Category: News

1 more time! Spain Will PROSECUTE Bushies. ¡Viva España!

Crossposted at Daily Kos

I know our fellow dharma bum Edger already covered this, but I wanted to keep the story alive and enjoy the celebration of the rule of law

From September 8, 2009

    A Spanish judge has decided to go ahead with the prosecution of six Bush administration lawyers – including former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales – who were the architects of the legal framework for President George W. Bush “enhanced interrogation” program, according to a report in the Spanish newspaper Publico. (Original article here; Google translation here.)

    The six Bush administration alumni targeted in the prosecution are former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales; John Yoo, author of the “torture memos”; Douglas Feith, then a deputy defense secretary; Pentagon lawyer William Haynes II; former assistant attorney general Jay Bybee; and David Addington, a former chief of staff to then-Vice President Dick Cheney.

~snip~

. . .  Holder’s investigation will be limited to instances where interrogators overstepped the boundaries set out by Bush lawyers for “enhanced interrogation.” By contrast, the Spanish case challenges the legality of the entire program.

rawstory.com

More below the fold! YAY!

Weekend News Digest

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Now with 38 Stories including bonus Formula One cheating coverage.

From Yahoo News Top Stories

1 Afghan attacks kill dozens; Karzai leads in poll

By Hamid Shalizi, Reuters

Sat Sep 12, 12:09 pm ET

KABUL (Reuters) – Roadside bombs, gunbattles and a suicide strike killed five Americans and dozens of Afghan civilians, troops and police, officials said on Saturday, a bloody day that showed how unrest has spread across the country.

Afghanistan is mired in a drawn-out dispute over election fraud that could test the patience of U.S. President Barack Obama and other Western leaders contemplating whether more troops are needed to defend its government.

Attacks took place in all corners of the country, not only in southern and eastern areas that have long been violent but also in the north and west, which had been comparatively quiet until recent weeks.

8 yrs and a day later, protest the Gov who pays the 9/11 heroes

I still have my NYPD/FDNY NY Yankees hat.

I grew up in the state of New York. On 9/11/01 I was in New Jersey, and I could see the smoke from there.

Image Hosting by PictureTrail.com     On that tragic day more brave Police Officers and Fire Fighters lost their lives trying to help and save others then I care to count, though each life lost that day should never be forgotten. The war that was launched in Afghanistan to bring justice to al Qaeda and the Taliban, and the false war based on lies in Iraq that prevented the job of catching Osama bin Laden from being brought to justice has claimed thousands of more lives. All of these men and women are heroes. This is true not only of the innocent victims of 9/11, but also of those who ran into those buildings in order to save the lives of their fellow citizens. The brave fallen soldiers of those wars and the emergency workers of NYC were and are true heroes.

   And today, the Corporate media, the Republican party and their Right Wing base, in order to remember that day and recall the national unity we Americans felt afterwards, are going to protest that same Government who employed, fed and buried the heroes who gave their lives on 9/11 and the wars that were launched in the days and years after..

    And that is truly pathetic.

“My hats off to Glenn Beck” says Dobbs, except by hat, he means hood

Crossposted at Daily Kos

Beck:     “This guy (President Obama), is, I believe, a racist.”

Dobbs:     “And there’s Van Jones saying, “Well, you know, you said something I don’t like, so what are we gonna do? We’ll just attack your sponsors.” That didn’t work out so shiny for him, did it? So, by the way, I gotta say hats off to Glenn Beck for having the guts to stand up to this.”

     More commentary, a transcript, and my civil rights friendly boot up Lou Dobbs keister below the fold.

SF-Oakland Bay Bridge: Unprecedented Construction Feat

Over Labor Day weekend the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge (Bay Bridge, for short) was closed for a seismic retrofit project featuring an unprecedented construction feat. A football field length, double-deck section,  weighing 3,200 tons was excised and a new section slid into place to form an S-shaped detour.  The huge pieces moved verrrrry slowly on specially built rails. A distance of 100 feet took several hours not including delays when the rails needed to be adjusted.  All of this took place 150 feet above ground.  

Here is a picture from a few weeks ago in preparation for the detour.  The scene is looking west where the East Span of the bridge meets Yerba Buena Island.  The detour is on the left and the old bridge on the right. The connecting piece that was installed this weekend is shown below.



from baybridgeinfo.org

Weekend News Digest

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From Yahoo News Top Stories

1 G20 aims at bank pay and capital; stimulus to stay

By Sumeet Desai and Louise Egan, Reuters

11 mins ago

LONDON (Reuters) – G20 finance leaders on Saturday took aim at excessive bank pay and risk-taking at the root of the financial crisis and insisted trillions of dollars of emergency economic supports would be needed for some time.

Although the global economy looks brighter than when the Group of 20 finance ministers and central bankers met in April, their closing statement said they would not remove economic stimulus until the recovery was well entrenched.

While the timing of these eventual policy reversals may vary, the G20 said for the first time there should be some coordination to avoid adverse international fallout.

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From Yahoo News Top Stories

1 Japan Democrats win landslide in historic election

By Linda Sieg and Chisa Fujioka, Reuters

2 hrs 56 mins ago

TOKYO (Reuters) – Japanese voters swept the opposition to a historic victory in an election on Sunday, ousting the ruling conservative party and handing the untested Democrats the job of breathing life into a struggling economy.

The win by the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) ended a half-century of almost unbroken rule by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and breaks a deadlock in parliament, ushering in a government that has promised to focus spending on consumers, cut wasteful budget outlays and reduce the power of bureaucrats.

“The people are angry with politics now and the ruling coalition. We felt a great sense of people wanting change for their livelihoods and we fought this election for a change in government,” said Democratic Party leader Yukio Hatoyama, 62.

The Morning News

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1 Afghan vote fraud claims gather momentum

AFP

Sat Aug 29, 1:28 am ET

KABUL (AFP) – Allegations of vote-rigging in Afghanistan’s elections gathered momentum on Saturday as the main challenger said he would not accept a compromised outcome and Western powers called for transparency.

The French foreign ministry said Paris has called a meeting of senior Western envoys to Afghanistan to discuss their response to presidential elections that have been marred by fraud allegations.

The White House, following on from revelations that its envoy to Afghanistan, Richard Holbrooke, had a testy meeting with President Hamid Karzai immediately after the August 20 vote, condemned any acts of fraud that might emerge.

The Morning News

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From Yahoo News Top Stories

1 Democrats scramble on health reforms post-Kennedy

By Svea Herbst-Bayliss and Donna Smith, Reuters

Thu Aug 27, 8:03 pm ET

BOSTON/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Democrats scrambled on Thursday to quickly fill the seat of Senator Edward Kennedy, to shore up President Barack Obama’s faltering effort to rally Congress behind an overhaul of the U.S. healthcare system.

Members of America’s most storied political dynasty said a private farewell to the Kennedy patriarch at a Mass in their Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, compound before accompanying his body to Boston for public tributes on Friday at the John F. Kennedy presidential library and for the funeral on Saturday.

Apart from depriving Congress of its most effective champion of healthcare reform, Kennedy’s death on Tuesday cost his Democratic party its essential 60th vote in the Senate, the number needed to beat Republican tactical blocking maneuvers.

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1 Head of troubled Darfur peacekeeping force resigns

By Louis Charbonneau, Reuters

Tue Aug 25, 5:45 pm ET

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – The head of the joint U.N.-African Union peacekeeping mission in Sudan’s conflict-torn Darfur region, who some diplomats say has been ineffective, is stepping down, the U.N. said on Tuesday.

The world body is working closely with the AU to find a replacement for Rodolphe Adada, a former foreign minister of the Republic of Congo, U.N. spokeswoman Marie Okabe said.

Other U.N. officials told Reuters on condition of anonymity that the United Nations and AU were considering several candidates from different parts of Africa.

Wednesday Morning Science Supplement

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From Yahoo News Science

1 Encyclopedia of Life grows; clues on ageing, pests

By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent, Reuters

Sun Aug 23, 10:11 am ET

OSLO (Reuters) – An online encyclopedia aiming to describe every type of animal and plant on the planet has reached 170,000 entries and is helping research into aging, climate change and even the spread of insect pests.

The “Encyclopedia of Life” (http://www.eol.org), a project likely to cost $100 million launched in 2007, says it wants to describe all the 1.8 million known species from apples to zebras within a decade.

“We’re picking up speed,” James Edwards, EOL Executive Director based at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, said Sunday of the 170,000 entries with content in a common format vetted by experts. A year ago, it had 30,000 entries.

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1 UBS chairman says clients "not harmless victims": report

Reuters

Sun Aug 23, 9:33 am ET

ZURICH (Reuters) – Clients of UBS facing disclosure of their accounts to U.S. tax authorities were not harmless victims and legal cases against former UBS bankers did not affect the bank, its chairman told Swiss Sunday newspapers.

“The clients are not just harmless victims. They knew what they wanted to evade,” Kaspar Villiger, chairman of the world’s second-largest wealth manager, said in an interview with SonntagsBlick.

“But they trusted the bank that it would work. Now we have to correct that,” said Villiger, adding it was still not the responsibility of UBS to make sure clients paid their taxes.

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