thursday reads

A landmark human rights lawsuit, accusing Royal Dutch Shell of complicity in the execution of author and human rights activist Ken Saro-Wiwa some 14 years ago, will proceed to trial in a New York courtroom.


billmon: Scalia's Nightmare

Maybe I'm wrong, maybe it was the electroshock therapy. But I've suspected for some time that conservatives would eventually have serious reservations about where Norm and his mouthpieces are trying to take them. Maybe it's finally dawning on some of them that making a federal case out this election contest risks a long-term disaster for the GOP -- one that would completely outweigh the short-term benefits of depriving the Democrats of their 59th vote.

After all, what Norm is threatening to do -- if he can't get his way in state court -- is to demand that the US Supremes go storming through the equal protection door they opened just a crack, and then promptly tried to close again, in Bush v. Gore.

Berlin's Admiralspalast theater will break new ground in May by staging the first production in Germany of the Mel Brooks musical "The Producers."

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wednesday reads

Tom Engelhardt - Terminator Planet: Launching the Drone Wars


Army doctors pressured to not diagnose PTSD.


A military team sent to evaluate electrical problems at U.S. facilities in Iraq determined there was a high risk that flawed wiring could cause further “catastrophic results” — namely, the electrocutions of U.S. soldiers.


Pirates overboard


Cat Shit One - The Animated Series (h/t Truthdig)

tuesday reads

[An] ICRC report describes "three principal roles" played by medical professionals in the torture of prisoners in U.S. custody.


A newly leaked terrorism assessment from a law enforcement fusion center in Virginia shows that police and feds are targeting "historically black colleges" as "radicalization nodes" for terrorists.


Tomgram: Michael Klare, Boom Times for Criminal Syndicates


The Great State of Piffle

monday reads

Powerful Earthquake Strikes Central Italy


Glenn Greenwald: There are no excuses for ongoing concealment of torture memos


Moyers Journal: Maddoff Was A Piker -- America's Big Banks Are a Far Larger Fraudulent Ponzi Scheme


Visit the George W. Bush Presidential Librarium. (h/t watertiger)


Take the 2009 State of the Republican Party Survey.