Advent vigils at Bath Iron Works

 

On Saturday I joined the Advent season vigil at Bath Iron Works in Maine.  The vigils will be held every Saturday with the upcoming ones on December 7, 14, and 21. They begin at 11:30 am for an hour.

We stand with signs and banners in front of the General Dynamics administration building and then walk down to one of the gates where the workers pour out at noon. Flyers are offered to the workers and some take them. Many pick-up trucks and cars crawl past us so we usually have a captive audience.

In recent years we have seen the BIW work force become increasingly younger. They've not had the many years experience of seeing our regular BIW protests like the past group of workers had. 

The Navy shipyard builds Aegis destroyers that these days are operating in the Red Sea in support of Israel's genocide in Palestine. The destroyers continually fire Tomahawk cruise missiles into Yemen in an attempt to degrade its missile launch capability. So far it appears the US has had minimal success. The US fires very expensive missiles while Yemen responds with quite cheap weapons.

The destroyers made at BIW are also now appearing in the Black Sea, Baltic Sea and the Barents Sea as they attempt to encircle and provoke Russia. In addition Washington is also sending these warships along China's vast coastline and frequently through the Taiwan Straits in provocative moves toward Beijing.

In the photo above note the listing of all US military service branches - which now include the Space Force. Just below the banner you can catch a glimpse of one Aegis destroyer being built. General Dynamics (which owns BIW) is now working on 6-7 destroyers at the shipyard.

Bruce

Sunday song

 

Free Imran Khan - stop killing his peaceful supporters!

 

Supporters of imprisoned former Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan announced a “temporary suspension” of street protests in Pakistan’s capital on Wednesday after a midnight raid by the country’s security forces, according to media reports.

The protest was called by Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, and thousands of his supporters marched on Islamabad starting on Sunday to demand his release.

Khan, 71, who is currently imprisoned on corruption charges, was ousted in April 2022. He has since faced more than 150 indictments, which his party has denounced as politically motivated.

Khan, who is currently detained in the Adiala jail in Rawalpindi, was initially charged under anti-terrorism laws, then on corruption charges, then for improperly receiving gifts from foreign countries, then for revealing state secrets, and finally for violating Islamic law with his marriage.

The former prime minister had accused the Pakistani military and the United States of plotting his ouster, claiming that Washington had conspired to overthrow his government after he visited Russia.

The PTI, which claims to have won the popular vote in the February election but maintains that Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and the military rigged the count to stay in power, reportedly stated on Wednesday that it would soon announce its future course of action.

The Pakistan junta is scared of what Trump may do. 

After the Islamabad massacre where over 100 peaceful protesters were shot, they're washing the streets and stealing the bodies to conceal the numbers and evidence. 

And love for the Pakistan army is replaced by hate.

Free Imran Khan, the overwhelmingly elected prime minister by the people of Pakistan!

Unresolved conflict since the end of WW2

 

Strategic Culture Foundation

An American deep state coup, then and now

A couple of observations are notable. November 22 marks the date 61 years ago when an American president, JFK, was murdered by the U.S. deep state. A coup d’état was executed very much for the objective of keeping the Cold War going with the Soviet Union because of the vested economic interests of U.S. militarism and the military-industrial complex.

All these years later, the U.S. deep state is attempting another coup against the democratic wishes of the American people for a peaceful end to the proxy war in Ukraine. The U.S. ruling elite want the war against Russia to persist in maintaining their lucrative profits and for existential reasons of empire. Joe Biden is a brain-dead president who is signing orders pushed in front of him by deep-state operatives like Tony Blinken and Jake Sullivan just before he wanders off to a retirement home – or into the Amazon jungle à la the hilarious photo-op at the G20 summit in Brazil this week.

Ukraine proxy war back to Nazi Germany

This long perspective also puts the Ukraine proxy war into a proper, wider historical context. The conflict in Ukraine did not start in February 2022. It did not even start with the CIA-backed coup in Kiev against an elected president in February 2014. It did not even start with the U.S.-financed Orange Revolution in Ukraine in 2004. This conflict goes back at least to the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in 1945 when the United States and its imperialist allies immediately responded by creating the Cold War with its newly forged imperialist instrument known as NATO, in part by deploying Ukrainian fascist collaborators to covertly attack Russia. After World War Two, the CIA and Nazi remnants like spymaster Major General Reinhard Gehlen were united in purpose along with the British MI6 to defeat the Soviet Union. What is transpiring today in Ukraine is the culmination of a systematic conflict, essentially about projecting and maintaining Western imperial power.

The emergence of Russia, China, the BRICS, and the Global South has amplified Western imperial angst and diehard hostility to preserve global power and privilege. The latter hegemonic Western system is the epitome of fascism and neocolonialism.

Historical nemesis

There is a profound historical nemesis at this juncture. Will the U.S. imperial aggressor and its NATO front go down in defeat, or will it push the world to a final global war?

Russia is not bluffing. It won’t back down because of the historical sacrifices it has made already to defeat fascist tyranny – 27 to 30 million [Soviet] dead in World War Two alone. The Russian nation’s pain and suffering from imperialist aggression make it defiant and resolute in a way that the Western regimes could never comprehend or emulate.

Will sanity prevail? The American and European people have onerous obligations to hold their criminal elite rulers accountable.

History lesson: Convert BIW news conference

 

June 21, 2019 News Conference organized by our Bath Iron Works navy shipyard conversion project team here in Maine.

The event was held at the public library in Portland. 

Great speakers including Maine Penobscot tribal Chief Barry Dana.

Latest Space Alert newsletter now online

 

Our latest Global Network Space Alert newsletter is now at the printer.   You can find it online at our web site here   This war-time edition features articles and writers from around the globe talking about Palestine (including how space tech aids the attacks on Gaza and Lebanon), US-NATO's proxy war on Russia using Ukraine as the blunt instrument, the US pulling Japan and South Korea into the planned western war on China, the implications of an increasingly contested & congested Lower Earth Orbit (LEO), finding our ecological niche on our Mother Earth, our two-page spread called Odds & Ends, and of course our usual 'funnies' cartoon section.    Find all Global Network social media links here

Hurricane victims don't matter to Washington

 

U.S. can't afford endless war$ and helping hurricane victims.

Simple as that.

Washington has its priorities and the American people are at the bottom of the list. 

Thank goodness for the many volunteers and donations that help a bit - but still no ultimate replacement for federal assistance.

Latest GN podcast about spaceports with UK PhD student Daniel Walsh

 

Here is our latest Space Alert podcast with an impressive young man Daniel Walsh from the UK.

 

His PhD research is taking a critical look at the development of spaceports around the world. In particular he's looking at the impacts of these spaceports on indigenous communities and the environment.

 

During this interview we talked about many spaceports (old or now under consideration) including in Texas, New Mexico, California, Florida, Maine, Alaska, Scotland, New Zealand, Brazil, Sweden, Indonesia, Kenya, Russia, and more.

Daniel also spoke eloquently about the venture capitalists 'financialization of outer space'.

 

The GN has previously put videos about some of these spaceports in our YouTube library here

 

Two of them in particular are:

 

Kodiak Island, Alaska here

 

Rocket Lab, New Zealand here

Will the ceasefire hold?

 

Will this ceasefire hold?

Is the US-Israel hoping to pit the right-wing Lebanese military against Hezbollah?

Is Israel just using this ceasefire to rest their worn out troops and re-supply their military with more US-EU weapons?

Will Israel use this time to double-down on the genocide in Palestine?

Ray Davies on Thanksgiving

 

Thanksgiving history lesson: 'The Rock is a Crock'

 

Located near the Plymouth Rock monument

Our dinner stop on Thursday evening

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2011 

(One day's blog during the Peace Walk for a New Spring led by Nipponzan Myohoji Buddhists from Leverett, Massachusetts)

We had lunch at a church in Plymouth, Massachusetts today. We walked through a torrential downpour and winds that approached 30 mph. When we arrived we walked down near the water to the spot where the pilgrims landed in 1620. The legend is that when they got off their boat they prayed at a huge rock that today has a big-pillared shrine around it. During the lunch one man, a former Navy submarine captain and now a member of Veterans for Peace, told us that the "rock is a crock". For those of you not familiar with that expression - crock means a pile of shit. The story was made up to build the mystique about the pilgrims.

By the time we got to the church in Plymouth my waterproof shoes were full of water and my socks were dripping wet. My waterproof pants were wet inside and my long underwear were wet. I changed and stuffed my shoes with paper to help dry them out. After lunch we walked about five more miles in the rain to a church in Duxbury and by the time we got here I had even more water in my shoes and my leather gloves were full of water. Some cars would slow down as they approached us along the road knowing that the huge water puddles alongside the road would splash us if they drove fast. But some cars and trucks plowed right into the puddles sending a stream of water onto our already wet bodies as we walked down the road. I spent alot of time trying to work out in my mind how people could be so cruel. Anyone who has been driving for more than one week knows what happens when you zoom thru standing water on a street.

Last night we slept on the floor in the home of a woman named Mother Bear who is a Wampanoag leader on Cape Cod. We first met her at the Old Indian Meeting House in Mashpee which has recently been renovated. This simple church is a living testimony of the native people's effort to keep their culture intact through all the years of adversity. Mother Bear served us one of the best clam chowder suppers I've ever eaten.

Her home is like an Indian museum. When you walk in the door weaved baskets hang from the ceiling and photos of Wampanoag people in traditional dress are all over the walls in virtually every room. A bear skin rug, with the head attached, was sitting on a chair and a large animal hide hung over the fireplace with Mother Bear's family tree etched into the smooth side.

On the wall in the dining room was a large map (1877) of the town of Mashpee and if you looked carefully you could see the town divided into 60 acre plots with the names of natives in each of the plots. Mother Bear told us that the land was given to each member of the tribe so they could have a community where their culture could be preserved. But then the state of Massachusetts mandated that they form an official town charter which required them to begin collecting property taxes. Most of the Indians could not pay the taxes and over time they lost their lands as white people bought up the tracts. At one time the Wampanoag controlled all the elected offices in Mashpee but now that is all gone as the dominant white population has taken over the town and built condos and shopping centers.

These same kinds of things happened on Indian reservations throughout the country as the whites always found a way to take lands set aside for the native people.

I did not know the story about Plymouth rock being a phony until today but it did not surprise to me at all. So much of our history in this country is illusion and public relations. This is just one more important example. 

 

Bruce