Tuesday, October 27, 2009

New York & San Francisco Events on Gitmo Beg. Nov 4th

New York:

Wednesday November 4, 7 pm: Talk - Torture and Lies: The Story Of Guantánamo. Followed by Q&A.
Talk by Andy Worthington at Revolution Books, 146 W. 26th Street, New York. 212-691-3345 Revolution Books, NYC

Friday November 6, 8 pm: Film screening - Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo, Followed by Q&A.
Screening at Alwan for the Arts, 16 Beaver Street, 4th Floor, New York.
With special guest Tina Foster (International Justice Network, Bagram habeas litigation) and moderator Debra Sweet, Director, 646-732-3261. This event is sponsored by Alwan for the Arts and The World Can't Wait

Saturday November 7, 4:30-6:30 pm: An Afternoon with Andy Worthington, hosted by The World Can't Wait. The Art Club, 100 Reade Street, Tribeca, New York. Selections from "Outside the Law: Stories from Guantanamo" and a chance to meet Andy Worthington, and to benefit the work of The World Can't Wait in stopping the US torture state. Donations requested.

San Francisco Bay Area:

Tuesday November 10, 7 pm: Film screening - Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo. Followed by Q&A. Berkeley, California, venue tbc. Phone: 415 864 5153
This event is sponsored by Berkeley students and World Can't Wait.

Wednesday November 11, 12 noon: Film screening - Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo. Followed by Q&A. University of San Francisco School of Law, 2130 Fulton Street, San Francisco, CA 94117. Contact: Elizabeth Hinchman. Please note that this screening is for students and staff of USF School of Law. This event is sponsored by the University of San Francisco School of Law

Wednesday November 11, 7 pm: Talk - Torture and Lies: The Story of Guantánamo. Followed by Q&A. Revolution Books, 2425 Channing Way, Berkeley, CA 94704. Phone: 510-848-1196 Revolution Books, Berkeley

More dates in DC/VA

And, from another hero, former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, How a Torture Protest Killed a Career

Surging on or Droning on?

ALERT: Street Protests & Die-Ins on the evening President Obama announces the plan to expand the occupation of Afghanistan. That's the night the media will be looking for response from the people. Get signs and banners ready, and make your gathering plans now.

Whether Barack Obama announces a troop increase to Afghanistan, or chooses the covert operations & unmanned drone option to try to "win" in Afghanistan, we should be in the streets opposing any escalation.

The only acceptable announcement to come from the administration would that they're withdrawing combat troops, support troops, CIA drones, covert operations, and all private contractors NOW.

From Ken Theisen on worldcantwait.net:

NATO and the Expansion of the Afghan War

Afghan Government "Legitimacy" is Critical to U.S. Imperialism

November 21 - 22 New York City

We're extending the invitation to this meeting far beyond activists already working with World Can't Wait. Everyone will contribute; everyone will learn a lot and be part of bringing this movement forward in 2010 toward more decisive and determined resistance.

Writers, students, thinkers, non "activists" all welcome at this meeting. Register now. Details forthcoming.

Debra Sweet, Director, The World Can't Wait----------

4 comments:

CN said...

Especially notice the Bagram lawyer who will be present! She is certainly one important key to unraveling the silence on THAT prison...

CN said...

When World Can't Wait began in 2005, we identified a direction under the Bush regime of pre-emptive war and illegitimate occupation that outraged the world. Dick Cheney talked about sweeping up the Middle East, "going massive;" Rumsfeld and Tenet swaggered about the world asserting the right to attack anyone, at anytime. And Bush himself...well, he was on a mission from God, and according to Secretary Rice, "if the President does it, it's not a crime." People were right to oppose all of this.

CN said...

Then along came the Obama administration claiming a different approach to the world, one more of negotiation and "multi-laterialism" than bullying and aggression.

But, if you will, watch Leon Panetta, Obama's Director of Central Intelligence justifying targeted assassination by US operatives -- in any country, anywhere. This is not just going "back" to the Bush years, but back to pre-1975 Church commission cover policy. No wonder Hilary Clinton stumbled so badly when trying to assure Congolese youth earlier this year that the US wouldn't kill Patrice Lumuumba now. She knows the deal!

A little history from Christopher Ketcham, "The Education of Bob Baer: Unlearning the CIA"

http://www.counterpunch.org/ketcham10232009.html

Congress under the direction of Sen. Frank Church in 1975-76 issued a devastating series of reports on the criminality of the agency. The CIA had sponsored coups and fixed elections in Greece, Italy, Burma, Indonesia and dozens of other nations. It had smuggled Nazi war criminals out of Germany to fight communism in Eastern Europe; it worked arm in arm with narcotics traffickers in Asia, Europe, the Middle East (and always seemed to leave behind a thriving drug nexus wherever it intervened); it supplied security forces worldwide with torture equipment, torture manuals, torture training. In Vietnam, its massive Saigon Station oversaw the kidnapping and killing of tens of thousands of suspected Vietcong, many of them innocents, doing a good job of turning the peasant population against the US. The rot came out almost daily as the Church Committee dug it up.

By the late 1970s, the CIA had planned or carried out the assassination of leaders in more than a dozen countries; CIA jokers called this "suicide involuntarily administered," courtesy of the Agency's "Health Alteration Committee." The agency's work disrupting governments was often in service of corporations with close ties to Congress and the White House and whose business interests were threatened by anything that smelled of socialism. The agency had been busy too on the homefront, in violation of domestic law, overseeing mind control programs in which unwitting Americans were poisoned with drugs, experimented upon, effectively tortured; opening the mail of US citizens; surveilling the political activity of Americans; infiltrating the media with disinformation; lying habitually to elected officials. The CIA appeared in this light as a threat to the republic itself...


NEW Film from British Journalist Andy Worthington Opens with World Can't Wait Support in New York and SF Bay Area

Focusing on the stories of three particular prisoners - Shaker Aamer (who is still held), Binyam Mohamed (who was released in February 2009) and Omar Deghayes - "Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo" provides a powerful rebuke to those who believe that Guantánamo holds "the worst of the worst" and that the Bush administration was justified in responding to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 by holding men neither as prisoners of war, protected by the Geneva Conventions, nor as criminal suspects with habeas corpus rights, but as "illegal enemy combatants" with no rights whatsoever.

Trailer for Outside the Law

CN said...

A little history from Christopher Ketcham, "The Education of Bob Baer: Unlearning the CIA"

http://www.counterpunch.org/ketcham10232009.html

Congress under the direction of Sen. Frank Church in 1975-76 issued a devastating series of reports on the criminality of the agency. The CIA had sponsored coups and fixed elections in Greece, Italy, Burma, Indonesia and dozens of other nations. It had smuggled Nazi war criminals out of Germany to fight communism in Eastern Europe; it worked arm in arm with narcotics traffickers in Asia, Europe, the Middle East (and always seemed to leave behind a thriving drug nexus wherever it intervened); it supplied security forces worldwide with torture equipment, torture manuals, torture training. In Vietnam, its massive Saigon Station oversaw the kidnapping and killing of tens of thousands of suspected Vietcong, many of them innocents, doing a good job of turning the peasant population against the US. The rot came out almost daily as the Church Committee dug it up.

By the late 1970s, the CIA had planned or carried out the assassination of leaders in more than a dozen countries; CIA jokers called this "suicide involuntarily administered," courtesy of the Agency's "Health Alteration Committee." The agency's work disrupting governments was often in service of corporations with close ties to Congress and the White House and whose business interests were threatened by anything that smelled of socialism. The agency had been busy too on the homefront, in violation of domestic law, overseeing mind control programs in which unwitting Americans were poisoned with drugs, experimented upon, effectively tortured; opening the mail of US citizens; surveilling the political activity of Americans; infiltrating the media with disinformation; lying habitually to elected officials. The CIA appeared in this light as a threat to the republic itself...


NEW Film from British Journalist Andy Worthington Opens with World Can't Wait Support in New York and SF Bay Area

Focusing on the stories of three particular prisoners - Shaker Aamer (who is still held), Binyam Mohamed (who was released in February 2009) and Omar Deghayes - "Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo" provides a powerful rebuke to those who believe that Guantánamo holds "the worst of the worst" and that the Bush administration was justified in responding to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 by holding men neither as prisoners of war, protected by the Geneva Conventions, nor as criminal suspects with habeas corpus rights, but as "illegal enemy combatants" with no rights whatsoever.

Trailer for Outside the Law