[Peace-discuss] My response to todays editorial related to the rally at the COL

[Karen Aram]

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> The NG got it wrong in todays editorial related to the rally at the COL. They refer to those supporting Prof. Boyle and those protesting the Dean bringing Malcolm Stewart to speak at the COL, last week as “lemmings," and a “handful of naive and gullible students.”  The majority were not only “not students,” they were  those with years of involvement in political issues such as “immigrant rights,” “anti-war” and “support for labor.” 

> Many had years of experience teaching, or working within the system, many possessed Ph.D’s. Those who were students were clearly some of the best and brightest on campus, and all anyone had to do was listen to their speeches to know they were anything but “gullible or naive." 
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> There was no prevention of freedom of speech, no where was the “speaker” blocked, intimated or threatened. The protestors never entered the building, never blocked the pathway, and stayed in the courtyard away from the building. 
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> What the protestors insisted upon is their right to protest a speaker supporting an Administration focused on “banning immigrants, DACA, and Dreamers,” forcible round ups by ICE and ignoring sanctuary cities rights, with federal takeovers. As well as a ban on Muslims from those nations which the US is guilty of bombing and destroying.
  
> We were opposing not just this episode, but previous episodes by the COL bringing speakers to influence students, who in another era, based upon US, law as well as International Law, would have been prosecuted as warmongers. I’m now referring to November 2016, one week before the election, Dean Amar bringing HRC’s drone advisor Harold Killer Koh, the “Killer” is his nickname within the beltway, because he supports drone killings. Promoting him  as a “lawyer to emulate” while he promotes drone killings, is reprehensible.
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> There is no such thing as “targeted killing” though the U of I COL would have one think so, based upon their program titled “The Legitimacy of Targeted Killing” in 2015, whereby Prof. Michael Moore, not only supported drone killing, but supported "torture,” based upon the fictional film “Zero Dark Thirty” as being an example of “sometimes its necessary, and it was effective when used by the KGB.”
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> Even the Pentagon does not support torture. See: the “Rules of Engagement” previous to those reconstructed in 2015.
  See: Andrew Cockburns: “Kill Chain” 
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