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The Foreign Correspondents' Club of Thailand (FCCT) sent a letter to Cambodia's Prime Minister Hun Sen today requesting he "personally" ensure "all Cambodian police, military and intelligence resources" are investigating the unexplained disappearance on February 14 of Dave Walker, a Canadian journalist and film-maker.

The letter is from "the professional membership" of the FCCT, FCCT a club that was established in Bangkok, Thailand, more than 50 years ago.

-- Dominic Faulder, Past President & Chair, FCCT Professional Committee -- signed the letter to Hun Sen.

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(Editors note: H.E. is His Excellency. Samdech is an honorific in Cambodia). Here below is the letter's text:

FCCT Foreign Correspondents' Club of Thailand

H.E. Samdech Hun Sen
Prime Minister
Phnom Penh
Kingdom of Cambodia

25 February 2014

Dear Samdech Hun Sen,

The professional membership of the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Thailand is extremely disturbed by the unexplained recent
I've been asked to debate Danny Postel on the question of Syria, and so have read the op-ed he co-authored with Nader Hashemi, "Use Force to Save Starving Syrians." Excellent responses have been published by Coleen Rowley and Rob Prince and probably others. And my basic thinking on Syria has not changed fundamentally since I wrote down my top 10 reasons not to attack Syria and lots and lots of other writing on Syria over the years. But replying to Postel's op-ed might be helpful to people who've read it and found it convincing or at least disturbing. It might also allow Postel to most efficiently find out where I'm coming from prior to our debate.

The FBI may have you on a terrorist list. Have you been to see “Gasland” or attended a zoning meeting on fracking?

The Columbus Free Press obtained a July 23, 2013 FBI's Philadelphia Joint Terrorism Task Force report on “Environmental Extremists.” The FBI and the Pennsylvania State Patrol coauthored the report that lumps virtually all activists engaged in protests against fracking for natural gas together as potential violent terrorists. The report includes photos of protests and protestors in Ohio along with photos of low grade black powder pipe bombs found unarmed and undetonated near natural gas drilling operations in rural Pennsylvania.

Madeline ffitch, of Millfield, Ohio, was arrested for blockading an entrance way to a fracking wastewater injection well site on June 26, 2012. She was arrested while locked to two 50-gallon cement filled drums, effectively shutting down the well site. Despite engaging in nonviolent civil disobedience ffitch’s photo is displayed in the FBI report.

A stunning new report indicates the U.S. Navy knew that sailors from the nuclear-powered USS Ronald Reagan took major radiation hits from the Fukushima atomic power plant after its meltdowns and explosions nearly three years ago. If true, the revelations cast new light on the $1 billion lawsuit filed by the sailors against Tokyo Electric Power. Many of the sailors are already suffering devastating health impacts, but are being stonewalled by Tepco and the Navy.

The Reagan had joined several other U.S. ships in Operation Tomodachi (“Friendship”) to aid victims of the March 11, 2011 quake and tsunami. Photographic evidence and first-person testimony confirms that on March 12, 2011 the ship was within two miles of Fukushima Dai’ichi as the reactors there began to melt and explode.

Convicted felon Tom Noe, former Lucas County (Toledo) Republican Party chairman, stole $13.7 million in the so-called “Coingate” scandal during the Voinovich and Taft administrations. Major daily newspapers in Ohio like the Toledo Blade and the Columbus Dispatch are finally getting around to pondering: Why has there been no investigation and final report from the Ohio Inspector General’s office on this important scandal?

A Blade editorial asks the key question: “What is the state trying to cover up?”

Let us explain it to them.

Why there’s no report on the Coingate scandal is because it intersects with money –laundering into a presidential campaign and Voinovich’s ties to organized crime.

Tom Noe was northwest Ohio's “Mr. Republican” and a close Bush/Rove crony. He served two years for illegal money laundering into the 2004 Bush/Cheney campaign. He is now serving an 18-year term in state prison for stealing from the state’s Bureau of Workers’ Compensation (BWC).

British university lecturers and teaching staff went on a nationwide strike for the fifth time in six months this week to protest against pay cuts and, more generally, against the increasing marketization of the country's higher education system. Members of the University and College Union (UCU) walked out on Thursday in the latest event from a lengthy struggle against the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition government's finance-dominated restructuring of Britain's higher education system.

The vast majority of universities in Britain are still public institutions, but like many American universities there has been an ongoing restructuring of higher education that removes public funding and replaces it with either private cash, or austerity. The backdrop of this is that chancellors and wardens of universities are being given above-inflation pay rises (last year's averaged 5.1%) while teaching staff have suffered a 13% pay cut in real terms since October 2008, while arts and humanities departments have suffered job losses and closures after their funding was halved in 2010.

Annie Jacobsen's new book is called Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program That Brought Nazi Scientists to America. It isn't terribly secret anymore, of course, and it was never very intelligent.

Jacobsen has added some details, and the U.S. government is still hiding many more. But the basic facts have been available; they're just left out of most U.S. history books, movies, and television programs.

America's gun culture costs lives and feeds our fears. Consider the most recent injustice in Florida, the verdict in the Michael Dunn case, and the most recent news about America's "guard labor."

In Jacksonville, Fla., Michael Dunn, a 47-year-old white man, was aggravated by the loud rap music coming from an SUV filled with four black teenagers in a convenience store parking lot. An exchange of insults ensued. Dunn, who was armed and clearly dangerous, claimed that he was threatened by Jordan Davis, a 17-year-old high school senior, and later claimed he saw the barrel of a shotgun coming from the SUV. There was no shotgun; no other witness saw anything that might resemble a shotgun. Dunn opened his door and fired 10 shots into the SUV as it drove away, killing Jordan Davis. Dunn then drove away without calling the cops, and without ever mentioning that the boys had a shotgun.

Under Florida's inane "Stand Your Ground" law, however, Dunn had the right to use lethal force to defend himself if he "reasonably" thought his life was threatened. Dunn's lawyer said, "I don't have to prove the threat, just that Mike Dunn believed it." The Jacksonville jury found
So the “all the above” energy strategy now deems we dump another $6.5 billion in bogus loan guarantees down the atomic drain. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz has announced finalization of hotly contested taxpayer handouts for the two Vogtle reactors being built in Georgia. Another $1.8 billion waits to be pulled out of your pocket and poured down the radioactive sink hole.

While Fukushima burns and solar soars, our taxpayer money is being pitched at a failed 20th century technology currently distinguished by its non-stop outflow of lethal radiation into the Pacific Ocean. solarornukes

Take that $6.5 or $8.3 billion and invest it right now in wind, solar, sustainable bio-fuels, geothermal, ocean thermal, wave energy, LED light bulbs, building insulation and Solartopian south-facing windows.

The money is to pump up a pair of radioactive white elephants that Wall Street won’t touch. Georgia state “regulators” are strong-arming ratepayers into the footing the bill before the reactors ever move a single electron—which they likely never will.

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