From Draft NOtices, October-December 2012
– Miriam Clark
Reports of sexual assault within the military are rising! Victims are primarily women but include some men. Over the last decade, exposés in special television reports, magazine articles and radio shows have offered personal testimonies and estimates of the high frequency of sexual assaults, but no significant changes have resulted.
In Washington D.C. last month, attorney Susan L. Burke filed a case against current and former secretaries of defense alleging ongoing violations of the plaintiffs’ civil rights. The suit has been filed on behalf of nineteen former and current U.S. military service members.
According to Burke, “After being raped or sexually assaulted by uniformed colleagues, these survivors reported the crimes. . . . Instead of their perpetrators being punished, the victims were intimidated, isolated, and retaliated against.”
There are four previous cases pending in federal district or circuit courts.
A key problem is permitting the “chain of command” (i.e., a single individual) to control which sexual assault allegations are fully investigated and prosecuted. The military has not eliminated the ability of a single officer to prevent a victim from accessing the military’s judicial system. The reality is that this officer may well be a sexual predator himself.
Committee Opposed to Militarism and the Draft (COMD)
From Draft NOtices, July-September 2012
– Rick Jahnkow
A recent report by Associated Press reporter Ben Hubbard indicates that the Syrian government’s brutal attacks on opponents of President Bashar Assad’s regime have led to a significant increase in draft avoidance.
Syria conscripts young men for a term of 18 months, which some people try to avoid by traveling abroad, seeking waivers for medical reasons, “using connections and bribes to get their names off the rolls,” or hiding in opposition areas. According to Hubbard, anti-regime activists are saying that the number of men avoiding the draft has increased significantly during the 15-month conflict that the U.N. says has taken 9,000 lives.
Hubbard says the true extent of draft resistance is hard to gauge, but a notable sign of its seriousness is the fact that Assad proclaimed an amnesty in June if men who have failed to report for duty will show up within 90 days (120 days for those outside the country).
From Draft NOtices, July-September 2012
In the April-June 2012 issue of Draft NOtices, we published an article by Stephanie Jennings on the misleading “Kony 2012” campaign of Invisible Children, a San Diego-based nonprofit organization that has been exposed has having connections to groups pursuing a right-wing religious agenda.
In April 2012, Invisible Children mobilized thousands of students across the U.S. to put pressure on the U.S. government to arrest Joseph Kony, a murderous African leader whose small rebel group has kidnapped children to use as soldiers. One of the many concerns expressed by critics of the Kony 2012 campaign is that it could be used to create a pretext for a much larger U.S. military presence in Africa. The U.S. has so far failed to convince any country on the continent to host the headquarters for the Pentagon’s Africa Command (AFRICOM), which is currently based in Germany (see Draft Notices, January-March 2008, “U.S. Militarization of Africa”).
Ninth CIRCUIT COURT RULING: CONFRONTING MILITARISM BY USING EQUAL ACCESS TO HIGH SCHOOLS
When the military comes to your local high school, you have a legal right to give students an opposing view. This has been the position taken by federal district courts in Florida, Pennsylvania and Illinois and two federal appellate courts. The most broadly-worded decision came from a case that COMD took to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in the 1980s. Here is the background:
