this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2023
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Here's a possibly-controversial take, but joining the army isn't really even close to the best analogy for a male-dominated industry where you "sell your body".
Being a labourer is. Working in industries like construction, but not as a skilled tradesman. It doesn't carry the same moral weight riley was going for though.
True, but it's not just about labor.
To join the US military you have to literally sign over your bodily autonomy to join. Once you do then they can pump you full of experimental drugs, or run whatever other ungodly experiments, all they want. I know someone who considered joining then backed out when this allegedly happened.
Anyway, never heard of Riley before but seems nice. Hope she supports our troops and offers military discount for her OnlyFans.
Wait, what?
I'm gonna need a source on that one my guy.
By ungodly experiments, he means your typical round of vaccinations.
Also, there's a waiver for just about anything in the military. If there's an actual medical concern with vaccinations, then you can apply for a waiver. The problem is when people confuse an actual medical condition with a conspiracy theory they read on the internet.
I doubt that; more likely they were thinking along the lines of agent orange
I was thinking more along the lines of the Bikini Atoll tests which included tens of thousands of people in the Navy but yeah.
I assume this is what they're talking about: "Under the Defense Authorization Act, the President is authorized to waive the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act's (the act) informed consent requirements in military operations if the President finds that obtaining consent is infeasible or contrary to the best interests of recipients and on an additional ground that obtaining consent is contrary to national security interests."
https://www.fda.gov/science-research/clinical-trials-and-human-subject-protection/protection-human-subjects-informed-consent-exception-general-requirements#:~:text=Under%20the%20Defense%20Authorization%20Act,on%20an%20additional%20ground%20that
I dunno, I think, for a modern example, PB pills are pretty bad.
US Soldiers are given many vaccines to prepare them for various diseases abroad or weaponized. Historically, refusing could result in sever penalties. I also think it's been normally questioned whether some vaccines given were experimental or rushed, but could find no explicit proof that's happened before.
Military personnel sue for use in experimental agent testing.
Experimental drugs given to soldiers during the Gulf war
See also the Burn pits, Agent Orange, CTE and other effects from prolonged exposure to crew weapons use, and the working conditions inside AC-130s and related health effects
I don't mean this to sound rude, but it's fairly common knowledge
Depends on your definition of mortal danger and how OSHA compliant your work site is.
I get what you're going for, but having worked in construction in Ohio I can say that yes, sometimes people do take potshots at you/around you.
i'm still going to choose popcorn lung over being blown the fuck up
True, you're far more likely to die working menial laborer jobs than you are in the military.
Laborers are providing direct goods to the people they supply too. The military is far more intangible with prevention being the key factor for it's expense.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/187127/number-of-occupational-injury-deaths-in-the-us-by-gender-since-2003/
9 military people die from hostile action in 2020. 317/1017 in accidents. 190 illness. 406 suicide.
https://dcas.dmdc.osd.mil/dcas/app/summaryData/deaths/byYearManner
I highly doubt they consider suicide for occupational hazards too which is strange in hindsight considering the military accounts for it now. One of the few things they do ahead of the woke curve lol. First responders as well.
So in reality you'd need to remove both suicide and illness from the military's numbers to equal laborers.
363 died in the military then vs 4,774.
Even hostile deaths... 9 in hostile action and 37 homicides... Meanwhile there were 392 workplace homicides. 37,060 nonfatal intentional injuries.
https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2022/workplace-violence-homicides-and-nonfatal-intentional-injuries-by-another-person-in-2020.htm
Oh man, this is wrong.
In. 2022, there were 500k plumbers in the US, I don't have exact numbers for how many pipe fitters there were, but it's a position that's always in high demand, safe to say that very few of that 500k number are pipe fitters, less than a quarter. So let's say 100k pipe fitters which is honestly, probably generous.
There were 70 fatal accidents involving pipe fitters. Not injuries, fatal accidents only. That is a ratio of .0006.
The US military boasted 1.3 million members that year, and 270 fatal accidents, and 0 to enemy action. A ratio of .0002.
You are 2/3rd less likely to die in the armed forces then you are pipe fitting.
That's interesting, but it would be perhaps more interesting to compare the yearly average accross a longer time frame. Also didn't a bunch of people get lung cancer and die as a result of burn pits? I'm sure people died years later from exposure to other hazards too, not to mention how many people commit suicide after.
Also this isn't to say pipe fitting isn't a dangerous job, I am just interested how the statistics would look over a longer time frame and with consideration of deaths that occur after service, but still as a result.
So there's a few things happening here that are causing industrial numbers to surpass American military rates of injury.
We are not actively in conflict with any other nation, so being in the military is no more dangerous than any industrial occupation because of conflict.
The military is, generally, safer than any one occupation, but the military is also a monolith. Saying it's safer in the military is kind of like saying office jobs in the US are more dangerous than pipe fitting. You're essentially comparing numerous disparate positions to one type of work, and that skews your results. It would be more accurate to compare rates of incidents in say, front line infantrymen to any particular other field.
It's also worth pointing out that the military has it's own plumbers, and they do their own pipe fitting. Statistics on the rates of injury there are a little harder to come by.
But more to the specific points you mentioned: yes, and that's not the first time the military has accidently killed or seriously injured it's own people. These incidents happen in civilian world too and arguably, more frequently. The US industrial labor pool is 10 times the size of the military, and negligent safety hazards come up every year. Rates of suicide are also lower in the military than in the general population, and a variety of factors contribute to that.
First of all, KIA MIA for 2022 is 0, I did add them.
People who later die due to injury is also included, for both metrics. That's why these numbers are almost 2 years old.
What specifically was excluded were those who died to illness or self inflicted wounds.
I picked the most recent year for which information is available, I gathered the summary information from statistics that others had already done.
These reports are prepared yearly, I'm not sure what you expect. It's literally how statistics are done. It's an industrial standard. Do you expect that people only work for 1 year out of their lives while everyone in the military is stuck there for 8?
I dunno man it sounds like you're just being dense on purpose because you've run out of room to argue.