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Militarization

Atlanta’s Attack On Cop City Protesters Should Be A Warning To Us All

June 30, 2023 Angela Y. Davis and Barbara Ransby, Truthout. , , , , ,
The ongoing attack on the network of environmental and abolitionist activists in Atlanta should make all people concerned with the right to protest, the future of the environment and the rise of militarized police forces take notice. At 5 am on June 6, after over 200 community members had spoken against moving forward with the facility, the Atlanta City Council voted to allocate $31 million in public funds toward construction of a militarized police training center dubbed “Cop City.” This was the most recent development in a fierce and violent struggle over police expansion and forest preservation in Georgia, and has repercussions well beyond the state.

Atlanta Is Already A ‘Cop City’; This Is Why The Fight Is Intensifying

June 27, 2023 Demetrius “Dee” Vaughn, Reckon. , , , , ,
I’ve lived in Atlanta for my entire life. I tried to leave a few times, but l always somehow made my way back. I’ve never felt the sense of community that I feel here anywhere else. It’s a Black city, steeped in southern hospitality. That means that we’ll find a way to help each other, even if we don’t have the resources. It’s a community of deep creativity, a city of hustlers and artists with a culture of Blackness that people from other places often can’t understand. But it’s also a place where the gap between the rich and the poor is painfully clear. That gap is marked by the presence of police in low-income Black neighborhoods like mine.

Students Protest US Militarization Of Papua New Guinea

May 26, 2023 Merolyn Ten, Post Courier. , , ,
Papua New Guinea - Students of Mt Hagen Technical College (HATECO) in Western Highlands Province staged a protest march to stop the signing of Defence Cooperation Agreement between PNG and the United States. Giving the same reasons, the University of Papua New Guinea, the University of Technology and the University of Goroka have all conducted protest marches demanding the Prime Minister James Marape not to sign the deal until and unless the citizens are fully aware of what is entailed in the document. Mt Hagen City was crowded yesterday with vehicles as hundreds of students and people marched around the city demanding the government not to sign the pact.

Organize A Stop Cop City Solidarity Action

April 29, 2023 Rising Tide North America, Popular Resistance. , , ,
The organizing against Cop City continues. Over 70% of Atlanta residents do not want it. For years, the city residents have been outspoken in opposition, filling city halls, organizing tree sits, contacting every level of government. In response the Georgia State Police murdered a land defender, Tortuguita in January, and have since charged over 40 people with domestic terrorism. Georgia police have responded with overwhelming and disproportionate violence. We know that this state repression will only grow with a huge influx of police into the majority Black city, and that cops from all over will be trained at this $90 million dollar facility. We need to stop Cop City.

The ‘American Plan’ 2.0

April 7, 2023 Kim Ives, Haiti Liberte. , , ,
In the late 1980s, after the Feb. 7, 1986 fall of Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, Washington began to implement in earnest its neo-liberal “structural adjustment” of Haiti. “Structural adjustment” is simply an economist’s euphemism for crushing austerity cuts, comprised of firing thousands of state workers, sale and closure of state enterprises, the dramatic lowering of tariffs, and the slashing of social programs. Journalist Michael Massing deftly described the havoc that the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID or simply AID) brought to Haiti in late 1987 in the New York Review of Books.

Cop City Aims To Transform Police Into A Paramilitary Force

March 6, 2023 Margaret Flowers, Clearing the FOG. , , ,
Atlanta, Georgia, with the support of the police force, banks and corporations, is trying to build a paramilitary police base in the Weelaunie Forest on 300 acres that was promised as a recreation space to the majority-black community living nearby. The base will be used to house police from across the nation and internationally to train them in urban warfare. The local community is largely opposed to it. They have been using traditional tactics of education, demonstrations and holding space through an occupation of the forest. This has all been met with state repression - violence, the murder of a 26-year old forest defender, arrests and felony terrorism charges. Kamau Franklin, of Community Movement Builders, speaks about the efforts to stop Cop City and why it represents the next level in the escalation of the militarization of police that will impact all of us. A week of action is currently underway.

‘Stop Cop City’ Week Of Action Begins In Atlanta

March 5, 2023 Unicorn Riot. , , , ,
Atlanta, Georgia – Atlanta-area forest defenders, community activists and their allies from around the country and the world are initiating a ‘week of action’ against a proposed ‘Cop City’ urban warfare campus and a movie industry facility that would demolish much of the largest urban forest in the country. The upcoming week of protests and direct actions comes less than two months after Georgia State Patrol shot and killed Manuel ‘Tortuguita’ Terán in suspicious circumstances at a defense encampment near the proposed site on January 18, 2023. The week of action is kicking off with a rally at Gresham Park, with a music festival scheduled for the rest of the weekend.

Devastating Effects Of Militarization On Puerto Rico And Her People

March 2, 2023 Teri Mattson, WTF is Going on in Latin America and the Caribbean. , , ,
The U.S. has been overtly and covertly intervening in Puerto Rico's internal affairs since 1898. Like the Spanish, British, Dutch, and the French, the U.S. understood the strategic value of the Puerto Rican archipelago, which would give their expanding empire a military advantage toward enforcing the Monroe Doctrine, thereby securing its established intent to dominate the Western Hemisphere. A new wave of militarization began soon after the change of colonial ownership, the implications of which would devastate the island municipalities of Culebra and Vieques. Culebra was militarized in 1901 and expelled the Navy in 1975. Vieques was militarized in 1941 and expelled the Navy in 2003.

Black University, White Power: HBCU Covers For US Imperialism

February 1, 2023 Erica Caines, Black Agenda Report. , , ,
The crisis of identity-reductionism has led to the overwhelming placement of Africans in positions to serve empire and double down on patriotism. Most recently, Howard University President Wayne A. I. Frederick, M.D., MBA, hosted U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin III, and U.S. Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall who awarded the university with a $90 million contract to serve as the 15th University Affiliated Research Center (UARC). The cultural and social significance of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) dominates almost all aspects of conversations centered on Black schools.  The UARC award will enable Howard to lead a consortium of HBCUs in creating a pipeline for students from elementary to post-graduate education with the UARC infrastructure, the university arm of the Department of Defense.

Ex-US Special Envoy To Haiti: Send Special Forces To Haiti Or 25,000 Troops

October 3, 2022 Dan Cohen, Mintpress News. , , ,
On September 19, activists gathered outside the White House to commemorate one year since the mass deportation of Haitian asylum seekers in Del Rio, Texas. The commemoration came as a popular uprising in Haiti entered its third week, sparked by International Monetary Fund-imposed fuel price hikes amid spiraling inflation and a state of total insecurity. Interim Prime Minister Ariel Henry has sought to avoid blame, telling citizens that, We will have to readjust the price of gas. I know there are people who will try to heat up your heads, tell you to take to the streets so that gas does not come back to its normal price… Violence has no place. Violence won’t get us anywhere. I put out a call for calm to everyone.” The U.S. and its junior partners, however, have sought to shift blame for the unrest onto local economic interests and so-called “gangs.”

ROTC Redux: A Bete Noire Of The Anti-War Movement Is In The News

August 25, 2022 Steve Early and Suzanne Gordon, Popular Resistance. , , ,
Fifty years ago, no symbol of university complicity with the military angered more students than the on-campus presence of the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC). The manpower requirements of the Vietnam era could not be met by conscription, draft-driven enlistments, and the graduating classes of military service academies alone. The Department of Defense also needed commissioned officers trained in DOD-funded Military Science Departments at private and state universities. Anti-ROTC campaigning became a major focus of the campus-based movement against the Vietnam War. Critics demanded everything from stripping ROTC courses of academic credit to, more popularly, kicking the program off campus.

In Atlanta, ‘Cop City’ Sparks A Web Of Resistance

August 2, 2022 Sara Herschander, Waging Nonviolence. , , ,
In the year since the Atlanta City Council approved plans for construction of a $90 million police training center in the South River Forest, a growing network of resistance has spread to nearly every corner of the city, from preschools to protests at subcontractors’ offices. It’s a multi-pronged strategy that activists say has been necessary to confront the corrupt connections between government, corporations, subcontractors and the police that have allowed the project — known as “Cop City” — to move forward, despite immense and clear public opposition. “All of these systems are interconnected — it isn’t a question just about policing,” said Jasmine Burnett, organizing director at Community Movement Builders, a collective of Black Atlantans that has been working to support local residents amidst the increased police presence in response to opposition.

Top Gun Maverick – A Counter-Narrative

June 14, 2022 Pat Elder, Military Poisons. , , ,
I saw “Top Gun: Maverick” yesterday. It was absolutely horrible. The film sets a new standard for state-orchestrated, pro-military, mass indoctrination. Goebbels, chief propagandist for Hitler’s Nazi Party, would be in awe of the shiny death plane and the spotlights and the movie star in his tuxedo. Tom Cruise stars as Captain Pete Mitchell in Top Gun: Maverick. In 1990, Cruise expressed misgivings about the original film when he said, “Some people felt that ‘Top Gun’ (1986) was a right-wing film to promote the Navy. And a lot of kids loved it. But I want the kids to know that’s not the way war is. That’s why I didn’t go on and make ‘Top Gun II’ and ‘III’ and ‘IV’ and ‘V.’ That would have been irresponsible.”  - Indiewire That was 32 years ago. Men change their minds about things.

When America No Longer Exports Carnage As A Business Model, Maybe We’ll Stop Seeing It In The Streets Here

June 11, 2022 Jacqueline Luqman, Black Agenda Report. , , ,
Speaking in the dimly lit Cross Hall in the White House, and flanked on either side by rows of candles and the soft lighting of the chandeliers and torchiere lamps above and behind him, Joe Biden conjured up his best human emotions to deliver an impassioned promise that he would do something about gun violence in this country. "How much more carnage are we willing to accept?" Biden asked, demanding Republicans in particular end their blockade of gun control votes. Since the mass shootings in Uvalde, Texas, and Buffalo, New York, Biden has been pressed to do something, which he promised he would do, but his speech was only tough talk to encourage Congress to reinstate a ban on assault weapons, to expand background check requirements for gun purchases, create new rules for safely storing weapons, enact new "red flag" laws that would prevent gun sales to those with criminal records, repeal liability shields for gun manufacturers and provide more mental health services for students.

Hundreds Protest Biden’s Visit To South Korea

May 23, 2022 Telesur English. , , ,
Amid heavy security, hundreds of South Koreans gathered in front of a hotel where U.S. President Joe Biden was staying in Seoul to protest against the president's visit. People crowded in front of the Grand Hyatt Seoul hotel, near the presidential office, in the Yongsan district of Seoul, where Biden stayed during his state visit to the Asian country, which ended on Sunday. The discomfort over the presence of Biden is due to the fact that it will fuel tensions and the war on the Korean peninsula, according to analysts consulted by the local press. The U.S. president arrived in Seoul on Friday as part of a tour of South Korea and Japan to address various issues, including tensions on the Korean peninsula.
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