All articles

Tue
12
Aug

Army recruiters visit London's poorest schools most often

The British Regular Army visits schools as a major part of its recruitment programme and a third of new soldier recruits are aged under 18. These recruits may face serious personal risk and challenging moral dilemmas, yet their terms of service can prevent them from leaving the army for up to six years. Given that minors are less able than adults to make free, informed and responsible decisions about enlisting, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child and the House of Commons/Lords Joint Committee on Human Rights have recommended raising the minimum age of recruitment to 18. Both Committees also recommend that the UK ensure that disadvantaged communities are not targeted for recruitment.

Tue
12
Aug

The Militarization of Young People in Chile

When examining militarisation and young people in this country, we must necessarily look back and take into account the hundreds of years of militarism in the area's history: land occupations and violence by European colonists, construction of the 'national heroes' to motivate patriotism, legislation of obligatory military training, exponential military spending versus the social spending diet, introduction of of military training in civilian schools, and mutation of the armed forces according to the dominant economic model. All of these measures have targeted sectors of the population that are economically vulnerable but are also potentially quite strong in political terms: the boys and girls and young people of this country. The vulnerability of this sector of the population allows militarisation to settle in comfortably and then neutralize possible pockets of resistance.

Tue
12
Aug

Militarization and masculinities: Refusing militarism is not possible without refusing hegemonic masculinity

It’s one thing to call a ceasefire, another to decommission militarized masculinity

Andreas Speck

“Questioning the militarist value system and its practices which are identified with military service, one is also obliged to question the hegemonic understanding of masculinity. In Turkey, military service is a laboratory in which masculinity is reproduced. The patriarchal system is solidified through military service. I objected to military service, because I am also against this laboratory manufactured masculinity. The struggle against militarism defined in heterosexist terms through sexist structures finds its fundamental expression in anti-militarism. This refers to freedom of sexual orientation, gender equality and total and unrestricted freedom”.1

Mon
11
Aug

Publicity campaigns in public spaces

The German Bundeswehr in the struggle for the hearts and minds of the German people

Mon
11
Aug

Counter-recruitment in the United States

With a seemingly endless war on terrorism gnawing away at the possibility for a lasting peace many activists in the United Sates are finding that they are drawn to a form of activism that deals with the relationship that young people have to militarism. The work is called, counter military recruitment or counter-recruitment for short, and it primary focus is to demilitarise a nation by attempting to first demilitarise the minds of its youth.

Mon
11
Aug

obama’s war on queer and trans youth

Image: zinelibrary.info/files/bb_queercounterrecruitment.pdf

Editorial by Ariel Attack, originally written for the Queers Against Obama blog, March 9, 2009. Some edits made.
Taken from: Bash Back Denver: Be one of those queers you've heard about: undermine the army's ability to fight! Queer Counter-Recruitment, May 2009

If a George Bush policy had had the systematic effect of bringing death, injury, sexual assault, harassment, psychological trauma, and suspension of civil rights to poor queer and trans people, while expanding the might of the military, there would have been widespread outrage from queers, anti-war activists, and liberals. Yet President Obama is able to push forward such a policy under the guise of equal rights and with the hearty encouragement of spellbound liberals and wealthy gays.

Mon
11
Aug

Antimilitarism in Action

In September 2012 an antimilitarist action week took place in Germany – an evaluation

Mon
11
Aug

Military in Schools in the United States

Oskar Castro

Every year in the United States, millions of young people are faced with the difficult challenge of figuring out what to do with their lives after they graduate from high school. For various reasons, many of them end up considering joining the US Armed Forces, but the commonality among all of those who enlist and those who don’t enlist is that they are all regularly bombarded with military recruitment propaganda pretty much from the time they are born. Whether it is on their television, their computer, at the toy store, or in their classroom, the pitch to embrace the military is everywhere.

Mon
11
Aug

Publicity campaign in the classroom

Photo: The German Bundeswehr promoting itself at a school

Recruitment and publicity of the Germany military in schools

Michael Schulze von Glaßer

The German military has two fundamental problems. The first problem is related to personnel: in 2009, the German Bundeswehr should have recruited 23,700 new soldiers [1]. But with 21,784 new recruits, the target was not reached — in the previous years the target usually was reached. In 2009, 14,000 open positions could be filled with external applicants, and almost 7,800 soldiers could be won through recruitment within the military — for example from the pool of serving conscripts. With the suspension of conscription in Germany from summer 2011, the German Bunderwehr will need to recruit completely from the civilian public.

Mon
11
Aug

Winning hearts and minds over to the army and defence industry

Photo: Military recruiting in South Africa

Laura Pollecut

Conscription propped up the apartheid government. Without its regular intake of white youth, the apartheid regime could not have stayed in power as long as it did. The movement against conscription gained ground in the 1980s and was one of the contributing factors to the then government’s decision to enter negotiations. Finally after the first democratic elections in 1994, conscription became a thing of the past when South Africa introduced a voluntary professional army.

Pages