STERLING, Va. — Imam Mohamed Magid tries to stay in regular contact with the teenager who came to him a few months ago, at his family’s urging, to discuss how he was being wooed by online recruiters working for the Islamic State, the extremist group in Syria and Iraq.
"Very glad to learn about this outstanding initiative, and I wish you the greatest – well-deserved – success." Noam Chomsky
"Regarding any input I have about your work to demilitarize public education in Chicago, it has my wholehearted support. We should be teaching our children how to resolve conflicts in a peaceful and constructive way." Roman Catholic Bishop Thomas Gumbleton
A former Shreveporter who left a troubled family here to serve as a combat medic in Iraq, and who later served as a new doctor combating Ebola in west Africa, will speak in his home town later this week and sign copies of his new book.
"My mom was in prison most of my life, and my sister did time," says Antonio Webb, 32, who now is in his residency as an orthopedic surgeon in San Antonio, Texas. He grew up in the Allendale, Queensborough and Meadows neighborhood off Jewella Avenue.
"My dad did the best he could as a single parent to keep us isolated from what was going on. I was lucky in that I left Shreveport at an early age, 17, after I graduated from high school. If I'd have stayed in Shreveport there would have been a different outcome."
Youth in Canada - particularly young people of faith - are increasingly concerned about militarism in our society; and how this affects them.
These concerns include (but are not limited to)
• the causes of war (including inequality),
• the militarization of entertainment,
• the intersection with gender,
• national identity,
• technological influence,
• infiltration into our educational institutions, and
• a lack of effective empowerment for youth who are
called to be peacemakers.
Project YANO is a California based nonprofit community organization that provides young people with an alternative point of view about military enlistment. Many of the organisation's members are armed forces veterans who believe that high school students are getting a distorted picture of the military and war from recruiting ads and marketing.
Congress surely meant to do the right thing when, in the fall of 2008, it passed the Child Soldiers Prevention Act (CSPA). The law was designed to protect kids worldwide from being forced to fight the wars of Big Men. From then on, any country that coerced children into becoming soldiers was supposed to lose all U.S. military aid.
It turned out, however, that Congress -- in its rare moment of concern for the next generation -- had it all wrong. In its greater wisdom, the White House found countries like Chad and Yemen so vital to the national interest of the United States that it preferred to overlook what happened to the children in their midst.
Classic antiwar animation that portrays the tragedy and loss of participation in the act of war from the perspective and innocence of a soldier in combat.
WRI's new booklet, Countering Military Recruitment: Learning the lessons of counter-recruitment campaigns internationally, is out now. The booklet includes examples of campaigning against youth militarisation across different countries with the contribution of grassroot activists.