[Peace-discuss] a reprehensible column regarding the CIA protest on campus

[Neil Parthun]

I wrote up a little diddy and sent it on in.

Remy Soni's column was reprehensible.

A look at history shows that direct action is the impetus for social  
change -- such as the Flint sit down strike and the labor movement of  
the 1930s, the civil rights protests that challenged legal  
segregation, the struggle against the Vietnam War and even the recent  
campaign of workers at Republic Windows and Doors to get their duly  
owed wages and benefits.

When one is dealing with an organization that has admitted to war  
crimes (waterboarding is a crime that we executed Japanese soldiers  
for committing during World War II -- among the many other crimes  
admitted in the recently released Office of Legal Counsel memos),  
sponsored assassinations, destabilized governments, created a  
counterintelligence program to spy on/assassinate/destabilize  
dissident groups domestic and abroad, installed dictators like  
Augusto Pinochet, supported the assassination of nuns, Jesuit priests  
and Archbishop Oscar Romero via US trained/armed/funded death squads,  
massacring civilians in El Mazote among other places -- showing a  
film or writing a column is woefully inappropriate to deal with the  
specter of torture and militarism on campus.

As CIA agent Ralph McGehee (served 1952-1977) said: "The CIA is not  
now nor has it ever been a central intelligence agency. It is the  
covert action arm of the President's foreign policy advisers. In that  
capacity it overthrows or supports foreign governments while  
reporting "intelligence" justifying those activities. It shapes its  
intelligence, even in such critical areas as Soviet nuclear weapon  
capability, to support presidential policy. Disinformation is a large  
part of its covert action responsibility, and the American people are  
the primary target audience of its lies."

People who want to join will have their opportunities.  But a visual  
representation of what these people are signing up for is  
appropriate.  It is the CIA's chickens coming home to roost.

Solidarity,
-N.

Neil Parthun
  Sports journalist, Public i  ||  http://publici.ucimc.org

"There are many victories worse than a defeat." - George Eliot

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