- Gary Ghirardi
- Hits: 3162
Webinars: Countering Military Recruiting in Schools During the Pandemic
A webinar series on how to address the challenge of countering military recruitment in schools during the pandemic.
https://nnomy.org/CRduringpandemic/
We are a group of activists representing various organizations that are part of NNOMY (National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth). We have been meeting to address the challenge of doing counter recruitment work during a pandemic. Based on our discussions we decided to offer a series of workshops to increase our outreach.
Webinars: 1: Remote Learning | 2: Getting into the Classroom | 3: Social Media | 4: Content Creation & Class Project
Listserv for this webinar series: https://groups.electricembers.net/lists/info/crduringpandemic
- Anna Attie
- Hits: 2198
From Student Debtor to Soldier
How the student loan debt crisis forces low-income students of color into the military.
Anna Attie / In These Times - When James Gardner got injured playing basketball as a DePaul University freshman, he lost his financial aid package and was dropped from his classes. To stay in school, he took out a $10,000 loan.
Soon, Gardner (a pseudonym requested in fear of reprisal) and his family realized they couldn’t afford the university. Instead, he transferred to a public university outside Chicago and enrolled in the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) of the Air Force. The military paid for his entire college education — on the condition he serve at least four years after graduation.
Gardner is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and says the military is geared toward “resource extraction and resource allocation.” When DSA colleagues learn about his military background, he says there is a “little bit of a gasp.”
“Would I be in the same predicament,” he wonders, “if college and university were tuition-free? Would I have gone through ROTC? I don’t know.”
Gardner’s situation isn’t unique. Americans owe more than $1.67 trillion in student debt, and the cost of college has increased by more than 25% in the past 10 years. According to a 2017 poll by the Department of Defense, paying for education is the top reason young people consider enlisting. In 2019, the Army credited the student debt crisis with helping it surpass its recruitment goals.
- Chad Vance
- Hits: 2488
Video Games & “Virtual” Sins
Chad Vance / Professor / William & Mary College - The Dilemma: We’ll start with two assumptions: Murder is morally wrong. Also, pedophilia (i.e., sexually molesting a child) is morally wrong.
In the real world, the verdict is the same: Both acts are wrong. Now imagine a VIDEO GAME where the gamer’s objectives involve molesting children. Very likely, you are morally opposed to such a game, and believe they should not be made or sold. If so, then consider the following argument:
1.Committing virtual pedophilia (e.g., in a video game) is morally wrong.
2.However, there are no morally relevant differences between committing a virtual act of pedophilia and committing a virtual act of murder.**
3.Therefore,committing virtual murder in a video game is also morally wrong.
[* Note: By ‘virtual murder it is meant an act of killing that would clearly be morally wrong were it committed in the real world. For instance, in Grand Theft Auto, players control criminal characters who drive around hitting and killing pedestrians. Contrast this with, say, those versions of Call of Duty where players control U.S. soldiers whom (we may presume) are killing enemy soldiers in a just war. Assume also that the person killed in the game stays dead—i.e., they do not “re-spawn”.]
[* Why morally equivalent? Well, in the real world, both actions are seriously morally wrong. And, in the virtual world, no one is actually harmed. You’re just manipulating pixels on a screen. Initially, there don’t seem to be any obvious moral differences.]
The conclusion here is that playing games like Grand Theft Auto is morally wrong! And yet, it is one of the best-selling game franchises of all time, with Grand Theft Auto V alone having sold over 100 million copies! (source) It seems that quite a few people must believe that committing virtual murder is morally permissible.
