April 4, 2008 / Tom Burghardt / Antifascist Calling - The New York Times reported Wednesday that the Pentagon is “expected to shut a controversial intelligence office that has drawn fire from lawmakers and civil liberties groups who charge that it was part of an effort by the Defense Department to expand into domestic spying.”
The Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA), created by former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld after the September 11 attacks, illegally conducted broad domestic operations that targeted antiwar and other dissident domestic groups.
Mark Mazzetti writes,
The move, government officials say, is part of a broad effort under Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates to review, overhaul and, in some cases, dismantle an intelligence architecture built by his predecessor, Donald H. Rumsfeld. …
The Pentagon’s senior intelligence official, James R. Clapper, has recommended to Mr. Gates that the counterintelligence field office be dismantled and that some of its operations be placed under the authority of the Defense Intelligence Agency, the government officials said. (Mark Mazzetti, “Pentagon is expected to close intelligence unit,” The New York Times, April 2, 2008)
Portions of CIFA, notably its Threat and Local Observation Notice (TALON) database, were allegedly dismantled after documents uncovered by the ACLU through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit, revealed in 2006 that the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force and local police departments had supplied the Pentagon with information that aided intelligence operations against the antiwar movement.
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Militarization of our Schools
The Pentagon is taking over our poorer public schools. This is the reality for disadvantaged youth.
What we can do
Corporate/conservative alliances threaten Democracy . Progressives have an important role to play.
Why does NNOMY matter?
Most are blind or indifferent to the problem.
A few strive to protect our democracy.
The National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth (NNOMY)
Articles
In Hillsborough, North Carolina, three public high school students stood up for their privacy rights to opt-out of taking a military career aptitude test that would share their contact information with recruiters. Their principal was not pleased.
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Feb. 14, 2008 / Amy Tiemann / CNET - Teens may have a better understanding of privacy issues than the adults around them. Unfortunately, when you are a high school student, your personal judgment can still be challenged by an unsympathetic principal.
The Raleigh News & Observer reports that at Cedar Ridge High School in Hillsborough North Carolina, more than 300 juniors were given the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB). The military provides and administers the tests without charge, and in return the scores and students' contact information are sent to military branch recruiters and the school.
Cedar Ridge Principal Gary Thornburg was willing to sign on to this deal to get access to what he views as a valuable career assessment tool. There is supposed to be an opt-out procedure, but three students who refused to take the test were sent to the in-school suspension room to take it--not as discipline, according to Thornburg, but because the in-school suspension teacher was available to supervise them while other students were taking the test. Sounds like a blatantly disingenuous answer to me. In my experience as a student and teacher, when you send students to in-school suspension, it is going to feel like a punishment and be perceived that way by others. Surely their well-equipped media center could have handled three students for independent study.
Cedar Ridge High's principal says they weren't being disciplined in being sent to a suspension classroom
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February 13, 2008 / Cheryl Johnston Sadgrove / NewsObserver - HILLSBOROUGH - Three high school students were sent to an in-school suspension classroom after refusing to take a military aptitude test at Cedar Ridge High School on Tuesday.
Principal Gary Thornburg said the students were not being disciplined, but rather that the in-school suspension teacher was the staff person available to supervise them. More than 300 juniors spent two hours Tuesday and again Wednesday in the school cafeteria taking the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery.
Thornburg said the test, which the U.S. military calls the ASVAB, is traditionally administered to juniors at his school and is part of a larger career assessment program.
The military provides the tests, proctors and grading without charge. In exchange, the scores are sent to military branch recruiters and the school.
"This happens to be the best career assessment we've found," Thornburg said.
By federal law, the contact information for any junior or senior who doesn't sign an opt-out form is passed along to recruiters by the school district.
I am constantly surprised at the ways in which people are surprised at things.I suppose that anywhere, you go, you can find things which are normal there and abnormal or incomprehensible elsewhere. Coming from Guam, a pretty little American territory/colony in the Western Pacific, I find alot of things which "shock" regular Americans, aren't so strange to me.
Often times, when people remark that Guam is so gof gof suette because we don't have to pay Federal income taxes, my response is a very sincere request that our positions be changed then. That this person I am talking to and whatever state they call home, switch its political status so that it becomes like that of Guam. So yes, by all means, take the no Federal income tax rule, but, you simply can't just take this benefit alone, you also have to accept with it, the overall dinimalas of being a colony. You have to take the lack of a voting Congressional representative, and also regardless of your population, no representation in the Senate whatsoever.
School districts are beginning to keep the results of a dodgy student aptitude test out of the hands of military recruiters
Megan Tady / In These Times - One thing is different this year about an aptitude test given to high school juniors and seniors in a Los Angeles school district: The test results won’t be going to military recruiters.
The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) adopted a policy in May to keep aptitude test results out of the hands of military recruiters, and notified the district’s career counselors of the change last month. LAUSD is the second largest school system in the country. Last year, another major school district, Montgomery Public Schools in Maryland, also enforced this policy.
Faced with questions of the future, every year high school juniors and seniors shade-in oval, numbered bubbles on aptitude tests. The test results may tell a student whether she’s well suited to work with people or has the mind for mechanics or engineering.
But one of these aptitude tests isn’t just designed to help guide faltering students to career enlightenment. Written by the Department of Defense and marketed by the military as a “career exploration” test, the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) informs military recruiters of which students to target for enlistment. Unless schools opt out, students are required to sign a privacy waiver before taking the test, allowing recruiters to mine their test results for possible recruits. Often, students and parents are unaware of the test’s true intentions, and at many schools, this test is mandatory. Fourteen thousands schools and Military Entrance Processing Stations give the ASVAB each year.
The Billions of dollars spent on advertising could be used for scholarships and other youth programs....
Under the supervision of Clinical Professor Penny Venetis, the following students and interns contributed to writing this report: Heidi Alexander, Avi Appel, Erica Askin, Amy Brown, Eric Bueide, Matthew Coleman, Randle DeFalco, Jason Fertakos, Lisa Hansen, Safia Hussain, Michael Isaac, Syrion Jack, Daniel Louis, Devi Shah, Nadia Rollins, and Robert Ulon.
Indeed, under 10 U.S.C.A. § 503, the “Secretary of Defense is required by law to enhance the effectiveness of DOD’s recruitment programs through an aggressive program of advertising and market research targeted at prospective recruits and those who may influence them.”...
The military has conducted extensive research into the psychological and behavioral factors that influence teenagers to enlist in the military....The Defense Manpower Data Center (DMDC) administers the YATS to students annually so that changes in youth “demographic trends, cultural characteristics, attitudes, and educational attainments” can be tracked by the DOD to formulate recruiting strategies....
The military’s marketing campaigns emphasize patriotic themes and tales of adventure that appeal to teenage sensitivities, while downplaying the actual risks of war....
[I]n teens, the judgment, insight and reasoning power of the frontal cortex is not being brought to bear on the task as it is in adults.
The United States Supreme Court has also recognized the psychological vulnerability of children and teenagers in several landmark decisions. In 2005, in discussing why the execution of juveniles is unconstitutional, the Supreme Court cited “[s]cientific and sociological studies documenting the tendency of adolescents to make “impetuous and ill-considered decisions”; their susceptibility to “negative influences and outside pressures": and the "transitory" nature of their character traits....
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