PEP Talk

As a member of the St. Louis Instead of War Coalition, I was able to attend the Code Pink International Drone Summit, April 28-29. The summit brought together a wide range of activists and organizers to discuss U.S. policies, or the lack thereof, towards drones. The collection of speakers on the program was incredible. I was in a star-studded room full of activists and organizers whose work I admired. The line-up in the program included Code Pink founder Medea Benjamin, award winning journalist Jeremy Scahill, and human rights activist and lawyer Shazad Akbar (most recognizable for his work on behalf of drone strike victims in Pakistan).

Before coming to this conference, I had a very basic working knowledge of drones and I left with a deeper understanding of the need to do education around the issue of drone usage.

I loved that there was a wide range of opinions in the room. There was no general consensus that drones were inherently bad or inherently good, instead, we focused on the lack of transparency and accountability with drone usage.

The Obama administration has been using drone warfare both with a lack of transparency and accountability, killing people without granting them due process to a trial; assassination by association. But then again, they are terrorists. Or are they? In a report done by the New America Foundation, it is cited that the U.S. has launched 297 drone strikes which resulted in 1800 deaths. Of that1800; it is estimated that three to four hundred were not combatants. As unmanned indiscriminate killing machines, drones are unable to make the distinction between who is a threat and who is not, making them horribly ineffective on this “war on terror.” Such callous disregard for human life is weaponized drones biggest offense, but not the only one.

Drone Summit Attendees in front of Supreme Court

Drones are also a violation of global privacy. Just think, would the U.S. ever let another country fly surveillance or weaponized aircraft in our airspace? Hell no. And global privacy isn’t the only concern. Domestic use of surveillance drones is jeopardizing us here on our own soil. Local police departments are already using drones as a means of surveillance and since there are no policies in place to regulate this usage, we are in danger of having our every move recorded by authorities. It’s like an Orwellian nightmare; I can imagine it now, unmanned surveillance vehicles flying in every back yard, Big Brother looming in the skies.

Perhaps a little more tangible and immediate than imagining a dystopian society, is the obvious fact that domestic drones will be used to increase the already high (and ineffective) level of surveillance in low-income communities of color. As an anti-war organizer, I see this as an opportunity to reach out to and to address the concerns of these communities that have become seemingly absent from the anti-war movement in the age of Obama. There’s much organizing work that needs to be done around drones. I’m glad I was able to participate in Code Pink’s Summit and gain the knowledge to move forward on this issue.

Medea Benjamin will be in St. Louis promoting her book Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control in June.

Tila Neguse

On Wednesday March 21st, Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Readiness and Management Support subcommittee said “no” to a new round of military base closings known as BRAC (Base Realignment and Closure Committee). The BRAC proposal allows the Pentagon to reduce spending like any typical cash-strapped corporation. BRAC is supposed to be crucial in the DoD’s cost-cutting strategies when in reality; it has been an inefficient plan with little savings and serious consequences.

BRAC doesn’t even scratch the surface in the real amount of spending cuts the military needs to undergo. DoD’s own figures show that the 2005 BRAC saved only $1.5 billion out of a $525 billion budget. On the scale of Pentagon expenditures, that’s chicken feed. Keep in mind, the 2005 BRAC won’t yield net savings till 2018. In other words, the BRAC that starts now won’t do much to reduce the federal deficit over the next ten years. In fact, without more cuts, it will most likely probably increase the deficit.

One of the biggest push backs against decreasing military spending is backed by the claim that the military is a vehicle for job creation. The political rhetoric of military spending advocates goes like this; if we cut the military budget, we cut jobs — period.

Yet, according to a study done by for the Department of Economics and Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 2011, for every billion dollars spent on military production, 11,000 jobs were created compared to the 29,000 that were created from every billion spent on education. The Pentagon is taking our jobs, not creating them and BRAC is a perfect example of dispelling this myth of job creation and protection.

The Pentagon’s budget-cutting ideas wreak maximum havoc on people while leaving hardware untouched. Besides closing bases, the Defense Department wants to cut Tricare, the military health system, and reduce other personnel costs. The Pentagon is acting like a giant corporation, downsizing its workforce and cutting their benefits in order to balance the budget on their backs.

There are common sense ways—as difficult as they may be–to decrease military spending, protect and create jobs and still keep our country safe. Inefficient as it may be, BRAC has tremendous impact potential on communities whose local economies rely on military bases, like those here in Missouri at Whiteman Air Force Base and Fort Leonard Wood, as Sen. McCaskill mentioned. There are alternative cuts that should take higher priority to BRAC.

Though World War II ended a half century ago and the Cold War two decades back, the Pentagon still has over 200 bases in Germany and over 100 in Japan.  If we closed just one-quarter of US overseas bases, we could save $80 billion dollars over the next ten years, as explained in a 2010 report by the Sustainable Defense Task Force.

Other smart, effective cuts could include:

• Scaling back our nuclear weapons arsenal The U.S. has over 5,000 nuclear warheads and the Pentagon continues to seek resources to fund these weapons.
• Promptly ending the war in Afghanistan, which costs us over $100 billion dollars a year.
• Pulling back forward-deployed troops, ships, and air wings so they can defend the United States instead of trying to police the world, control its oil shipping lanes, and encircle China.

These changes in overall military strategy would save hundreds of billions of dollars a year, not the billion here and billion there under base closings. They would help keep us out of destabilizing wars like those in Iraq and Afghanistan. And they would safeguard our troops far more seriously than today’s wars of choice.

BRAC is a flawed band-aid on an open, gushing wound. We can make cuts, big cuts, and not on the backs of working people.

Tila Neguse

The National Priorities Project came out with a report a couple months ago, summarizing and analyzing the 2013 Pentagon Budget. I encourage you to take a look for yourself at it here.

Some quick takeaways from the report:

• The Defense Department’s annual “base” budget for Fiscal Year 2013 at $525 billion – 46 percent above the 1998 level – an important side note: These figures do not include war costs or the nuclear weapons activities of the Department of Energy.
• The military of the future will be smaller, but more agile. (whatever *that* means)
• The military will continue to shift its focus towards the Asia Pacific region, in part in response to China’s growing economic and military power, while maintaining a robust presence in the Middle East.
• During a Pentagon briefing earlier this year, President Obama said, “over the next 10 years, the growth in the defense budget will slow, but the fact of the matter is this – it will still grow…”

An extra point worth noting is a section on the military and job creation. One common outcry on cutting significant – or even semi-significant – cuts to the military is, “But you’ll cut all those JOBS”. The summary points to this report by the Political Economy Research Institute that suggests the military has one of the poorest Returns On Investment on job creation of all the ways to spend money federally.

The second half of the summary focuses on “sequestration”, which is the concept of the “across the board” budget cuts that will be made to all parts of government if the Super Committee cannot come up with an approved plan for cutting $1.2 trillion over the next ten years by December of this year. While this is a very important topic that all Americans should be paying attention too, it’s complicated, political, and has a lot of noise around it.

“Across the board” is not the worst thing that can happen – conversely, an agreement may have far less or zero cuts to the budget – while social service programs, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, public employees, funding for general federal infrastructure programs, and others are cut beyond the bone.

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta is, predictably, calling some of the possible cuts “disastrous”. Some of us would say the cuts would be “better late than never.”

Some legislators are trying to pass bills that would exempt the military from sequestration. I am simultaneously unsurprised and incredulous at this.

I hope that the needs of America’s current and future citizens have more weight than certain war profiteers’ quarterly profits as our legislators decide where the ax will fall next year.

Why Not Cut the Military?

The Republicans are loathe to cut the military budget. The US already spends about as much on so-called defense as the rest of the world combined. I find it difficult to imagine what more we need.

Even the assessment of the costs of war in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya include materiel replacement costs for items we don’t necessarily need to replace. We have a lot of weapons stockpiled.

Military spending is not a job driver. Weapons are capital-intensive. That means they are constructed by computer-aided design (CAD) and computer-aided manufacturing (CAM). Even the material is as likely to be an epoxy-base composite as it is to be steel.

And, when all is said and done, the Pacific and Atlantic oceans make it difficult invade the U.S., more difficult to control invaded territory, and for all practical purposes impossible for a victor to claim and carry away any spoils.

Yes, terrorism is a threat. But it’s not one that more B-1 bombers will allay. We’d do better fighting terrorism by providing clean water for the world.

THINK nonviolence. Talk up nonviolence. Make it a prevailing idea.

Mary Ann McGivern

Corporation Spotlight and Lessons from Bolivia

Bechtel Corporation isn’t a company that comes to mind when you talk about the military-industrial-congressional complex. It doesn’t make bombs or guns, like Lockheed Martin or Honeywell. It isn’t a private “security” firm like the infamous Blackwater. Nor does it have impossibly obvious connections to Presidential administrations like Halliburton.

But Bechtel is a poster child for another part of the military-industrial complex. The MICC doesn’t only shape U.S. policy to go to war or attack foreign countries; it also shapes U.S. policy regarding countries we’ve destroyed. And if the countries we’ve invaded and/or destroyed have oil under their soil, then we’ll take a bit of that too. All’s fair in love and war.

Enter Bechtel.

First, let’s take a look at Bechtel’s Board of Directors. It is a classic example of the “revolving door” of government agencies, military branches and private interests. Some of the government positions are not commonly known and I will not go into their descriptions here, but you’re encouraged to dig deeper to see how deep this rabbit hole goes.

• David O’Reilly is the former chairman & CEO of Chevron Corporation (Chevron recently discovered natural gas off the coast of Australia, oh boy).
• George P. Shultz is the former U.S. Secretary of State under Ronald Reagan, former president of Bechtel, as well as a former board member of the prominent investment bank Dillon, Read & Co. Inc. Dillon, Read & Co. is now owned by the Swiss Bank Corporation.
• The late Caspar Weinberger served as the United States Secretary of Defense under Ronald Reagan. Prior to this position, he was the Vice President, Director, and General Counsel of the Bechtel Group of companies.
• David Welch was an assistant Secretary of State under George W Bush.
• Gen. John J. Sheehan, USMC (ret.) is a former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic, former member of the Defense Policy Board, and a former Special Advisor to Asia for the U.S. Defense Department. He’s also a former General Manager of the Petroleum and Chemical Business Unit for Europe/Africa/Middle East/South West Asia and was also a Bechtel partner.
• Ross J. Connelly is a former CEO of Bechtel Energy Resources Corporation. He served on the Overseas Private Investment Corporation under George W. Bush.
• Kenneth Davis is a former Bechtel senior vice-president and is the former U.S. Deputy Energy Secretary.
• Riley P. Bechtel is the CEO of Bechtel. With a net worth of at LEAST $3 billion (in 2009, he was worth $5.5 billion – where did the other $2.5 billion go?). In February 2003, he was appointed by President George W. Bush to the Export Council, which advises the president on international trade issues.

Bechtel has over 60 joint ventures and subsidiaries listed on their Wikipedia page. Their specialties and missions focus on energy; direct investments, venture and growth capital; conceptual design, process engineering, process technology, and consulting services to the energy industry; underground construction services; and on and on.

After the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, Bechtel was one of the first companies awarded a contract to rebuild it. The contract was for $680 million. The next year, Bechtel was awarded an additional $1.8 billion contract. As you may remember, Bechtel was forced to pull out of Iraq in 2006 due to violence on the ground. Fifty-two of it’s contracted workers were killed during the contract.

Over a decade prior, after the first Iraq War, Bechtel was given a $2.3 billion contract – partially to execute “the most successful oil recovery in history“, according to Bechtel’s website. Good to know.

In 2008, Bechtel was awarded a 4-year contract to build the Keystone Pipeline, from Alberta, Canada to the U.S. Midwest. Continued pipeline construction was recently stalled by large protests in Washington, DC….but wait….

Bolivia: Who’s water? Our water!

Around the turn of the 21st century, Bechtel was contracted to privatize the water service in Cochabamba, Bolivia’s third largest city. Technically, the contract was awarded to Aguas del Tunari, a company that Bechtel has a 27.5 percent share in. There were two main parts of the contract that the Bolivians did not like: collecting rain water was made illegal (!?); and water rates increased by about 50%.

Soon after, civil unrest broke out to what was later called the “Cochabamba Water Wars.” There were large protests and several general strikes that shut down the city. Bolivia’s government declared martial law. Protestors were assaulted, kidnapped and killed by police and soldiers. After five months of protest and chaos, Bechtel had to back out of Bolivia. This was truly an unprecedented act in modern world history.

“This is the first time that a major corporation like Bechtel has had to back down from a major trade case as the result of global citizen pressure,” said Jim Shultz, executive director of The Democracy Center in Cochabamba, and a leader of the global effort.

Canada: We Don’t Want Your Dirty Oil

Thinking about the Bolivian people’s victory in regaining control over their own natural resources has me looking at this Tarsands deal in a new light. A couple months ago, outcry from the American people forced Obama and Congress to “postpone” work on the Tar Sands Keystone Pipeline. Is this victory? Yes, for now.

Bechtel and multinationals of the like are looking for profit overseas, and here at home. And this dirty oil pipeline, which would run from Alaska to Texas, is just another symptom of the military-industrial complex and living in a war economy.  Before the Payroll Tax holiday was worked out, the pro- Tarsands folks were trying to hold the Payroll tax cuts hostage for a Tarsands Pipeline deal.

We have much more in common with the people of Bolivia than with the Board of Directors of Bechtel. We are the 99%. Buried in generations of American Exceptionalism we have a largely unsung story of inspiration from our southern neighbors in Bolivia. Despite corruption within the U.S.-approved Bolivian government, the Bolivian people preserved. They preserved and prevailed. Lesson learned.

Who’s oil? Our oil. I hope the movement in the U.S. is able to keep Bechtel and the like off our green grass and farmland in the same way our brothers and sisters in Bolivia were able to keep Bechtel’s hands off their water.

Onward.

Charlie Edelen is the Communications Organizer for Jobs with Justice and Peace Economy Project Board Member

A giant experiment is about to begin in St. Louis.

Over the next decade, the federal government will repeatedly cut Head Start, education, environmental programs, Community Development Block Grants, fuel assistance, and much more. Working class families and communities of color will take the biggest hits, but everyone will hurt.

How will the experimental subjects react? Will St. Louis residents quietly accept ten more years of cuts in practically every city service? Will parents compete with senior citizens and library lovers to protect some programs at others’ expense? Might they come together and push back against all the cuts?

It’s up to the experimental subjects – the guinea pigs. That’s us.

Peace activists in other cities, where the same experiment is underway, are forming coalitions with unions and community groups. We are mobilizing on “other people’s issues” – home foreclosures, layoffs, social service cuts. For many peace organizations, that’s a big change, but most are thriving on the new energy, new connections, and new power we are building.

By showing up for other people’s work, we are earning their support. In city after city we are agreeing on a four-point platform: create jobs, save services, tax the rich and corporations, and cut the Pentagon. Together we’re starting to build power that we don’t have alone.

We’ll need that power next year and we can use it to:

• Unite the many. Give all the separate fights against budget cuts a common focus: tax the 1% and cut military spending.
• Push our demands up to Washington. “Bird-dog” candidates for Congress in 2012 and ask if they will support those solutions.
• Enlist local elected officials. Urge the many city and county governing bodies in metro St. Louis to send “fund us – cut military spending” resolutions to Congress.

Mike Prokosch

Mike Prokosch argues that locally based initiatives are necessary to push reform now. Rich and powerful interests in this country, with special help from conservative republicans, are trying to restructure the country, in a way that would lock the inequities in place for years to come. He described the debt crisis in the country and the different approaches by members of the two parties in congress – republicans refusing to accept any tax increases, especially on those in the highest income brackets, and democrats seemingly willing to give on big cuts on entitlements and on the non-defense sector of the discretionary budget.

His approach is that groups like PEP with its relatively narrow focus, need to join others to form a broad based coalition willing to fight for 4 goals – 1) Creating Jobs, 2) Saving basic safety-net services, 3) Raising taxes, and 4) Cutting the Military. Mike noted initiatives around the country that seem to making an impact. For example, a group in Durham, North Carolina has convinced the City Council to adopt a resolution addressing the four points, and to push their congressional delegation as well. He stressed the importance of convincing mayors and county executives to use their lobbyists for this cause in Washington. He suggested that having the coalition show up at local events, like the closing of a library or park, or a foreclosure hearing, was an opportunity to educate the public about the importance of rebalancing priorities in this country.

In summary, the 2012 election, and the months leading up to it will constitute a major opportunity for the exchange of ideas important to our future. A lot of money and advertising will be spent trying to hide and confuse the real issues. Those who believe in PEP and groups like it need to push hard, waking people out of their apathy and educating them about what a fair and prosperous future will require.

Charles Kindleberger

I understand that our economy is doing very poorly.  And I also do understand that selling U.S. made products to other countries is good for our economy.  But why, so often, must the Made In America label be affixed to weapons?  Why do we, so often, sell weapons to any oil-rich despot who wants to buy them?

Bahrain is an archipelago of 36 islands located off the Eastern Coast of Saudi Arabia. The government is a hereditary monarchy.  According to the U.S. State Department (www.state.gov): U.S. military sales to Bahrain since 2000 total $1.4 billion. Principal U.S. military systems acquired by the Bahrain Defense Force include eight Apache helicopters, 54 M60A3 tanks, 22 F-16C/D aircraft, 51 Cobra helicopters, 9 MLRS Launchers (with ATACMS), 20 M109A5 Howitzers, 1 Avenger AD system, and the TPS-59 radar system.

On February 14^th 2011, Protests began in Bahrain when thousands of people gathered from across the state. They planned to walk to the Pearl Roundabout in central Manama, the capital, for a “Day of Rage” to demand greater freedom, social justice and political and constitutional reforms. Peaceful protest soon turned to panic as security forces resorted to overwhelming force. Within a week, seven protesters were dead and hundreds of others were injured. The worst violence occurred on the 17^th of February during an early morning raid on those camped at Pearl Roundabout. Massed ranks of riot police stormed the area to evict the sleeping protesters, firing live ammunition and using tear gas, batons, rubber bullets and shotguns, including at close range, to disperse them. Tanks and armored vehicles later blocked access to the roundabout. Five people were fatally wounded and at least 250 were injured, some critically. Among the injured were people clearly identified as medical workers who were targeted by police while trying to help people wounded by the security forces.  (Amnesty International Arms Transfers To The Middle East and North Africa)

Despite these atrocities, the United States had, this month, all but finalized a $53 million weapons deal with the Persian Gulf Kingdom of Bahrain. Just last week, however, the State Department agreed to delay the weapons sale until a commission in Bahrain finishes investigating the government’s human rights abuses.

Maybe, just this once, we won’t sell more weapons to a country that will turn them against its own people.  Maybe, just this once, justice will win over the dollar bill.

By Abbe Sudvarg

We all know that the last decade has witnessed a huge build up in US defense spending, the result of two wars, fears of terrorism, and 95 major weapon systems under development. Finally the pendulum has shifted. The first phase of the Congressional  deficit cutting compromise calls for $350 billion in defense cuts over 10 years; by Thanksgiving we will have the report of the 12 person Super Committee, and we will know how much additional defense cutting is called for.  I believe it should be substantial.

It won’t be an easy process. We know that much of the military’s equipment is antiquated and/or beat up because of the wars. We know that veterans and their families face difficult challenges as they try to reintegrate into society.  But major cuts are necessary:

• Debt Reduction. The $739 billion annual budget is 27 percent of federal budget which currently runs more than a trillion dollars in the red each year. The nation must do more to balance its budget.

• Threat Scenarios. The US faces serious threats around the world (e.g. terrorism, cyber warfare, nuclear threats and more). We need to be able to stand up to North Korea, Iran, and other difficult countries. However, can anyone seriously imagine a large scale land war in the coming years?  How could we possibly need 6200 Abrams Battle Tanks, more than 4000 combat aircraft, 5113 nuclear warheads   or 1, 564,000 active duty troops?

• Priorities. Almost daily, the headlines remind us of the pain experienced by many of our citizens and the failures of our nation. Poverty is more widespread than it has been in the last 18 years. As many as 25 million are looking for work or looking for full time work, and many more have dropped out of the work force. Participation in the food stamp program is at an all time high. There are so many other similarly depressing statistics.

Every new ship or aircraft that is not built, or soldier that is not deployed frees up dollars for improving education, health care, infrastructure, and the many other domestic needs of this nation, including reducing the national debt.

Defense spending has peaked three times since World War II – Korean War, Vietnam War, and during Ronald Reagan’s presidency. After each there was a dramatic cutback in expenditures.  This time should be no different. The massive defense buildup of the last decade needs to be reversed in a major way.

If you agree, put your thoughts in writing. Let the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction (the Super Committee)  know your beliefs. Write to Co-Chairs  Senator Patty Murray  of Washington <murray.senate.gov> and Congressman Jeb Hensarling of Texas <hensarling.house.gov>. Don’t let the lobbyists from the Military Industrial Complex be the only ones they hear.

Charles Kindleberger

I attended a small, Christian all-girls private school from the time I was in 4^th grade until I graduated high school. The great education I received was shadowed by an environment that (whether knowingly or unknowingly) attempted to crush all individuality and voices of dissent. I was a freshman in high school when we first entered the war in Afghanistan. Having a mark of the activist in my 14-year old self, I was very vocal about my opposition to the war and it definitely wasn’t easy being in a conservative oppressive environment. I was so upset, so hurt, so confused by the racist, ignorant, intolerant, and hateful comments that would float in the halls among my pious southern belle classmates regarding Muslims, Arab-Americans, and the inverted support of peace for our country through war with another. What could I say to make them hear my side? To make them really listen to me?

Writing has always been such an important part in my life and that is exactly the medium I turned to during that time to explain my pacifist stance that was so callously disregarded, ignored, or perhaps just misunderstood by my peers. In an assignment in class when we were asked to reflect on the national tragedy on 9/11, I opened my essay with the words of Wilfred Owen, I am the enemy you killed my friend. I remember those words to this day from the poem “Strange Meeting.” I am the enemy you killed my friend. I chose those lines in a desperate attempt to make my classmates see people as members of a human race instead of subcategories of race and religion, markers of difference that since the beginning of time we have used to justify attacking and killing one another. I am the enemy you killed my friend. I couldn’t explain it more articulately than Wilfred Owen did, and to me the message was and is in the poetry.

Wilfred Owen

What could I do to make them listen to me? To make them hear me? To make them understand me? These must be the questions that all great anti-war poets have had to ask themselves at some point. The function of political art and poetry is essential in our movement against the war. We can speak in numbers, statistics, figures and politics but there is power in the poetic word, and paired with a message or a cause it becomes extremely poignant. The ability to create art within a movement is a spirit we need to keep alive. Sometimes we just need poets, like Wilfred Owen, to speak beyond logic to a different part of us, to remind us that we are all human after all and of the simple universal truth that violence and war is bad. If the thought of the sound of the guns and bombs don’t make you deplore war, then perhaps sullen poetic words describing it will echo and resonate within your soul. After all, the pen is the ultimate anti-thesis to the sword.

To Read Wilfred Owen’s “Strange Meeting” (1918) Click Here:

http://users.fulladsl.be/spb1667/cultural/owen/strange-meeting.html

Tila Neguse