Not feminist as in "women should be included in the draft" but feminist as in "being drafted is a violation of bodily autonomy for any gender".

The draft should not exist. Drafting people into the military is a violation of human rights. You should not be able to force someone to risk their life. If you can't find enough people who care about a conflict to keep it going then it simply shouldn't keep going. You can't even force someone to donate a kidney using government power, why the fuck can you force them to donate their whole body and life to a cause they don't agree with or don't care about?

Spain lied about not selling weapons to Israel.

Even after October 7th, Spain has sold more than 1 million € of weapons to Israel. Norway and Finland make it possible.

In January, Spain made headlines word-wide when the government's Minister of Exteriors, José Manuel Albares (PSOE), claimed in Congress and later again in a radio interview that Spain had stopped selling weapons to Israel ever since October 7th. Israel's intensification of violence in Gaza following October 7th meant that, on top of decades of apartheid and ethnic cleansing, between October 7th and January 23rd Israel had already killed 28,000 people and forced 2 million out of their home. In this context, many people were demanding their governments stop arming and funding the genocide of the Palestinian people, and here on Tumblr and other social media sites like Twitter I think we all saw the many posts praising the Spanish government for this.

Well, it turns out it was a lie.

According to Albares, "Since October 7th there are no more weapons exportations [from Spain] to Israel". But in November alone, Spain exported weapons to Israel for 987,000€, as was published on the Spanish Government's official website dedicated to exterior commerce (Comex). A researcher from Centre Delàs (an independent centre for peace studies) found it and published it, and it has also been verified by newspapers such as elDiario.es.

This 987,000€ worth of weapons in November was not the only ammunition that Spain has sent to Israel in 2023. In 2023, Spain exported a total of 1.48 million € in war material to Israel.

All of the weapons sent in November come from the factory of Nammo Palencia (Castilla y León), a corporation that is 50% property of the Government of Norway and 50% owned by a public Finnish business. However, even if the owners are foreigners, the ammunition was sent from Spain and thus it had to be authorized by the an organism of the Spanish Government named Junta Interministerial de Defensa y Doble Uso, whose deliberations on whether a weapons exportation is accepted or denied are kept secret. The only cases where they have denied exporting weapons to Israel have been when they thought that Israel would re-sell these weapons to the Philippines.

Spain has had a close relation with Israel for years. As published by the Spanish Government, Spain has sold 20 million € of weapons to Israel between 2012 and 2022. Spain also buys weapons and military software from Israel (for example, the Spanish Intelligence Service has been using the Israeli software Pegasus to illegally spy on Catalan activists, journalists, politicians and civil society members and their relatives to attack the Catalan independence movement), and Spain has continued buying from Israel and allocating defense contracts to Israel even after the October 7th attacks. It is very difficult to track the concessions of public contracts such as buying weapons, but some contracts have been known. For example, on November 24th 2023, Spain bought 287.5 million € of missiles from Israel. This is not unusual: between 2011 and 2021, it is publicly known that Spain bought war material from Israel for at least 268 million €, but experts say that the real number could be two or three times as much.

Spain has also continued allocating concessions to Israel. For example, on December 15th 2023 Spain allocated a contract worth over 576 million € to Israel for a rocket launcher programme. On November 22nd, Spain allocated another another Israeli company to provide missiles for 237 million € at the same time as the Spanish army bought Israeli inhibitors for 1.4 million €. The very next day, November 23rd, Spain signed another military allocation to Israel for 82,600€. The following week, Spain signed yet another allocation with a different Israeli military corporation for 3.7 million €.

Spain also allows Israeli weapon manufacturing companies to produce weapons through their branches located in Spain. This way, Israeli weapons make their way to markets with which Israel doesn't have diplomatic ties but Spain does, like Saudi Arabia. And since Spain is a member of NATO, Israeli weapons produced in Spain are approved according to NATO standards and access it easily. In the same way, these Israeli weapons manufacturers also access European Union defense funds through their branches in Spain. (source).

As I said, I saw a lot of positive posts around when Albares said Spain was going to embargo, but I haven't seen any post about how they didn't do it. I also (personally) haven't seen anything on international media, and barely anything on Spanish media, which is already busy with the PSOE covid material corruption scandal. So I share this in the hope of helping put pressure on Spain to cut all ties with Israel immediately.

SHAME ON EVERYONE WHO GIVES ISRAEL THE MATERIAL AND MONEY THAT WILL BE USED TO MASSACRE THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE. SHAME ON SPAIN, NORWAY, AND FINLAND.

Corrected military billboard spotted in Richmond, Virginia

Poor women in border areas are victims of mass rape. The soldiers posted there abuse their authority to violate women's bodies. Numerous women of Kashmir have come out against this gang rape yet the intellectuals of India remain silent. Women's issues are merely an afterthought to politicians.

Amusingly I keep getting targeted ads from the army on various social media apps. Me, a mentally ill, physically out of shape, communist in the Army? I don’t think so. Let them waste their money though.

"The army: where the rich send working class youth to be maimed and killed for profit" (EN: English)

(Instagram source)

So, Sim Kern has a tiktok on moral injury and leftist spaces. My problem isn't with the video itself (I found it quite insightful and now have another book rec to add to my ever growing tbr list) but with a particular comment on Sim Kern's instagram post of this tiktok:

To explain, the reason why I have an issue with this comment is because there is a tendency for left-leaning military veterans (esp those from the US) to prioritize/privilege/center their own hurt feelings over being "rejected" from leftist spaces. And what's even more frustrating is how so many pple, including Sim Kerns themselves, are jumping into the replies to comfort alexramos8485.

And this is frustrating to me because as a society, we are often expected to understand why military veterans, esp those from the imperial core, chose to serve in the military as evidenced in this reply:

And this is because we have been conditioned by Western media to sympathize with military veterans from the imperial core (also becos the West has a lot of cultural softpower). So many tv shows and movies from the West are devoted to understanding the psyche of these soldiers, the troubles facing them when they return home from a tour, uncovering the backstories that led to them making the choice to serve in the military.

So here we are understanding why military veterans make the choices that they make, however these military veterans often do not make the same effort to understand why there are leftist spaces that are "hostile" towards them. This reply really sums my thoughts:

I'm not saying that we should reject military veterans from leftist spaces, they provide unique perspectives and experiences that are of use when building movements and coalitions. I just wish that for veterans from the imperial core wanting to enter leftist spaces, y'all have to do the work, y'all have to learn to de-center your feelings and actually listen to the pple impacted by the wars caused by your country's military forces which you are also complicit in, actually prioritize their feelings. One of the greatest strengths of leftism is that we leftists are a very diverse and ecclectic bunch so there are tons of leftist circles that exist, but remember that you are neither entitled to forgiveness by those affected by your complicity in your country's military nor to being in all leftist circles.

every day i want to grab service members by the shoulders & scream "aren't you sick of it?? aren't you fucking SICK of our country's bullshit?! get OUT get OUT for fucks SAKE, do smth BETTER w/ ur life!!"

"Video games normalize violence" is another take where it could actually be a good conversation, but it's pointed towards the wrong people.

Video games can cause violence to be more normalized when they're used as propaganda. Such as what the American military does.

If you watch military ads, you will see that they very much treat joining the military to kill real life people like it's some action game or movie.

Let's use a Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare trailer, for example. Here is a trailer for a video game which the trailer was released four years ago.

Now, here is an actual ad for the marines that was posted one year ago.

And you see the comments filled with young men saying this looks cool or great or more branches should be like this. And that's exactly what the military wants.

Recruitment is down an astronomical amount right now and they're doing whatever they can to get more people to enlist.

Make no mistake, the military actively tries to appeal to young people however they can and it's so fucking insidious that they're treating real lives like it's some video game. (Alongside every other insidious thing they do.)

Spare five minutes to learn about the Vietnam Backlash and the ten-year resistance movement that ended the war. There is a lot we can learn from those people. In many ways they are light years ahead of us.

🇵🇸🇻🇳🇺🇸

Idk how to save videos from IG to PC, so sorry if you see log in link on IG. you don't need to log in.

Here's the link so if you're more comfortable copying it to your browser

https://www.instagram.com/p/C3n_D2vgaSn/

I'd just like it to be known that I hate militaries, but especially the US military for being imperialism incarnate, rapists, the biggest user of fossil fuels in the world, taking advantage of poverty, murdering children, among many many other things I'm forgetting right this second. I also hate private companies that are part of the military industrial complex or that otherwise feed into this massive terrorist machine.

me and who??

The appropriate response to the military

[Image description: A tumblr text post, edited whiteout-poetry style. The resulting text reads, "the military, the most violent organization and the most destructive, is also a group of people whose entire focus hinges on commiseration inside the industrial war machine."]

---

the military, the most violent organization and the most destructive, is also a group of people whose entire focus hinges on commiseration inside the industrial war machine

Anarchist Ruslan Sidik was arrested in #Russia at the end of November allegedly for blowing up railroad tracks and damaging 18 cargo wagons. He is also accused of attack on military aerodrome in Ryazan region. - via Bad Immigrant