Majority Agenda Project

August 30, 2010–One Nation Working Together released a powerful and lyrical vision statement today: For Jobs, Justice and Education for All! Speaking to "peace abroad and jobs at home" and the need for a green economy, it quickly drew many "likes" on Facebook but also prompted one supportive but cautionary comment: "You know, we really need many nations working together." Here's the full text:

The noted peace movement thinker, Phyllis Bennis explains why she's supporting the One Nation Working Together mobilization:  "I think Oct 2nd is a great example of what it means for us as a peace movement to take on the dual challenges of both bringing our anti-war, anti-military budget messages to a much broader mobilization than our own, making the links about how the costs of war directly impact all the key issues around jobs, health care, the environment, housing, the economic crisis/recovery, etc., AND demonstrating our willingness/capacity to mobilize in support of the broad call around jobs etc. because it's important in its own right... 

$7.13 trillion! Trillion! New York Times Magazine columnist Peter Maass cites new studies for the non-war costs of US carrier groups along major oil routes: over three decades, the cost of patrolling the Persian Gulf, in purely economic terms, amounted to $7.13 trillion. Of course, these costs are not figured into the price you pay at the pump, but you can be sure that's where your tax dollars go. Here's Maass' full essay from Foreign Policy magazine.

Rev. Jesse Jackson and United Auto Workers President Bob King issued the following statement at a July 12th press conference in Detroit.

DETROIT (July 12, 2010) No group has suffered more from America's economic meltdown than working men and women. The auto industry was decimated and workers paid the price. Urban America is in crisis and teachers, transportation workers, and all who do the hands-on work that make our cities run are the first to feel the effects of budget cuts. Unemployment continues at around 9.8%. Detroit is ground zero of this national crisis with an unemployment rate that is far higher. From December 2007 to June 2009, auto assembly and parts production accounted for 325,000 lost jobs. The auto industry has gone from a high of 1.5 million workers to 400,000 today.

In Appalachia and the Gulf, years of unenforced regulation, driven by corporate greed and government complicity, have led to needless deaths and destruction in the coal and oil fields.

One problem with the U.S.' far-flung military commitmenets is that they generate wars, conflicts, and resentments; but they are also extremely costly.   A policy task force convened by Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank released a report in Washington today which details a package of $1 trillion of realistic military budget cuts.   In a final section, the Cato Institute representatives on the task force say they would cut deeper, adopting a "strategy of restraint" which focuses on defending the U.S.

WASHINGTON - June 11 - House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.), along with a bipartisan task force that includes members of the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, Cato Institute, Center for Defense Information and others, announced the release today of a new report that identifies $960 billion in Pentagon budget savings that can be generated over the next ten years from realistic reductions in defense spending.  The report was produced by the Sustainable Defense Task Force, a group convened in response to a request from Rep. Frank to explore options for reducing the defense budget's contribution to the federal deficit without compromising the essential security of the United States.

Writing in the New York Times today, Bob Herbert reacts to the latest dismal employment data (see also our piece from last Friday). Before pointing to solutions, he writes starkly of the crisis: "Unemployment is crushing families and stifling the prospects of young people... Entire communities are going under." He continues, "The economy is sick, and all efforts to revive it that do not directly confront the staggering levels of joblessness are doomed."

Is there a solution is sight? No: "There is no plan that I can see to get us out of this fix. Drastic cuts in government spending would only compound the crisis...

The U.S. military far overmatches any other force in the world; it is not designed to defend the U.S. homeland but rather to project overwhelming power on every continent and ocean and in space. But playing world policeman is tremendously expensive-- 55 cents of every discretionary spending dollar now goes to the military, even while millions are jobless, teachers are laid off and libraries are closing. Even some of those who wish to continue and strengthen U.S. hegemony, like Defense Secretary Robert Gates, would like to trim pork-laden military projects, but the military-industrial complex is now so politically powerful that this adjustment is a difficult one, writes Christopher Hellman in TomDispatch. Hellman is a former congressional staffer and military policy analyst; he is now communications liaison at the National Priorities Project in Northampton. 

Is that the wake-up smell of coffee wafting through the halls of the Pentagon? After a decade and a half of unparalleled budget growth, top Defense Department officials are finally talking about the possible end of their spending spree. And they're not alone.

In recent years, Republicans and Democrats in Congress and successive administrations have not only repeatedly resisted efforts to control Pentagon spending, but regularly pushed for more dollars to go into the defense and national security budgets. And many of them still are.

The American public has long been divided on the Afghanistan war.   Though still fearful of terrorism, the public increasingly understands that military operations in Afghanistan militarily are making the U.S. less, not more, safe.   Longtime peace activist Tom Hayden argues that the public is now turning firmly against the war, even as the U.S. prepares for what will probably be a bloody offensive in the city of Kandahar this summer.

American antiwar sentiment is consolidating, according to a new Washington Post/ABC poll, despite months of official fanfare promoting the US military offensive in Afghanistan. 
 
The news comes as the US military prepares its summer offensive in Kandahar, as Afghanistan president Hamid Karzai is welcomed to the White House, and Congress considers $33 billion for the troop escalation on top of $159 billion for another year of war. 

The Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), negotiated in 1970, was a grand bargain in which the U.S. and other nuclear weapons states agreed to negotiate reduction and abolition of nuclear weapons, and the non-nuclear states agreed not to build the bomb-- but the nuclear weapons states have never taken their disarmament obligation seriously. 15,000 people marched in New York City May 2 on the eve of the NPT Review Conference calling for worldwide abolition of nuclear weapons.  Anna Shen reported for the Inter Press Service.

UNITED NATIONS - Japanese women in kimonos carrying signs urging "No More Hiroshimas", an 80-year-old grandmother, and 18 mayors from around the world were just some of the almost 15,000 people who marched in New York City Sunday to rally for the abolition of nuclear weapons.

More than 60 million Americans have gone out to see Avatar, the 2 and half hour long movie that pits a rapacious corporation against indigenous people and the environment.