Bath Iron Works - one of Maine’s largest private companies, with more than 5,000 employees - recently christened the USS Stockdale, the 30th Aegis guided missile destroyer the shipyard has produced. Comments from protestors and politicians illustrate what’s so “complex” about the “military industrial complex.

Using a series of congressional slight-of-hand maneuvers, Pelosi’s plan consists of scrapping the contents of a bill that has already passed, and in its place, voting on three separate new amendments: one on funding the war, a second on a set of provisions including a non-binding “goal” of redeploying combat troops from Iraq within 18 months, and a third for funding a set of domestic economic priorities.  read more »

By Aaron Glantz
Foreign Policy in Focus
Friday 09 May 2008

Eighteen American war veterans kill themselves every day. One thousand former soldiers receiving care from the Department of Veterans Affairs attempt suicide every month. More veterans are committing suicide than are dying in combat overseas.

These are statistics that most Americans don’t know, because the Bush administration has refused to tell them. Since the start of the Iraq War, the government has tried to present it as a war without casualties.  read more »

The Economist, which calls the current crisis the silent tsunami, reports that last year wheat prices rose 77% and rice 16%, but since January rice prices have risen 141%. The reasons include rising fuel costs, weather problems, increased demand in China and India, as well as the push to create biofuels from cereal crops.  read more »

Join us for food, presentations on our 2008 programs, speakers and our Annual Peacemaker Awards

Keynote Speaker: Frida Berrigan

Frida Berrigan is Senior Program Associate of the Arms and Security Initiative at the New America Foundation. Previously, she served for eight years as Deputy Director and Senior Research Associate at the Arms Trade Resource Center at the World Policy Institute at the New School in New York City. She has also worked as a researcher at The Nation magazine.  read more »

Not long ago, Dwight Anderson welcomed reporters with open arms. He liked to entertain them with stories from the world of big money. Anderson is a New York hedge fund manager, and as recently as last October he would talk with enthusiasm about his visits to Malaysian palm-oil plantations and Brazilian grain farms. “You could clearly see how supply was getting tight,” he said.  read more »

In 2005, the Maine Legislature voted overwhelmingly to reject Real ID. In 2007, the Legislature put that resolution into statute. But now, Governor Baldacci is pushing a bill in the legislature, LD 2309, to reverse that statute (ie overturn the law), force Maine to comply with the Real ID Act and surrender our personal data and our state’s integrity to the Department of Homeland Security.

WE CANNOT LET THIS HAPPEN!

Why?

Though there are many reasons to oppose LD 2309, Peace Action Maine wants to highlight the following two points above all else:  read more »

A new study by the Washington-based Center for Defense Information (CDI) charges that, while child soldiers are often recruited and deployed by rebel groups over which the government has little control, in other cases the recruitment is being carried out by directly by governments and government-supported paramilitaries.  read more »

As the US military occupation in Iraq drags on, more and more Mainers are refusing to pay their taxes to continue the conflict. War tax refusers and their supporters have been and will be distributing flyers on “where our tax money really goes” in 20-25 Maine locations.

The Maine War Tax Funds for Life will also give several $500 grants of refused tax money to Maine, national, and international groups who are trying to counteract the harm being done by the US presence in Iraq.  read more »

There is nothing unusual about seeing military recruiting ads right now. But in Congress and the Pentagon, many people think that the new Air Force ads are less about recruiting and more about lobbying for extra money.

Some lawmakers see an Air Force push to win funds for newer equipment. And, in rare criticism from others in the military, some Pentagon officials think that the ads are meant to buck Bush administration spending priorities and to push the Air Force’s agenda.  read more »