UC Santa Cruz Students Effectively Kick Military Recruiters off Campus

Cyre2067

The Living Force
San Francisco Chronicle said:
Four military recruiters hastily fled a job fair Tuesday morning at UC Santa Cruz after a raucous crowd of student protesters blocked an entrance to the building where the Army and National Guard had set up information tables.

Members of Students Against War, who organized the counter-recruiting protest, loudly chanted "Don't come back. Don't come back" as the recruiters left the hilltop campus, escorted by several university police officers.

"The situation had degraded to the point where there was a possibility of injury to either a student or law enforcement officer. We certainly didn't want that to happen,'' said Capt. Will Griffin, one of the Army recruiters.

University officials had been aware for weeks that Students Against War planned a protest to prevent military personnel from participating in the school's biannual job fair held for students.

(sic - rest available: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/04/12/BAG3KI7INT1.DTL)
Heh i love this. Students effectively protested in a manner in which the army recruiters left. Granted claim they were "afraid of violence" insuing, but so what? No one died, nor was anyone hurt which is quite the opposite of what happens when one does enter the military. Plus military recruiters use some of the most effective brainwashing i've ever seen. They tell you mostly about money and make promises about service they typically can't keep. Young kids eat it up thinking they can choose how they want to serve when the bottom line is once you sign that contract they own you until it's up.
 
In Turkiye military service is mandatory. 2 years if you're a highschool graduate and if you're a college or university graduate, 8 months or 1,5 years depending on the lottery. So no eligible young men can escape the military, it is a crime with punishment. And you can be called back for service again, if the need arises, as of the present, because of a possibility of attack on Iran. If you have chosen the military for a lifelong career you have be a graduate of military schools or academies or you can voluntarily choose it (but it is a rare occasion). At least americans can choose whether they want to join or not.
 
Allow me the honor of giving you a brief lesson in Army Recruitment's many overbearing attributes. I realize that some of you may not know the particular background details of the events I'm referring to. I'm not going to go into those details here, but you can read up on them elsewhere. Furthermore, Army Recruitment has vowed that by next weekend it'll fuel the censorship-and-intolerance crowd. This is hardly news; Army Recruitment has been vowing that for months with the regularity of a metronome. What is news is that I myself am not concerned with rumors or hearsay about it. I am interested only in ascertained facts attested by published documents, and in these primarily as an illustration that if you think that this is humorous or exaggerated, you're wrong.

Given that nothing would make Army Recruitment happier than to see me wind up in a straitjacket and locked in a padded cell, it stands to reason that Army Recruitment does, occasionally, make a valid point. But when it says that it should glamorize drug usage because "it's the right thing to do", that's where the facts end and the ludicrousness begins. Now, perhaps you think I'm imagining things. Perhaps you think that Army Recruitment really isn't going to silence any criticism of the brainwashing and double standards that it has increasingly been practicing. Well, I wish it were just my imagination. But you know, its reasoning is circular and therefore invalid. In other words, it always begins an argument with its conclusion (e.g., that every featherless biped, regardless of intelligence, personal achievement, moral character, sense of responsibility, or sanity, should be given the power to resort to ad hominem attacks on me and my family) and therefore -- not surprisingly -- it always arrives at that very conclusion. Unsettling as that is, the more infuriating fact is that there are some simple truths in this world. First, by an odd twist of fate, the only thing bigger than the chip on Army Recruitment's shoulder is the grossness of its actions. Second, Army Recruitment's assumptions are matched in their untenability only by the arrogant fervor with which they are held. And finally, Army Recruitment can't attack my ideas, so it attacks me. It could be worse, I suppose. It could redefine humanity as alienated machines/beasts and then convince everyone that they were never human to begin with.

Army Recruitment's victims have been speaking out for years. Unfortunately, their voices have long been silenced by the roar and thunder of Army Recruitment's loyalists, who loudly proclaim that we should avoid personal responsibility. Regardless of those malicious proclamations, the truth is that talking about Army Recruitment in the highly charged vortex of plagiarism is always burdened with agitation and diversion. I've said that before and I've said it often, but perhaps I haven't been concrete enough or specific enough, so now I'll try to remedy those shortcomings. I'll try to be a lot more specific and concrete when I explain that Army Recruitment's expositors claim that all major world powers are controlled by a covert group of "insiders". I say to them, "Prove it" -- not that they'll be able to, of course, but because if we don't remove the Army Recruitment threat now, it will bite us in our backside in the near future. One might think that Army Recruitment would like to see patriotism, honor, and personal responsibility fall into desuetude, and this is, not surprisingly, the case. Army Recruitment's bruta fulmina are like hothouse plants. They shoot up, but they lack the strength to defy the years and withstand heavy storms. Army Recruitment's flimflams are as cynical as they are an insult to human intelligence. Of that I am certain, because a great many of us don't want Army Recruitment to exploit the masses. But we feel a prodigious pressure to smile, to be nice, and not to object to its twisted intimations. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
 
aurora said:
In Turkiye military service is mandatory. 2 years if you're a highschool graduate and if you're a college or university graduate, 8 months or 1,5 years depending on the lottery. So no eligible young men can escape the military, it is a crime with punishment. And you can be called back for service again, if the need arises, as of the present, because of a possibility of attack on Iran. If you have chosen the military for a lifelong career you have be a graduate of military schools or academies or you can voluntarily choose it (but it is a rare occasion). At least americans can choose whether they want to join or not.
From what my Dutch cow orkers said, that used to be the case in most other european countries - all males over a certain age had to get a few years of military training. I made the remark, why put people who have no desire or aptitude through that? And one guy made an interesting remark - if you let the military self-select, it tends to create its own insular culture, which over time, will become very different from the general population.

As far as the military trying to recruit in Sanna Crooz - why bother? Sanna Crooz is the kind of place where you have to show proof that you're "growing your own" for residency. Trying to get people there to sign up for military service? That's like trying to sell cellphones to the deaf, or bubblegum to someone with lockjaw. Not that you won't get results, but you're going to have to really really work at it. I think the only other place that would be more futile to recruit at would be Berkeley.
 
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