Progressive Democrats Sonoma County

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For a schedule of all of the upcoming PDA IOT calls, click here

Giles Tremlett
December 4, 2010

Join PDA’s Accountability and Justice Issue Organizing Team (IOT); learn more here .

Leaked cables show Spanish officials and prosecutors shared information about investigations into US human rights abuses

Published by The Guardian.

US officials tried to influence Spanish prosecutors and government officials to head off court investigations into Guantánamo Bay torture allegations, secret CIA “extraordinary rendition” flights and the killing of a Spanish journalist by US troops in Iraq, according to secret US diplomatic cables.

Read the Rest Here

By David Swanson
February 21, 2010

Everything you’re reading about torture lawyers John Yoo and Jay Bybee getting off the hook is wrong. They are not torture lawyers, they are not off the hook, there never was any hook, they may not be lawyers for long, impeachment and indictment are on the agenda, and you have a role to play.

Read the Story Here

November 22, 2009, Bay Area, CA

• 10-11 a.m. protest at John Yoo’s (Torture Professor) house, 1241 Grizzly Peak Blvd., Berkeley, CA

Followed by events on David Swanson’s book tour: “Daybreak, Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union”

On August 17th, Donna Norton, Susan Baritell, and Terra Freedman joined demonstrators at Boalt Hall, UC Berkeley School of Law, calling for legal accountability for John Yoo. Donna and 3 others were arrested (basically for chanting loudly!).

While temporarily acting as Legal Counsel for the Justice Dept, John Yoo authored documents providing “legal” authorization and cover for the Bush-Cheney administration’s wire-taping and torture programs. It’s one thing to promote a President-Is-King (Unitary Executive) theory in the classroom and in articles, but quite another to use your position in the Justice Dept to make your personal ideology the law of the land.

Congress, the Justice Department, and the University have failed to investigate both the ethical and criminal violations of Yoo’s actions.

Join PDA’s Accountability and Justice Issue Organizing Team (IOT); learn more here .

A large coalition of human rights groups has planned rallies and marches in major U.S. cities, including a rally in Washington, D.C.‘s John Marshall Park at 11 a.m. followed by a noon march to the Justice Department where some participants will risk arrest in nonviolent protest if a special prosecutor for torture is not appointed.

Events are planned in Washington, D.C.; San Francisco, CA; Pasadena, CA; Thousand Oaks, CA; Boston, MA; Salt Lake City, UT; Seattle, WA; Portland, OR; Las Vegas, NV; Honolulu, HI; Tampa, FL; Philadelphia, PA; and Anchorage, AK, with details available online:
http://tortureaccountability.webs.com/eventsacrossus.htm

In Pasadena at 12 p.m. PT citizens will submit a formal judicial misconduct complaint against 9th Circuit Judge Jay Bybee, former Assistant Attorney General.

Whether or not you can make it to one of the events, please do these things on Thursday:

A day of demonstration everywhere,
including in Washington, D.C.

On June 25, we’ll hold a rally in Washington, D.C., and then march to the Department of Justice to demand a special prosecutor for torture. If our demand is not met, some may choose to engage in nonviolent civil resistance, risking arrest.

Join us if you can. More details here .

Click here to create and find events.

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Jay Bybee, an author of the torture memos, has a lifetime appointment as a judge on the 9th Circuit Federal Court of Appeals (the Western states). PDA is demonstrating for his impeachment this Thursday, May 28, at both California court houses:

THE JAMES R. BROWNING COURTHOUSE
95 7TH STREET,
SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94103

THE RICHARD H. CHAMBERS COURTHOUSE
125 SOUTH GRAND AVENUE,
PASADENA, CA 91105

Both the San Francisco and Pasadena demos will be at 1:00PM.

By Scott Horton
Harper’s
April 18, 2009

On Thursday the spirit of George Orwell visited America, three times.

The first visit can be found in four memoranda prepared by Bush Administration lawyers which gave the actual go-ahead for the use of specific torture techniques on specific individuals, thus demolishing forever the absurd contention that the torture lawyers were ever only engaged in some abstract exercise without any direct application to incidents of torture. Here, we discover that Room 101 of the Ministry of Love (Miniluv) has been faithfully recreated by the Bush Team.

Read the Rest Here

By Liliana Segura | AlterNet

The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer discusses the fallout from the Red Cross’ shocking report on CIA torture and its serious legal implications.

On the night of April 6, a long-secret document was published — in its entirety for the first time — that provided a clear, stark look at the CIA torture program carried out by the Bush administration. ....

Read the Full Story Here