Check out this great op-ed piece on minorities in the media in the Guardian UK from one of Link TV's board members, actor and UNDP Goodwill Ambassador Danny Glover! Written together with U.S. Congressman Mike Honda (D-California), the piece calls out the lack of diversity in America's newsrooms, and the paucity of coverage of minority issues. There's also a nice plug for Link TV and the channel's mission of providing diverse global perspectives, with Glover and Honda pointing out that "the more world-wise we become, the more capable we will be as a nation to understand and be understood." The article has spawned a lively discussion on the Guardian UK's website - let us know what YOU think!

A 2004 report from the CIA's inspector general was released to the public today, revealing details on CIA abuse of prisoners in the "War on Terror," including mock executions that violate federal law on torture. While a considerable amount of the document remains blacked out, the revelations have rekindled long-standing questions on prisoner abuse and torture under the Bush administration. The complete report is available here:

After word of the report leaked out on Friday, speculation rose around the next steps of Attorney General Eric Holder, who has the power to appoint a Justice Department prosecutor to investigate the CIA abuses detailed in the report. The Washington Post reported today that an announcement from Holder was imminent, naming John Durham in the role to conduct the inquiry.

Today's Democracy Now! interview with Michael Isikoff, the Newsweek investigative reporter who together with Mark Hosenball broke this story on Friday, offers an excellent overview on the legal implications of this report:

For a harrowing look at the Bush administration's policies on detention and interrogation, check out Link TV's documentary Torture on Trial. More background on the ongoing call for accountability for torture is available at linktv.org/accountability.

The debate over health care reform in the United States has now turned into more of a battle, replete with guns and anger. The divisive rancor that had seemingly disappeared following Obama's election amid calls for national unity has resurfaced at contentious town halls on the health care issue, fueled in part, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism, by "conflict-driven cable news." Linguistics professor and author George Lakoff, featured previously on Link in the special "There You Go Again: Orwell Comes to America," takes the Democrats to task in this video for failing to sell a national health care plan to the American public. (Video courtesy of our partners at FORA.tv!) Instead, according to Lakoff, conservatives are successfully framing the debate with phrases like "death panels" and "government takeover," while Democrats refuse to risk touting the real and tragic failures of insurance company-based health care in the United States. (For an interesting look at the ill effects of the American health care system on ordinary folk, check out Andrew Sullivan's blog series at the Atlantic Monthly, "The Views From Your Sickbeds," and another article in the September 2009 edition of the Atlantic, "How American Health Care Killed My Father" by David Goldhill.)

Yesterday, Amy Goodman's Democracy Now! also looked at the health care debate, interviewing Chad Terhune, a senior writer at BusinessWeek covering health care issues. Terhune's article, "The Health Insurers Have Already Won," looks at the real potential winners in health reform -- the health insurance industry. He writes, "The carriers have succeeded in redefining the terms of the reform debate to such a degree that no matter what specifics emerge in the voluminous bill Congress may send to President Obama this fall, the insurance industry will emerge more profitable." (Watch the complete interview below, and read more at DemocracyNow.org.) And what do you think -- is a better health care system on the horizon for the U.S.? Or will insurance companies be the only winners in this battle?

You might think that Iranians live in total information isolation, and have little idea what is being said in the U.S. and other Western countries. Watching Link TV's documentary "The Dish", about Iran's national obsession with satellite TV, will quickly disabuse you of that notion. And this week, Link TV expanded its global reach when the Tehran Times, Iran's major English-language daily newspaper, reprinted Mosaic Producer Jamal Dajani's latest article in the Huffington Post, "Iraq: Talk is Cheap, Blood is Cheaper". Though the Tehran Times is hardly a progressive, pro-Western media outlet, claiming that "it must be a loud voice of the Islamic Revolution," it does frequently include reports from international news agencies such as the Associated Press, Reuters, and now, even our own Jamal Dajani, to keep its readers informed of outside news and opinion.

If you missed Dajani's excellent Mosaic Intelligence Report from Friday, which expands upon his Huffington Post article on Iraq, we encourage you to watch it below. And to stay updated on what's really going on in the Middle East, follow Jamal Dajani on Twitter, and subscribe to his weekly Mosaic Intelligence Report enewsletter.

And a reminder: to keep Mosaic going, we rely on donations from our viewers. So if you value Mosaic, the Mosaic Intelligence Report and Link's other great programming focused on the Middle East and more, be sure to donate today, in any amount. We need to hear from you!

President Richard Nixon solicited the help of Brazil's notorious leader Emilio Medici in early talks of overthrowing Chile's President Salvador Allende, according to a secret memo from 1971 released to the public for the first time on Sunday. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger wrote up the meeting, and was asked to act as a back channel between Medici and Nixon.

Two years later Allende was killed in a US-backed coup which put Gen. Augusto Pinochet into power. Pinochet's name would later become synonymous with brutal human rights abuses and "disappearances" in the thousands.

The actions of Brazil's leadership, who were no strangers to torture and assassination, are detailed by the victims themselves in the astonishing contemporaneous documentary Brazil: A Report on Torture [watch here]. The young students and professionals who appear in the film were living in Chile as political refugees when Pinochet came into power, throwing them again into a world of detention and pain. In this interview, filmmakers Haskell Wexler (Medium Cool, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) and Saul Landau (Fidel) talk about their time in Chile interviewing the Brazilian victims, as well as US involvement in South American politics. Wexler and Landau were in Chile working on a documentary about Allende when they met the victims.

Link TV also broadcasts the documentary The Trials of Henry Kissinger. Check here for airdates and a clip from the film.