Big action days

The next few days are going to be action-packed. For those of you who can't attend the activities below, why not try something from this list. For example, you can sign this web petition against extraordinary rendition.

Sunday 25 June

Location: L.A., Barnsdall Gallery Theater, 4800 Hollywood Blvd.
Activity: Speakers including James Yee
Time: 2:00 to 4:00pm (PDT)
Further details: PTVLA website

Location: New York, Judson Memorial Church, 55 Washington Square South.
Activity: Speakers including attorney representing 14 Yemeni prisoners at GTMO
Time: 6:00pm (EDT)
Further details: Source, Shut Down Guantanamo website, Contact 212-477-0351

Location: Georgetown University Law Center, 600 New Jersey Ave., NW, Washington DC 20001
Activity: Teach in
Time: 10 a.m.-4 p.m.
Further details: Teach in agenda; Source. Also, say hello to Blogger Against Torture Mash, who'll be attending.

Location: Field Park, Williamstown, Mass.
Activity: Vigil
Time: 2 - 2:45 pm.
Further details: Source, call Susan Matsui 413-458-9766 or the First United Methodist Church at 413-458-3183.

Monday 26 June

Location: Washington, Vice President's house
Activity: Vigil
Time: 5.00 to 6.30 pm
Further details: WRRCAT website

Location: New York, Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, 47th street and First Avenue
Activity: Demonstration, Procession to the U.S. Mission to the United Nations to Call on Ambassador John Bolton to Join the International Consensus Against Torture
Time: 10.30 am meet, 11.00 am start, 12.00 - 1pm demonstration at US Mission to UN.
Further details: Source.

Activity: Lobby Day
Location: Location: Capitol Hill
Time: 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Further details: Torture Awareness registration.

Location: Washington DC
Activity: 24-hour Vigil
Further details: Flyer; About the Mock Prison Cell that will be on display. Contact diortiz@tassc.org to participate; About planned civil disobedience; Source

Location: Washington DC
Activity: Be a Walking Billboard!
Further reading: Source. Contact to volunteer: harold@tassc.org

Activity: Speakers, music
Location: Minnesota, State Capitol Rotunda directions
Time: 11.30am
Further details: Source

Location: Minneapolis, Minneapolis Healing Center, 717 East River Road,
Activity: Tree planting
Time: 5.00pm
Further details: Flyer; Source

Some articles

Time, 23 June 2006, How Doctors Got Into the Torture Business:

One of those [interrogation] rules was that a prisoner's medical information could be provided to interrogators to help guide them to the prisoner's "emotional and physical strengths and weaknesses" (in Rumsfeld's own words) in the torture process. At an interrogation center called Camp Na'ma, where the unofficial motto was "No blood, no foul," one intelligence officer testified that "every harsh interrogation was approved by the [commander] and the Medical prior to its execution." Doctors, in other words, essentially signed off on torture in advance.

... Elsewhere in Guantánamo, one prisoner had a gunshot wound that was left to fester during three days of interrogation before treatment, and two others were denied antibiotics for wounds. In Iraq, according to the Army surgeon general as reported by Miles, "an anesthesiologist repeatedly dropped a 2-lb. bag of intravenous fluid on a patient; a nurse deliberately delayed giving pain medication, and medical staff fed pork to Muslim patients." Doctors were also tasked at Abu Ghraib with "Dietary Manip (monitored by med)," in other words, using someone's food intake to weaken or manipulate them.

Washington Post, 20 June 2006, The Shadow War, In a Surprising New Light (via The Osterley Times and Hermel's Drive-In):

Abu Zubaydah, his captors discovered, turned out to be mentally ill and nothing like the pivotal figure they supposed him to be. CIA and FBI analysts, poring over a diary he kept for more than a decade, found entries "in the voice of three people: Hani 1, Hani 2, and Hani 3" -- a boy, a young man and a middle-aged alter ego. ... Dan Coleman, then the FBI's top al-Qaeda analyst, told a senior bureau official, "This guy is insane, certifiable, split personality."

Abu Zubaydah also appeared to know nothing about terrorist operations; rather, he was al-Qaeda's go-to guy for minor logistics -- travel for wives and children and the like. That judgment was "echoed at the top of CIA and was, of course, briefed to the President and Vice President," Suskind writes. And yet somehow, in a speech delivered two weeks later, President Bush portrayed Abu Zubaydah as "one of the top operatives plotting and planning death and destruction on the United States." And over the months to come, under White House and Justice Department direction, the CIA would make him its first test subject for harsh interrogation techniques.