BANGKOK, Thailand -- Two months of typhoons and heavy monsoons have flooded Southeast Asia, killing nearly 500 people, forcing thousands of survivors to flee including prison inmates and hospital patients, plus drenching the region with fresh storms on Thursday (Oct. 6).

"Meteorologists have indicated that flooding in some of these countries is the worst in 50 years," the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) said on Wednesday (Oct. 5), describing the devastation in Thailand, Cambodia, the Philippines, Laos, and Vietnam.

Successive storms, born in the South Pacific, have battered their way westward, first hitting the Philippines and continuing on to slam Vietnam's long, S-shaped coastline.

Some of those storms also traveled further west to flood Cambodia before soaking northern Thailand.

Meanwhile, a separate batch of powerful rainstorms during the past six weeks have emerged from the Bay of Bengal, whipping northeast to punish Thailand on a second saturated front.

The loss of life and damage across Southeast Asia has included:

-- Thailand:

Paul Singer likes to breakfast on decayed carcasses. What he chews down is sickening, but just as nausea-inducing are his new table mates: Ken Langone and the Koch Brothers, Charles and David.

Singer has called together the billionaire boys club for the purpose of picking our next president for us. The old fashioned way of choosing presidents—democracy and counting ballots and all that—has never been a favorite of this pack. I can tell you that from my investigations of each of these gentlemen for The Guardian. When the Statue of Liberty has nightmares, she dreams that these guys will combine to seize America via a cash-and-carry coup d'état.

Welcome to the nightmare. Singer, Langone and the Kochs last month decided to elect Chris Christie for us. The Jersey Governor's pseudo-campaign went belly-up before it began. But that's besides the point. Now that the Supreme Court has effectively ended campaign finance limits and allowed secretive contributions through "corporations", this new combine of the ultra-wealthy should not be viewed as just a political threat to the Democrats, but a threat to democracy.

That’s one of the chants of about 200 people who marched down Pennsylvania Avenue on Oct 6, toward the end of day 1 of the October2011 protests for human needs and against corporate greed. As Food Not Bombs D.C. and other community groups provided pizza, bananas and vegetables, and as David Rovics lyrically counterspun American history and current events for the couple of thousand or so gathered in Freedom Plaza, a somewhat different event was taking place down the road at the Newseum: the 2011 Washington Ideas forum.

That’s where the 200 or so marchers gathered for about 20 minutes. They banged drums and chanted “we got sold out, banks got bailed out,” and “arrest Cheney now.” The former vice president was listed as one of the speakers at the exclusive event.

An activist and a few others unrolled a long sheet of brown paper.

The board of trustees at Wilberforce, the nation’s oldest private, historically Black university are the focus of a case accusing them of mismanagement of resources, conflicts-of-interest, and gross negligence. On behalf of the Wilberforce Faculty Association and Concerned Citizens of Greene County, attorneys Bob Fitrakis and Connie Gadell-Newton filed the case with the Ohio Attorney General last week.

The board of trustees has failed to include faculty, staff, and students in decisions affecting the university, said participants at the press conference last week where Fitrakis and Gadell-Newton formally announced the case.

“Communication could definitely be a lot better. We filed approximately 12 grievances without any replies or responses,” said Everett Jones, Professor of Piano, and secretary of the Wilberforce Faculty Association.

“In a collectively governing body such as a university with faculty, staff, students, and administration, along with upper administration, everyone has to work together for there to be success,” Jones said.

Wilberforce Professor of Religion and Philosophy, Daniel Iselaiye said the same thing.

BANGKOK, Thailand -- The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency may have used Bangkok's former Don Muang International Airport as its secret prison to torture a suspected Muslim terrorist, the first time a specific location has ever been described within Thailand, according to statements by the Libyan who survived.

It was impossible to immediately confirm Abdel Hakim Belhaj's allegations of being "hung," "injected," and refrigerated with "ice" at the airport, but if true, it is the first description of any site in Thailand pinpointed by a prisoner held the CIA.

Thai officials in this Buddhist-majority Southeast Asian country have consistently denied knowledge of any CIA secret prison.

London's Guardian newspaper reported on Sept. 5, however, that Britain's M16 intelligence agency helped the CIA in March 2004 arrest Mr. Belhaj, who is now a powerful commander in Tripoli for the anti-Moammar Gadhafi transitional government.