- Sign now to demand Obama announce a plan to close Guantanamo, and then let’s up the pressure by flooding the White House with calls in these final hours -- it’s time we end this shame!
- Enough is enough. Let’s get Obama to act and close this painful scar on humanity.
Avaaz.org
Submitted by Evergreene Digest Contributing Editor Jim Fuller
This article is made possible with the generous contributions of all reader supported Evergreene Digest readers like you. Thank you!
22 May 2013 |In 24 hours, President Obama could finally move to close Guantanamo -- the most notorious prison camp on earth.
With inmates on a 100-day hunger strike and massive calls for Obama to act, our president has been pushed to respond with a major speech about the prison. If enough of us demand a plan -- he could free the prisoners already cleared for release, and appoint a White House official with one mission: close Guantanamo down!
We're at a tipping point. Sign up to demand Obama close this shameful gulag down, and share the shocking facts below so others join this urgent call:
The facts speak for themselves:
- Detainees in Guantanamo now: 166
- Detainees facing active charges: 6
- Detainees cleared for immediate release, but stuck in the camp: 86
- Guantanamo inmates on hunger strike: 103
- Hunger strikers strapped down and force fed: 30
- Prisoners who have died in custody: 9
- Children the US has held at Guantanamo: 21
- Detainees tried in civilian court: 1
- "Unreleasable" detainees who can't be tried for lack of evidence or torture: 50
- Prisoners released by the Bush administration: 500+
- Prisoners released by the Obama administration: 72
- Current annual cost to US taxpayers: $150 million
- Days since Obama first pledged to close Gitmo: 1579
- Days since first prisoners arrived at Guantanamo: 11 years, 4 months, 11 days
For years, Obama has blamed the US Congress for the failure to close Guantanamo. But since Congress granted the Defense Department waiver authority that allows prisoners who have been cleared to be transferred out, Obama himself can free these 86 men. And while he will need Congressional cooperation to close the prison completely, if he truly wants to shut it down, he can task someone at the White House right now to show it is a priority and make it happen.
Sign now to demand Obama announce a plan to close Guantanamo, and then let’s up the pressure by flooding the White House with calls in these final hours -- it’s time we end this shame!
When he first campaigned to become US president, Obama promised to close Guantanamo down. This illegal and repulsive prison has led to far too much suffering and fueled great divisions and hate in our world. Enough is enough. Let’s get Obama to act and close this painful scar on humanity.
With hope and determination,
Dalia, Joseph, Allison, Bissan, Nick, Alice, Ricken and the whole Avaaz team
PS - Many Avaaz campaigns are started by members of our community! Start yours now and win on any issue - local, national or global:
More Information
Obama to address Guantánamo and drones in major defence speech (The Guardian)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/19/obama-guantanamo-drones-defence-speech
Guantanamo by the numbers (ACLU)
http://www.aclu.org/national-security/guantanamo-numbers
Gitmo is killing me (New York Times)
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/15/opinion/hunger-striking-at-guantanamo-bay.html
How Gitmo imprisoned Obama (Newsweek)
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2013/05/15/how-gitmo-imprisoned-obama.html
Stop force-feeding inmates and close Gitmo (CNN. Op-Ed)
http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/09/opinion/warren-gitmo-hunger-strike/index.html
Guantanamo hunger strike enters 100th day (Aljazeera English)
http://www.aljazeera.com/video/americas/2013/05/201351719348602566.html
Three Guantanamo Bay prisoners who’ve been on hunger strike for 100 days (VICE)
http://www.vice.com/read/prisoners-in-guantanamo-bay-are-on-hunger-strike
Yemen wants it’s detainees out of Guantanamo (UPI)
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2013/05/17/Yemen-wants-its-detainees-out-of-Guantanamo/UPI-58651368823800
Can you watch this three-minute video right now, share the video with family, friends, and social networks, and then call your senators? 
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Now that former Guatemalan president Efrain Rios Montt has been convicted of genocide, it’s time for the “hegemonic puppeteer,” the United States, to be put on trial. “U.S. officials were fully aware of the pogrom against the Ixil people in the mountains of Guatemala at the very moment that the U.S. government was involved in training and arming the Guatemalan military.”
Wednesday, May 15, 2013 | The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges joins us to discuss what could mark the most significant government intrusion on freedom of the press in decades. The Justice Department has acknowledged seizing the work, home and cellphone records used by almost 100 reporters and editors at the Associated Press. The phones targeted included the general AP office numbers in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Hartford, Connecticut, and the main number for the AP in the House of Representatives press gallery. The action likely came as part of a probe into the leaks behind an AP story on the U.S. intelligence operation that stopped a Yemen-based al-Qaeda bombing plot on a U.S.-bound airplane. Hedges, a senior fellow at The Nation Institute and former New York Times reporter, calls the monitoring "one more assault in a long series of assault against freedom of information and freedom of the press." Highlighting the Obama administration’s targeting of government whistleblowers, Hedges adds: "Talk to any investigative journalist who must investigate the government, and they will tell you that there is a deep freeze. People are terrified of speaking, because they’re terrified of going to jail."
May 4, 2013 | Tim Clemente’s spontaneous admission was made on the CNN show “Erin Burnett OutFront” on Wednesday in a discussion about phone calls between Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his 24-year-old wife, Katherine Russell. Those conversations have become a focus of the government’s investigation into the attack. The revelation came when Burnett asked whether investigators could gain access to the calls in the event Russell refuses to talk about them.
