PETER BERGEL: Terrific vacation packages to be raffled off in OPW’s popular Great Getaway Raffle are being secured. Tickets will be on sale as soon as all packages are complete. If we have your address, we will mail you a raffle entry form. If we have your email address we will also email you the form. Otherwise, you can check our website www.oregonpeaceworks.org for details.
Calendar
To offer calendar items, post them at www.oregonprogressivenetwork.org or email them to: updates@oregonpeaceworks.org before the 12th of the month for following month’s issue.
Building a Better Strategy for the Peace Movement
PETER BERGEL: I have recently become increasingly critical of the strategy and tactics that have guided the peace movement for the last decade or more. The dangers that threaten the human race have multiplied rapidly, even as our ability to address them has weakened, yet we continue to invest the bulk of our resources in approaches that are not working — exactly the error we regularly criticize the military and the government for making. It is time — past time — for a major strategic overhaul based on a broad peace vision.
The Afghanistan Gap: Press vs. Public
NORMAN SOLOMON: This month, a lot of media stories have compared President Johnson’s war in Vietnam and President Obama’s war in Afghanistan. The comparisons are often valid, but a key parallel rarely gets mentioned the media’s insistent support for the war even after most of the public has turned against it.
Spooks on the Loose
KEN MCCORMACK: The CIA and over 20 other such agencies are rapidly spreading our national disease — much more dangerous than the flu — diagnosed by doctors “terminal hypocrisy.” Hypocrisy syndrome appears with two levels of truth. Truth one is public. Truth two is simply the dirty laundry.
Recovering to Death
TOM H. HASTINGS: If stimulus packages for corporate sinkholes are good enough for the American taxpayer, why can’t we find $5.4 billion to create minimum wage jobs, with full health care benefits, for the 216,000 Americans who lost their jobs in August? Coincidentally, $5.4 billion is the amount the Pentagon will spend next year on unmanned vehicles, such as the Predator, which is killing so many civilians in Pakistan and turning our friends into our sworn enemies.