The Soldiers From Standard Oil
OPS_admin | Nov 06, 2009 | Comments 0
ROTC, Harvard and American Foreign Policy
By BRIAN GALLAGHER
In a glowing and laudatory report on college students who join the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) at nearby schools while enrolled at prestigious universities from whence ROTC was banned in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the New York Times has eased the way for colleges such as Harvard to ditch their ROTC ban and become in practice, not just in theory, fully supportive of the US government’s militarized foreign policy.
The New York Times (The ROTC Dilemma) presents us with the travails of Harvard undergrads who have to rise at 4:45am and shave then drive or jog across the beloved and revered (no matter how compromised) River Charles in order to reach Boston University, where, “under a system developed by the military that allows host universities to serve nearby campuses”(NYT 10/26/09), they may be trained as officers ready to serve the interests of their country’s leadership. The car used for this daily trip costs between $250 to $300 a month to maintain, the Times also lets us know, as if the civilians of Cambridge and Boston get a discount.
“It’s worse at Yale,” laments the Times’ author, Michael Winerip, who reports that there anyone wanting to be in ROTC must endure a 90 minute drive to UConn and request class notes from a friend. Winerip notes that this June, only 8 ROTC members will graduate while a half century ago, in 1959, 121 seniors were commissioned as officers.
Full Story Brian Gallagher: The Soldiers From Standard Oil.
Filed Under: Military, War, Occupation,
Comments (0)
-
If we don't change our ways soon...
A new report by the Royal Society, chaired by Nobel prize-winning biologist Sir John Sulston warns that world population must be stabilized and consumption in wealthy nations must be reduced or the entire planet is in big trouble. As the report reads: "The number of people living on the planet has never been higher, their levels of consumption are unprecedented and vast changes are taking place in the environment. We can choose to rebalance the use of resources to a more egalitarian pattern of consumption... or we can choose to do nothing and to drift into a downward spiral of economic and environmental ills leading to a more unequal and inhospitable future."This is the same warning that President Jimmy Carter gave Americans back in the 1970's - but it was ignored when Ronald Reagan came to power with a "more positive" message basically telling Americans we can do whatever we want. And then after 9/11 - Bush told us all we should go shopping and consume ever more.And now with corporations calling the shots in Washington - long-term sustainability of the planet takes a back seat to short-term profits. If we don't change our ways soon - and embrace clean, alternative energy and educate women around the plant - then we all could be headed for a rough century.-Thom(Is there any chance we will learn in time? Tell us here.) -
LEGALIZE Democracy
" We the corporations" On January 21, 2010, with its ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations are persons, entitled by the U.S. Constitution to buy elections and run our government. __________
MOVE to AMEND
a project of the CAMPAIGN TO LEGALIZE Democracy
Help end Corporate personhood
-
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. 
moveon.org
