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Published by Tom Hayden, The Peace Exchange Bulletin is a reader-supported journal, critically following the Pentagon's Long War in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq, as well as the failed U.S. wars on drugs and gangs, and U.S. military responses to nationalism and poverty around the world.
With a Western withdrawal from Afghanistan “irreversible," according to NATO, the Pentagon and CIA’s military focus will concentrate on Yemen, where diplomatic or political solutions seem impossible anytime soon.
Torie Osborn’s campaign for a West Los Angeles assembly seat (50th District) is stirring excitement and mobilizing grassroots volunteers like nothing else so far this year in dreary California, where budget deficits keep deepening and politics decays despite a Democratic governor and legislative majority.
The vast outpouring of protest in Chicago last week was a promising sign of health for progressive social movements, but still left big uncertainties about the future.
National Nurses United (NNU), the union spearheading the drive for a Robin Hood Tax, also calls for a “participatory democracy,” evidence of the current vitality of a concept born at the Port Huron convention of SDS fifty years ago this June. Saying, "Democracy is not a spectator support,” a chart by the NNU envisions participatory democracy flowing into economic democracy, then political democracy, and finally into representative democracy.
Thousands of nurses, sporting green Robin Hood caps and red t-shirts, marched in Chicago last Friday demanding a Robin Hood tax on Wall Street speculation. National Nurses United has spearheaded the drive, which has gained support in France, Germany, Brazil among other world powers and many labor and progressive organizations.
By moving the G8 meeting to Camp David, President Obama deflated or delayed the rebirth of the Occupy movement once hoped for by Adbusters and many radical activists here in Chicago. But a positive scenario remains possible, depending on choices made in the next 72 hours.
As a candidate opposing the Iraq War, Barack Obama improved his hawkish credentials by promising to track down Osama bin Laden, expand drone attacks, and escalate the American troop numbers in Afghanistan. Three years later, bin Laden is dead, the drones inflame Pakistan opinion and complicate a peace settlement, and 33,000 American troops are scheduled to pull out by the end of 2012 with "steady withdrawals" to continue after. Sixty-eight thousand U.S. troops will remain in Afghanistan by this year's end, with the deadline for withdrawing most of them by December 2014.
With Mitt Romney leading 49-48 percent in national polling, President Obama hosts an internally-divided NATO summit in Chicago this weekend, surrounded by weapons and security forces which surpass Chicago 1968. The scale of the protest ranks remain to be seen after Obama shifted the G8 — or One Percent — summit to the secret seclusion of Camp David. Adbusters has called for 50,000 to pitch their tents, while anti-war protesters will march and attend a “counter-summit.” The Chicago police are preparing overkill.
An estimated 500 lives have been saved since March in a peace process launched by imprisoned Salvadoran gang members. The incarcerated members of MS and 18th Street are urgently asking that voices of civil society speak on behalf of the process and their protection.
"Now that it's in the [legal] system people are beginning to tire of it and forget. We are truly the United States of Amnesia. We are addicted to forgetfulness. Many also feel helpless that there is nothing they can do since the justice system has the case. Don't believe the hype. This was an unarmed black teen who was gunned down by a wannabe cop at least sixty pounds heavier and seven years older."
Wednesday, May 23, 2012 at 4:44PM