Chicagoans! Stand Up Against Torture This Monday, 9 AM, South of the Field Museum

We can't always directly attack the nerve center of shocking government actions, but here in Chicago we have a chance to make a statement on the torture issue by joining in the brief demonstration against Boeing's complicity in torture flights.

Time: 9 A.M., Monday, 27 April 2009.

Place: Sidewalk on north side of McFetridge Drive, along back (south) entrance to Field Museum. Map

Occasion: Annual shareholders' meeting of Boeing Company.

We are planning a peaceful picket and distribution of flyers to arriving Boeing shareholders, on a public sidewalk, where no permit is required.

It is important for us to have a significant presence both to make our point about Boeing/Jeppesen involvement in torture flights and to assert our First Amendment rights of peaceable assembly in public space.

We will disband when the shareholder meeting begins, not long after 10 AM. So, this is not a big investment of time to make some important statements of our principles.

Please circulate this notice to your friends and other potential supporters.

See you there! Bob

Here is text of flyer we will distribute. It explains why we are conducting this demonstration for the second year in succession:

BOEING/JEPPESEN

Jeppesen Dataplan, Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of Boeing Company. An ACLU lawsuit charges that Jeppesen has sold to the CIA direct flight services that enabled the delivery of captives in U.S. custody to secret overseas locations where "friendly governments" as well as CIA operatives carried out their torture.

Boeing refuses to provide information. In response to our protest at the 2008 shareholders' meeting the company repeated its refusal to disclose any information about dealings with its clients and even stated that Boeing will not inquire into purposes of such flights: a kind of Eichmanesque "don't ask, don't tell, we'll just help deliver the goods" stance. But the "goods" in this case have been human beings conveyed to torture.

Unfortunately, the Obama Justice Department has re-asserted the Bush "state secrecy" claim to try to block airing of these issues in the ACLU lawsuit, which at the moment is awaiting a decision by a U.S. court of Appeals. The new release of "torture memos" does not cover what was done to victims CIA/Jeppesen delivered to foreign countries and of course the President's grant of impunity to CIA torturers provides no real accountability, not even for the civil damages ACLU seeks for victims in its suit.

Statements by former Jeppesen employess, records of flight plans, European investigations and other sources indicate that Jeppesen/Boeing provided (and may still be providing) flight and logistical support for dozens, perhaps hundreds of "extraordinary rendition" flights which led to brutal torture with no semblance of due process in countries such as Jordan, Thailand, Egypt, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan (where some were boiled alive), Morocco, and Afghanistan. (Source: Stephen Grey, Ghost Plane, 2007.) Victims were in some cases kidnapped (in one case off the streets of Milan), in others turned over for bounty payments by local enemies. U.S. taypayer money has been paid to Jeppesen/Boeing for travel services to CIA employees engaged in transferring these prisoners to predictable torture in flagrant violation of U.S. and international law.

Even though President Obama has ordered the closing of CIA "black sites" there remains uncertainty concerning the commitment not to deliver captives into the hands of foreign torturers; and the substitution of the Bagram detention center in Afghanistan for Guantanamo raises further concerns and possibilities of flights conveying detainees in U.S. custody to undisclosed mistreatment and even torture.

According to Meg Satterwaite, attorney for Ahmed Bashmilah, "This is a program that could not exist without corporate complicity. Jeppesen is a crucial example here. The CIA used purportedly civilian planes to avoid certain procedures that they normally would need to use if the used, for example, military planes or official government planes. So the corporate complicity is actually a crucial part of the CIA program."

Boeing's silence and efforts by the U.S. government to put the lid of secrecy on these atrocities will not stop our campaign to insist that Boeing recognize that TORTURE IS BAD BUSINESS.

Whatever the stance of the U.S. government, we call upon Boeing to release information on these practices and to renounce all such business in the future.

- Bob Clarke, for the Coalition to Ground Boeing Torture Flights (www.groundtortureflights.com)