Visit to Lubec & Campobello Island

Gull Rock in Hancock, Maine

Tidal Falls in Hancock

Wharf at Compobello Island

Campobello Island

Light house on Campobello

FDR's summer cottage on Campobello

Fishing boats in Lubec near our hotel room

MB and I have taken a week off and gone north in Maine. We first stopped for two nights at the home of dear friends Russell & Akemi Wray in Hancock. Akemi has a pottery studio called Gull Rock - a spectacular place right on the water. Russell creates amazing art work and sculpture.  

Russell took me for a long electric bike ride that led to the Tidal Falls near his home (pictured above). He and Akemi are great activists who MB and I have been working with since we moved to Maine in 2003. Russell came on many of the peace walks I organized up and down the state over the years.

We then drove to Lubec which has the eastern most point of the US at Quoddey Head State Park just outside of town.

Today we drove from Lubec over the FDR bridge to Campobello Island and the Roosevelt Campobello Int'l Park which is jointly run by the US and Canada. This beautiful location was the summer home of former US president Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR). We took the tour of FDR's summer cottage on the island. Every year during his youth and early adulthood FDR spent summers on Campobello. 

During the tour the guide was talking about FDR's grandfather Warren Delano Jr. who made a fortune, lost it, and remade another during his life. FDR's mother inherited the fortune and used the money to help pave the way for FDR to become Governor of New York and president.  In front of the group on the tour with us I asked the guide, 'How did FDR's grandfather make his fortune'? She whispered to me 'the China opium trade'. Then she paused and repeated the same answer loud enough for everyone on the tour to hear. No one appeared to react.

I knew this story about FDR's family fortune coming from the importation of opium from India to China, and getting generations of Chinese addicted to opium, because I read a riveting book entitled The China Mirage: The Hidden History of American Disaster in Asia.  This so-called 'trade' led to the Opium Wars between China and the western powers during the mid-19th Century. 

As it turns out former US Sen. John Kerry's (D-MA) maternal great-grandfather also made his Boston-based fortune via the same opium trade. The funds from this illicit drug biz funded the founding of Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Columbia universities as well as the first transcontinental railroad across the US. So it is instructive to reflect on the fact that leading American 'blue-blood' political families were crooks - drug dealers. Thus I don't have any trouble thinking of the ruling elites (including the slave traders from many of these same families) as scum. 

This of course is a little known story in our country. This opium trade was sold to the American people 'innocently' as just the 'China trade'. (Think nice art, dishes, silk and such.)

Tomorrow we'll go for a hike at Quoddy Head State Park. We've been there once before and love this place. It's quiet here now in Lubec as autumn has come and the masses of summer tourists have returned home. It's the time of year I most enjoy visiting such places. We have to search hard for restaurants that are still open but that is part of the charm of this wonderful community.

Bruce 

Operation Paperclip: Eisenhower, the CIA & NASA

 

Was Dwight D. Eisenhower a peace-loving president or a master manipulator? 

In this eye-opening episode, we uncover the shocking truth behind Eisenhower's presidency, from his secret deals with Nazi scientists to the rise of the CIA and the military-industrial complex. 

Prepare to question everything you thought you knew about American history.

Be sure to read this amazing book:  The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Power by David Talbot 👉 Click here 

Cubans turn out for Palestine

 

President Miguel Diaz-Canel led thousands of Cubans in a march through Havana to express solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza. 

"Israel has adopted a totally irrational, imperialist and genocidal behaviour that forces us to continue to express our rejection and condemnation of what is happening in the Palestinian territories," said a protester. 

The demonstrators, including around 250 Palestinian medical students living in Cuba, carried a large banner that read "Long live free Palestine". President Diaz-Canel was also among those wearing the Palestinian keffiyeh.

Open letter from Brian Eno & Yanis Varoufakis to the judges of ICC

ICC is located in The Hague, Netherlands

 pressenza

On October 7, Brian Eno and Yanis Varoufakis appealed to the International Criminal Court to do its duty. To uphold international law by prosecuting self-evident war crimes in Israel-Palestine, lest genocide becomes normalised across the world.

Dear judges of the International Criminal Court,

When we heard in January that the Court on which you sit had decided to hear the case concerning the situation in Israel-Palestine, we were encouraged. Humanity needs an International Criminal Court that upholds the rule of law and is prepared to investigate the most serious allegations of violations of international law.  

Today, on 7 October 2024, exactly one year after the start of the latest and most brutal phase of the 76-year-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict, we feel the need to address you directly. Not only because of the increasing cruelty of what is happening west of the Jordan River, but also because of the dangerous precedent that would be set if a state could operate so far outside the international consensus of acceptable behaviour in times of conflict. Unless such violations are sanctioned by a court such as yours, states will carry out war crimes with greater impunity in the future. 

For it is now beyond dispute: Israel’s Government has set out to eliminate systematically every aspect of Palestinian life in Gaza. We have already seen: 

• The most intensive bombing of a densely populated urban area in living memory
• The most deliberate starvation of a population since the Second World War
• The systematic destruction of health facilities
• An unprecedented number of journalists and UN personnel killed

The Israeli government has attacked schools, universities, libraries, archives, cultural centres, heritage sites, mosques and churches. Professors and teachers have been killed, along with their students and often their entire families. Meanwhile, under the cover of the Gaza conflict, Israeli settlers, protected by IDF soldiers, are evicting Palestinians from their ancestral homeland in direct violation of every principle of international law. 

These are not merely violations by a government. The international community has no reason to expect that a change of government will bring the Israeli state back into the fold of international law. 

On 19 July 2024 the International Court of Justice ruled as unlawful Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. Five days later, the Israeli Knesset voted 65-9 to ignore the ICJ ruling and provocatively described the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem as part of “the Land of Israel”. To prove further its contempt for international law and the institutions humanity created after the Second World War to support it, last Wednesday Israel’s government banned UN Secretary General Guterres from entering the country. 

So here is the question: When can we expect indictments from your Court? 

Today is the anniversary of the beginning of the bleakest chapter of a tragedy that our generation will be answerable for, to future generations. Today humanity needs more than ever a court like yours, where impartial legal minds from around the world can reach consensus on standards of legal conduct in war and its aftermath. Your role is vital, and we implore you to act immediately. 

Thank you,

Brian Eno and Yanis Varoufakis

~ Brian Eno is a British producer, composer, keyboardist, and singer who helped define and reinvent the sound of some of the most popular bands of the 1980s and ’90s and who created the genre of ambient music.
~ Yanis Varoufakis grew up during the Greek dictatorship of 1967-1974. He later became an economics professor and was briefly Greek finance minister in 2015.

Protest 'Maine Space Conference' @ Portland Oct 24

 

 

Join us to protest militarization of space
Thursday, Oct 24
11:00 am to 1:00 pm

Holiday Inn By the Bay
88 Spring St Portland, Maine

 

Thursday, October 24 will mark the second year we've protested outside of the 'Maine Space Industry Conference' where they are pushing to turn our state into a space weapons production and launch site.

 

Current projects in Maine by the aerospace industry include testing hypersonic missiles at the former Loring AFB near Limestone and Caribou.

 

In addition bluShift Aerospace (based in Brunswick at the former naval air station) is being funded by NASA and the US Space Force to build mini-satellites and launch them near Acadia National Park. The plan is to fill up Lower Earth Orbit (LEO) with as many US-NATO satellites ASAP that would be used for military purposes (dual use). 

 

The Space Force is supporting many launch companies around the globe to fill LEO up before China and Russia can put more satellites into space. 

 

Since all warfare on Earth is now coordinated by space tech there is military advantage to take control of LEO and deny its use to others.

 

Most Mainers know little about our state's growing role to turn space into the next war zone. Big $$$$ is being dangled before the eyes of Maine political leaders. 

 

We've heard it all before. Lots of jobs, no enviro impacts, and the adventure of exploring space.

 

Help us tell the aerospace industry they are not wanted in Maine.

'This panel below will explore the evolving landscape of space security, focusing on defining acts of aggression and violations of international law in outer space. Discussions will cover national defense policies, including the role of cyberspace, and address contested strategies in space and the Arctic'.

~ Photos are from last year's protest at the Maine Space Conference

What gives the U.S. the right to lecture other nations on morality?

 

Journalist Liam Cosgrove confronts State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller on US foreign policy during the daily press.