The U.S. Conference of Mayors meeting in Baltimore, June 20, unanimously approved a resolution urging a speedy end of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, safe return of U.S. troops and use of the $126 billion spent on those wars to meet domestic needs like job creation, aid to our cities, and infrastructure rebuilding. Our petition is addressed to our local mayors urging them to endorse the USCM resolution and call for a discussion of the issues it raises during a regular City Council meeting

H. Res. 333 supports the 67-year effort for justice by the American POWs of Japan who suffered untold hardships and misery in captivity and faced gag orders and poor treatment upon their return to the United States. The resolution is an enduring message to all service men and women that their country will never forsake them. These WWII veterans all in their 90s wish to see their dignity restored and memory honored before the last one passes on. The resolution thanks the Government of Japan for its apology and program of reconciliation given to the American POWs in September 2010. The resolution further encourages Japan's great companies that used these POWs as slave labor to follow the example of their government to acknowledge and apologize to the American POWs. Japanese companies that used POW slave labor include Mitsui, Mitsubishi, Sumitomo, Hitachi, Kawasaki, Showa Denko, Nippon Steel, and Nippon Sharyo. To hear the POW experience in these veterans own words see: http://www.youtube.com/user/americanpowsofjapan?feature=mhee To see H. Res. 333, please visit: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d112:h.res.333:

The only acceptable timeline for bringing our troops home is the fastest responsible withdrawal possible. The danger for the United States is not a military defeat; it is a slow bleeding of our economic vitality at a time when we can least afford it. While billions of taxpayer dollars are spent on this war, America's cities - from New York to Omaha - are facing profound economic crisis. Don't wait, end this war today.

In the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, taxpayers have been, unwittingly, thrown into another war, which serves to suck more money from our treasury and kill more innocent lives. We won't finance, morally or economically, this war for NATO. It is time for Congress, the White House and the Millitary Industrial Complex to stop this "proxy" war. Now!

How ridiculous is it that we have BILLIONS to spend on wars, and nothing but severe budget cuts for Americans.

Close three of the four military bases in Japan

We need to put pressure on the President, and congress, to lift the Embargo on Cuba, and begin to treat Cuba as a normal nation-state. The 'Cold War' is over, there is no threat to the United States from Cuba, nor are they a part of any anti-american movement. Yet, we continue to force their citizens to live in abject poverty, without any mandate from the United Nations, or any other international force, giving us the authority to do so. I have learned much about the Cuban society, through friends who have traveled there, and they have made many valueable contributions to art, music and literature, not to mention american professional athletics, despite the horrible state of affairs there, for which our embargo is chiefly to blame. The embargo expires in September of this year. We must act NOW, to ensure that the President hears our voice on this matter at the right time!

It is noted that the vast majority of the hatred for America where found tends to be due to and related to the support America gives to the existence and expansion of the Israeli state -- not to the reality of any American "freedoms." The foreign aid and national expenditures towards those ends, including conducting wars of proxy for Israel at American cost and lives, need to draw to a dramatic halt in the absence of a proper existence of both states. Israel needs to withdraw to its 1949 borders and make peace with the Palestinian peoples in return for a pledge to democracy by both states, receive secure guaranteed borders, and guarantees of access to fresh water. The United States must forewarn Israel, and to an appropriate extent the Palestinians, that it intends to decrease real support where counterproductive to America's true interests, although not necessarily denying moral support, at the rate of 10% per year for the region to the extent it does not find a way to legitimate, lasting peace -- with the possibility the end could result in zero financial and military support both directly and by proxy. This approach also is a partial way to stop otherwise unrelated regional entities from using the Palestinian-Israeli problem as a means of pursuing a dream of imposing an otherwise inappropriate intellectual, regional caliphate, except that it be arrived at by legitimate democracy thru those affected, and aside from Israel. In this view, Israel would be treated by the United States as an equal foreign partner and ally, for example, as Great Britain and France.

Close the base in Saudi Arabia that is so close to Mecca that some Muslims feel the need to defend. Create an international Gaza Strip that belongs to everyone perhaps it could be a United Nations duty free zone and the US could help with the military policing so we are still in the region. Small steps World Peace...