June, 17 2009, 11:00am EDT
Attorney General To Testify Before Senate Committee Today On Torture, Surveillance And Civil Rights
Justice Department Should Reverse Damaging Policies Of Previous Administration, Says ACLU
WASHINGTON
Attorney General Eric Holder will testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee today as it holds its first oversight hearing over the Department of Justice (DOJ) during the Obama administration. The American Civil Liberties Union has urged committee members to ask Holder tough questions on issues including overzealous surveillance, the restoration of the DOJ Civil Rights Division and torture.
"Unanswered questions about torture, a bloated terrorist watch list, overreaching investigatory guidelines and a crippled Civil Rights Division are just some of the blights inherited by the current Department of Justice," said Caroline Fredrickson, Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. "Attorney General Holder now has an opportunity to reverse the damaging policies set by previous administrations and we hope he seizes it. Now is the time to commit to the change America was promised."
The ACLU has been strongly urging Holder to appoint an independent prosecutor to investigate the authorization and use of torture during the interrogation of detainees held by the United States. There is mounting public evidence that crimes of torture were authorized and committed, including memos produced by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) obtained through FOIA litigation brought by the ACLU, testimony at several congressional hearings, accounts from detainees themselves and a report released last month by the Senate Armed Services Committee. These documents make clear that important decisions on the use of torture and abuse were made in the White House, at the Pentagon, and at the headquarters of the CIA and the Justice Department. New documents released this week through a separate ACLU FOIA request show that detainees said they lied during their interrogations in an effort to halt torture techniques being used on them.
"We now know that detainees misled and lied to interrogators to stop the torture being inflicted upon them," said Christopher Anders, ACLU Senior Legislative Counsel. "Not only were these techniques illegal and immoral but they were also counterproductive. No one is above the law, and those responsible for the torture program must be held to the same standard as any other American who commits a crime. The appointment of an independent prosecutor is a vital step towards restoring the rule of law."
The American Civil Liberties Union was founded in 1920 and is our nation's guardian of liberty. The ACLU works in the courts, legislatures and communities to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to all people in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States.
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Database Exposes 'Illicit Network Undermining Democracy Around the World'
Yanis Varoufakis hailed the effort as "a treasure chest of well-researched reports on how the reactionaries of the world unite."
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PI calls it an "illicit network undermining democracy around the world."
"Today is a mask-off moment for the Reactionary International and the parties, politicians, judges, journalists, foundations, think tanks, tech platforms, NGOs, activists, financiers, and entrepreneurs that comprise it," PI said.
"After a year of preparation, we finally open the doors to our new research consortium, exposing the global network of reactionary forces that corrode our democracies, destroy our planet, and drive us closer to world war," the group added.
"The twin insurrections at the U.S. Capitol in 2021 and Brasília's Three Powers Plaza in 2023 left no doubt about the international coordination of reactionary forces," PI argued. "Yet far too little is known about the entities of this network, their sources of financing, and their institutional allies operating inside our political systems."
Ultimately, PI aims to "support democratic systems to become more resilient to their insidious tactics."
From leaders like Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and former U.S. President Donald Trump—the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee—to evangelical Christian groups influencing laws in African countries criminalizing LGBTQ+ people and tech companies empowering ubiquitous state surveillance, Reactionary International is a who's-who of the world's right-wing forces.
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Yanis Varoufakis, a PI member and secretary-general of the left-wing Democracy in Europe Movement 2025, called the database "a treasure chest of well-researched reports on how the reactionaries of the world unite."
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Andre Segura, vice president of litigation at the environmental legal group Earthjustice, said Wednesday that the Republican attorneys general aim to "eviscerate civil rights protections just to make it easier for industrial polluters to continue with business as usual."
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As Volkswagen workers in Tennessee began voting on whether to join the United Auto Workers, progressive critics on Wednesday continued to call out six Southern GOP governors for jointly saying they "are highly concerned about the unionization campaign driven by misinformation and scare tactics that the UAW has brought into our states."
Govs. Kay Ivey of Alabama, Brian Kemp of Georgia, Tate Reeves of Mississippi, Henry McMaster of South Carolina, Bill Lee of Tennessee, and Greg Abbott of Texas issued their statement in response to "the largest organizing drive in modern American history," which the UAW launched after major contract wins following a strike targeting the Big Three automakers—General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis—last year.
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What actually threatens American workers?\n\u274c Anti-union, anti-worker propaganda like this\n\ud83d\udcb0 Corps that put profits over people\n\u26d1\ufe0f Safety standards not being met\n\n@GovAbbott & @GovernorKayIvey sound more like corporate lobbyists than governors here. @UAW backs American workers!— (@)
The Economic Policy Institutesaid Wednesday that the governors' anti-union statement "clearly shows how scared they are that workers organizing with UAW to improve jobs and wages will upend the highly unequal, failed anti-worker economic development model of Southern states."
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More Perfect Union told Ivey that "unions only threaten your values if you value denying workers a living wage and good benefits."
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