“Isahama Women Farmers” against Enclosure

2020 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 547-574
Author(s):  
Wendy Matsumura
Keyword(s):  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Women Farmers ◽  
Favorable Outcome ◽  
Political Struggle ◽  
Mass Mobilization ◽  
Okinawa Island ◽  
Us Military ◽  
The Us ◽  
The World ◽  
The Military

In July 1954, the US military notified residents of Isahama, Ginowan, in the central part of Okinawa Island, of their evictions from their lands. Despite immediate opposition by residents, the military rejected all appeals on the grounds that this and other evictions were necessary to make the world safe for democracy. Though Isahama’s residents were discouraged by their failure to extract a more favorable outcome from military authorities, their struggle to keep their lands from being requisitioned—and similar struggles that erupted in Iejima, Furujima, and Mawashi—are widely recognized as the sparks that ignited the “all-island struggle” of 1956. This article considers the roles that Isahama’s women farmers played in inspiring the mass mobilization of 1956. While scholars have characterized the power of their protests as stemming precisely from their apolitical character—from their desperation as mothers and wives simply trying to protect their families from certain death—it proposes a reconsideration of this assessment. A Marxist feminist perspective that centers on the concept of social reproduction enables a linking of their struggle to a broader genealogy of political struggle in Okinawa and beyond to one that women and feminists waged against capital, militarism, and patriarchy.

scholarly journals Helminth infections in the US military: from strongyloidiasis to schistosomiasis

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alyssa R Lindrose ◽  
Indrani Mitra ◽  
Jamie Fraser ◽  
Edward Mitre ◽  
Patrick W Hickey
Keyword(s):  
Military Personnel ◽  
International Classification Of Diseases ◽  
Data Repository ◽  
Military Health ◽  
Intestinal Nematode ◽  
Us Military ◽  
Helminth Infections ◽  
The Us ◽  
East And Southeast Asia ◽  
The Military

Abstract Background Helminth infections caused by parasitic worms, including nematodes (roundworms), cestodes (tapeworms) and trematodes (flukes), can cause chronic symptoms and serious clinical outcomes if left untreated. The US military frequently conducts activities in helminth-endemic regions, particularly Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia. However, the military does not currently screen for these infections, and to date, no comprehensive surveillance studies have been completed to assess the frequency of helminth diagnoses in the military personnel and their families. Methods To determine the burden of helminth infections in the US Military Health System (MHS), we conducted a retrospective analysis of International Classification of Diseases (ICD)-9/10 diagnosis codes from all medical encounters in the MHS Data Repository (MDR) from fiscal years (FY) 2012 to 2018. Chart reviews were conducted to assign ICD diagnoses as incorrect, suspected, probable or confirmed based on the laboratory results and symptoms. Results Abstraction of MHS data revealed over 50 000 helminth diagnoses between FY 2012 and FY 2018. Of these, 38 445 of diagnoses were amongst unique subjects. After chart review, we found there were 34 425 validated helminth infections diagnosed amongst the unique subjects of US military personnel, retirees and dependents. Nearly 4000 of these cases represented infections other than enterobiasis. There were 351 validated strongyloidiasis diagnoses, 317 schistosomiasis diagnoses and 191 diagnoses of cysticercosis during the study period. Incidence of intestinal nematode infection diagnoses showed an upward trend, whilst the incidence of cestode infection diagnoses decreased. Conclusions The results of this study demonstrate that helminth infections capable of causing severe morbidity are often diagnosed in the US military. As helminth infections are often asymptomatic or go undiagnosed, the true burden of helminth infections in US military personnel and dependents may be higher than observed here. Prospective studies of US military personnel deployed to helminth-endemic areas may be indicated to determine if post-deployment screening and/or empirical treatment are warranted.

scholarly journals Militarization, slow violence, and the emerging threat of condemnation in Hawai‘i

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 3.1-3.12
Author(s):  
N. Mahina Tuteur
Keyword(s):  
Active Role ◽  
Kanaka Maoli ◽  
Public Purpose ◽  
Us Military ◽  
Military Presence ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Cost ◽  
The Military ◽  
Fair Market Value

This article examines the environmental impacts of the US military presence in Hawaii, looking specifically at the federal government’s power to condemn land for a ‘public purpose’ under the US Constitution. In 2018, the Hawaii Supreme Court ruled that the State of Hawaii failed its duty to properly manage 23,000 acres of lands leased to the military at Pōhakuloa and must take an active role in preserving trust property. With the expiration of this lease (and several others) approaching in 2029, controversy is stirring as to whether the military will simply condemn these lands if the cost of clean-up is greater than the land’s fair-market value at the expiration of the lease. In other words, as long as it remains cheaper for the military to pollute and condemn than it is for it to restore, what options do we have for legal and political recourse? Considering grassroots movements’ strategic use of media and legal action through an environmental justice lens, this article provides a starting point to consider avenues for ensuring proper clean-up of these lands, and ultimately, negotiating for their return to Kānaka Maoli.

Religion, Violence, and the State

2018 ◽  
pp. 226-262
Author(s):  
Muhammad Qasim Zaman
Keyword(s):  
Political Violence ◽  
War On Terror ◽  
The State ◽  
The Other ◽  
Islamic Tradition ◽  
State And Society ◽  
The Us ◽  
The World ◽  
The Military ◽  
Subsequent Rise

This chapter focuses on religio-political violence, whose widespread incidence—after Pakistan's realignment in the US-led War on Terror in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, and the subsequent rise of a new, Pakistani Taliban—has threatened the very fabric of state and society. It examines the violence in question from two broad and intertwined perspectives, one relating to the state, and the other to Islam and those speaking in its terms. Part of the concern in this chapter is to contribute to an understanding of how the governing elite and the military have often fostered the conditions in which the resort to religiously inflected violence has been justified. It also suggests that the nonstate actors—ideologues and militants—have had an agency of their own, which is not reducible to the machinations of the state. Their resort to relevant facets of the Islamic tradition also needs to be taken seriously in order to properly understand their view of the world and such appeal as they have had in particular circles.

Deploying Jim Crow

2021 ◽  
pp. 297-343
Author(s):  
Thomas A. Guglielmo
Keyword(s):  
White Supremacy ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Black Americans ◽  
Home Front ◽  
The Other ◽  
Multiple Forms ◽  
Us Military ◽  
The Us ◽  
The World ◽  
The One

Chapter 8 explores what happened to the US military’s black-white lines as American troops moved overseas. On the one hand, the US military transplanted these lines all around the world. While not identical to those on the home front, they also took multiple forms, involving everything from jobs and dances to courts-martial and minstrel performances. They also stemmed from the military’s paradoxical goals of winning a war for democracy while at the same time protecting white supremacy. On the other hand, fully achieving this latter goal became more difficult overseas because of locals’ warm relations with black Americans, the black-white comradeship of some American GIs, and the activism of black troops. Taken together, these developments chipped away at the black-white divide. At war’s end, Jim Crow in uniform was far from dead, but it lay moderately wounded just the same.

From Blockade to Aid

2019 ◽  
pp. 275-338
Author(s):  
Mary Elisabeth Cox
Keyword(s):  
International Aid ◽  
Institutional Level ◽  
Us Military ◽  
The Us ◽  
Private And Public ◽  
Save The Children ◽  
German Children ◽  
The Military ◽  
Different Sources

Once the blockade against Germany was fully lifted on 12 July 1919, food from different sources began entering the country. Excess food from the US military was parcelled out to American citizens resident in Germany. Though significant for the recipients who received it, the military surplus lasted only a few months and could only be shared with other Americans. A source of foreign food for German citizens were food drafts, which allowed family and friends in foreign lands to purchase foodstuffs for their loved ones in Germany without taking the risk of theft or spoilage associated with directly exporting the goods. Other institutions, private and public, focused on feeding German children. This chapter examines the efforts of some of the major international aid organizations, including the American Friend Service Committee, Save the Children, and other groups feeding German children. It examines the approaches and struggles of these groups at an institutional level.

John Useem and Governance Operations

2018 ◽  
pp. 199-238
Author(s):  
Montgomery McFate
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Small Island ◽  
Military Government ◽  
Us Military ◽  
Successful Case ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Navy ◽  
Government Enterprise ◽  
The Military

This chapter concerns the wartime civil affairs experience of John Useem, a US Navy officer who became the military governor of a small island in Micronesia. While the post-World War II, military government established in Germany and Japan are often offered as examples of successful governance operations, the partially successful case of Micronesia better exemplifies the paradoxes at the heart of the military government enterprise. These issues which plagued the US military government in Micronesia, and which John Useem wrote about in the 1940s and 1950s, were the exact same issues that have plagued the intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq more than a half century later. What happens when the policy of democratization is incompatible with the existing social order? What happens when American social norms conflict with the society they intend to govern? What happens when the core principle of military government non-interference cannot be implemented in practice and outright contradicts the imperatives of ‘nation building’?

Eyes in the Sky

The Drone Age ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 96-130
Author(s):  
Michael J. Boyle
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Organizational Structures ◽  
The United States ◽  
Us Military ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Military ◽  
Organizational Costs

Chapter 4 argues that drones accelerate the trend toward information-rich warfare and place enormous pressure on the military to learn ever more about the battlefields that it faces. Today, for the United States, war is increasingly a contest for information about any future battlespace. This has had an organizational effect as the ability for the United States to know more through drone imagery has turned into a necessity to know more. The US military is becoming so enamored of its ability to know more through drone surveillance that it is overlooking the operational and organizational costs of “collecting the whole haystack.” Using drones for a vast surveillance apparatus, as the United States and now other countries have been doing, has underappreciated implications for the workload, organizational structures, and culture of the military itself.

scholarly journals The Politics of Sex Abuse in Sacred Hierarchies: A Comparative Study of the Catholic Church and the Military in the United States

Religions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 281
Author(s):  
Carolyn M. Warner
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
The United States ◽  
Sex Abuse ◽  
Us Military ◽  
The Us ◽  
Privileged Status ◽  
Child Sex Abuse ◽  
The Military ◽  
Patterns Of Abuse ◽  
The Catholic Church

The paper explores similarities in patterns of abuse and in patterns of how the known abuse cases are handled by the Catholic church and the U.S. military and develops preliminary explanations of why. The paper considers how the two organizations deal with external efforts by civil authorities at oversight and prosecution, and the extent to which they invoke their sacred status authority to evade responsibility and civilian oversight. The paper finds that the handling of sex abuse in each organization has been affected partly by the institutions seeing themselves as sacred, as something apart from the secular state, beholden to alternative authorities. The paper highlights the fact that child sex abuse by religious officials and sexual assault of soldiers by fellow soldiers and officers constitute profound challenges for democracy in the US and elsewhere, as the institutions claim and may be accorded separate and privileged status, beyond the reach of democratic laws and procedures. It is a warning about the costs of public deference to other institutions. The study utilizes documentation of Catholic church clergy child sex abuse cases in the US, and documentation of sex abuse cases in the US military.

The US Special Forces

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Prados
Keyword(s):  
Critical Mass ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Body ◽  
Rapid Decline ◽  
Security Threat ◽  
Special Forces ◽  
Us Military ◽  
The Us ◽  
The World ◽  
Osama Bin Laden

The assassination of Osama bin Laden by SEAL Team 6 in May 2011 will certainly figure among the greatest achievements of US Special Forces. After nearly ten years of searching, they descended into his Pakistan compound in the middle of the night, killed him, and secreted the body back into Afghanistan. Interest in these forces had always been high, but it spiked to new levels following this success. There was a larger lesson here too. For serious jobs, the president invariably turns to the US Special Forces: the SEALs, Delta Force, the Green Berets, and the USAF’s Special Tactics squad. Given that secretive grab-and-snatch operations in remote locales characterize contemporary warfare as much as traditional firefights, the Special Forces now fill a central role in American military strategy and tactics. Not surprisingly, the daring and secretive nature of these commando operations has generated a great deal of interest. The American public has an overwhelmingly favorable view of the forces, and nations around the world recognize them as the most capable fighting units: the tip of the American spear, so to speak. But how much do we know about them? What are their origins? What function do they fill in the larger military structure? Who can become a member? What do trainees have to go through? What sort of missions do Special Forces perform, and what are they expected to accomplish? Despite their importance, much of what they do remains a mystery because their operations are clandestine and the sources elusive. In The US Special Forces: What Everyone Needs to Know, eminent scholar John Prados brings his deep expertise to the subject and provides a pithy primer on the various components of America’s special forces. The US military has long employed Special Forces in some form or another, but it was in the Cold War when they assumed their present form, and in Vietnam where they achieved critical mass. Interestingly, the Special Forces suffered a rapid decline in numbers after that conflict despite the fact that the United States had already identified terrorism as a growing security threat. The revival of Special Forces began under the Reagan administration. After 9/11 they experienced explosive growth, and are now integral to all US military missions. Prados traces how this happened and examines the various roles the Special Forces now play. They have taken over many functions of the regular military, a trend that Prados does not expect will end any time soon. This will be a definitive primer on the elite units in the most powerful military the world has ever known.

scholarly journals ‘Killing is our business and business is good’: The evolution of ‘war managerialism’ from body counts to counterinsurgency

Organization ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 491-515 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leo McCann
Keyword(s):  
Vietnam War ◽  
Management Systems ◽  
Military Organizations ◽  
Us Military ◽  
New Wars ◽  
The Us ◽  
Complex Picture ◽  
Public Scrutiny ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Military

Managerialism versus professionalism is a central axis of conflict across many occupations. ‘The profession of arms’ is no exception. This article explores the contested yet symbiotic relationship of management and the military via a discussion of the Vietnam conflict and contemporary debates over restructuring the US military to fight so-called ‘New Wars’. It portrays a complex picture of the organization and measurement of destruction, arguing that managerialism has long been an important ideological element of civilian and military practice. While management systems such as the infamous ‘measurements of progress’ in the Vietnam War were practically dysfunctional, they were effective up to a point in their managerialist goal of portraying civilian and military organizations as effective, evidence-based, progressive and ethical. This logic also pertains to contemporary debates over ‘progress’, and its measurement in the Iraq and Afghanistan counterinsurgencies and the campaign against Isil. Despite its practical limitations, managerialism is highly prevalent as ideology in warfare, fixating on tactical and operational levels, thereby excluding broader strategic, political or ethical discussions. ‘Progress’ and its mismeasurement in Vietnam and the New Wars are therefore best understood not simply as reasons for military and civilian failures in prolonged and inconclusive conflicts but as evidence of the success of managerialism in restricting public scrutiny and accountability of the business of war.

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