How Elon Musk conquered Louisiana

Elon Musk just took over 130,000 acres of public land in the southern state of Louisiana.

After secret deliberations conducted behind the cover of Non-Disclosure Agreements, Governor Landry just handed SpaceX a beautiful parcel of land, a $27.5 billion tax break, and legal immunity.

Musk would not be liable for anything - rocket fuel contamination of local waters, space debris harming humans or wildlife after launch pad explosions, major air pollution and more. The taxpayers of Louisiana would have to cover the tab.

Locals say the claimed 30 rockets a day the site would launch will devastate the pristine coast, while the richest man in the world reaps the profits.  

What happened to government for and by the people? The oligarchs have taken over the nation and they can get what they want - anytime they want it.

We've all become serfs. Is this what we want?

Sunday song

Space week protest at Bath Iron Works in Maine

Keep Space for Peace Week protest at Bath Iron Works in Maine where Navy Aegis destroyers are built.

These destroyers are for offensive operations and are today deployed off the shores of China, Russia and Iran. They fire nuclear-capable Tomahawk cruise missiles and 'missile defense' interceptors - the sword and the shield.

In 2008 one of these warships fired an interceptor missile into space and destroyed an old US military satellite, in Operation Burnt Frost, proving these weapons could serve the role as an anti-satellite weapon (ASAT).

We arrived just before hundreds of workers poured out of the shipyard for their short lunch break. Two of our folks handed out flyers explaining our protest and calling for the conversion of the shipyard to building things like commuter rail, tidal power systems, and offshore wind turbines all of which would create more jobs than military production.

Currently BIW is undergoing a massive construction expansion to accommodate parking and additional workspace for over 5,000 workers. They are building 6-7 new destroyers. We are witnessing the preparation for endless war.

Bruce

BIW in Maine builds destroyers for Space Warfare

Navy Aegis destroyers built at Bath Iron Works (BIW) in Maine are outfitted with 'missile defense interceptors' and first-strike attack Tomahawk cruise missiles. So these destroyers are the Pentagon's 'sword and shield'.

These warships are currently deployed just off the coasts of Iran, Russia and China.

BIW is currently building a slew of these new destroyers as the US ramps up its aggressive war fighting capability.

In order to pay for all this expensive technology, the US government is cutting social spending, education and environmental programs.

BIW is owned by the General Dynamics Corporation. 

the funnies

Trump preparing for more Iran war; Election rigging in November?

• EU extends Ukraine military training mission mandate to 2028: Kaja Kallas announced that EU member states agreed on extending the mission for Ukraine by two years. A coordination group will be established in Kiev to study combat lessons and strengthen military education. The EU Commission President also proposed funding the modernization of two training centers in Ukraine and thanked the Netherlands for contributions that close existing financing deficits. 

• In a new revelation, the mother-in-law of Iran’s leader says Seyyed Mojtaba Khamenei was present at Imam Reza's shrine during the burial of his father, the martyred Leader Seyyed Ali Khamenei. 

• According to a recent Fox News poll, 71% of registered voters in the US believed that the Trump administration lacked “a clear strategy for ending the war with Iran,” while 60% said the US had made the wrong decision to launch military action. The poll also found that 47% of respondents believed military action against Iran would make the US less safe, while 32% said it would make the country safer.

• The US has imposed sanctions on Iran’s Rail and Automobile industry with the aim to “isolate” Iran further. USS Theodore Roosevelt departed San Diego on Sunday bound for West-Asia to replace the USS George Washington reports Al-Monitor.
• Wired: Google, SpaceX, and a host of startups are all planning to build data centers in space. But for those plans to work, they’ll need power. Lots of it. Star Catcher, a startup based in Jacksonville, Florida, aims to provide it by concentrating the sun’s energy and using lasers to beam it to satellites’ waiting solar panels. The company is preparing to launch its prototype system aboard a SpaceX rocket this week that will transmit energy to another satellite in orbit.

• RT: Over the past few months, there’s been a noticeable surge in reports regarding Germany’s interest in missiles – ranging from ballistic and cruise missiles to land- and sea-based systems. Various partners are involved in the initiative, including the US, Ukraine, Türkiye, and Israel. Berlin’s financial commitment to advancing military programs has reached unprecedented levels. The country is significantly ramping up defense spending. Between 2024 and 2025, approximately 200 new defense industry companies emerged in Germany, and another 100 have appeared since November 2025. But why is Germany showing such interest in missiles?

• CNN: The intelligence report, circulated across the US military this spring in the midst of the war with Iran, immediately set off alarm bells: A Chinese ship in the Middle East was transporting components of a nuclear weapons program. The US military swung into action with plans to intercept the vessel, according to four sources familiar with the episode. According to two of the sources, armed members of the US military were preparing to board the ship. Military planes were in the air, one of those sources and another source familiar with the incident said. It was only just before the planned operation that officials dug deeper into the report put together by a special operations command analyst and found it had been generated with the help of artificial intelligence (AI) — and that a chatbot the analyst had used inaccurately identified the material the ship was carrying. CNN was not able to learn what the misidentified cargo was. The report, according to one of the sources, was “entirely false.” But it also “almost started a war,” the source said. Any US operation against a Chinese vessel could have risked spiraling into an armed conflict between the two nations.

• 'It is impossible to defeat a country like Russia, so victory will undoubtedly be ours' - Russian President Vladimir Putin. Other statements made by the president at a meeting with the leaders of the parties that won seats in the Russian State Duma: 'Courage, bravery, and heroism have been demonstrated in Donbass and Novorossiya; It will not be possible to intimidate such people and it is impossible to defeat such people or such a country; All attempts to disrupt the election campaign and interfere in our internal affairs have completely failed; The state will provide assistance to the families of those killed in the attacks on the elections in the border regions and will award the heroes posthumously; The elections confirmed the respect Russians have for the Special Military Operation (SMO) troops.' 

• Pistol Pete Hegseth just fired the professors at West Point, the Naval Academy and the Air Force Academy. Not because they did anything wrong. Because they have job security. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth signed a memo Tuesday ending civilian tenure at all US military service academies — ordering West Point, the Naval Academy and the Air Force Academy to stop appointing civilian faculty to tenured positions immediately. Hegseth's reasoning in his own words: "Civilian academic norms dilute our focus on lethality."

• US-led military operation shifts headquarters to Jordan after Iraq withdrawal. The US-led Operation Inherent Resolve has shifted its headquarters to Jordan following the completion of the coalition’s military withdrawal from Iraq, US Central Command (CENTCOM) stated. In some ways it is merely a symbolic move at this point, given that the US is still fully entrenched in West Asia with bases throughout the region, so the occasion is really more a milestone for Iraq and its own national sovereignty, rather than a momentous geopolitical juncture.  

• Every seat in the U.S. House of Representatives and a third of U.S. Senate seats, some 470 contests in all, will be decided Nov. 3, and the War Department will help ensure foreign actors don't meddle in those elections. "As we approach this election cycle, we must prove that we can and will protect the integrity of our democratic processes from any threat," said Secretary of War Pete Hegseth. "In my role as secretary of war, the Department of War will effectively wield its capabilities to protect and uphold the reliability of America's voting mechanisms against external manipulation and disruption from foreign actors, while maintaining the fundamental freedoms that characterize our country." [I'm not worried about foreign actors. I'm worried about AIPAC, ICE, Palantir, the War Department, etc. Right now the US is fiddling in the coming elections in Brazil as it has been doing lately all over Latin America, along with Israel. If the Repubs are declared the winners in November then we know they rigged the elections which they can easily do. Bruce]

RACE/HUSTLE by Zora Murff

Days ago we visited the MASS MoCA museum in North Adams in western Massachusetts.

There were many interesting art exhibits in this huge museum which once housed the Sprague Electric Company in the mid-20th century.

My favorite display was called RACE/HUSTLE by Zora J. Murff. It included a photo of Obama (top right next to the drones) when he went to Flint, Michigan due to major water contamination there to reassure the public that the water was safe. He pretended to drink a glass of local water but people saw thru his hustle.

Here is a description in the handout.

Bruce

With Bully Pulpit and other works, Murff wants to tell people what they may not want to hear. Imperialism and white supremacy have wreaked havoc both outside and inside the US, on bodies as well as minds. Resistance through a plurality of methods is necessary, but some methods, like anti-capitalist organizing and armed resistance, are punished by the state, and others whose ideas about appropriate behavior dominate the public sphere.

RACE/HUSTLE means to nudge, surprise, or entice people toward mental transformation - through education and exposure to ideas and images, we can expand our imaginations of what liberation looks like and how to get there. While more is need to move people from the symbolic register to real, tangible organization, RACE/HUSTLE is a call looking for an answer.

In the words of Pure air: ACTION...UNITE...Commit class suicide! Against a pervasive and decades-old pessimism.

Murff proposes a revolutionary optimism articulated well by the late Assata Shakur, a US-born revolutionary who defied imprisonment and found refuge in Cuba:

"Through the lies and the sell-outs.
The mistakes and the madness.
Through pain and hunger and frustration,
We carried it on.
Carried on the tradition...
Carry it on now.
Carry it on 
TO FREEDOM!"

Pembrokeshire, Wales: We stand against the U.S. space radar

We are Pembrokeshire, Wales. And we stand against the radar.

The 'US Space Force'—one of Donald Trump's many 'big-brain genius' inventions—has proposed one of the most health-hazardous, tourism-ruining, destabilizing & offensive, skyline-blighting military installations ever proposed anywhere in the UK: a gigantic 27-dish radar network, named DARC, in the heart of our St. Davids peninsula.

The DARC radars proposed, as tall and wide as multi-storey buildings, would cumulatively produce radiation so powerful that scientific studies show the array would undoubtedly have the capacity to be unsafe for human residential habitation.

It gets worse.

The US military’s submitted scoping plans go as far as to report, specifically, that they are trying to build a radar installation that would literally tower over the very skylines of Newgale beach and Solva harbour themselves. Shocked enough yet?

It gets worse-er.

If this were not enough, a lack of clarity concerning the micro-siting and radar-to-radar distance requirements of the plans actually reveals not only that the gigantic radars would span over a staggering kilometre (10 football pitches) of space, but could even stretch over the very horizon of St Davids Airfield and the Preseli mountains itself. 

Letter to Editor: Warning to the public about costly war in space

The Journal Gazette
Friday, Sept 25, 2006

Tim Tiernon is a US  military veteran and a long time Global Network member from Ft. Wayne, Indiana.

Would you please write a similar Letter to the Editor of your local newspaper this week?

UK Activists Rally Against the Militarization of Space

There are several key US space warfare bases across the UK.

A  movement against these bases goes back many years at such bases in North Yorkshire like Menwith Hill NSA spy base and the Fylingdales space war radar.

But now new US bases are underway and older existing bases in the UK are being upgraded with new space tech.