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Sat

Jan

2024

Elective Military Corps Programs in Schools Should Not Be Forced Upon Minority and Low-income Students

Submitted by nnomy

Wed

Dec

Hollywood’s role in recruiting for US military

Submitted by hannah on Wed, 17/12/2014 - 12:34

WATCH THE VIDEO

American teenage children are being tracked, targeted, and sometimes captured by a global military industrial media complex.

Parents of teens are seldom aware of how their children are at the rising risk of being systematically targeted, manipulated and psychologically remodeled for use within the war-machine.

Across the military, there is a wide-speared belief that positive media images correlate with higher recruitment and retention rates.

In this edition of the Hollywood Cut, we will examine the role of Hollywood in recruiting for the US military.

AY/MHB

Source: PressTV

Wed

Dec

Documentary: Moving on – Surviving Lord Resistance Army

Submitted by hannah on Wed, 17/12/2014 - 12:26

Trigger warning: this video includes footage of people talking about abuse against children, murder and abduction.

Moving on – Surviving Lord Resistance Army is an intimate and honest documentary on what it means for children and youth to be forced into cruel situations. The documentary demonstrates the need for children to process their experiences, to find a way of living and their deep wish to contribute to a better society and future for all.

Annette Giertsen - Monday 2 June 2014

Documentary: Moving on – Surviving Lord Resistance Army

Tue

Dec

Military activities in UK schools & colleges: what are the issues and what you can do

Submitted by hannah on Tue, 16/12/2014 - 13:57

Military activities in UK schools & colleges: what are the issues and what you can do

This 2-sided ForcesWatch briefing (2014):

outlines the extent and nature of armed forces visits to schools
details the Department for Education's 'Military ethos in schools' policy.
outlines the concerns about these activities
suggests what students, parents and others can do to challenge them.

Download here.

English translation unavailable for .

Thu

Dec

Disaster militarism

Submitted by hannah on Thu, 11/12/2014 - 16:52

The country’s military institutions must not be seen as deserving of special consideration. Once the ethos of public service has been smashed and discredited by neoliberal restructuring, the danger is that it will take more than an army to bring it back.

Thu

Dec

Football, the military and one Florida high school student’s difficult choice

Submitted by Gary on Thu, 11/12/2014 - 15:05

In the Florida Panhandle, football and military seen as ways out. Marine Recruiter Master Sgt. Newton McPherson addresses students during a visit to a JROTC class at Jefferson County Middle/High School. COLIN HACKLEY/For The Washington Post

By Kent Babb -

MONTICELLO, Fla. — The binder sat open on his adoptive mother’s lap, turned to the page where the scholarship papers lay in a transparent sleeve.

Nik Branham said nothing, holding the phone in its camouflage case close enough that his face glowed. The woman supported her 17-year-old’s plan to join the Army, but she didn’t understand it. These papers were a miracle, as she saw it, college at least partially paid for because of the hell he had survived, a chance at an education and maybe a few more years of football, the game he once loved.

Thu

Dec

There Is No Future in War: Youth Rise Up, a Manifesto

Submitted by Gary on Thu, 11/12/2014 - 13:49

A peace sign printed on the American Flag is raised during a protest against the Vietnam War in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Archive / History Channel)

Statement written by Ben Norton, Tyra Walker, Anastasia Taylor, Alli McCracken, Colleen Moore, Jes Grobman, Ashley Lopez / Codepink -

Once again, US politicians and pundits are beating the drums of war, trying to get our nation involved in yet another conflict. A few years ago it was Iran, with “all options on the table.” Last year it was a red line that threatened to drag us into the conflict in Syria. This time it’s Iraq.

We, the youth of America, have grown up in war, war war. War has become the new norm for our generation. But these conflicts—declared by older people but fought and paid for by young people—are robbing us of our future and we’re tired of it.

There is no future in war.

We, the youth of America, are taking a stand against war and reclaiming our future.

War does not work. Period.

War does not work from an economic perspective

Mon

Dec

Call of Duty: gaming's role in the military-entertainment complex

Submitted by hannah on Mon, 08/12/2014 - 11:32

How a writer on the world’s biggest shoot-’em-up has come to advise Washington on the future of warfare

Six months after Dave Anthony left his job as a writer and producer on the video game series Call of Duty, he received an unexpected phone-call from Washington DC.

That week, the caller, Steve Grundman, a former Pentagon official who served in a succession of appointments at the US Department of Defense during the 1990s, had been watching his son play Call of Duty: Black Ops 2. “Grundman told me that he’d been struck by the realism and authenticity in the game and in particular the story,” says Anthony. “So struck by it, in fact, that he’d been compelled to track me down.”

Mon

Dec

S. Sudan's Yau Yau pledges to demobilize child soldiers

Submitted by hannah on Mon, 08/12/2014 - 10:57

The demobilization process, which is expected to end in February, is aimed at reintegrating former child soldiers into their respective communities.

World Bulletin/News Desk

An agreement has been reached to demobilize more than 2,000 child soldiers from the former rebel South Sudan Democratic Movement/Cobra faction (SSDM/Cobra faction) of David Yau Yau.

"More than 2,000 children are going to be released by the cobra faction," Ettie Higgins, UNICEF's deputy country representative, told The Anadolu Agency on Friday.

"There will be a need for psychosocial support for them. They need vocational training and they need to be reintegrated into community life," she said.

Thu

Dec

Indigenous military course pushing would-be recruits to their limits

Submitted by hannah on Thu, 04/12/2014 - 17:34

Warrant Officer Watego had been in the Army for 40 years, and was an Aboriginal elder from the Northern Rivers district of New South Wales.

He said the course was a wonderful reflection of the symbiotic relationship between Indigenous Australians and the nation’s military.

"It provides opportunities. There is no limit to what can be achieved in a structured environment like the defence force – it’s a continuation of learning and self-development," he said.

"You come from a community or family into a much bigger community or family."

Not all those who graduate from the course will enter the military or public service, but it offers insight into what’s required.

Those who wish to pursue the military furtherwere eligible to sit the next phase of recruitment which included an aptitude test.

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Countering Military Recruitment

WRI's new booklet, Countering Military Recruitment: Learning the lessons of counter-recruitment campaigns internationally, is out now. The booklet includes examples of campaigning against youth militarisation across different countries with the contribution of grassroot activists.

You can order a paperback version here.