[Peace-discuss] VICTORY: CIA recruitment SHUT DOWN!

[Stuart Levy]

On Thu, Apr 09, 2009 at 08:28:53PM -0700, martin smith wrote:
> (see attached pics!)
> 
> Students Shut Down CIA Recruitment at UIUC
> On
> April 9, members of the Campus Antiwar Network, Iraq Veterans Against
> the War, and the International Socialist Organization joined forces for
> a third annual protest against the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
> recruitment session at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. 
> However this year, students and activists were stunned by their victory
> when the CIA canceled the session at the last minute, shamed by our
> tactics which exposed the Agency’s dark history of assassinations,
> political sabotage and torture.  

Martin,

This is great news!

It's especially encouraging that the UofI police acknowledged your
right to protest.  That's been a sore point in the past, of course --
sometimes they have claimed some notion of limited 'free speech zones',
e.g. behind Illini Union, but not elsewhere.

So not only is this a wonderful outcome today (we see that
the CIA, like orcs, can't abide sunlight!), it sets a good
precedent for future actions at the UofI.  

Keep on keeping on!

   Stuart


> Outside the session door, one activist donned a black Grim Reaper
> cloak and stood with arms extended on a milk crate to greet potential
> recruits and remind them of the brutal atrocities conducted at Abu
> Ghraib with CIA complicity.  Another used a simple pillowcase as a hood
> and kneeled with arms clasped behind his back to show the treatment by
> prisoners common at Bagram Air Base and Guantánamo.  Others passed out
> informational leaflets and challenged attendees to consider the lies to
> be presented by the CIA, which claimed in their campus ad to be
> “looking for a diversity of people for the important job of keeping
> America safe.”
> 
> Campus police showed up at the request of the CIA operative in
> attendance who, according to the officers, requested to “have us
> removed.”  However, the policemen checked our campus IDs and then
> notified us that we could stay as long as we did not impede traffic. 
> Five minutes later after our continued vigilance, we were thrilled when
> we heard that the CIA would cancel the session, claiming that since the
> student newspaper had shown up and taken pictures for an article
> featuring our protest that security had been compromised.  We suspect
> their true motive for cancelling was their embarrassment over our
> collective message: “Say NO To The CIA Recruiting on our Campuses!”
> 
> 
> According to the International Red Cross, the CIA frequently used
> techniques against prisoners held in secret overseas detention centers
> or “black sites” that “constituted torture” in violation of the Geneva
> Conventions.  Prisoners received cruel and degrading treatment,
> including beatings, sleep deprivation, extreme temperatures, strip
> searches, starvation, scare tactics utilizing canines, and
> waterboarding.  Some detainees then faced “rendition,” the transferring
> of prisoners and outsourcing of torture to other countries where the
> CIA operates, especially those known for committing human rights
> violations, such as Egypt, Jordan, and Syria.  Many of these prisoners
> become “ghosts,” detainees whom officials refuse to give information
> about the location or status of to either family members or lawyers on
> the grounds that their incarceration is needed for long-term
> interrogation.  
> 
> 
> Such barbaric deeds are a gross violation of international and U.S.
> constitutional law and are crimes against humanity on par with the
> U.S.-run concentration camps of Japanese American citizens during World
> War II and the “gulags” of Soviet Russia.  Among the prisoners are
> possibly hundreds of innocent people, whose only crime is to be Arab,
> Muslim, and a person of color.  Moreover, such tactics by no means keep
> “America safe” but rather alienate local populations by its
> heavy-handed nature, and provides a window of opportunity for
> terrorist-group recruitment. 
> 
> 
> CIA Director Leon Panetta reiterated the Obama administration’s
> commitment to continue several Bush administration policies in the
> so-called war on terror. Panetta told reporters the US will continue
> controversial CIA drone attacks in Pakistan that have killed hundreds
> of civilians. He also said that while CIA interrogators will have to
> abide by the Army Field Manual, President Obama can still approve
> harsher techniques using wartime powers and that the "CIA retains the
> authority to detain individuals on a short-term basis."
> 
> 
> Activists and students should stand up to the CIA whenever they
> attempt to recruit on college campuses or in your community.  With even
> a small number, you can shut down their recruitment meetings and score
> an important victory for peace and justice.  As Campus Antiwar Network
> member Eric Heim explained, “I was pretty shocked when I found out that
> we managed to cancel the meeting.  To finally have a visible victory
> was a huge morale boost. The CIA needs to be opposed when and wherever
> it appears because it is nothing but an agent of empire that destroys
> democracy and helps establish US hegemony across the globe through
> force and brutality.”
> 
> -- 
> *******************************************************
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> 
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> 
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> 
> 
> 
>       


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