8 de enero de 2025 / Christopher Kilmartin y Ronald Levant / Opinión invitada / Akron Beacon Journal - En la prevención y respuesta a las agresiones sexuales en el ejército, el liderazgo es fundamental. Por lo tanto, nos preocupa profundamente la seguridad de nuestros militares, tanto hombres como mujeres, bajo la presidencia de Donald Trump y su candidato a secretario de Defensa, Pete Hegseth.
Ambos hombres tienen acusaciones de agresión sexual en su contra, y en ambos casos existen pruebas fiables que corroboran estos informes. Trump parece ser un agresor especialmente grave, mencionado en más de 20 informes . No se trata de un caso de «él dijo, ella dijo», sino de «él dijo, ellos dijeron».
El ejército estadounidense publica estimaciones fiables de agresiones sexuales cada dos años, basadas tanto en las denuncias oficiales como en las registradas mediante encuestas. Y esto no afecta solo a las mujeres en las filas: muchas de las víctimas de agresiones son hombres.
Casi una de cada cuatro mujeres militares estadounidenses denuncia haber sido agredida sexualmente en el ejército. ¿Por qué ha sido tan difícil cambiar la cultura?
English - Publicado el 3 de agosto de 2021 - Actualizado el 11 de octubre de 2021 / Melinda Wenner Moyer / New York Times Magazine - La soldado de primera clase Florence Shmorgoner se despertó una tarde de 2015 y se dio cuenta de que estaba en la cama de otra persona, en la habitación de otra persona. Algo andaba mal. La joven de 19 años había estado jugando videojuegos en la habitación de su amigo en el cuartel con la puerta abierta; la regla en su base de Twentynine Palms, California, era que, si marines masculinos y femeninos estaban juntos en la misma habitación, la puerta debía dejarse abierta. Aunque era media tarde, en algún momento se quedó dormida en su cama. Ahora la puerta estaba cerrada y su amigo la estaba manoseando. Sintió como si estuviera teniendo una experiencia extracorpórea, como si estuviera viendo lo que estaba sucediendo, pero no experimentándolo realmente. Él le quitó la ropa y la penetró.
Pfc. Florence Shmorgoner woke up one afternoon in 2015 and realized that she was in someone else’s bed in someone else’s room. Something was wrong. The 19-year-old had been playing video games in her friend’s room in the barracks with the door open — the rule at their base at Twentynine Palms in California was that if male and female Marines were together in the same room, the door had to be left open. Although it was midafternoon, at some point she had dozed off on his bed. Now the door was closed, and her friend was groping her. She felt as if she was having an out-of-body experience, as if she was watching what was happening but not actually experiencing it. He took off her clothes and penetrated her.
April 23, 2025 / Fabiola Cardozo Ponte / NNOMY - It began at a very young age, born and raised in an environment of precariousness and economic hardship, where I felt the hostility of the world.Structural violence reduces your opportunities for advancement and makes your life an endless series of daily challenges.Living in a poor home where violence and its various manifestations were present made me understand that it was neither appropriate nor fair for me or any other human being.Over time, I grew up rejecting all expressions of violence, but at the same time, I strengthened my rebelliousness, my critical thinking, and my insatiable need to explore other ways of relating.From a young age, I was certain that education was my only option to overcome my situation of extreme poverty, and I took refuge in books.I had a special sensitivity to the injustices, slights, and marginalization of the victim era, and although my destiny seemed already determined by my social class and gender, I continued as a good rebel, determined to achieve what I so yearned for… At 16, I had a clear understanding of Gandhi's principles, his peaceful resistance, his Satyagraha, and his rejection of any unjust social imposition.The economic difficulties continued, and although I attended various public universities, it was in 2018 that I finally graduated from the Central University of Venezuela with a degree in Sociology, and in 2021 from the Latin American and Caribbean University with a degree in International Humanitarian Law.
Today an SSS spokesperson provided me with this official response to my questions about DOGE and SSS records:
A DOGE representative visited our Agency this week. We’ve established a great working relationship. They asked us about our data and requested access, which we gave in compliance with the President’s Executive Order on Establishing and Implementing the Department of Government Efficiency.
The SSS spokesperson also told me that no new computer matching programs involving SSS registration records have been carried out (yet) by DOGE. But it’s not clear whether the SSS would even know what DOGE has done with SSS data, once DOGE has gotten access to it and possibly exfiltrated it. DOGE and the SSS have operated computer matching programs that appear to violate the Computer Matching Act, so there’s little reason to expect that either would provide the required advance notice of new uses of SSS data.
The SSS registration database contains information on all those male U.S. citizens or residents born on or after 1 January 1960 who have registered with the SSS or have been registered by state driver’s license agencies. Compliance is low, many men in these cohorts never registered, and few of the addresses, even for draft-age men, are up to date. But the database is still huge and vulnerable to abuse. Because SSS registration records are so inaccurate and incomplete, matching them against other databases would produce large numbers of mis-matches, with unknown consequences.
The Army is grappling with a staggering attrition rate among newly enlisted troops, even as recent recruiting figures suggest the service is clawing its way out of a yearslong enlistment crisis.
Nearly one-quarter of soldiers recruited since 2022 have failed to complete their initial contracts, according to internal Army data reviewed by Military.com. While the Army's recruiting totals look solid on paper, a high dropout rate raises serious doubts about whether those numbers are an accurate portrayal of how well the service is manned.
It remains unclear why the Army is losing so many soldiers, but one explanation could be the declining quality of its recruiting pool. One-quarter of all enlistees last year had to go through at least one of the Future Soldier Preparatory Courses, which were set up as a sort of silver bullet for recruiting woes -- getting applicants up to snuff with academic or body fat enlistment standards before they ship out to basic training.
Donald Trump’s dismantling of the deep state presages the formation of something far worse.
Feb. 18, 2025 / Chris Hedges / The Chris Hedges Report - The Trump administration’s war with the deep state is not a purgative. It is not about freeing us from the tyranny of intelligence agencies, militarized police, the largest prison system in the world, predatory corporations or the end of mass surveillance. It will not restore the rule of law to hold the powerful and the wealthy accountable. It will not slash the bloated and unaccountable spending — some $1 trillion dollars — by the Pentagon.
All revolutionary movements, on the left or the right, dismantle the old bureaucratic structures. The fascists in Germany and the Bolsheviks in the Soviet Union, once they seized power, aggressively purged the civil service. They see in these structures, correctly, an enemy that would stymie their absolute grip on power. It is a coup d'état by inches. Now we get our own.
Rearguard battles — as in the early years of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany — are taking place in the courts and media outlets openly hostile to Trump. There will be, at first, pyrrhic victories — the Bolsheviks and the Nazis were stalled by their own judiciaries and hostile press — but gradually the purges, aided by a bankrupt liberalism that no longer stands or fights for anything, ensures the triumph of the new masters.
The Trump administration has expelled or fired officials who investigate wrongdoing within the federal government, including 17 inspectors general. Federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies, such as the FBI and Homeland Security, are being purged of those deemed hostile to Trump. Courts, as they are stacked with compliant judges, will be mechanisms for the persecution of state “enemies” and protection rackets for the powerful and the rich. The Supreme Court, which has granted Trump legal immunity, has already reached this stage.
NNOMYnews reports on the growing intrusions by the Department of Defense into our public schools in a campaign to normalize perpetual wars with our youth and to promote the recruitment efforts of the Pentagon.
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