Quotable

"War is the greatest threat to public health." - Gino Strada, Italian war surgeon and founder of the UN-recognized Italian NGO Emergency

Sunday, July 25, 2010

Are These People Crazy???

Friends,

A madness has taken hold of the U.S. House of Representatives, so far just the Republicans. Republicans in the house have introduced a measure (HR 1553) that would throw the support of the U.S. Congress behind military strikes by Israel against Iran. A who's who of Neoconservatives from John Bolton to William Kristol are behind the bill that already has the support of "nearly a third of House Republicans." The bill essentially expresses:
...support for the State of Israel’s right to defend Israeli sovereignty, to protect the lives and safety of the Israeli people, and to use all means necessary to confront and eliminate nuclear threats posed by the Islamic Republic of Iran, including the use of military force if no other peaceful solution can be found within reasonable time to protect against such an immediate and existential threat to the State of Israel.
The Huffington Post reported the scary news on July 23rd. The article mentioned the obvious point that U.S. military experts have been stating (and which those pushing this bill ignore at all our peril) - that Israeli military action against Iran "could be catastrophic to US national security interests and could engulf the Middle East in a 'calamitous' regional war," and would most likely draw the U.S. into such a war.

You don't suppose that's just what these folks have in mind??? They are obviously unhappy that President Obama has chosen sanctions rather than the military option. Sanctions are causing enough friction as it is, but this is just nuts! The Middle East situation is unstable enough as it is, and now we have reports of Israeli submarines (loaded with nuclear Cruise missiles) patrolling off the coast of Iran. Great!!!

Well, right now the best thing the Israelis can do is keep their missiles in their pants. And if the recent attack on the humanitarian aid flotilla is any indication, no one should underestimate their potential actions, and absolutely NO ONE should be supporting military action against Iran.

Let's stop this madness before it gains any more momentum. CLICK HERE to send a message to demand that House Republic Leader John Boehner denounce this resolution and oppose another war in the Middle East.

Click here to read the full text of House Resolution 1553.

Pushing Peace,

Leonard

Thursday, July 22, 2010

Deficit Doves vs. Deficit Hawks

Dear Friends,

It is becoming more and more evident that endless wars are creating endless spending that is ever so surely leading us to bankruptcy, both economic and moral. War spending keeps taking a bigger slice of the budget (and therefore tax) pie, until one day the people are left with crumbs.

A few in Congress like Barney Frank of Massachusetts and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma are calling for cuts in Pentagon spending, while Florida Congressman Alan Grayson has introduced the War Is Making You Poor Act (HR5353). Others in Congress are trying to cut every social program possible in order to fund continued warmaking.

Amy Goodman calls them "Deficit Hawks", and that is exactly what they are. The following article speaks to all you "Deficit Doves" out there, and calls on all of us to speak out, confront the lies of the Deficit Hawks, and show another way.

When you have read Amy's article, learn more about HR5353 and support the bill at Friends Committee on National Legislation.

Peace,

Leonard

***********

Originally published on Wednesday, July 21, 2010 by TruthDig.com

Deficit Doves
by Amy Goodman

Getting out of the red is the new black. Deficit hawks have swooped down on the U.S. budget. This week, they attacked unemployment benefits.

Ultimately, they are going after Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid, the venerable programs once considered untouchable "third rails" of U.S. politics. These have been replaced by a new third rail, the defense budget. To really deal with annual deficits and a surging national debt, we are going to need to cut military spending.

We need some deficit doves.

First, let's call it what it is: the war budget. The government formed the Department of War in 1789, and only in 1949 renamed it the Department of Defense. The war budget President Barack Obama recently sent to Congress, for fiscal year 2011, is $548.9 billion, with an additional $33 billion, which is the 2010 supplemental that is currently being debated in Congress, and $159.3 billion more "to support ongoing overseas contingency operations, including funds to execute the President's new strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan." Recall, "overseas contingency operations" is how the Obama administration rebranded the "global war on terror."

This is just the publicly available war budget. There is also a "black budget," kept secret, for clandestine operations that former Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair revealed was about $75 billion. As The Washington Post exposed this week, the post-9/11 security state has grown into a massive, unmanageable and largely privatized "enterprise."

Over 2,000 for-profit firms and over 850,000 people with top-secret clearance are engaged in military and intelligence activities, ostensibly for the U.S. government, with seemingly little or no oversight.

Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Fla., has submitted a bill, H.R. 5353, called "The War Is Making You Poor Act." Grayson, with a few Republicans and a number of progressive Democratic co-sponsors, wants to force Commander in Chief Obama to run his two wars with "only" the $548.9 billion base budget. The $159.3 billion saved would be turned into a tax break, making the first $35,000 of income tax-free, and anything left over would be directed to paying down the national debt. The bill is in committee now and may generate genuine bipartisan support. Grayson, when introducing the bill, highlighted a fact worth repeating: The U.S. war budget is greater than the military spending of every other nation on Earth, combined.

Meanwhile, at the National Peace Conference to be held in Albany, N.Y., this weekend, people are targeting the military budget. Students are organizing around the connection between war expenditures and education budgets that are being slashed, sparking protests at campuses nationwide. Another effort, called "Bring Our War Dollars Home," promotes action at the city council and statehouse level, along with grass-roots campaigns to pressure members of Congress to stop funding war.

The cost of the Iraq war was estimated by Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, with his colleague Linda Bilmes, at $3 trillion, calculating not only hard, current costs, but also the cost to society of caring for wounded veterans, and the long-term costs of having so many families disrupted by caring for their injured loved ones, or having a breadwinner killed in action. And that's just Iraq. As of May, the monthly cost of the war in Afghanistan surpassed, for the first time, the cost of war in Iraq.

Stiglitz was one of the many economists who said the economic stimulus package (at $787 billion) was too small. He argues that deficit spending, when done wisely, creates long-term returns for an economy.

Conversely, he wrote recently, "Deficits to finance wars or give-aways to the financial sector ... impos[e] a burden on future generations."

Economist Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research says President Obama's Deficit Commission, formally the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, is a major cause for concern. The co-chairs are former Republican Sen. Alan Simpson and Democrat Erskine Bowles, who is on the board of Morgan Stanley, one of the bailed-out Wall Street firms. Baker told me: "Both are on record saying they want to cut Social Security. This should have people very, very worried. That isn't a balanced commission."

Cutting Social Security isn't the answer. Cutting war spending, and bringing the troops home, is. This is the job for the deficit doves.

Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.

© 2010 Amy Goodman

Amy Goodman is the host of "Democracy Now!," a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on 800 stations in North America. She was awarded the 2008 Right Livelihood Award, dubbed the “Alternative Nobel” prize, and received the award in the Swedish Parliament in December.