FIRE JOHN YOO!

Monday, June 17, San Francisco

Today World Can't Wait called a rush hour protest vigil and speak-out in downtown San Francisco on Market Street, demanding:  No Government Spying on Whole Populations!  Hands Off Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning! Close Guantanamo Now!

The action drew together 30 people to stand up and speak out together: World Can't Wait, School of the Americas Watch, religious activists, Code Pink, Vets for Peace.  Others showed up too, several carrying their own homemade signs.  We had a bullhorn for agitation and speakers, five people wore the jumpsuits and hoods, others lofted the big banners.  We had a display of some letters from Guantanamo prisoners recently published in the Yemen Times.  Commuters and tourists were snapping pictures;  some would listen for a few minutes and then approach one of us to talk, or walk into the circle and put money into the donation can.

A US doctor and two lawyers Wednesday called for an end to force-feeding prisoners on hunger strike at Guantanamo Bay, saying the practice goes against medical ethics and is a form of assault.

supporting an administration I so desperately want to succeed, only to watch the snowballing impact of administrative overreach confound any conceivable notion of liberty I may hold. 

The President did say he'd close the prison; it isn't closed. Eighty-six of the hundred and sixty-six prisoners--more than half--have been cleared for release; they haven't been released. A country that does that can't be proud, and Obama may actually be ashamed... But why now?

..the catalyst in this case is the real possibility that one or more prisoners will die of starvation soon; the odds are, given the raw numbers, that it will be someone we've already decided shouldn't be at Guantánamo, or have given up trying to charge. Prisoners have died there before, but not in a protest so broad and so stark. A wave of deaths would be a political, moral, and foreign-policy disaster, with the seriousness not necessarily in that order.

THE HECKLER, THE PRESIDENT, AND THE HUNGER STRIKERS

the price of being "the world's most powerful nation." 

Show the world there is a section of people in the U.S. who care about humanity. Donate to help publish this message as soon as possible internationally, and in alternative media. We have been offered very substantial discounts to publish in the International Herald Tribune and The Progressive. Whether we can publish there quickly -- or in other online or print media -- depends entirely on you.

Although Obama has indicated that he is set to resume prisoner transfers from Guantanamo Bay, former detainee Moazzam Begg believes innocent people striking for their freedom will not stop unless they see some real action...

May 23, 2013

Parliament passed a resolution on the situation of the hunger-striking prisoners in

Guantánamo. The resolution calls on US authorities to treat detainees with respect for

their inherent dignity and to uphold their human rights and fundamental freedoms.

Speculation on the motivation for John Yoo's cover for presidential over-reach tends to define his role as "fixer." The reality is that the Office of Legal Counsel attorney was actively promoting patently illegal policy from the get-go, including choice of the prison location. 

"Well, there weren't a lot of good choices, and I think Secretary Rumsfeld called it the "least worst place" or something like that... 

a related issue was whether the federal courts were going to get involved in trying to manage how the facility worked. And so in the past, the Supreme Court had said prison bases outside the United States, the territory of the United States, which house enemy prisoners at war would not be within the jurisdiction of the federal court system...

one thing you want to be concerned about is having that kind of involvement while war is still going on.

As the Guantanamo hunger strike enters its 100th day, the number of voices, both in the US and around the world, to close the facility are growing stronger and louder... the latest from RT here

Political speeches and posturing are one thing. Reality is another.

While promoting the message to Close Guantanamo that we are raising funds to publish in The New York Times, we  have been hearing, especially in the Twitterverse, that people think, because Obama promised to close Guantanamo, and says that Congress is not allowing him to do that, the main problem is with Congress. It is quite true that the U.S. Congress, both when the Republicans led it under Bush, and since the Democrats took over leadership in 2006, has a shameful record in advancing all sorts of repression.  Memorably, they've made speeches and passed resolutions -- and tried to pass laws -- saying Guantanamo, specificially, can't be closed, nor can the prisoners ever by tried here or released in the U.S. So appealing to the right-wing Congress is going to continue to be a very hopeless road, absent the kind of mass political movement from the people needed, on all issues of justice, from authorizing un-ending wars, targeted killing, violation of borders for other countries, while further militarizing this country's borders and infrastructure...