An unreleased military investigation shows U.S. taxpayer dollars are being funneled to the Taliban in Afghanistan under a $2.6 billion transportation contract. The year-long investigation implicates four of the United States’ eight prime contractors in Afghanistan in criminal enterprises or support for the enemy. The military has not revealed which four companies were involved, nor has it disclosed the total amount of taxpayer dollars that have disappeared. The investigation confirms separate inquiries carried out by Congress, federal agencies and The Nation magazine.

We are now at this stage in the life of our country and our world: WikiLeaks revealed that the Japanese Government was warned three years ago that earthquake preparedness at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant was dangerously insufficient.

Naturally, the leaders of the world are – or wish to start – prosecuting WikiLeaks, and not the Japanese Government.

The IAEA was saying in 2008 that Japan’s nuclear safety guidelines were dangerously out of date. A government whistleblower in that country was quoted in a cable to Washington the same year that a Japanese ministry was “covering up nuclear accidents, and obscuring the true costs and problems associated with the nuclear industry.”

And our government, in our name, continues both to seek ways to prosecute WikiLeaks, and to stick by the President’s ludicrous 2009 suggestion that we accelerate our national Nuclear Power program. The uncensored real oversight, and the truth about Japan’s irresponsibility, are both buried because the illusion of Japan as a successful safe nuclear nation is necessary to President Obama’s pitch, and President Obama’s pitch is necessary to some labyrinthine political calculation, and to the bottom lines of sundry international corporations.

Ladies and gentlemen, today we have seen Hamlet without the princess. We have seen a prosecutor who has been ready to feed the media with information but has been unprepared to come here and subject herself to the cross-examination she knows she cannot withstand. I challenge you, Marianne Ny: Marianne Ny, come to London, come on Friday, subject yourself to the cross-examination by Geoffrey Robertson QC.

Newly released classified U.S. diplomatic cables from WikiLeaks reveal that Israeli officials have long hoped that newly appointed Egyptian vice president, Omar Suleiman, would eventually succeed Hosni Mubarak as president of Egypt. In an August 2008 cable, a U.S. diplomat wrote, “There is no question that Israel is most comfortable with the prospect of Omar Soliman.” The cable reveals that Suleiman’s deputies spoke to Israeli military officials several times a day via a “hotline.” The cable also shows that Suleiman wanted Hamas “isolated” and thought Gaza should “go hungry but not starve.” The Obama administration has already embraced the longtime ally. Suleiman played a key role in the U.S. extraordinary rendition program. He also underwent training in the 1980s at the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare School and Center at Fort Bragg in North Carolina.

A U.S. lawmaker said he requested Friday a visit with the Army solider accused of leaking classified documents to the WikiLeaks website.

“I am concerned about reports of his treatment while in custody that describe alarming abuses of his constitutional rights and his physical health,” Rep. Dennis Kucinich said in a letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

Kucinich, a member of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said in a statement that he wants an “explanation of reports that the Army ignored evidence of mental health problems of Pfc. (Bradley) Manning, and that he is being held in conditions that could contribute (to) a violation of the his Eighth Amendment right of protection from ‘cruel and unusual’ punishment.”

He asked for a visit, he said, because as a member of the House committee, “It is my duty to conduct effective oversight.”

The allegations of abuse gained more attention on Tuesday after a friend visited Manning at the U.S. Marine Corps brig in Quantico, Virginia.

The discussion of violent and paranoid rhetoric in the media is long overdue, whether or not it is ever determined that accused Tucson shooter Jared Lee Loughner was somehow influenced or motivated by such rhetoric. Before the shooting, there had been a remarkable surge of politically motivated violence (FAIR Blog, 1/12/11). Despite media efforts to suggest this is a problem coming from “both sides” (FAIR Blog, 1/10/11), any disinterested analysis would conclude that the rhetoric coming from the right is both far more virulent and is given a much higher profile by nationally syndicated talk radio and the Fox News Channel.

But any discussion of media support for violence should not exclude other examples, many of which emanate from respectable, mainstream figures in the corporate media. The difference is that, in most cases, they are supporting or calling for state violence, usually against citizens of weaker countries who cannot, in most cases, defend themselves. This kind of rhetoric rarely elicits calls for greater “civility” in our public discourse, which suggests that some calls for violence are considered more acceptable than others.