TALKING EMPIRE OF ARROGANCE, SURVEILLANCE, AND CORPORATE WAR

• About 25 of us were in the Bath, Maine July 4 parade yesterday with a theme of drone and NSA surveillance.  It was alot of fun and at our pot luck picnic afterward folks felt real good about the response we got from the approximately 10,000 along the parade route.  I was inside the big puppet near the back so it was hard to gauge the reactions.  In spite of the fact that it was hotter than hell and I was dripping wet with sweat (yes it felt like Florida) I had alot of fun.  Thanks to all who joined with us.

• In recent days I can't get over the outrageous move by the US and some of its European allies to "hijack" the presidential air flight of Evo Morales from Bolivia.  Journalist John Pilger has a great piece in the UK Guardian about it which I highly recommend.  He writes, "Germany's Der Spiegel has described the Obama administration as 'soft totalitarianism'. If the penny is falling, we might all look closer to home."  See the piece here

• Edward Snowden might be on his way to Iceland if he can get there.  They way things are going the Obama team just might shoot any plane carrying him out of the sky....."for the greater good" they'd say afterward.  Nothing surprises me any more from Obama.  A bigger sellout in US history has never sullied the halls of our government.

• My next trip comes soon.  On July 10 I head to Kauai, Hawaii to meet with the peace group on that island.  On Kauai the naval version of the Pentagon's "missile defense" (MD) system launches dummy 'nuclear weapons' and Aegis destroyers outfitted with interceptors are parked offshore.  They then try to intercept the dummy missiles.  These Navy Aegis MD systems are the ones Obama is using to help surround Russia (by sending them into Mediterranean, Baltic, Black, Bering, and Barents Seas) and China (East China and Yellow Seas).  From Kauai I'll then head to the Philippines for an international conference called A Conference on U.S. Strategic Pivot to Asia Pacific, U.S. Militarism, Intervention and War.  I'll stay for a couple days afterwards and do some speaking around Manila.  From there I head to Australia where Global Network board member Dr. Hannah Middleton and others have organized a three-city speaking tour for me.  I'll go to Darwin in the north where Obama has announced the basing of more than 1,500 Marines.  (We've got to protect Australia from something, not sure what?).  Then I go to Sydney and Melbourne.  It will be a three-week trip altogether.  I hope to show and distribute The Ghosts of Jeju at each stop.