In Maryland, two Johns Hopkins University students disrupted a lecture Wednesday by former Bush administration attorney John Yoo. Yoo helped author the notorious Justice Department memos justifying waterboarding and other forms of torture. Before Yoo began his talk, students stood at the front of the lecture hall holding a banner reading "Try Yoo for Torture." They refused to move, but agreed not to interrupt Yoo's speech. Yoo then delivered the lecture with the students holding their banner throughout. Protester: "We wanted to make it very clear that John Yoo is not accepted at Johns Hopkins University and that wherever he goes--not simply because of his views, but rather because of his material support for the administration of torture--that it is unacceptable, and we're voicing that quite clearly." -text quoted from democracynow.org

In this song series, Canadian composer Ben Mueller-Heaslip exposes the horror of John Yoo's Torture Memos by setting the text of the Torture Memos to music sung by Kristin Mueller-Heaslip. Listen here to track six:
Medical Personnel are on the Scene

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From the website; "We just released our new recording of the Torture Memos: a musical reworking of the legal documents that attempted to justify torture. The text is all by John Yoo and his cronies at the U.S. Department of Legal Counsel, taken directly from the documents with no alterations, additions, or misleading combinations. This music says exactly what these criminals intended to say....In lieu of paying our "lyricists" we're donating 15% of the sales of this record to the American Civil Liberties Union." The singer Kristin Mueller-Heaslip said in an email to firejohnyoo.net; "...we definitely want to keep the Torture Memos project moving forward. There's been a fantastic response every time we perform it, and the music brings out the banal evil of the text like nothing else can. We're thinking of organizing a US tour, assuming of course that we can get across the border."
parkdalerevolutionaryorchestra.com/torturememos

Get the complete transcript of this interview:

British Lawmaker David Davis Challenges US Threats to Suppress Evidence of CIA Torture

See the video from last week of Amy Goodman's interview with this anti-torture right-wing conservative Brittish MP:

British MP Blasts U.S. Efforts to Keep Evidence Hidden in Gitmo Torture Case

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Stephen Colbert on Chuck Todd and torture investigations

Amazingly, reports that Eric Holder is considering commencing an investigation into Bush-era torture crimes has created extreme consternation in multiple Beltway circles despite how narrow and limited those investigations would be.  As I wrote last week, numerous reports indicate that Holder wants to replicate the Abu Ghraib travesty by investigating only low-level interrogators who exceeded the torture limits approved by John Yoo and George Bush, and not investigate the high-level policy makers who instituted the criminal torture regime or the DOJ lawyers who authorized it. 

Since then, the Newsweek reporter who first printed what DOJ officials told him about Holder's intentions, Daniel Klaidman, confirmed in an interview on The Young Turks that Holder intends to confine any investigations only to "rogue" interrogators who exceeded John Yoo's torture permission slips while shielding high-level Bush officials who acted in accordance with Yoo's decrees.  Proving yet again that there is nothing more difficult than satirizing our rotted political culture, here is what I wrote about Holder's intentions last week:

Holder's plan, at least at the moment, is -- from the start -- to confine the prosecutors' authority to investigate to CIA agents who went beyond what John Yoo and George Bush decreed could be done ("he used more water than Yoo said he could"; "he tied him up for longer than Yoo authorized"; "the room was colder and the freezing water icier than Yoo allowed"). At least if these reports are accurate (and, for several reasons, that's unclear), anyone who "merely" did what John Yoo said was legal -- meaning everyone who matters -- will be shielded and immunized...

Read the complete Salon.com article here

"A brand new, powerful music video from David Ippolito. (That Guitar Man from Central Park) Watch this video...Be heard. Download this song for free at thatguitarman.com. PASS THIS VIDEO ON TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW!"
"You and me... let's make it 'cool to care' again."

Rocking direct action in Yoo's classroom by Austrailian blogger 'Young and Grumpy' Read more about it at the blog youngandgrumpy.com

On Pacifica Radio's KPFA Evening News program for 6-14-09, Aarin Murray reports on the World Can't Wait rallying for the impeachment of Judge Jay Bybee in front of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. World Can't Wait set up a 'Bush and Bybee Torture museum' featuring photos of tortured prisoners and signs the detailed approved torture techniques... This news segment runs about three minutes:

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You can also download an mp3 of the segment here.

Go to the song producers blog to comment and learn more about this Cuban tradition:
radicalism.us   Music begins about :55 second into the video.

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.
Welcome to UC Berkeley!


The FJY blogger coordinating on cell phone from the Sproul Hall steps

These lyrics by Richard Stallman are set to the tune of the most famous Cuban song, Guantanamera. Before it became tied up with the concentration camp and torture center we've all come to know, Guantanamo was best known for the Cuban patriotic song Guantanamera. Although originally the story of a peasant girl from Guantanamo who broke the narrator's heart, "the Guantanamera became a popular vehicle for romantic, patriotic, humorous, or social commentary lyrics, in Cuba and elsewhere in the Spanish speaking world".

These lyrics to "Guantanamero" are from the point-of-view of a male prisoner

...guantanamera means "of Guantanamo (female)". "Guantanamero" means "of Guantanamo (male).

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Richard Stallman (aka RMS) is an American software freedom activist, hacker and software developer. In September 1983, he launched the GNU Project Open Source (free) operating system,  started the free software movement and, in October 1985, set up and now leads the Free Software Foundation. At his urging, Wikipedia was founded. Thanks Richard.

Me odiaba mi primo
Por celos a mi carrera.
Lo arrestaron y dijo
Que terrorista yo era.

Guantanamero, soy preso guantanamero.
Guantanamero, soy preso guantanamero.

Ha decidido el imperio
Tenerme por siempre preso
Y la cuestión es hacerlo
Con o sin falso proceso.

Guantanamero, etc.

Cuando me hieren el cuerpo,
Dicen que no me torturan.
Causan heridas profundas
De esas que nunca se curan.

Guantanamero, etc.

No me permiten que duerma:
Mi fin no es un misterio.
Voy a salir cuando muera
O caiga el gran imperio.

Guantanamero, etc.

Translation:
My cousin hated me;
He was jealous of my career.
They arrested him and he said
I was a terrorist.

Guantanaman, I'm a Guantanaman prisoner.
Guantanaman, I'm a Guantanaman prisoner.

The empire has decided
To keep me in prison forever.
The question is whether to do it
With or without a fake trial.

Guantanaman, I'm a Guantanaman prisoner.
Guantanaman, I'm a Guantanaman prisoner.

When they injure my body
They say they are not torturing me.
They cause me grave wounds
Such as never heal.

Guantanaman, I'm a Guantanaman prisoner.
Guantanaman, I'm a Guantanaman prisoner.

They don't let me sleep:
My end is no mystery.
I will get out when I die
Or the great empire falls.

Guantanaman, I'm a Guantanaman prisoner.
Guantanaman, I'm a Guantanaman prisoner.

The audio below was reported on the Pacifica radio affiliate KPFA in Berkeley on the 12-9-08 evening news report on the 12-8-08 Berkeley City Council discussion and resolution on War Crimes prosecution against John Yoo initiated by the Berkeley City Council's Peace and Justice Commission. There are some clips of Councilman Max Anderson's passionate and eloquent speech.  click here to listen 3.8meg, 4min10 sec