Re: Torture Tapes,Here comes the Judge…

Seems BushCo might have a bad case of indigestion this week. From TPMmuckraker we get some lovely news:

Judge Orders Hearing on Destruction of CIA Torture Tapes

And the judicial branch enters the fray.

Much to the administration’s chagrin, Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr. has ordered a hearing on the CIA’s destruction of the torture tapes for this Friday at 11 AM.

This IS sweet music to my ears. Judge Kennedy is a Clinton-appointed judge, who also ordered BushCo, back in 2005, to safeguard “all evidence and information regarding the torture, mistreatment, and abuse of detainees now at the United States Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay.”

I love you Judge Kennedy..not in that way of course, but as a protector of the constitution and all things anti-torture. Here is hoping you give BushCo major heartburn Friday @ 11am.

Amazingly BushCo opposed this hearing. LOL..like that is friggin news my dear reader. Bush’s lawyers argued that the hearing “is both unnecessary and potentially disruptive.” Oh please..its all unnecessary according to the Idiot-in-Chief and his minions. Keep us all in the dark and feed us bullshit is their modus operandi. The NYT article goes in depth as to the arguments the Bush administration will use to attempt to get this tossed.

FindLaw has a good writeup on it as well here, plus copies of the court doc’s.

Stay tuned..

Tags: Torture Tapes, CIA,

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another reason to think before you buy

“June is the wet season in Ghana, but here in Accra, the capital, the morning rain has ceased. As the sun heats the humid air, pillars of black smoke begin to rise above the vast Agbogbloshie Market. I follow one plume toward its source, past lettuce and plantain vendors, past stalls of used tires, and through a clanging scrap market where hunched men bash on old alternators and engine blocks. Soon the muddy track is flanked by piles of old TVs, gutted computer cases, and smashed monitors heaped ten feet (three meters) high. Beyond lies a field of fine ash speckled with glints of amber and green-the sharp broken bits of circuit boards. I can see now that the smoke issues not from one fire, but from many small blazes. Dozens of indistinct figures move among the acrid haze, some stirring flames with sticks, others carrying armfuls of brightly colored computer wire. Most are children.
Choking, I pull my shirt over my nose and approach a boy of about 15, his thin frame wreathed in smoke. Karim says he has been tending such fires for two years. He pokes at one meditatively, and then his top half disappears as he bends into the billowing soot. He hoists a tangle of copper wire off the old tire he’s using for fuel and douses the hissing mass in a puddle. With the flame retardant insulation burned away-a process that has released a bouquet of carcinogens and other toxics-the wire may fetch a dollar from a scrap-metal buyer.
Another day in the market, on a similar ash heap above an inlet that flushes to the Atlantic after a downpour, …”

read rest here

cross posted at life’s journey

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“The biggest evironmental crime in history”

That, my dear reader, is the title of the Independent article I read last Sunday evening in my inbox. Somehow, I wasn’t surprised to see that it was about British Petroleum..aka BP. It’s the description of a Canadian drilling project which environmentalists and people with a modicum of common sense brand BP’s method of ‘extraction’. From the Indy article:

BP, the British oil giant that pledged to move “Beyond Petroleum” by finding cleaner ways to produce fossil fuels, is being accused of abandoning its “green sheen” by investing nearly £1.5bn to extract oil from the Canadian wilderness using methods which environmentalists say are part of the “biggest global warming crime” in history.

The multinational oil and gas producer, which last year made a profit of £11bn, is facing a head-on confrontation with the green lobby in the pristine forests of North America after Greenpeace pledged a direct action campaign against BP following its decision to reverse a long-standing policy and invest heavily in extracting so-called “oil sands” that lie beneath the Canadian province of Alberta and form the world’s second-largest proven oil reserves after Saudi Arabia.

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The People of Italy Speak Out Against Tibet Occupation

Associazione Italy-Tibet have staged a protest on the 10th by hanging banners from large buildings in the Coliseum in Rome, the Milan Cathedral and the Asinelli Tower in Bologna which read: “Tibet Libero” (Free Tibet, for the uncultured); in celebration of 60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

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Let me get this straight

The revaluation of the renmibi isn’t going to do anything but make life more expensive for you in the short term.

Between Chimpy’s policy of subsidizing outsourcing and Mao-Mart’s strong-arming vendors into relocating their shops to China, the simple truth is we don’t make a hell of a lot of stuff here anymore. If you don’t believe me, go to the nearest store and just try to find a microwave oven not made in China. Or an artificial Christmas tree. Or a DVD player. Or a flat-screen television. Or a kerosene heater. Or a…… get what I mean? If you don’t, I recommend that you go try it yourself. I have.

If the renmibi revalues even higher, for mst Americans it will mean that the goods they are buying just got a lot more expensive. Nothing else. In a perverse sort of way, the Chinese pegging to the dollar has been pretty good for American consumers, who are facing a de facto annual inflation rate of about 50% for things like food and fuel (although the fuel seems to be backing off now.) If it weren’t for all the Chinese stuff still being cheap, a hell of a lot more of us would be bankrupt, or going hungry.

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Federal Judge throws out AZ immigration law challenge..

This is a good thing..its important for several reasons. First, Arizona is attempting to do what many of us have been bitching about for years now..Make the Companies and Businesses responsible when it comes to hiring undocumented workers. It puts on the onus on them, where it belongs. We need to treat them like the damn DEA treats most drug dealers; take everything they own and auction it off, leaving them penniless and in jail. Under the law, any business that is found to have knowingly hired an illegal worker is subject to sanctions ranging from probation to a 10-day suspension of its business licenses. A second violation would bring permanent revocation of the license.

Second, the lawsuit shows us that businesses and corporations don’t want to change the status quo. The corporatocracy talks a good game about illegals being a blight on the american job market, but the reality is, they like hiring them and keeping the wages low and pocketing more of their bottom line, not to mention treating the undocumented workers like chattel.

The Pew Hispanic Center estimates that illegal immigrants account for one in 10 workers in the Arizona economy. The following is Jurists writeup on this case a good place to go for all things legal:

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Keith Olbermann and his Special Comment on the Idiot-in-Chief

Last night was a great one folks..thanks to Crooks and Liars for putting this up. I heart them for it.

WWIII my ass! Chicken Little is right KO.

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And from our WTF? dept..

Did he really say that? Is the man out there? Krazy Karl had the nads to espouse the following:

Karl Rove claimed that he was “opposed” to holding the pre-war Iraq vote just ahead of the 2002 elections. “The administration was opposed to voting on it in the fall of 2002,” Rove said. He stated that his upcoming book will argue that the administration did not want to schedule an Iraq war vote prior
to the 2002 elections:

ROSE: But you were opposed to the vote.

ROVE: It happened. We don’t determine when the Congress vote on things. The Congress does.

ROSE: You wish it hadn’t happened at that time. You would have preferred it did not happen at that time.

ROVE: That’s right.

Oh holy shit..my dear reader..if you don’t believe that..watch him say it..again:

 

Even Daschle said Krazy Karl is nucking futs..and..trying to sell some books..perhaps his book isn’t going over so well and headed for the sale bin already?

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Rendition and torture, it’s the American way?

The European newspaper, the TimesOnline had an interesting article this past Sunday. What bothers me that I can’t find anything similar in the US media. I googled the main phrase ‘flight logs, cia’ and only got the European write-ups, with the exception of a two-year old CommonDreams article reprinted from a French news media outlet. Pathetic wouldn’t you say?

Back to the Times article, which is the second write-up they have done on the CIA’s rendition of individuals. The second paragraph caught my attention:

Despite widespread criticism of alleged human rights abuses and torture at the US base in Cuba, a Sunday Times investigation has shown that at least five European countries gave the United States permission to fly nearly 700 terrorist suspects across their territory. (emphasis mine)

Seven Hundred suspects is quite the load of terrorists isn’t it? Considering the fact that over 400 prisoners have been released over the last few years from Gitmo, more than half the total number incarcerated since the opening days of the war on terror, it gives one pause to think about how many of the secretly kidnapped suspects never made it to Gitmo and what actually happened to them…but I digress.

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As the dollar drops, so goes the US credit rating.

I slogged through my email’s this morning..my mind on other things..when I hit on one from Newsweek that caught my attention. The title: ‘In the Realm of the Dying Dollar’ was enough for me to sit still and read it through. I have heard lately that europeans and canadians are flocking to our shores to shop their little brains out because our dollar is worth less than the Euro and Canadian currency. I realize the devaluation of the dollar isn’t a good thing but noticed I haven’t read too much on that topic lately.

So, I read the Newsweek writeup and its not pretty. It tells us that the Decider-in-Chief is ruining our lives in another way that isn’t quite as obvious yet. The Newsweek article mentions another writeup in Vanity Fair by a Nobel laureate that rips BushCo a new one:

In a blistering essay in the current Vanity Fair, Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, a former World Bank economist, notes that Bush took a nation with a budget surplus upon assuming office and turned it into a global debtor, and he has underinvested in education and alternative energy. “In breathtaking disregard for the most basic rules of fiscal propriety, the administration continued to cut taxes even as it undertook expensive new spending programs and embarked on a financially ruinous ‘war of choice’ in Iraq.

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The 5 permanent members of the UN Security council..

.. have veto power over any resolution put forth. They are also the five biggest arms dealers in the world; People’s Republic of China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States. Coincidence?

I think not.

That fact about the UN Security council was the last line that scrolled across the screen in the movie Lord of War(2005). I watched it Tuesday instead of my usual..political fare. Nicolas Cage stars as an international gunrunner, although gunrunner should really be ‘arms dealer’ since he deals in everything from AK-47’s to tanks and armed helicopters. He arms entire nations and becomes very rich in the process. Some trivia about the movie:

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Valerie Plame talks to Jason Leopold, part 2

The second and last installment of the Valerie Plame convo with Jason Leopold of TruthOut.

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The true cost of BushCo’s Wars..

It is with great regret I announce to you what might possibly be the true cost of George W. Bush’s two wars my dear reader. It probably won’t surprise you, but it will jack your jaw just a tad I think. According to the Democrats and The Washington Post..the total cost for both wars, at this point, is somewhere around..

$1.5 Trillion

So, did it freak you out? How this figure was arrived at might be a question you are pondering..I know I did. Well, according to the report, this ungodly number was arrived at by adding in higher oil prices,the costs of treating the wounded and disabled, lost productivity from those injured, potential future expansions in the size of the military made necessary by the war, the costs of repair and refit for military equipment, increases in recruitment and retention costs for the military, and economic disruptions created by the deployment of the Reserves and last but certainly not least.. interest payments on the money borrowed to pay for the wars.

I have always been angry about the fact that we must borrow money to pay for Bush’s wars, I have never been quiet about that. To me its a huge travesty, if not an outright crime to finance these gigantic boondoggles in this way. To actually quote from the Executive Summary of the report:

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audacity

Audacity. This is one word that can be used when describing the basic mold of the United States of America. It means the quality or state of being audacious and having intrepid boldness. Someone who exhibits audacity is said to have a bold or arrogant disregard of normal restraints . This definition, according to Merriam-Webster.

 

I think it was audacious to come to this land in 1620 and look around and decide that it was okay to just start living here. I know the Native indigenous people welcomed the pilgrims on the Mayflower, but they overstayed their welcome and were audacious. They boldly and arrogantly tried to tell the original inhabitants of what we now call the United States that the way they were living was wrong and that they would help them become ‘civilized’. The pilgrims brought their organized religion right along with syphilis and other diseases. The civilization they saw as lacking in the Indian community was there, but not to the acceptance of the pilgrims. They sought to change it. They assessed that surely a race of people could not be happy living like they were.

 

This theme has been hammered out by many countries in the world, but not knowing or having studied the entire history of the world, I can’t tell you who did what and where. There was the Inquisition-Catholics killing anyone that did not accept their faith. There were the Crusades- another attempt at making pagans toe the line in matters of religion, economics and lifestyle. But no one seems to have been more audacious than the USA, and the attitude follows through to everyday Americans in everyday situations throughout this country. It is spread throughout the world by Americans. It is spread throughout a community. It is spread in individual homes. This bold arrogant way of telling people how they must live. Forcing down their throats what we think best for them.

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Going to hell in a handbasket–Musharraf style

The newest country to impose martial law is Pakistan. Following a fine tradition started eons ago, General Perez Musharraf has used the time-honored excuse that the citizens of Pakistan need protecting from themselves. I think the timing is suspect, based on the fact that this week the Supreme Court of Pakistan was going to hand down a decision that would basically make General Musharraf an illegal president in that country. So far as I have been able to determine, we have handed roughly $10 Billion taxpayer bucks to Musharraf over the recent past. I thought I would check out how many dictators the U.S. has propped up over the years..and let me tell you..it’s a lot my dear reader.

As I googled my way around the internets, looking for a comprehensive list of heathen, murdering dictators who were or are beholden to the U.S. or our Corporatocracy for giving them millions if not billions of American tax dollars..I was amazed and impressed at the length and breadth of the list. Now, bear in mind that the US, or our Corporatocracy for that matter, have not supported ALL dictatorships, thank Buddha for that! But still, what I could find was at least 42 non-democratically elected dictators that loved the democracy known as the United States of America for various reasons. I will now actually list those guys and their country of origin for you:

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