I don't want to exaggerate it, but NPR and the rest of them do really do have similarities with the toothless Soviet media in the days of the old USSR.

When NPR refuses to call a spade a spade because it might get in trouble with the ruling party or its apparatchiks, then the Fourth Estate in America is in big trouble.

In fact, Iranian abuses are being reported in many, many articles by news organizations throughout the world.

The point is that does Salon need to do it as well? In article after article?

Salon's reputation to a large extent rests on reporting events, such as governmental malfeasance, that are little covered in American mainstream media because of journalistic timidity and establishment collusion.

The abuses in Iran are being shouted from the rooftops - rightly - by all and sundry media. What is Salon adding to this?

In the meantime, American missiles killed another 50 - yes, 50 - people in Pakistan. See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/8115814.stm.

"Companionship? Hey, stay single, dude, you’ll have a lot more money, and then you can buy companionship."

Sad.

"ongoing detention would be subject to annual presidential review"

This is pre-Magna Carta stuff.

Incredible.

I enjoyed this article. It was a clear-sighted review of what sounds like a clear-sighted history of Communism.

I think many people in the West were attracted to the idea of communism because it was not capitalism. The inequities and raw consumerism of Western capitalism repelled some people and they saw in communism another, less avaricious way of living.

It also meant, of course, they turned a blind eye to communism's failures, and it wasn't until the fall of the Berlin Wall that Communism as an ideology became almost universally discredited.

And she was a vice-presidential candidate? A narrow escape, America.

I know that the UK press routinely calls it torture, whether it's torture performed by or on behalf of America, or UK complicity in torture.

From today's Guardian for example, a piece headed "CIA's London chief to face jury over waterboarding torture tapes", begins

"Senior CIA officials, including the London station chief, have been called before a grand jury in Virginia investigating the potentially illegal destruction of 92 video tapes recording the torture and interrogation of al-Qaida detainees."

it's about American disregard for non-American lives.

Michael Jackson is just a convenient point of reference: his death - the death of one man - is still ricocheting emptily round the airwaves while the deaths of many, many innocent Afghans at the hands of American troops goes unmourned and largely unreported in the American media.

Under Obama, American policy now - i.e. put the people first and not the bad guys - is surely right. But it is far too late. Afghans who have lost friends and relatives at weddings and funerals to American bombs are not just going to forgive and forget. Would you?

This will haunt America for many years to come, yet many Americans will still not understand why.

George Orwell always springs to mind when you consider the attitude of the American media towards torture.

'Torture is OK when we do it but not when anybody else does it', or 'Torture is wrong except when it's right'.

If that's not a prime example of Orwellian doublethink I don't know what is.

I've seen this mini-series on British TV and it's actually pretty good - better than most of the earlier episodes which had a too-high cheese quota.

The script in this one is tighter, the effects good, and the thing with the children is genuinely creepy.

The acting is generally rather hammy, but there are some good performances, especially from Peter Capaldi. As somebody pointed out, John Barrowman as Captain Jack Harkness is too lightweight. An enduring mystery to me is why he is supposedly so attractive to both men and women alike.

I'd love to see Britain call America's bluff on this but can't see it happening because the UK government is thoroughly implicated in this whole bloody outrage.

As a Brit, I've personally written to David Miliband about the Binyam Mohamed case, both to his constituency office in his role as an MP, and to the House of Commons in his role as Foreign Secretary. I have not even had an acknowledgement, let alone a reply.

I think the British government are - rightly - very worried about this and just wish it would go away.

But it won't go away.

Thanks to to the efforts of people like the admirable Clive Stafford Smith here in the UK, and persistent pressure from people like Glenn Greenwald in the US, I can only hope that the whole rotten mess will eventually be dragged into the daylight.

Until Tony Blair started his love-in with George Bush, it was understood and accepted by the political and military establishment in the UK that, since the dark days of internment in Northern Ireland, torture was a definite no-no.

British governments have always tried to ally themselves closely (too closely sometimes) to the US, but from 9/11 onwards Blair went to astonishing lengths to back George Bush in his 'The War on Terror': enabling and colluding in torture, allowing extraordinary rendition flights, and eagerly signing up to an illegal and pointless war. I don't recall ever being so ashamed of the behaviour of a British government.

Rules were relaxed and blind eyes turned for a crucial period from 2001, and this is where it has led to. I don't know what quid pro quo Blair was hoping for from the 'special relationship' but Britain is now viewed round the world, particularly the Islamic world, as a pawn of the US and willing to commit the worst crimes.

Gordon Brown inherited this deep hole and, instead of climbing out, is still digging.