The USA is showing signs of jumping over its own shadow. After more than a century of civil rights struggles, an African American will now become President! Not that long ago, it would have been inconceivable.
Perhaps an even more important chance for change is the prospect of intelligence, reason, and compassion coming to the White House. We shall overcome even the Bush legacy.

But several shadows of doubt remain to be jumped. For those of us who would like to see peace on the agenda, the outlook is not all that bright. Obama has declared his intention to increase troop levels in Afghanistan. But like Iraq, this is a war that cannot be won.
As expressed in a poster held by a young Iraqi boy, "Democracy is not to force people to follow the USA." Obama would be wise to put away the bombs, put forward constructive diplomacy, and help these people find a decent life again... their life, not an imposed US version.

It can be asked , however, whether Obama has assembled a team that is capable of jumping over shadows, considering that they've helped to create many of them. In the words of Jeremy Scahill: "The assembly of Hillary Clinton, Robert Gates, Susan Rice and Joe Biden is a kettle of hawks with a proven track record of support for the Iraq war, militaristic interventionism, neoliberal economic policies and a worldview consistent with the foreign policy arch that stretches from George HW Bush's time in office to the present." Is this what the French call "reculer pour mieux sauter"? = "stepping back for a better jump forward"? We do hope so.

Bush and the neocons are on the way out, but to find out "How these gibbering numbskulls came to dominate Washington" George Monbiot suggests we read Susan Jacoby's book “The Age of American Unreason." She writes that "Americans must recognize that we are living through an overarching crisis of memory and knowledge involving everything about the way we learn and think."

Canadian singer-songwriter Neil Young has long been an advocate for environmental issues, but more recently he has become a powerful participant in the anti-war movement with his album "Living with War" and an associated website, on which there are links to about 3000 protest songs and more than 500 protest videos

That figure above for the Cost of the War is now over $500 billion, but more than two years ago, Harvard's Linda Bilmes and Nobel-prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz determined that, after including things like medical expenses for injured troops, higher oil prices, and restocking the military, the war will cost the USA upwards of $3 trillion.

As pointed out in the Toronto Star, "...according to sources like Columbia's Jeffrey Sachs, the Worldwatch Institute, and the United Nations, with that same money the world could:
--> Eliminate extreme poverty around the world (cost $135 billion in the first year, rising to $195 billion by 2015.)
--> Achieve universal literacy (cost $5 billion a year.)
--> Immunize every child in the world against deadly diseases (cost $1.3 billion a year.)
--> Ensure developing countries have enough money to fight the AIDS epidemic (cost $15 billion per year.)
In other words, for a cost of $156.3 billion this year alone – less than a tenth of the total Iraq war budget – we could lift entire countries out of poverty, teach every person in the world to read and write, significantly reduce child mortality, while making huge leaps in the battle against AIDS, saving millions of lives."

Bush & Co. have never listened to such arguments, but the voices are getting stronger all the time. Alecia Beth Moore, that tough lady who calls herself Pink has some hard words for Bush in her song Dear Mr. President.

Driving Home
by Charles Simic, August 20, 2007

Minister of our coming doom, preaching
On the car radio, how right
Your Hell and damnation sound to me
As I travel these small, bleak roads
Thinking of the mailman’s son
The Army sent back in a sealed coffin.

His house is around the next turn.
A forlorn mutt sits in the yard
Waiting for someone to come home.
I can see the TV is on in the living room,
Canned laughter in the empty house
Like the sound of beer cans tied to a hearse.

» Previous APJ Blog articles can be found here.


Gene Sharp's 198 methods of nonviolent action are classified into three broad categories: nonviolent protest and persuasion, noncooperation (social, economic, and political), and nonviolent intervention.
As this is quoted from a 1973 book, we could now add two more to make 200:
199. E-mail
200. Websites