Monday Night — Field Trip — World Can't Wait – Drive Out the Bush Regime — 09.22.06
Comments Off on Monday Night — Field Trip — World Can't Wait – Drive Out the Bush Regime — 09.22.06Monday Night — Field Trip — World Can’t Wait to Drive Out the Bush Regime — 09.22.06
Contents:
0. Event at Cooper Union
1. Note from Sunsara, Prachi, and Araby
2. Note from Naeem — State Of Exception, After The Torture Vote
3. Useful Links from Naeem
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please note:
this event is NOT at 16Beaver
but is taking place at Cooper Union
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0. Event at Cooper Union Tonight
When: Monday, October 2, 7:30 pm
Where: Cooper Union Great Hall
Address: 7 E 7th Street at Third Avenue, NYC
What: Gathering related to Oct. 5th protest + Detainee Law
We had thought about a discussion related to October 5th, but felt that maybe supporting the protest on that day and attending this discussion may be a better way to connect to a larger group of actors. Even despite the “big names” that might stand up on the stage.
There is a suggested Donation of $5-$25, but no money should not be a barrier to entry.
If you cannot make it to tonight’s event, please visit: http://www.worldcantwait.org/ to find out more about October 5th!
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1. Note from Sunsara, Prachi, and Araby
(Forwarded via Jesal:)
Friends,
Torture has just been openly ratified in our names. So, we moved our Monday night meeting from a space that holds 200 to Cooper Union’s Great Hall that holds 900.
If we don’t want to become a nation of torturers, each of us needs to get on an emergency footing to pack this space!
Forward this email, get on the phone to everyone you know, print copies of this announcement and hand it out on the train, at the movies, everywhere all weekend long.
Best,
Sunsara, Prachi, and Araby
Join Olympia Dukakis, Bill Goodman, Malachy McCourt, Craig Murray, Reno, and Mark Ruffalo with a special message from Sean Penn
Momentum is building towards nation-wide protests on October 5th to bring the Bush crimes to a halt. In the last few days the number of cities planning protests has jumped from 50 to 140! But even as we grow, the Bush regime presses ahead with new horrors.
Learn about Bush’s new Detainee Law, get materials, and get organized to pull out massive numbers of people to protest on October 5th.
Endless wars! Torture! Katrina! Theocracy! Bring this to a Halt!
Monday, October 2, 7:30 pm
Cooper Union Great Hall
7 E 7th Street at Third Avenue, NYC
Suggested Donation: $5-$25
Craig Murray
Bill Goodman
Center for Constitutional Rights attorney involved in cases to stop illegal domestic surveillance, defend Guantánamo detainees, and challenge extraordinary rendition. He will break down Bush’s new the “Military Commissions Act of 2006.”
Craig Murray
Former UK Ambassador to Uzbekistan who risked his life and forfeited his career to blow the whistle on US sponsored TORTURE.
THE WORLD CAN’T WAIT!
DRIVE OUT THE BUSH REGIME!
THURSDAY OCTOBER 5
No Work. No School. March with us!
12 noon: Gather at Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza
1st Ave. at 47th St. (across from UN)
Then March
Rally at Union Square at 4:00 pm
worldcantwait.org 212.969.0772
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1. State Of Exception, After The Torture Vote
– Naeem Mohaiemen
About culture’s re-engagement with the war on something, Martin Amis
recently said:
“As Norman Mailer said when 9/11 happened, the temptation to charge
in should be resisted because what happens with writing is that you
receive the stimuli and they go down into your subconscious, and what
settles settles, and what doesn’t doesn’t. You find, after a couple
of years, that you’ve got something to write about. It’s part of your
silent anxiety about what Don DeLillo calls the world hum.”
The world hum right now is last week’s stunning vote to authorize new
powers to reinterpret the Geneva Conventions on torture. Aziz Huq of
NYU Brennan Center (and Visible Collective) calls it “a bill that
strikes harder at American liberties and at the fundamentals of
American government than any since the authorization of the Japanese
internment.”
Even the NYT was moved to apoplexy:
“[The new law] allows the president to identify enemies, imprison
them indefinitely and interrogate them – albeit with a ban on the
harshest treatment – beyond the reach of the full court reviews
traditionally afforded criminal defendants and ordinary prisoners.
Taken as a whole, the law will give the president more power over
terrorism suspects than he had before the Supreme Court decision this
summer in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld that undercut more than four years of
White House policy.”
We are now in that space that Francois Saint Bonnet called the space
of “imbalance between public law and political fact.” Looking at the
proposal for a suspension of the French constitution, Giorgio Agamben
traces two models – one where wartime powers spread into civilian
space, the other wherein individual liberties are suspended from the
constitution. The merging of these two trajectories produces the
state of exception.
The argument that a sitting President of the United States has the
power, unique among all signatories to the Geneva Conventions, to
reinterpret what constitutes torture, is a full-force realization of
a state of exception. It can also take on the contours of notstand
(“state of necessity”), state of siege, or emergency powers. But not
yet that trigger-term: martial law (that’s for Thailand, so the
yammering classes can breathe a sigh of relief).
How will the citizens of this nation respond? Voting for Democrats at
midterms is one very micro (but tangible) baby step. But more
systematic, wide-ranging meditations on the changing nature of the
soul of continental United States are needed.
Protest action is mounting after last week’s vote. Some of it is
incandescent with purpose.
Organized groups are doing a lot more than just writing. Artists,
activists, lawyers, clergy, labor, academics, and many other levels
of society are mobilizing for this week’s nationwide protests to
“Drive Out The Bush Regime.”
Two key events:
October 2: Mobilizing Meetings
October 5: National Protests
[details below]
Is this wishful thinking, visual resistance, building capacity,
symbolic theater, or all of the above? Only way to find out is to
attend the meetings and rallies, starting with tonight.
In a word: participate
No time for armchair analysts.
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2. Useful Links via Naeem
October 5: Drive Out Bush Regime
http://www.worldcantwait.net
Aziz Huq on Military Commissions Act of 2006
http://writ.corporate.findlaw.com/commentary/20060926_huq.html
Aziz Huq on Terror 2016
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/09/28/terror_2016.php
Ariel Dorfman on Torture
http://tinyurl.com/lnfza
Torture Not An American Value
http://tinyurl.com/zy7j2
This Is What Waterboarding Looks Like
http://www.davidcorn.com/archives/2006/09/this_is_what_wa.php
How Would A Patriot Act?
http://tinyurl.com/m9hm9
Comfortably Numb
http://tinyurl.com/zkv9y
Banned On Airplanes: Craig Murray’s New Book
http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,1867840,00.html