"In May 2006, freelance journalist Sarah Olson interviewed Army First Lieutenant Ehren Watada for Truthout.org and National Radio Project's 'Making Contact.' Watada is the first commissioned officer to publicly refuse orders to deploy to Iraq (he considers the war to be illegal), and as a result became the first military officer charged with public dissent since 1965. Lt. Watada faces four counts of conduct unbecoming an officer. The Army has subpoenaed Olson to testify in Watada's court martial, which is slated for the first week of February, in order to verify the statements Watada made to her, which are already a part of the public record." Here is the interview with Sarah Olson.

Chavez at the United Nations

Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez will not renew the broadcast concession of Radio Caracas Television's (RCTV's) current owners. José Miguel Vivanco of Human Rights Watch called the decision "clearly a case of censorship" meant "to punish a medium for its opposition to the government." The Venezuelan government has faulted RCTV's racy telenovelas as indecent daytime programming and says the TV station actively supported the 2002 coup, which resulted in several deaths. RCTV "encouraged the [2002] protests and, once Chavez was ousted, celebrated his removal," reports the Washington Post. "But when the interim government that replaced him began to collapse, RCTV and other stations blacked out the news -- which the government says was done to keep Venezuelans from rising up against the coup organizers." Writing from Caracas for CounterPunch, George Ciccariello-Maher says the non-renewal "is simply not about free speech." Venezuela's "media responsibility law" is in line with broadcaster responsibilities in other countries, he says. Ciccariello-Maher also points out that RCTV "broadcasts will continue," but its concession "will instead be granted to either another private corporation, a mixed public-private corporation, a collective of workers, or some other combination."

Two scientists who served on the British government's Committee on Radioactive Waste Management (CoRWM) but later resigned from it have gone public with harsh criticisms. Professor David Ball and Dr. Keith Baverstock accuse Prime Minister Tony Blair of "manipulating" the CoRWM for "political ends." The CoRWM approved of underground storage for high-level nuclear waste; the scientists say this conclusion "was used to push through the Cabinet the decision to go ahead with a new generation of nuclear power stations." They also expressed concern that four of the 12 CoRWM members had financial ties to consultancies working for the committee. Baverstock warned that CoRWM's compromised process "has resulted in continued and unnecessary exposure of the public to the ongoing risk of temporarily stored nuclear waste, surely a legitimate public concern in this age of terrorism." Parliamentarian Alan Simpson said, referring to how to handle waste from nuclear power plants, "No one has a clue how to do this safely."

"Spocko," an obscure blogger living in San Francisco, has shaken up some of the merchants of hate on right-wing KSFO-AM radio. For the past year, he has been e-mailing the station's advertisers with audio clips from its shows and asking sponsors to consider what they're supporting. Some sponsors have pulled their ads, after hearing clips like one of KSFO's Lee Rodgers suggesting that a protester be "stomped to death right there. Just stomp their bleeping guts out." Other controversial clips were from Melanie Morgan, the chair of the pro-war group Move America Forward. In retaliation, the station's corporate owner, ABC/Disney, threatened legal action that forced Spocko to shut down his site (it's now back up), while simultaneously accusing him of attempting to censor their speech.