April 25, 2009 archive

How is this for motivation?

Bybee’s friends said he never sought the job at the Office of Legal Counsel. The reason he went back to Washington, Guynn said, was to interview with then-White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales for a slot that would be opening on the 9th Circuit when a judge retired. The opening was not yet there, however, so Gonzales asked, “Would you be willing to take a position at the OLC first?” Guynn said.

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/…

After Bybee approved the torture memo, he was made a Federal Judge by Bush. Is there now any longer a mystery about how an ambitious lawyer would authorize a memo legalizing torture of captives? This is how legal corruption works: all you have to do is make the quid pro quo tacit, and the devil’s work gets done.

 Torture Leads Straight To Cheney

He Has Committed War Crimes

Flu virus outbreak in Mexico kills 70 and causes fear

The head of the World Health Organisation arrived in Geneva today for an emergency meeting as concern mounted over a frightening new flu strain.

By Sunday Telegraph reporter and agencies in Mexico

Last Updated: 9:43AM BST 25 Apr 2009

The outbreak of swine fever in Mexico has killed nearly 70 people and spread into the United States, raising fears of a global pandemic.

In Mexico, sports stadiums have been empty, schools and museums have shut and public events cancelled. Mexicans have started wearing surgical masks which soldiers handed out in the streets.

Margaret Chan, head of the WHO, broke off a visit to Washington to return to the agency’s headquarters in Switzerland to coordinate a response to the emergency.

Experts stopped short of declaring a pandemic but warned that there would probably be more cases of the swine flu, a mixture of viruses which has not previously been seen.

Officials from the WHO said the virus from 12 of the Mexican patients was the same genetically as a new strain of swine flu, designated H1N1, seen in eight people in California and Texas who later recovered.

Indonesia’s Voters Retreat From Radical Islam



By NORIMITSU ONISHI

Published: April 24, 2009

JAKARTA, Indonesia – From Pakistan to Gaza and Lebanon, militant Islamic movements have gained ground rapidly in recent years, fanning Western fears of a consolidation of radical Muslim governments. But here in the world’s most populous Muslim nation just the opposite is happening, with Islamic parties suffering a steep drop in popular support.

In parliamentary elections this month, voters punished Islamic parties that focused narrowly on religious issues, and even the parties’ best efforts to appeal to the country’s mainstream failed to sway the public.

The largest Islamic party, the Prosperous Justice Party, ran television commercials of young women without head scarves and distributed pamphlets in the colors of the country’s major secular parties. But the party fell far short of its goal of garnering 15 percent of the vote, squeezing out a gain of less than one percentage point over its 7.2 percent showing in 2004.

USA

In 2002, Military Agency Warned Against ‘Torture’

Extreme Duress Could Yield Unreliable Information, It Said

By Peter Finn and Joby Warrick

Washington Post Staff Writers

Saturday, April 25, 2009

The military agency that provided advice on harsh interrogation techniques for use against terrorism suspects referred to the application of extreme duress as “torture” in a July 2002 document sent to the Pentagon’s chief lawyer and warned that it would produce “unreliable information.”

“The unintended consequence of a U.S. policy that provides for the torture of prisoners is that it could be used by our adversaries as justification for the torture of captured U.S. personnel,” says the document, an unsigned two-page attachment to a memo by the military’s Joint Personnel Recovery Agency. Parts of the attachment, obtained in full by The Washington Post, were quoted in a Senate report on harsh interrogation released this week.

 Its Radioactive  

Give a little, take a little

Immediately after depositing the federal government’s cash handouts into the bank accounts of 50 local residents, officials in Tsushima, Nagasaki, then seized overdue taxes from them.

It was reported that police in Ichikawa, Chiba, busted a forgery ring specializing in fake alien registration cards. Over 1,300 documents were recovered, worth an estimated ¥12 million on the black market.

Twenty-eight Japanese World War II veterans were joined by 20 vets from the US for a softball game at an elementary school in Hiroshima where 400 children were killed in the 1945 atomic bombing.

Neighbors expressed shock that a three story building in a densely packed Osaka residential area was being used as a “marijuana factory.” Cops arrested two men and seized over 350 plants worth an estimated ¥500 million.

Today’s Republican noise machine is busy broadcasting that those people who want accountability for torture are just the extreme left wing of the Democratic Party.  If the Obama justice department investigates and prosecutes former Bush administration officials, Obama will lose the support of moderates.

Here’s what a former Republican Presidential candidate said about extremism versus moderation:

“I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!” Barry Morris Goldwater 1964.

Now I’m no extremist.

An extremist would insist George, Dick and Don get water-boarded over one hundred and eighty times in thirty days.

You know… Justice biblical style – an eye for an eye.

Nope, I’ll settle for a fair trial and if convicted of a crime, sending them to jail.

The real question is, in this new Obama era, will there still be two systems of Justice and two Americas?