In 2002, with NY Port Authority Detective Tommy McHale, on loan to the FBI, CIA agent John Kiriakou raided the Taliban embassy located in Peshawar, Pakistan. The bloodless action resulted in two van loads of Taliban documents and equipment. A few days after the raid, Detective McHale called Kiriakou to let him know about an incredible find…

“You’re never going to believe what I found!” It was a file folder with telephone bills in it. And the telephone bills were written in English. They were Pakistani issued telephone bills. And they documented 168 calls made, from the Taliban embassy to numbers inside the United States, and I mean all over the United States, Bethesda MD, Los Angeles, Buffalo, Kansas City, all over the country. And those call stopped abruptly on September the 10th, 2001, and then started up again slowly, on September the 16th.

So why were the numbers never investigated?
John Kiriakou, author of The Reluctant Spy, shares his story and his frustration in the following interview excerpt from C-SPAN’s After Words.
(Click arrow to hear clip) John Kiriakou: Peshawar Taliban Embassy Raid
Link to full Video interview. Link to full Audio interview.

In the full interview Kiriakou describes his involvement in the arrest of Abu Zubaydah. Kiriakou was instrumental in arranging for the medical care that kept Zubaydah alive. Kiriakou was earlier led to believe that Zabaydah, incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay, began ‘speaking’ after one episode of waterboarding. It later came to be known that Zubaydah had been waterboarded  83 times in the month of August 2002 alone!
The interview includes details about Kirakou’s recruitment, and his time as an anti-terrorism agent in Greece. Kiriakou is inteviewd by Frederick Hitz, who was the Inspector General of the Central Intelligence Agency from 1990 to 1998 and is the author of The Great Game: The Myth and Reality of Espionage.

photo credit: brewbooks

How many of us have a clue about how much a kilowatt is. Check out Marshall Brain’s article, “How much coal is required to run a 100-watt light bulb 24 hours a day for a year?”
You can also get the podcast from iTunes.

Then today on a show I like ThisWeekInTwitter,  guest Aaron Cohen, author of ‘Slave Hunter’ really got my dander up. Throwing the phrase ‘the children’ around like a Fox News anchor, calling Amsterdam a failure, and talking about the ‘tools’ (i.e. laws) he and like minded activists need in order to go in and shut down these slave trade operations. Another part of his argument that really rankled me was his statement that ‘Craigslist receives a third of its earnings from sex postings’, as though this was something Craigslist was doing. Why pick on Craigslist? Can we not assume that a large portion of any classified ad publisher’s income derives from sex related ads? (Here’s the recent NY Times article about Craigslist and sex related ads Aaron was probably thinking of). But just because I didn’t like the way Aaron framed his argument didn’t mean he doesn’t have valid points. Certainly it made me realize I have a lot to learn.

So then I went back to Ted and found this…

About Amsterdam I found various articles discussing changes being made, like raising the age to 21 and requiring prostitutes to be licensed. Also this:

Anti-slavery campaigner and labour party city councillor Lodewijk Asscher already raised the issue in February. This week he submitted a detailed report , noting that between 50 and 90 per cent of all the prostitutes working in Amsterdam’s inner-city were found to be working there against their will – coerced and forced by international criminal gangs.

These are such messy issues. You want to think that somewhere, drugs and prostitution are being handled intelligently and effectively. If not Amsterdam, where? I will try to follow-up on the Amsterdam situation. But in the meantime I obviously have a lot of reading to do around the issue of human trafficking. How can there be 27,000,000 people caught up in slavery and I hardly know the first thing about it?

A few years ago our family stopped giving each other hard drives and boots and started donating to charity instead. It was Mom’s idea. She just loved to give a goat (Oxfam Canada). I had just read Three Cups of Tea, Greg Mortenson’s story about building schools, mostly for girls, in Pakistan and Afghanistan. That book is just so moving. So we donated to the non-profit he has set up to collect funds for more schools.

Greg has a new book, Stones into Schools which I just picked up (purchase from this link donates a percentage of the price to the Central Asia Institute, Greg’s non-profit). I’m looking forward to reading it over the Christmas break.  We also chose the Central Asia Institute again this year because I have such a soft spot for educating girls, but also because it makes such a powerful positive impact.

In 2009…
CAI schools total 131
CAI built 29 new schools Afghanistan and
in Pakistan
CAI Students total enrollment is 58,000
CAI now has 36,000 female enrollment
CAI has a total of 17 vocational centers
CAI educated 19 higher education scholarship students.
CAI had teacher training & midwife training workshops
CAI’s Greg Mortenson published 3 new bestseller books
CAI’s Greg Mortenson spoke at 214 events nationally
CAI’s program Pennies for Peace raised 150,000,000 cents
CAI’s Pennies for Peace expanded from 280 to
4500 programs in schools, groups & libraries in 20 countries

Greg Mortenson C-Span interview with Congresswoman Mary Bono Mack. (audio) (video)

Direct donation link.

Stewart Brand’s new book has a great accompanying website with a million cool links
and enough of the book to let you know you’re going to love reading it. But just in case
you’re not sure, check out the talk (and great questions afterwards) from The
Long Now Foundation. Direct link to the mp3 file here.

Are you a nuclear over reactor?

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Simply put, Victoria Hale’s organization has saved thousands of lives. Join the founder of OneWorld Health—the first nonprofit pharmaceutical company in the US—as she shares her vision of bringing an end to what she calls the “diseases of poverty.”

Victoria is founder and CEO of the Institute for OneWorld Health, a nonprofit pharmaceutical company with a mission to develop affordable drugs to treat diseases that plague the world’s poorest communities.The institute recently received approval for and brought to market its first drug, paromomycin, a low-cost antibiotic cure for visceral leishmaniasis, which afflicts approximately 1.5 million people worldwide, primarily in India, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Sudan. Research to create paromomycin was largely funded by a grant of $10 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Treatments underway for malaria, diarrheal disease, and Chagas disease hold the potential to save the lives of millions more.

From PopTech (video too) or (right click to download or click the arrow to) listen

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Your Free Nature Conservancy Calendar 2010
Your Free National Parks Conservation Association 2010 Calendar

Does sending bulk junk mail calendars send the wrong message?
I think so. I’m going to keep a list of the free calendars I receive (and throw away) here, just to remind me NEVER to support these clueless conservation groups.

Let’s add Carl Pope and the Sierra Club for this Free U.S. Wall Map.
And a bulky full-color guilt trip of a reminder letter from The Nature Conservancy that I still haven’t donated to them for the calendar I didn’t want or ask for.

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The stars and stripes forever? Futurist and author Juan Enriquez isn’t sure of that.
He cites a long history of borders, countries and flags that have changed, and warns
the United States isn’t immune.

Mp3 QTmov
This is a great talk and there are many more on the PopTech site. Juan mentions this MapsOfWar
movie–fascinating. More on the MapsOfWar.com site.