October 2017 Archives

"Eight years ago, when I wrote a book on the first days of Guantanamo, The Least Worst Place: Guantánamo's First 100 Days, I assumed that Gitmo would prove a grim anomaly in our history," remarks Carol Rosenberg. "Today, it seems as if that 'detention facility' will have a far longer life than I ever imagined and that it, and everything it represents, will become a true, if grim, legacy of twenty-first-century America."

Some observers speculate that the base will also provide space for the surge of undocumented migrants deported from the United States since Donald Trump took office. The half-billion dollar Pentagon budget for new construction at Guantanamo includes $100 million for a 13,000 migrant tent city. Spokesmen for the Navy, Southcom and the Department of Homeland Security are reticent to reveal its purpose, although DHS spokesman David Lapan says Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) "does not have any plans to use this facility for any new/additional detention." 

At this time, the Navy is accepting site bids to build a skeletal structure for kitchen areas, dumpsters and a headquarters building. A public-address system has been proposed. The facility is expected to have a "minimum life of 50 years." 

To our collective dismay, the extralegal terrorism policies of the Bush administration have found a second life in the Trump era. We must find the courage and conviction to end this nightmare. On November 4 we take to the streets to drive the Trump/Pence regime from power.
John Yoo's colleague at the Berkeley Law School will say anything to discredit wind energy. Steven Hayward is on the board of directors for the Institute for Energy Research, a nonprofit whose main contributor is Charles Koch and other 'friends of the earth', and claims wind energy subsidies are not cutting emissions.  

North Dakota physician Lyle G. Best wonders why we should listen to someone with little training in physics, engineering or biology. "Hayward may be of the opinion that mercury and other heavy metals are good for you, sort of like the benefits of 'waterboarding', but I think not." 

Editorials in the Denver Post and the chairman of the University of Colorado faculty assembly found Hayward's statements "border on hate speech." The professor counters that those offended "need to get a sense humor." 

UC Berkeley administrators purport to solicit conservative scholars to counter 'liberal bias'. But "bigotry is not diversity," argue Chris Schaefbauer and Caitlin Pratt. "The academic imperative to promote a diversity of ideas and experiences ends when the ideas being expressed are oppressive and discriminatory." 
Authorities at Guantánamo Bay have ceased force-feeding hunger-striking prisoners, reports Reprieve. "On September 20th, a new Senior Medical Officer stopped tube-feeding the strikers, and ended the standard practice of closely monitoring their declining health."

Medical professionals have an obligation to bring attention to the plight of the hunger strikers in Guantanámo Bay say signers to a new petition for independent medical oversight. "The moral and ethical issues may readily be resolved. Where, as here, a prisoner has been denied liberty or a fair trial for 15 years or more, most people would agree that he has a valid cause for complaint. The simple solution would be to give him justice."

Forced feeding is a hideous process employed to relieve government embarrassment over custodial death. The brutish Trump/Pence regime exhibits no such shame or compunction to release the 41 men falsely  imprisoned in Guantanamo. "Not only will the detainees die as a result of their peaceful protest," notes lawyer Shelby Sullivan-Bennis, "but their deaths will spark still more anger if the military coerces them by manipulating their medical treatment. The Trump Administration must urgently allow independent medics to examine these detainees, before it's too late."

One of the men on a hunger strike is Ahmed Rabbani, a Pakistani prisoner held -- without charge or trial -- since September 2002. He has been on a hunger strike since 2013, reportedly weighs just 95 pounds, and is suffering internal bleeding. "I don't want to die," says Rabbani, "but after four years of peaceful protest I am hardly going to stop because they tell me to. I will definitely stop when President Trump frees the prisoners who have been cleared, and allows everyone else a fair trial."
Yes, you read that right.

Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz will be speaking at UC Berkeley, thanks to an invitation from Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, that allows him to bypass a campus rule requiring eight weeks notice for such a speech... 

2015-01-07T022205Z_1_LYNXMPEB0602S_RTROPTP_3_USA-LAWSUIT-BRITAIN-ROYALS.jpg

The last few weeks have demonstrated how inexplicably eager UC administrators have been to welcome far-right speakers to campus; Chancellor Carol Christ leads the pack of misguided academics enabling the advance of totalitarian agenda in universities across the country. 

'Torture Professor' John Yoo's colleague Alan Dershowitz has a particular interest in forms of debilitating pain: "I want more painful. I want maximal pain, minimum lethality. You don't want it to be permanent, you don't want someone to be walking with a limp, but you want to cause the most excruciating, intense, immediate pain. Now, I didn't want to write about testicles, but that's what a lot of people use. I also wanted to be explicit because I didn't want to be squeamish about it. People have asked me whether I would do the torturing and my answer is, yes, I would if I thought it could save a city from being blown up [the universally discredited 'ticking time bomb' scenario]."

We refuse to accept a torture state.

UC Berkeley Billboard

press conference, protest, photos, video, reports

Donations via PayPal
are not tax deductible.




Events & Calendars

War Criminals Watch Events



Important Reading

Physicians for Human Rights
Broken Laws, Broken Lives

NLG White Paper
ON THE LAW OF TORTURE...

The President's Executioner

Detention and torture in Guantanamo



About this Archive

This page is an archive of entries from October 2017 listed from newest to oldest.

September 2017 is the previous archive.

November 2017 is the next archive.

Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.



Login

  AUTHOR'S LOGIN

Contact

  info@firejohnyoo.net