departure from his unit, his capture and his five years as a prisoner of war that disprove many of the malicious rumors and depictions of him and his conduct.

As documented in his lawyers' statement submitted to the Army on March 25, 2015, in response to Sergeant Bergdahl's referral to the Article 32 preliminary hearing (which is roughly the military equivalent of a civilian grand jury), the following facts are now known about Sergeant Bergdahl and his time prior to and during his captivity as a prisoner of war:• Sergeant Bergdahl is a "truthful person" who "did not act out of a bad motive"; • he did not have the intention to desert permanently nor did he have an intention to leave the Army when he left his unit's outpost in eastern Afghanistan in 2009; • he did not have the intention of joining the Taliban or assisting the enemy; • he left his post to report "disturbing circumstances to the attention of the nearest general officer". • while he was a prisoner of war for five years, he was tortured, but he did not cooperate with his captors. Rather, Sergeant Bergdahl attempted to escape twelve times, each time with the knowledge he would be tortured or killed if caught; • there is no evidence American soldiers died looking for Sergeant Bergdahl.

The Department of Homeland Security aims to increase its domestic human intelligence collection activity this year, the Department recently told Congress. In a question for the record from a September 2014 congressional hearing, Rep. Paul C. Broun (R-GA) asked:  “Do we currently have enough human intelligence capacity–both here in the homeland and overseas–to counter the threats posed by state and non-state actors alike?” The Department replied, in a response published in the full hearing volume last month (at p. 64): “DHS is working on increasing its human intelligence-gathering capabilities at home and anticipates increasing its field collector/reporter personnel by 50 percent, from 19 to approximately 30, during the coming year.” “We are also training Intelligence Officers in State and major urban area fusion centers to do intelligence reporting. This will increase the human intelligence capability by additional 50–60 personnel.” The projected increase in DHS HUMINT collection activity was not specifically mentioned in the Department’s FY 2015 budget request.

Human intelligence collection in this context does not necessarily mean that the Department is running spies under cover. According to a 2009 report from the Congressional Research Service (footnote 38), “For purposes of DHS intelligence collection, HUMINT is used to refer to overt collection of information and intelligence from human sources. DHS does not, generally, engage in covert or clandestine HUMINT.” In any case, “The DHS Intelligence Enterprise has increased intelligence reporting, producing over 3,000 reports in fiscal year 2014,” DHS also told Rep. Broun. A June 2014 report from the Government Accountability Office found fault with some of that reporting, which is generated by the DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A). “I&A customers had mixed views on the extent to which its analytic products and services are useful,” GAO found. See DHS Intelligence Analysis: Additional Actions Needed to Address Analytic Priorities and Workforce Challenges, GAO report GAO-14-397, June 2014. DHS concurred with the resulting GAO recommendations.

A senior U.S. diplomat touched down in Caracas on Wednesday where he met with Venezuelan President, Nicolas Maduro, ahead of the Organization of American State’s (OAS) 7th Summit of the Americas this Friday in Panama.  State Department Counsellor, Thomas A. Shannon, flew to Venezuela on Tuesday on behalf of Secretary of State, John Kerry, at the invitation of Caracas. Venezuelan Foreign Minister, Delcy Rodriguez, was also present.

Venezuelan President, Nicolas Maduro, stated that he hoped the meeting would lead to a new era of relations with the U.S. “I told him, with all due respect, I hope that what I am going to say here in this meeting, with the best Bolivarian commitment, is going to be received where it needs to be received and that the doors are opened to a new stage in our relationship, based on respect, respect for the dignity and sovereignty of Venezuela,” stated Maduro on Thursday.

The reaction has witnessed Washington tone down its rhetoric in relation to Venezuela and on Tuesday this week, Benjamin J. Rhodes, deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, stated that “The United States does not believe that Venezuela poses some threat to our national security,” in what seemed to be a contradiction of the language used in March’s Executive Order. Nevertheless, the issue is expected to be a significant point of contention throughout the upcoming summit, which will be attended by both President Nicolas Maduro and Barack Obama.

Iceland's government is considering a revolutionary monetary proposal - removing the power of commercial banks to create money and handing it to the central bank. The proposal, which would be a turnaround in the history of modern finance, was part of a report written by a lawmaker from the ruling centrist Progress Party, Frosti Sigurjonsson, entitled "A better monetary system for Iceland". "The findings will be an important contribution to the upcoming discussion, here and elsewhere, on money creation and monetary policy," Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson said. The report, commissioned by the premier, is aimed at putting an end to a monetary system in place through a slew of financial crises, including the latest one in 2008.

He argued the central bank was unable to contain the credit boom, allowing inflation to rise and sparking exaggerated risk-taking and speculation, the threat of bank collapse and costly state interventions. In Iceland, as in other modern market economies, the central bank controls the creation of banknotes and coins but not the creation of all money, which occurs as soon as a commercial bank offers a line of credit. The central bank can only try to influence the money supply with its monetary policy tools. Under the so-called Sovereign Money proposal, the country's central bank would become the only creator of money. "Crucially, the power to create money is kept separate from the power to decide how that new money is used," Mr Sigurjonsson wrote in the proposal.

Banks would continue to manage accounts and payments, and would serve as intermediaries between savers and lenders. Mr Sigurjonsson, a businessman and economist, was one of the masterminds behind Iceland's household debt relief programme launched in May 2014 and aimed at helping the many Icelanders whose finances were strangled by inflation-indexed mortgages signed before the 2008 financial crisis. The small Nordic country was hit hard as the crash of US investment bank Lehman Brothers caused the collapse of its three largest banks. Iceland then became the first western European nation in 25 years to appeal to the International Monetary Fund to save its battered economy. Its GDP fell by 5.1pc in 2009 and 3.1pc in 2010 before it started rising again.

In the spring of 2014, the Project On Government Oversight (POGO) put out the call to whistleblowers within the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to provide an inside perspective on the issues the Department was facing. In our 34-year history, POGO has never received as many submissions on a single issue. Nearly 800 current and former VA employees and veterans from 35 states and the District of Columbia contacted us. POGO reviewed each of the submissions, and found that concerns about the VA go far beyond long or falsified wait times for medical appointments; they extend to the quality of health care services veterans receive. A recurring and fundamental theme became clear: VA employees across the country fear they will face repercussions if they dare to raise a dissenting voice. POGO wrote a letter to Acting VA Secretary Sloan Gibson in July last year, highlighting three specific cases of current or former employees who agreed to share details about their personal experiences of retaliation.[1] In California, a VA inpatient pharmacy supervisor was placed on administrative leave and ordered not to speak out after protesting “inordinate delays” in delivering medication to patients and “refusal to comply with VHA regulations.” In one case, he said, a veteran’s epidural drip of pain control medication ran dry, and another veteran developed a high fever after he was administered a chemotherapy drug after its expiration point.

In Pennsylvania, a former VA doctor told POGO that he had been removed from clinical work and forced to spend his days in an office with nothing to do. This action occurred after he complained that, in medical emergencies, physicians who were supposed to be on call were failing or refusing to report to the hospital. The Office of Special Counsel (OSC) shared his concerns, writing “[w]e have concluded that there is a substantial likelihood that the information that you provided to OSC discloses a substantial and specific danger to public health and safety.”[2] In Appalachia, a former VA nurse told POGO she was intimidated by management and forced out of her job after she raised concerns that patients with serious injuries were being neglected. In one case she was reprimanded for referring a patient to the VA’s patient advocate after weeks of being unable to arrange transportation for a medical test to determine if he was in danger of sudden death. “Such an upsetting thing for a nurse just to see this blatant neglect occur almost on a daily basis. It was not only overlooked but appeared to be embraced,” she said. She also pointed out that there is “a culture of bullying employees….It’s just a culture of harassment that goes on if you report wrongdoing,” she said.

That culture doesn’t appear to be limited to just one or two VA clinics. Some people, including former employees who are now beyond the reach of VA management, were willing to be interviewed by POGO and to be quoted by name, but others said they contacted us anonymously because they are still employed at the VA and are worried about retaliation. One put it this way: “Management is extremely good at keeping things quiet and employees are very afraid to come forward.” This kind of fear and suppression of whistleblowers who report wrongdoing often culminates in the larger problems, as the VA is currently experiencing. By now it is well known that employees who recently raised concerns about veteran wait times faced reprisal. But whistleblower retaliation in the VA is nothing new. In 1992 a congressional report detailed the experiences of VA employees who were harassed or fired after reporting problems.[3] Throughout the 1990s there were several congressional hearings conducted on the quality of care at VA hospitals and on reprisal against VA employees who exposed inadequate care.[4] Despite then-Secretary Togo D. West’s declaration that such reprisals would not be tolerated, a House hearing in 1999 found that the reprisal problems still existed.[5] A Government Accountability Report from 2000 found that many VA employees were unaware of their rights to protections against retaliation for blowing the whistle on wrongdoing.[6] The report also found that the majority of employees feared retaliation and were therefore unwilling to report misconduct.

As Saudi Arabia and its allies have begun the bombing campaign against Yemen, in the south, a separatist movement calling for a "State of South Arabia" is emerging. Fostered by the US, it will leave the Houthis with two hostile states at their borders and locked access to the sea, if it succeeds.

Welcome to phase two of US regime change operations. After Yemen's 2011 revolution failed and Houthi militias overthrew President Hadi, forces trained and sponsored by the US government are being activated as a separatist movement. The Southern People's Committees (SPC), founded around 2007 although USAID has been conducting political workshops as part of a $695,000 project and actively grooming leadership in Yemen since 2005. (Also in 2007, weekly protests began, organized by women's organizations, fostered by the workshops.) The SPC were similar to many color revolution movements such as Serbia's Otpor in that they did not have a central leadership, but rather an autonomous cell-based organization. In addition, they were very capable in the use of social media technologies, text messaging and the circumventing the government's internet censorship to organize protests.

Meanwhile, the Yemen Center for Human Rights Studies, which received $193,000 from the EU and US-funded Foundation for the Future in 2009, conducted a poll in January 2010, which found that 70 percent of southern Yemenis favored secession. Another USAID-funded project, the $43 million Responsive Governance Project (RGP), launched in May 2010, conducted "New Social Media training for Youth leaders to equip Yemeni youth groups in the use of media to enhance their participation in formulating public issues." The project focuses on establishing contacts with the Yemeni government and providing "leadership and civic education training to youth NGOs."

“I can’t wait to be relieved of the burdens of close air support,” Major General James Post, the vice commander of Air Combat Command (ACC), allegedly told a collection of officers at a training session in August 2014. As with his now notorious warning that service members would be committing treason if they communicated with Congress about the successes of the A-10, Major General Post seems to speak for the id of Air Force headquarters’ true hostility towards the close air support (CAS) mission. Air Force four-stars are working hard to deny this hostility to the public and Congress, but their abhorrence of the mission has been demonstrated through 70 years of Air Force headquarters’ budget decisions and combat actions that have consistently short-changed close air support. For the third year in a row (many have already forgotten the attempt to retire 102 jets in the Air Force’s FY 2013 proposal), the Air Force has proposed retiring some or all of the A-10s, ostensibly to save money in order to pay for “modernization.” After failing to convince Congress to implement their plan last year (except for a last minute partial capitulation by retiring Senate and House Armed Services Committee chairmen Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) and Representative Buck McKeon (R-CA)) and encountering uncompromising pushback this year, Air Force headquarters has renewed its campaign with more dirty tricks.

First, Air Force headquarters tried to fight back against congressional skepticism by releasing cherry-picked data purporting to show that the A-10 kills more friendlies and civilians than any other U.S. Air Force plane, even though it actually has one of the lowest fratricide and civilian casualty rates. With those cooked statistics debunked and rejected by Senate Armed Services Chairman Senator John McCain (R-AZ), Air Force headquarters hastily assembled a joint CAS “Summit” to try to justify dumping the A-10. Notes and documents from the Summit meetings, now widely available throughout the Air Force and shared with the Project On Government Oversight’s Center for Defense Information (CDI), reveal that the recommendations of the Summit working groups were altered by senior Air Force leaders to quash any joint service or congressional concerns about the coming gaps in CAS capabilities. Air Force headquarters needed this whitewash to pursue, yet again, its anti-A-10 crusade without congressional or internal-Pentagon opposition.

The current A-10 divestment campaign, led by Air Force Chief of Staff Mark Welsh, is only one in a long chain of Air Force headquarters’ attempts by bomber-minded Air Force generals to get rid of the A-10 and the CAS mission. The efforts goes as far back as when the A-10 concept was being designed in the Pentagon, following the unfortunate, bloody lessons learned from the Vietnam War. For example, there was a failed attempt in late-1980s to kill off the A-10 by proposing to replace it with a supposedly CAS-capable version of the F-16 (the A-16). Air Force headquarters tried to keep the A-10s out of the first Gulf War in 1990, except for contingencies. A token number was eventually brought in at the insistence of the theater commander, and the A-10 so vastly outperformed the A-16s that the entire A-16 effort was dismantled. As a reward for these A-10 combat successes, Air Force headquarters tried to starve the program by refusing to give the A-10 any funds for major modifications or programmed depot maintenance during the 1990s. After additional combat successes in the Iraq War, the Air Force then attempted to unload the A-10 fleet in 2004.

Washington continues making an international fool of herself by her inability to effectively counter the impression around the world that Russia, spending less than 10% of the Pentagon annually on defense, has managed to do more against ISIS in Syria in six weeks than the mighty US Air Force bombing campaign has done in almost a year and half. One aspect that bears attention is the demonstration by the Russian military of new technologies that belie the widely-held Western notion that Russia is little more than a backward oil and raw material commodity exporter. Recent reorganization of the Russian state military industrial complex as well as reorganization of the Soviet-era armed forces under Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu’s term are visible in the success so far of Russia’s ISIS and other terror strikes across Syria. Clearly Russian military capabilities have undergone a sea-change since the Soviet Cold War era. In war there are never winners. Yet Russia has been in an unwanted war with Washington de facto since the George W. Bush Administration announced its lunatic plan to place what they euphemistically term “Ballistic Missile Defense” missiles and advanced radar in Poland, Czech Republic, Romania and Turkey after 2007. Without going into detail, BMD technologies are the opposite of defensive. They instead make a pre-emptive war highly likely. Of course the radioactive ash heap in such an exchange would be first and foremost the EU countries foolish enough to invite US BMD to their soil.

What the Russian General Staff has managed, since the precision air campaign began September 30, has stunned western defense planners with Russian technological feats not expected. Two specific technologies are worth looking at more closely: The Russian Sukoi SU-34 fighter-bomber and what is called the Bumblebee hyperbaric mortar weapon.

The plane responsible for some of the most damaging strikes on ISIS and other terror enclaves in Syria is manufactured by the Russian state aircraft industry under the name Sukhoi SU-34. As the Russian news agency RIA Novosti described the aircraft, “The Su-34 is meant to deliver a sufficiently large ordnance load to a predetermined area, hit the target accurately and take evasive action against pursuing enemy planes.” The plane is also designed to deal with enemy fighters in aerial combat such as the US F-16. The SU-34 made a first test flight in 1990 as the collapse of the Soviet Union and the chaos of the Yeltsin years caused many delays. Finally in 2010 the plane was in full production. According to a report in US Defense Industry Daily, among the SU-34 features are: • 8 ton ordnance load which can accommodate precision-guided weapons, as well as R-73/AA-11 Archer and R-77/AA-12 ‘AMRAAMSKI’ missiles and an internal 30mm GSh-301 gun. • Maximum speed of Mach 1.8 at altitude.

The G-20 summit of world political leaders being held in Turkey to discuss the economic issues impacting on the world economy has been turned into a council of war. The major imperialist powers are moving rapidly to escalate their military intervention in Syria in the wake of Friday night’s terror attack in Paris. Yesterday evening French fighter jets carried out their biggest raid on Syria. It was launched simultaneously from the United Arab Emirates and Jordan, dropping 20 bombs on the Syrian city of Raqqa, reportedly targeting an Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) command centre, a munitions depot and a training camp. The operation was carried out in coordination with US forces. Earlier, Ben Rhodes, the US deputy national security adviser, said he was confident that in the “coming days and weeks” the US and France would “intensify our strikes against [ISIS] … to make clear there is no safe haven for these terrorists.” Speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Rhodes said there would be an “intensification” of US military efforts and “what we are doing here at the G-20 is seeking to gain additional contributions from some of our partners so we can bring more force to bear on that effort.”

Demands are being brought forward from within the American military and political establishment for a major escalation in US action, regardless of the consequences. Texas Senator Ted Cruz, a Republican candidate for president, said that ISIS would “not be deterred by targeted air strikes with zero tolerance for civilian casualties, when the terrorists have such utter disregard for innocent life.” His call for vastly stepped-up US military action, without any regard for the consequences for the civilian population already devastated by the US-inspired civil war, were echoed by California Democrat, Dianne Feinstein, who sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee. “It has become clear,” Feinstein said, “that limited air strikes and support for Iraqi forces and the Syrian opposition are not sufficient to protect our country and our allies.” Retired Navy admiral John Stavridis, who served as NATO’s top commander in Europe from 2009 to 2013, called for direct NATO intervention in Syria and Iraq. “Soft power and playing the long game matter in the Middle East, but there is a time for the ruthless application of hard power. This is that time, and NATO should respond militarily against the Islamic State with vigor,” Stavridis said.

The subsequent discussions between Obama and Putin at the G-20 were held as part of the US objective of sidelining, if not completely removing, Russian support for the Syrian regime of president Bashar al-Assad. Under the agreement, following a ceasefire, a process would be set in motion to establish “inclusive and non-sectarian” governance, the drafting of a new constitution and the holding of elections under UN supervision within 18 months. However, the crucial sticking point remains the future of Assad. In an interview on the eve of the G-20 summit, Putin said other nations had no right to demand that Assad leave office and that “only those who believe in their exceptionality [a thinly-veiled reference to the US] allow themselves to act in such a manner and impose their will on others.” The US has been waging a campaign since 2011 for the overturn of the Assad government as part of its regime-change operations in the Middle East, in order to bring the region under its control. Russia has backed Assad in order to protect its strategic interests in the region, including a naval facility in Syria. The US has made clear that as far as it is concerned there can be no resolution without Assad’s ouster—a position repeated by Obama’s National Security Adviser Susan Rice. She said a “transition regime” had to come to power “and it’s very hard to envision how that could be accomplished with Assad still in power.”

Finance ministers and central bankers from the world’s biggest economies met in Shanghai, China over the weekend to discuss many of the problems for which they alone are responsible. Leading the list of issues, was the steady deceleration in global growth which, to great extent, is the result of experimental monetary policies central banks implemented following the recession in 2009. Surprisingly, the group admitted that their “easing strategies” had failed to produce the durable recovery that they sought, but at the same time,  they made virtually no effort to correct their mistake by making the changes necessary to shore up flagging global output.

Prominent neocon Robert Kagan has endorsed Democrat Hillary Clinton for president, saying she represents the best hope for saving the United States from populist billionaire Donald Trump, who has repudiated the neoconservative cause of U.S. military interventions in line with Israel’s interests. In a Washington Post op-ed published on Thursday, Kagan excoriated the Republican Party for creating the conditions for Trump’s rise and then asked, “So what to do now? The Republicans’ creation will soon be let loose on the land, leaving to others the job the party failed to carry out.” Then referring to himself, he added, “For this former Republican, and perhaps for others, the only choice will be to vote for Hillary Clinton. The [Republican] party cannot be saved, but the country still can be.”

While many of Kagan’s observations about the Republican tolerance – and even encouragement – of bigotry are correct, the fact that a leading neocon, a co-founder of the infamous Project for the New American Century, has endorsed Clinton raises questions for Democrats who have so far given the former New York senator and Secretary of State mostly a pass on her pro-interventionist policies. The fact is that Clinton has generally marched in lock step with the neocons as they have implemented an aggressive “regime change” strategy against governments and political movements that don’t toe Washington’s line or that deviate from Israel’s goals in the Middle East. So she has backed coups, such as in Honduras (2009) and Ukraine (2014); invasions, such as Iraq (2003) and Libya (2011); and subversions such as Syria (from 2011 to the present) – all with various degrees of disastrous results.

In another important decision on European participation in the US war on terrorism, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) issued a judgment late last month against Italy for its role in the extraordinary rendition of Egyptian cleric Osama Mustafa Hassan Nasr, better known as Abu Omar. (An English-language summary of ruling is here; the full decision, presently available only in French, is here.) The ruling not only represents a further contribution to the Strasbourg Court’s growing accountability jurisprudence, but also highlights the United States’ own failure to provide any redress to victims of the torture program that it primarily created and operated. The ECtHR’s decision in Nasr v. Italy concerns one of the most notorious instances of extraordinary rendition (i.e., the extrajudicial transfer of an individual to another country for purposes of abusive interrogation). In 2003, Nasr, who had been granted political asylum in Italy, was abducted in broad daylight from a street in Milan and taken to Aviano air base, which is operated by the US Air Force. Nasr was subsequently taken, by way of the US’s Ramstein air base in Germany, to Cairo where he was interrogated by Egyptian intelligence services. Egyptian authorities held Nasr in secret for more than a year and subjected him to repeated torture before releasing him in April 2004. Approximately 20 days after his release — and after submitting a statement to Milan’s public prosecutor describing his abuse — Nasr was rearrested and detained without charges. He was released in 2007, but prohibited from leaving Egypt.

The ECtHR ruling centers on Italy’s role in Nasr’s abduction in Milan, his rendition to Egypt where he faced a real risk of abuse, and its subsequent failure to conduct an effective domestic investigation or to provide any redress. The ECtHR found Italy liable for multiple violations of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), including article 3 (the prohibition on inhuman or degrading treatment), article 5 (the right to liberty and security), and article 13 (the right to an adequate remedy). It ordered Italy to pay €70,000 to Nasr and €15,000 to his wife, Nabila Ghali, for the suffering and anguish caused by her husband’s enforced disappearance. The Milan public prosecutor had previously investigated and prosecuted 25 CIA officers, including the agency’s Milan station chief, Robert Seldon Lady, and seven Italian military intelligence officers, for aiding and abetting in Nasr’s abduction and rendition. The United States strenuously opposed the prosecution, warning that it would harm US-Italian relations, and the Italian government successfully challenged much of the evidence on the grounds it could jeopardize national security. The trial court convicted 22 CIA agents in absentia and gave them prison sentences of between six to nine years; a Milan appeals court upheld the convictions and overturned the acquittals of the other three US defendants. Italy’s highest court, however, overturned the conviction of five of the Italian military intelligence agents based on state secrecy grounds. The Italian government has refused to seek the extradition of the convicted US nationals. (For more details, Human Rights Watch has an excellent summary of the proceedings in Italy here.)

The ECtHR’s ruling in Nasr strengthens accountability by reinforcing state responsibility for participation in abuses committed during the war on terrorism. It builds on the Strasbourg Court’s prior decisions in El-Masri v. Macedonia and Al-Nashiri v. Poland/Husayn (Abu Zubaydah) v. Poland, which held Macedonia and Poland, respectively, liable for their role in CIA torture and rendition, including (in the case of Poland) for hosting a CIA black site. Nasr, together with El-Masri and al-Nashiri/Husayn, should help discourage a state’s future participation in cross-border counterterrorism operations conducted in flagrant violation of human rights guarantees. While the deterrent value of legal judgments may be uncertain, the recent line of Strasbourg Court decisions raises the costs of aiding and abetting illegal operations, even in the national security context.

A top Army commander on Monday ordered that Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl face a court-martial on charges of desertion and endangering troops stemming from his decision to leave his outpost in 2009, a move that prompted a huge manhunt in the wilds of eastern Afghanistan and landed him in nearly five years of harsh Taliban captivity. The decision by Gen. Robert B. Abrams, head of Army Forces Command at Fort Bragg, N.C., means that Sergeant Bergdahl, 29, faces a possible life sentence. That is a far more serious penalty than had been recommended by the Army’s investigating officer, who testified at the sergeant’s preliminary hearing in September that prison would be “inappropriate.”

According to Sergeant Bergdahl’s defense lawyers, the Army lawyer who presided over the preliminary hearing also recommended that he face neither jail time nor a punitive discharge and that he go before an intermediate tribunal known as a “special court-martial,” where the most severe penalty possible would be a year of confinement.

Monday’s decision rejecting that recommendation means that Sergeant Bergdahl now faces a maximum five-year penalty if ultimately convicted by a military jury of desertion, as well as potential life imprisonment on the more serious charge of misbehavior before the enemy, which in this case means endangering the troops who were sent to search for him after he disappeared.Sergeant Bergdahl has been the focus of attacks by Republicans in Congress and on the presidential campaign, and it is far from clear that General Abrams’s decision will temper their criticisms.Donald J. Trump, for one, has called the sergeant a “traitor” who should be executed, while Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona and the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, has vowed to hold hearings if the sergeant is not punished.

A few weeks before the last great international climate conference—2009, in Copenhagen—the e-mail accounts of a few climate scientists were hacked and reviewed for incriminating evidence suggesting that global warming was a charade. Eight separate investigations later concluded that there was literally nothing to “Climategate,” save a few sentences taken completely out of context—but by that time, endless, breathless media accounts about the “scandal” had damaged the prospects for any progress at the conference. Ad Policy Now, on the eve of the next global gathering in Paris this December, there’s a new scandal. But this one doesn’t come from an anonymous hacker taking a few sentences out of context. This one comes from months of careful reporting by two separate teams, one at the Pulitzer Prize–winning website Inside Climate News, and the other at the Los Angeles Times (with an assist from the Columbia Journalism School). Following separate lines of evidence and document trails, they’ve reached the same bombshell conclusion: ExxonMobil, the world’s largest and most powerful oil company, knew everything there was to know about climate change by the mid-1980s, and then spent the next few decades systematically funding climate denial and lying about the state of the science.

An anonymous hacker claims to have breached CIA Director John Brennan's personal email account and has posted documents online, including a list of email addresses purportedly from Brennan's contact file. The CIA said it referred the matter to the proper authorities, but would not comment further. The hacker spoke to the New York Post, which described him in an article published Sunday as "a stoner high school student," motivated by his opposition to U.S. foreign policy and support for Palestinians. His Twitter account, @phphax, includes links to files that he says are Brennan's contact list, a log of phone calls by then-CIA deputy director Avril Haines, and other documents.

The hacker also claimed to have breached a Comcast account belonging to Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, and released what appeared to be personal information. One document purporting to come from Brennan's AOL email account contains a spreadsheet of people, including senior intelligence officials, along with their Social Security numbers, although the hacker redacted the numbers in the version he posted on Twitter. It's unclear why Brennan would have stored such a document in his private email account. Based on the titles, the document appears to date from 2009 or before. When people visit the White House and other secure facilities, they are required to supply their Social Security numbers. Brennan could have been forwarding a list of invitees to the White House when he was President Barack Obama's counter terrorism adviser, the job he held before he became CIA director in 2013.

The hacker told the Post he had obtained a 47-page version of Brennan's application for a security clearance, known as an SF86. That document — millions of which were stolen from the federal personnel office last year by hackers linked to China — contains detailed information about past jobs, foreign contacts, finances and other sensitive personal details. No such document appears to be posted on the hacker's Twitter account, but it's not clear whether the hacker posted it elsewhere.

Former attorney general Eric Holder was the honored guest at a Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press reception on Wednesday (leading investigative reporter Murray Waas to reasonably wonder: How’s that again?). And while I was primarily interested in hearing whether Holder regretted whiffing on torture prosecutions during his tenure (see story: “Holder, Too Late, Calls for Transparency on DOJ Torture Investigation”), I also asked him about whiffing on financial fraud prosecutions. Specifically, I noted his failure to hold accountable the people responsible for the wide-scale financial fraud that led to the massive economic recession of 2007-2009. And I noted that after he stepped down from his post in April, he went back to his job at Covington & Burling, the gigantic D.C. law firm whose clients have included many of the big banks that Holder chose not to prosecute. (The reception was actually held at Covington & Burling’s swanky new building downtown. While it was being built — while Holder was still attorney general! — the firm actually kept an 11th-story corner office reserved for his return. He was making over $3 million a year from the firm before his sojourn at the Justice Department; his current salary has not been disclosed.)

Holder bristled at my suggestion that there might be a connection between his current employer and his conduct at Justice, saying that many top prosecutors at Justice had pursued cases as best they could. “We were simply unable to do it under the existing statutes that we had, and given the ways the decision-making worked at those institutions,” he said. However, Holder had all the statutory authority he needed to prosecute straightforward crimes such as robosigning fraud, perjury in front of Congress by Goldman Sachs executives, or for that matter, HSBC’s money laundering for Mexican drug cartels. He simply chose not to. (In response to another questioner, he denied that any of his decisions not to prosecute were based on the massive legal teams that were fielded against the government.) Moreover, he actively waved off offers of additional help such as the suggestion from Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, that Congress give him more staff for his Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group, or extend the statute of limitations on some crimes. At Wednesday’s event, Holder continued: “It’s an easy thing for people who are not a part of the process” to “ask questions,” he said. “It pisses me off, on the other hand,” for people “not conversant” in the process to “somehow say that I did something that was inconsistent with my oath or that I’m not a person of integrity.” “I’m proud to be back at the firm,” he said. “It’s a great firm. And I’m proud of the work I did at the Justice Department.”

Holder’s comment was only the most recent in a series of pronouncements from formerly powerful government officials that they were in fact powerless — while talking tough once they no longer have the ability to do anything about it. See, for instance, my colleague David Dayen’s recent article, “Bernanke Talks Tough But Was Weak When It Mattered,” about former Federal Reserve chair Ben Bernanke saying that more Wall Street executives should have gone to jail for criminal misconduct that led to the financial crisis. As Fed chair, Beranke could have initiated criminal referrals to the Justice Department, but chose not to. As attorney general, Holder could have made pursuing financial fraud a top priority. And he did not.

The initial admission by the Department of Defense that one sample of  live anthrax was inadvertently sent to  Osan Air Base in South Korea has now been revealed  to be grossly inaccurate.

According to a recent report by a US/South Korea joint working group, a US military defense laboratory at Dugway Proving Grounds mailed anthrax to South Korea at least fifteen times prior to the previously acknowledged March, 2015 delivery. These other anthrax samples were delivered to Yongsan Garrison, in central South Korea, between 2009 and 2014.  In addition, a 1-milliliter sample of the Yersinia pestis bacterium (which can cause the bubonic plague) was sent along with the anthrax to Osan.

It has recently come to light that the Pentagon FedExed live anthrax to all fifty states and to nine foreign countries. The Department of Defense has declared that errors in the process of inactivating the anthrax resulted in the inadvertence wherein live anthrax was FedExed to foreign and domestic laboratories. 

Nir Hefetz, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's "spin doctor" and confidant, will hand over recordings of Netanyahu and his wife Sara as part of a deal with police to turn state's evidence in the bribery case involving the Bezeq telecom giant and the Walla news site. Netanyahu, currently in the U.S. for AIPAC and a meeting with Trump, received the news at the Blair House, where he is a guest of the White House. In return for testifying against Netanyahu, Hefetz will not stand trial, face prison time or be fined. While he testifies, he will be housed at an isolated installation.

According to assessments regarding the deal, Hefetz will also give information regarding the other cases against the prime minister and his wife. Keep updated: Sign up to our newsletter Email* Please enter a valid email address Sign up Please wait… Thank you for signing up. We've got more newsletters we think you'll find interesting. Click here Oops. Something went wrong. Please try again later. Try again Thank you, The email address you have provided is already registered. Close Hefetz is the third Netanyahu confidant to turn against the prime minister in the ongoing corruption cases. Hefetz is suspected of receiving bribes and obstructing justice as part of what is called Case 4000. He is also a key figure in 1270, and is second fiddle in Case 2000. In Case 4000, Hefetz liaised between the Netanyahu couple and the Walla news website, owned by Bezeq. Hefetz arranged for flattering items on the couple and censorship of less flattering items, Haaretz's Gidi Weitz reported. In Case 1270, Hefetz allegedly served as the prime minister's confidant who sought to elucidate how Judge Hila Gerstl felt about closing a case against Sara Netanyahu. Allegedly a trial balloon was floated, hinting to Gerstl that she would be promoted to Israel's next attorney-general if she closed the case down. Hefetz claims that it all boiled down to idle chatter and hadn't been coordinated with the prime minister and his wife. In Case 2000, Hefetz had involvement on both sides of the coin. He was head of public relations for Netanyahu, before which he served as senior editor in the Yedioth Ahronoth group, owned by Arnon Mozes. In 2009, Mozes is suspected of agreeing to provide sweetheart coverage of Netanyahu, who in turn allegedly promised to get the rival (free) newspaper Israel Hayom to stop printing a weekend edition, which stood to hugely benefit Yedioth.

Channel 10 reports that Hefetz will be providing information on other cases – some of which the public hasn't even heard of yet.

Judicial Watch today released 1,606 pages of documents from the U.S. Department of State revealing repeated use of unsecured communications for classified information and numerous examples of Clinton Foundation donors receiving special favors from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s staff. The documents, containing emails from the unsecure, non-government account of Huma Abedin, Clinton’s then-deputy chief of staff, also show Clinton or her staff expressing interest in visiting Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez and North Korean dictator Kim Jung II. The documents included 91 Clinton email exchanges not previously turned over to the State Department, bringing the known total to date to at least 530 emails that were not part of the 55,000 pages of emails that Clinton turned over to the State Department, and further contradicting a statement by Clinton that, “as far as she knew,” all of her government emails had been turned over to the State Department. The documents were obtained in response to a court order from a May 5, 2015, lawsuit filed against the State Department (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:15-cv-00684)) after it failed to respond to a March 18, 2015, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking: “All emails of official State Department business received or sent by former Deputy Chief of Staff Huma Abedin from January 1, 2009 through February 1, 2013 using a non-‘state.gov’ email address.”