Upcoming Bay Area Events

By
Curt Wechsler, The World Can't Wait
on August 23, 2020 4:08 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Art of Democracy: War and Empire at Meridian Gallery

Curated by Anne Brodzky, DeWitt Cheng, and Art Hazelwood

September 4- November 4, 2008

Opening reception: Thursday September 4, 6-9 PM

 

 

  
(c) Fernando Botero, Abu Ghraib 72, 2005
Collection of American University Museum, Washington DC

Thinking globally

According to Peter Selz, art historian and author of Art of Engagement: Visual Politics in California and Beyond, "Not since the 1930s, facing the Great Depression and the impending danger of a Fascist New World Order, and the 60s with a previous illegal and immoral war, has there been such a great outpouring of political art. At the present, a great many artists, working in media, old and new, have again picked up their brushes, cameras or computers to protest against a foul war, destruction of the environment, obscene fiscal gains and abnegation of constitutional rights to express their rage and speak to the public."

Artists across the country, animated by response to events of the last seven years and mobilized over the past two years by Art Hazelwood, a San Francisco-based printmaker, and Stephen A. Fredericks, president of the New York, Society of Etchers have organized a series of forty exhibitions entitled Art of Democracy. The exhibitions, spanning the United States from Washington State to New Hampshire, including Puerto Rico, will analyze what went wrong within this millennium with an America that was admired not so long ago.

But the organizers of these shows hope to do more than simply indict the malefactors of great wealth; they hope to help inspire a new public spirit. The novelist Richard Flanagan, writing in Bookforum, sees the role of the artist in time of crisis as moral and humanistic, not merely esthetic: "There are so many forces in the world that divide us deeply and murderously. In recent times, we have lived through not so much a crisis of politics as a collapse of that most human attribute, empathy, a collapse so catastrophic it sometimes appears to be a crisis of love...." Art offers an alternative vision, however, Flanagan concludes: "At its best, art reminds us of all we share, of all that brings us together."

San Francisco's non-profit Meridian Gallery will host the most comprehensive of the Bay Area shows, Art of Democracy: War and Empire, from September 4 to November 4. Each national exhibition and event has its own sub theme; Meridian Gallery chose War and Empire. In addition to the exhibition featuring more than forty artists, an extensive schedule of related films, concerts, and lectures is conceived as an integral component of the show.

 

'Hamdan v. Rumsfeld': The Landmark Case & Impact on Guantánamo Detainees

9/16/2008   6:00 PM - 7:00 PM     Please arrive early for registration

World Affairs Council Auditorium

312 Sutter Street
Second Floor
San Francisco, California 94108

Speaker(s)
Jonathan Mahler, Staff Writer, The New York Times Magazine
Event Details

The trial before a special military tribunal of Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a former driver of Osama bin Laden, is the first US war crimes tribunal since World War II. Beyond serving as the opening of the controversial tribunals, Hamdan's detention and case have been at the center of one of the Supreme Court's most significant decisions on presidential power and the rule of law. Jonathan Mahler joins the Council to discuss Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, the legality of the tribunals at Guantánamo Bay, and the battle over presidential power.

This event is co-sponsored by the Human Rights Center at UC Berkeley, Human Rights Watch, International Development Exchange, and the San Francisco Bar Association.

Advanced registration is recommended for guaranteed seating. However, pre-registration is not required and walk-ins on the day of this program are welcome.

Online Registration

To begin the registration process please select one of the following fees.

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fee ends 9/16/2008
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 $5.00 Register
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Lecture: Linda Greenhouse and 'The Mystery of Guantanamo Bay'
Wednesday, September 17 | 4:10 p.m. | Lipman Room, 8th floor Barrows Hall

In the weeks following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the Bush administration made the fateful decision to house "enemy combatants" captured in the war against the Taliban at the U.S. Naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba -- out of reach, the administration believed, of the ordinary civilian and military justice systems. Three times over nearly seven years, the Supreme Court pushed back and told the President that he had made the wrong call. Yet in all those years, not a single detainee has been ordered released, against the government's will, by the authority of any institution. That is the mystery of Guantanamo Bay which Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Linda Greenhouse, will explore in this lecture, part of UC Berkeley's observance of Constitution Day.

 

10-5-08, 4 PM, UCBerkeley
Film Screening, Taxi to the Dark Side 
Townsend Center for the Humanities, 220 Stephens Hall
Free screening of this Academy Award-winning feature documentary, an in-depth look at the torture practices of the United States in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, focusing on an innocent taxi driver in Afghanistan who was tortured and killed in 2002.  
 
10-6-08, 4 PM, UCBerkeley
Forum: Taxi to the Dark Side & the U.S. War on Terror
The Human Rights Center, 460 Stephens Hall
Filmmaker Alex Gibney discusses Taxi to the Dark Side.
The Center is part of International and Area Studies at UC Berkeley and works closely with the International Human Rights Law Clinic at Boalt Hall School of Law, the UC Berkeley-UCSF Joint Medical Program, and the UC Berkeley War Crimes Studies Center. 

International Law, Human Rights, and Torture

By
Curt Wechsler, The World Can't Wait
on August 23, 2008 1:03 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

lecture by Rita Maran
President, United Nations Association East Bay

 

Osher Lifelong Learning Institute

Monday October 20 from 12:15-1:15 p.m.
150 University Hall

2199 Addison Street

Berkeley


$5 general admission
Free for OLLI members and current UC Berkeley faculty, staff, and students with current ID.

 

RITA MARAN writes on torture as a violation of international law on human rights. She is a founding member and member of the Board of Directors of Human Rights Advocates, a California-based organization accredited to the United Nations.

 

Find reviews of Rita's book, Torture: The Role of Ideology in the French-Algerian War, at  http://www.greenwood.com/catalog/C3248.aspx .

Legal Redress for Torture Victims Cannot Be Denied

By
Linda Rigas
on August 20, 2008 11:35 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Experts Predict Slew of Torture Suits:
Courts Begin to Consider Whether Torture Victims
May Seek Legal Redress

Last week, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals announced that its full court would reconsider the disturbing case of Maher Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian citizen arrested by U.S. authorities at JFK airport in 2002 and forcibly extradited to Syria for interrogation. As U.S. officials surely expected, Arar was questioned under torture for the next year in a Syrian prison. He was eventually released without charge.

One of the first known victims of the Bush administration's secret "extraordinary rendition" policy, Arar sued U.S. authorities in 2004 for conspiring in his torture. A three-judge panel dismissed the case in January, saying that as an alien deported by immigration authorities, he had no right to bring a claim. But as more such cases are being filed, it appears the courts are beginning to reconsider. The entire Second Circuit court -- all 22 judges -- last week announced sua sponte that it would take a second look at Arar's case. Meanwhile, similar cases filed by former detainees apparently tortured under the direction of U.S. officials could be headed to the Supreme Court.

http://www.washingtonindependent.com/view/experts-predict-slew


On The Darker Figures

By
Linda Rigas
on August 20, 2008 11:13 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
"The one thing that is missing is an understanding of the lawyers on the other side: the darker figures of the story. Lawyers like Prof. John Yoo (who is given passing reference in the book) and Prof. Viet D. Dinh are viewed by many law professors and civil libertarians as grotesque and even monstrous in their work to excuse torture and to deny the basic rights of detainees. They remain cutout caricatures in books examining the tribunals."

from How a Jihadist Curtailed a President's Authority
by Jonathon Turley

Looks like more Yoo memoranda may be exposed...

By
Curt Wechsler, The World Can't Wait
on August 20, 2008 7:32 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
items 5, 6 and 9 requested in letter:
SENATORS SAY SECRECY IMPEDES OVERSIGHT OF TORTURE POLICY
 
 In a letter to White House Counsel Fred Fielding, Senators Leahy and
Specter asked Mr. Fielding to turn over ten specified legal memoranda
and other OLC documents on detention and interrogation policies.
 
 
The Senators set a deadline of Friday, August 29 at 10 AM for delivery
of the requested documents. They did not indicate how they might
respond if the documents are not received.

The US Established a New Category of Human Being Without Rights: "the Terrorist"

By
Curt Wechsler, The World Can't Wait
on August 18, 2008 2:46 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Toward a Universal Declaration of Human Wrongs

By C. DOUGLAS LUMMIS

U.S. government policy has established a new category of human--The Terrorist--who can be placed in a separate legal category from other humans, a category in which there are no rights at all. Suspected Terrorists can be assassinated using missiles fired from robot airplanes, they can be imprisoned without charges, they can be given trials where U.S. military officers are the judges, or they can be held for years without being tried at all. It is permitted to do such things not because of what these people did, but because of what they are: they are Terrorists.

read this article at http://www.counterpunch.org/lummis06052004.html  

"Some people think of an attorney as a hired gun...

By
Curt Wechsler, The World Can't Wait
on August 17, 2008 5:24 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

with no responsibility otherwise," said Boalt graduate Michael Anderson, who circulated the  [2004] petition calling on Yoo to resign only days after Anderson's graduation. "But that's immoral. Even if Yoo is right and terrorists aren't covered by the Geneva conventions, he induced the military to commit war crimes with his advice."

Furor Over UC Prof's Brief on War

Published on Monday, June 7, 2004 by the San Francisco Chronicle, http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0607-05.htm 

here is that petition:

 

To: Boalt Administration and Prof. John Yoo

We, the undersigned students, graduates and alumni of the Boalt Hall School of Law, put forth this petition to express our outrage at certain actions taken by Boalt Prof. John Yoo during his tenure as Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel.

According to a recent report in Newsweek Magazine entitled "The Roots of Torture", Prof. Yoo authored a memorandum in January, 2002 advising the Bush Administration that the protections of the Geneva Conventions would not apply to prisoners held by the United States in its execution of the war in Afghanistan. While Secretary of State Colin Powell and lawyers for the State Department vigorously sought to repudiate Prof. Yoo's flawed legal analysis, subsequent actions taken by the Bush Administration and the military demonstrate that our government has taken Prof. Yoo's advice to heart.

We believe that the actions taken by Prof. Yoo contributed directly to the reprehensible violations of human rights recently witnessed in Iraq and elsewhere. By seeking to exploit and magnify any technical ambiguities in the Geneva Conventions and the laws of war, Prof. Yoo and the Bush Administration have created a climate of disdain and hostility towards international law, effectively opening the door to the acts of outright torture, rape and murder that we now know were committed by United States soldiers and civilian interrogators. Such abuses, if not explicitly ordered by the Administration or military commanders, were at the very least a foreseeable consequence of crippling the protections of the Geneva Conventions in the context of the "war on terror".

The terrible consequences of these policies have now demonstrated their folly. The standing of the United States has suffered serious, lasting damage in the eyes of the world, while groups such as Al Qaeda have been strengthened and encouraged. As a result, the Bush Administration's contempt for international law in numerous contexts has severely hindered our efforts to fight terror.

We therefore call on Prof. Yoo:

1) To follow the example of Boalt Hall's finest alumnus, Chief Justice Earl Warren, by his expression of deep regret for supporting the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II;

2) To publicly and unequivocally repudiate his official governmental position with regards to the application of the Geneva Conventions as applied to prisoners captured by the United States anywhere in the world;

3) To use his influence with the Bush Administration to encourage United States compliance with the Geneva Conventions in all its military endeavors; and

4) To reject as immoral the use of interrogation techniques involving serious physical and psychological coercion, regardless of whether he believes they may or may not be technically defined as "torture" under existing laws.

Should Prof. Yoo refuse to take these actions, we would then call on him to resign as a faculty member of the Boalt School of Law.

We emphasize that this petition does not constitute an attack on academic freedom, as we fervently believe in a free and open discussion of ideas; rather, our position is a response to those governmental actions taken by Prof. Yoo in his official capacity as Deputy Assistant Attorney General that have caused severe damage to this nation, and the world.

Sincerely,

It was signed by many current students and alumni. As of May 29, the total was 295 signatures.

Then at graduation, some 3Ls participated in a silent protest by wearing red arm bands over their gowns.

Professor's Memo Challenges Nation's Values

By
Curt Wechsler, The World Can't Wait
on August 17, 2008 12:03 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From regretting that his secret machinations were exposed[,] to a bald defense of arbitrary presidential powers that are not subject to legal review or control, Yoo's defense is in reality a bold confirmation of every criticism that has been leveled at him in Berkeley and nationwide. He is baldly refusing to admit any error, and continues to maintain that his role in helping our president violate the spirit, if not the letter, of the U.S. Constitution, is beyond reproach.

In essence, Yoo is challenging the Berkeley community and the American public to confront the basics of his deeply immoral stance. It is my belief that we should take up that challenge.

The Constitution, and our republican democracy, are not Yoo's, nor Bush's, nor anyone's plaything to alter or ignore at their pleasure. And there is no reason for UC to be a party to such dangerous nonsense.

Robert Cruickshank, UC Berkeley alumnus, June 21, 2004  http://www.dailycal.org/article/15505/letter_to_the_editor                                                                                              

Psychologists Clash on Aiding Interrogations

By
Curt Wechsler, The World Can't Wait
on August 16, 2008 12:42 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

By BENEDICT CAREY, NYTimes, August 15, 2008

"It's really a fight for the soul of the profession."
BRAD OLSON, a psychologist at Northwestern University, on efforts to prohibit military psychologists from taking part in interrogations of enemy combatants detained by the military and C.I.A.

California condemns use of torture

By
Curt Wechsler, The World Can't Wait
on August 15, 2008 11:18 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (Aug. 14) - California won't stand for torture.

American Friends Service Committee, http://www.afsc.org/ 

stoptortureThe state Legislature adopted a resolution today aimed at preventing doctors, psychologists, and other health professionals from taking part in coercive interrogations at any U.S. military prisons.  It's the first such resolution in the United States.


The American Friends Service Committee, Physicians for Social Responsibility, and Program for Torture Victims coordinated the two-year campaign.

Download Press Release (PDF)

"The Promise of Berkeley"?!

By
Curt Wechsler, The World Can't Wait
on August 14, 2008 3:24 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
Friday, May 30, 2008

Haven't We Seen This Film Before?

Marty Lederman

There's a UC Berkeley alum in my household, and so we're frequently inundated with promotional materials from the University.

Last week we received the latest issue of The Promise of Berkeley, a big glossy production designed to tout the accomplishments of members of the University community. The Spring issue includes a piece promoting the close connections between Cal Berkeley and the U.S. government here in D.C. "A number of Berkeley's faculty have held positions in past presidential administrations or worked closely with presidential candidates," it boasts. And so the Promise of Berkeley asked six faculty members -- "three from each side of the aisle" -- to "reflect on their time in Washington, what's at stake in the 2008 presidential election, and what Berkeley means to them."

The Dems profiled are, not surprisingly, Chris Edley, Bob Reich and Janet Yellen. The editors apparently had a more difficult time finding prominent Republican officials on their faculty: The chose Dan Schnur (a Poli Sci lecturer who worked on McCain's 2000 primary campaign), Sandy Muir (a speechwriter for Bush 41), and, you guessed it . . . John Yoo.

Now, it's one thing to decide not to challenge a tenured professor's job security, notwithstanding substantial evidence that he facilitated war crimes (a decision of Chris Edley's that I supported here). But it's quite another to give that faculty member pride of place -- because of his government service -- in a publication intended to encourage alumni contributions by stressing the laudable public service of one's faculty members. Did the editors of The Promise of Berkeley really think that including John Yoo in their brochure would result in more robust alumni donations? My sense is that this is tone-deafness of a very high order -- but what do I know?
 
continue reading at http://balkin.blogspot.com/2008/05/havent-we-seen-this-film-before.html

American Psychological Association Considers Resolution on Torture

By
Curt Wechsler, The World Can't Wait
on August 14, 2008 12:02 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
by Chip
AfterDowningStreet.org 
 

The American Psychological Association has a resolution pending disavowing employment where torture is used. The text of the resolution is below. Pro and con arguments can be read here.

PETITION RESOLUTION

We the undersigned APA members in good standing, pursuant to article IV.5 of the APA bylaws, do hereby petition that the following motion be submitted to APA members for their approval or disapproval, by referendum, with all urgency:

Whereas torture is an abhorrent practice in every way contrary to the APA's stated mission of advancing psychology as a science, as a profession, and as a means of promoting human welfare.

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