The National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth (NNOMY)

The Militarization of U.S. Culture

General David Petraeus' rocky first days as a lecturer at the City University of New York Though the United States of America shares with other nations in a history of modern state militarism, the past 65 years following its consolidation as a world military power after World War II, has seen a shift away from previous democratic characterizations of the state.  The last thirty years, with the rise of the neo-conservative Reagan and Bush administrations (2), began the abandonment of moral justifications for democracy building replaced by  bellicose proclamations of the need and right to move towards a national project of global security by preemptive military force .

In the process of global military expansion, the US population has been subjected to an internal re-education to accept the role of the U.S. as consolidating its hegemonic rule internationally in the interest of liberal ideals of wealth creation and protectionism.

The average citizen has slowly come to terms with a stealthly increasing campaign of militarization domestically in media offerings; from television, movies and scripted news networks to reinforce the inevitability of a re-configured society as security state. The effect has begun a transformation of how, as citizens, we undertand our roles and viability as workers and families in relation to this security state. This new order has brought with it a shrinking public common and an increasing privatization of publicly held infrustructure; libraries, health clinics, schools and the expectation of diminished social benefits for the poor and middle-class. The national borders are being militarized as are our domestic police forces in the name of Homeland Security but largely in the interest of business. The rate and expansion of research and development for security industries and the government agencies that fund them, now represent the major growth sector of the U.S.economy. Additionally, as the U.S. economy continually shifts from productive capital to financial capital as the engine of growth for wealth creation and development, the corporate culture has seen its fortunes rise politically and its power over the public sector grow relatively unchallenged by a confused citizenry who are watching their social security and jobs diminishing.

How increasing cultural militarization effects our common future will likely manifest in increased public dissatisfaction with political leadership and economic strictures. Social movements within the peace community, like NNOMY, will need to expand their role of addressing the dangers of  militarists predating youth for military recruitment in school to giving more visibility to the additional dangers of the role of an influential militarized media, violent entertainment and play offerings effecting our youth in formation and a general increase and influence of the military complex in all aspects of our lives. We are confronted with a demand for a greater awareness of the inter-relationships of militarism in the entire landscape of domestic U.S. society.  Where once we could ignore the impacts of U.S. military adventurisms abroad, we are now faced with the transformation of our domestic comfort zone with the impacts of militarism in our day to day lives.

How this warning can be imparted in a meaningful way by a movement seeking to continue with the stated goals of counter-recruitment and public policy activism, and not loose itself in the process, will be the test for those activists, past and future, who take up the call to protect our youth from the cultural violence of militarism.

The "militarization of US culture" category will be an archive of editorials and articles about the increasing dangers we face as a people from those who are invested in the business of war. This page will serve as a resource for the NNOMY community of activists and the movement they represent moving into the future. The arguments presented in this archive will offer important realizations for those who are receptive to NNOMY's message of protecting our youth, and thus our entire society, of the abuses militarism plays upon our hopes for a sustainable and truly democratic society.

NNOMY

 

More on U.S. Militarization of Open Access

The Militarization of U.S. Culture

2008-09-17

Maximilian Forte -

As if to continue a previous post here titled, “Imperializing Open Access and Militarizing Open Source: “What’s yours is ours. What’s ours is ours” (1.3),” we can see that others, including Noah Schachtman below, are beginning to realize the situation that open access publishing has to face  in this “era” of a U.S. “global” war “on terror”. For those of us who have advocated for open access publishing in anthropology, these realizations ought to be sobering at least, and should compel us to rethink our role in possibly supporting U.S. imperialism, specifically its military and intelligence arms, now that this is war has gone well beyond the confines of targeting one single organization. When placing material out in the open,  we should not be “dumb” (Hayden’s word below), and train ourselves to “see like a state.” In the passages that follow, key sections appear in bold:

From Noah Schachtman
DANGER ROOM, Wired Blogs, Sept. 17, 2008

 

Michael HaydenThe material is out in the public sphere, for anyone to see: newspapers, television shows, Internet postings. The methods for obtaining the material are straight-ahead: watch the tube, click on a mouse, and translate accordingly. The end product is almost always unclassified. And the whole thing is paid for by U.S. taxpayers. But the head of the CIA says that average Americans shouldn’t be able to see so-called “open source intelligence” products. It’s too sensitive for public eyes.

Director of National Intelligence Open Source Conference late last week. (Click here for the audio.) “One irony of working the open source side of the intelligence business… is that the better we do, the less we can talk about it.”

Just a few years ago, open source intelligence was a backwater in a community where wiretaps and surveillance satellites and clandestine agents were prized. But that’s changed, of late. The head of the Open Source Center, where public information is collected, now reports directly to Hayden – just like the Directorate of Intelligence and National Clandestine Services chiefs. Open source material is included regularly in the President’s Daily Brief – the intelligence summary, delivered right to the Oval Office.

These days, “secret information isn’t always the brass ring in our profession,” Hayden said. “In fact, there’s a real satisfaction in solving a problem or answering a tough question with information that someone was dumb enough to leave out in the open.”

He added, “The questions our customers ask – whether it’s a policy maker or a military commander or a law enforcement official — demand answers, many of which are only available through open source research.”

Open source material not only fills in blanks often-elusive adversaries. It can also give a broader sense of the mood in a particular country, or the feeling in a particular group. Hayden himself found this out recently in Key West, Florida. At a CIA listening station, he watched a Cuban soap opera, where they joked constantly about the Castro regime Keystone Kops approach to domestic surveillance. “It gave me a new appreciation for life and thought on the island,” Hayden said.

But, by the end of his talk, it still wasn’t clear is why the rest of us couldn’t enjoy that same appreciation.

Source: http://zeroanthropology.net/2008/09/17/more-on-us-militarization-of-open-access/

 

Opening Up Borderland Studies: A Review of U.S.-Mexico Border Militarization Discourse

The Militarization of U.S. Culture

Jose Palafox -

Until lions have their own historians, histories of the hunt will glorify the hunter. -- African proverb

Introduction: The Border Patrol's "Battle Plan" en la Frontera 1

Esequiel Hernándezz ON MAY 20, 1997, CLEMENTE BANUELOS, A U.S. MARINE ON AN ANTIDRUG operation, shot and killed 18-year-old Esequiel Hernandez, Jr., in Redford, Texas. Banuelos was a member of Joint Task Force-6 (JTF-6), a federal agency that coordinates antinarcotics operations between the Border Patrol and the military. Although Border Patrol and Marine officials claimed that Hernandez shot at the Marine surveillance team, an autopsy report suggests that Hernandez could not have done so. Banuelos' attorney stated that while Hernandez had no previous criminal history, he fit the profile of a drug trafficker that was given to the marines in their training for missions on the border (Los Angeles Times, 1997). Meanwhile, government officials described the killing as an unfortunate, but justified act of self-defense. "This was in strict compliance with the rules of engagement," said Marine Col. Thomas R. Kelly, deputy commander of the military's anti-drug task force (Katz, 1997: A19).

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