New Internationalism

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.

What a year this has been! Some of the Occupy encampments are being shut down, but the ideas, the outrage, and the commitment of the Occupy movement remain. The words “99 percent” have entered our permanent vocabulary, and the national discourse is being transformed. In the Middle East the Arab Spring is in the process of turning a region long controlled by once-unchallengeable U.S.-backed dictators into the centerpiece of today’s global transformations. And here in the U.S., through the work of organizations like the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, we are in the midst of our own huge transformation of public discourse on the Middle East. It’s an amazing time.

A Democracy for America panel discussion of the Institute for Policy Studies report "America is Not Broke -- How to Pay for the Crisis While Making the Country More Equitable, Green, and Secure" (www.ips-dc.org) detailing 24 policy suggestions to secure $824 billion of deficit reduction every year.