The Webmaster: February 2010 Archives

Where's Dante when you need him? The Inferno's epic vision of Christian Hell's violence and poetic genius is actually a political allegory and political critique. For several days, this trend emerging in reporting on John Yoo in the blogosphere is beccoming increasingly traumatic and angry. As the webmaster of firejohnyoo.net, I have been trying to read every headline and scan all the unique articles on Yoo in the mainstream media and online for some time now. From Mainstream media to the littlest bloggers - in regard to the way the validation and vindication of Yoo and the rest of the Bush war and torture team - there is a growing consciousness, impatience and disillusionment with the lack of dignity, integrity and justice from the White House, the Justice Department, Congress, the Senate and the Supreme court in spite of John Conyers proposing his hearing to whitewash this with his Congressional 'good cop / bad cop' game with Pelosi.

The actual blog posts represent a variety of accuracy and quality in line with the breadth of writing professionalism on the net. Scanning the last 300 articles on my John Yoo google alerts news feed from the last 48 hours, here is a sampling of headlines which tell the story in themselves.

• The Choice Has Been Made: Yoo and Bybee Over America and Humanity
• The OPR report: this era's 'Hiroshima'
• Obama's policy is the same as Bush's
• Torture Bored How we've erased the legal lines around torture and replaced them with nothing.
• Yoo and Bybee, Poor Judgment Indeed
• The brutality of American exceptionalism
• "American Takfiris": The US Proponents of Torture (and Why It Matters)
• John Yoo is 'vindicated': Presumably he gets to keep his Inquirer job
• The flailing falsehoods of America's war criminals
• Yoo, Bybee, And Disinformation
• THESE BASTARDS: He's a peach, isn't he?
• Lawyers, Americas Impaired Intellectuals
• John Yoo: President Has So Much Power He Can Order Civilians "Massacred"
• Yoo: 'Sure,' The President Could Order A Village Of Civilians Massacred
• Yoo Called Civilian Slaughter OK
• John Yoo, Douchebag
• Yoo Forgot He Approved Waterboarding
• The Torture Memo Author You've Never Heard Of
• Jennifer Hardy: Torture Princess
• DisbarTortureLawyers Campaign To File OPR Report Today To Supplement Fifteen Disbarment Complaints
• The OPR Report Is Only the Beginning Yoo's Attorney On Blasts OPR For 'Shockingly Substandard Legal Work'
• The OPR Report Is Only the Beginning
• David Margolis Is Wrong - The Justice Department's ethics investigation shouldn't leave John Yoo and Jay Bybee home free.
• Vindicating John Yoo - Bush lawyers are found to have acted ethically, unlike their accusers.
• Cheney's baby: A monster named Torture

(WATERBOARDING 2)

"The CIA didn't want to torture." - John Yoo


Absolved of abetting criminal intent
John Yoo, now on book tour, tells us

he only provided legal justification
of various options of interrogation
of war prisoners. Just legal recipes.

Now teaching at Cal (UC Berkeley),
in a protected academic environment

he's safe from waterboarding
by any of his legal colleagues

however much they loathe him,
while no really hard rain falls.


(22 FEB 10, Santa Clara CA)v2

Read more of Bill Costley's poetry on War Criminals and other stuff at his blog: http://costleybill7.blogspot.com/

In Maryland, two Johns Hopkins University students disrupted a lecture Wednesday by former Bush administration attorney John Yoo. Yoo helped author the notorious Justice Department memos justifying waterboarding and other forms of torture. Before Yoo began his talk, students stood at the front of the lecture hall holding a banner reading "Try Yoo for Torture." They refused to move, but agreed not to interrupt Yoo's speech. Yoo then delivered the lecture with the students holding their banner throughout. Protester: "We wanted to make it very clear that John Yoo is not accepted at Johns Hopkins University and that wherever he goes--not simply because of his views, but rather because of his material support for the administration of torture--that it is unacceptable, and we're voicing that quite clearly." -text quoted from democracynow.org

Kenneth Jost, Supreme Court editor of CQ Press published a great article today noting protests dogging "the Torture Professor" John Yoo's book tour this month; "Constitutional law professor John Yoo is out promoting his new book and its stout defense of the need for a strong president in times of national emergencies. But the demonstrators in orange jump suits outside his recent appearance in Washington, D.C., were a reminder that Yoo's thesis has an inevitable subtext: his authorship of the later-repudiated Justice Department memo claiming a presidential power to commit torture. Yoo makes no mention in Crisis and Command of either of the two infamous torture memos that he drafted..."
Strong Presidents Have No Need for Torture

In this song series, Canadian composer Ben Mueller-Heaslip exposes the horror of John Yoo's Torture Memos by setting the text of the Torture Memos to music sung by Kristin Mueller-Heaslip. Listen here to track six:
Medical Personnel are on the Scene

Get Adobe Flash Player to listen.

From the website; "We just released our new recording of the Torture Memos: a musical reworking of the legal documents that attempted to justify torture. The text is all by John Yoo and his cronies at the U.S. Department of Legal Counsel, taken directly from the documents with no alterations, additions, or misleading combinations. This music says exactly what these criminals intended to say....In lieu of paying our "lyricists" we're donating 15% of the sales of this record to the American Civil Liberties Union." The singer Kristin Mueller-Heaslip said in an email to firejohnyoo.net; "...we definitely want to keep the Torture Memos project moving forward. There's been a fantastic response every time we perform it, and the music brings out the banal evil of the text like nothing else can. We're thinking of organizing a US tour, assuming of course that we can get across the border."
parkdalerevolutionaryorchestra.com/torturememos

On 1-27-10, the San Francisco Commonwealth Club nationally syndicated NPR Program featured John Yoo Author of the notorious "Torture Memos" promoting his book about presidential power "Crisis and Command" - was shut down five times by WORLD CAN'T WAIT protesters throughout this program. This NPR program is currently being replayed around the country on NPR radio affiliates. Throughout the evening, many protesters engaged attendees coming in and out of the prestigious Commonwealth Club. The program was moderated by Stanford Law School professor Alan Wiener who was also protested for legitimizing Yoo by participating...regardless of a few hard ball questions at the end of the program. Below are transcriptions of the protesters comments. Protesters start times are indicated because each was spaced 5-15 minutes apart throughout the program. Each protester was quickly and peacefully escorted out by police. This Minnesota Public Radio audio program begins with a brief commentary and is briefly interrupted for commentary.

1:49 John Yoo is a war criminal. He is directly responsible for the torture of thousands of people, thousands of innocent people all over the world. John Yoo is a war criminal. He should be in prison. He shouldn't be teaching at UC Berkeley. He should be fired, disbarred, prosecuted for war crimes...

13:51 John Yoo is a war criminal. War Criminal! The Nuremberg judgments say attorneys who assist in the commission of war crimes are war criminals. You are a war criminal. Torture is a war crime. A war crime.

19:20 Professor Wiener, you may be a good person. You may be an ethical professor. But, why are you giving John Yoo legitimacy? What you have to make a decision whether you think torture is okay or not. Torture is never okay. It is not okay to torture. He is a war criminal. John Yoo is a war criminal. He should be prosecuted to the fullest...

31:38 Torturer. Torturer. Your victims will have their justice John Yoo. The people of the world will have their justice. You murderer. You murderer. Your victims will have their justice. War Criminal. You murderer. YOU SMUG SMUG MURDERER! Your victims will have their justice.

33:50 Torture is not a polite debate. Torture is a war crime. It's a crime against humanity. Torture is a crystallization of what John yoo stands for. To sit here politely with the most important torturer on earth is wrong.