Okinawans have been campaigning for years to be rid of U.S. bases, which were established at the end of World War II. These bases have been the source of noise and environmental pollution, accidents, and crime committed by U.S. soldiers, including violence against women and girls. On August 30, 2009, the patient and determined campaigning by the Japanese peace movement paid off. The Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), which promised to review the U.S.-Japan military alliance, defeated the ruling coalition that had been in power for over 50 years. Many of the newly elected representatives criticized Japanese acquiescence toward U.S. foreign policy; others resented U.S. “occupation mentality.” In response, both U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates and President Obama made hasty visits to Tokyo, invoking the importance of the alliance and pressing the new government to keep the Okinawa-Guam deal afloat. But the tide of public opinion had turned; the Japanese media branded Gates a “bully” and bridled at such “high-handed treatment.”

Christine Ahn and Gwyn Kirk, “Democracy Thwarts U.S. Base Plans” (Washington, DC: Foreign Policy In Focus, February 10, 2010)

For More See:  http://www.fpif.org/articles/democracy_thwarts_us_base_plans

 Wed April 28^th, 2010

 5pm for 5.30 Start    -    9pm Finish

Uniting Church Centre 130 Lt Collins Street Melbourne 

        Snacks, tea/ coffee & conversation                                                     5.00-5.25pm

1. Welcome  + Update on A2E Project                                                   5.30     

Larry Marshall/ Harry Kerr                                                              

1. Presentation by Professor Joseph Camilleri                                5.40       

• US Empire:  Hope, Hegemony and Obama                                                        
• Australia’s Role in engaging with  Empire        

 3.  Open Forum  -            Discussion                                                                6.10   

 4.  Panel  A   Living Ethically - Personal Stories (3  Voices)                     6.30 

• Strategies for Challenging Empire 
• Building Alternative Communities & Grassroots responses

5.   Small Groups – Three groups quiz each speaker                                7.00  

        Tea Break – Networking / Snacks and Coffee –                                       7.20 – 7.45 

6.        Panel B    Spiritual Responses to Empire –                                         7.50

            Spiritual Resources for Taking Action                         

• Prof. Chandra Muzzafar  Muslim Response (DVD Presentation)
• Rev David Pargeter – Uniting Church
• SGI -  Buddhist Responses

7.     Open Forum     Q & A                                                                             8.25 – 8.50

 8.    Concluding Remarks                                        

Russia’s General of the Army Nikolay Makarov, Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, warned that an American attack on Iran now, when the US is bogged down in two wars, might well lead to the collapse of the United States. He said that such an attack would roil the region and have negative consequences for Russia (a neighbor of Iran via the Caspian Sea).

It appears that, the International Atomic Energy Agency is at least allowing for the possibility that documents allegedly found on a laptop some years ago –but discounted by the US Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency as of dubious provenance and incompatible with other intelligence gathered in Iran — point to a nuclear weapons program that no one has been able to locate. Some close observers have concluded that the laptop documents are forgeries. A new IAEA report that declines to dismiss the alleged documents will certainly cause the war lobby in the United States to redouble its efforts to get up an attack on Iran.

Read More:  http://www.just-international.org/

We pay tribute to the late historian, writer and activist Howard Zinn who died suddenly on Wednesday of a heart attack at the age of 87. Howard Zinn’s classic work A People’s History of the United States changed the way we look at history in America. …

 http://www.commondreams.org/video/2010/01/28

 To see an animation of Howard Zinn’s People’s History of Empire go to:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Arn3lF5XSUg

The belief that people in disaster (particularly poor and nonwhite people) are cattle or animals or just crazy and untrustworthy regularly justifies spending far too much energy and far too many resources on control — the American military calls it “security” — rather than relief. A British-accented voiceover on CNN calls people sprinting to where supplies are being dumped from a helicopter a “stampede” and adds that this delivery “risks sparking chaos.” The chaos already exists, and you can’t blame it on these people desperate for food and water. Or you can, and in doing so help convince your audience that they’re unworthy and untrustworthy.

  A former member of Congress and I were talking a few years ago. We were wondering how advocates of so-called national missile defense systems manage to win appropriations each year. He said, “We opponents win on the facts of the matter. We win on policy analysis. We win on policy recommendation. But then we lose floor votes in the House and the Senate. Why?” Then he answered his own question: because advocates of the national missile defense system have the best story. People – and law makers — go with the story rather than with the facts and the analysis.

This “best story” is a narrative about threats and fear. The narrative tells people about their world and their place in it. The national-defense story – like the war-on-terror story — is a narrative of cosmological proportion. The definition of the problem runs like this: good people and bad people inhabit the world, we are the good people, and the bad people are trying to kill us. The resolution to this problem is: if we want to survive, we will have to stop the bad people from attacking us by killing them first. The story defines the problem, and the problem definition leads to the “solution.”Narratives give meaning to people’s everyday lives. Whether in politics or in houses of worship, narratives function as scripture and nurture what is essentially a religious worldview. The narrative orients individuals and groups to power, both temporal and eternal.

Today, we face another narrative about us and them. This time the categories are not communist versus anti-communist. Our world today presents the appearance of a new East-West conflict along a religious axis: a renewed conflict between Christians and Muslims. But this narrative, like the Cold War story, ignores that conflicts actually emerge from competition for resources, such as land, water, and oil. An overarching civil religion in the United States connects these two narratives and challenges us all to come up with a compelling alternative.

Read More at: http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/4732

MELBOURNE, Dec 8 (IPS) – For the global religious community, the use of nuclear arms is an overwhelmingly important ethical issue for the human family. Thus, nothing less than the immediate abolition of such weapons is needed from the highest levels, said speakers at the Parliament of the World’s Religions currently underway in this Australian city.

The Parliament, considered the world’s biggest inter-religious gathering, brings together people of various faiths to tackle issues relating to peace, diversity and sustainability. It opened on Dec. 3 and runs until Dec. 9 at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre.

Its theme, ‘Make a World of Difference: Hearing each other, Healing the earth’, reflects the urgent need for religious and civil society groups to act on crucial issues threatening the world’s survival, nuclear arms being one of them.

Considered the most significant human-made destructive force on the planet, nuclear devices pose a spiritual as well as existential threat to humanity, participants said.

“The time for us to act decisively is now,” said Dr Sue Wareham, immediate past president of the Medical Association for Prevention of War in Australia, and Australian Board Member of the international campaign to abolish Nuclear weapons (ICAN).

Noting that the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) will have its five- yearly review in May 2010, Wareham said, “Progress towards nuclear disarmament will be critical at this meeting if we are to prevent further spread of the weapons, which should no longer be seen as status symbols or legitimate military weapons, but rather they should be seen for what they are —illegal and inhumane instruments of terror

Nonviolent Resistance Is the Most Powerful Tactic Against Oppressive Regimes

On the outskirts of a desert town in the Moroccan-occupied territory of Western Sahara, about a dozen young activists are gathered. They are involved in their country’s long struggle for freedom. A group of foreigners—veterans of protracted resistance movements—is conducting a training session in the optimal use of a “weapons system” that is increasingly deployed in struggles for freedom around the world. The workshop leaders pass out Arabic translations of writings on the theory and dynamics of revolutionary struggle and lead the participants in a series of exercises designed to enhance their strategic and tactical thinking. These trainers are not veterans of guerrilla warfare, however, but of unarmed insurrections against repressive regimes. The materials they hand out are not the words of Che Guevara, but of Gene Sharp, the former Harvard scholar who has pioneered the study of strategic nonviolent action. And the weapons they advocate employing are not guns and bombs, but strikes, boycotts, mass demonstrations, tax refusal, alternative media, and refusal to obey official orders.

Read More: http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/learn-as-you-go/weapons-of-mass-democracy

The Conservative party, like New Labour, advocates the continuing deregulation of business. The Trafigura case, like the financial crisis, suggests that in business there are people ruthless enough to shut their eyes to almost anything if they think they can make money. Business without regulation is scarcely distinguishable from organised crime. Regulation without strict enforcement is an open invitation to mess with people’s lives. Tedious directives, state power and bureaucratic snooping – the interference that everyone professes to hate – are all that stand between civilisation and corporate hell.       

read more at:  http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2009/09/22/toxic-assets/

With the Copenhagen climate summit two weeks away, best-selling journalist Naomi Klein examines the grass-roots movement behind the climate debate proposal that argues all the costs associated with adapting to a more hostile ecology—everything from building stronger sea walls to switching to cleaner, more expensive technologies—are the responsibility of the countries that created the crisis. Klein also discusses the 10th anniversary of the Seattle WTO protests and the 10th anniversary of her first book, “No Logo.”

For More Read: http://www.democracynow.org/2009/11/23/naomi_klein_on_climate_debt_why