NEWSLETTER #2 ON MILITARISM
IN ARKANSAS
Contents of #1
WAR
MEDIA: Arkansas
Reporting the Empire:
C-130 AT LRAFB
US Senate Passes War Bill
War Cemeteries
Warriors
Surveillance
RESISTANCE
Representative Snyder?
Real Heroes: Peace
Contents of #2 Oct. 10, 2012
Dick Bennett: Call
for Officials’ Candidness
Dick: Call for Economic Conversion
Dick:: Grassroots Militarism
Johnson: Pentagon
Arms Police
Ledbertter,
Hartung: US Military-Industrial Complex
Dick: Give Us a Military Base
MILITARY
IN EDUCATION
Dick:
Resisting Military Recruiting in the
Schools
Swanson
Interviews Pat Elder on Student Privacy
Giroux: Against Militarizing Higher Education
Officials: Why Shortage of Money for Public Services?
The Northwest
Arkansas Times of Oct. 7, 2012 led with this page one banner headline: “Finances Rule Politics.” Although the article focuses on county
government, the headline describes city and state government as well. What’s the problem? Not enough money not only for all the hopes
but for all the needs. Why? Several reasons—insufficient taxes, price
inflation, population growth.
But
one cause is never mentioned, despite its powerful influence over all others; I
refer to the US US
has spent many trillions on wars, even though few of these wars were needed,
useful, or legal in defending US
Some might argue that Pentagon spending
(now $600 billion not including the wars) supports the economy. But that is true in only a few
localities. The Pentagon and its wars
generate “comparatively few jobs per dollar spent,” whereas money appropriated
for highways, trails, mass transportation, health care, or education creates
“many more jobs” than the same amount spent on weapons. A Univ. of Massachusetts
So when city, county, and state
officials try to explain to the public why they cannot accomplish the
renovation of the ancient sewer pipes or fill all the pot holes or retrofit all
the public buildings for energy efficiency, why do they not explain that the
money has gone into the unbridled militarism of fiscally disastrous, bloody,
and futile foreign wars?
Are our state, county, and local officials
predisposed toward war and militarism? Surely not.
Do they need, as apparently do our
national leaders, to demonstrate toughness, despite abundant evidence of that
policy’s countless harms—killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people,
squandering our citizens’ treasures in life and income, our security decreased
by increasing opponents and poverty? I hope not.
So let our officials speak the truth
against imagined fears and for a more caring society, speak out against empire,
which is to say—for our towns, cities, and state.
References
Bennett,
Dick. Militarism USA : Washington County , Ark.
Blum,
William. Killing Hope and Rogue State
Lofgren,
Mike. The Party Is Over.
RESISTANCE: CONVERSION TO
CIVILIAN INDUSTRY
JOB CREATION: AN ARGUMENT AGAINST INVESTING IN MILITARY
INDUSTRY
Investing in education and mass transit creates twice as
many jobs as investing in the military.
Investing in other areas such as health care and home weatherization
creates significantly more jobs than investing the same amount in the military. Conclusion: The US
GRASSROOTS MILITARISM BIT BY
BIT
Whereas with opposing climate change we go from small to
large footprint, with militarism it has been the opposite. Militarism pervades
the US Washington County
FROM WASHINGTON COUNTY DEMOCRATS
At the last county committee meeting we voted to pay for a
booth at the 2012 National Guard Champions Cup Soccer Tournament at Springdale High School
“Pentagon Offers US Police Full Military Hardware”
Robert Johnson, Business
Insider, Dec. 6, 2011, RSN
Intro:
"The US
James
Ledbetter. Unwarranted Influence: Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Military Industrial
Complex. Yale UP, 2011.
Bill
Hartung. Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the
Military-Industrial Complex. Nation
Books, 2011.
The biggest C-130 base (essential to US imperial might) is at Jacksonville Ark.
Resisting Military Recruiting in the Schools via Testing
By Dick Bennett,
11-19-08
OPTION 8 Access to student test information is not
provided to recruiting services: READ MORE
The original
regulations can be found here: http://www.mepcom.army.mil/publications/pdf/regs/r-0601-004.pdf – the options table is found on
the 13th page of the document.
Every year, hundreds of thousands of high
school students take the basic entrance test for the U.S.
military—the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude
Battery (ASVAB). Administered free by the Pentagon in partnership with local high schools, the ASVAB is billed as part of a “career exploration program.” The military grades the test and reports are
sent to students, school counselors, and to military recruiters—and recorded in
the Pentagon’s Joint Advertising Market Research and Studies Program, a
computerized database tracking potential recruits.
The ASVAB was not designed to help
students explore careers in general. The
US Army’s School Recruiting Program Handbook states that a main purpose of the
ASVAB is to provide military recruiters “with a source of leads of high school
seniors and juniors qualified through the ASVAB for enlistment.” Its information about each test taker’s
skills, graduation plans, and contact information enable recruiters to tailor
their sales pitch to each student.
Here’s the problem with the test:
Schools can block the release of this information to recruiters by choosing
Option 8 of the ASVAB, which allows the ASVAB to be administered but prevents
data from being forwarded to recruiters, but only if the school chooses release
option 8 universally. Also, schools can universally choose Option 8 but arrange to have the
scores released for students who request that their scores are forwarded to the
military. Even if students or parents decide
to opt out from their school’s release of student contact information to
recruiters under No Child Left Behind, that opt-out decision is overridden if
students then take the ASVAB. .
Students cannot individually elect option 8.
The school can regulate its own release of information from pupil
records, but it cannot regulate the military's access to ASVAB test data,
except by declaring that all students must be tested under ASVAB release
option 8.
Montgomery
County , Maryland Montgomery County District of Columbia
What can be done?
Access under NCLB: Parents who do not wish recruiters to have
access to their children’s private information should write the Principal of
the school.
Build community support for reversing the
NCLB requirement that schools must provide contact information about students
to recruiters unless parents object.
Ask your congressional representatives to advocate changing the
requirement to read that schools must not
provide private information to recruiters unless the parents request them to.
Access via the ASVAB test: The
best way of avoiding dissemination of the test and contact information is to
not take the test. The
test is not mandatory, a fact many high schools fail to disclose. Ensure all students are aware that taking
the test is voluntary. Call for the
school to make this announcement to students prior to the administration of the
test.
Urge school administrators to offer
students who choose not to take the ASVAB an alternative place to go. Suggest that administrators offer the test
on a weekend so as not to take up valuable school time.
Build community support for banning the
ASVAB. Speak and leaflet at school board
meetings.
Encourage support for alternative career
assessment options.
Request that counter-recruitment literature
be present in school guidance counseling offices, libraries, and career
centers.
Access via
Option 8: Ask the school to choose
Option 8: Access to student test information is
not provided to recruiting services
These
efforts are part of a broad movement to reduce the military’s presence in our
schools. Much more is necessary. We must question all the ways that the
military insinuates itself into schools to condition our youth for war—visits
to schools by recruiters, programs like JROTC, Young Marines, Army’s Adventure
Van, Air Force’s Raptor Trailer.
Military propaganda begins so early in U. S. schools that we can identify them as the
military’s predominant recruitment venue.
Let’s pursue all options for reducing military recruitment in our
schools, expose the military’s agenda for our schools, and challenge the
embrace most schools have long given to all branches of the armed forces.
Reference:
Tanya Theriault & Matt Vogel, “You Do the
Military Math,” The Catholic Worker
(August-September, 2008). Statement
endorsed by AFSC, CPF, COMD, Project YANO, PGAPLP/GAPP, WRL.
The NNOMY (National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth) website
at www.nnomy.org has an excellent ASVAB
section.
Talk Nation Radio: 3-Hour
Military Test Secretly Administered in Thousands of High Schools http://www.nnomy.org/
Pat Elder of the National Coalition to Protect Student
Privacy (StudentPrivacy.org)
explains how the
Total run time: 29:00
Host: David Swanson.
Producer: David
Swanson.
Engineer: Christiane
Brown.
Music by Duke
Ellington..
Syndicated by Pacifica
Against the
Thursday 20 November 2008
by: Henry A. Giroux, t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Defense Secretary Robert Gates has announced an effort to increase the militarization of higher education.
While there is an ongoing discussion
about what shape the military-industrial complex will take under an Obama
presidency, what is often left out of this analysis is the intrusion of the
military into higher education. One example of the increasingly intensified and
expansive symbiosis between the military-industrial complex and academia was on
full display when Robert Gates, the secretary of defense, announced the
creation of what he calls a new "Minerva Consortium," ironically
named after the goddess of wisdom, whose purpose is to fund various
universities to "carry out social-sciences research relevant to national
security."(1) Gates's desire to turn universities into militarized
knowledge factories producing knowledge, research and personnel in the interest
of the Homeland (In)Security State should be of special concern for
intellectuals, artists, academics and others who believe that the university
should oppose such interests and alignments. At the very least, the emerg ence
of the Minerva Consortium raises a larger set of concerns about the ongoing
militarization of higher education in the United States
In a post-9/11 world, with its all-embracing war on terror and a culture of fear, the increasing spread of the discourse and values of militarization throughout the social order is intensifying the shift from the promise of a liberal democracy to the reality of a militarized society. Militarization suggests more than simply a militaristic ideal - with its celebration of war as the truest measure of the health of the nation and the soldier-warrior as the most noble expression of the merging of masculinity and unquestioning patriotism - but an intensification and expansion of the underlying values, practices, ideologies, social relations and cultural representations associated with military culture. What appears new about the amplified militarization of the post-9/11 world is that it has become normalized, serving as a powerful educational force that shapes our lives, memories and daily experiences. As an educational force, military power produces identities, goods, institutions, knowledge, modes of communication and affective investments - in short, it now bears down on all aspects of social life and the social order. As Michael Geyer points out, what is distinctive about the militarization of the social order is that civil society not only "organizes itself for the production of violence,"(2) but increasingly spurs a gradual erosion of civil liberties. Military power and policies are expanded to address not only matters of defense and security, but also problems associated with the entire health and social life of the nation, which are now measured by military spending, discipline and loyalty, as well as hierarchical modes of authority.
As citizens increasingly assume the roles of informer, soldier and consumer willing to enlist in or be conscripted by the totalizing war on terror, we see the very idea of the university as a site of critical thinking, public service and socially responsible research being usurped by a manic jingoism and a market-driven fundamentalism that enshrine the entrepreneurial spirit and military aggression as means to dominate and control society. This should not surprise us, since, as William G. Martin, a professor of sociology at Binghamton University, indicates, "universities, colleges and schools have been targeted precisely because they are charged with both socializing youth and producing knowledge of peoples and cultures beyond the borders of Anglo-America."(3) But rather than be lulled into complacency by the insidious spread of corporate and military power, we need to be prepared to reclaim institutions such as the university that have historically served as vital democratic spheres protecting and serving the interests of social justice and equality. What I want to suggest is that such a struggle is not only political, but also pedagogical in nature.
Over 17 million students pass through the hallowed halls of academe, and it is crucial that they be educated in ways that enable them to recognize creeping militarization and its effects throughout American society, particularly in terms of how these effects threaten "democratic government at home just as they menace the independence and sovereignty of other countries."(4) But students must also recognize how such anti-democratic forces work in attempting to dismantle the university itself as a place to learn how to think critically and participate in public debate and civic engagement.(5) In part, this means giving them the tools to fight for the demilitarization of knowledge on college campuses - to resist complicity with the production of knowledge, information and technologies in classrooms and research labs that contribute to militarized goals and violence.
Even so, there is more at stake than simply educating students to be alert to the dangers of militarization and the way in which it is redefining the very mission of higher education. Chalmers Johnson, in his continuing critique of the threat that the politics of empire presents to democracy at home and abroad, argues that if the United States is not to degenerate into a military dictatorship, in spite of Obama's election, a grass-roots movement will have to occupy center stage in opposing militarization, government secrecy and imperial power, while reclaiming the basic principles of democracy.(6) Such a task may seem daunting, but there is a crucial need for faculty, students, administrators and concerned citizens to develop alliances for long-term organizations and social movements to resist the growing ties among higher education, on the one hand, and the armed forces, intelligence agencies and war industries on the other - ties that play a crucial role in reproducing mili tarized knowledge.
Opposing militarization as part of a broader pedagogical strategy in and out of the classroom also raises the question of what kinds of competencies, skills and knowledge might be crucial to such a task. One possibility is to develop critical educational theories and practices that define the space of learning not only through the critical consumption of knowledge but also through its production for peaceful and socially just ends. In the fight against militarization and "armed intellectuals," educators need a language of critique, but they also need a language that embraces a sense of hope and collective struggle. This means elaborating the meaning of politics through a concerted effort to expand the space of politics by reclaiming "the public character of spaces, relations, and institutions regarded as private" on the other.(7) We live at a time when matters of life and death are central to political governance. While registering the shift in power toward the large-scale pr oduction of death, disposability and exclusion, a new understanding of the meaning and purpose of higher education must also point to notions of agency, power and responsibility that operate in the service of life, democratic struggles and the expansion of human rights.
Finally, if higher education is to come to grips with the multilayered pathologies produced by militarization, it will have to rethink not merely the space of the university as a democratic public sphere, but also the global space in which intellectuals, educators, students, artists, labor unions and other social actors and movements can form transnational alliances to oppose the death-dealing ideology of militarization and its effects on the world - including violence, pollution, massive poverty, racism, the arms trade, growth of privatized armies, civil conflict, child slavery and the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. As the Bush regime comes to an end, it is time for educators and students to take a stand and develop global organizations that can be mobilized in the effort to supplant a culture of war with a culture of peace, whose elemental principles must be grounded in relations of economic, political, cultural and social democracy and the desire to sustain human life.
(1). Brainard, Jeffrey. (April 16, 2008) "U.S. Defense Secretary Asks Universities for New Cooperation," The Chronicle of Higher Education, online at http://chronicle.com/news/article/4316/us-defense-secretary-asks-universities-for-new-cooperation.
(2). Michael Geyer, "The Militarization of Europe, 1914-1945," in The Militarization of the Western World, ed. John Gillis (Rutgers University Press, 1989), p. 79.
(3). William G. Martin, "Manufacturing the Homeland Security Campus and Cadre," ACAS Bulletin 70 (Spring 2005), p. 1.
(4). Chalmers Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (New
York
(5). SeeCary Nelson,
"The National
Security State
(6). Chalmers Johnson, "Empire v. Democracy," TomDispatch.com (January 31, 2007), available online at http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/views07/0131-27.htm
(7). Jacques Rancière, "Democracy, Republic, Representation," Constellations 13:3 (2006), p. 299.
»
In a post-9/11 world, with its all-embracing war on terror and a culture of fear, the increasing spread of the discourse and values of militarization throughout the social order is intensifying the shift from the promise of a liberal democracy to the reality of a militarized society. Militarization suggests more than simply a militaristic ideal - with its celebration of war as the truest measure of the health of the nation and the soldier-warrior as the most noble expression of the merging of masculinity and unquestioning patriotism - but an intensification and expansion of the underlying values, practices, ideologies, social relations and cultural representations associated with military culture. What appears new about the amplified militarization of the post-9/11 world is that it has become normalized, serving as a powerful educational force that shapes our lives, memories and daily experiences. As an educational force, military power produces identities, goods, institutions, knowledge, modes of communication and affective investments - in short, it now bears down on all aspects of social life and the social order. As Michael Geyer points out, what is distinctive about the militarization of the social order is that civil society not only "organizes itself for the production of violence,"(2) but increasingly spurs a gradual erosion of civil liberties. Military power and policies are expanded to address not only matters of defense and security, but also problems associated with the entire health and social life of the nation, which are now measured by military spending, discipline and loyalty, as well as hierarchical modes of authority.
As citizens increasingly assume the roles of informer, soldier and consumer willing to enlist in or be conscripted by the totalizing war on terror, we see the very idea of the university as a site of critical thinking, public service and socially responsible research being usurped by a manic jingoism and a market-driven fundamentalism that enshrine the entrepreneurial spirit and military aggression as means to dominate and control society. This should not surprise us, since, as William G. Martin, a professor of sociology at Binghamton University, indicates, "universities, colleges and schools have been targeted precisely because they are charged with both socializing youth and producing knowledge of peoples and cultures beyond the borders of Anglo-America."(3) But rather than be lulled into complacency by the insidious spread of corporate and military power, we need to be prepared to reclaim institutions such as the university that have historically served as vital democratic spheres protecting and serving the interests of social justice and equality. What I want to suggest is that such a struggle is not only political, but also pedagogical in nature.
Over 17 million students pass through the hallowed halls of academe, and it is crucial that they be educated in ways that enable them to recognize creeping militarization and its effects throughout American society, particularly in terms of how these effects threaten "democratic government at home just as they menace the independence and sovereignty of other countries."(4) But students must also recognize how such anti-democratic forces work in attempting to dismantle the university itself as a place to learn how to think critically and participate in public debate and civic engagement.(5) In part, this means giving them the tools to fight for the demilitarization of knowledge on college campuses - to resist complicity with the production of knowledge, information and technologies in classrooms and research labs that contribute to militarized goals and violence.
Even so, there is more at stake than simply educating students to be alert to the dangers of militarization and the way in which it is redefining the very mission of higher education. Chalmers Johnson, in his continuing critique of the threat that the politics of empire presents to democracy at home and abroad, argues that if the United States is not to degenerate into a military dictatorship, in spite of Obama's election, a grass-roots movement will have to occupy center stage in opposing militarization, government secrecy and imperial power, while reclaiming the basic principles of democracy.(6) Such a task may seem daunting, but there is a crucial need for faculty, students, administrators and concerned citizens to develop alliances for long-term organizations and social movements to resist the growing ties among higher education, on the one hand, and the armed forces, intelligence agencies and war industries on the other - ties that play a crucial role in reproducing mili tarized knowledge.
Opposing militarization as part of a broader pedagogical strategy in and out of the classroom also raises the question of what kinds of competencies, skills and knowledge might be crucial to such a task. One possibility is to develop critical educational theories and practices that define the space of learning not only through the critical consumption of knowledge but also through its production for peaceful and socially just ends. In the fight against militarization and "armed intellectuals," educators need a language of critique, but they also need a language that embraces a sense of hope and collective struggle. This means elaborating the meaning of politics through a concerted effort to expand the space of politics by reclaiming "the public character of spaces, relations, and institutions regarded as private" on the other.(7) We live at a time when matters of life and death are central to political governance. While registering the shift in power toward the large-scale pr oduction of death, disposability and exclusion, a new understanding of the meaning and purpose of higher education must also point to notions of agency, power and responsibility that operate in the service of life, democratic struggles and the expansion of human rights.
Finally, if higher education is to come to grips with the multilayered pathologies produced by militarization, it will have to rethink not merely the space of the university as a democratic public sphere, but also the global space in which intellectuals, educators, students, artists, labor unions and other social actors and movements can form transnational alliances to oppose the death-dealing ideology of militarization and its effects on the world - including violence, pollution, massive poverty, racism, the arms trade, growth of privatized armies, civil conflict, child slavery and the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. As the Bush regime comes to an end, it is time for educators and students to take a stand and develop global organizations that can be mobilized in the effort to supplant a culture of war with a culture of peace, whose elemental principles must be grounded in relations of economic, political, cultural and social democracy and the desire to sustain human life.
(1). Brainard, Jeffrey. (April 16, 2008) "U.S. Defense Secretary Asks Universities for New Cooperation," The Chronicle of Higher Education, online at http://chronicle.com/news/article/4316/us-defense-secretary-asks-universities-for-new-cooperation.
(2). Michael Geyer, "The Militarization of Europe, 1914-1945," in The Militarization of the Western World, ed. John Gillis (Rutgers University Press, 1989), p. 79.
(3). William G. Martin, "Manufacturing the Homeland Security Campus and Cadre," ACAS Bulletin 70 (Spring 2005), p. 1.
(4). Chalmers Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (
(5). See
(6). Chalmers Johnson, "Empire v. Democracy," TomDispatch.com (January 31, 2007), available online at http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/views07/0131-27.htm
(7). Jacques Rancière, "Democracy, Republic, Representation," Constellations 13:3 (2006), p. 299.
»
Henry A. Giroux currently holds the Global TV Network Chair
Professorship at McMaster
University
END OF
NEWSLETTER #2 ON MILITARISM IN ARKANSAS
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