Progressive Democrats Sonoma County

By John Nichols
The Nation
June 16, 2009

Thirty-two Democrats broke with the Obama administration and House Democratic leaders Tuesday to oppose a $106 billion supplemental appropriation to maintain the occupation of Iraq, surge more troops into the quagmire that is Afghanistan and fund the International Monetary Funds anti-social policies of forcing developing countries to sacrifice programs for the poor in order to bail out big banks.

MORE CALLS NEEDED RIGHT NOW! (Leave messages at any hour!) Use the virtual phonebank. Watch the whip list. Vote is planned for Tuesday morning.

Read: McGovern: Reporter Made It Up, I’m Voting NO

Read: An Exit Strategy That Keeps Wars Going.

June 16th: Catch Bob Fertik on Democracy Now! at 8:45 a.m. ET. Then catch the vote on C-Span if it happens. It IS on the schedule for late morning. Emanuel is still trying to bribe Republicans to fund war (odd as that may sound) by including funding for the flu (bizarre as that may sound, and they were going to include it anyway) in an attempt to somehow overcome the Republicans’ opposition to the IMF’s doing things Republicans support if only it were with someone else’s money. Clear? The San Francisco Chronicle has an article quoting Sam Farr putting the question of whether Obama is embarassed above the question of whether people in Iraq or Afghanistan are killed, and George Miller professing his blind obedience to the President. The same article reports that Jackie Speier and Lynn Woolsey will vote No.

Read the Rest Here, including frequent updates

By Norman Solomon
June 8, 2009

Take Action: Tell Congress We want Healthcare NOT Warfare

It takes at least tacit faith in massive violence to believe that after three decades of horrendous violence in Afghanistan, upping the violence there will improve the situation.

Despite the pronouncements from high Washington places that the problems of Afghanistan can’t be solved by military means, 90 percent of the spending for Afghanistan in the Obama administration’s current supplemental bill is military.

Often it seems that lofty words about war hopes are boilerplate efforts to make us feel better about an endless warfare state. Oratory and punditry laud the Pentagon’s fallen as noble victims of war, while enveloping its other victims in a haze of ambiguity or virtual nonexistence.

Read the Rest Here

SIGN THE PETITION!

by Tom Hayden
The Nation.com – May 26, 2009

The most powerful grassroots organization of the peace
movement, MoveOn, remains silent as the American wars
in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan simmer or escalate.

Norman Solomon
May 21, 2009

To understand what’s up with President Obama as he escalates the war in Afghanistan, there may be no better place to look than a book published 25 years ago. “The March of Folly,” by historian Barbara Tuchman, is a chilling assessment of how very smart people in power can do very stupid things—how a war effort, ordered from on high, goes from tic to repetition compulsion to obsession—and how we, with undue deference and lethal restraint, pay our respects to the dominant moral torpor to such an extent that mass slaughter becomes normalized in our names.

What happens among policymakers is a “process of self-hypnosis,” Tuchman writes. After recounting examples from the Trojan War to the British moves against rebellious American colonists, she devotes the closing chapters of “The March of Folly” to the long arc of the U.S. war in Vietnam. The parallels with the current escalation of the war in Afghanistan are more than uncanny; they speak of deeply rooted patterns.

Free Gaza Movement boat breaking the siege of Gaza, October 2008

What happened and why? What roles have the U.S. and the media played?

What can we hope for in an Obama administration?

What can WE do?

Tuesday February 10, 2009
7:30 PM
Dance Palace, 503 B Street,
Point Reyes Station

Free Admission
Sponsored by West Marin Alliance
For more information, contact Susan at syscott@prodigy.net or 669-1745.

From the Peace & Justice Center of Sonoma County:

Tuesday, Dec. 30: 5:00pm
Candlelight vigil at Courthouse Square in Santa Rosa:
To protest the violent actions & bombing of Gaza.

Gaza is a 40km by 5km (25-mile by three-mile) ribbon of land along the south-east corner of the Mediterranean Sea, home to some 1.3 million Palestinians and 8,000 Jewish settlers (Nov. ’04 statistics). According to the media, “the fiercest attacks in the last 60 years” have been onleashed on the people of Gaza by Israel.

This is done with US sanction, and by US made bombs and jet fighters. Attention must be drawn in order to stop the bloodshed, insist on a ceasefire and return to negotiations.

A demonstration is called by Peace organizations on Dec 30th.
All people who think violence is not the answer and those who care about humanitarian issues are asked to take part.

Tell Congress to enforce the law

Gaza —The Israeli Air Force attacked the occupied Gaza Strip killing an estimated 200 or more people and injuring hundreds more, yesterday. (See video) These Israeli attacks come on top of a brutal siege of the Gaza Strip, which has created a humanitarian catastrophe of dire proportions for Gaza’s 1.5 million Palestinian residents by restricting the provision of food, fuel, medicine, electricity, and other necessities of life. A virtually unarmed and starving people, the Palestinians of Gaza have been living under an illegal blockade and lock down for the past six months.

As Bill Fletcher warned on this site less than two weeks ago, silence toward human rights abuses against the Palestinian people means the removal or elimination of a people, a stated objective of a segment of the Israeli ruling class.