Blowing the Whistle on Torture

Former CIA official John Kiriakou, who spent two years in prison for revealing the truth about White House-sanctioned torture, became the 15th recipient of the Sam Adams Award for Integrity at a ceremony at America University.
Last year, PEN Center USA, a human rights and freedom of expression organization, honored John Kiriakou, with its “First Amendment” award. It has since become clear that while John Kiriakou sat in prison, Senate Intelligence Committee investigators were uncovering heinous details about torture by the CIA from its own original banality-of-evil cables, which showed that CIA and others had lied in claiming torture “worked.”

How is this a bad thing?

JASTA would allow the families of victims of the 9/11 attacks to sue Saudi Arabia for its role in supporting plotters in the lead-up to the attack. President Obama vetoed the bill Friday, claiming other nations could reciprocate and that it would open taxpayers up to lawsuits for America’s own misdeeds internationally.
Carter’s opposition to JASTA took a different tack, arguing that a lawsuit against Saudi Arabia over 9/11 would lead to “an intrusive discovery process,” and ultimately lead to the public disclosure of “American secrets,” potentially damaging the terror war.

Still bombing the wrong people after 15 years

US air strikes have killed eight Afghan policemen in the embattled southern province of Afghanistan, officials confirmed, as security forces, supported by US strikes, battle Taliban fighters.
Rahimullah Khan, a provincial operational commander, said the first of two air strikes on Sunday afternoon killed one policeman at a checkpoint outside the provincial capital of Tarin Kot, while the second, killed seven others.

More boots on the ground

The US and Iraq have agreed on a plan that could send approximately 500 additional US troops to Iraq in the coming days to assist Iraqi forces in the battle to retake Mosul from ISIS.

Two Libyas

A powerful Libyan general whose forces recently captured several key oil facilities has rejected a U.N.-brokered government and said the country would be better served by a leader with "high-level military experience."
In a series of written responses to questions from The Associated Press this week, Field Marshal Khalifa Hifter said his army only recognizes the authority of the Libyan parliament based in the east, which has also rejected the U.N.-backed government in the capital, Tripoli.

California cuts off Wells Fargo

California, the nation’s largest issuer of municipal bonds, is barring Wells Fargo & Co. from underwriting state debt and handling its banking transactions after the company admitted to opening potentially millions of bogus customer accounts.
The suspension, in effect immediately, will remain in place for 12 months, State Treasurer John Chiang said Wednesday. "Complete and permanent severance" between his office and the bank will occur if it doesn’t change its practices, he said. The treasurer is also suspending his office’s investment in Wells Fargo securities.
"Wells Fargo’s fleecing of its customers by opening fraudulent accounts for the purpose of extracting millions in illegal fees demonstrates, at best, a reckless lack of institutional control and, at worst, a culture which actively promotes wanton greed,” the treasurer said in a statement.

Student loan defaults worse than reported

The good news is that Americans are taking longer to default on their federal student loans, the U.S. Department of Education announced Wednesday. The bad news is that the overall number of defaults continues to rise.
How can this be?...
With so much at stake, it’s probably not a surprise that the system can be gamed. The default rate doesn’t accurately represent the degree to which former students struggle to repay their loans, federal officials and higher education experts have said. This is because of school efforts to push back eventual defaults to later years by persuading students to postpone payments under federally approved programs. Of 6,155 schools with default rates, just 10 may lose access to federal student aid as a result of their high default rates, the department said.
The so-called cohort default rate published by the Education Department is “susceptible to artificial manipulation,” the White House said in a report last year. The share of borrowers paying down their loans, which the Obama administration publicly released for the first time last year, “more accurately reflect[s] the borrowing behavior of students than default rates,” the White House said.
The difference between the cohort default rate and the nonrepayment rate at junior colleges is about 25 percentage points, the White House said. At four-year schools, it’s about 12.5 percentage points. For-profits have a 30 percentage-point differential. That’s a lot of misery missing from the numbers.