Militarization

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. Podcast – WTF is Going on in Latin America & the Caribbean colonization, Environment, Militarization, Puerto Rico

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. Educate! HBCUs, Howard University, Militarization, US Imperialism

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. Educate! Haiti, Mass Action, Militarization, US Imperialism

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. Educate! Higher Education, Militarization, ROTC, Student Activism

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. Resist! Atlanta, Cop City, Militarization, Police

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. Educate! Hollywood, Media, Militarization, Propaganda

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. Educate! Gun violence, Joe Biden, Mass Shootings, Militarization

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. Resist! Joe Biden, Korean War, Militarization, South Korea

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.

Legislators Declare ‘Over Militarization’ A Threat To Hawai’i’s Security

March 24, 2022 Col. Ann Wright, Popular Resistance. Educate! Hawaii, Militarization, Security, US military

In a remarkable twist, four members of the Legislature of the State of Hawai’i are finally challenging the U.S. military in Hawai’i. No doubt using the U.S. Navy’s massive jet fuel leak at Red Hill that contaminated the drinking water for over 100,000 residents of O’ahu as an inflection point of deteriorating military and Hawai’i citizen relationships, on March 23, 2022, four legislators held a hearing titled “Declaring Over Militarization to Be a Threat to the Security of Hawai’i and the International Community.” Having served 29 years in the US Army and Army Reserves and retiring as a Colonel, also being a U.S. diplomat in the Asia-Pacific, for two years at the US Embassy in the Federated States of Micronesia and at the US Embassy in Mongolia and as a U.S. diplomat...

Activists Are Occupying The Woods To Block A New Police Facility

February 22, 2022 Ella Fassler, Vice. Educate! #StopCopCity, Atlanta, Militarization, Police

Inside Atlanta’s sprawling South River Forest, city officials are moving forward with plans to raze dozens of acres of woodlands to build a $90 million police training facility that locals are calling “Cop City.” In response, Defend the Atlanta Forest activists who call themselves “forest defenders” have begun occupying the woods in an attempt to physically halt the facility’s construction—sabotaging construction vehicles and building barricades around a police-free autonomous zone that serves as both a living space and staging ground for the resistance effort. The forest defenders say the proposed 85-acre facility, which proponents are calling the Atlanta Institute for Social Justice and Public Safety Training, would harm air quality in the Atlanta area and prioritize policing and social control in a city that desperately needs life-affirming infrastructure such as affordable housing.

Two Perspectives On Defend The Atlanta Forest

February 17, 2022 It's Going Down. Resist! #StopCopCity, Atlanta, Militarization, Police

They say Atlanta is a city in a forest. What happens when cops, developers, and Hollywood team up to decimate some of the very woods the city claims to treasure? In the last year, a widespread and diverse movement has sprung up to Defend the Atlanta Forest from a secretive proposal to build a police training facility, flanked by a movie soundstage, in a wooded parcel in southeast Atlanta. In this interview from January 30, just days after a major action ending in a handful of arrests, we speak with two participants in the movement about its origins, tactics, and insurgent vision. Their story is of getting ahead of the media, outsmarting the cops, and coming to know the woods through the struggle.

Activists Protest ‘Cop City’ In Atlanta

February 16, 2022 Sukainah Abid-Kons, The Georgia Voice. Resist! #StopCopCity, Atlanta, Militarization, Police

In September 2021, the Atlanta City Council voted to approve the new police training facility for the Atlanta Police Department. The Atlanta Police Foundations, who are largely sponsoring the $90 million dollar project, have referred to the planned facility as a new “Public Safety Training Center.” Activists in the Atlanta area have dubbed it “Cop City” and have been protesting for months to stop the project. On Saturday (February 12), the small area of the Intrenchment Creek trailhead was filled with protestors, there to express their opposition to Cop City. The project — which has the support of Governor Brian Kemp, former mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, and new mayor Andre Dickens — is planned to be built where the Old Prison Farm now sits and will require deforestation to make room for the facility.

Defund The Global Climate Wall

November 6, 2021 Todd Miller, The Border Chronicle. Create! Border Wall, climate crisis, Immigration, Militarization

Blinken’s sentiment was echoed by a report on the impact of climate change and migration from the White House earlier this month, one of a slew of reports as the U.S. prepared for the United Nations summit on climate change that begins in Glasgow on October 31. According to the report, “The current migration situation extending from the U.S.-Mexico border into Central America presents an opportunity for the United States to model good practice and discuss openly managing migration humanely, [and] highlight the role of climate change in migration.”

Police Increasingly Cite Climate Disasters When Seeking Military Gear

October 24, 2021 Molly Redden and Alexander C. Kaufman, HuffPost. Educate! 1033 program, climate crisis, Militarization, Police

When locals learned that the Johnson County, Iowa, sheriff’s office had gotten hold of a massive, mine-resistant vehicle, Sheriff Lonny Pulkrabek reassured a skeptical public that officers would primarily use it during extreme weather events in order to save residents from the state’s extraordinary blizzards or floods. “Essentially it’s really a rescue, recovery and transport vehicle,” Pulkrabek said in 2014. But in the seven years since, the vehicle — which comes from the Pentagon’s much-maligned 1033 Program that arms local law enforcement with weapons, gear and vehicles leftover from the country’s foreign wars — has been used for almost anything but that. Iowa City police, who share use of the vehicle with the sheriff’s office, staged it near last year’s racial justice protests, where officers fired tear gas at peaceful protesters for refusing to disperse.

Biden Threatens To Deploy National Guard To Move Cargo

October 24, 2021 Barry Grey, WSWS. Educate! Joe Biden, Militarization, Ports, Trucking

Baltimore, MD - At a CNN town hall event Thursday evening, President Joe Biden revealed that he is considering using National Guard troops to ease the bottleneck at Southern California ports. In response to questioning from moderator Anderson Cooper, Biden said the plans potentially include having soldiers drive trucks from the ports to warehouses and distribution centers. This would mean the militarization of the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, which handle 40 percent of US imports. It would be a direct state attack on longshoremen, truck drivers and warehouse workers, with soldiers serving essentially as scabs operating in behalf of the private owners of the ports, trucking firms, shipping companies and major retailers such as Walmart. It could also directly impact rail workers.

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