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Dec

2024

“You Can’t Buy Paradise with Blood”

Submitted by Gary

Tue

Mar

Counter-recruitment and School Demilitarization Activism: From Past Victories to the Challenges Ahead

Submitted by Gary on Tue, 18/03/2014 - 21:01

Education Not Arms Coalition: In the audience are about 70 students, parents and others showing their support for the policy

Rick Jahnkow -

Counter-recruitment and school demilitarization work in the U.S. has gone through several cycles of expansion and contraction during the last few decades. The first expansion was during the early 1980s when it was supported by a small number of national organizations, such as the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), War Resisters League, Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors (CCCO) and National Lawyers Guild. Most grassroots activities at the time were carried out by chapters of these organizations and a number of independent community peace groups (including COMD and, eventually, Project YANO).

Tue

Mar

Notes Toward More Powerful Organizing: Pitfalls and Potential in Counter-recruitment Organizing

Submitted by Gary on Tue, 18/03/2014 - 20:20

Amy Hagopian, co-chairwoman of the Garfield High PTSA, lights up Marine Sgt. Christopher Matthews in the school lunchroom. Hagopian is trying to get military recruiters barred from the school. The Marines and the Army have failed to meet recruiting quotas in recent months. Photo: Dan DeLong/Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Matt Guynn -

It’s not necessary to go to Washington for a protest to significantly engage key issues related to the War on Terrorism. Try going to a local coffee shop or any other public place where you can strike up a conversation with youth or young adults about the choices and paths that the young people in your community see in front of them.

Tue

Mar

Israel Bans Activists From High School Civil Rights Debates

Submitted by Gary on Tue, 18/03/2014 - 19:54

Young Israeli women who refused to serve in the IDF

New Profile -

New Profile, the feminist movement to civil-ize Israeli society, wrote Minister of Education, Gideon Saar, this morning, strongly condemning his recent instructions to prohibit its members' participation in high school debates convened by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) on questions of human rights and freedom of expression.

New Profile wrote the minister that his act had exposed the government's true stand on civil rights and freedom of expression, also belying the Education Ministry's professed respect for tolerance.

“The minister's step was taken in tandem with the decision he took to send yet more military personnel into schools—a move designed to increase enthusiasm for fighting,” New Profile advised in its letter.

Tue

Mar

Military Recruiters Have Gone Too Far The Pentagon is using video games to infiltrate middle schools.

Submitted by Gary on Tue, 18/03/2014 - 17:25

A team of CyberPatriot Marine Military Academy cadets partake in the Cyber Patriot National High School Defense competition, in Harlingen, Texas, on Jan. 14, 2012 Read more: Military Recruiters Have Gone Too Far | TIME.com http://ideas.time.com/2013/09/17/military-recruiters-have-gone-too-far/#ixzz2wKtBez6w

Corey Mead -

In its rush to find the next generation of cyberwarriors, the military has begun to infiltrate our high schools and even our middle schools, blurring the line between education and recruitment. The Air Force, for example, runs a “CyberPatriot” national high school cyberdefense competition, geared toward influencing students to pursue careers in cybersecurity. The Pentagon, meanwhile, has its own annual “Digital Forensics Challenge,” in which teams of players develop their own investigative tools. But no one is as innovative in his approach as Colonel Casey Wardynski (ret.)—for 16 years the Army’s top economist and now the superintendent of schools in Huntsville, Ala.

English translation unavailable for .

Mon

Mar

Building The Perfect Kill House With Video Games

Submitted by Gary on Mon, 17/03/2014 - 21:55

Brian Crecente -

Armed with M4 automatic rifles, swathed in body armour and combat fatigues, the five-man US Special Forces Airborne entry team stacks up outside the entrance to the house.

An explosion sends bits of the door flying inside. The men slide through the still-smoking opening, fanning to the right and left, guns up, safeties off, fingers on triggers. The live rounds start flying almost immediately. Bullets tear through the men standing inside the house, knocking them to the ground. One round hits a terrorist in the head, a bright red plume of blood splatters against the wall.

Special Forces don’t usually play games, but for their Fort Bragg training they sometimes make an exception to that rule.

The Laser Shot Virtual Shoot House gives these specialised warriors a chance to blow in doors, fire live ammo and take out life-sized enemies, all in a real environment helped along by quite a bit of video game technology.

Mon

Mar

Coming of Age in a Land of Broken Dreams

Submitted by Gary on Mon, 17/03/2014 - 21:16

Dana Visalli -

English translation unavailable for .

Mon

Mar

The Military Enlistment Opportunity Act: a New Kind of Draft?

Submitted by hannah on Mon, 10/03/2014 - 17:12

Rick Jahnkow

Originally posted on Draft Notices

It’s well established that many people who join the U.S. military do so because of their economic status. It could be that they do not see options for a civilian job that pays a livable wage, they cannot afford health insurance, or they believe they’ll never be able to go to college without financial aid from the Post-9/11 GI Bill. Whether this belief is accurate or based on an individual’s limited awareness of alternatives, military recruiters are effective at exploiting economic predicament to meet their monthly quotas. Many of us refer to it as economic conscription or the “poverty draft.” It is the reason why counter-recruitment groups spend much of their time and energy gathering and distributing information on alternative sources for job training and college financial aid.

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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.