Broadcatch

The President's praise of fair trials and the rule of law

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Unclaimed Territory – by Glenn Greenwald: The President’s praise of fair trials and the rule of law: “The President’s praise of fair trials and the rule of law

(updated below – Update II)

By Glenn Greenwald – President Bush today hailed the critical importance of fair trials and the rule of law . . . . in Iraq:

Today, Saddam Hussein was executed after receiving a fair trial — the kind of justice he denied the victims of his brutal regime.

Fair trials were unimaginable under Saddam Hussein’s tyrannical rule. It is a testament to the Iraqi people’s resolve to move forward after decades of oppression that, despite his terrible crimes against his own people, Saddam Hussein received a fair trial. This would not have been possible without the Iraqi people’s determination to create a society governed by the rule of law.

The President is certainly right that it is is a good thing that Saddam Hussein was given a trial, represented by lawyers, with an opportunity to contest his guilt, before being deemed to be guilty. That is how civilized countries function, by definition. In fact, allowing people fair trials before treating them as Guilty is one of the handful of defining attributes — one could even say (as the American Founders did) a prerequisite — for countries to avoid tyranny.

Sasha/Digweed

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YouTube – Sasha at Club Glow Washington DC

Sasha, born Alexander Coe (born September 4, 1969), is a WelshDJ and record producer. He is best known for partnering with fellow English DJ, John Digweed, as Sasha + Digweed. The pair released several mix albums together, including the Northern Exposure series (released between 1996 and 2001). They also released one of the all time best selling mix albums, The Renaissance Mix Collection part 1, in 1994. The album was recently re-issued. Sasha also released two Global Underground solo mix CDs, San Francisco (GU009) and Ibiza (GU013), which are considered classics of the progressive house genre. In 2002 he released his first solo LP, Airdrawndagger, a result of collaboration with Spooky, James Holden and Junkie XL. The album enjoyed excellent reviews upon its release, and recently a wave of quality remixes by various producers has re-kindled interest in Sasha’s production work. 2004 saw the release of Involver, his third in the Global Underground series. This mix album differed from previous albums in that each track was completely reproduced in the studio, as opposed to simply being blended together. More recently, in 2005, Sasha began moving away from mixing with records and CDs in favor of a new approach with computer software and a dedicated controller for his live sets. With the sequencing/mixing software Ableton Live and a custom controller that Sasha helped to design, he is able to use mixing techniques that are difficult or impossible with conventional methods, including mixing together many sources at once, adjusting pitch and tempo of sources independently, and cutting up and rearranging songs. His most recent mixed CD, Fundacion, was recorded using the Ableton Live software and the album bears the name of his monthly residency nights in both New York, Los Angeles, Denver and GLOW in WASHINGTON D.C.




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Gassed His Own People

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Gassed His Own People

I am, you know, amazed that this is a society which so wants to be free that they’re willing to — you know, that there’s a level of violence that they tolerate.—Who is “tolerating” that? Bush is — from the comfort of his treadmill in the White House gym — and Cheney and Rumsfeld, maybe. But do you honestly think that any mother trying to raise a family on the streets of Baghdad tolerates it? And the evidence is overwhelming that they don’t tolerate it one bit. Why do you think that a whopping 71 percent of Iraqis want America to leave in the next year?

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toohotfortnr

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tooho:tfortnr Since you been gone, I can breathe for the first time

Hey, Frank, great editing, buddy. You really are a credit to the magazine, and I’m a total dick. Here’s what you let Bob Kagan write for you this week:

Schmuck – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Schmuck – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: “In his famous cultural lexicon, The Joys of Yiddish, Leo Rosten lists the Yiddish schmuck as related to the Slovene word, šmok, meaning ‘a fool, an innocent, a gullible dolt”

St. McCain’s look of desperation

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“St. McCain’s look of desperation
By: John Amato

John McCain had this weird—glazed look in his eyes as he attacked John Kerry’s botched joke on Hannity & Colmes Tuesday night. (Here’s Kerry’s reply to the distortions)

Video -WMP Video -QT

How quickly St. McCain forgot his high praise of Kerry:

In his work toward that day, Kerry earned the ‘unbounded respect and admiration’ of McCain, who, like others in the Senate, originally viewed Kerry with suspicion. ‘You get to know people and you make decisions about them,’ says McCain. ‘I found him to be the genuine article.’

or this :

On a more serious note, McCain added later, ‘I think that the best Americans from both parties should be the nominees of their parties, so that the American people would have the very best to select from, and I would certainly put Sen. Kerry in that category.’

It’s sad how an election cycle will bring out the worst in people. I guess the Republicans are that desperate, but by bringing up the Iraq war front and center, they might have made a mistake:

In attacking Mr. Kerry and defending the war, the White House clearly made the calculation that achieving what has been its”