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Meet the Sims … and Shoot Them
The country of Ghanzia is embroiled in a civil war. As a soldier in America’s Army, your job is to do everything from protect U.S. military convoys against AK-47-wielding attackers to sneak up on a mountain observatory where arms dealers are hiding out. It is a tough and dangerous tour of duty that requires dedication, focus, and a bit of luck. Fortunately, if you get hit by a bullet and bleed to death, you can reboot your computer and sign on under a new name.
America’s Army is a video game — a “tactical multiplayer first-person shooter” in gaming lingo — that was originally developed by the U.S. military to aid in its recruiting and training, but is now available for anyone to play. Among the most downloaded Internet games of all time, it is perhaps the best known of a vast array of video game-based military training programs and combat simulations whose scope and importance are rapidly changing not just the video-game marketplace, but also the way the U.S. military finds and trains its future warriors and even how the American public interfaces with the wars carried out in its name. For all the attention to the strategic debates of the post-9/11 era, a different sort of transformation has taken place over the last decade — largely escaping public scrutiny, at modest cost relative to the enormous sums spent elsewhere in the Pentagon budget, and with little planning but enormous consequences.
These “games” range from the deadly serious, like programs designed to train soldiers in cultural sensitivity or help veterans overcome the trauma of combat, to the truly outlandish, like a human-sized hamster wheel that makes virtual-reality software feel more realistic. There are even video-game modules that teach soldiers about the perils of sexual harassment. All told, the U.S. military is spending roughly $6 billion each year on its virtual side, embracing the view, as author Tom Chatfield put it, that “games are the 21st century’s most serious business.”
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Counter recruitment continues in U-46 school district, despite opposition that has generated a new ‘Parents for a Say’ initiative
Cheryl Brumbaugh-Cayford -
The counter recruitment effort in U-46 School District, which is the second largest school district in Illinois after Chicago, was begun several years ago by Bettina Perillo. She is a member of Highland Avenue Church of the Brethren in Elgin, and a member of Fox Valley Citizens for Peace and Justice. The effort began with a counter recruitment table at Elgin High School once a month.
As more volunteers joined in and the work gained sponsorship from the two above-named groups, the effort ran into criticism and active opposition from school administrators. Supporters went to the school district board meetings to express the need for counter recruitment in the high schools, meetings were held with school district officials including the school district lawyer, and meetings were held with members of the administration at Elgin High School. With help from AFSC in Chicago, who gave advice and helped speak to the school district board about the legal requirement for equal access to high schools that are visited by military recruiters, the counter recruitment effort was given equal access.
Since then, counter recruitment tables have been at Elgin High School and Larkin High School (also in Elgin) once a month, and for a couple of years also were at South Elgin High School.
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National Leafleting Inaugurates for International Week of Action Against the Militarisation of Youth
Winning the Peace is a national leafleting campaign.
In cooperation with War Resisters' League and the Project on Youth and Non-military Opportunities, The National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth inaugurates the first national youth intervention against school militarization and military recruitment in U.S. National public schools to be offered for smartphones and mobile devices. Winning the Peace begins as a national intervention in our high schools as part of the Week of Actions Against the Militarisation of Youth, a third year project of War Resisters' International (WRI).
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Pat Elder #NoWar2016
World Beyond War organized a national conference called NO WAR 2016 at the American University in Washington, D.C., on September 23rd to 26th OF 2016. TheRealNews livestreamed video and video documented all the conference presenters. Pat Elder representing The National Coalition to Protect Student Privacy, spoke about the militarization of American public schools by Pentagon programs designed to recruit youth into military service.
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Bringing Truth to the Youth: The Counter-Recruitment Movement, Then and Now
Emily Yates | Originally published in Truthout - July 16, 2016
"Back when we started, recruiters were just blatantly lying to the kids," said Susan Quinlan, the co-founder and volunteer coordinator of the peace and justice group, Better Alternatives for Youth–Peace (BAY-Peace). For 12 years, she's been bringing teams of youth into Oakland, California, schools to inform students about deceptive military recruiting practices. In that time, she has seen the recruitment climate in schools change drastically -- and not necessarily for the better.
"It used to be that recruiters would make promises to the kids that were patently untrue, like offering benefits that wouldn't materialize, for example, so our job was to go in and say, 'No, that's not true,'" Quinlan said. Then over the years, as the wars grew increasingly unpopular and recruitment dropped, the military beefed up the benefits and incentives to more closely match its promises. Many student activists saw that as a victory, she said, and as a result, the work lost urgency.
"The recruiters are still being dishonest," she said, "but it's become less obvious. And they haven't gone away. Now, recruitment is back up where it was before we started, and we're losing our funding."