Monday. February 8: Monthly DPP Meeting, 7-9 pm, Vietnamese American Community Center, 42 Charles St., Fields Corner. Topics:  Organizing for anti-war, cut military budget campaign; getting out on the streets, framing the issues, taking the initiative.Wheelchair accessible.  Please call us a week in advance if you need translation, childcare, a ride, or have other needs: 617-282-3783. 

Notes from January 31 DPP Retreat 19 DPP members attended a stimulating and productive discussion and assessment; plus a welcome from Rev. Art Lavoie of First Parish Church.

Anti-War and 25% Decisions:--We voted to join the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, a broad-based coalition working to change US policy toward the Israel-Palestine conflict:  see details and statement of principles/call to action that DPP signed on to here  --The Anti-War Committee will organize a tabling campaign that combines 25%’s “fund our neighborhoods” demand with education about military spending and what it’s for. Many or most active DPP members will table. We want to focus on Afghanistan, and present concrete facts on items like military bases. We will continue talking about a sharper slogan like “Bring Our War $ Home.” The community coalition depends on us to have the info and to keep them updated on what’s happening with the 25% campaign. We also need to work on fears and security.--Our February 8 meeting will discuss one or both of these topics:1)      organizing tabling and outreach: locations, reaching out to members, involving interested people, getting stuff to elected officials. Hayat and Sharon want to coordinate and think about the education piece. (is that correctly defined?)2)      messaging and framing: Daryl, Jeff, Kelley, Betsy.  

Membership Decisions:Hayat and Kelley will take responsibility for following up with newly interested people.Mike and Rosemary will complete the phone tree overhaul.Betsy, Jane, and Angela will set up a Facebook page.Haiti Decisions: Hayat and Denise will organize a fundraising event (dinner?) for AFAB.

Multicultural Competence Committee Ideas We’re Pursuing:The Anti-War Committee will think about one or two events about the impact of wars on people of color not just what’s happening in another country but attacking it at its roots. The 25% Committee will think about a training on white supremacy issues raised by the 25% campaign. This would guide our future work and create a module others can use. (no assignment) Readings that we can cover in meetings.Christine will investigate workshops by People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond. Kelley, Daryl, Rosemary, ?others want to go. (If you know of other good trainings, check them out too.)

Film: We’ll cosponsor “View from a Grain of Sand” 6:30 February 11 with First Parish Church, publicize it, and bring food. Kelley and Mike will look for an LED projector.Also, Jane will investigate DotArt doing a “what would 25% create here?”

Facilitation Team: Christine are willing to start May 11; Kelley and Alison will consider.

Dues: We collected voluntary dues of $20.

Snail mailing the update: Sharon will take over from Christine.  

 

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Thursday, February 11, Film and Talk by Producer Meena Nanji: "View From a Grain of Sand" - 6:30pm - First Parish Church, 10 Parish St., Meetinghouse Hill, Dorchester.  Screenings with Talks by Producer/Director Meena Nanji.  Explore the situation of women in Afghanistan at a screening of the 2006 film View from a Grain of Sand , followed by  Q&A and discussions with the director and producer, Meena Nanji.  About the movie: Shot in refugee camps of Pakistan and the war-torn city of Kabul, three remarkable Afghan women lead us through the maze of Afghanistan's complex history, informing this examination of how international interventions, war and the rise of political Islam have stripped Afghan women of their freedom over the last thirty years.  About the producer/director: Meena Nanji is a South-Asian Kenyan American filmmaker who has produced, written and directed award-winning independent documentaries and experimental videos. Titles include Voices of the Morning, a 15 minute piece about the effects of orthodox Muslim law on young women, Living in Colour about 2nd generation South Asian youth living in Los Angeles, It Is A Crime, and others.Sponsored by First Parish Church and Dorchester People for Peace.

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HAITI

Members of Dorchester People for Peace (DPP) are deeply saddened by the tragedies unfolding in Haiti. We are also aware that our friends and neighbors among the Haitian Diaspora in Dorchester are reeling from the shock. Boston has the third largest Haitian community in the country, with Dorchester having the highest numbers. The Boston community is facing grief and loss with many family members dead, and they are already preparing for the large influx of Haitians expected to arrive who will need housing, employment, post-disaster relief and support. Our partner organization in Dorchester, Association for Haitian Women, (AFAB) is already providing much needed trauma counseling, advocacy and practical services. DPP invites you to join us in supporting AFAB so it can continue to respond to the crucial needs of the Haitian community in Boston.

 

Tuesday, February 16, POTLUCK FUNDRAISING DINNER TO BENEFIT AFAB, 6:30pm, The Great Hall, Codman Sq., DorchesterBring a dish; enjoy great company, food, music and raffle; hear from someone who has just returned from Haiti; support a wonderful organization!Suggested Donation $40.00 To order tickets or contribute, Email imamhayat@hotmail.com   *wheelchair accessible 

 

Local Haitian Media
Jean Filias hosts a Haitian radio program on Radio Energy (1620AM) out of Dorchester.
The Boston Haitian Reporter has an impressive live blog on developments in Haiti and updates on available resources.
The Boston Haitian Reporter also has a list of Haitian community resources and organizations. 

 

US  Haiti "Relief" a Rehearsal For Troop Deployments in Latin America?
When the U.S. sent thousands of troops into Port au Prince airport, earthquake relief was clearly not the primary mission. Otherwise, ships and whole military units would not have arrived with only supplies for themselves. "U.S. naval units sailed into Haitian waters without bothering to load up with food, water and medicine at the nearby U.S. base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba." The American commandeering of the airport at Port au Prince and de facto seizure of sovereignty over Haiti looked exactly like an invasion and occupation – except that Haiti had already been invaded in 2004 by the U.S., which then turned over occupational duties to its servants in the United Nations. To speak of a U.S. "invasion" of Haiti is getting a little bit redundant. The Americans never left, and they and their flunkies walk all over Haiti like an old rug.
Clearly, however, the U.S. was not on an earthquake rescue mission.  More See on new US basing structure in Latin America, below! 

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Viva Palestina Event in Allston with British MP George GallowayAt least 5 DPP members attended the fundraiser at the Palestinian Cultural Center for Peace on February 1, where a packed audience of almost 400 people heard George Galloway, leader of Viva Palestina humanitarian relief convoys to Gaza; DPPer Jeff Klein made the fundraising appeal. 

British MP tells Allston audience its time end to Gaza Strip blockade George Galloway slammed the collective punishment Israel imposed on Palestinian people living in the Gaza Strip during a speech on Monday night at the Palestinian Cultural Center of Peace in Allston… Israel began the blockade of Gaza to punish citizens for the way they voted in a democratic election, said the MP. Supporters calling for an end to the blockade gathered at the Palestinian Cultural Center for Peace to listen to Galloway, the founder of Viva Palestina, a charity that aims to break the siege of Gaza by bringing convoys of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip.  More 

 

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CAN'T AFFORD WAR NO MORE!

Since President Obama announced Dec. 1 that he will escalate the Afghanistan war by sending 30,000 additional troops, the disastrous failure of the Administration's war policy is becoming more apparent.

 

On February 1, the White House will present its FY2001 budget, which is expected to include a record-shattering $709 billion for "defense" with $159 billion for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Congress will also vote this spring on President Obama's request for another $33 billion for the Afghanistan escalation on top of the $709 billion.  At a time when millions of Americans are jobless and cities and towns across the country are slashing budgets for basic services, we urgently need to challenge the Administration's budgetary priorities.    

  

Starve the War, Not the Nation!  Across the country students, teachers, women, the disabled, hospital and healthcare workers, the homeless, domestic workers, the unemployed, seniors and many others are protesting deep budget cuts to essential programs.It's time to join our efforts for a just economy with our call for peace and to tell Congress we can't afford war anymore. Find out who in your community is organizing in support of economic justice. Invite them to join peace activists in a monthly Brown Bag Lunch Vigil (BBLV) at your local congressional office. 

 

Saturday, February 13, “Peace Organizing in a Time of Economic Crisis,” 1-5pm, Democracy Center • 45 Mt. Auburn St. • Cambridge. We invite the UJP community to gather and discuss peace organizing in a time of economic crisis, at our February strategy conference. In our first segment, Maryam Shansab, an Afghan-American Tufts graduate student, will discuss the war in Afghanistan in the context of U.S. foreign policy, and how to build support against the war.  Boston City Councilor Chuck Turner will speak about the effect of the economic crisis and the impact of the Obama presidency on mobilizing against war and the war economy among people of color and all working people.  In the second segment, Mike Prokosch will present a workshop on behalf of the campaign to cut the military budget and fund our communities. The final segment will consist of updates from the Nuclear Abolition, Palestine, Afghanistan, and Legislative Action task forces, and presentations by the Online Organizing Committee and the Majority Agenda Project. Join us for an important and stimulating conversation about our work to build the peace movement.

  

 

Thursday, February 18, Vigil at Sen. Kerry's Boston office, Noon, One Bowdoin Square.  The UJP Afghanistan Task Force will hold Join us, update us at ujpcoalition@gmail.com, or write us to talk about organizing a vigil at your Congressional Rep's office.  Take Action!  Ask your members of Congress to reject the president's proposal to increase Pentagon spending. Ask them to find ways to reduce the military budget so that the government has money to spend to provide real security for people in the United States. Tell your Congressional representative to vote against war funding. Call 202-224-3121.

Total Outlays (Federal Funds): $2,650 billion MILITARY: 54% and $1,449 billion NON-MILITARY: 46% and $1,210 billion

Source: http://www.warresisters.org/pages/piechart.htm (these figures refer to last year’s  Federal budget) 

 

Don’t Call It a ‘Defense’ Budget

This isn’t "defense." The new budget from the White House will push U.S. military spending well above $2 billion a day. Foreclosing the future of our country should not be confused with defending it. "Unless miraculous growth, or miraculous political compromises, creates some unforeseen change over the next decade, there is virtually no room for new domestic initiatives for Mr. Obama or his successors," the New York Times reports.  More 

 

Obama's Budget Calls for Billions in New Spending for Drones For the first time, according to The Los Angeles Times, the Air Force is proposing the purchase of more drones than combat aircraft and will double the production of the MQ-9 Reaper, "a bigger, more heavily armed version of the Predator drone, to 48. The Army will also buy 26 extended-range Predators." "The expansion will allow the military to increase unmanned patrols - the number of planes in the air at once - to 65, up from its current limit of 37," The Los Angeles Times noted.  Defense Secretary Robert Gates told reporters Monday that the use of drones will continue to increase "even as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan eventually wind down." … While Obama said in his State of the Union address last week that creating new jobs for Americans is now his "number one priority for 2010," the massive defense spending his budget proposes will actually do the opposite, according to Dean Baker, co-director for the Center for Economic and Policy Research. More 

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REDUCING MILITARY SPENDING  

25% Campaign Update

1.  Coalition to FUND OUR COMMUNITIES---CUT MILITARY SPENDING 25%
The Coalition to Fund Our Communities---Cut Military Spending 25% formed last July at a meeting called by DPP and a dozen other community groups from Dorchester, Roxbury, and surrounding neighborhoods.  An ad hoc steering committee has been meeting monthly since then, holding some lively strategy discussions and planning and carrying out some actions.  So far over 20 community groups and agencies, big and small, are participating.   

At the recent (1/13) steering committee meeting, 12 people from 6 groups stuffed envelopes for a mailing to all the mayors of Massachusetts cities and towns.  The Coalition, which got Mayor Menino to endorse the 25% demand by sending an open letter to President Obama and Congress last October, is asking the mayors to sign on to a similar open letter, and is also calling friends and community groups in those towns asking them to urge their mayors to sign.  The Coalition is also linking up with UJP folks, who have agreed to ask their member groups in those towns to contact the mayors.  Phyllis Evans, of ACORN and DPP, represented the Coalition at a Jan.17 UJP 25% campaign planning meeting, and Coalition and UJP folks hope this joint planning and work will continue.

The Coalition is also surveying community groups in Boston to find out what unmet and underfunded needs they see among their constituents, to gather information to help compile a Community Budget, showing what we need the money spent on here.  And the Coalition has decided to push our Congresspeople to support the Congressional Black Caucus's jobs bill and fund it by not funding an escalation of the war in Afghanistan.  More discussion of goals and strategies, and action plans, are on the agenda for the February meeting.

2.  UJP 25% task force.  See www.justicewithpeace.org/25-percent-solution and www.25percentsolution.org
The 25% task force of United for Justice with Peace, our eastern Mass peace coalition, has decided to take the plunge and try to

• get Congress to cut military budget items this year and appropriate equivalent amounts of money for jobs at home,
• get the Mass. congressional delegation to work for this, and
• find other peace groups around the country that are doing the same.

The task force held a very successful training for about 17 activists across eastern Mass on January 9 and a first working group meeting Sunday January 17 for people who want to put serious efort into the campaign. Peace activists in other towns are contacting their mayors and asking them to endorse the Coalition's letter (see above). The task force is trying to make sure they also contact people hurt by the economic crunch -- neighbors, service providers, advocates -- to talk with mayors and let them know this is a real solution to our budget crisis.

 

Next 25% Committee Meeting is on Monday, March 1 at 6:30pm 

In Maine: BRING OUR WAR $$ HOME CAMPAIGNOur January 14 launch of the 3-month Bring Our War $$ Home campaign was quite a success.  A great mid-week turnout resulted in an impressive showing of 70 folks from all over Maine.  Common Dreams re-posted the Portland Press Herald / Kennebec Journal / Waterville Morning Sentinel coverage. Other media notice included a great spot on CH 5 WABI-TV (Bangor) that ran morning, evening and night, plus MPBN radio and WERU radio. An article ran in the the Capitol Weekly and the Rumford Reporter put our news release at the top of their web site. Thanks to Martha Spiess and Jeffrey Daniels who collaborated on this YouTube post while developing an hour long local access cable tv show that will run in the Portland area, and to Roger Leisner who shared his terrific photos.  Gary Higginbottom (Portland) has finished drafting the town meeting warrant/resolution for those who wish to take the issue of war spending cuts to their town for a vote.  Please feel free to adapt it for local conditions.  It is on the web site.  (Dud Henrick reports that Deer Isle has now qualified to have the warrant on the agenda for their Town Meeting.)  Gary also did some great research and has come up with a list of how much every town in Maine has contributed to war since 2001.  This information is also on the web site.  www.BringOurWarDollarsHome.org

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COST of WAR . . . 

War spending surges in 2011 budget

President Barack Obama’s new budget, to be released Monday, forecasts two consecutive years of near $160 billion in war funding, far more than he hoped when elected and only modestly less than the last years of the Bush Administration. In 2011 alone, the revised numbers are triple what the president included in his spending plan a year ago. And the strain shows itself in new deficit projections, already hobbled by lagging revenues due to the weak economy. The administration appears to be projecting a deficit of near $1.6 trillion for the current year and $1.3 trillion in 2011… The budget’s increased war funding is not entirely surprising given Obama’s decision to add more U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Nonetheless, seeing everything in a single budget brings the war costs more into focus. Democrats are increasingly agitated by the pace of withdrawal from Iraq, and the combined costs of the two wars is striking –especially when measured against the much more hopeful rhetoric of Obama’s campaign.  More 

NEW PENTAGON BUDGET: Spending Even More, Buying Even LessExcluding the cost of the wars, the "base" Pentagon budget has also gone up dramatically: 25 percent, or over another Trillion dollars…  Where did the added money go? According to the Government Accountability Office almost $300 billion went into mismanagement in the form of cost overruns for hardware. (Expect a new GAO report this spring finding the cost overruns have grown.) Much of the rest of the money for acquisition went into "successful" hardware programs that were so much more expensive to buy and maintain than what they were replacing that we literally shrunk the force with more money, while simultaneously spending more to support this new equipment at lower operating and training levels.   More

In case you missed this. . .

Massive Defense Spending Leads to Job LossThe projected job loss from this increase in defense spending would be close to two million. In other words, the standard economic models that project job loss from efforts to stem global warming also project that the increase in defense spending since 2000 will cost the economy close to two million jobs in the long run. For some reason, no one has chosen to highlight the job loss associated with higher defense spending. In fact, the job loss attributable to defense spending has probably never been mentioned in a single news story in The New York Times, Washington Post, National Public Radio, or any other major media outlet. It is difficult to find a good explanation for this omission.  More 

SEVEN DAYS IN JANUARY: How the Pentagon Counts Coups in Washington  To put just the president’s domestic cost-cutting plan in a Pentagon context:  If his freeze on domestic programs were to go through Congress intact (an unlikely possibility), it would still be chicken-feed in the cost-cutting sweepstakes.  The president’s team estimates savings of $250 billion over 10 years.  On the other hand, the National Priorities Project has done some sober figuring, based on projections from the Office of Management and Budget, and finds that, over the same decade, the total increase in the Pentagon budget should come to $522 billion... Or consider that $14.2 billion meant for the Afghan military and police.  Forget, for a moment, all the obvious doubts about training, by 2014, up to 400,000 Afghans for a force bleeding deserters and evidently whipping future Taliban fighters into shape, or the fact that impoverished Afghanistan will never be able to afford such a vast security apparatus (which means it’s ours to fund into the distant future), or even that many of those training dollars may go to Xe Services (formerly Blackwater) or other mercenary private contracting companies.  Just think for a minute, instead, about the fact that the State of the Union Address offered not a hint that a single further dollar would go to train an adult American, especially an out-of-work one, in anything whatsoever.   More 

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. . . and COST of EMPIRE 

HOW MANY US MILITARY BASES?Every year the Department of Defense publishes its “Base Structure Report” – a kind of inventory and real estate guide to US military facilities in the US and around the world.  You can find the latest one (for fiscal year 2008) here.  The report is 205 pages long. A summary chart (page 23) lists a total of 5,429 sites, of which 761 are “foreign” and 104 are on “US territories” (such as Guam, Puerto Rico).  These don’t include “temporary” bases in Iraq or Afghanistan.  We’ll be looking at US Military bases regularly in the DPP Update. 

 

There are 45 US Army installations in GERMANY and at least two large airbases  . . . more than 20 years after the end of the Cold War.Look at the list (and map) here  Several of the larger bases  --  Bamberg,  Ansbach,  Ramstein --  are more or less permanent US “towns” with  their own web sites, transport and commercial recreation, on -base schools, hospitals and health care. Ramstein Air Base and Spangdahlem Air Base remain as fully active U.S. air bases in Germany, supporting ongoing operations in the Middle East and Balkans. About $600 million is now being spent to improve their facilities to extend their usefulness for twenty years or more. More 

One of the largest US bases in Europe is located at Vicenza, NORTHERN ITALY.  The operations and proposed expansion of the Vicenza base (which is used to support US military operations in the Middle East)  have been the subject of protests by locals and a source of political controversy in Italy for years. See, for example, here.

 

VIDEO: A few years ago the late Howard Zinn addressed the Vicenza protesters and spoke about the need to close US military bases abroad. 

 

Muscling Latin America

In September Ecuador's president, Rafael Correa, delivered on an electoral promise and refused to renew Washington's decade-old, rent-free lease on an air base outside the Pacific coast town of Manta, which for the past ten years has served as the Pentagon's main South American outpost. The eviction was a serious effort to fulfill the call of Ecuador's new Constitution to promote "universal disarmament" and oppose the "imposition" of military bases of "some states in the territory of others." It was also one of the most important victories for the global demilitarization movement, loosely organized around the International Network for the Abolition of Foreign Military Bases… Then Washington answered with a show of force: take away one, we'll grab seven. In late October the United States and Colombia signed an agreement granting the Pentagon use of seven military bases, along with an unlimited number of as yet unspecified "facilities and locations." They add to Washington's already considerable military presence in Colombia, as well as in Central America and the Caribbean.  More 

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AFGHANISTAN
Afghanistan cannot be subdued by force. The Taliban showed last week that it can freely strike in the heart of Kabul, only yards from the Presidential palace.   It has shadow governors in all but one of Afghanistan's provinces.  And the killing of 5 CIA officers, including the agency's leading experts on Al Qaeda, by a double agent at a CIA base in Khost province Dec. 30, illustrates that the U.S. is facing sophisticated and disciplined adversaries. The war is causing rising civilian casualties and Afghan resentment of foreign forces.  2009 was the worst year since 2001 for Afghan children. Just in the past month, NATO forces killed 10 civilians including 8 schoolboys in Kunar province, 4 civilians in Nangarhar province (arousing a 5,000-person protest), 10 protesters in Helmand province, and 4 people in Ghazni province whom the Americans said were Taliban, but who the local people said were civilians. The UN reported that 2,412 civilians were killed in Afghanistan in 2009, a 14% increase over 2008.   Pressure is increasing on the U.S. for a diplomatic settlement. An International Herald Tribune op-ed last week joined a growing number of experts calling for restoring Afghanistan's neutrality, including  the departure of U.S. forces and bases.   And opposition to Obama's war is stirring in Congress, too.   Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) plans to introduce a privileged resolution repealing Congressional authorization for the war.  Rep.  Jim McGovern (D-MA) and Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) will offer a bill to require an exit strategy.   And Rep. Barbara Lee's (D-CA) HR.3699 withholds funds to pay for any increased troop levels.

 

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“WAR ON TERROR”  Do you feel safer now? 

More airport security won’t do much to stop terrorists. Leaving the Middle East would.

Earlier this week, Osama bin Laden praised the Christmas Day attack in which a Nigerian-born man living in London attempted to blow up a Detroit-bound airplane by igniting explosives in his underwear. Mr. bin Laden’s endorsement, along with recent attacks in Baghdad, raise concerns about a new round of attacks against the United States. Politicians, security experts, and pundits have therefore called for heightened security measures at airports and on airplanes.It won’t work without addressing why there are attacks to begin with.  More 

 

LEGAL LYNCHING? Government Claims Right to Kill US Citizen “Terrorist Suspects” Without Trial

But even if you're someone who does want the President to have the power to order American citizens killed without a trial by decreeing that they are Terrorists (and it's worth remembering that if you advocate that power, it's going to be vested in all Presidents, not just the ones who are as Nice, Good, Kind-Hearted and Trustworthy as Barack Obama), shouldn't there at least be some judicial approval required?  Do we really want the President to be able to make this decision unilaterally and without outside checks?  Remember when many Democrats were horrified (or at least when they purported to be) at the idea that Bush was merely eavesdropping on American citizens without judicial approval?  Shouldn't we be at least as concerned about the President's being able to assassinate Americans without judicial oversight?  More 

 

Nostalgia for Bush/Cheney Methods in "War On Terror"

…there is clearly a bipartisan and institutional craving for a revival (more accurately:  ongoing preservation)  of the core premise of Bush/Cheney radicalism:  that because we're "at war" with Terrorists, our standard precepts of justice and due process do not apply and, indeed, must be violated.  To relieve ourselves of guilt and of the bad lingering taste left from having such discredited and unpopular leadership for eight years, we collectively pretended for a little while to regret the excesses of the Bush/Cheney approach to such matters.  But it's now crystal clear that the country, especially its ruling elite, is either too petrified of Terrorism and/or too enamored of the powers which that fear enables to accept any real changes from the policies that were supposedly such a profound violation "of our values." …Countries which have been victimized by horrific terrorist attacks over the last several years -- Britain, Spain, India, Indonesia -- have tried and convicted the perpetrators as criminals in their civilian court system, right in their normal courthouses, in the heart of the cities that were the target of the attacks.  These countries -- which aren't protected by oceans and (in the case of India and Indonesia) aren't bordered by friendly countries -- didn't invent special military commissions to abridge due process or simply imprison the accused without a trial.  More 

 

3 U.S. Soldiers Die in Attack by Pakistan Militants

Three American soldiers were killed in a roadside bomb attack Wednesday morning in an area known as a Taliban stronghold but which the Pakistani military had declared cleared of the militants, two Pakistani government officials said…  The presence of American troops, mainly for intelligence and training missions, has been handled with extreme discretion because of the sensitivities of the Pakistani military and government. Sections of the Pakistani press have waged an anti-American campaign in recent months that has made the Pakistani authorities even more nervous about association with the United States and perceived infringements on the country’s sovereignty.  More 

The Iraqi Oil Conundrum: Energy and Power in the Middle East

The entire six-year saga of American energy dreams, policies, and pressures in Iraq has so far yielded little -- no significant increase in Iraq’s oil production, no increase in its future capacity to produce, and no increase in its energy exports.  The grand ambition of transferring actual control of the oil industry into the hands of the international oil companies has proven no less stillborn… The end is not in sight and the outcome still unclear.  Will the vast Iraqi oil reserves be developed and sent into the hungry world market any time soon?  If they are, who will determine the rate of flow, and so wield the power this decision-making confers?  And once this ocean of oil is sold, who will receive the potentially incredible revenues?  As with so much else, when it comes to Iraqi oil, the American war has generated so many problems and catastrophes -- and so few answers. More    

   

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ISRAEL / PALESTINE 

Despite “freeze” settlements being built at fastest pace since 2000According to the most recent report on settlements by the Foundation for Middle East Peace, a Washington-based think tank, “the main operational effect of the settlement moratorium announced by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on November 26 has been to increase the pace of authorized new settlement housing construction above historical averages.” At present, “close to 4,000 dwellings are currently under construction in West Bank settlements, a rate of construction not seen since 2000.” More

 

Full Report Netanyahu's Settlement Moratorium: The Reality  here 

 

Reps. Jim McDermott (WA) and Keith Ellison (MN) wrote the letter to their colleagues in the House of Representatives to invite them to sign on. Six Mass Reps have signed the letter – Stephen Lynch, Michael Capuano, William Delahunt, Jim McGovern, John Tierney, John Olver.  You can contact your own rep and thank him for supporting the letter (or object to his refusal) here. 

Israeli commander: 'We rewrote the rules of war for Gaza'

A high-ranking officer has acknowledged for the first time that the Israeli army went beyond its previous rules of engagement on the protection of civilian lives in order to minimise military casualties during last year's Gaza war, The Independent can reveal.  The officer, who served as a commander during Operation Cast Lead, made it clear that he did not regard the longstanding principle of military conduct known as "means and intentions" – whereby a targeted suspect must have a weapon and show signs of intending to use it before being fired upon – as being applicable before calling in fire from drones and helicopters in Gaza last winter. A more junior officer who served at a brigade headquarters during the operation described the new policy – devised in part to avoid the heavy military casualties of the 2006 Lebanon war – as one of "literally zero risk to the soldiers".   More  

 

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OTHER EVENTS 

 

Saturday, February 6, ACLU of Mass. Statewide Conference: Secrecy, Surveillance, and Sunlight, 11:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. • UMass Boston Campus Center, Dorchester.  This conference focuses on government secrecy and the growing surveillance society.  Learn what we can do about both, by “shining a light” on the secrets and the system. There are additional workshops on “Race, Secrecy and Law Enforcement,” “Social Media,” “Civil Liberties Activism in Congress and the State House” and “The Power of Film to Shine the Light.” Speakers include: * Jameel Jaffer, Director of the ACLU’s National Security Program * Chris Calabrese, ACLU’s Technology and Liberty Program * State Rep. Byron Rushing * Filmmakers Judy Richardson, Arnie Reisman, and Lisa Simmons UMass Boston Campus Center, Registration: $20 for ACLU members; $5 for students/limited income; $40 for nonmembers (includes membership) For the complete program and to register visit http://www.aclum.org/2010 or call 617.482.3170x314 with any questions. 

 

Sunday, February 7, GAZA STEADFAST: a photographic presentation, starting 12:30, Cambridge Friends Meeting Center, 5 Longfellow Park (convenient to Harvard Square Red Line)  Local activist/photographer Skip Schiel shares his work “photographing and teaching photography for one month in Gaza during the summer of 2009, my 4th trip to that sorely afflicted region, I portray how conditions have deteriorated. Hope for many has disappeared. People, especially those young or moderate, have no voice and often attempt to leave, only a few successfully. While others remain, like the steadfast—sumud is the Arabic word—Dr. Mona Al Farra and others I profile in my latest show.” skipschiel@gmail.com

 

Thursday, February 11, FILM: “View from a Grain of Sand” (Followed by a talk by the producer Meena Nanji), 6:30pm, First Parish Church, Meetinghouse Hill, Dorchester. This important film explores the situation of women in Afghanistan. Co-sponsored by First Parish Church and Dorchester People for Peace

 

Thursday, February 11, Gaza Freedom March Report Back With Sarah Roche-Mahdi, 6:30pm, Boston University, Kenmore Classroom Building
room 101, 565 Commonwealth Ave. RSVP on Facebook: http://tinyurl.com/yjsuugl The Gaza Freedom March brought together hundreds of people from 43 countries, including high-profile leaders, to challenge the inhumane and illegal siege on Gaza. Organized by the US based CODE PINK, the march was intended to bring hundreds of people to Egypt to march against the closed boarder with Palestine, bringing badly needed humanitarian supplies. To our dismay the Egyptian authorities did not allow the march to proceed and activists scrambled to make their voices heard despite the overt repression. Come hear the personal account of one woman's journey to Egypt with the Gaza Freedom March!  

Sponsored by the Greater Boston Stop the Wars Coalition, CODE PINK, BU Students for Justice in Palestine, Socialist Party USA

www.gazafreedommarch.org   www.stopthewars.org   www.spboston.org   bu-sjp.blogspot.com

 

Monday, February 15, Daniel Ellsberg on “Obama’s National Security Agenda: A Critique”  5pm, Cambridge Friends Meeting,5 Longfellow Park (off Brattle St. out of Harvard Square), Cambridge Daniel Ellsberg, best known for his courageous effort to end the Vietnam War by making the Pentagon’s secret history of the War public, has long been a trenchant critic of U.S. foreign and military policies. Having served as a senior figure in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations and senior staff at RAND, he speaks with an insider’s knowledge and with the commitments of one of the country’s most dedicated nonviolent activists. He is the author of “Secrets” and most recently chapters of his “nuclear memoir” which appear on TruthDig. He will be in Boston for the launch of the film “The Most Dangerous Man.” This event is a fundraiser for the American Friends Service Committee, with a donation of $10 per person There is also a reception from 4:00 to 5:00 p.m. ($40 per person), to be followed by Daniel Ellsberg’s presentation. RSVP by calling AFSC at 617.661.6130 ext. 119  For more information email: JGerson@afsc.org <mailto:JGerson@afsc.org>   

 

Wednesday, February 17, BILL FLETCHER: Decision Time for Our Movements, 7pm, Simmons College, Paretsky Conference Center (300 The Fenway), 3^rd floor. Come hear Bill Fletcher, long-time labor and justice leader, speak about the strategies for social change that will help us to move off the sidelines to the center of debate. "War, Extremism, Global Warming, Economic Crisis, Health Care. The crises we face everywhere you look today are not isolated problems. They are completely intertwined. War will continue as long as we pursue energy resources around the world – the very fossil fuels that have created the climate catastrophe we now face. We can’t reverse our economic crisis without massive investment in green jobs. We can’t stop extremism as long as we must force privatization, deregulation and corporate globalization on the rest of the world. This economic model that has intensified the climate crisis and lies at the root of our economic crisis. Bailing out Wall Street and escalating in Afghanistan alone fritter away a trillion dollars needed to prevent foreclosures, put people to work, keep services in place, and build a green economy." Sponsored by the Majority Agenda Project and the Simmons Institute for Leadership and Change.  617-497-5373

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SPAM?  If you know someone who is not receiving the Weekly DPP Update – or if you don’t get it regularly – please be sure to set your “spam blocker” to allow emails from jjk123@comcast.net and mikeprokosch@verizon.net.  Many email services and programs refuse mail from mass mailers not identified as “safe”.
*    *    *    *CONTACTING DPP and Joining Our Work:

To make it easier to get involved with DPP, we've decided to publish contact info for our coordinators in every issue of this update. We will also regularly publish upcoming meetings of work committees, create a brochure or flyer about DPP, and greet new people at monthly meetings with an explanation of how we work. Here's how to reach them.

Facilitation Committee:

Mike Prokosch, mikeprokosch@verizon.net; Jane Taylor, janetaylor11@gmail.com.

The Anti-War Committee pressures Congress, does community outreach and education to end the wars in the Middle East. Contact Denise Zwahlen at denisezwahlen@yahoo.com.  

The 25% Campaign Committee is centering the Coalition to Fund Our Communities---Cut Military Spending 25%, which is made up of community groups from Dorchester, Roxbury, and surrounding neighborhoods.  The 25% committee also promotes other aspects of the campaign, including coordinating with UJP's 25% Solution Task Force, and with DPP's Anti-War Committee.
Contact Daryl Wright, dwright@youthbuild.org or Becky Pierce, 617-282-3783 or beckyp44@verizon.net.

The Multi-Cultural Competence Committee promotes internal and public education on racism and the diverse cultures of Dorchester. Contact Jane Taylor, janetaylor11@gmail.com.

The Counter-Recruitment Committee educates youth and their parents about alternatives to military service and how to keep military recruiters from getting their contact information. Contact Alison Gottlieb at alison.gottlieb@umb.edu.

TheBiolab Committee opposes the bio-hazard laboratory that BU is building at Boston Medical Center. Contact Mike Coté at mike_j_cote@yahoo.com.

OurTreasurer is Mike Prokosch, mikeprokosch@verizon.net.  Daryl Wright and Mike Prokosch prepare budgets and write funding proposals: dwright@youthbuild.org, mikeprokosch@verizon.net .

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DPP Calendar - Monthly Meetings/Events

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Holiday Greetings to All Friends and Allies of Dorchester People for Peace!

Best Wishes from DPP to those observing the holidays of Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanza – or simply enjoying the spirit of the season. . .

 And a PEACEFUL NEW YEAR!

CHRISTMAS IN THE TRENCHES -- 1914

In December, 1914, after months of slaughter during the First World War (it was supposed to be “The War to End all Wars”!), British and German soldiers declared an informal and spontaneous truce.  The story of their fraternization and holiday celebration is told in detail here http://www.squadron13.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1190.   (Many thanks to the Veterans for Peace, Smedley Butler Brigade, for reminding us of this!)

 The event has been immortalized in a song by folksinger JOHN MCCUTCHEON, which you can hear and watch along with contemporary illustration and a moving introduction by the performer:

Christmas In The Trenches VIDEO: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9coPzDx6tA

 The song ends with this stanza:

My name is Francis Tolliver, in Liverpool I dwell
Each Christmas come since World War I, I've learned its lessons well
That the ones who call the shots won't be among the dead and lame
And on each end of the rifle we're the same.

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VIDEO: John Lennon – Happy Christmas (The War is Over) – updated for today

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8jw-ifqwkM

John Lennon

(killed on December 8, 1980)

VIDEO:   “All we are saying is give peace a chance.”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-NRriHlLUk

 

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Yusuf Ibrahim (aka Cat Stevens)

(recently denied entry to the US as a threat to Homeland Security)

 VIDEO: “Peace Train”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7wEctHyuc0

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FUND OUR COMMUNITIES / CUT THE MILITARY BUDGET …into the Boston Election!

Tuesday, October 13, Forum: City-wide Councilor Candidates at UMass:  

JOIN US!  DPPers and members of other 25% Coalition groups will be outside the UMass Campus Center from 5:45-6:30pm with a banner and leaflets highlighting the demand that City Council candidates support a cut in military spending with the funds redirected to urgent local needs.

 

Tuesday, October 13, Forum: City-wide Councilor Candidates,  6:30-8pm, Campus Center,UMass Boston.  Sponsored by Massvote and many of the progressive organizations DPP works with. See: http://www.massvote.org/  DPPers are urged to attend and help make the 25% Campaign part of the election;  look for specific plans for leafleting, banners and plans to bring the issue into the forum and to the public.

“NOT A LOCAL ISSUE”?

The share that Massachusetts contributes to annual military-related spending is around $20,000,000,000 on a per capita basis -- probably more, as Mass personal income and taxes are well above the US average.  For the City of Boston, that comes to $1.7 billion or about $3400.00 for every man, woman and child living in our city.  A 25% reduction in military spending that channeled funds back to urgent local needs could provide up to $500 million annually for jobs, schools, healthcare, mass transit and infrastructure improvements – at a time when budget shortfalls are causing cuts in all these areas.

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AFGHANISTAN (and IRAN) TURNING POINT?  War Party, Generals Strike Back

As President Obama ponders the future of US policy in Afghanistan, there has been an unprecedented public campaign by Republican operatives, Neocon pundits – and outspoken generals -- to trap him into an unlimited “long war.”  The threat is a future witch-hunt for “Who Lost Afghanistan” -- and possibly a General Petraeus for President campaign in 2012?  Meanwhile, Obama’s actual electoral base –  THE MAJORITY OF PEOPLE IN THE US! – and many Democrats in Congress are pressing for a new policy of limited War and speedy withdrawal from Afghanistan (as well as Iraq).  It appears to be a battle for the “hearts and minds” of the Obama administration.  (On Iran, see further down in this email.)

We need to seize every opportunity to speak out NOW – whether flyering in our neighborhoods, at the October 17 anti-war rally, in the upcoming Senate race and loud and clear at the so-called “Obama Listening Tour” on October 26 (see below).

Starting Another Year of War in Afghanistan

October 2009 has begun with the New York Times reporting that "the president, vice president and an array of cabinet secretaries, intelligence chiefs, generals, diplomats, and advisers gathered in a windowless basement room of the White House for three hours on Wednesday to chart a new course in Afghanistan." …U.S. media and politics are now awash in talk about getting smarter and shrewder in Afghanistan. The idea of setting a country right while waging war is a popular Washington fantasy. What it has to do with reality is another matter. "I don’t want any foreigners building roads or big buildings for me when I am cleaning blood from my home," a shopkeeper in Helmand province, Haji Dawood Khan, told a Financial Times reporter in late September. The newspaper quoted a businessman from Kandahar province, Mohammad Karigar, who said: "The more foreign troops there are, the more people will hate them."   More

Afghans Cool to Prospect of More U.S. Troops

Today President Obama hosts the first of five national security council meetings to debate whether to reinforce the war with as many as 40,000 additional troops, and ABC News asked officials and residents what they thought: would more U.S. troops bring peace? … the majority of residents interviewed in southern and eastern Afghanistan said they were against sending additional troops, fearing that more foreign forces would create more violence. But what they all seemed to agree with was that Afghan security forces should take the lead. "Instead of more troops, it would be better to add more Afghan police and soldiers to do the job," says Gen. Saifullah Hakim, the head of the southern section of the Afghan Border Police, from his base in Kandahar.   More

Pakistanis Continue to Reject U.S. Partnership

Pakistan — Even with the arrival of the Obama administration and the prospect of substantially increased aid, more Pakistanis — an overwhelming majority — continued to reject the United States as a partner to fight militancy in their country, a new poll finds… According to the poll, 80 percent of the respondents said they were opposed to United States assistance in Pakistan’s fight against terrorism, a 19 percentage-point increase since the last survey conducted by the institute in March. The survey says that 76 percent of the respondents were opposed to Pakistan partnering with the United States on missile attacks against extremists by American drone aircraft.  More

JOHN KERRY: Testing Afghanistan Assumptions

Before we send more of our young men and women to this war, we need a fuller debate about what constitutes success in Afghanistan. We need a clearer understanding of what constitutes the right strategy to get us there. Ultimately, we need to understand, as Gen. Colin Powell was fond of asking, "What's the exit strategy?" Or as Gen. David Petraeus asked of Iraq, "How does it end?" Why? Because one of the lessons from Vietnam—applied in the first Gulf War and sadly forgotten for too long in Iraq—is that we should not commit troops to the battlefield without a clear understanding of what we expect them to accomplish, how long it will take, and how we maintain the consent of the American people.  More

White House Eyeing Narrower War Effort
Senior White House officials have begun to make the case for a policy shift in Afghanistan that would send few, if any, new combat troops to the country and instead focus on faster military training of Afghan forces, continued assassinations of al-Qaeda leaders and support for the government of neighboring Pakistan in its fight against the Taliban.   More

Gen. McChrystal Rejects Scaling Down Afghan Military Aims

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/02/world/asia/02general.html

The top American commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, used a speech here on Thursday to reject calls for the war effort to be scaled down from defeating the Taliban insurgency to a narrower focus on hunting down Al Qaeda, an option suggested by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. as part of the current White House strategy review… he used the London session for a rebuttal of the idea of a more narrowly focused war. When a questioner asked him whether he would support scaling back the American military presence over the next 18 months by relinquishing the battle with the Taliban and focusing on tracking down Al Qaeda, sparing ground troops by hunting Qaeda extremists and their leaders with missiles from remotely piloted aircraft, he replied: “The short answer is: no.”

 

McChrystal’s Myth

The neoconservative apparatus that got us into Iraq for reasons we still haven’t decided on threatens to keep us in Afghanistan indefinitely for reasons yet to be determined. Everything we’re doing in Central and Southwest Asia supposedly has something to do with eradicating al-Qaeda, yet there is no sign of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. The argument for persisting in Afghanistan says that we have to make sure al-Qaeda doesn’t go back there, yet as former CIA officer Philip Giraldi recently noted, credible assessments suggest that "Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda has likely been reduced to a core group of eight to ten terrorists who are on the run more often than not."   More

From the Great Game to the Blame Game

In a remarkable parallel with a similar turning point in the Vietnam War 44 years ago, President Barack Obama will preside over a series of meetings in the coming weeks that will determine whether the United States will proceed with an escalation of the Afghanistan War or adjust the strategy to reduce the U.S. military commitment there… But the decisions that emerge from the coming meetings are more likely to be shaped primarily by the concerns of the military and of the White House about being blamed for a defeat in Afghanistan that now seems far more likely than it did just six months ago.  More

In case you missed this. . .

The Velvet Junta

If McChrystal and his allies get their way, we’ll have deployed over 135,000 troops to Afghanistan — on top of the roughly 130,000 troops still in Iraq — for the purpose of rounding up fewer than a dozen bad guys…   Now that Petraeus and Mullen have officially endorsed McChrystal’s re-escalation strategy, the pro-war echo chamber will kick into warp drive.  If Obama can stand up to America’s militaristic madness, he’ll be the first president to successfully do so since Dwight David Eisenhower, who ended Douglas MacArthur’s botched Korean War and who warned us in his 1961 farewell speech against "the disastrous rise of misplaced power" that our military industrial complex would create. More

Quick Facts About U.S. Military Operations in Afghanistan

http://www.nationalpriorities.org/2009/09/02/quick-facts-US-military-operations-Afghanistan

Myth v. Fact: Afghanistan

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/malou-innocent/myth-v-fact-afghanistan_b_277411.html 

The Cost of War in Afghanistan can be found at:

www.nationalpriorities.org/auxiliary/costofwar/cost_of_war_afghanistan.pdf

A series of lively and informative short videos is viewable on-line at http://rethinkafghanistan.com/

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"Rethink Afghanistan" Film - UJP Strategy Conference

Saturday, October 3, 1-5pm, Democracy Center, 45 Mt. Auburn St., Harvard Sq. Members of UJP and its affiliated groups will gather on, from 1-5pm, for our next strategy conference. To start off the program we will view the powerful and thought-provoking new film, Rethink Afghanistan, by noted documentary filmmaker Robert Greenwald.   (UJP members who view the film Oct. 3 will be invited to organize screenings in their communities or house party screenings in their own homes.  The film will be followed by a discussion on the peace movement's response to the Afghan war.  

The conference will also discuss and adopt an updated UJP structure proposal which was presented at the June conference.   It calls for each member group to designate a representative to the UJP planning group.  Member groups have been reviewing the proposal during the summer and appointing their representatives; if yours has not done so, please take the time to bring it up at your September meeting.   Comments and proposed amendments are asked to be submitted at least one week prior to the conference; they can be posted here or emailed to ujpcoalition@gmail.com UJP task forces will also present updates on their work on Palestine, the 25% Solution, and Nuclear Abolition.

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SAVE THE DATE!

EIGHT YEARS OF WAR – HOW MANY MORE?

March and Rally in Copley Square, Boston

October 17, 2009 – 1:00 PM

Bring your family and friends to the October 17 peace demonstration in Copley Square, Boston, calling for All Troops Home from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq!

 

DPP will be putting out its own flyer for this event and is planning a morning standout at one or more T-stations, probably Wednesday, October 7 at Ashmont; possibly October 14 also.

(More info as it becomes available)

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FUND OUR COMMUNITIES---CUT MILITARY SPENDING 25%
The new coalition to Fund Our Communities---Cut Military Spending 25% is meeting next on September 23 to follow up with steering committee made of up member organizations such as  City Life, Alianza Hispana, Boston Workers' Alliance, City Councilor Chuck Turner, Project HIP-HOP, and DPP; internal structure; in-reach workshops; petitioning; City Council and Senatorial elections; October 17 antiwar rally.

GETTING SMART ABOUT THE PENTAGON BUDGET: What will make our nation more secure? 

*Total spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will exceed $1 trillion February/March 2010…  *as the “budgetary pie” increased, the defense slice got bigger and fatter and the “grants to the states” slice of the pie got smaller …   *Even without including current war allocations, U.S. military spending is at its highest level since World War II.  This takes into account the war-time budgets of Vietnam and Korea…  * Despite rhetoric to the contrary, the Obama Administration is not cutting defense.  In fact, the Pentagon budget is projected to grow25% over the next decade.  More

The next DPP 25% COMMITTEE meeting will be Friday, October 2, 6:30pm, at Daryl's house, 22 Salcombe St., Jones Hill.  Agenda: review of September 23 Coalition steering committee meeting, next steps for tabling, “in-reach” among member organizations, pressing the issue in the Citywide elections – at-large candidate forum October 13 at UMass Boston -- and the special election for US Senate. (w. 617-741-1208; dwright@youthbuild.org).

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TABLING/SIGNATURE GATHERING

---DPP needs people to table/gather signatures [to pressure Congress and the President to reduce military spending by 25% and use that money to fund urgent community needs] on Saturdays 11:00-1:00  We also need people to coordinate the Sept. sessions.

Regular tabling sessions also include orientation as needed/desired, provided by the coordinator and others.)
Please call or e-mail the above coordinators or Becky or Mike,
617-282-3783, mikeprokosch@verizon.net, beckyp44@verizon.net

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  COST OF WAR 

25% Campaign Resources: http://www.25percentsolution.org/

The direct cost of the Iraq war through September 30, 2009 will be $687 billion and the Afghanistan war will cost $228 billion, according to the latest calculations by the National Priorities Project (http://nationalpriorities.org/). This means that Massachusetts taxpayers have paid $25.6 billion for the two wars since 2001.  Indirect costs and future budget obligations arising from the war multiply these figures several times.  NPP has updated its Cost of War counters to show what this is costing cities like Boston and what the money could pay for instead. NPP also analyzes the Military Cost of Securing Energy… and the alternatives at http://www.nationalpriorities.org/Energy_Security/Energy_Priorities  

 

“WHERE THE MONEY IS. . .” – During the 1930’s bank robber Willie Sutton was asked why he robbed banks. His famous reply: “Because that’s where the money is!”  If we look at where the bulk of federal spending goes, it is clear that military spending is “where the money is.” This is why local government and community services are starved – and why, by ignoring this, local politicians are looking to raise additional revenue from regressive taxes on family spending and housing.

A 25% reduction in military spending could mean annual funding of
$5,000,000,000        for Massachusetts
$500,000,000           for Boston
What could that pay for in schools, neighborhood services and green jobs?

Oversight Reports Slam Dysfunction At Defense Contract Audit Agency

Last year, the obscure but important arm of the federal government called the Defense Contract Audit Agency looked at $501 billion in contractor costs. Which is, as it sounds, a pretty important job. But the DCAA isn't doing the job so well, concludes the Defense Department's Inspector General, whose 96-page report on the DCAA was unsealed yesterday and can be read here (.pdf), and the Government Accountability Office, whose own damning report is here.   More

 

Health Care vs. Warfare

http://www.counterpunch.org/leys09082009.html

The struggle for health care and the struggle to end warfare are inextricably linked. The cost for substantive (though imperfect) health care reform as envisioned in the House of Representatives approach (with the public option) is projected to average $100 billion per year for the next 10 years. The cost to continue the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are projected to cost anywhere from $55 to $100 billion a year. With a few modest reductions to the baseline military budget and the difference is paid. The choice is clear: health care or warfare; the Common Good or Common Destruction.  More

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TELLTHE CANDIDATES:  “FUND OUR NEIGHBORHOODS-- CUT MILITARY SPENDING 25%”

FORUM 3

CITY COUNCILLORS AT LARGE

Tuesday, Oct. 13, 6:30-8:00 p.m.

UMass-Boston, Boston

FORUM 4

MAYORAL CANDIDATES

Tuesday, Oct. 27, 6:30-8:00 p.m.

Faneuil Hall, Boston

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Targeting ACORN

DPP has worked closely with ACORN, an organization striving to empower low-income people in housing, employment and voting rights --  its local branch in Dorchester includes a number of  individuals who are also members of DPP.  Non-profit ACORN challenges the real power-brokers of wealth with a membership and leadership who are largely people of color, and for that reason it has been demonized by the right-wing and Republican establishment, Fox News, the openly racist radio talk shows – and the  phony white-peoples’ “populism” they mobilize. Caving in to these demagogues and the bogus “scandals” they generated, the Senate voted almost unanimously on Wednesday to cut off the miniscule amount of government funding ACORN receives for voter registration efforts (Kerry cravenly joined the majority of 83-7); Thursday the House voted 345-75 to do the same (with only Tierney from the Mass delegation joining the majority, while the rest – including Capuano and Lynch – courageously voted no;  Barney Frank was among several “not voting”)  Here is an excellent article dissecting the furor over ACORN:

Saturday, October 10, ACORN’s Social Justice Tour, Begins 10am at the ACORN Office

196 Adams St, Dorchester:  10:30am Bus will start the tour -2:pm the tour will end – at the ACORN office

Where are we headed on the Social Justice Tour?  Mattapan Square, Blue Hill and River Street, Mattapan/Dorchester Border, Blue Hill Ave and Morton St, Dorchester – Codman Square, Washington St and Talbot Ave, Dorchester/Roxbury – Grove Hall, Blue Hill Ave towards Warren St – walk to the Save A Lot on Warren St, Note: ACORN Members may be planning a neighborhood action as well.ACORN Stepping Up To Take Back Our Community! Flyering, Petitioning to Support Mass ACORN. Let the neighborhood know about our real work – Paid Sick Days, Green Justice, Housing and more….  Food, Drinks at the ACORN Office after the tour to celebrate and break bread with our members for all the hard work and movement on ACORN Campaigns Food and Relaxation from 2:pm to 4:pm  Call Mimi and or email for more information on how you can be involved in

getting 50 people out and how you can be apart of this Social Justice Day in Boston - 617-905-9939 or maacorn@acornmail.net

 

The Democrats, Pfizer and Acorn

Acorn is a poor people’s grassroots organization. Earlier this month, some of it’s employees were caught on tape giving advice to two young right-wing activists posing as pimp and prostitute. Pfizer is a wealthy and powerful multinational corporation. Earlier this month, a Pfizer unit pled guilty to a felony in connection with a major health care fraud and paid $2.3 billion in fines. So, if the Democratically controlled Congress were to vote to either: a) strip federal funding from the grassroots group Acorn, or b) ban corporate felon Pfizer from future government business

Which would it be?Let me guess.  More

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PEACE with IRAN?  Neocons in a funk.
As commentators noted, one day of talks with Iran achieved more than 8 years of Bush administration blustering and threats. . .  Neocons and other war promoters are not amused.  See here, here and here.

[IRAN War cheerleaders have reintroduced a new Iran Sanctions Bill in the Mass Legislature this year.  DPP opposed a similar bill last year and helped to block its passage.  More details in future Updates.]

 

PROGRESS IN IRAN TALKS

Iran agreed in principle Thursday to ship most of its current stockpile of enriched uranium to Russia, where it would be refined for exclusively peaceful uses, in what Western diplomats called a significant, but interim, measure to ease concerns over its nuclear program. The agreement was announced after seven and a half hours of talks in Geneva that included the highest-level official U.S.-Iranian encounter in three decades. Iran also pledged that within weeks it would allow the inspection of a previously covert uranium enrichment facility near the holy city of Qom, and the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, announced that he'd head to Tehran to work out the details.  More

OBAMA WELCOMES ADVANCE IN IRAN TALKS
President Barack Obama on Thursday hailed what he said was a tentative agreement that could help diminish tensions over Tehran’s nuclear program after the most extensive U.S.-Iranian talks in 30 years. Speaking at the White House after the end of international negotiations in Geneva, Mr. Obama said the U.S. was looking for swift and concrete action by Tehran after a day of constructive talks. Both Iran and its interlocutors, which also included Russia, China, Britain, France, and Germany, said the two sides had agreed to resume talks on the nuclear file this month and that the Islamic Republic would allow international inspectors to see a previously undeclared nuclear site near the city of Qom, dramatically revealed last week.  More

 

Iran Again: Is Everyone Bluffing?

From Iran’s point of view, there are three nearby nuclear powers — India, Pakistan and Israel — who not only have never signed the nonproliferation treaty but actually have nuclear weapons, many nuclear weapons. They are not, however, being accused of violating the norms of the “international community.”

So, the Iranians say, why pick on Iran? Iran has, unlike these three nearby countries, signed the nonproliferation treaty, and has up to now not violated its specific provisions. Nonetheless, it is being denounced for a far lesser violation of international norms than that of the three other countries. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil points out that Brazil is also enriching uranium and sees nothing wrong with Iran doing that.   More

ON THE OTHER HAND. . .

Obama agrees to keep Israel's nukes secret

President Obama has reaffirmed a 4-decade-old secret understanding that has allowed Israel to keep a nuclear arsenal without opening it to international inspections, three officials familiar with the understanding said… Under the understanding, the U.S. has not pressured Israel to disclose its nuclear weapons or to sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which could require Israel to give up its estimated several hundred nuclear bombs.   More

US bill targets companies selling gasoline to Iran

The US House of Representatives approved legislation that would sanction foreign companies that sell gasoline to Iran, as talks on the country's nuclear program were underway in Geneva.  The bill would prevent companies that sell gasoline to Iran from holding contracts with the US Energy Department to supply the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The ban, adopted as part of the 2010 energy budget, affects companies that have gasoline contracts with Iran that are worth more than one million dollars. It also covers companies that provide Iran with the means to improve their own refining capacity or their ability to import refined petroleum products.  More

Iranian Opposition Warns Against Stricter Sanctions

As the United States and its allies consider further sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program, opponents of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad fear that such punishment could have unintended consequences, strengthening the government's hand against domestic dissent and triggering an even harsher crackdown on political foes. On the eve of talks Thursday in Geneva between representatives of Iran and six world powers, Iranian opposition leaders, politicians and analysts warned that new financial or other penalties would hurt ordinary Iranians rather than change the government's behavior.  More

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OTHER EVENTS

Saturday, October 3, "Rethink Afghanistan" Film - UJP Strategy Conference, 1-5pm, Democracy Center, 45 Mt. Auburn St., Harvard Sq. Members of UJP and its affiliated groups will gather on, from 1-5pm, for our next strategy conference. To start off the program we will view the powerful and thought-provoking new film, Rethink Afghanistan, by noted documentary filmmaker Robert Greenwald.   (UJP members who view the film Oct. 3 will be invited to organize screenings in their communities or house party screenings in their own homes.  The film will be followed by a discussion on the peace movement's response to the Afghan war.   The conference will also discuss and adopt an updated UJP structure proposal which was presented at the June conference.   It calls for each member group to designate a representative to the UJP planning group.  Member groups have been reviewing the proposal during the summer and appointing their representatives; if yours has not done so, please take the time to bring it up at your September meeting.   Comments and proposed amendments are asked to be submitted at least one week prior to the conference; they can be posted here or emailed to ujpcoalition@gmail.com UJP

task forces will also present updates on their work on Palestine, the 25% Solution, and Nuclear Abolition.

Monday, October 5,  WHY WE REFUSE:  Israeli Women Speak Out about Conscientious Resistance, 12 noon, Harvard Brown Bag Lunch; 3:30pm, Northeastern University; 7pm Brandeis (Pearlman Lounge). CODEPINK and Jewish Voice for Peace are supporting the US tour of two extraordinary young Israeli women, Maya Wind and Netta Mishly, to discuss why they refused to serve in an occupying army.  Check for details: http://www.whywerefuse.org/.

Monday, October 5, AFGHANISTAN REVISED: Andrew Bacevich in Conversation with Charles Sennott, 6:30pm, Cambridge Forum at 3 Church St. (Harvard Sq.). What is really happening there? What impact is the growing United States military presence having in this war-worn country? What role should we play in Afghanistan? Join in the discussion between Andrew Bacevich, professor of International Relations at Boston Univeristy and Charles Sennott, founder of GlobalPost, to discuss the challenges the Obama adminstration faces in Afghanistan. For more information, call 617-495-2727 or visit http://www.cambridgeforum.org  

Wednesday, October 7, CHIP BERLET: Unraveling the Right-Wing Attacks on Obama, 12-1:30, Community Change Library: 14 Beacon Street, Room 605, Boston. Obama is the target. Racial fears, economic anxieties, and gender unease are the triggers. Shooting down progressive policies that seek equality and fairness wins the prize for those seeking to defend and restore traditional social and political hierarchies. Chip will base his talk on his new report: Toxic to Democracy: Conspiracy Theories, Demonization, & Scapegoating.

Thursday, October 8, Breaking the Siege of GAZA, 7pm,  Palestine Cultural Center for Peace, 41 Quint Avenue, Allston. Come, Learn more about the march and what’s happening in Gaza at a benefit to send Boston’s youth on the Gaza Freedom March!  Speakers: Susan Akram – Clinical Professor at Boston University Law School and international human rights expert who will speak on the newly-released Goldstone Report; Nancy Murray -- Founder and president of the Gaza Mental Health Foundation; Sarah Roche-Mahdi – Scholar, writer, women’s reproductive rights activist, Code Pink Cambridge organizer. Traveled to Gaza in March and Israel/Palestine in June as Code Pink delegate; Jeff Klein – Longtime union leader and peace/justice campaigner, active in Dorchester People for Peace and community/political organizing.  Went to Gaza on Viva Palestina-US Gaza Convoy. Suggested donation $5.00   Refreshments will be served. Sponsor: Palestine Task Force, United for Justice with Peace: www.justicewithpeace.org , 617-491-4857

(Date Change) Saturday, October 3, Shop for Change! Yard Sale to Benefit Grassroots International, 10am-3pm, First Church in Jamaica Plain, 6 Eliot St.  Fabulous items; Silent Auction; Raffle; Samosas! Don’t miss out! DPP member Hayat Imam Imam writes: Grassroots International is a great JP based group that supports organizing by farmers all over the world on the issue of resource rights (land, food, water). If you have anything in your basement you don't want and would like to contribute to the yard sale, please bring it to the yard sale in Jamaica Plain on October 3. If you can't make it, call me and I'll get it from you. Otherwise just come to shop and have fun!  *Rain date is October 10th

Monday, October 12, "John Brown: Martyr to Freedom; American Terrorist -- or Both?" 11am-4pm,  Massachusetts Historical Society, 1154 Boylston Street (directions) Open House.  On the 150th anniversary of abolitionist John Brown's attack on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, view an exhibit of personal papers and other documents related to his raid, trial, and execution; find evidence of continuing arguments about the morality and meaning of Brown's actions.   The exhibition "John Brown: Martyr to Freedom; American Terrorist -- or Both?" will be open for viewing at the Massachusetts Historical Society from October 12 - December 23, 2009.

JOHN BROWN AND MASSACHUSETTS: Watch this Calendar for information about related programs in Boston, Concord and Worcester in late October and early November! http://www.masshist.org/events/more_info.cfm?eventID=452 Free and open to the public.

Sunday, October 25,  AFAB Fundraising Concert with Emeline Michel, 7pm, Strand Theater, Dorchester.  Emeline Michel is. "a captivating performer, versatile vocalist, and one of the premier Haitian songwriters of her generation." $30/ $20 for students with ID Details: www.afab-kafanm.org. 

 

SAVE THE DATE!

Monday, October 26, “Obama Listening Tour” with Organizing for America, 7pm, Boston IBEW Local 103 (Dorchester)

OFA, an arm of the Democratic National Committee,  is setting up meetings around the state dedicated to “supporting President Obama's agenda through the same grassroots movement that was built during the campaign”  An opportunity to bring our voices for an end to the wars and occupations in the Middle East --  and reduce Pentagon spending to Fund Our Communities.  More info here.

 

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This Sunday, June 7, Dorchester Day Parade! 

DPP will be marching again this year along with our friends and allied organizations.  Our contingent will gather around Noon in Dorchester Lower Mills (look for us along Richmond St., off Dorchester Av), with the parade kick-off 1pm.

Our message will focus on ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, reducing the military budget and funding urgent needs at home in our neighborhoods and communities.  Thousands of parade watchers will see our banners and get our anti-war flyers! 

DPP will host an after-Parade barbeque at 123 Cushing Ave. From about 3:30 on. We’ll have hamburgers and hotdogs on hand -- Parade marchers can also drop off food or drink before the parade if that works for them.

We are getting an excellent response from our members and friends!  This promises to be the largest and most diverse Peace presence ever in the Dot Day Parade.  Please help spread the word and let us know if you will be marching with us by emailing info@dotpeace.org or phoning 617-282-3783.

Gen. Smedley Butler: “WAR IS A RACKET”        

A speech delivered in 1933, by Major General Smedley Butler, USMC.

“WAR is a racket. It always has been It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives…”Full text and an audio story/commentary here

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Next DPP Meeting

Monday, June 8, Kick-Off 25% Solution Campaign, 7-9pm,Vietnamese American Community Center, 42 Charles St., Fields Corner. Also, an update on this year’s opt-out/counter-recruiting campaign.Wheelchair accessible.  Please call in advance if you need translation, childcare, a ride, or have other needs: 617-282-3783.

 The new DPP Facilitation Team is:

Denise Zwahlen - denisezwahlen@yahoo.com

Alan Booth - adb_durant@hotmail.com

Jeff Klein – jjk123@comcast.net

Contact them for questions, suggestions for meeting topics, DPP organizational matters

 DPP Needs YOU!

With DPP’s new decentralized committee-based structure there is sometimes a need to consult or make decisions about issues in between membership meetings we established a “Core” or decision-making group of active DPP members who could be contacted quickly by email or phone. This is also a way of participating more actively in DPP work -- also possible through becoming active with one of our committees (see contact info at the end of this email)  Please reply to this email if you want to be a participant in the DPP decision-making process.

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UJP Strategy Conference Saturday, June 13 - Hold the Date

1-5pm, Friends Meeting House, 5 Longfellow Park, Cambridge

The Strategy Conference will cover: Political discussion on ending the Afghanistan/Pakistan war; Reports from Cut Military Budget 25% Disarmament, Israel-Palestine, and other working groups; General discussion on state of the peace movement; Structure of UJP

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DEMOCRATS POSTPONE ACTION ON WAR BILL

Worried  by their prospects in the House, Democrats postponed final action on a nearly  $100 billion wartime spending bill until next week so as to buy more time for  talks among lawmakers and the return of President Barack Obama from overseas.  More

With Your Help, The House Can Defeat the War/IMF Supplemental

Can you call your Representative today, and ask him or her to vote no on the war supplemental? The Congressional switchboard is 202-225-3121: ask to be connected to your Representative. Last month, 60 Members of the House voted against the war supplemental. But this week, the supplemental could be defeated on the floor of the House.  House Republicans, including Minority Leader John Boehner, have threatened to vote no on the war funding if the IMF money is attached. If Republicans vote no, and if all the Democrats who voted no last month vote no again, the war supplemental would fail on the floor of the House, 200-228.

McGovern Bill to Require Afghan “Exit Strategy”

Rep. Jim McGovern introduced H.R. 2404, a house resolution “To require the Secretary of Defense to submit a report to Congress outlining the United States exit strategy for United States military forces in Afghanistan participating in Operation Enduring Freedom” by the end of the year. Details here.  

The bill now has 84 co-sponsors, including (beside McGovern)  Capuano, Delahunt, Frank, Olver, Tierney, Tsongas; not so far Lynch, Markey, Neal.

Lynch constituents should call his office. . . (202) 225-8273 (ask for Mariana Osorio, his foreign policy staffer) or email stephen.lynch@mail.house.gov

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OBAMA IN THE MIDDLE EAST

Addressing Muslim World, Obama Calls for New Start

As President Obama opened a bold overture to the Islamic world on Thursday, urging Americans and Muslims to drop their suspicions of one another and vigorously confront violent extremism, he pledged to pursue a two-state solution to Middle East peace “that is in Israel’s interest, Palestine’s interest.”It was the first time Mr. Obama had publicly referred to “Palestine,” choosing it over the more ambiguous “Palestinian state” usually relied on by United States leaders. He dwelled on Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan in his sweeping address here, but reserved some of his sharpest words for Israel and called for an end to settlements in the West Bank.  More

Read (and watch) the speech here

Muslims see shift in Obama speech, no breakthrough

From shopkeepers and students to radical groups such as Hamas, many Muslims praised President Barack Obama's address Thursday as a positive shift in U.S. attitude and tone. But hard-liners criticized it as style over substance and said it lacked concrete proposals to turn the words into action. Obama touched on many themes Muslims wanted to hear in the highly anticipated speech broadcast live across much of the Middle East and elsewhere across the Muslim world. He insisted Palestinians must have a state and said continued Israeli settlement in the West Bank is not legitimate. He assured them the U.S. would pull all it troops out of Iraq by 2012 and promised no permanent U.S. presence in Afghanistan.  More

<!--[if !vml]-->Obama's speech marks a strategic revolution for Israel <!--[if !vml]--><!--[endif]-->

For Israel, Obama's "Cairo speech" marks nothing less than a strategic revolution. During the Bush era, Israel was America's friendliest partner in the war on terror, and enjoyed military freedom of operation against the Palestinians, Hezbollah and Syria, for which it in return withdrew from the Gaza settlements. With Obama, Israel has to undergo a re-education, and will have to once again pass a test of its dedication to U.S. interests in the Middle East.  Until yesterday, Obama discussed the Israeli-Arab conflict in terms of interests, and refrained from speaking about values and ethics. But in Cairo, he used the vocabulary and narrative of the American liberal left, whence he came. He spoke unwaveringly about "the occupation" and about the "Palestinians aspiration for dignity, opportunity, and a state of their own,"  More

Iraqis See Signs of Progress in Obama's Speech to Muslim World

President Obama did not dwell on the war in Iraq during his speech to the Muslim world in Cairo Thursday. But the address was closely watched by Iraqis, who are looking for signs of what is to come for their own nation and hope they can believe what the president said. Two to three minutes of Obama's nearly hour-long speech were devoted to reassuring Iraqis that the U.S. will honor its commitment to pull troops out of the country by 2012. More

Obama Hits A Home Run

He even nodded to Hamas, acknowledging that Hamas has support among the Palestinians, and – amazingly – did not refer to the organization as a "terrorist group." And, of course, he kept up the pressure on Israeli expansionism by yet again slamming the settlements in the occupied territories – an issue, that likely as not, will bring down Bibi Netanyahu's right-wing government. On Iran, Obama stated clearly that Iran has the right to peaceful uses of nuclear energy. Indeed, it is precisely that issue that will be at the core of the coming U.S.-Iran dialogue…  More

CHOMSKY: What Obama Didn't Say in His Cairo Address Speaks Volumes

A CNN headline, reporting Obama's plans for his June 4 address in Cairo, Egypt, reads "Obama looks to reach the soul of the Muslim world." Perhaps that captures his intent, but more significant is the content hidden in the rhetorical stance, or more accurately, omitted… Those familiar with the history will rationally conclude, then, that Obama will continue in the path of unilateral U.S. rejectionism.  More

 

Wall Street Journal: “Barack Hussein Bush”

One benefit of the Obama Presidency is that it is validating much of George W. Bush's security agenda and foreign policy merely by dint of autobiographical rebranding. That was clear enough yesterday in Cairo, where President Obama advertised "a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world." But what he mostly offered were artfully repackaged versions of themes President Bush sounded with his freedom agenda.  More

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Tell Congress to Ban Cluster Munitions!

One year ago this week -- on May 30, 2008 -- more than 100 governments put the finishing touches on the biggest arms control and humanitarian treaty negotiated in a decade. The global treaty to ban the production, use, and stockpiling of cluster munitions has been endorsed by nearly all of the United States NATO allies and many other countries -- 96 in all.

In December 2008, then President-elect Obama promised that after he took office he would launch a review of the Bush administration's decision not to sign the global treaty banning cluster bombs.

The Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL) is campaigning to persuade President Obama to overrule the Pentagon and endorse a global treaty banning these weapons by promoting the Cluster Munitions Civilian Protection Act (S. 416), They hope to reach at least 33 Senate cosponsors. Senator Kennedy has signed on, but so far not Kerry.

Please help make some noise! Send a letter to your senators urging them to cosponsor the Cluster Munitions Civilian Protection Act (S.416) and help put an end to use of these terrible weapons.

 

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COST OF WAR

 

GEORGE MCGOVERN: We could defend ourselves with half the military budget

We now spend $12 billion a month on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan -- two mistaken invasions that have increased violence and terrorism in the Middle East. For a fraction of what we are spending on these badly conceived interventions, we could fund a new GI Bill with full medical care for the tens of thousands of veterans who have lost legs or arms or suffered lasting nerve or brain damage. The second step I would take is to ask Congress to shift half of our military budget to other sources of national security.  More

 

Where the money comes from, where it goes and what it could pay for instead.

http://nationalpriorities.org/

The Military Cost of Securing Energy… and the alternatives

http://www.nationalpriorities.org/Energy_Security/Energy_Priorities

 

DPP Takes Up the “25% SOLUTION” Campaign 

FUND OUR COMMUNITIES – REDUCE MILITARY SPENDING

DPP members decided at our April 13 meeting to work on developing a campaign to reduce military spending and redirect the funds to vital community needs.  We are working in collaboration with the our community allies and the larger UJP movement. Since February, some of us have been talking to numbers of organizations to find out what they think about joining together in a "Fund Our Communities - Cut Military Spending / 25%" campaign. It is expected that a group of community leaders, together with DPP, will soon convene a larger meeting to launch the effort, with a possible “roll-out” with a joint group marching in the Dorchester Day Parade June 7.

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“WHERE THE MONEY IS. . .” – During the 1930’s a notorious gangster was asked why he robbed banks.  His famous reply: “Because that’s where the money is!”  If we look at where the bulk of federal spending goes, it is clear that military spending is “where the money is.” This is why local government and community services are starved – and why, by ignoring this, local politicians are looking to raise additional revenue from regressive taxes on family spending and housing.

 $23,458,507,116 = Cost of Iraq/Afghanistan Wars to Massachusetts, so far.

 A 25% reduction in military spending could mean annual funding of

 $5,000,000,000        for Massachusetts

$500,000,000           for Boston

What could that pay for in schools, neighborhood services and green jobs?

 In case you missed it. . .

Barney Frank: Cut the Military Budget

I would be very happy if there was some way to make it a misdemeanor for people to talk about reducing the budget deficit without including a recommendation that we substantially cut military spending. Sadly, self-described centrist and even liberal organizations often talk about the need to curtail deficits by cutting Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other programs that have a benign social purpose, but they fail to talk about one area where substantial budget reductions would have the doubly beneficial effect of cutting the deficit and diminishing expenditures that often do more harm than good.  More

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“WAR ON TERROR”  . . . Do You Feel Safer Now?

How Many Times Will Guantánamo Kill?

It began with the deaths of Manei al-Otaibi, Yasser al-Zahrani (Saudi Arabia) and Ali Abdullah Ahmed Al Salami (Yemen) in June 2006. That was followed the deaths of Abdul Rahman al-Amri (Saudi Arabia) in May 2007 followed by Abdur-Razzaq (Afghanistan) in 2008. All but the latter are said to have committed suicide. That version of events is highly contested by their families and former prisoners who knew them. A few weeks ago the alleged suicide of Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi in a Libyan desert-prison elicited a similar response. This week, it was the turn of Muhammad Ahmad Abdallah Salih, one of the hundred or so Yemenis, the single largest group still held at Guantánamo Bay. More

 

Taking a Troubling Measure of Torture

According to the Times, "Armed with polling data that show a narrow majority of support for keeping the prison open and deep fear about the detainees, Republicans in Congress started laying plans even before the inauguration to make the debate over Guantanamo Bay a question of local community safety instead of one about national character and principles. " No political party would dare make torture a cornerstone of its rejuvenation if people really understood what it is. And lest we forget, we're not just talking about waterboarding, itself a trivializing euphemism for drowning.  More

CIA station chief: Torture did not thwart terror attacks

Milton Bearden, a former Central Intelligence Agency Pakistan station chief who served at the agency for three decades, says claims that the Bush administration’s so-called enhanced interrogation techniques saved American lives are likely false. The retired senior CIA officer also says that the former administration’s repeated assertions that attacks were foiled through torture are hurting US credibility abroad, endangering alliances and aiding the cause of would-be terrorists.  More

General Rick Sanchez Calls for War Crimes Truth Commission
In front of a packed audience tonight at the Times Center in New York City, General Ricardo Sanchez, the former commander of all coalition forces in Iraq, called for a truth commission to investigate the abuses and torture which occurred there.  The General described the failures at all levels of civilian and military command that led to the abuses in Iraq, "and that is why I support the formation of a truth commission."  The General went on to say that, "during my time in Iraq there was not one instance of actionable intelligence that came out of these interrogation techniques."  More

And “DOMESTIC TERRORISM. . .”

 

The Murder of Dr. Tiller

The Rush Limbaughs, Pat Robertsons, and Ann Coulters have responsibility for Dr. Tiller’s murder too, by creating a political climate leading to his murder. 9-11 was the fault of “abortionists” according to Pat Robertson. The clever Rush comment “Tiller the Killer,” drawn straight from the constant street protesters around George’s clinic, and Coulter’s comment that previous abortion doctors were killed by a “gun used in a procedure” all fuel the climate that it’s OK to murder doctors.   More

 

George Tiller: Casualty of the Culture Wars?

It is too early to say whether the murder of Dr. Tiller will trigger a wave of violent terrorism targeting abortion providers similar to the one that took place during the mid-1990s. It is not too early to be struck by the parallels. Then, as now, the violence came not in a moment of triumph for the prolife movement but in the face of isolation and defeat.  More

The far-right's violent return

When Barack Obama was elected president last year, pro- choice activists were elated, but there was an undercurrent of anxiety. In the past, the extremist fringe of the anti-abortion movement has responded to political disempowerment with violence… So when Dr Tiller was assassinated in church on Sunday morning, it was a hideous shock, but it was also, in some ways, predicted. This April, a leaked report from the Department of Homeland Security warned about a possible outbreak of right-wing violence. "Paralleling the current national climate, right-wing extremists during the 1990s exploited a variety of social issues and political themes to increase group visibility and recruit new members," the report said, mentioning opposition to gun control, free trade, abortion and same-sex marriage, as well as racial antagonism.  More

Some Headlines from a Rightwing Religious  Web Site:

FAITH UNDER FIRE

WorldNetDaily Exclusive: 'Government persecuting' jailed creation evangelist; Kent Hovind built celebrated anti-evolution ministry, now serving 10-year prison sentence on tax charges

Got your permit to study the Bible?

Exclusive: Chuck Norris warns America, it's time to fight for religious freedom

Stunning Darwin-led-to-Hitler video – $4.95 today only!

Acclaimed DVD documentary, normally $25, will change your view of evolution forever

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IRAQ

 

DAHR JAMAIL: The Return of the Resistance

At least 20 US soldiers have been killed in Iraq in May, the most since last September, along with more than 50 wounded. Iraqi casualties are, as usual - and in both categories - at least ten times that number. Attacks against US forces are once again on the rise in places like Baghdad and Fallujah, where the Iraqi resistance was fiercest before so many of them joined the Sahwa (Sons of Iraq, also referred to as Awakening Councils), and began taking payments from the US military in exchange for halting attacks against the occupiers and agreeing to join the fight against al-Qaeda in Iraq.  More

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AFGHANISTAN LOOMS. . . and Pakistan

 

New U.S. Afghan strategy will cost billions, take years

President Barack Obama's choice to take charge of the war in Afghanistan Tuesday called "significant growth" of the Afghan army and national police the key to his strategy, but the annual cost of building and maintaining the existing Afghan force is more than four times larger than the entire Afghan economy… "We are building an army they will never be able to afford," a senior U.S. military official told McClatchy.  More

"War on Terror"  Destabilizes Pakistan

So far the principle result of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan following the events of 9-11 has been the destabilization of Pakistan. That breakdown is peaking with the events in what AP calls the “Swat town” of Mingora---actually a city of 375,000 from which all but 20,000 have fled as government forces moved in, strafing it with gunships. We’re talking urban guerrilla warfare, house-to-house fighting, not on the Afghan border but 50 miles away in the Swat Valley. We’re talking about Pakistani troops fighting to reclaim the nearby Malam Jabba ski resort from the Tehreek-e-Taliban, who since last year have been using it as a training center and logistics base. We’re talking about two million people fleeing the fighting in the valley and 160,000 in government refugee camps.  More

 

Corpses lay exposed in retaken Swat town

Corpses lay exposed in the Swat Valley's main town on Sunday, and residents rushed to mostly empty markets in search of food a day after the military claimed to have retaken the city from the Taliban… "We have been starving for many days. We have been cooking tree leaves to keep ourselves alive. Thank God it is over," said Afzal Khan. "We need food, we need help. We want peace."  More

Pakistan's Victories Over the Taliban: Will They Last?

The lasting impact of the military's Swat campaign, however, may well be the 3 million civilians it has displaced, left to largely fend for themselves in neighboring towns and emergency camps. Aid agencies warn of an impending humanitarian disaster in Swat, where civilians who failed to flee have been cut off for days from food and water supplies; others languish in camps and sympathetic communities desperately short of resources. Many of those who have returned to areas cleared by the military have found their homes, stores and mosques reduced to rubble.  More

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PALESTINE - ISRAEL

 

The Peril of Forgetting Gaza

The recent meeting between President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu generated speculation over the future relationship between America and Israel, and a potentially changed U.S. policy towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Analysts on the right and left are commenting on a new, tougher American policy characterized by strengthened U.S. demands on Israel. However, beneath the diplomatic choreography lies an agonizing reality that received only brief comment from Obama and silence from Netanyahu: The ongoing devastation of the people of Gaza.  More

VIDEO: Focus on Gaza here

<!--[if !vml]--><!--[endif]-->ANALYSIS / Netanyahu will comply with Obama's demands <!--[if !vml]--><!--[endif]-->

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will back down. Another week, another month, and he will give into American pressure and will be forced to accept the two-state solution and also agree to some sort of concessions on settlements… The Americans are demanding complete cessation of construction in the settlements, or in the language of President Obama, "no settlements." Netanyahu insists on "natural growth," but has no troops. Not one of Israel's supporters in the U.S. has stood up against the popular president to defend the construction of a new neighborhood in Ma'aleh Adumim or a home for a young couple in Itzhar. At most, they might ask Obama to be a little more gentle and not bash Israel.  More

Israelis Say Bush Agreed to West Bank Growth

Senior Israeli officials accused President Obama on Wednesday of failing to acknowledge what they called clear understandings with the Bush administration that allowed Israel to build West Bank settlement housing within certain guidelines while still publicly claiming to honor a settlement “freeze.” The complaint was the latest in a growing rift between the Obama administration and the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over how to move forward to achieve peace in the Middle East. Mr. Obama was in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday and is scheduled to address the Muslim world from Cairo on Thursday.  More

Gideon Levy: Future of Mideast is a domestic American issue <!--[if !vml]--><!--[endif]-->

As the odds of Israeli society coming to its senses and fighting for its destiny have become infinitesimal, the arena for ending the occupation and pursuing peace has moved stateside, and Jewish America is itself beginning to undergo a revolution. One line of thinking goes like this: If Obama succeeds in dealing with GM, he will also win public support in dealing with Yitzhar and other settlements like it. If he can convince American supporters of Israel that relations with the Jewish state have become dishonest, the sky's the limit. Americans must understand that without changing relations with the Arab and Muslim worlds, the world itself will become a more dangerous place, and that improving relations with those people need not be at Israel's expense, but to its benefit.  More

AVNERI: "Racists for Democracy"

HOW LUCKY we are to have the extreme Right standing guard over our democracy. This week, the Knesset voted by a large majority (47 to 34) for a law that threatens imprisonment for anyone who dares to deny that Israel is a Jewish and Democratic State… THE FACTORY of racist laws with a distinct fascist odor is now working at full steam. That is built into the new coalition. At its center is the Likud party, a good part of which is pure racist (sorry for the oxymoron). To its right there is the ultra-racist Shas party, to the right of which is Lieberman’s ultra-ultra racist "Israel is our Home" party, the ultra-ultra-ultra racist "Jewish Home" party, and to its right the even more racist "National Union" party, which includes outright Kahanists and stands with one foot in the coalition and the other on the moon.  More

 

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Pushing for War with IRAN

Report Ties Dubious Iran Nuclear Docs to Israel

A report on Iran’s nuclear program issued by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last month generated news stories publicizing an incendiary charge that U.S. intelligence is underestimating Iran’s progress in designing a "nuclear warhead" before the halt in nuclear weapons-related research in 2003.  That false and misleading charge from an intelligence official of a foreign country, who was not identified but was clearly Israeli, reinforces two of Israel’s key propaganda themes on Iran – that the 2007 U.S. National Intelligence Estimate on Iran is wrong, and that Tehran is poised to build nuclear weapons as soon as possible.  More

Blast from the past (2002)…

NETANYAHU: The Case for Toppling Saddam

If a pre-emptive action will be supported by a broad coalition of free countries and the U.N., all the better. But if such support is not forthcoming, then the U.S. must be prepared to act without it. This will require courage, and I see it abundantly present in President Bush's bold leadership and in the millions of Americans who have rallied behind him.  More

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Other Events

Friday, June 5, Returning War Veterans:  Challenges in Continuing Mental Health Care, 2:30-5pm, Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology, 221 Rivermoor Street, Boston (West Roxbury). Veterans returning from war carry emotional and brain injuries that are long-lasting and call for protracted care beyond crisis intervention. Is our mental health system and our society—traditionally geared to acute care of acute problems—willing and able to provide this care? How can we enhance our military, veterans administration, and civilian mental health systems and our community support to deal with these prolonged mental health needs? Open to the Professional Community and the Public—No Admission Charge

 

Saturday, June 13, Boston Teachers Union School Fundraiser, 8pm-midnight, BTU Hall, 180 Mt. Vernon St. Dorchester. DPP member Betsy Drinan, one of the lead teachers opening the new Boston Teachers Union School in September( www.btuschool.org), writes:  

“We are having our first fundraiser - a comedy night on June 13 - and would love it if you could attend! You can purchase tickets for $35 by calling the BTU at 617 288 2000. You can also purchase tickets at the door ( though obviously advance ticket sales assist with the planning)See attached flyer for more information.”

 

Monday, June 15,  Rabbis for Human Rights Arik Ascherman: Pursuing Justice, Finding Hope:  Post Gaza Reflections, 7:30pm, Nehar Shalom Community Synagogue, 43 Lochstead Ave, Jamaica Plain.  For parking information and directions, please visit Nehar Shalom Community Synagogue's website. Ascherman is visiting the States from Israel in June and will be speaking in several locations across the country, including Boston, as part of his twice-yearly educational and fund raising tour.  You will find his complete itinerary at www.rhr-na.org.  There is no cost for the talk, and donations in any amount are very appreciated. 

Starts Tuesday, June 16, White People Challenging Racism: Moving From Talk to Action, Adult education Summer 2009 class starts Tuesday, June 16. Meets weekly for 5 weeks, from 6:45 pm to 8:45 pm at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education, 42 Brattle St., Harvard Square, Cambridge. Costs only $27 (plus administrative fee), including materials. Register at www.ccae.org  (the course code is WHIT) or call 617-547-6789 For more information, go to: www.wpcr-boston.org, contact Barbara Beckwith phone: 617-868-3143 email: beckwithb@aol.com

Friday, June 26,  Islamic Society of Boston: Interfaith and Civic Leaders’ Inaugural Breakfast.  8:45am, breakfast at the Reggie Lewis Center;  11:30am Ribbon-Cutting Ceremony at the mosque with Mayor Menino. The weekend’s various inaugural events entitled "Islam in America: From Slavery to Citizenship", mark the completion of Phase 1 of the 68,000 square foot Islamic cultural center; the largest in New England. .   Several key leaders from various faith communities will speak, and Professor William A. Graham, Dean of the Harvard Divinity School will be a featured speaker.   Tickets to the Breakfast event are $25.

  

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CONTACTING DPP and Joining Our Work:

To make it easier to get involved with DPP, we've decided to publish contact info for our coordinators in every issue of this update. We will also regularly publish upcoming meetings of work committees, create a brochure or flyer about DPP, and greet new people at monthly meetings with an explanation of how we work. Here's how to reach them.

Facilitation Committee:

Denise Zwahlen - denisezwahlen@yahoo.com; Alan Booth - adb_durant@hotmail.com; Jeff Klein – jjk123@comcast.net

 The Anti-War Committee pressures Congress, does community outreach and education to end the wars in the Middle East. Contact Denise Zwahlen at denisezwahlen@yahoo.com.

The Counter-Recruitment Committee educates youth and their parents about alternatives to military service and how to keep military recruiters from getting their contact information. Contact Alison Gottlieb at alison.gottlieb@umb.edu .

The Biolab Committee opposes the bio-hazard laboratory that BU is building at Boston Medical Center. Contact Mike Coté at mike_j_cote@yahoo.com.

The Multi-Cultural Competence Committee promotes internal and public education on racism and the diverse cultures of Dorchester. Contact Mary Regan, maryregan@hotmail.com.

Our Treasurer is Mike Prokosch, mikeprokosch@verizon.net.  Daryl Wright and Mike Prokosch prepare budgets

and write funding proposals: dwright@youthbuild.org, mikeprokosch@verizon.net .

*   *   *   *

DPP Calendar - Monthly Meetings/Events

June 7:  Dorchester Day Parade

June 8:  Next DPP meeting

*    *    *    *

CORI Reform Rally & Speak Out
Wednesday, June 3 10am-12:30pm
State House Steps (Beacon St): after rallying on the steps, we will enter the State House around 11am to deliver letters to our legislators. Please join BWA and our allies in a creative Rally & Speak Out on June 3rd for CORI reform.  CORI speakers will be dressed in the clothing of their occupational of choice (cook, nurse, customer service, building trades etc) to underscore the talents that they have and to show how CORI locks them out of the system. 
For more information or to endorse the campaign, contact: Aaron at Boston Workers' Alliance, 617 606 3580 or email atanaka@bostonworkersalliance.org

Please save the date: June 30 for a major press conference & lobby day to pass CORI reform in 2009. Stay tuned for details.

*    *    *    *

Project HIP-HOP Still Needs Your Help

Mariama White-Hammond writes:

Project HIP-HOP refuses to cut back in the face of the greatest need we have ever seen. Our board, staff and volunteer base are rallying together to raise these funds and we need your support.

 If you missed the Thursday fundraiser, you can still make a contribution on-line or by mail – details here

*    *    *    *

Next DPP Meeting

Monday, June 8, Kick-Off 25% Solution Campaign, 7-9pm,Vietnamese American Community Center, 42 Charles St., Fields Corner.

Wheelchair accessible.  Please call in advance if you need translation, childcare, a ride, or have other needs: 617-282-3783.

 

The new DPP Facilitation Team is:

Denise Zwahlen - denisezwahlen@yahoo.com

Alan Booth - adb_durant@hotmail.com

Jeff Klein – jjk123@comcast.net

 

Contact them for questions, suggestions for meeting topics, DPP organizational matters

DPP Needs YOU!

With DPP’s new decentralized committee-based structure there is sometimes a need to consult or make decisions about issues in between membership meetings we established a “Core” or decision-making group of active DPP members who could be contacted quickly by email or phone. This is also a way of participating more actively in DPP work -- also possible through becoming active with one of our committees (see contact info at the end of this email)  Please reply to this email if you want to be a participant in the DPP decision-making process.

*    *    *    *

UJP Strategy Conference Saturday, June 13 - Hold the Date

1-5pm, Friends Meeting House, 5 Longfellow Park, Cambridge

The Strategy Conference will cover:

<!--[if !supportLists]-->·         <!--[endif]-->Political discussion on ending the Afghanistan/Pakistan war

<!--[if !supportLists]-->·         <!--[endif]-->Reports from Cut Military Budget 25%, Disarmament, Israel-Palestine, and other working groups

<!--[if !supportLists]-->·         <!--[endif]-->General discussion on state of the peace movement

<!--[if !supportLists]-->·         <!--[endif]-->Structure of UJP

*    *    *    *

McGovern Bill to Require Afghan “Exit Strategy”

Rep. Jim McGovern introduced H.R. 2404, a house resolution “To require the Secretary of Defense to submit a report to Congress outlining the United States exit strategy for United States military forces in Afghanistan participating in Operation Enduring Freedom” by the end of the year. Details here.  

When the bill was filed it had 74 co-sponsors, including (beside McGovern)  Capuano, Delahunt, Frank, Olver, Tierney, Tsongas; not so far Lynch, Markey, Neal.

Lynch constituents should call his office. . . (202) 225-8273 (ask for Mariana Osorio, his foreign policy staffer) or email stephen.lynch@mail.house.gov

 

Senate O.K.'s $91 Billion in War Funds

The Senate approved $91 billion in funding for the  wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan yesterday, with all senators but three  voting for the bill.

This, along with a House vote last week in favor of $97  billion, seals the deal for the Obama administration's first supplemental war  spending request. The no-strings-attached legislation comes as a deep  disappointment to progressive members of Congress, as well as to antiwar voters,  many of whom hoped the Obama administration would mark a significant break with Bush-style war funding.   More

Last minute efforts by peace groups across the country (including many UFPJ member groups), were able to garner as many as 52 antiwar votes on the House side. (Roll-call vote here) This was much better than anticipated, but still far from the numbers we need. On the Senate side, there were only two antiwar votes: Feingold and Sanders.

Please call the district or state offices of your Representative or  Senator, and thank them if they voted "No." If they voted "Yes" ask if a staff member can explain their decision and express your disappointment.

DPP joined many other anti-war organizations in signing a letter to the Congressional Progressive Caucus asking for their continued opposition to more money for war funding.

Tell Kennedy and Kerry:  No More Blank Checks for War!

Kennedy: (202) 224-4543; email: senator@kennedy.senate.gov  

Kerry: (202) 224-2742; email: john_kerry@kerry.senate.gov

*    *    *    *

Tell Congress to Ban Cluster Munitions!

One year ago this week -- on May 30, 2008 -- more than 100 governments put the finishing touches on the biggest arms control and humanitarian treaty negotiated in a decade. The global treaty to ban the production, use, and stockpiling of cluster munitions has been endorsed by nearly all of the United States NATO allies and many other countries -- 96 in all.

In December 2008, then President-elect Obama promised that after he took office he would launch a review of the Bush administration's decision not to sign the global treaty banning cluster bombs.

The Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL) is campaigning to persuade President Obama to overrule the Pentagon and endorse a global treaty banning these weapons by promoting the Cluster Munitions Civilian Protection Act (S. 416), They hope to reach at least 33 Senate cosponsors. Senator Kennedy has signed on, but so far not Kerry.

Please help make some noise! Send a letter to your senators urging them to cosponsor the Cluster Munitions Civilian Protection Act (S.416) and help put an end to use of these terrible weapons.

 

*    *    *    *

GI TRAUMA, RESISTANCE. . .

 

The SECOND ANNUAL MEMORIAL DAY FOR PEACE was observed Veterans for Peace and other organizations at Long Warf on Monday with a moving tribute to the soldiers and civilians who lost their lives in US wars.  The crowd was solemn but determined – and the event also received significant local publicity:

Honor the dead, work for future peace, speakers say

Though the speeches mostly focused on members of the military who had died in wars present and past, politics crept in. Maureen Hearn of Military Families Speak Out raised the specter of an impatient electorate when she noted that while voters "elected a president who promised to bring the troops home . . . President Obama is not only continuing the war in Iraq, he's increasing the number of troops" being sent to Afghanistan.  More

Nice article in The Metro also, here

CINDY SHEEHAN: Day Of The Dead
Casey will always be my hero but he was a victim of US Imperialism and his death should bring shame, not pride, as it did not bring freedom to anyone. I will, of course, mourn his senseless death on Memorial Day as I do every day. However, we do not need another day here in America to glorify war which enables the Military Industrial Complex to commit its crimes under the black cloak of "Patriotism." From Palestine to Africa to South America, our quest for global economic domination kills, sickens, maims or oppresses people on a daily basis and about 25,000 children per day die of starvation. I am not okay with these facts and I am not proud of my country. I will spend my reflective time on MD to mourn not only the deaths of so many people all over the world due to war, but mourn the fact that they are the unseen and uncared for victims of US Empire.  More

 

Courage to Resist:

http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/  

*    *    *    *

 “OUR BOMBS” is an interactive website and documentary film that looks at the human cost and strategic implications of U.S. air strikes. The film takes a unconventional look at the psychology behind military decision making, questioning how the technology and distance of aerial warfare affect our ethical and strategic judgments.

[But it doesn’t include attacks with US bombs by other countries – principally Israel, but also Turkey. . .  ]

*    *    *    * 

COST OF WAR

 

Cost of Empire

"There is virtually no news coverage-no journalists' or editors' curiosity-about the pressures or lures at work when the U.S. government seeks to persuade officials of Romania, Aruba or Ecuador that providing U.S. military-basing access would be good for their countries." The American public, if not the residents of the territories in question, is almost totally innocent of the huge costs involved, the crimes committed by our soldiers against women and children in the occupied territories, the environmental pollution, and the deep and abiding suspicions generated among people forced to live close to thousands of heavily armed, culturally myopic and dangerously indoctrinated American soldiers.  More

 

Where the money comes from, where it goes and what it could pay for instead.

http://nationalpriorities.org/

The Military Cost of Securing Energy… and the alternatives

http://www.nationalpriorities.org/Energy_Security/Energy_Priorities

 

DPP Takes Up the “25% SOLUTION” Campaign 

FUND OUR COMMUNITIES – REDUCE MILITARY SPENDING

DPP members decided at our April 13 meeting to work on developing a campaign to reduce military spending and redirect the funds to vital community needs.  We are working in collaboration with the our community allies and the larger UJP movement. Since February, some of us have been talking to numbers of organizations to find out what they think about joining together in a "Fund Our Communities - Cut Military Spending / 25%" campaign. It is expected that a group of community leaders, together with DPP, will soon convene a larger meeting to launch the effort, with a possible “roll-out” with a joint group marching in the Dorchester Day Parade June 7.

*    *    *    *

“WHERE THE MONEY IS. . .” – During the 1930’s a notorious gangster was asked why he robbed banks.  His famous reply: “Because that’s where the money is!”  If we look at where the bulk of federal spending goes, it is clear that military spending is “where the money is.” This is why local government and community services are starved – and why, by ignoring this, local politicians are looking to raise additional revenue from regressive taxes on family spending and housing.

$23,458,507,116 = Cost of Iraq/Afghanistan Wars to Massachusetts, so far.

A 25% reduction in military spending could mean annual funding of

 

$5,000,000,000        for Massachusetts

$500,000,000           for Boston

What could that pay for in schools, neighborhood services and green jobs?

In case you missed it. . .

Barney Frank: Cut the Military Budget

I would be very happy if there was some way to make it a misdemeanor for people to talk about reducing the budget deficit without including a recommendation that we substantially cut military spending. Sadly, self-described centrist and even liberal organizations often talk about the need to curtail deficits by cutting Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other programs that have a benign social purpose, but they fail to talk about one area where substantial budget reductions would have the doubly beneficial effect of cutting the deficit and diminishing expenditures that often do more harm than good.  More

*    *    *    * 

“WAR ON TERROR”  . . . Do You Feel Safer Now?

Facts and myths about Obama's preventive detention proposal

Guantanamo is a symbol, true, but it's a symbol of a lawless, unconstitutional detention and interrogation system. Changing the venue doesn't solve the problem… There are literally tens of thousands of potential terrorists all over the world who could theoretically harm America. We cannot protect ourselves from that possibility by keeping the handful we have in custody locked up forever, whether in Guantanamo or some Super Max prison in the US.  More

 

Military Commissions, Round Three

Politicians normally like to be praised, but I have to wonder how President Obama feels having gotten accolades from such unaccustomed sources as Ari Fleischer, John McCain and the Wall Street Journal.  …this month, the Obama administration announced that it would resume trials of Guantanamo detainees by military commissions, albeit under new rules that would offer defendants greater legal protections. The additional rules prohibit the introduction of evidence obtained through cruel treatment, tighten the rules on hearsay evidence, and allow detainees greater choice in selecting defense lawyers. While the revised commissions improve somewhat on the model used by the Bush administration, they still fall far short of providing the due process guarantees found in U.S. federal courts.  Unsurprisingly, Republicans are jubilant.  More

Inflating the Guantánamo Threat

…a Pentagon report made public on Tuesday concluded that 74 of the 534 men who have been freed from Guantánamo were “confirmed or suspected of re-engaging in terrorist activities.” This is a recidivism rate of around 14 percent, which was up from the Pentagon’s previous estimate in January of 11 percent.  But are things this bad? While we must of course be careful about who is released, these numbers are very likely inflated. This is in part because the Pentagon includes on the list any released prisoner who is either “confirmed” or just “suspected” to have engaged in terrorism anywhere in the world, whether those actions were directed at the United States or not. And, bizarrely, the Defense Department has in the past even lumped into the recidivist category former prisoners who have done no more than criticize the United States after their release.  More

Freedom is worth security risks: The Chimera of Total Security

If history is a guide to the future (and it is), then terrorists will hit us again, no matter who is president, no matter what policies he or she sets. Dick Cheney knows this, yet he preys on our fear with politics. No one denies a need to take every reasonable precaution for security. But we need to get over the idea we can guarantee we are never hit again. You simply cannot make that promise and have left a country worth living in. Or as President Eisenhower reputedly said, "If you want total security, go to prison."  More

General Accuses WH of War Crimes

The two-star general who led an Army investigation into the horrific detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib has accused the Bush administration of war crimes and is calling for accountability… Now, in a preface to a Physicians for Human Rights report based on medical examinations of former detainees, Taguba adds an epilogue to his own investigation. The new report, he writes, "tells the largely untold human story of what happened to detainees in our custody when the Commander-in-Chief and those under him authorized a systematic regime of torture. This story is not only written in words: It is scrawled for the rest of these individual's lives on their bodies and minds. Our national honor is stained by the indignity and inhumane treatment these men received from their captors.  More

Yet Another Bogus 'Terror' Plot

Despite the pompous statements from Mayor Bloomberg of New York and other politicians, including Representative Peter King, the whole story is bogus. The four losers may have been inclined to violence, and they may have harbored a virulent strain of anti-Semitism. But it seems that the informant whipped up their violent tendencies and their hatred of Jews, cooked up the plot, incited them, arranged their purchase of weapons, and then had them busted. To ensure that it made headlines, the creepy informant claimed to be representing a Pakistani extremist group, Jaish-e Muhammad, a bona fide terrorist organization. He wasn't, of course. It is disgusting and outrageous that the FBI is sending provocateurs into mosques.

The headlines reinforce the very fear that Dick Cheney is trying to stir up. The story strengthens the narrative that the "homeland" is under attack. It's not.  More

5 decry jail terms in Holy Land Foundation case

The five defendants in the Holy Land Foundation case were defiant Wednesday while being sentenced for their roles in funneling money to overseas terrorists, expressing disbelief that American law could criminalize the feeding of needy Palestinian people… "We gave the essentials of life – oil, rice, flour," former Holy Land board chairman Ghassan Elashi said before receiving his 65-year sentence.   More

*    *    *    *

PALESTINE - ISRAEL

 

Obama Pushes Israel On Settlement Issue
President Obama yesterday continued to press his administration's tough stance on Jewish settlements in the West Bank, telling reporters after a meeting with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas that Israel must halt all settlement activity to build momentum for peace. Obama, who met last week with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, said, "In my conversations with Prime Minister Netanyahu, I was very clear about the need to stop settlements, to make sure that we are stopping the building of outposts . . . to alleviate some of the pressures that the Palestinian people are under in terms of travel and commerce."  More

Key Lawmakers Are Opposing Israeli Policy On Settlements

…when Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu came to Capitol Hill for a May 18 meeting after being pressed by President Obama to freeze the expansion of West Bank settlements, he was “stunned,” Netanyahu aides said, to hear what seemed like a well-coordinated attack against his stand on settlements. The criticism came from congressional leaders, key lawmakers dealing with foreign relations and even from a group of Jewish members… In their meetings, according to the congressional aide, lawmakers rejected Netanyahu’s call for Palestinian reciprocity on terrorism as a precondition and kept pressing him on the need to stop building in settlements.  More

Israel rebuffs US call for total settlement freeze

Israel defied a surprisingly blunt U.S. demand that it freeze all building in West Bank Jewish settlements, saying Thursday it will press ahead with construction. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Wednesday that President Barack Obama wants Israel to halt to all settlement construction _ including "natural growth." She was referring to Israel's insistence that new construction is necessary to accommodate the expansion of families already living in existing settlements.   More

The Never-Ending “Outpost Evacuation” <!--[if !vml]--><!--[endif]-->

At this week's cabinet meeting, Benjamin Netanyahu said that "we will not set up new settlements." But in the very same breath he added that "it is not fair not to provide a solution for natural increase." The best of Israbluff: Every community in the territories occupies a nearby hill or Palestinian agricultural land, builds roads there, sets up houses and calls this "natural increase." It's not a new settlement, it's a new neighborhood, they say. Even the new immigrants who settle there are considered "natural increase." The settlers have one aim - to create facts on the ground to render any territorial solution impossible. Not a Palestinian state, not even a state of cantons.  More

Is Abbas Still Relevant to the Peace Process?

Last week's meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu underscored the challenge Obama faces in pursuing a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — the Israeli leader, after all, opposes the principle of sovereign independence for the Palestinians. This week, Obama will encounter a second major obstacle: Abbas may be committed to the two-state solution, but his political authority over his own people is so limited that he is unable to effectively negotiate on their behalf.   More

The Dangers of False Optimism in the Middle East

But whether or not Obama is willing to twist arms to impose a settlement, a broader question remains unanswered. The conditions for peace processing may be better than they have been in the preceding eight years, but the reality on the ground is now eight years worse… The status quo is also increasingly untenable, and the more likely scenario for the coming decade, if not longer, is that Israel's determined efforts to perpetuate it will produce increasing - and increasingly existential, regionalised and bloody - conflict. With the train derailed, the light at the tunnel's end is liable to remain very dim for the foreseeable future.  More

*    *    *    *

IRAQ

 

Army chief: Troops could be in Iraq after 2012

The United States could have fighting forces in Iraq and Afghanistan for a decade, the top Army officer said, even though a signed agreement requires all U.S. forces to be out of Iraq by 2012.  Gen. George Casey, Army chief of staff, said Tuesday his planning envisions combat troops in Iraq and Afghanistan for a decade as part of a sustained U.S. commitment to fighting extremism and terrorism in the Middle East.  More

 

U.K. Finishes Withdrawal of Its Last Combat Troops in Iraq

The last of Britain’s combat troops finished military operations in Iraq today, ending a six-year deployment at their base near Basra in the south of the country… The U.K. deployed up to 46,000 soldiers to help the U.S. oust Saddam Hussein and has scaled back its force steadily since then. About 400 British personnel will stay on after today, mainly to help train the Iraqi navy.  More

Prospects are dismal for returning Iraqi refugees

Since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, an estimated 4 million Iraqis have fled their homes to escape the violence, half of them abroad. Several months ago, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki began telling them to return, assuring them that Iraq is safe.  Not everyone agrees, however, and some families who've come back said they regretted it. They face soaring rents, limited job opportunities and shortages of electricity, clean water, education and health care, not to mention the continuing threat of violence and political instability.  More

DAHR JAMAIL: Provoking the Inevitable

… the ongoing attacks by the Maliki government against the Sahwa continue to destabilize the situation in Iraq and allow overall violence to increase with each passing week. We are seeing Sahwa fighters leave their posts in ever-increasing numbers; the US military is literally redrawing the boundaries of cities in order not to move their bases outside of them to respect the Status of Forces Agreement, and there is no sign from the Obama administration that there will ever be a full withdrawal from Iraq, nor reparations made to the people of Iraq.  More

*    *    *    *

Pushing for War with IRAN

Obama orders Gates to update plan for Iran strike

American defense secretary tells NBC television president has instructed him to refresh plans for military action against Tehran prepared during Bush era. 'Presidents always ask their military to have a range of contingency plans available to them,' he says   More

 

Everything You Think You Know About Iran is Wrong

… over the last five years, senior Iranian officials at every level have repeatedly asserted that they do not intend to build nuclear weapons. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has quoted the regime's founding father, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who asserted that such weapons were "un-Islamic." The country's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, issued a fatwa in 2004 describing the use of nuclear weapons as immoral. In a subsequent sermon, he declared that "developing, producing or stockpiling nuclear weapons is forbidden under Islam." Last year Khamenei reiterated all these points after meeting with the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei. Now, of course, they could all be lying. But it seems odd for a regime that derives its legitimacy from its fidelity to Islam to declare constantly that these weapons are un-Islamic if it intends to develop them.  More

Have We Already Lost Iran?

PRESIDENT OBAMA’S Iran policy has, in all likelihood, already failed. On its present course, the White House’s approach will not stop Tehran’s development of a nuclear fuel program — or, as Iran’s successful test of a medium-range, solid-fuel missile last week underscored, military capacities of other sorts. It will also not provide an alternative to continued antagonism between the United States and Iran — a posture that for 30 years has proved increasingly damaging to the interests of the United States and its allies in the Middle East.   More

ANALYSIS / Netanyahu bringing Israel closer to war with Iran <!--[if !vml]--><!--[endif]-->

A senior source close to the Obama administration has said that the dialogue Obama has offered Iran will come to nothing and that the U.S. will not strike Iran unless something unusual and unexpected happens. If this turns out to be the case, the Netanyahu government may have to decide whether to attack Iran's nuclear installations… A war with Iran is not inevitable. But the prime minister took another step yesterday toward preparing the general public for the possibility that it might break out.  More

Blast from the past (2002)…

NETANYAHU: The Case for Toppling Saddam

If a pre-emptive action will be supported by a broad coalition of free countries and the U.N., all the better. But if such support is not forthcoming, then the U.S. must be prepared to act without it. This will require courage, and I see it abundantly present in President Bush's bold leadership and in the millions of Americans who have rallied behind him.  More

Half of Israelis back immediate strike on Iran

Fifty-one percent support an immediate Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear sites, while 49 percent believe the Jewish state should await the outcome of efforts by the US administration to engage with the Islamic republic, said the survey published by Tel Aviv University.

But 74 percent of those questioned said they believe that new US President Barack Obama's efforts will not stop the Islamic republic from acquiring atomic weapons.  More

**********************************

Other Events

May 21 - June 6, The Eyes of Babylon: award-winning, critically acclaimed play by IVAW member, Boston Playwrights' Theater, 949 Commonwealth Ave. The play is developed from the Iraq War Journals of Iraq Veterans Against the War member, and former marine, Lance Corporal Jeff Key who deployed to Iraq in March 2003 and was med-evac'd two months later for surgery after a non-combat related accident. While deployed to Iraq, Key kept his sanity by recording his experiences in a small moleskin notebook he kept in the cargo pocket of his cammies.  For entertainment, he read the journals to his fellow marines.  In the journal there are serious moments and moments seriously funny.  For tickets: http://www.bu.edu/bpt or 866-811-4111. For more info on the play:  http://www.theeyesofbabylon.com  To hear Key's Winter Soldier testimony:  http://ivaw.org/wintersoldier/

Saturday, May 30, Modern Day Slavery in Bateyes, 5-8pm, Great Hall, Codman Sq. Please join members of the Association of Haitian Women (AFAB) and two special guests-HELENE KOSCIELNIAK and AMY SERRANO- on May 30th for a discussion on the plight of Haitians in the Dominican Republic  For more info -  tel 617-287-0096

 

Wednesday, June 3, Community-Labor United Annual Dinner, 6 pm at the China Pearl restaurant, 9 Tyler Street, Chinatown.  Please reserve your tickets now for CLU's Annual Awards Dinner,. This year we are honoring: •Caroline Murray and the Alliance to Develop Power for their pioneering work creating community-controlled green jobs in and around Springfield. •Mike Fadel and SEIU 1199 for their rapidly growing campaign to organize healthcare workers in eastern Massachusetts. •Marvin Martin and the Greater Four Corners Action Coalition for valiantly defending and improving their neighborhood. Tickets are $50 and you can reserve them by mailing a check to Community Labor United, 8 Beacon St, 2d floor, Boston MA 02108.  http://massclu.org/  

Friday, June 5, Returning War Veterans:  Challenges in Continuing Mental Health Care, 2:30-5pm, Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology, 221 Rivermoor Street, Boston (West Roxbury). Veterans returning from war carry emotional and brain injuries that are long-lasting and call for protracted care beyond crisis intervention. Is our mental health system and our society—traditionally geared to acute care of acute problems—willing and able to provide this care? How can we enhance our military, veterans administration, and civilian mental health systems and our community support to deal with these prolonged mental health needs? Open to the Professional Community and the Public—No Admission Charge

 

Saturday, June 13, Boston Teachers Union School Fundraiser, 8pm-midnight, BTU Hall, 180 Mt. Vernon St. Dorchester. DPP member Betsy Drinan, one of the lead teachers opening the new Boston Teachers Union School in September( www.btuschool.org), writes:  

“We are having our first fundraiser - a comedy night on June 13 - and would love it if you could attend! You can purchase tickets for $35 by calling the BTU at 617 288 2000. You can also purchase tickets at the door ( though obviously advance ticket sales assist with the planning)See attached flyer for more information.”

*************************************

 

CONTACTING DPP and Joining Our Work:

To make it easier to get involved with DPP, we've decided to publish contact info for our coordinators in every issue of this update. We will also regularly publish upcoming meetings of work committees, create a brochure or flyer about DPP, and greet new people at monthly meetings with an explanation of how we work. Here's how to reach them.

Facilitation Committee:

Denise Zwahlen - denisezwahlen@yahoo.com; Alan Booth - adb_durant@hotmail.com; Jeff Klein – jjk123@comcast.net

 The Anti-War Committee pressures Congress, does community outreach and education to end the wars in the Middle East. Contact Denise Zwahlen at denisezwahlen@yahoo.com.

The Counter-Recruitment Committee educates youth and their parents about alternatives to military service and how to keep military recruiters from getting their contact information. Contact Alison Gottlieb at alison.gottlieb@umb.edu .

The Biolab Committee opposes the bio-hazard laboratory that BU is building at Boston Medical Center. Contact Mike Coté at mike_j_cote@yahoo.com.

The Multi-Cultural Competence Committee promotes internal and public education on racism and the diverse cultures of Dorchester. Contact Mary Regan, maryregan@hotmail.com.

Our Treasurer is Mike Prokosch, mikeprokosch@verizon.net.  Daryl Wright and Mike Prokosch prepare budgets

and write funding proposals: dwright@youthbuild.org, mikeprokosch@verizon.net .

*   *   *   *

DPP Calendar - Monthly Meetings/Events

June 7:  Dorchester Day Parade

June 8:  Next DPP meeting

 

 *    *    *    *

Sunday, May 10, 13th Annual Mother's Walk for Peace, 9am-12noon, gather at the park in Field’s Corner.  Louis D. Brown Peace Institute's (LDBPI) Mothers' Walk draws together hundreds of men, women, & children who make up the surviving families of homicide victims, as well as community supporters from throughout Massachusetts.  Last year, over 5,000 people walked to support the uniquely effective services the LDBPI provides families, young people, and urban neighborhoods. DPP supports this event as an organization and will have a marching contingent.  Look for our banner in the park!  Register Online Now

Sunday, May 10,  NO MORE RAIDS! Families Know NO Borders!, 1:30- 2:30  Meet at South Bay Detention Center, Boston 20 Bradston Street (not far from Boston Medical Center).  Mother’s Day is a time for celebration for mother’s everywhere. Yet, for women in prison and immigration detention this is not the case Everyday in Massachusetts, approximately 800 immigrants and asylum-seekers are in detention in county jails around the state waiting to be deported or fighting a legal battle to stay in the country. None of those persons are serving sentences for having committed a crime. Resist The Raids Coalition American Friends Service Committee Proyecto Voz API Movement Boston Interpreters Collective Boston Liberation Health Group Boston May Day Committee Centro Presente Deported Diaspora Jobs with Justice and many other organizations.

Mother's Day Proclamation - 1870
by Julia Ward Howe

Arise then...women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
"We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."

From the bosom of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe out dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace...
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God -

In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.

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National Call-In Day: FUND DIPLOMACY, NOT THE WARS!

Tuesday, May 12  - To reach the Congressional Switchboard 1-800-517-5696

The Obama Administration has asked Congress for another $83.4 billion in Supplemental funding for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. As of today, the House Appropriations Committee has actually increased this amount to $94.2 billion.Members of Congress need to hear from their constituents that this funding bill is not acceptable !
(Voting on the Supplemental will be happening as early as next week. It is vitally important that people across the country send a clear, rapid message that this bill continues and extends the failed policies of the past.)

On May 12, join the National Call-In Day and let Congress know that while we support funding for the safe withdrawal of troops, and for diplomacy, economic assistance and humanitarian aid, we oppose more money for war. While making that call, urge them to co-sponsor a bill by Congressman James McGovern that would require President Obama to provide an exit plan for Afghanistan no later than December 2009.

Key Talking Points:

<!--[if !supportLists]-->·         <!--[endif]-->At a time of economic crisis and multiplying domestic needs, the 2009 Supplemental is an appalling waste of our money. 

<!--[if !supportLists]-->·         <!--[endif]-->The Supplemental funds the increase of troops to Afghanistan, escalating the war rather than ending it.   

<!--[if !supportLists]-->·         <!--[endif]-->The Supplemental places no restrictions on American bombings in either Afghanistan or Pakistan, despite the disproportionate harm to civilian inhabitants.

<!--[if !supportLists]-->·         <!--[endif]-->The Supplemental maintains a high level of American troops in Iraq for the duration of FY 2009.

Join the National Call-in Day on Tuesday May 12

Congressional Switchboard: 1-800-517-5696

Let them know that you reject yet another "blank check" for war!

Click to see the OMB analysis of the War Supplemental funding request (in PDF) here:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/assets/budget_amendments/supplemental_04_09_09.pdf) and 
click here for analysis of the Supplemental from the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation.

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Monday, May 25, Second Annual Memorial Day for Peace

Veterans For Peace and Military Families Speak Out are sponsoring our second annual Memorial Day For Peace on at noon at Christopher Columbus Park near Long Wharf.  Last year, people felt that this was a very meaningful event.  We will have some speeches, read names of Massachusetts people killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, and honor all civilian victims of war as we say NO MORE WAR. Please consider coming, and forward this on to your mailing lists and friends.  The flyer is located at:

http://smedleyvfp.org/page15/files/memorial%20day%20flyer.pdf

Our friends at Veterans for Peace and Military Families Speak Out (MFSO) continue to work on a petition for legislation to Bring Home the Mass National Guard:  see the petition here: http://smedleyvfp.org/page8/page34/files/petition.pdf

Save the Date!

Sunday, June 7, Dorchester Day Parade!  Watch for details soon.

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DPP Takes Up the “25% SOLUTION” Campaign 

FUND OUR COMMUNITIES – REDUCE MILITARY SPENDING

DPP members decided at our April 13 meeting to work on developing a campaign to reduce military spending and redirect the funds to vital community needs.  We are working in collaboration with the our community allies and the larger UJP movement. Since February, some of us have been talking to numbers of organizations to find out what they think about joining together in a "Fund Our Communities - Cut Military Spending / 25%" campaign. It is expected that a group of community leaders, together with DPP, will soon convene a larger meeting to launch the effort, with a possible “roll-out” with a joint group marching in the Dorchester Day Parade June 7.

*    *    *    *

“WHERE THE MONEY IS. . .” – During the 1930’s a notorious gangster was asked why he robbed banks.  His famous reply: “Because that’s where the money is!”  If we look at where the bulk of federal spending goes, it is clear that military spending is “where the money is.” This is why local government and community services are starved – and why, by ignoring this, local politicians are looking to raise additional revenue from regressive taxes on family spending and housing.

$23,458,507,116 = Cost of Iraq/Afghanistan Wars to Massachusetts, so far.

A 25% reduction in military spending could mean annual funding of

 

$5,000,000,000        for Massachusetts

$500,000,000           for Boston

What could that pay for in schools, neighborhood services and green jobs?

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Saturday, May 9,  Economic Recovery and Beyond: Redirecting Military and Energy Resources, 1-4pm, Watertown Free Public Library at 123 Main Street. The Mini-Conference, featuring academics/activists, Dr. Anita Dancs and Dr. Frank Ackerman,  is free and open to anyone interested in learning how our economy is effected by military spending and climate change.  Anita Dancs, Assistant Professor of Economics, Western New England College and former Research Director at the National Priorities Project (NPP), is the author of  The Military Cost of Securing Energy. Frank Ackerman, Professor of Economics at the Global Development and Environment Institute, Tufts University, has written extensively about the economics of climate change and other environmental problems. His latest book, Can we Afford the Future? Economics for a Warming World was published in the fall of 2008.

For more information please visit www.watertowncitizens.org or call 617-926-8560, mailbox 2. The Library is easily accessible by public transportation by taking the #73 Bus from Harvard Square and getting off at the last stop in Watertown Square.  The Library also has a metered parking lot.

In case you missed it. . .

Barney Frank: Cut the Military Budget

I would be very happy if there was some way to make it a misdemeanor for people to talk about reducing the budget deficit without including a recommendation that we substantially cut military spending. Sadly, self-described centrist and even liberal organizations often talk about the need to curtail deficits by cutting Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other programs that have a benign social purpose, but they fail to talk about one area where substantial budget reductions would have the doubly beneficial effect of cutting the deficit and diminishing expenditures that often do more harm than good.  More

*    *    *    * 

COST OF WAR

 

Obama's War Budget

President Obama is seeking $130 billion to fund the Iraq and Afghanistan wars in his budget request for 2010.  This is a mere $14 billion less than overall funding in 2009.  It won’t be possible to determine the direction Obama seeks to take war funding until the Department of Defense releases its justification materials to lay out how this $130 billion will be spent. Yet the reality that Obama’s Fiscal Year 2010 request is only $14 billion less than the 2009 war budget is not at all encouraging.  More

 

Where the money comes from, where it goes and what it could pay for instead.

http://nationalpriorities.org/

The Military Cost of Securing Energy… and the alternatives

http://www.nationalpriorities.org/Energy_Security/Energy_Priorities

*    *    *    *

ECONOMIC CRISIS / “BAILOUT WORLD”

 

Mortgage Madness: Why the Home Loan Industry Won’t (and Can’t) Fix Itself

But what Obama's plan doesn't do--so far--is address the larger question: can any solution work if it doesn't strengthen the negotiating hand of overwhelmed borrowers? Like all previous initiatives, industry participation in the president's plan is largely voluntary, if heavily subsidized. He's proposed allowing homeowners to modify mortgages through bankruptcy courts, which could reduce their principal, but the industry, led by firms like JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Bank of America, has fought hard to kill the legislation, blocking it in the Senate since March. And the plan does nothing else to give borrowers more leverage, such as freezing foreclosures--as candidate Obama pledged he'd do back in October.  More

City Life/Vida Urbana Featured on PBS

Bill Moyers’ Journal had a long and positive feature on the City Life / anti-foreclosure campaign last Friday, with Steve Meacham and others, including footage of foreclosure blocking actions in Dorchester. Video here

U.S. Taxpayers Risk $9.7 Trillion on Bailout Programs (Update1)

The stimulus package the U.S. Congress is completing would raise the government’s commitment to solving the financial crisis to $9.7 trillion, enough to pay off more than 90 percent of the nation’s home mortgages. The Federal Reserve, Treasury Department and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation have lent or spent almost $3 trillion over the past two years and pledged up to $5.7 trillion more. The Senate is to vote this week on an economic-stimulus measure of at least $780 billion. It would need to be reconciled with an $819 billion plan the House approved last month.  More

 

What "oversight" means in Washington

Yesterday, the Fed's Inspector General, Elizabeth Coleman, appeared before the House Financial Services Committee and was questioned by Rep. Grayson about her office's oversight duties.  Just watch this five-minute question-and-answer session to get a sense for the true breadth of decay and corruption in our political and financial classes and for what a sorry joke the concept of "oversight" is in Washington(VIDEO here) More

*    *    *    *

AFGHANISTAN LOOMS. . . and Pakistan?

 

Afghans riot over air-strike atrocity

Shouting "Death to America" and "Death to the Government", thousands of Afghan villagers hurled stones at police yesterday as they vented their fury at American air strikes that local officials claim killed 147 civilians. The riot started when people from three villages struck by US bombers in the early hours of Tuesday, brought 15 newly-discovered bodies in a truck to the house of the provincial governor. As the crowd pressed forward in Farah, police opened fire, wounding four protesters. More

Any Remorse, Mr. President?

The International Committee of the Red Cross confirmed yesterday that "dozens of people, including women and children," were killed in U.S. air strikes on villages in Western Afghanistan Monday night… So far, however, Obama's public response has been muted. This could be because the military is refusing to confirm the reports from the ground. But it makes me wonder: Have we all, including Obama, gotten so desensitized to the violent death of civilians at our hands, ostensibly in the name of fighting terror? Is this another tragic Bush legacy?Where is Obama's anger, his sadness, his regret, his vow to find out what happened and make sure it never happens again?   More

AFGHANS TO OBAMA: “Get Out, Take Karzai With You”

It is not so much that the Taliban is strong and popular, but that the government is weak, corrupt and dysfunctional. “Security has not deteriorated because of what the Taliban has done,” says Daoud Sultanzoy, a US-trained commercial pilot who is a highly respected MP from Ghazni province, south-west of Kabul, “but because people feel the government is unjust. It is seen as the enemy of the people, and because there is no constitutional alternative to it, the Taliban gain.”… The problem for Obama is similar to that facing Afghans. His administration can see the failings of Karzai and his government, but they can’t see an alternative that would offer an improvement. The strong criticism of the Karzai government coming out of Washington several months ago has subsided for the moment.  More

Congress Issues A 'Vietnam' Warning

There were new signs of uneasiness on Capitol Hill about United States involvement in the region. The Democratic chairman of the House Appropriations Committee pronounced himself as "very doubtful" that Mr. Obama's plan for Afghanistan and Pakistan could succeed. The chairman, Representative David Obey, of Wisconsin, said he would allow only one year for the White House to show concrete results, and repeatedly likened Mr. Obama's approach to President Richard Nixon's plans for Vietnam in 1969.  More

U.S. Options in Pakistan Limited
The Pakistani government was mired in political bickering. The army, still fixated on its historical adversary India, remained ill-equipped and unwilling to throw its full weight into the counterinsurgency fight. But despite the threat the intelligence conveyed, Obama has only limited options for dealing with it. Anti-American feeling in Pakistan is high, and a U.S. combat presence is prohibited.  More

US Senate takes up aid to Pakistan bill

The US Congress made a friendly gesture to President Asif Ali Zardari on Monday,  introducing a bill to triple American aid to Pakistan on the day he arrives in the US capital on a four-day visit. Two influential senators – Democrat John Kerry and Republican Richard Lugar – introduced the Pakistan Enduring Assistance and Cooperation Enhancement or the PEACE Act of 2009, in the Senate on Monday afternoon after a long delay.‘The legislation intents to help transform the relationship between the US and Pakistan from a transactional, tactically-driven set of short-term exercises in crisis-management, into a deeper, broader, long-term strategic engagement,’ said a statement issued by the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.  More

*    *    *    * 

“WAR ON TERROR”  . . . Do You Feel Safer Now?

The Threatmonger's Handbook

The United States has the world's largest economy (so far), and the world's most powerful conventional military forces... America is further protected from conventional military attack by two enormous oceanic moats, there no great powers in the Western hemisphere, and it hasn’t been invaded since the War of 1812. 9/11 reminded us American security is not absolute, of course, and the strategic advantages I just outlined are no defense against climate change, pandemic disease, or financial collapse. But surely the United States is about as secure as any great power in modern history. Yet Americans continue to fret about national security, continue to spend far more on national security than any other country does, and continue to believe that our way of life will be imperiled if we do not confront an array of much weaker foes on virtually every continent.   More

Bible and Guns: Why Soldiers Who Proselytize Strengthen Our Enemies

Many Americans have expressed shock at news that some U.S. soldiers have been seeking to use their positions of power in Iraq and Afghanistan to preach Christianity. But this does not come as news to Muslims, who have been long aware of these proselytizing efforts at the end of a gun… Even worse, the image of the soldier-preacher fits directly into Al-Qaeda's meme that Americans are engaged in a new Crusade to destroy Islam. And to the extent that these fundamentalist churches are allowed to exert influence in our military, our enemies are proven right.  More

 

Interrogation Debate Sharply Divided Bush White House

The proclamation that President George W. Bush issued on June 26, 2003, to mark the United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture seemed innocuous, one of dozens of high-minded statements published and duly ignored each year… But inside the Central Intelligence Agency, the statement set off alarms. The agency’s top lawyer, Scott W. Muller, called the White House to complain. More

CIA Says It Briefed Congressional Leaders

Congressional leaders were briefed in detail about techniques used in the Central Intelligence Agency's interrogation program, according to a new intelligence document. The document appears to conflict with recent statements from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who was then the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee. Ms. Pelosi has said she hadn't been told that the CIA was using the technique known as waterboarding, or simulated drowning. According to the document, Ms. Pelosi was one of the first lawmakers briefed on the interrogations in 2002.. More

We need to investigate the Bush years

This may be our great teachable moment, our one chance, Democrats and Republicans alike, to look clearly at our country and what it became under Bush. Already, people's attention is wandering, ennui is setting in, and a banal mood of easy acceptance is taking hold. If we don't act now, the chance may be lost. And then, the next time there is a terrorist attack, a cunning ideologue could once again lead America down the same primrose path. More

*    *    *    *

IRAQ

 

NIR ROSEN: The Big Sleep in Iraq

The Sunni militiamen of the Awakening movement have outlived their usefulness to American forces and the Iraqi government. Some worry these unemployed fighters will relaunch the insurgency they left behind – but they don't stand a chance…   The prevailing order in Iraq today is a Shiite-dominated one, but the balance of power is not divided along exclusively sectarian lines: it is between those close to the state and those without its backing – as some wags put it, between the “powers that be” and the “powers that aren’t”.  More

 

Iraq's Wrecked Environment: Half Life of a Toxic War

When the Bush administration (parts one and two) and its congressional allies sent troops to Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein’s regime, they not only ordered these men and women to commit crimes against humanity, they also commanded them to perpetrate crimes against nature… More than 15 years later, the dire health consequences of our first radioactive bombing campaign [with DU] in this region are coming into focus. Since 1990, the incidence rate of leukemia in Iraq has increased over 600 percent. Detection and treatment of cancers was made unnecessarily difficult by Iraq’s forced isolation under a regime of sanctions, producing what was described by former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan as “a humanitarian crisis.”  More

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PALESTINE - ISRAEL

 

<!--[if !vml]--><!--[endif]-->Settlement expansion seeing biggest boost since 2003

West Bank construction has been accelerating for several months, putting Israel on a collision course with a U.S. administration taking a hard line on settlement expansion. A new outpost, new roads, and other building projects have raced ahead in and around the settlements, often without legal permits, producing the biggest construction drive since 2003, according to Dror Etkes of the Israeli advocacy group Yesh Din. That group monitors construction in the West Bank. The construction, which has sped up even more since Benjamin Netanyahu's government took office this spring, is to be a main issues in U.S. President Barack Obama's meeting with Netanyahu at mid-month.   More

 

UN laments choking of Bethlehem

The UN has accused Israel of restricting development of the Bethlehem region in the West Bank. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha) said just 13% of land around Bethlehem was open for use by the Palestinian population. It said the traditional birthplace of Jesus Christ was hemmed in by Israeli settlements and military zones as well as Israel's West Bank barrier.  More

 

AIPAC Confronts A New Reality as Obama’s Agenda Becomes Clear

…when they went to lobby on Capitol Hill, AIPAC delegates even found some stalwart supporters in Congress holding back on one of their key legislative initiatives — a full-court press to impose new sanctions on Iran to accompany the Obama administration’s drive to engage Tehran diplomatically. It was the lobby’s first mass encounter with a Washington now dominated by President Obama and his party. The broad and uncritical embrace of the Bush administration’s eight years seemed a distant memory. Bush’s GOP, now out of power in the White House and both houses of Congress, seemed in full retreat. And pro-settler evangelical Christians — a prominent feature of AIPAC conferences during the Bush era — were not on the schedule at this year’s conference.  More

What Obama must tell Netanyahu

If Washington can talk to North Korea and Iran, it has no reason to boycott the people who won the last Palestinian elections and are likely to win the next one. Far from defeating Hamas, Israel's war on Gaza has made it stronger while further reinforcing Israel's image as a bully. By the same token, the US needs to talk to ¬Hezbollah in ¬Lebanon. Israel's war on Hezbollah in 2006 was as brutal as its war on Gaza this year, nothing more than the old strategy, taken to a -grotesque level, of demolishing homes as a collective punishment.  More

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And in the REST OF THE WORLD. . .

Africa: The Second Scramble for Africa Starts

Sub-Saharan African countries have of late become the target of a new form of investment that is strongly reminiscent of colonialism: investors from both industrialised and emerging economies buy or lease large tracts of farm land across the continent, either to guarantee their own food provisions or simply as yet another business… Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and activists in Europe are denouncing this land grab in Egypt, Sudan, Cameroon, Senegal, Mozambique and elsewhere in Africa as a new form of colonialism.  More

Misreading the Somali Pirate Threat

US hawks, who--conflating piracy, the militant Somali group Al Shabab and Al Qaeda--swiftly turned the attack into a new excuse for extending the "war on terror" to this corner of Africa. John Bolton, former ambassador to the United Nations, called for an invasion as "the prudential response" to piracy, while the Heritage Foundation's James Carafano argued for "going into Somalia and rooting out the [pirate] bases." Former FBI interrogator Ali Soufan maintained in the Wall Street Journal that if Al Qaeda mounts another successful attack, "there is a strong chance it will be linked to Somalia."… The Obama administration's response to Somali piracy--and the strategy it develops to deal with Al Shabab--will be a crucial test of whether the neocon worldview retains any traction.  More

U.S. Navy says fight against pirates needed ashore

The fight against piracy must involve efforts on land and at sea, the U.S. Navy's top officer said on Monday, saying the issue was more complex than just putting arms on commercial ships… Mullen also said the issue was ultimately larger than just piracy. "It's about Somalia and it's about a future safe haven, and it's about what the international community is going to do with respect to Somalia, among other things."  More

 

Why Latin America's Left Keeps Winning

Washington's foreign policy establishment has been proven wrong. Latin America is more stable and democratic than ever.. The left governments have mostly succeeded where their neoliberal predecessors failed. Partly they have benefited from an acceleration in world economic growth during most of the last five years. But they have also changed their economic policies in ways that increased economic growth.  More

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Other Events

Friday, May 8, LONG TIME PASSING: Mothers speak about war and terror, 7pm, Beacon Hill Friends House, 6 Chestnut St., Boston. Military Mom and Author Susan Galleymore made international headlines by taking the extraordinary and dangerous step of traveling to Iraq to visit her son stationed on a military base in the so-called Sunni Triangle, north of Baghdad; she continues to share the stories of those affected by war as founder of MotherSpeak, as a radio host for Raising Sand Radio, and as a counselor on the G.I. Rights Hotline.  With Art, Poetry, and Refreshments, a moving portrait of what it means to be a mother in time of war...

Saturday, May 9,  Economic Recovery and Beyond: Redirecting Military and Energy Resources, 1-4pm, Watertown Free Public Library at 123 Main Street. The Mini-Conference, featuring academics/activists, Dr. Anita Dancs and Dr. Frank Ackerman,  is free and open to anyone interested in learning how our economy is effected by military spending and climate change.  For more information please visit www.watertowncitizens.org or call 617-926-8560, mailbox 2

Saturday, May 9,  Boycott Motorola Weekly Action, 1-2pm, Coolidge Corner Verizon Store, 285 Harvard St.  Please support the call from Palestine to participate in B/D/S work, and help put consumer pressure on Motorola to stop aiding Israeli apartheid and profiting from Israel's war crimes. Next Saturday May 16, Harvard Square, Cambridge, 1pm

Saturday, May 9, American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee of Mass: Annual Community Banquet, 6:45 registration, Hyatt Harborside at Boston's Logan Airport, 101 Harborside Drive. Keynote Speaker: Noura Erakat, Esq. Arab-American Political Engagement: A Necessity, Not an Option; This Year's Honoree: Susan Akram, Esq. - Dedication to the Defense of Human Rights and Advocacy for Refugees
Tickets: $65  -- Regular; $45 -- Student Ticket. To reserve your tickets, send an email to info@adcma.org; call 617.492.3282 Deadline: April 30^th

 

Thursday, May 14, Community Summit to protect our children, 6-8pm,  Roxbury Community College Student Center, Roxbury Crossing T.on the proposed Boston School Department's proposed student assignment plan, that would decrease school choices for parents and students, and decrease access to high-performing schools for children in Roxbury, Mattapna, and Dorchester.  DPP allies UMN, BPON, Chuck Turner, and Sam Yoon are among the sponsors and endorsers.

Saturday May 16, New England Security Officers' Convention! 10am-2pm,  SEIU Local 615, 26 West St., Boston.  On May 16^th, thousands of security officers will gather together in over two dozen cities nationwide to demand an economic recovery for all workers through the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, legislation that would enable millions of workers to organize unions in order to improve wages and benefits and rebuild the middle class. While bankers and CEOs fight over our taxpayer bailout money, working people are angry and looking for new leadership and new solutions in these difficult economic times.  It is our collective responsibility to be that voice in our communities!

Saturday, May 16, New England United Regional Meeting, 1-5pm, Encuentro 5, 33 Harrison Ave., 5^th floor, Boston. OPENING PROGRAM – 1:00-2:30 pm "Iran: The key to understanding U.S. policy in the Middle East." Presenter, Phil Wilayto, editor of The Virginia Defender and author of In Defense of Iran: Notes from a U.S. Peace Delegation's Journey Through the Islamic Republic will offer an eyewitness account of his travel to Iran and an analysis of the critical role Iran plays in US foreign policy. NEU MEETING – 2:30-5pm. Refreshments will be provided. For further information, www.newenglandunited.org   Tel: 781-316-2018

Sunday, May 17,  Protest AIPAC at its 10th Annual New England Leadership Dinner, 4:30, gather at 10 Copley Place
[the corner of Huntington Ave. and Dartmouth St.]near outside the Westin Copley Place Hotel. Signage should focus on AIPAC – suggested messages include: AIPAC = ENDLESS WAR; AIPAC: BAD 4 PALESTINE-ISRAEL-U.S.; AIPAC: OBSTRUCTION TO PEACE.  Spondored by AMERICAN JEWS FOR A JUST PEACE-BOSTON – “JUSTIC IS THE KEY”

Thursday, May 21, Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions for Israel/Palestine: A Forum, 7pm,  Friends Meeting House, 5 Longfellow Park, Cambridge.  United for Justice with Peace invites you to a forum with Nancy Murray, respondent: Martin Federman. In 2005, over 100 Palestinian civil society groups called for “international civil society organizations and people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era” Come to a forum to learn more about BDS and the “Hang Up on Motorola” campaign and to discuss whether this campaign might be an effective tool to help bring peace to the Middle East.

Tuesday, May 26, Lobby Day for CORI reform legislation, 10:00-12:30:  State House demonstration to press for fairness in job applications, removing non-convictions from people's records, and sealing outdated records for adults and aged out (grown up) juveniles. 

Called by Commonwealth CORI Coalition, of which DPP is a member.  Info: Boston Workers' Alliance, 617-359-0336.

Friday, June 5, Returning War Veterans:  Challenges in Continuing Mental Health Care, 2:30-5pm, Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology, 221 Rivermoor Street, Boston (West Roxbury). Veterans returning from war carry emotional and brain injuries that are long-lasting and call for protracted care beyond crisis intervention. Is our mental health system and our society—traditionally geared to acute care of acute problems—willing and able to provide this care? How can we enhance our military, veterans administration, and civilian mental health systems and our community support to deal with these prolonged mental health needs? Open to the Professional Community and the Public—No Admission Charge

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CONTACTING DPP and Joining Our Work:

To make it easier to get involved with DPP, we've decided to publish contact info for our coordinators in every issue of this update. We will also regularly publish upcoming meetings of work committees, create a brochure or flyer about DPP, and greet new people at monthly meetings with an explanation of how we work. Here's how to reach them.

“On Capitol Hill, most Democrats seem to have settled on a tactical approach of simultaneously ratifying and deploring the continuation of the war. The approach may or may not be savvy politics in a narrow sense of gaining temporary partisan political advantage. But it is ultimately destructive to refuse to do the one thing that the Constitution empowers Congress to do to halt a U.S. war – stop appropriating taxpayer money for it."  Read more.

There is growing interest and action in banning cluster bombs following revelations of their horrible effects during Israel’s war against Lebanon.  Jewish Voice for Peace, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, the Amer. Task Force for Lebanon are among the growing number of groups issuing statements, organizing petitions, distributing information. To learn more and sign a petition to ban these weapons here.
 
On February 9, Senators Feinstein and Leahy introduced Senate bill 594, the "Cluster Munitions Civilian Protection Act of 2007" to restrict the use, sale or transfer of cluster bombs where 1% or higher of the bomblets fail to detonate on contact. Their bill would also ensure that the risk of civilian exposure to these weapons is minimized. See also their press release. Sen. Kennedy (but not Kerry) is one of the co-sponsors.

Hundreds of immigration officers and police descended on a New Bedford leather goods factory yesterday , charged top officials with employing illegal immigrants, and rounded up 350 workers who could not prove they were in the country legally. The waterfront company, Michael Bianco Inc., was using the illegal immigrants to produce safety vests and backpacks for the US military, officials said.

Read more...