BIBLE THUMPERS IN AFGHANISTAN-PAKISTAN

Here are the US version of the rabid fundamentalists in Afghanistan - the American Taliban if you will.

This will surely alarm the people in the Middle East even more as they see the Christian "Holy Rollers" breathing down their necks. Jesus (and the Army cavalry-Calvary) have come to save you!

And the House of Representatives (read the Democrats in charge) have decided to give Obama $94.2 billion for Afghanistan-Pakistan wars instead of the $83 billion he requested.

You do remember that Obama and the Democrats were put in charge because they said they were going to end Bush's crazy and expensive wars.....right? Just checking.

Beware what you buy from a politician dressed as a donkey......

News Flash: US airstrikes in Afghanistan yesterday killed a huge number of people. Reuters news service reports, "Ghulan Farooq, a member of parliament from the province, said he had been told by family members in the Bala Boluk district where the fighting took place that as many as 150 people had died. He said U.S. air strikes had destroyed 17 houses. Those figures could not be independently confirmed."

Last year more than 7,000 people, including 2,000 civilians, died in insurgency-related violence in Afghanistan, the United Nations and aid agencies say.

THE OTHER MISSILE DEFENSE

While in Korea for our Global Network annual conference we were taken to Pyeongtaek where the US is dramatically expanding a military base. There we were shown nearly a dozen mobile PAC-3 (Patriot Advanced Capability) launchers parked just beyond the razor-wired fence.

Lockheed Martin describes their PAC-3 system as "the world’s most advanced, capable and powerful terminal air defense missile. It defeats the entire threat: tactical ballistic missiles carrying weapons of mass destruction, cruise missiles and aircraft. The PAC-3 Missile is a high velocity interceptor that defeats incoming targets by direct, body-to-body [kinetic] impact."

In addition the Raytheon Company, based in Tewksbury, MA., plays a key role in building PAC-3.

The PAC-3 program has been coordinated for the Pentagon at the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama.

Currently the US is deploying the PAC-3 in South Korea, Japan, Iraq, Egypt, Germany, Greece, Kuwait, Netherlands, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Taiwan, and Israel. The Pentagon has also recently signed a deal to deploy PAC-3 in Poland.

Turkey has also recently shown interest in acquiring a similar system but has been talking with competitors of the US weapons industry about buying the technology from them. However, Washington has been pressuring Ankara to consider potential "NATO interoperability problems" that could occur should Turkey opt for a non-Western solution. Subtle arm twisting you might say.

The PAC-3 system, along with THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) system, are the new "layered look" for the Pentagon's missile defense program. The mobile THAAD, designed to shoot down short-and medium-range ballistic missiles, are also being heavily deployed in Japan and South Korea along with PAC-3 in order to serve as key elements of US first-strike strategy aimed at China.

Add the Navy's Aegis destroyer, also outfitted with missile defense interceptors and being deployed in the Asian-Pacific region, into the scheme and you get the full picture of this theater-wide program to take out "the enemy" retaliatory missiles after a US first-strike.

ARMY DEN OF DESTRUCTION IN PHILLY

There was a protest Saturday in Philadelphia at the Army Experience Center that sits inside the Franklin Mills Mall. Over 200 folks marched one mile from a local church and entered the mall for a protest. After some time the police ordered them to leave and all but seven did who were then arrested.

Philadelphia Veterans for Peace member John Grant wrote about the place, "The Army Experience Center sees patriotism in stirring up the primal, hormonal emotions of our vulnerable teenagers to recruit them to hunt down and kill other, equally duped kids in far flung and strange cultures like Afghanistan. Now, it is doing this recruiting in a dismal economic downturn."

If there was any doubt that America is a killing culture this is it. It is morally reprehensible that in a public space our kids are exposed, and invited, to enter this cult-like center where murder and violence are glorified. The fact that the society-at-large is not beyond themselves with outrage over this just goes to show how far as a nation we have sunk into the dark side.

As I have said so many times this is our future under corporate globalization, or at least it is the future the oligarchy plans for us. We won't have jobs for our children in the traditional sense. Our "job" under corporate globalization will be "security export" - making weapons and sending our kids off the kill those who are not submitting to the dictates of the corporate powers in the Middle East, Central Asia, Latin America, and Africa. Our tax dollars will increasingly be wasted on these types of "fun and entertainment centers" to corrupt the future generations values so that they become killers without a blink of an eye.

Just below is an NBC-TV report on this center in Philadelphia. Note the near total lack of outrage in the story. We should all be sick to our stomachs. More power to those who protested at this den of destruction last Saturday. Next time there should be 20 times as many people there. There must be protests over and over again at this place. Forget holding national protests in DC. It is places like this that need the massive national demos. This is where the action is for the peace movement. Take it to the heartland and create debate in our communities about what kind of nation we have become!

BLACK AGENDA REPORT GRADES OBAMA'S FIRST 100 DAYS - FAILING GRADE

By Black Agenda Report Managing Editor Bruce A. Dixon

Why a Report Card At All?

The hundred day report card is an enduring tradition in American journalism for a very good reason. It's journalism's job to help citizens make sense of the world, to seek the truth and tell it without fear or favor no matter where it leads. Three months and a week into a new administration, everybody knows where the mens and ladies rooms are, most of the key hires are in place, and the bus has definitely cleared the station. There's plenty of evidence by now to assess where it's going, and whether it's anyplace we really ought to be headed.

Should We Grade President Obama on What He Promised, or on What People Need?

The answer to this should be easy. It all depends on whether we imagine government derives its authority from the blessedness of anointed men and women in office, or whether legitimacy comes from the informed consent of the governed. Most of us who were not home schooled learned it the latter way: governments are legit only insofar as they serve the people. Limiting the scope of a report card to what politicians promise confers upon them the power to lock down our collective imagination and deny our hunger and thirst for justice before we can even express it.

Why These Categories?

Because these are the issues that matter to our people. As the journal of African American political thought and action, they are what our authors write about every week.

1. Health Care Reform (9 points)
2. Creating New Jobs and Preserving Old Ones (5 points)
3. Fully Funding and Preserving Public Education (6 points)
4. War & Peace (9 points)
5. Transportation (5 points)
6. Caribbean and Latin America (4 points)
7. Obama's Africa Policy; Our Brotherman and the Motherland (5 points)
8. Wall Street Bailout (6 points)
9. Debt and Foreclosure Crises (6 points)
10. Investigating Bush-era Crimes (5 points)
11. Criminalizing Immigration, Militarizing the Border (5 points)
12. Broadband For Everyone and a Just and Fair Media (5 points)
13. Environment (5 points)
14. Agricultural Policy, and Policy Toward Black Farmers (5 points)
15. Mass imprisonment (5 points)
16. Employee Free Choice Act (5 points)
17. Urban Policy (5 points)
18. Privatization of Government Agencies and Services (5 points)

****************************************
1. Health Care Reform

President Obama himself declared that we should judge his first term on whether we get a national health care plan. While the exact specs of the Obama campaign have not been formally introduced, it's been no secret for a couple years now that Barack Obama and his advisors abhor any form of Medicare-For-All or single payer health care. When the president's people ordered their activists to convene a wave of health care house meetings in December, the demand most often voiced was for single payer, everybody-in and nobody out. Despite this, and despite polling data that shows a majority of physicians and a majority of the American people favor single payer health care, the Obama administration buried the results of those house meetings. Obama's series of regional health care "summits," although billed as the chance to get input from all the relevant have pointedly excluded any voices for single payer health care.
Currently, private insurance companies consume a third of every health care dollar for advertising, lawyering, salaries and bonuses, bad investments and the vast bureaucratic machinery they have created to deny coverage to the sick. We are the only nation where half the bankruptcies are caused by illness. The Obama health care plan, modeled on the failed "individual mandate" health insurance experiments of Massachusetts, Tennessee and other states will make health insurance like car insurance.
Everyone will have to buy a policy from a private company or face tax and other penalties, with no guarantee the policy will be either affordable or comprehensive. The myriad shortcomings of this plan are detailed in a report from Physicians for a National Health Care Plan, and in several previous BAR articles. When asked during the campaign whether he thought health care was a human right, Barack Obama said he thought it was. His health care plan does preserve the profits of insurance companies.
Five points for admitting health care is a human right, minus one for suppressing discussion of single payer. Four out of nine.

2. Creating New Jobs and Preserving Old Ones

When Franklin D. Roosevelt took office in 1933, the nation had been in the Depression almost four years. The new president created some 800,000 jobs in the space of a few months. To be fair, this Depression hasn't been in effect nearly as long, and there are no insistent mass movements waging extralegal campaigns of strikes and civil disobedience going into the spring of 2009. So it's more complicated than measuring the hundreds of thousands of new jobs Roosevelt created against the hundreds of thousands Obama hasn't.
What we see is a failure of imagination on the part of the Obama administration. Not only does the First Black President declare it's the job of the private sector, never government, to create jobs, a stand closer to Herbert Hoover than to Franklin Roosevelt --- his "stimulus packages" have refused to fully fund the operations of local and state governments. Full funding for local governments would preserve the jobs of teachers, water department workers, librarians, coaches and park district workers, public safety employees and others who are being sent home in the tens of thousands. It's a piece of low hanging job and vital service preserving fruit the Obama administration refuses to harvest.
One point out of five for the Obama rhetoric on green jobs, and the $10 billion directed toward high speed rail..

3. Fully Funding and Preserving Public Education

There is no good news here. While Obama's Secretary of Education has not called teachers unions "terrorists" as his Bush-era counterpart did, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is as committed to de-funding and privatizing public education as his predecessors. Obama's pick for Secretary of Education is an underqualified stooge whose longest lasting job was as a pro basketball player, and who has not a single hour of classroom teaching experience. Duncan's innovations as Chicago Public Schools CEO, detailed in a December BAR interview with longtime Chicago teachers union activist George Schmidt, include the closing and privatizations of dozens of schools in African American communities and the summary firing of their mostly black teachers and principals, and the handing over of several inner-city Chicago middle and high schools to the Army, Navy and Marine Corps.
No Child Left Behind, the bipartisan corporate Bush era "education reform," which allows schools and entire districts to be threatened with closure and privatization, seems destined to remain intact for the forseeable future under an Obama administration.
Zero points here of a possible six.

4. War and Peace

From 2003 onward, Barack Obama staked his political career on conveying to voters the impression that he opposed the war in Iraq, while vigorously signalling to the bipartisan freign policy establishment that he was really one of them. By early 2008 Obama closed the circle, openly endorsing the Bush "surge" and war aims in Iraq, confirming that thirty or fifty or seventy thousand troops, depending, could remain in Iraq throughout his first term. Unlike John McCain, who said the US should increase troop levels in Afghanistan because "we" are "winning," Obama wanted to boost the number of American boots on the ground there because "we" are losing. Halfway though his first week in office, Obama was launching missiles from drones at Pakistani mountain villages.
While the US spends more on things military than the rest of the world combined, the Obama military budget is higher than Bush's. Though the laughable "war on terror" is gone from our government propaganda, all or most of its machinery remains in motion under the new administration.
Barack Obama has kept Robert Gates, a bloodstained Reagan-era war criminal as chief of the Pentagon, and designated the bloodthirsty Susan Rice as UN Ambassador. Susan Rice is an enthusiastic advocate of genocidal military intervention practically everywhere on the African continent under the monstrously hypocritical cover of "stopping genocide."
The president says he will talk to Iran, which is worth a point, but continues the Bush policy of threatening Russia with NATO expansion right up to its borders, which takes away the single point.
Zero out of nine points.

5. Transportation

After more than a half century of disinvestment, the US passenger rail network is the laughing stock of the developed world. Passenger railcars have not been manufactured in the US for decades, and no high speed rail exists at all outside a single line in the northeast. Investment in high speed intercity rail was one of the first promises broken by the Clinton administration.
The initial investment of $10 billion, apparently pushed at the president's personal initiative is a modest start, with the potential to create tens of thousands of new jobs, though not right away. Obama probably knows that $100 billion over his first term would be a minimally reasonable down payment on a world class passenger rail network, which will be cheaper and more sustainable than America's dependence on highways and air travel. Assuming he does have the vision, the question are whether he has the political will, and whether, after allowing Wall Street to pillage and loot the US Treasury under the guise of a "bailout," whether we have the money, and how much of it can be executed before the price of fuel makes air and highway travel prohibitive.
Also, existing urban mass transit is in tatters, thanks to management that believes transit is a profit center rather than an economic right. Those awaiting an Obama commitment to the future of urban mass transit on the scale of his pledges to intercity rail may have a long wait. After all, urban mass transit is identified, in the minds of many, with African Americans, a political identification the First Black President determined to avoid wherever possible.
Four points out of five.

6. Caribbean and Latin America

Given that one black person in ten in the US has a spouse, sibling or parent born abroad, most often from Africa or the Caribbean, administration policies toward these regions have a special resonance in the African American community. Obama deserves a half point for shaking hands with Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, and another half point for not striking the usual full frontal crudity pose toward Cuba at the inter-American summit earlier this month. But massive taxpayer subsidies of US agribusiness to dump millions of tons of genetically modified corn, soybeans and other products on Jamaica, Haiti, Mexico, Central and South America continue to crush local agriculture, deepening food dependency in and driving immigration from these countries. There is no sign that an Obama administration is reconsidering any of these policies.
The brutal occupation of Haiti by a US financed proxy force of so-called peacekeepers, also continues unmentioned by the US press, and unremarked upon by the Obama administration.
Lots of room for improvement here. One and a half points out of four.

7. Obama's Africa Policy: Our Brotherman and the Motherland

In recent years the US has provided arms transfers, military training and military assistance to more than 50 out of Africa's 54 nations. Hence Africa is the most war-torn region on earth, containing millions of square miles in which hospitals, schools, agriculture, industry and civil society have collapsed into vast law-free zones, such as the eastern Congo, where 5 million souls have perished since the mid 1990s. These law-free zones have proven an ideal business-friendly environment for the extraction of Congo's timber and mineral wealth, including 90% of the world's coltan, an essential strategic mineral found in every cell phone, computer, aircraft and modern electronic device. Resources extracted from law free zones in the Congo and elsewhere in Africa invariably find their way into "legitimate" markets of Western Europe and the US.
While the death toll in neighboring Darfur is bad the death toll is a twentieth or a hundredth that of the Congo, according to Mahmood Mandani and others who are in a position to know, but the Obama Administration, just like the Bush Administration before it, calls Darfur a "genocide," and not the Congo. The difference, say many, is that the Sudanese oil is being pumped out by the Chinese, while the profits from 5 million Congolese dead end up here. The "genocide" label is about as truthful as Saddam's WMD, another excuse for military intervention.
Barack Obama has been to Somalia, but his administration continues the twenty year low-intensity war against that unhappy country. Somalia hasn't had a central government in two decades not because its people don't want one, but because successive US Republican and Democratic administrations brand as "terrorist Al Qeada sympathizers" any Somali government that won't grant the US the exclusive rights to the untapped lake of oil beneath the country.
The Bush administratin established AFRICOM, the US imperial command on the continent, a move so unpopular that only one African government in 54 will dare openly accept it, fearing the wrath of their own constituents. Although it is a military command headed by a black US general AFRICOM is seconded by a civilian from the State Department, and liberally sprinkled with representatives of every US civilian governmental, and some ostensible non-governmental entity which does business in Africa. Thus AFRICOM deliberately blurs the line between US civilian and military involvement on the African continent, and even more thoroughly militarizes US policy toward Africa.
Nobody who thinks half a minute about it imagines that the militarization of Africa, and of US policy toward Africa is a good thing. It has been US policy for more than two decades. Among the bipartisan designers of this policy are Obama's top foreign policy advisors including Madeline Albright and Susan Rice. You can look awfully hard for some good news in Obama's policy toward Africa so far, and find no reason for optimism.
We'll give him one point out of five anyway, for no good reason. Call it hope.

8. Bailing Out Wall Street

The extent to which Wall Street and the Obama administration are in bed with each other is deeply disappointing to most Americans, according to a recent NBC News Gallup poll.
Not a single economist, regulator, or financial analyst who predicted the bursting of the bubble economy, and there were many, has been hired by Obama's financial gurus, and every financial policy seems aimed at rescuing speculators rather than the American people. Rather than recognize the systemic crisis of capital for what it is, the end of business as usual, all the Obama 'stimulus" paackages are offered in the folorn hope that that lending can be re-started, another bubble re-inflated, and business can be resumed as usual.
Zero points out of six.

9. Debt and Foreclosure Crises

For ordinary people, the financial crisis has become a debt crisis. Mortgage, consumer and credit card debt have mounted to unpayable levels, as the parasitic masters of capital attempt to extract an interest payment out of every transaction. Acquiring a college education, for example, has become virtually impossible for most Americans without incurring a five figure debt at usurious interest rates. The Obamas, despite their much higher than average income, were unable to pay off their college loans till a couple years ago, when they received royalties from his best-selling book.

Until there is a commitment on the part of the Obama administration to lower interest rates on current and new consumer, mortgage, and student loans, to restricting interest rates in future lending, and a restoration of bankruptcy laws that enable individuals to liquidate their debt and start anew, we cannot give Barack Obama any more than a single hopeful point out of six.

10. Investigatng the Bush Era Crimes

Unlike the nation's political elite, a substantial majority of the American people want the Bush crimes against humanity and the Constitution at least investigated. But the Obama administration on every front seems to affirm a bipartisan elite consensus that government officials are above the law. The Obama vision of reconciliation without truth incentivizes further violations of law on the part of government. If there were negative points, we would award them here.
Zero out of five.

11. Criminalizing Immigration and Militarizing the Border

Despite some promising campaign rhetoric in which Obama declined to adopt the racist and scapegoating language of Republican and many Democratic politicians toward immigrants, the Obama administration designated Janet Napalitano, the evil twin sister of Phoenix sheriff Joe Arpaio to head the Department of Homeland Security. In our opinion, this is an executive agency which should never have been formed, and ought to now be dissolved. Under the Obama administration, construction of the border wall continues.
Obama gets one point for rhetoric, and another point for not deploying troops to the border. Two out of five.

12. Broadband For Everyone, Low Power Radio, and a Just and Fair Media

One of the administration's professed goals is the extension of broadband availability to underserved rural and urban areas. The designation of $7 billion for this purpose, and the nomination of former FCC commissioner Jonathan Adelstein to supervise its dispensation is a promising start. But the failure thus far to neutralize corporate forces who want to keep any broadband mapping data concealed from the public is a loathsome concession to cable companies and telcos. Obama's new FCC chief has not yet been confirmed, and so cannot be judged. The administration says it is for network neutrality, and has not opposed low power FM radio as far as we know. Its position on media consolidation and the future of music remain unknown.
Two points awarded here for substance, and one for hope. Three out of five.

13. Environment

The so-called "Cap And Trade" scheme favored by the Obama adminstration enacts the reprehensible suggestion of Obama advisor Larry Summers' that African and other less developed countries are "underpolluted" by establishing a corporate "right" to pollute, along with a financial market to buy, sell, trade and speculate on the value of these imaginary pollution "rights." It doesn't appear to have reduced carbon emissions in Europe, according to Dartmouth's Dr. Michael Dorsey, but it has made a lot of traders and speculators rich, and is a product of the same market-as-solution-to-everything exhibited during the Bush years. A tax on carbon emission s would be more straightforward. No points there, and none for "clean coal" either.
The Obama adminstration gets a single point for talking up fuel economy standards and green jobs, with another thrown in for hope. One point out of five.

14. Agricultural Policy, and Policy Toward Black Farmers

The broad Obama policy toward agribusiness is unlikely to be good news. Obama is committed, for instance, to ethanol, which often takes more energy to produce than it does when burned. On the other hand, one of the first acts of Obama's new Secretary of Agriculture was to meet with black farmers of the Southern Federation of Rural Cooperatives. After decades of malign neglect toward African American farmers, a single meeting isn't much, but it's hopeful, worth two points of a possible five.

15. Mass Black Imprisonment

Some things are too hot for a First Black President with no real allegiance to African Americans as a community to touch, but too important to the lives of millions in that community to ignore. Not long ago, Obama declared that despite an incarceration rate seven to nine times that of white America, blacks were "90% of the way to equality." If the First Black President cannot grow a pair on this issue, and come out for restorative justice, elimination of disparate penalties, banning of incarceration of juveniles with adults or an end to indeterminate sentencing, he deserves no points. It's tough, it's a high standard, but a fair one.
Zero out of five.

16. The Employee Free Choice Act

The EFCA would better enable workers to form unions across the country. It would give them some of the same vital tools for raising their own living standards that workers in other countries like Canada have --- the ability to exercise democracy on the job and assert their economic rights to security and survival. On the campaign trail President Obama endorsed the EFCA, but gererally, only when asked or when appearing at union halls and labor functions. Since assuming office he has rarely mentioned it. The Chamber of Commerce and other employers including Wal-Kart and Home Depot are spending tens or hundreds of millions on deceitful PR campaigns to misrepresent and distort the issue. They are not being countered by the Obama administration. Some Democrats have declared against EFCA, and others appear ready to trade off pieces of it for goodness knows what. This is a time when presidential leadership can enable tens of millions to lift up their own living standards.
We are waiting for President Obama to show this leadership. Still waiting.... Two points of a possible five, and slipping.

17. Urban Policy

Despite the elevation of tens of thousands of African Americans to public office in cities and states and counties across the land, the creation of thousands of black millionaires, along with an educated and empowered black middle class, the only model of urban economic development any of us have seen consists of moving poorer people out of urban neighborhoods and richer ones in. The black misleadership class seems not to know how to create jobs or low income housing, or how to develop, to value, to stabilize communities where they are. They just know how to get paid, and they do that by playing the development game as their white counterparts have handed it to them. Sadly, Barack Obama's administration brings little to the table on this score. We award the Obama administration two points for establishing an office of Urban Policy, and take away one of those for appointing a New York pol with ties to real estate developers to the post.
One out of five.

18. Privatization of Government Agencies and Services Including the Military

A hallmark of the Bush, and before that, the Clinton administration has been the conversion of public wealth, public property, even public services and the military, to centers of private profit. In principle, most Americans know that privatization of public resources is a bad idea. Publicly transparent processes become proprietary information. Public services are cut back to wring profits from every transaction, and needed services that don't turn big enough profits are cut back. Vast portions of the nation's intelligence, prisons and military establishments, for example, have been privatized. This is an issue never mentioned by candidate Obama or President Obama, but one vital to the future of any sort of democracy.
Zero points out of five.

A hundred days is far too early for anyone to score a hundred points on a list of concerns like these. 55 would have been passing, and 45 a sign of hopes being actually redeemed on some fronts. But at under 25 out of a possible 100 our First Black President is at best a chronic underacheiver, as far as the real needs of African Americans go.

MAINE GREENS MAKE A GOOD TURN

I spent the day yesterday in Augusta at two Maine Green Party events.

First was a planning meeting for the campaign of Lynne Williams who is running for governor in 2010 as a Green. Lynne is a well-known attorney in the state who has over the years represented communities fighting on environmental issues, represented people in the peace movement arrested for civil disobedience, helped Native Americans in the state, and a whole lot more. People all over Maine have benefited from her legal expertise and she has a solid base of support to build a campaign around. She is a highly respected activist and for the past year, before declaring her candidacy, was president of the Maine Green Independent Party (MGIP).

It was a good meeting where we spent some time reviewing key campaign issues and discussing the nuts and bolts of building a solid statewide campaign. She has already been going from one end of this big state to the other to meet with local people about her candidacy.

Following the campaign meeting there was a dinner to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the MGIP, which was the first state Green Party in the US that was created - in fact it was founded even before the national party was formed. Former Bowdoin College professor and activist John Rensenbrink is credited with the founding and last night he made a fine speech where he outlined the need for any successful party to come from the grassroots movements of our day. Just to make the point he asked all those who were peace activists to stand up, then environmental activists, those working on health care, those working on this or that issue, etc..... He well illustrated the point.

Closing the dinner Lynne Williams made an excellent speech about the need for corporate capitalism, and its ravenous and deadly growth ethic, to die a timely death. In its place Lynne suggested we need to see growth in organic farming, the use of alternative forms of energy creation, local control of our schools and our natural resources (water for one). The state, Lynne said, should help the citizens in our local communities, not dominate them with edicts and laws that are designed to benefit multi-national corporations like Nestle and others.

During the giving of awards I was quite surprised to get an award they called "Maine Green of the Year". I think much of the reason for the award was my work leading the committee in our state in support of Cynthia McKinney's presidential bid during the last election.

I've not always been impressed by the Green Party in Maine's organizing expertise. It appears though that the candidacy of Lynne Williams is bringing needed life into the party and last night's dinner celebration was the best event I'd witnessed since I joined the party after arriving in Maine six years ago.

One friend excitedly told me on my way out the door, "Lynne is the best candidate for governor we've had yet." From what I can see I think he may be right.

OBAMA CONTINUES BUSH POLICY ON WEAPONS TO GEORGIA

Tens of thousands of Georgian protesters attend a rally near the parliament building in Tbilisi in early April

President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton have announced that they intend to keep the promise of former president George W. Bush to send $242 million in military aid to Georgia in the 2010 budget.

This comes at the very time that NATO war games are being prepared in Georgia, right on Russia's southern border. Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev sounded the alarm about the NATO military operations saying, "“Military exercises can’t be conducted where the war has been recently unleashed. Those who took a decision to conduct them will bear responsibility for their negative consequences."

Russia vows to help South Ossetia and Abkhazia protect their borders against a new Georgian attack that could well come following the NATO war games and efforts by the US to rearm Georgia after their failed attack on Russia last summer. NATO is accusing Russia of destabilizing the Southern Caucasus region by building up its military stronghold on the Georgian breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

The absurdity of NATO blaming Russia for securing their southern border, at the very time the US and NATO are surrounding them, indicates the real agenda underway.

Some countries in the region are refusing to participate in the NATO-Georgia war games, recognizing the dangers they are causing in the region. So far Latvia, Estonia, Kazakhstan, Armenia, Serbia and Moldova have opted out.

Just last month more than 60,000 Georgians marched onto their capital in Tbilisi calling on their fanatical President Mikheil Saakashvili to resign. The protesters said he is ruining their country and that they want peace with Russia. But Saakashvili, educated in the US, is an agent of corporate globalization and his job is to turn Georgia over to US interests which he has done. He has essentially made his country into a US military base on the Russian border.

Although NATO leaders call the upcoming war games "staff training", they are nevertheless aimed at backing the puppet regime of Saakashvili.

I'm following this Georgia-Russia situation closely as I see it as one key trigger for real war between the US-NATO and Russia.

Just today I read that Czech Republic pilots are being sent on missions along the Russian border in a separate NATO operation. This is the first time that the Czech military's tactical air force has been deployed in a foreign operation since the end of World War II.

Another area of major US-NATO moves against Russia is over control of the Artic region. Due to global warming the extraction of oil will now be possible in the Artic and the US is saying that its growing effort to militarize this region is about "security". In a meeting in Reykjavik in January NATO General Secretary Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said that “Here in the High North, climate change is not a fanciful idea – it is already a reality – a reality that brings with it a certain number of challenges, including for NATO."

The challenges the NATO General Secretary refers to is keeping Russia at bay. Take a look at a map of the Artic north and you will see it is Russia that has the biggest land mass in that region.

The US and NATO are out to rule the world - they have become the military arm of corporate globalization.

Obama and Hillary are doing their part to make it happen.

NEWS FLASH: Georgian troops mutiny on May 5. See Washington Post story here.

ORIGINS OF SWINE FLU

WATER WARS

I went to our state capitol in Augusta today for a news conference and a legislative hearing about water and limiting corporate control. The event was sponsored by three groups in Maine working on water issues - Save Our Water, POWWR and Defending Water for Life.

I was asked to speak at the news conference (which was attended by just one commercial TV news station and two public access cable stations). Then we went inside the state house building for the public hearing before the State and Local Government Committee of the state legislature.
We had to wait two hours before it was our turn to comment on the pending legislation we were there to support. There were enough supporters there on our side that we filled the meeting room.

A bill has been introduced called "An Act to Enhance Municipal Home Rule Status" that would guarantee local communities right to self-government to stop the corporate assault on local decision making authority.

This has become a big issue in Maine because the Nestle corporation (doing business as Poland Spring bottled water which they own) has been trying to come into Maine and take control of much of the ground water in the state. In several communities the local people have overwhelmingly organized opposition to Nestle control of their water supply and they have been told again and again that they have no right to legally stand against this corporate control.

So a couple small towns, using the town hall meeting style of decision making, have passed local ordinances denying constitutional protections to corporations. They've then been told these laws that they have passed are "unconstitutional" and that the state won't allow locals to put limits on corporations.

So this bill has been introduced in our state legislature to give a municipality the right to adopt and enforce an ordinance that denies a corporation sweeping powers.

I was the third person today to stand before the state legislative committee to offer testimony and while I was preparing to go up to the podium I found myself thinking of the Chipaya people in the Bolivian Andes that are featured in the short video I posted just below. I told the state legislators that the corporations know that water is a declining resource due to global warming and that there will be water wars coming soon for control of remaining supplies of water and these big corporations, like Nestle, are trying to line up their control of it now. In fact I said water wars are already happening right here in Maine in our local communities.

I said that the Maine Constitution recognizes that the people are the source of all governing authority. That being the case corporations should not be allowed to block our local democratic processes in order to take profits from our communities.

I said that conservatives have long maintained that the best government is that which is the most local and I thought this was a good point.

I concluded by saying that if local democracy was made irrelevant by corporate domination, then it was just a matter of time before the Maine State Legislature would be irrelevant as well.

Only one vote was needed from the committee to send the bill to the full legislature for debate. We won't know for some time what will happen as I understand they next go into a "work session" to study the bill before making their committee recommendation.

MUST CHANGE THE WAY WE LIVE NOW

The weather hit 90 degrees here in Maine yesterday, the first time ever in recorded history for the month of April. The local newspaper this morning called it "bewildering" and never once mentioned the words global warming or climate change.

Instead they carried photos of Mainers pushing their strollers with no shirts on, people swimming, and stories about people thrilled by the high temps. The people of Maine seem to like the idea that our weather is changing. At least for now they do.

But the changes will come fast according to scientists and they will be severe. Food and water shortages, rising sea levels, and strange and violent weather disturbances are coming. By that time it will be too late to do much about it.

We have very little time left to make changes in how we live if we hope to reduce the severity of the coming crisis. But the US government seems immune to the reality of climate change. Instead we are nickle and dimeing it and pushing ahead with massive military expansion so the corporations can control the remaining natural resources in a coming world of disruption and disarray.

Those who are fasting to bring awareness about climate change are now in their second week and we hear nothing about their action from the corporate media.

TEA BAG THESE CORPORATE TAX HAVENS!

DEBATING EMPIRE - FIREMAN OR FLAME THROWER?

I "debated" Bobby Reynolds this morning at the University of Southern Maine in Portland. It was in a Sociology class of professor John Baugher. There were about 40 students in the class. Each of us spoke for 20 minutes and then we took questions from the students.

Reynolds introduced himself as the liaison staffer between Maine Republican Senator Susan Collins and military contractors in the state. He said he had been in the Navy and then was a fireman in Portland and got involved in politics and eventually went to work for Sen. Collins. He spoke at length about all the good the US military does around the world, protecting democracy and freedom, and likened our military to a fire department, stepping in when there was great need. At one point, while talking about the former Soviet Union, he said that the US had armed the Taliban in Afghanistan. At another point he suggested that I might be critical of US military spending, which he said is now at the level of $444 billion per year.

After introducing myself I said I found it interesting that Bobby, while working as the "defense liaison" for Sen. Collins, did not seem to know the current level of military spending. I indicated that Obama was raising it 4% in 2010 to a level of $663 billion. That figure, I added, did not count the $23.4 billion for the Department of Energy nuclear weapons work; $25.3 billion in the Department of State budget given to foreign countries to buy US weapons; the $1 billion for military recruitment; or the Veterans Administration which gets $75.7 billion, 50% of which goes for long-term care for the most seriously injured among our 30,000 troops wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. Another $46.4 billion goes to the Department of Homeland Security. On and on the story goes......... (These figures are from the 2008 federal budget.)

By the time you add it up we are spending about $1 trillion a year on the military.

We are spending more than the rest of the world combined does on the military. It's not about putting out fires, it's about creating fires - control of declining oil and natural gas in the Middle East, Central Asia, and Africa. Our job under corporate globalization, I quoted a former Pentagon source as saying, is going to be "security export."

I told the students that when I arrived on campus I picked up the student newspaper and saw an article about staff and faculty lay-offs at the university due to the state's fiscal crisis. I said that tuition increases were likely in the near future.

I referred to the study called "The U.S. Employment Effects of Military and Domestic Spending Priorities" by the Department of Economics at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst that was published in October 2007. I had passed around a one-page chart from the study that gave figures on the overall employment effects of spending $1 billion in 2005. The study shows that when $1 billion was spent on military 8,555 jobs were created. But if that same amount of money had gone into health care 12,883 jobs could have been created. Or if that $1 billion had gone into making mass transit systems 19,795 jobs could have been created. Home weatherization, something badly needed in Maine, would create 12,804 jobs per billion dollars. Which was the best path for dealing with global warming and our economy I asked?

After Bobby and I spoke we took questions from the students. One said she could not afford to get her teeth fixed. Another questioned why Bobby kept referring to "bad people" around the world....wasn't he just setting up the same old construct of the US being the good guys and everyone else the bad guys? One student said she was confused by Bobby's saying early on that we had funded the Taliban to fight the Soviet Union and now the Taliban were the bad guys in Afghanistan and Pakistan?

It was a good experience. I think the students learned some things today. Hopefully they come away with more questions in their minds about which direction our nation is heading. Hopefully they might pay more attention to these issues in the future.

My last words to the class were - you are going to pay for all this in the end.

NATO LOOKING FOR TROUBLE

You'd think that with NATO already tied up in Afghanistan-Pakistan they would not be eager for more war. But surprise, surprise they are now going to stoke the fires of war with Russia.

Approximately 2,000 soldiers from more than 10 NATO member and partner countries will partake in war games in Georgia from May 6 - June 1. The exercise is supposedly to improve "interoperability" between NATO and its partner countries. Count on them to leave a boat load of weapons after their "exercises" in Georgia that will then be used to prepare for another war with Russia.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev cited the war games as an "erroneous and dangerous" plan.

"Decisions of this kind are aimed at muscle-flexing. Such decisions are disappointing and do not facilitate resumption of full-scale contact between Russia and NATO. We shall be following everything in the most attentive way and, if need be, will take this or that decision.”

I've said many times on this blog, and it bears frequent repeating, that the US is out to take control of Russia's natural gas (the worlds largest supply) and their oil. A Rand Corp. study some time ago called for balkanizing Russia into four separate countries so we could grab their resources. Who should be surprised that Russia is getting a bit paranoid?

In a related development the US is sounding the alarm about Pakistan in a way that makes me very suspicious. I can just see the case being made very soon that Pakistan is a totally failed state and because they have nuclear weapons the US must take them over to ensure security in the region.

In today's Washington Post Gen. David H. Petraeus calls on Congress and President Obama to provide $400 million to his Central Command for a "Pakistan Counterinsurgency Capability Fund, a new, more-flexible spending stream that would permit more rapid and targeted U.S. training and provide more equipment to Pakistani forces that combat insurgents inside the country's lawless tribal regions."

Tell me we are not fully at war in Pakistan now as well.

The next steps very well might be for the US to take over the Pakistan government, using the Central Command and ultimately NATO to run the country.

It's the NATO New World Odor at work. Can you smell it?

AFGHANI-NAM

VIDEOS FROM KOREA

Global Network board member Loring Wirbel (Citizens for Peace in Space in Colorado Springs) has posted a whole series of photos and short videos from our conference and field trips in South Korea. You can see them at his blog here.

He captured a bit of my talk above.

Just below is an excellent talk by Korean activist Francis Daehoon Lee that I referred to in my report. It is worth listening to.

And then a short song from our friend Tim Rinne who coordinates Nebraskans for Peace. His group hosted our GN annual space conference last year in Omaha. This performance took place in a local restaurant rented for the night by our Korean hosts. We had a sort of an international talent show that was quite fun.

And finally a song from dear Agneta Norberg in Sweden. She's quite a good singer....this one about missiles.

You can see we had a good time in Seoul.......

FULL KOREA TRIP REPORT

This trip report covers the period of April 13-20 as I traveled to Seoul, South Korea to attend the Global Network’s (GN) 17th annual space organizing conference. Traveling with me was Mary Beth Sullivan and Tom Sturtevant, a leader from Maine Veterans for Peace.

A Korean Organizing Committee, comprised of 10 groups, organized the GN conference and they collectively did a wonderful job of hosting the large international delegation that came from about 25 countries. In addition to our GN international delegation the conference was also supported and attended by many international activists from the Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict (GPPAC).

Our first day was a field trip by bus to visit the DMZ along the border between North and South Korea. Our timing for the conference could not have been better as we arrived on the heels of the intense controversy surrounding North Korea’s launch of a rocket into space. The U.S. and Japan used the launch to justify their own deployments of “missile defense” systems in the region, which are ultimately aimed both at China and North Korea. The militarist rhetoric was flying as evidenced by one right-wing commentator from the U.S. who said, “The lesson of North Korea’s rogue launch is that America needs more missile defense not less. Militarily and technologically, our adversaries can catch up with us only if we chose to stand still.”

Our trip to the DMZ was led by well-known photographer Si-Woo Lee who spent two months in a South Korean jail accused of “taking pictures” of the DMZ. He fasted for two months in protest of his arrest. His case generated a great deal of national and international support, and he was ultimately acquitted. At the DMZ, we had a group photo taken with North Korea just behind us, and at one point I watched a bird fly back and forth between the two countries. It reminded me that humans build walls between each other while nature knows nothing about boundaries and lines of separation. The next day the group color photo was published at the top of page one in a leading national newspaper.

One of out of four families in South Korea has relatives in the North. Thus the drive for peaceful reunification of the country is deep in the hearts of the people. Unfortunately, the U.S. is expanding its military presence in South Korea and trying to drive the two nations further apart, while 60% of South Koreans want American bases closed and the troops to leave the country.

Our April 17 space organizing conference, attended by about 100 people, was without a doubt the most professionally organized event we’ve had during the GN’s 17 years of operation. The meeting facilities at the Seoul Women’s Plaza were first rate, we had simultaneous translation from Korean into English, and the food and sleeping accommodations at this same location were excellent.

Wooksik Cheong from the Korean Peace Network, a key conference organizer, in his speech called U.S. missile defense deployments [Aegis destroyers, PAC-3, and THAAD] in South Korea and Japan the “iron curtain of the 21st century.”

Global Network board member Atsushi Fujioka from Japan, a professor of Economics in Kyoto, told the assembled “Not to trust missile defense. It is like trusting a key of the henhouse to a wolf.” Atsushi, who helped bring 20 fellow Japanese to the conference reported that, “In Japan the U.S. Navy and Marine bases are shifting to Okinawa, the closest point to China. I think the major target of missile defense will not be North Korea, but China and Russia.”

Similarly, Koji Sugihara, representing the Japanese peace group called No to Nukes & Missile Defense Campaign, recently wrote “Under Article 9 of the Constitution, which renounces war and prohibits the maintenance of armed forces, Japan is not supposed to have a war industry….Japan’s cooperation with the U.S. in missile defense development is unusually intense. In fact, Japan’s islands have been turned into a huge missile defense-testing site. North Korea’s missile tests in July 2006, and its nuclear test in October 2006, served as a pretext for the acceleration of the U.S.-Japan missile defense plan.”

Physical evidence of this Asian-Pacific acceleration of U.S. missile defense deployments were witnessed by conference participants when we took a second field trip on April 18 to Pyeongtaek where the U.S. military is dramatically expanding an existing base. There we saw multiple launch vehicles for the PAC-3 – the latest version of the Patriot missile system that is now being deployed in South Korea and throughout Japan.

We were given a tour of the surrounding area, much of it farm land, that is being gobbled up by the U.S. base that will grow from 8,999 to more than 23,000 American soldiers. The U.S. is moving troops away from the DMZ onto this giant Air Force and Army “hub” base where they will be out-of-range of North Korean weapons fire. Farmers and local activists from the Pyeongtaek Peace Center have been vigorously protesting against this expansion for several years but the U.S. will not be denied.

Earlier in the day on April 18 we held the annual membership business meeting of the Global Network where we had a stimulating strategy discussion and approved new board members from South Korea, Japan, Poland, U.S., and the Czech Republic. It was also agreed to pursue the proposal by board member J. Narayana Rao to hold our 2010 GN space conference in Nagpur, India. The U.S. is now dragging India into the space weapons race in an already unstable part of the world.

Our annual Peace in Space Award, for extraordinary work on the issue, was presented during the conference to Sung-Hee Choi (South Korea), Atsushi Fujioka (Japan), and J. Narayana Rao (India). Sung-Hee had been the primary force behind our decision to meet in South Korea this year and showed her dedication to the organization by being a tireless organizer before and all during the event.

Our third and final field trip was on April 19 as we headed north to Mugeon-ri where the U.S. is expanding another military area – this time for tank and Bradley fighting vehicle training. Since 1980 local rice farmers have been organizing to resist the taking of their beautiful lands for warfare preparation. Mugeon-ri is just a short distance from the North Korean border. The U.S. has already taken a huge area and now wants 30 square kilometers of additional land that will displace hundreds more farmers.

In 2002 two 15-year-old local schoolgirls, walking to a friend’s birthday party, were run over and killed on a narrow street in the town by U.S. tanks. To this day no one has been held responsible for their killing.

Because Mugeon-ri is near to the North Korean border, and has similar terrain, the military training that goes on there is viewed by the Korean peace movement as a preparation for an attack by the U.S. So not only do the farmers face losing their lands but they also face the sad reality that their lands are being used to train to kill their relatives in nearby North Korea.

The roads around Mugeon-ri are lined with yellow banners proclaiming their message - "We want to live in our hometown." The people have lived on this land for more than 400 years.

That evening, after feeding us a fine traditional Korean meal, we joined the struggling farmers for a candlelight vigil under a make-shift shelter where they have been holding nightly vigil for the past year. During that time we shared heartfelt words and sang to each other. The people pleaded with us to share their story when we returned home to our various countries. They urged that people go to Republic of Korea and U.S. embassies and consulates around the world in protest of the taking of their farm lands.

The reality of deadly U.S. militarism has a human face. It is seen today in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and in places like Pyeongtaek and Mugeon-ri in South Korea.

It is clear that we must all become more focused on preventing war in the Asian-Pacific as the U.S. now doubles its military presence in that part of the world. At a time when we should be dealing with the coming harsh reality of climate change we have a new president and Congress, controlled by the Democrats, who are planning to increase military spending in 2010.

Closing the conference on April 17 Francis Daehoon Lee, from the People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy in Seoul, said, “We are not just dealing with bad policies. Security politics is not about the safety of the people but is about the monopolizing of information, decision making, finance, and capitalist economy. Security politics is a closed circuit. In order to stop it we have to cut something inside.”

These are important words. One must ask the question: what would we cut? How do we get out from under the corporate dominated security system that feeds on fear and endless war? I would suggest the first thing we must cut is our allegiance to and faith and trust in the global war machine. Then we must stop giving them our precious tax monies. We must stop being slaves to the global war economy.

We thank our wonderful hosts in South Korea for their kind and warm hospitality. We thank them for their generous and courageous spirits and we vow to them that the Global Network will do all it can to work with groups in the region to roll back U.S. militarism before another deadly war begins.

MY HOPE IS RESTORED

Watch this incredible interview with a young soldier who refuses to go to Iraq and renounces his participation in the Afghanistan war. The news man interviewing him could not hide his utter disdain for the brave young man - a real hero in my book.

His point that most soldiers share his opinion but don't have the ability to act as he has done is a telling comment. This kid is a real leader, very smart, and fast on his feet. The talking heads on the news tried to trap him but he kept his focus and did us all right proud!

GN BOARD MEMBER JAILED IN UK

I learned this morning that Global Network board member Lindis Percy was arrested yesterday in England and has been jailed for 45 days. Lindis has just returned to the UK from Seoul, South Korea where she spoke at the 17th annual space organizing conference.

Lindis is a leader of the group called Campaign for Accountability of American Bases (CAAB) in England that works hard to educate the public about and resist the presence of two US Star Wars bases at Menwith Hill and Fylingdales in Yorkshire.

According to the BBC, "A North Yorkshire Police spokesman said the 67-year-old had been arrested for a breach of bail conditions. "

According to supporters in England, "Lindis Percy was remanded in custody for 45 days by the Harrogate Magistrates Court yesterday. This was for some minor fines Lindis refuse to pay for so-called aggravated trespass at Menwith Hill and Fylingdales. Lindis has constantly refused to pay these fines and yesterday there was a Warrant out for her arrest just after she returned from Seoul."

Lindis is being held in the Low Newton Women's Prison.

To send a message to Lindis contact Elizabeth Barclay at elizabeth.barclay@nexusdsl.co.uk

HOME BUT REMEMBERING KOREA

At the end of the formal conference

One of our meals

Speaking with Sung-Hee Choi at the DMZ

On one of our three field trips

We got home last night at midnight from a more than 24-hour return trip. It's a long slog back. We slept for 12 hours and I am still in bed with my laptop. Its cold and raining outside, I might not get up at all today.

I'm fasting today in solidarity with the climate change movement's call for Congressional action. Some folks, like friend Ted Glick, are going to fast for a couple of weeks.

I've already had two emails from Japan this morning. The largest delegation at our conference in Seoul was the twenty people from Japan. Our long-time board member Atsushi Fujioka, from Kyoto, organized them to come. We added three new Japanese folks to our Global Network advisory committee. There is some interest in having me come to Japan in August for the annual conferences in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and then a tour around the country. Will have to see if it all works out or not.

We must thank our dear friend Sung-Hee Choi from Inchon, South Korea for having put out this whole idea of the Global Network conference in her country. She pressed for this last year when we met in Nebraska and was instrumental in pushing it through. She had major help from Haeng-Woo Lee who lives in New Jersey and was the founder of the National Association of Korean-Americans. Haeng-Woo wanted so badly for more people around the world to deeply understand the current dangers on the Korean peninsula and to help advocate for a peaceful reunification of Korea. His support was vital to the success of the conference.

I don't think I will do much today. I need a day off to just be lazy. It's good to be home again but part of my heart remains in Korea. As it turns out my birthday, July 27, was the day the ceasefire was signed to end the shooting in the Korean war. But the war still remains on as the US digs militarily deeper into the divided country. We should all remember this important fact and help press for true peace which can only come when US bases there close down. Once more we have to say - bring the troops home now.

You can listen to an interview with me in Seoul by Yumi Kukuchi from Japan here.

FIGHTING TO SAVE THEIR FARMS

Citizens of Mugeonri fight to save their farm land

Yesterday 20 of the remaining GN's international delegation took a two-hour bus ride to Mugeonri which is just 36 kilometers from the North Korean border. At this place the US Army has been displacing this rice growing community from their lands since 1980. But they want still more land. High-tech weapons systems demand larger areas to practice.

The remaining two hundred people in this beautiful place, surrounded by hills, are fighting hard to hang on to the last of their lands. But the Army will not be denied as they want to expand their existing military training area (mostly for tank and Bradley fighting vehicle training) by some 30 square kilometers more. So they are saying the people most go.

The roads for miles are lined with yellow banners proclaiming their message - "We want to live in our hometown." The people have lived on this land for more than 400 years.

We were taken to a place near their village which is a nesting area for white cranes, the symbol of their resistance. Over 1,000 cranes used to nest there but now their numbers have dropped to about 100 as the Army destroys the land.

We also visited the site where two 15-year old girls, walking to a friends birthday party, were run over and killed by US tanks on the narrow country road in 2002. No one was ever held responsible for their deaths which further outraged the nation.

The US Army is practicing for an invasion of North Korea. The villagers, because they are so close to the border, have many relatives in the nearby north. One of their leaders told us that the US is "Threatening not only our livelihood but also peace on the Korean peninsula and in the Asian-Pacific region."

The Pentagon's OPLAN-5027 spells out the strategy of military action against and control of North Korea.

So the people have a doubly hard task at hand. They have to save their farms and their homes but also try to stop the US from invading the north and killing their relatives. The thought that the US is training to kill their relatives on their own farm lands is just too heartbreaking for them to believe.

I am writing from the Seoul airport as we prepare to head home. We fly first to Tokyo, then to Chicago, and finally to Portland, Maine. We got out of bed at 4:30 am this morning to make the two-hour trip to the airport. Mary Beth has been sick in bed for the past three days and missed two of our three field trips. Luckily she was still able to deliver her speech at the conference. Tom Sturtevant is doing well and having a grand time.

It was an incredible experience, and the three field trips we took were bonding experiences for all of us. We produced an excellent statement coming out of the conference and you can see it here.

The memory of the people of Mugeonri is now branded on our hearts.

US BASE EXPANSION IN SOUTH KOREA

Vigil at the gate of US's Osan AFB in Pyeongtaek

This photo, from our visit to the DMZ, was published on the top of the front page in a national newspaper the other day. That's North Korea behind us.

The conference went extremely well all day on Friday, we had just about 100 people from more than 20 countries represented. The presentations were all tremendous and our hosts have organized by far the most professional event we've ever had in all of our 17 years of Global Network conferences.

Yesterday we had our annual business meeting where we had a vigorous strategy discussion and then decided to accept the invitation from our friends in India who have offered to host our 18th annual conference next year in their country. More work will need to be done to settle on the right date. Following that event we loaded up the bus to travel to the city of Pyeongtaek where the US has the Osan Air Force Base. The base is now doubling in size by swallowing up small farm villages around it. The citizens have held huge protests during recent years and have been beaten and arrested but they continue to resist in spite of all odds. The base is a clear indication that US military expansion in the Asian-Pacific is intended to further surround China and Russia.

I saw an article yesterday about recent comments by Mikhail Gorbachev where he said that Obama's talk about nuclear disarmament would be "just rhetorical" if other nations were asked to give up their nukes while the US maintains an overwhelming conventional military force. "Military superiority would be an insurmountable obstacle to ridding the world of nuclear weapons," the ex-Soviet president said. "Unless we discuss demilitarization of international politics, the reduction of military budgets, preventing militarization of outer space, talking about a nuclear-free world will be just rhetorical."

The US base expansion in Pyeongtaek is a perfect illustration of Gorbachev's point. More than 60% of the people of South Korea want the US bases to close. When will the American people begin to listen to the cries of the people of the world who want the US military empire to end?