[Marxism] Professor Yee endorses child torture

[Brian Shannon <brian_shannon@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I received the message at the end because I am on a list of former  
members of UC Berkeley's SLATE, probably the earliest and most  
important campus political party of the radical renaissance of the  
late 1950s and early 1960s. I sent the message below in return.

Please distribute it as widely as possible to anyone that you may  
know in the Bay Area.
_______________________

I suggested similar ideas to those below before. Due to the  
trajectory of my life, I now live in Massachusetts and am attempting  
to make some literary contributions to various left wing lists on the  
Internet. I may be able to gather them together before I meet the  
great intelligent designer.

But if I were in Berkeley, I would put all this aside and attempt to  
organize periodic "performance art" in front of Boalt Hall (the UC  
Berkeley law school), of which I am a non-graduating alumnus. How  
often it could happen would depend on how successful others and I  
were. Certainly it could be done once a week. It would not have to be  
the same group each time. Organizations could be contacted to  
generate their own performance: religious groups, acting groups,  
ethnic groups, law student groups, relatives of GIs, members of the  
Muslim community, members of other communities such as refugees from  
Latin America who have also suffered torture from the School of the  
Americas, women's organizations showing how machismo dovetails with  
torture. The list is endless.

– Readings from Professor Yee and Atty Genl Gonzalez
– Dramatizations of Torture
– Mannequins of perpetrators and victims of torture
– or better, actors from the UC Berkshire drama department playing  
this roles
– Videos of Bush, Rumsfeld, Gonzalez, Rice ("we do not do torture")  
et al
– Formal speeches from ex servicemen, including the upper ranks of  
retired officers testifying as to the futility of torture
– Mock tortures of Professor Yee's and Attty Genl Gonzalez's  
families. Remember when Dukakis was asked what his response would be  
if his wife were raped. How about an actor playing these roles, while  
a staged rape is presented to him.
– Like the groups above the creative possibilities are endless.

Are the people in Berkeley living in Bush's bubble? The greatest  
ideologue of Bush's torture is there and nothing is done to embarrass  
him or the law school that employs him.

Needless to say, I propose no physical harm to Professor Yee. I just  
want him and and the university that employs him to die of shame.

Brian Shannon
_________________________

On Jan 8, 2006, at 9:00 PM, Kate Gilpin wrote:

Bush Advisor Says President Has Legal Power to Torture Children

By Philip Watts

01/08/06 "revcom.us" -- -- John Yoo publicly argued there is no law  
that could prevent the President from ordering the torture of a child  
of a suspect in custody - including by crushing that child's testicles.

This came out in response to a question in a December 1st debate in  
Chicago with Notre Dame professor and international human rights  
scholar Doug Cassel.

What is particularly chilling and revealing about this is that John  
Yoo was a key architect post-9/11 Bush Administration legal policy.  
As a deputy assistant to then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, John  
Yoo authored a number of legal memos arguing for unlimited  
presidential powers to order torture of captive suspects, and to  
declare war anytime, any where, and on anyone the President deemed a  
threat.

It has now come out Yoo also had a hand in providing legal reasoning  
for the President to conduct unauthorized wiretaps of U.S. citizens.  
Georgetown Law Professor David Cole wrote, "Few lawyers have had more  
influence on President Bush's legal policies in the 'war on terror'  
than John Yoo."

This part of the exchange during the debate with Doug Cassel, reveals  
the logic of Yoo's theories, adopted by the Administration as bedrock  
principles, in the real world.

Cassel: If the President deems that he's got to torture somebody,  
including by crushing the testicles of the person's child, there is  
no law that can stop him?
Yoo: No treaty.
Cassel: Also no law by Congress. That is what you wrote in the August  
2002 memo.
Yoo: I think it depends on why the President thinks he needs to do that.

The audio of this exchange is available online at revcom.us ....

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11488.htm

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