Committee Opposed to Militarism and the Draft (COMD)

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From Draft NOtices, November - December 2001



— Rick Jahnkow

   

When a student takes a gun to school and goes on a shooting rampage — as one 15-year-old is charged with doing in a community near me in California — the public immediately expresses its shock and confusion over how such a thing could ever occur. Educators, politicians and the mental health professionals who are called upon to deal with this sort of tragedy all struggle to come up with a plausible explanation.

Usually, their attention focuses on narrow, individualistic conditions that might provoke such a violent outburst. The American Psychological Association’s brochure, "Warning Signs of Teen Violence" (http://helping.apa.org/warningsigns/), advises us that factors that contribute to teen violence include:

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From Draft NOtices, August-September-October 2001



— Carol Jahnkow

    

Once in office, George W. Bush quickly followed up on his presidential campaign promises to set in motion "an immediate, comprehensive review of our military" and to give the Secretary of Defense "a broad mandate to challenge the status quo." Beginning in February, media stories began to report that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had begun this new broad review of the military.

Rumsfeld's review will bring significant changes in policy. U.S. military strategy since 1993 has revolved around maintaining the capacity to simultaneously fight two major wars. But according to Rumsfeld, the U.S. military has been "living a lie," with the two-war strategy stretching the military thin and preventing needed investment in equipment and strategy to help wage the wars of the future. This strategy has, he says, "brought us to a point where we don't have the forces to do it. It has brought us to a point where, because of the efforts to do it, we have slighted modernization and took a prolonged procurement holiday; we have slighted, in my view, transformation; and we have slighted things that affect the quality of our force."

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From Draft NOtices, August-September-October 2001



— Molly Morgan

 

In June, San Diego was host to BIO2001, an annual conference for the biotechnology industry. As a result it also became the host for Beyond Biodevastation, the fifth grassroots gathering to celebrate biodiversity and question genetic engineering. Events included a two-day teach-in featuring world-class speakers from nearly every continent; a colorful, spirited march of about 800 people protesting various aspects of genetically modified organisms; and a variety of creative direct actions designed to educate the public and challenge conventional thinking about genetic engineering.

"Biowarfare" was the title of a presentation at the teach-in by Edward Hammond and Susana Pimiento from the Sunshine Project, a nonprofit organization that works to stop the development and use of biological weapons. Hammond, a U.S. policy researcher, Pimiento, a Colombian lawyer working in the U.S., and Jan van Aken, a German biologist, formed the organization last year upon discovering their mutual concern about biological weapons and their intense commitment to avert the dangers of new weapons stemming from advances in biotechnology. The name of the Sunshine Project refers to the fact that many biological weapons are quickly broken down and rendered harmless by exposure to bright sunlight.

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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:

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