oh, everything

[click image, audio, 45 minutes]

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Scott Horton of Harper's talks with Scott Horton of AntiWar about lots and lots of stuff. The flotilla massacre, the ignoble treatment of Helen Thomas, and, oh, torture.

Harper's Scott is fence sitting, doing his sound-even-tempered-about-it thing, which by now is BULLSHIT, but he says some good stuff in here anyway.

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Actually, some hours later, I'm losing my feeling of equanimity about Harper's Horton's lawyerspeak. I notice that lawyers, after about the age of 45, become incapable of speaking like PEOPLE anymore, EVEN when not in the office, let alone court. They turn determinedly sophist in there somewhere and can't seem to bust out of it. I've been trying manfully to endure this crap out of him, whether in interviews or on his blog, because he's dealing with important stuff, but he's pissing me off more and more with this... and it's making it so I'm going to have to stop wasting time on him.

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I saw it trying to happen to me and I got the fuck on out, and that's before I started in with the Zen stuff. I can not condemn people for needing their incomes so badly they can't cut their noses off despite their faces QUITE to the extent I do, as I have too many times to count anymore, but IF they are going to stay chained to that income, it is their DUTY not to let this happen, despite the pressure... or they're NOT worth anyone's attention.

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For Immediate Release, June 10, 2010

Twenty-Seven to Go on Trial for Protesting the Obama Administration’s Failure to Close Guantanamo, Plan for Indefinite Detention, and Refusal to Prosecute Torture

Contact:

Jeremy Varon — M: 732-979-3119 — varon@aol.com
Helen Schietinger — M: 202-344-5762 — h.schietinger@verizon.net

WASHINGTON, D.C. — On Monday, June 14 twenty-seven will face trial stemming from arrests at the U.S. Capitol on January 21, 2010 — the date by which President Obama had promised the closure of the Guantanamo detention camp. The human rights activists will hold a press conference outside the courthouse defending their protest, condemning the Obama administration’s continuation of Bush policies, and explaining their use in court of the “necessity defense.” The press conference will be held Monday, June 14th at 8:30 am, across from the Federal District Courthouse (333 Constitution Avenue, NW).

On January 21, twenty-seven people dressed as Guantanamo prisoners were arrested on the steps of the Capitol holding banners reading “Broken Promises, Broken Laws, Broken Lives.” Inside the Capitol Rotunda, at the location where deceased presidents lie in state, fourteen activists were arrested performing a memorial service for three men who died at Guantanamo in 2006. Initially reported as suicides, the deaths may have been — as recent evidence suggests — the result of the men being tortured to death (see Scott Horton, “Murders at Guantanamo", March 2010, Harper's).

“The continued operation of the prison camp at Guantanamo is unacceptable,” Matthew W. Daloisio of Witness Against Torture. “If Guantanamo was a foreign policy liability and stain on the rule of law on day one of the Obama presidency, it surely is eighteen months later.”

“The deaths at Guantanamo show how barbaric US policies have been,” says Helen Schietinger, a defendant in the trial. “We are still waiting for accountability for those who designed and carried out torture policies under President Bush. Obama can’t restore the rule of law if he doesn’t enforce the law.”

The human rights activists plan to mount a “necessity defense” before Judge Russell Canan. “We will be arguing that we broke the law only after exhausting all legal means of opposing a much larger crime—the indefinite detention, mistreatment, and torture of men at Guantanamo and other US prisons,” says Jerica Arents of Chicago, Illinois, another the defendants.

The January protests were the culmination of a twelve-day fast for justice and an end to torture organized by Witness Against Torture in Washington, DC. More than 100 people participated in the fast and daily actions throughout the nation’s Capital.

Futile Gesture #38,423....

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