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For Immediate Release
June, 14 2011, 02:42pm EDT
Contact:
Frida Berrigan,press@witnessagainsttorture.com
When it comes to Guantanamo Bay, the Politics of Fear and Cynicism Have Won Out over Any Promised Hope or Change
CALL TO ACTION - JOIN US ON JUNE 22-25, 2011
WASHINGTON
We must continue to speak and act against the ongoing crime of Guantanamo!
We walk in shame and grief and anger.
We walk mindful of broken promises, hollow words, and bankrupt institutions.
We walk for men torn from their families and homelands, tortured and abused by this nation, still detained without charge or trial after all these years.
We walk because we know that torture is wrong, that the indefinite detention of people without charge is wrong, and that vilification of South Asians and Muslims is wrong.
We walk because we cannot and will not accept injustice, forsake hope, and forget the humanity of the men detained by the United States at Guantanamo, Bagram, and other detention sites.
From June 22-25, 2011, Witness Against Torture will return to our nation's capitol. Please Join us. *
22 June 2011: DAY OF PREPARATION
12-2 vigil @ the Department of Justice
5pm dinner @ St. Stephen's
6:30pm action planning at location TBA
23 June 2011: DAY OF ACTION
11am Solemn procession from the White House to the Department of Justice to the Supreme Court to Congress
24 June 2011: DAY OF FASTING
12pm-2pm vigil @ the Department of Justice
25 June 2011: DAY OF SOLIDARITY
7am-7pm vigil @ the White House with the Torture Abolition Survivor's Support Coalition as part of their week for survivors of torture
Additional information will be posted in the coming weeks at www.witnesstorture.org. You can let us know you are coming by writing to fast@witnesstorture.org. Please DOWNLOAD and distribute our new flier!
"THE ONLY WAY OUT OF GUANTANAMO IS IN A COFFIN"
From Andy Worthington: "The last living prisoner to be released from Guantanamo was Farhi Saeed bin Mohammed, an Algerian who was repatriated against his will in January. Since then, an Afghan prisoner, Awal Gul, died in February, and on last week the US military announced that another Afghan prisoner, Inayatullah, who was 37 years old, "died of an apparent suicide," early on the morning of May 18."
ALSO SEE
- Hunger strikes continue at Guantanamo to protest conditions of confinement and President Obama's indefinite detention order.
- Witness Against Torture's response to the latest Wikilieaks about Guantanamo.
- Witness Against Torture's latest letter (April 7, 2011) to the Department of Justice.
- Read Kathy Kelly's and War Resisters Leagues's statements on the murder of Osama Bin Laden.
SUPPORT OUR CAMPAIGN
- Buy a Witness Against Torture T-Shirt or Book.
- Donate online or send a check made out to "Witness Against Torture" to Mary House Catholic Worker, 55 E. Third Street, New York, NY 10003.
- Post your local community's anti-torture event to our calendar.
- Spread the word! Forward this e-mail, learn more, or put a button on your website.
- FACEBOOK: Join our cause and group.
Witness Against Torture is a grassroots movement that came into being in December 2005 when 24 activists walked to Guantanamo to visit the prisoners and condemn torture policies. Since then, it has engaged in public education, community outreach, and non-violent direct action. For the first 100 days of the Obama administration, the group held a daily vigil at the White House, encouraging the new President to uphold his commitments to shut down Guantanamo.
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After Claiming Maduro Was Its Kingpin, DOJ Now Admits in Court That 'Cartel De Los Soles' Isn't a Real Group
"They've been pretending that this made-up thing was real for a year. But now that they'd have actually to demonstrate its existence in court, they're going to cram it down the memory hole."
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One of the central claims the Trump administration has used to justify the overthrow of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and describe his government as “illegitimate” is the allegation that he is the leader of a multinational narco-terrorist organization known as “Cartel de los Soles.”
But now that the Department of Justice (DOJ) must prove the allegation in court following the US military's kidnapping of Maduro last week, prosecutors are backing off the claim and, in effect, admitting what critics had long protested: that Cartel de los Soles is not, in fact, an organization at all.
In the months leading up to the illegal US invasion that plucked Maduro from power, the Treasury Department and State Department both designated Cartel de los Soles as a foreign terrorist organization.
That allegation originated from a 2020 grand jury indictment of Maduro, drafted by the DOJ during Trump’s first term. The document described the Cartel de los Soles as a “Venezuelan drug-trafficking organization comprised of high-ranking Venezuelan officials.”
As the New York Times explained back in November:
There’s a big catch with the impression created by the Trump administration’s narrative: Cartel de los Soles is not a literal organization, according to a range of specialists in Latin American criminal and narcotics issues, from think-tank analysts to former Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) officials.
It is instead a figure of speech in Venezuela, dating back to the 1990s, for Venezuelan military officials corrupted by drug money, they say. The term, which means “Cartel of the Suns,” is a mocking invocation of the suns Venezuelan generals wear to denote their rank, like American ones wear stars.
It is for that reason that the DEA's annual National Drug Threat Assessment, which describes major trafficking organizations in detail, has never mentioned Cartel de los Soles. Nor has the annual “World Drug Report” by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
Nevertheless, the claim that Maduro was at the helm of an international terrorist cartel was a core justification the Trump administration has used over the past year to legitimize pushing him out of power.
"Maduro is NOT the President of Venezuela and his regime is NOT the legitimate government," said Secretary of State Marco Rubio in a post on social media in July. "Maduro is the head of the Cartel de Los Soles, a narco-terror organization that has taken possession of a country. And he is under indictment for pushing drugs into the United States."
Such a portrayal was useful when attempting to drum up support for US aggression against Venezuela. But now, Maduro stands on trial in the Southern District of New York, where a jury will decide his guilt or innocence based on the evidence presented after he pleaded not guilty on Monday.
Elizabeth Dickinson, the deputy director for Latin America at the International Crisis Group, told the New York Times that the designation of Cartel de los Soles as a foreign terror organization was “far from reality,” but that “designations don’t have to be proved in court, and that’s the difference. Clearly, they knew they could not prove it in court.”
Following Maduro's abduction by US forces on Saturday, the DOJ released a new indictment. While it still accused Maduro of participating in a drug trafficking conspiracy, it totally abandoned the claim that any organization called "Cartel de los Soles" actually existed.
To the extent that any such group does exist, the indictment says it's not as a criminal organization, but as "a culture of corruption in which powerful Venezuelan elites enrich themselves through drug trafficking," and a "patronage system run by those at the top."
But even a day after the new indictment fatally undercut his claims, Rubio continued to insist on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that Cartel de los Soles was a “transnational criminal organization” and that “the leader of that cartel,” Maduro, “is now in US custody and facing US justice in the Southern District of New York.”
"They've been pretending that this made-up thing was real for a year. But now that they'd have to actually demonstrate its existence in court, they're going to cram it down the memory hole," marvelled Derek Davison, a Washington-based researcher and writer on international affairs and American politics.
Ben Norton, editor of the Geopolitical Economy Report, wrote on social media that the administration's abrupt abandonment of one of its central justifications for war demonstrates that "the entire US war is based on lies."
While the initial phase of Trump’s ramp-up of military aggression against Venezuela was premised, with scant evidence, on the need to prevent alleged drug boats from reaching the US, President Donald Trump has now said explicitly that the administration’s goal is to take control of Venezuela’s massive oil reserves and hand them to US-based companies.
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A suspiciously timed and lucrative bet on the US abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro over the weekend has prompted speculation that the wager was placed with inside knowledge, possibly by someone within the Trump administration or its orbit.
The yet-unknown gambler placed a series of bets totaling nearly $34,000 between late December and January 3—the day of the US assault on Venezuela. All of the bets, placed on the cryptocurrency-based prediction platform Polymarket, were related to the probability of Maduro being removed from power and the US attacking Venezuela before the end of January.
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NBC News reported Tuesday that the bettor "has already cashed out their Polymarket winnings in Solana, a type of cryptocurrency, through a major American exchange, with no indication they have tried to hide or launder the funds." The outlet added that "if any regulators or law enforcement went looking for the bettor, they’d likely have little difficulty locating them."
It was public knowledge that US President Donald Trump—who had said Maduro's days as the leader of Venezuela's government were "numbered"—was considering a direct attack on the South American country, and his administration had amassed a large military force in the region in recent months in preparation for such an assault.
But there was no publicly available information on the timing of any possible attack. The New York Times, which reportedly learned of the US assault and abduction operation shortly before it began, later revealed that Trump "had authorized the US military to go ahead as early as December 25, but left the precise timing to Pentagon officials and Special Operations planners to ensure that the attacking force was ready, and that conditions on the ground were optimal."
Trump gave the final go-ahead order late Friday night, according to the Times, and the attack began in the early hours of Saturday morning, Venezuela time.
Analysts have warned that the spread of prediction platforms like Polymarket—where gamblers can bet on a dizzying range of scenarios, including the timing of the second coming of Jesus Christ—could raise the likelihood of insiders trying to profit from confidential information.
It also increases the risk that people in positions of power and influence will try to push policy in a certain direction in order to cash in on their bets, said Demand Progress executive director Sean Vitka.
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Leaders of several European nations on Tuesday released a joint statement pushing back on US President Donald Trump's threat to seize Greenland from Denmark.
The statement, which was signed by the heads of state of France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, Denmark, and the UK, emphasized that security in the Arctic region must be "achieved collectively, in conjunction with NATO allies including the United States, by upholding the principles of the UN Charter, including sovereignty and the inviolability of borders."
While noting that the US is an "essential partner" in the NATO alliance, the leaders nonetheless said that "Greenland belongs to its people" and "it is for Denmark and Greenland, and them only, to decide on matters concerning Denmark and Greenland."
In a separate statement released Tuesday, Greenland Premier Orla Joelsen thanked the European leaders for speaking up in defense of his people's independence and emphasized that Greenland is not an imperial trophy to be won by the US president.
"Our country is not something that can be annexed or taken over simply because someone wishes to do so," Joelsen said. "At a time when the president of the United States has once again stated that the United States is very serious about Greenland, this support from our allies in NATO is both important and unequivocal."
Trump and his allies have been making more aggressive statements in recent days about taking Greenland, which Trump has called essential to US national security.
Top Trump aide Stephen Miller on Monday night refused to rule out using military force to take Greenland during a Monday interview with CNN, and further claimed that "the future of the free world depends on America to be able to assert ourselves and our interests without an apology."
The Trump administration's bellicose rhetoric, combined with its illegal invasion of Venezuela and abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, has reportedly convinced European leaders to take the threat of US imperialism on their territories seriously.
Danish sources who spoke with The Atlantic on Monday said that the Venezuela invasion was a wakeup call showing them that Trump is deadly serious about seizing Greenland against the will of its own people.
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Nathalie Tocci, director of the Istituto Affari Internazionali in Rome, argued in a Tuesday column for The Guardian that European leaders' refusal to condemn Trump's ouster of Maduro would only make it more likely that he would attack their territories as well in the coming months.
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