New Internationalism

Phyllis Bennis, author of "Calling the Shots, How Washington Dominates the UN," says the challenge with peacekeeping troops is the same problem that exists between the Security Council and the General Assembly – a contradiction between power and democracy. "The UN has no authority over those perpetrators," says Ms. Bennis, who works at the Institute for Policy Studies, a think tank in Washington, D.C. "You can ask the leadership to bring that person home and hope they are taken to trial, but there’s no way to enforce that."

"The idea of keeping these reactors going for 80 years is crazy!" declares Robert Alvarez, senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies and former senior policy advisor at the U.S, Department of Energy and a U.S. Senate senior investigator. He is also an author of the book Killing Our Own: The Disaster of America's Experience with Atomic Radiation. "To double the design life of these plants--which operate under high-pressure, high heat conditions and are subject to radiation fatigue--is an example of out-of-control hubris, of believing your own lies."

"I think the U.S. and its Western allies are desperate to figure out a strategy in Syria, and they don't have one," Phyllis Bennis, a senior research fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, a progressive think-tank in Washington, told IPS. "Athough regime change is clearly on their wish list now, it wasn't until pretty recently.

"Syria, despite its anti-imperialist rhetoric, was pretty useful for Israel. (It) kept the Golan Heights quiet. (It kept) the Israeli border relatively peaceful," although it was "a bit troublesome hosting/supporting Hamas and Hezbollah", she added.

"When you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail. When you’re a military alliance, every problem looks like it requires a military solution," argues Phyllis Bennis, an author and fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. "NATO is a giant, big hammer. The problem is, Afghanistan is not a nail, Libya is not a nail. These are political problems that need to be dealt with politically. And by empowering ... a military alliance, NATO is really serving to undermine the goal of the United Nations Charter, which speaks of the importance of regional organizations, in political terms, for nonviolent resolution of disputes, not to put such a primacy and privilege on military regional institutions that really reflect the most powerful parts of the world."

President Karzai may in fact be simply "posturing" about troop deployment, Phyllis Bennis, director of the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies told The Final Call.

“There’s a lot that we don’t know,” Phyllis Bennis, Director of the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies told The Final Call. “We do know that (Sgt. Bales) was suffering from a number of stress related issues, including multiple deployments. He was diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury in Iraq. All that’s true, and probably relevant.

Phyllis Bennis, an analyst with the progressive Institute For Policy Studies says any militarization is a bad idea.

“That regime is strongest in the military arena.  Weakest in the arena of international legitimacy, human rights, the support of the population.  So, as soon as you make it entirely a military battle, you are playing to the strengths of the regime,” said the analyst.

The NPP's ongoing research into how federal tax dollars are spent remains a powerful tool for activists and ordinary citizens, said Phyllis Bennis, a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, who met Speeter in the early 1990s when she was a keynote speaker for his group's annual dinner.

"His legacy is that people across the country working on issues from housing to health care to ending wars can all do our jobs better," Bennis said. "Greg understood far earlier than anyone else the importance of truly understanding the budget."

"The sanctions that were imposed on Cuba so any years ago were really designed to impoverish people, (but) the reality is that it never works that way," said Phyllis Bennis, director of the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington.

The Institute for Policy Studies puts the savings from overseas base closures as high as $184 billion over 10 years.