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NNOMYnews: Fourth Quarter 2025

Opinion:
Targeted military recruitment impacts Latine voter decisions

September 11, 2024 / Valeria Martinez / Daily Orange - College students all over the country, including many students at Syracuse University, seem to take the privilege of higher education for granted. Meanwhile, in places like Laredo and the Rio Grande Valley, public school students lack the same academic support or resources that are commonplace in wealthier, and consequently, predominantly white areas. Upon moving to Syracuse, I learned that most of my peers didn’t grow up going to school sanctioned career fairs dominated by military recruiters. This contrast highlights the limited career opportunities available to Texan students like me, where many feel pressured to sacrifice their futures to a system that perpetuates poverty rather than pursue their true passions.

 

Similarly to many students throughout the United States, in Texas, I pledged allegiance to the U.S. and Texas flags every morning from pre-K through 12th grade. This regularly scheduled blind allegiance, combined with a curriculum that glosses over the lingering colonial realities of our history, have essentially indoctrinated students into believing that military service is not only honorable, but a duty.

 

According to the National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth, military recruiters purposefully embed themselves in schools to foster a sense of “school ownership.” Military recruiters were omnipresent in my own Texan high school, often stationed near the cafeteria and enticing students with merchandise and “macho tests” like the pull-up bar. This presence, often normalized in Texan high school assemblies and classrooms, conditions students to accept military service as a necessary path.

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This Program Rescued Army Recruiting

Oct. 4, 2025 / Greg Jaffe / Visuals by Kenny Holston / New York Times - Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has credited the military’s strong recruiting numbers this year to a nationwide surge in patriotism and a love for President Trump. “What changed is a commander in chief that America’s young people believe in,” Mr. Hegseth told lawmakers this summer. “You can feel it in the ranks.”

Mr. Trump echoed the sentiment: “We’re getting the best people that you’ve ever seen.”

Mr. Trump’s election win and a higher unemployment rate among people ages 16 to 24 could have played a small role in improving recruiting, Army officials said. The Army’s recent success, though, would not have been possible without the program at Fort Jackson. About 22 percent of the Army’s more than 61,000 new recruits this year came in through the Future Soldier Preparatory Course, a senior Army official said.

 Joseph King, wearing a camouflage uniform, writing in a notebook in a classroom.Trainees in the program have 90 days to meet the Army’s minimum academic and body fat standards, or they are sent home. Those who pass go directly to 10 weeks of basic training.

A New York Times reporter was granted access to the program at Fort Jackson for a week in August. None of the dozens of trainees interviewed cited Mr. Trump’s election as a factor in their decision to enlist.

Many said they had come to Fort Jackson because they saw no other choice.

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Beginning/Recruitment -
Middle/Killing -
End/The long slide into Moral Hell

Dec 17, 2025 / Rubicon & Griobhtha with Juan Idalgo / Crossing Rubicons - Sean was asked to write something for the National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth. We have previously published reports on ROTC & JrROTC and military indoctrination and recruitment through schools: ROTC/JROTC in K-12 Schools: Laws, Problems, Ethics and Prioritization of ROTC/JROTC in K-12 Schools Due to Federal Funding Incentives and Patterns of Involuntary Enrollment

NNOMY has republished this report on their site. We encourage everyone to read the important articles and information which NNOMY has to offer, and to become involved. Schools cannot refuse to participate, especially in the current political climate, with ROTC without risking funding loss; and federal law prohibits schools from blocking access to military recruiters. This we understand.

However, we also understand that there are NO prohibitions of the school and its board from implementing counter measures to military recruitment. Such instruction can be synergistic with English, Reading, and Student Engagement (unvarnished history; moral, ethical, psychological reading and debates, study of the history and meaning in Just War Theory (History & Debate and Moral & Ethical Framework) If board members prioritize funding over humanity and care, that is moral fault and an ethical breach. Even if an educator claims to be unaware of the fault, it still lays shame and responsibility at their feet. Board members should be made to understand history regarding aggression and conflicts, and that:

The sole purpose of the military is to kill and support killing.

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How the US Became the Evil Empire

Nov 17, 2025 / Tam Hunt / tamhunt.medium.com -  On July 8, 1853, Commodore Matthew Perry sailed into Edo Bay with four heavily armed warships — two steamships and two sailing vessels — their black hulls billowing smoke as they approached the Japanese capital. The Japanese, who had maintained a policy of isolation for over 200 years, called them the “black ships of evil mien.” Perry’s mission, ordered by President Millard Fillmore, was to force Japan to open its ports to American trade “through the use of gunboat diplomacy if necessary.” He positioned his ships with guns aimed at the town of Uraga and fired blank shots from his 73 cannons — ostensibly celebrating American Independence Day, though everyone understood the message. When Perry returned in February 1854, he brought nine ships and nearly 2,000 sailors, pushing past Japanese warning shots and sailing directly into what is now Tokyo. The Japanese, recognizing they were hopelessly outgunned, signed the Treaty of Kanagawa on March 31, 1854.

It was gunboat “diplomacy” in its purest form — the naked use of military superiority to extract economic concessions from a weaker power. Everything that the revolutionary Americans only 80 years previously had reviled about the British Empire.

One hundred seventy-two years later, in November 2025, the USS Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group — the world’s most advanced aircraft carrier accompanied by destroyers, cruisers, and submarines — positions itself in the Caribbean off Venezuela’s coast. Ten thousand American sailors and Marines stand ready.

The justification has evolved from “opening trade” to “fighting drugs,” but the underlying logic remains identical: the deployment of overwhelming military force to bend a sovereign nation to Washington’s will. The continuity is unmistakable. America has spent nearly two centuries perfecting the art of imperial coercion, and under Trump, it’s dispensing even with the pretense of international law.

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Peaceful Career Alternatives

In a time in the United States with escalating educational tuition and military budgets, many of our young people are finding themselves faced with few options for earning a degree or finding a career and turn to military offers of college funding and learning job skills. For more than half of those who have taken up the offer of a military career the result has been physical and mental health problems from combat related injuries. Additionally, many soldiers have experienced frustrations when facing the contradictions of their service versus the stated mission of United States military occupations internationally that seem unrelated to claims of democracy building.

The Peaceful Career Alternatives website has been developed with the support of multiple national, regional, and local peace and religious organizations to provide young people deciding how to begin their productive working lives with alternative ideas and options without entering military service.

We encourage school counselors, parents, teachers, and most of all our youth, to utilize this resource before recommending or deciding on a military career and to network this resource to those considering enlistment.

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Talk World Radio: Norman Solomon on the Blue Road to Trump Hell

December 15, 2025 / Norman Solomon & David Swanson / Talk World Radio -David Swanson on Talk World Radio is talking with Norman Solomon about his brand new book, The Blue Road to Trump Hell: How Corporate Democrats Paved the Way for Autocracy. The book is free online at BlueRoad.info. It includes wonderful cartoons by Matt Wuerker. Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction, where Swanson also works, and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. He is the author of more than a dozen books, many of them previously discussed on this program, including War Made Invisible, and War Made Easy.

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