John Yoo: April 2009 Archives

For several hours last night, a loudly chanting line of two dozen protestors marched slowly back and forth across the entry of the Hyatt at Fisherman's Wharf.  Some wore the orange jumpsuits and black hoods representing the detainees - some wore giant human billboard signs denouncing torture as a war crime,and John Yoo as a war criminal who should be fired, disbarred, and prosecuted for his role in green lighting torture for the Bush Regime.  The action was planned overnight, with activists learning of Yoo's appearance at this conference only late the previous evening. TV news cameras caught the sunset footage of the demonstration and interviewed World Can't Wait speakers including SF Bay Area KTVU, Fox News, Channel 2. Click the picture below to view:This TV News coverage aired in juxtaposition with comments by College Republicans praising Yoo and claiming that torture isn't really torture.  (The College Republicans are a campus organizing wing of the David Horowitz school of fascist thought, and actively mobilize for it in this area, for example by promoting the annual Muslim-bashing hate speech of "Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week" and in flag-waving counter-protests at anti-war events.  They invited John Yoo to their state conference to be greeted as a "hero...(to)...tell behind the scenes stories we really want to hear..."College Republican leader and conference co-organizer Leigh Wolf is pictured here being confronted outside the conference. Leigh Wolf frequently leads bigoted radical-right political demonstration like the 2-18-08 "Battle of Berkeley" where nationally syndicated radical-right shock-jock Melanie Morgan's front-group "Gathering of Eagles" protested the Berkeley City Council taking a principled stand against the Berkeley Marine recruiting Center.

Many of the tourists from other countries who happened upon the scene expressed strong sympathies with World Can't Wait's message, were glad to see the action, and gave words of encouragement.

Although hotel security kept non-Republicans out of the convention proceedings, as Yoo rose to speak to his audience of several hundred, their welcoming applause was disrupted suddenly by thundering chants: demonstrators had discovered a (non-see-thru) glass wall between the auditorium and the street, and aimed their voices straight into the room: "TORTURE IS A WAR CRIME!  JAIL JOHN YOO!" "GUANTANAMO  GUANTANAMO! WAR CRIMES, WAR CRIMES....   ABU GHRAIB, ABU GHRAIB! WAR CRIMES, WAR CRIMES...."  For all of Yoo's 30-minute talk, dismayed College Republicans had to listen to their "hero" against a constant echoing string of truthful, powerful chants.

(Unrelated audio is the falungun club doing a presentation nearby.)

Fire John Yoo and World Can't Wait spoke to hundreds of new students and their families about John Yoo's tenure at UC Berkeley Law (formerly Boalt Hall) demonstrating and providing information about Bush's "Architect of Torture" teaching United States Constitutional Law at the UC Berkeley. Cal Day is a big outdoor celebration centered at historic Sproul Plaza where all the student groups and departments gift food and other stuff, meet and greet the families. John Yoo is perhpas the leading US advocate of torture today. As White House legal counsel under former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Jay "bugs" Bybee, Yoo legally "authorized" torture and actively worked to confuse and distort the law of torture through his notorious torture memos. UC Berkeley Law Dean Edley is dissembling when he says he cannot do anything except defend Yoo's Academic Freedom of speech. Dean Edely has a right to - and a responsibility to - take a public stand against John Yoo perpetuating torture. Yoo participated in and sometimes led the formulation and development of a broad system of torture and Crimes Against Humanity.
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The FJY blogger coordinating on cell phone from the Sproul Hall steps

New York Times

April 19, 2009
Editorial

The Torturers' Manifesto

To read the four newly released memos on prisoner interrogation written by George W. Bush's Justice Department is to take a journey into depravity.

Their language is the precise bureaucratese favored by dungeon masters throughout history. They detail how to fashion a collar for slamming a prisoner against a wall, exactly how many days he can be kept without sleep (11), and what, specifically, he should be told before being locked in a box with an insect -- all to stop just short of having a jury decide that these acts violate the laws against torture and abusive treatment of prisoners.

In one of the more nauseating passages, Jay Bybee, then an assistant attorney general and now a federal judge, wrote admiringly about a contraption for waterboarding that would lurch a prisoner upright if he stopped breathing while water was poured over his face. He praised the Central Intelligence Agency for having doctors ready to perform an emergency tracheotomy if necessary.

These memos are not an honest attempt to set the legal limits on interrogations, which was the authors' statutory obligation. They were written to provide legal immunity for acts that are clearly illegal, immoral and a violation of this country's most basic values.