We gain rare access to a top-secret, Club Med style base in the vast Pacific which can 'see' everything that moves across a third of the globe and deep into space. But just across the lagoon lies a squalid third world.
Tomorrow I fly to Honolulu, Hawaii to speak at the International Forum on Globalization conference on People of the Asia-Pacific. I will speak on a panel called: Militarization & Resistance in the Pacific. Obviously I will talk about the Jeju Island Navy base fight but will also put that effort into the larger strategic picture of U.S. military attempts to contain China.
There will be a great batch of speakers at this event and they are paying my travel there. It should be a great experience.
I lived on the island of Oahu for 15 months in 1973-74 while in the Air Force. I spent alot of time in the water while living in Hawaii and was lucky I never drowned when body surfing in the big waves on the north shore.
Hawaii has been a U.S. military colony and a corporate agri-business plantation for many years. But the independence movement there has been strong for a long time and appears to be growing. Here is a video from the movement.
"David Swanson is a truth-teller and witness-bearer whose voice and action warrant our attention." — Cornel West.
“David Swanson has written a fascinating account of how peace once became the law of the land, through the Kellogg-Briand Pact. It is particularly pertinent in the era of the Endless War, by giving encouragement and suggestions of a path forward to those who want to give peace a chance.” — Liz Holtzman, former member of the U.S. Congress.
"David Swanson has done it again with this new book – unearthing history they don't tell you about in mainstream media." — Jeff Cohen, founder of FAIR and author of Cable News Confidential.
"David Swanson brings his laser focus, brilliant writing, and incredible intelligence to bear in this book, where he makes the case that the Kellogg-Briand Pact was a major step -- as yet unrecognized -- on the path towards eliminating war. He tells a wonderful story, shines light on the unknown peace activists who refused to be deterred by what was considered possible or reasonable, and makes a compelling analogy with slavery -- like war, a worldwide activity deemed unstoppable -- and like war, an immoral crime that must be ended. I have been active in the antiwar movement from Vietnam through Iraq. I have done political work for some of the most antiwar candidates of the modern era -- McGovern, Jackson, Nader, Kucinich. I have marched and petitioned, organized and strategized, and played a part in peace demonstrations from Las Cruces, New Mexico, to London and New York. And I am a history buff. But until I read David Swanson's book, I had never heard this story before -- and certainly never understood why it was important." — Steve Cobble, former political director of the National Rainbow Coalition, advisor to Jackson, Nader, and Kucinich presidential campaigns
“Swanson has done it again. This is a masterful account of how Americans and people around the world worked to abolish war as a legitimate act of state policy and won. Swanson’s account of the successful work of those who came before us to insist that war be outlawed compels us today to rethink the cost and morality of cynical or weary inaction in the face of our repeated resort to military threats and warfare to achieve policy goals.” — Jeff Clements, Author of Corporations Are Not People.
"David Swanson's fascinating new history of the development of the much neglected campaign in the 1920s to outlaw war has many lessons for anti-war activists today. An essential read." — Andrew Burgin, Stop the War Coalition.
"David Swanson predicates his belief that nonviolence can change the world on careful research and historical analysis. This compelling and wonderfully readable narrative examines pacifist developments in the U.S., dating back to the 1920s. Swanson then examines contemporary anti-war efforts. He writes from a particularly advantageous perspective because he is firmly rooted in plans and actions designed to put an end to war. Drawing from historical examples of success and failure, he help readers imagine achieving the U.N.’s eloquent mandate: 'to eliminate the scourge of war.'" — Kathy Kelly, Voices for Creative Nonviolence.
“From Daybreak to War Is A Lie to When the World Outlawed War to a prodigious number of essays (and that’s just since the ’08 election) David Swanson combines the timeliest scholarship and logical elegance in a call to action: ‘to learn how to enjoy working for the moral good for its own sake.’” — John Heuer, Veterans for Peace.
“One of the best ways to radicalize someone’s thinking is to force the person to look at a cherished ideal in a fundamentally new way. David Swanson does that with War, an ideal cherished by too many Americans. Can the United States ever be weaned from its love affair with war — Endless War? This book provides the background for dealing with that question.” — William Blum, author of Killing Hope, and of Freeing the World to Death.
“How many Americans know that an American peace movement in the 1920s mobilized millions of people, and eventually the U.S. government, to get the world’s major powers to formally renounce war? Or that the Kellogg-Briand Pact is still on the books making our current leaders guilty of the same crime that we hung people for at Nuremberg? It’s time for a little education! David Swanson has written a wonderfully well-documented history of a time when Americans discovered their own power to organize and impact their government on the most vital issue facing the world, then and now: the abolition of war.” — Nicolas Davies, author of Blood On Our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq.
“Polls show a large majority of U.S. citizens oppose current U.S. wars, but many Americans’ reluctance to engage in antiwar activism is in part due to their sense of impotence at having any impact on their own government. This book tells the story of how the highly energized Peace Movement in the 1920s, supported by an overwhelming majority of U.S. citizens from every level of society, was able to push politicians into something quite remarkable — the Kellogg-Briand Pact and the renunciation of war as an instrument of national policy. The 1920s War Outlawry movement was so popular that most politicians could not afford to oppose it. If any one piece of American history can re-energize the American people to again push their politicians, then this book can do it.” — Bruce E. Levine, author of Get Up, Stand Up: Uniting Populists, Energizing the Defeated, and Battling the Corporate Elite.
“‘Ahhh, peace, that would be so nice,’ an Afghan grandmother whispered after recounting how 30 years of war had devastated her family. The world community has failed her miserably, as it has failed so many millions from the Congo to Iraq to Sri Lanka. But David Swanson’s book gives us a glimpse of another possible reality, a world that says no to war. By recounting the heroic efforts of a generation in the 1920s that actually did pass a treaty banning war, Swanson invites us to dream, to scheme and most important, to take action.” — Medea Benjamin, cofounder of CODEPINK.
“David Swanson is on a mission to end war. In his latest book he brings to life an important story about a time when a national peace movement raged across our nation. The media covered this movement, and members of Congress were active participants. Through this movement a treaty was signed that outlawed war. Sadly today few know about this significant moment in our history, but Swanson’s book will help change that.” — Bruce K. Gagnon, Coordinator, Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space.
The older woman in the video is long time Global Network member Carole Abrahams in New York City. She has been giving support to the Occupy Wall Street movement from the start. During Keep Space for Peace Week she did her best to educate those in the park about our annual week of protest to demilitarize space.
Knowing Carole I'd bet she has been bringing them abundant amounts of food donated from local shops.
Click on photos for better viewIt was a good day yesterday for the Occupy movement in Maine.
We had our first such event in Brunswick when about 75 people (half of whom were new to local protests) gathered on the town green and marched to the Bank of America on Maine Street. We stayed in front of the bank for 45 minutes as the cars streamed by along the busy street - many of them honking. We chanted and heard some words from a young man from Occupy Portland as a van load of them had come north for our event on their way to Augusta.
When we first gathered in a circle on the green several people made statements. I told folks about Bank Transfer Day (Nov 5) which was a national day to move your $$$ from the big banks to local credit unions and small community banks. The Credit Union National Association (CUNA) reports that over 650,000 people have joined credit unions in the last four weeks. In 2010 only 600,000 moved their accounts into credit unions all year long so this is an astounding response to the call to pull our meager resources out of the mega-banks.
“Our struggling economy is not the disease, it’s the symptom,” says CUNA. ”There is mounting evidence to prove that big banks, with their profit-at-all-costs agenda, are actually making our collective disease worse by systematically making choices that undermine the efforts of regulators and ordinary people like us to make changes and get back to a state of health.”
Following this event I grabbed the big banner that we used (made by Maine artist Natasha Mayers) and drove north to Augusta to join the protest at the state capital planned by Occupy Augusta. When I arrived young occupiers were banging on a large drum on the steps leading up to the capital building and people lined both sides of the street with signs. We stood in vigil for about an hour before marching to the federal building and back.
The Occupy Augusta camp is in a lovely park along the Kennebec River just across the street from the capital. They have port-a-toilets and a large iron wood stove for cooking. Work was being done while we were there to winterize their tents. One terrific thing they did was to acquire two of those very large "big top" tents and have their small camping tents inside the big tents which will do much to protect them from the wind, cold, and snow that will soon be coming.
The question on everyone's mind is how long this Occupy movement will last? No one has a clue but I met a man at the protest yesterday in Augusta who is 55 years old and was recently laid off from his carpentry job after 16 years. He can't find more work. You add to that the legions of young people who have no future, many of them are saddled with massive college loans to repay, and you've got the ingredients for a long-lasting movement. People have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
In the meantime I saw much of the key leadership of Maine's peace movement in Augusta yesterday. There is a clear understanding amongst these folks that we have to be there supporting this effort. Earlier in the day in Brunswick, peace activist Karen Wainberg told the crowd at the concluding circle that this anti-corporate "Occupy" movement incorporates all our movements that have been working separately for so many years. She was exactly right and we all need to do all we can to keep connecting the dots and throwing logs onto the fire to keep this thing blazing.
Republican presidential hopeful Herman Cain went before a friendly audience of conservatives on Friday and pitched his trademark economic plan, eager to leave accusations of sexual harassment behind.
Cain has been working for the right-wing Koch brothers for several years essentially as a high-paid pitchman where he promoted their ideas of corporate economic domination. His campaign has become an extension of the Koch empire's public relations message.
German Air Force Unveils Powerful Spy Plane SPIEGEL
On Wednesday, the German air force unveiled the latest addition to its fleet: the "Euro Hawk," a state-of-the-art spy drone. The reconnaissance aircraft can fly non-stop for 30 hours in the stratosphere without having to refuel and its on-board sensors can penetrate clouds and sandstorms.
After 10 years of planning and development, the Bundeswehr on Wednesday publicly unveiled its most recent acquisition of next-generation reconnaissance technology: a powerful new drone designed to bolster its surveillance capabilities on the battle field. The deployment in 2012 of the "Euro Hawk" is expected to launch a new era for Germany's armed forces.
The unmanned drone is similar to the spy plane introduced a decade ago in the United States military, the "Global Hawk," but with European modifications, Lieutenant Colonel Holger Neumann, a Luftwaffe spokesman, told SPIEGEL ONLINE. Both models are strictly used for surveillance purposes.
Although their plane may look like a clone of its American counterpart and includes much of the same technology, defense contractor Cassidian, a subsidiary of the European aerospace giant EADS, is equipping the aircraft with German-engineered sensors and surveillance equipment before delivering the final Euro Hawks to the Bundeswehr.
The drone will be able detect potential targets on the ground while simultaneously eavesdropping on wireless communications from cruising altitudes of up to 60,000 feet (18,288 meters) -- well above that of any commercial airliners, which generally fly at 30,000-40,000 feet. It is also designed to eavesdrop on telephone calls and text messages and to pick up radio and TV signals, among other data. That information is then transmitted in real-time to a control center on the ground in Germany. The on-board sensors are powerful enough to penetrate heavy cloud covering and sandstorms to capture signals.
A 'Vacuum Cleaner for Information'
Some have dubbed the machine a "huge vacuum cleaner for information," while others, like Rüdiger Knöpfel, the director of the German military's Euro Hawk program at the Federal Office for Defense Technology and Procurement, called the move a "milestone" in the history of the country's armed forces. The Euro Hawk is expected to far surpass the capabilities of Germany's existing unmanned aircraft. Reconnaissance is a core challenge for armed forces, Knöpfel said, and "currently we are deaf when it comes to electronic reconnaissance." That could change with the deployment of Euro Hawk.
The drone's technical details alone are impressive. The unmanned aircraft weighs 15 tons and is built of carbon fiber. It is 14.5 meters long and has a wing span of around 40 meters (131 feet). It can travel up to 25,000 kilometers non-stop, meaning it could fly from Berlin to Tokyo and back without having to land. But that's only one example. The drone's real future area of deployment is likely to be in war and crisis regions like Afghanistan, where the Bundeswehr is deployed.
Although the aircraft components for the first prototype were officially completed in 2009, the Euro Hawk didn't take off for its maiden journey until June 29, 2010. It was produced in California by Northrop Grumman, the American contractor that manufactures the drone and has created a joint venture with EADS to build the European version. Finally, on July 21, 2001, a prototype of the machine landed at the Luftwaffe air force base in Manching, Germany, after flying more than 10,000 kilometers (6,213 miles) in a 24 hour-long "hand-off" flight, during which American and German operators observed the drone's progress from ground control installations in their respective countries.
By next summer, the Luftwaffe is expected to begin operations with the drone as it carries out reconnaissance missions. Eleven German pilots have already received training in the United States. In total, the Bundeswehr plans to acquire a fleet of five Euro Hawks.
Political uncertainty in crisis hit Greece is dominating the G20 meeting in France. Away from the actual summit, anti-G20 marches have been held across the French Riviera.
I've watched some video of the Black Block anarchists (or was it Masked Agent Provocateurs) smashing and spray painting windows in Oakland yesterday. In the video you could see some of the Occupy folks trying to stop the violence. It's now been proven that in several cities across the U.S. the police have been placing provocateurs into the Occupy encampments so it wouldn't surprise me in the least if this was also happening in Oakland as well - especially after the police took a public relations beating for their warlike raid on the Occupy Oakland encampment last week.
Here in Maine Occupy efforts are underway in Portland, Augusta, and Bangor. There will be a march on Saturday in Augusta (the state capital) and I plan to go. It begins at 2:00 pm. At 10:00 am that same morning in nearby Brunswick an Occupy solidarity event will be held that will include a protest outside of the local office of Bank of America.
I worked outside in the garden again for five hours today. We have two dozen raised garden beds and I turned the soil in each one and then was able to spread fresh soil that we made in our compost bins into each of the beds. Then I raked up a bunch of maple leaves that refilled the compost bins to begin the process all over again. During this time I was continually finding more fallen twigs from our recent storm which I picked up and put into big barrels that we keep in our shed for kindling. We go through alot of kindling in the course of the winter and that is one job I take very seriously.
Plastic trash has made its way to the Pacific Ocean and its collected in massive amounts out in the middle of a 10 million square mile area known as the Pacific Gyre (pronounced G-I-R-E) which is also known as "The Great Pacific Garbage Patch". The Gyre is a large clockwise spinning vortex that basically sucks everything into itself and because plastic is not biodegradable and cannot be broken down naturally it will just continue to circle the Gyre for decades maybe even centuries. This plastic soup is wreaking unimaginable havoc on the area's ecosystems.
More than 1 million sea birds die from ingesting the plastic thinking that it's food. Turtles are choking on plastic shopping bags, which look amazingly like jelly fish, the main prey of turtles. The answer to stopping this madness is to STOP USING SO MUCH FUCKIN' PLASTIC. And for the plastic that you do use, try to recycle it or better yet, REUSE it!
Charles and David Koch are each worth about $25 billion, which makes them the fourth richest Americans. When you combine their fortunes, they are the third wealthiest people in the world. Radical libertarians who use their money to oppose government and virtually all regulation as interference with the free market, the Kochs are in a class of their own as players on the American political stage. Their web of influence in the US stretches from state capitals to the halls of congress in Washington DC.
Below is the proposal for a General Strike passed by the Occupy Oakland [California] General Assembly on Wednesday October 26, 2011 in reclaimed Oscar Grant Plaza. 1607 people voted. 1484 voted in favor of the resolution, 77 abstained and 46 voted against it, passing the proposal at 96.9%. The General Assembly operates on a modified consensus process that passes proposals with 90% in favor and with abstaining votes removed from the final count.
PROPOSAL:
We as fellow occupiers of Oscar Grant Plaza propose that on Wednesday November 2, 2011 we liberate Oakland and shut down the 1%.
We propose a city wide general strike and we propose we invite all students to walk out of school. Instead of workers going to work and students going to school, the people will converge on downtown Oakland to shut down the city.
All banks and corporations should close down for the day or we will march on them.
While we are calling for a general strike, we are also calling for much more. People who organize out of their neighborhoods, schools, community organizations, affinity groups, workplaces and families are encouraged to self organize in a way that allows them to participate in shutting down the city in whatever manner they are comfortable with and capable of.
The whole world is watching Oakland. Let’s show them what is possible.
Department of War and weapons industry working together (with mainstream media) to create fear about losing massive numbers of jobs if Pentagon budget gets cut.
Truth is we'd get more jobs if we put that war $$ into building rail systems, health care, education, home weatherization or any other category.
Cut the Pentagon budget and raise taxes on the rich = better economy, we maintain social progress and create more jobs.
NATO ended its bombing campaign in Libya on Monday. Over the past seven months, NATO aircraft conducted more than 26,500 sorties, including 9,700 strike missions. NATO said it bombed 5,900 military targets inside the country. While NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen hailed the campaign as a success, many analysts say NATO’s intensive bombing campaign violated its U.N. mandate. "The role that NATO played in Libya has been a very, very problematic one, a very troubled one, and ultimately is going to have a very long-term, deleterious impact on Libya’s future," says Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies.
"The notion that the NATO bombings somehow was to do nothing but protect civilians is simply not the case." Bennis said the Libyan revolution began as part of the Arab Spring, but the NATO intervention turned it into a "Western assault on another North African, Middle Eastern, Arab country." She also expresses alarm over the rising U.S. military presence in Africa. "Despite efforts to claim that AFRICOM [U.S. Africa Command] is really about healthcare and AIDS education and women’s rights, to be carried out by the U.S. military, we have a very serious reality that Africa now provides more oil to the United States than the entire Middle East."
Tomorrow I fly to Honolulu, Hawaii to speak at the International Forum on Globalization conference on People of the Asia-Pacific. I will speak on a panel called: Militarization & Resistance in the Pacific. Obviously I will talk about the Jeju Island Navy base fight but will also put that effort into the larger strategic picture of U.S. military attempts to contain China.
Click on photos for better view
It was a good day yesterday for the Occupy movement in Maine.
