LETTER FROM OKINAWA

Yesterday in the mail I received a letter from Susumu Inamine, the Mayor of Nago City on Okinawa.  I was one of the signers of a January letter of US activists and intellectuals who declared our opposition to the relocation of a US Marine base at Futenma to another part of the island at Henoko in Nago City.

The letter was widely printed, along with our photos, in major Okinawan newspapers.  Mayor Inamine wrote that on January 19 he was reelected in Nago City "holding fast to my previous campaign promise not to allow the construction of a new military base either on sea or land.... in Nago City.  This reflects the collective will of the people of Nago City who have been at the mercy of the Futenma relocation issue for the past 18 years."

Mayor Inamine also wrote, “Soon after the city’s mayoral election, however, the Japanese government declared that they would go ahead with the relocation to Henoko as planned regardless of the result of the election… For these reasons, I think it is necessary for me to visit the US to issue a direct appeal to the US government and citizens over our opposition to the relocation of Marine base Futenma to Henoko.”

I've seen the US plans to build warplane runways out into the pristine ocean where endangered species are found.  Local peace activists have been arrested and battered by the Japanese government in recent years as they expand their non-violent campaign against the base. During the recent election cycle on Okinawa the Japanese government, surely at the behest of the Pentagon, offered big money to Okinawa if they voted for candidates that supported the base relocation.  But the bribe was turned down and Mayor Inamine was reelected.

Okinawa is a key US military outpost needed as a base for the Obama "pivot" into the Asia-Pacific to surround China.  But the people on Okinawa have had enough of the US military presence and want them gone yesterday.  Similar opposition to US bases is seen these days in South Korea, Guam, Philippines, Australia and other places in the region. 

My step-dad was stationed in Okinawa and Korea during the Korean War.  He worked in Air Force photo reconnaissance at the time and had many scrapbooks full of pictures from those two war zones.  In my youth I spent many hours pouring through these photo books - little did I know that some day I'd be working alongside the indigenous people from Okinawa and Korea to kick the US military off their lands. 

WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

When we really need them?

THIS SAYS IT ALL

My dear artist friend in Florida W. B. Park wrote me today after reading my rant about the US destabilizing Ukraine.  I've been working with Will since the early 1980's when I was organizing in Florida.  He made countless drawings and cartoons for leaflets, newsletters, posters, and even once designed us a billboard that we put up.  When I published my book, Come Together Right Now: Organizing Stories from a Fading Empire, I used all of Will's artwork that I could dig up.

Will's first draft today was a pencil sketch and I asked him to add the "missile defense" interceptors that the US-NATO are now surrounding Russia with.  He put them in Uncle Sam's hand and then mixed in the color and fine-tuned the piece.  It's totally brilliant and I just love the big military boot that the Pentagon is now stomping down on the neck of much of the world.

Thank you Will.  You are great.

US ALLIES IN UKRAINE

The US-NATO plan to upend the government in Ukraine has been aided on the streets of the country by right-wing forces that were linked with Hitler when they supported the German invasion of the Soviet Union during WW II.

These are the type of cats the US has been funding to do the street protests in Kiev and across the Ukraine.

SUDDEN DEATH IN MISSISSIPPI

Mayor Chokwe Lumumba, long-time radical, prominent lawyer and human rights activist died suddenly and unexpectedly Tuesday in Jackson, Mississippi. He was 66.

Lumumba had only been in office as mayor since last summer.  

Born in Detroit, Edwin Taliaferro changed his name in 1969, saying the first name, Chokwe, came from an African tribe that resisted slavery centuries ago, and the last name from the Congolese independence leader Patrice Lumumba.

Lumumba was labeled a Black terrorist by many for his leadership of the radical group, the Republic of New Afrika, in the 1970s and ’80s. The group advocated a separate Black government and reparations for slavery and was closely monitored by the FBI.

 But while many members of such separatist groups were harassed and prosecuted by law enforcement, Lumumba managed to take a different route. After finishing first in his law school class at Wayne State University, Lumumba became a staff attorney in the Detroit Public Defenders Office. He formed a law firm in Detroit in 1978 and became a renowned human rights lawyer and activist. He moved to Jackson in 1988 and continued his legal work on behalf of the indigent and powerless, helping to found organizations like the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement and eventually being elected to the City Council in 2009.
 
Lumumba's victory as mayor of Mississippi’s capital surprised even some of his strongest supporters. It sparked worries in the city’s establishment. He was considered potentially too radical to build coalitions and too outspoken for the wheeling and dealing necessary to govern a city.

It did not take him long to prove them wrong. Lumumba quickly forged good working ties across Jackson’s civic spectrum, earning the respect of his election opponents and the business community. He passed a budget that raised spending by 43 percent to address the city’s urgent infrastructure needs. And he funded it with a sharp rise in water and sewer rates. He won approval by referendum of a sales tax increase for public works.

Lumumba proved that a dedicated and determined leftist could run a major city and still maintain his grassroots base and his personal integrity.  

THE US ARROGRANCE STIRS ME

U.S. Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland offered food (and $$$) to pro-European Union agitators as she and U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt, right, walked through Independence Square in Kiev, Ukraine last December

I watched the mainstream national news last night at 6:30 pm.  I did alot of raging at the TV.  One of the networks led off with the story about Russia holding war games inside their own country, near the Ukrainian border.  The White House and Secretary of State John Kerry issued stern warnings to Russia about not trying to "interfere" with the current balkanization of the Ukraine.  In Crimea, riots between pro-EU and pro-Russian citizens broke out.  The Russian Navy has their Black Sea base in Crimea.

I was ready to throw my slippers at the TV when Obama and Kerry threatened Russia over any "interference".  Who the hell are they to talk about interfering?  The now famous "Fuck the EU" quote from Victoria Nuland (wife of Bush-Cheney era neocon Robert Kagan) was direct evidence of the deep involvement and interference of the US in Ukraine.  This whole story just reeks of hypocrisy and arrogance on the part of the US.

Talking about war games - the US-NATO in recent months were holding war games in Latvia and Lithuania - practicing flying NATO warplanes right up against Russia.  Were they trying to draw a response?  And the US has been heavily arming Georgia and doing joint war games there, again right along the Russian border. At this very moment the US and South Korea are running war games aimed at North Korea which is bordered by Russia and China. 

But the American people would never know about US war games because the network TV news never reports those facts.  They only report the news that is intended to lead the public in a certain direction - and that direction is demonizing Russia (and China) in order to justify US imperial moves.

During one of the commercials that dominate network TV an actor, about my age, was selling some product.  I had muted the sound but watched this nice looking middle class man appear so genuine and I couldn't help but feel confident that he was gaining the trust of those across the nation who had not cut the sound off.  I then thought of a lifetime of watching the tube, buying the soap and the bullshit sold on corporate TV.  The false patriotism during the Olympics... the agenda infused news reporting done by reporters who toe the corporate party line.... the false innocence and phony outrage expressed by US politicians about Russia trying to defend their immediate front-door interests as if the US would not be going ballistic if the Russian Bear had its "diplomats" handing out bread during riots in Canada intended to force that nation to break away from the capitalist camp and move into bed with Moscow.  Just imagine that one.

This stuff just drives me crazy.  And the American people keep walking off the cliff in lockstep as the US prods, pokes, surrounds, and stomps on Russia which sooner or later will indeed respond - and when they do we will hear this from Washington - "Holy shit, look what Putin is doing... we told you he was crazy and wants war with us!"

The US pulls this kind of crap daily all over the world... but you'd never know it back here at home because it is not reported on the TV - and that is all that counts.

RESPECTING THE CYCLE OF LIFE

TAKING BACK DEMOCRACY ONE PERSON AT A TIME

The WE THE PEOPLE initiative in Maine is a formal request to amend the U.S. Constitution to safeguard access to the political process for all US citizens regardless of income by establishing that:

Corporations Are Not People:  The rights of corporations and artificial entities are subordinate to the rights of natural persons. Corporations and artificial entities are the creation of government for the purpose of promoting the life, health, and general welfare of the public and may be regulated, modified or abolished by government to accomplish that purpose.
   
Money Is Not Speech:  The spending of money to influence elections is not speech under the First Amendment, and may be reasonably regulated in order to prevent the appearance or reality of corruption, and to promote a greater balance, participation, and equality of citizens in the electoral process.

To kick off this statewide effort, that will require us to gather tens of thousands of signatures of registered voters, an event will be held this weekend.

Join us Saturday, March 1 for the We The People Maine Celebration Bash from 5:00 ‑ 9:00 pm at Steve Burke's home which is at 1160 Atlantic Highway (Rte 1) in Warren, Maine - right across from School House Farm. 

On Saturday March 8,  noon to 3:00 pm a meeting of the organizing committee will be held at the Mediation & Facilitation Resources Center, 11 King Street, in Augusta.  The meeting will include a workshop on the rules behind signature collection.  All are invited.  

Find more about the campaign here 

MORE FROM MOYERS

In a Web-exclusive interview, political scientist Adolph Reed Jr. talks with Bill Moyers about his new article in the March issue of Harper’s Magazine – a challenge to America’s progressives provocatively titled, “Nothing Left: The Long, Slow Surrender of American Liberals.”

In the piece, Reed writes that Democrats and liberals have become too fixated on election results rather than aiming for long term goals that address the issues of economic inequality, and that the administrations of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama too often acquiesced to the demands of Wall Street and the right.

As a result, Reed tells Moyers, the left is no longer a significant force in American politics. “If we understand the left to be anchored to our convictions that society can be made better than it actually is, and a commitment to combating economic inequality as a primary one, the left is just gone.”

YOUR $$$$ AT WORK

Put the green frog skins into doing good for the people of our mothership Earth....we can stop killing one another on behalf of Mr. Big.

NEW WAR BUDGET AND STRATEGY ANNOUNCED BY OBAMA TEAM

There is disagreement about the Latin phrase in the logo.  Does it mean liberator or oppressor?  I guess that's why they keep it darkly hidden.  Notice the arrows through the head above - a throwback to the killing of the Native Americans.  These are the killers for Mr. Big.

Secretary of War Chuck Hagel yesterday announced the Obama administration's Pentagon budget proposal for the coming year.  Despite mandates for cuts in military spending after agreements with Congress under sequestration, Hagel actually calls for an increase of more than $115 billion for war making.

The Hagel budget basically calls for cuts in Army ground forces and cutbacks in military pay, housing and commissary facilities on bases.  Life for the enlisted will become more difficult.  The Pentagon is also calling for the closing of a few National Guard posts in some states.  

Hagel calls for 'sustaining' the Pentagon's nuclear triad - air, ground, and sea delivery systems of nuclear weapons.  Also called for is an increase in drones and robotic forces as well as significant expansion in cyber warfare capabilities.  

Wall Street immediately reacted by joyfully giving Lockheed-Martin all-time high stock gains.  The writing on the wall is clear - cuts in troop levels and increase in high-tech space directed war-making capability.

We will see an expansion of US "hidden" wars in the near future and the Obama budget reflects this reality.  While Hagel wants to pare back the size of the active-duty military by 13% and the reserves by 5% in coming years he would boost the size of Special Operations forces by about 6%.  The plan is to add more than 3,000 personnel to the kinds of special ops forces teams that reportedly killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. 

These same clandestine forces now operate in more than 75 countries around the world.  In his film “Dirty Wars” investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill reports on the largely unaccountable Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) that is now doing targeted assassinations, destabilization, and training of right-wing and terrorist forces used by the US in places like Ukraine, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela and beyond. The corporate oligarchy is moving rapidly to consolidate their total control of the people around the world and the US is playing its role of "security export" rather well.

Mainstream media reports of the Hagel announcement also tag two key places on the planet that will receive special emphasis from this new budget.  Those are the African continent and the Asia-Pacific.  This is where the long-range military operations planning and funding are heading.

Our organizing (no matter whether it is local, regional, national or international) needs to take into account this very fundamental direction the Obama supported military complex is tacking toward.   

In addition it is important that we all talk more about jobs.  It will be hard to cut military spending because of the local jobs issue.  We must speak to this fundamental concern that is wrapped in fear, as everyone knows that jobs are scarce these days.

The growing conversion movement across the nation indicates that more and more groups are making these job connections.  Imagine if military production workers and the peace movement were to stand hand-in-hand calling for conversion of the military industrial complex.  In the early 1990’s that was indeed happening across the nation when William Winpisinger served as President of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers.  He vigorously took on the responsibility to link military production workers with peace groups in order to successfully demand conversion after the end of the Cold War.  That promised “peace dividend” though never came to be as new “enemies” were created in the Middle East and Central Asia.  The conversion issue was deflated….. but not defeated.

Many of us across the nation have stayed on message during these darker years.  We’ve kept talking about conversion and linking jobs.  We are eternally grateful to the Department of Economics and Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.  They’ve continued to give us the empirical evidence that proves military production was the very worst way to create jobs.  In every other case – rail, wind, solar, conservation, teachers, hospitals, or even tax cuts create more jobs.

The jobs issue is the long-sought buried treasure that we’ve been looking for…. right before our eyes.  Pick it up.

FINAL GLOBAL NETWORK CONFERENCE PROGRAM

Vandenberg’s Role in US Global Domination: Implications of US “Pivot” into the Asia-Pacific

 22nd Annual Space Organizing Conference

March 14-16, 2014   

Santa Barbara, California

Conference Program

Friday, March 14

1:30 pm Hospitality lounge & Conference registration at La Casa de Maria Retreat Center (800 El Bosque Rd, Santa Barbara). All guests should check in at the registration office, and then proceed to Casa San Ysidro.

2:30 pm Leave for Vandenberg AFB

4:00 – 5:00  Vigil at Vandenberg AFB

6:30 – 7:30  Dinner at Casa San Ysidro house

-    Welcome by Dennis Apel (Guadalupe Catholic Worker House)
-    Music by Holly Gwinn Graham (Olympia, Washington) & JoYakgol (Jeju Island)

8:00 – 9:30 Showing of Ghosts of Jeju documentary film


Saturday, March 15

7:30 am  Breakfast at Casa San Ysidro house

9:00 – 11:00 Introductions and local updates

11:15 – 12:00 Presentation by Bard Wormdal (Norwegian journalist) on his book The Satellite War

12:00 – 1:30  Lunch and awards

2:30 – 3:15 Presentation by Tamara Lorincz (Canadian activist) on Conversion & Demilitarisation

3:30 – 4:15 Presentation by Masaki Toda (Japanese activist) on US X-Band “missile defense" radar being deployed in Kyoto region.

5:00 – 5:45 pm  Dinner

6:15 pm Move to Trinity Episcopal Church (1500 State Street)

7:00 – 9:00 Community program at Trinity Episcopal Church

-    Welcome by David Krieger (Nuclear Age Peace Foundation)
-    Dennis Apel (Guadalupe Catholic Worker House)
-    Dave Webb (GN Chairperson, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, Leeds, UK) 
-    Andrew Lichterman (Western States Legal Foundation)
-    Christine Hong (Korea Policy Institute and UC Santa Cruz)
-    Mary Beth Sullivan (Social worker & peace conversion activist, Bath, Maine)
-    Music by Tom Neilson, JoYakgol & Holly Gwinn Graham


Sunday, March 16

7:30 am Breakfast

9:00 am – 12:00  Global Network annual membership meeting (Election of board, coordinator’s report, budget review, strategy & planning discussion, next meeting decisions, 2014 Keep Space for Peace Week theme)

12:00 Lunch

1:00 Check out of retreat center

GORBY: US & EU OUT OF UKRAINE

The EU's foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton is visiting Kiev to meet the new interim leadership. She's there to discuss measures to keep the country afloat as reports emerge that the Ukrainian treasury is empty.

The EU has already pledged to provide Ukraine with 20 billion euro once a new government is formed. That's after the International Monetary Fund confirmed its commitment to provide Kiev with financial support.

Mikhail Gorbachev, the former president of the Soviet Union thinks that the West should let the people of Ukraine decide their own political future.

PRIVATIZED GOVERNMENT

In this week's show, Mike Lofgren joins Bill Moyers to talk about the Deep State, a hybrid of corporate America and the national security state, which is "out of control" and "unconstrained."

THE NAZI'S IN UKRAINE

'I'll be fighting Jews and Russians till I die': Ukrainian right-wing militants aiming for power

Kalashnikov-wielding members of Ukraine's radical nationalist opposition group, Right Sector, have pledged to resort to arms in their fight against those involved in "lawlessness" and looting, saying they will shoot to restore "order and discipline."

"I warn you, if anyone in this town, this area, engages in 'lawlessness' and looting, Right Sector squads will shoot the bastards on the spot. Then there will be order and discipline," one of the radical nationalist opposition group leaders, Aleksandr Muzychko, said on Friday.

On February 21, when Berkut police officers arrived in the western Ukrainian town of Rovno from Kiev, Muzychko said that if he met them on a battlefield, his hand "would not tremble."
 
"I would shoot," the Right Sector leader declared in Rovno, where his supporters have already equipped themselves with Kalashnikov rifles.

"If tomorrow these bastards [police] in Kiev won't stop, we'll take over military units, get hold of armored personnel carriers and tanks - we know how to operate them - and go to Kiev. Victory will be ours," Muzychko warned earlier this week.

Aleksandr Muzychko is a notorious nationalist leader. Back in 2007 he pledged to fight against "communists, Jews and Russians for as long as blood flows in his veins," openly saying that leading the fight against all of the above mentioned groups is his "credo."
 
Back in 1994, Muzychko, aka Sashko Bilyi, arrived in Chechnya to join separatist forces. He took part in numerous battles with federal troops, mainly in the capital Grozny, and personally knocked out three tanks, six armored personnel carriers and a SP vehicle.

According to media reports, he led an entire federal forces unit (presumably the marines) into an ambush. As a result, it was destroyed by the Chechen separatists. For his military merits, the notorious Chechen militant leader, general Dzhokhar Dudayev, presented Muzychko with a "Hero of the Nation" award.

Muzychko later served a term in a Ukrainian prison for racketeering and gangsterism, but he claims it was only for political reasons.

"The next president of the country will be from Right Sector! Our party will also be represented in parliament!" he once promised.

Even though the new peace deal on early elections and constitutional reforms reached between Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich and opposition leaders was finally signed, thousands are still protesting in central Kiev. Vitaly Klitschko, opposition leader and head of the UDAR party was booed when he portrayed the latest deal as “very important.” He even attempted to speak about the agreement during a recent memorial service for a protester killed during recent clashes.

Dmitry Yarosh, Right Sector radical nationalist opposition group leader, told protesters that the deal between the Ukrainian president and the opposition is unacceptable, saying their ultimate goal is Yanukovich's resignation.

“The Right Sector will not lay down its arms,” the Unian news agency quoted him as saying. “The Right Sector will not remove the blockade of one of the government buildings until our most important requirement is fulfilled – the resignation of Yanukovich.”
 
The group rose to fame when its members, equipped with Molotov cocktails and bombs, clashed with police in central Kiev in mid-January.


Yarosh even proposes the liquidation of the pro-government Party of Regions and the Communist Party of Ukraine, calling them criminal groups whose activity must be stopped.

“Two anti-national groups have been acting this year in Ukraine, they are responsible for numerous misfortunes of the Ukrainian nation,” said Yarosh on his Facebook page, adding that these two groups are the Party of Regions and the Communist Party of Ukraine. He urged Right Sector members to stop the activity of these parties “by all means.”
 
Meanwhile, the so-called Spilna sprava (Common Cause) opposition movement is demanding that the Ukrainian Parliament, (the Verkhovna Rada) and Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich, all step down.

"Unfortunately, Maidan Square is not a safe place. My detention and custody were to have been decided upon within a few hours," says the group's leader Aleksandr Danilyuk, a lawyer and a rights activist who was earlier involved in campaigns against former President Leonid Kuchma, said on his Facebook page.

Despite the absence of its leader, Common Cause has given an ultimatum to the Kiev prison service demanding freedom for all political prisoners. If their demand is not fulfilled, then will use force, they say.

“Tonight all political prisoners will be released. We have the power and means for it,’" said an official statement of the organization.

Just several months ago, Common Cause was hardly a household name in Ukraine. When President Yanukovich thwarted an integration deal with the EU in November in favor of closer ties with Russia, Common Cause activists joined mass demonstrations calling for closer ties with Europe.

On 25 January in a bid to demonstrate their might, they held the Energy Ministry for a few hours in Kiev. The event reportedly provoked strife within the opposition, with Common Cause activists ignoring the Udar party leader's pleas to leave the ministry. The Justice Minister, Elena Lukash, then threatened to impose a state of emergency unless the radicals gave way. The ministry was only released after a telephone conversation between the Interior Minister, Vitaly Zakharchenko, and US Ambassador to Ukraine, Jeffrey Payette.

SUNDAY SONG

A VISIT FROM A FRIEND

A story telling friend visited last night for dinner and wood stove sharing afterwards.  James Williamson, from good New England stock, is a very bright man.  He lives in Cambridge, Ma. and frequently drops by Harvard to listen to many speakers who normally represent mainstream views.  James loves to ask long and complex, but pointed, questions and prides himself on getting his face and question on the C-SPAN TV channel. He was on two nights ago and called me to quickly turn the TV on and see him in action.

After talking for a good while we watched a couple episodes of the Netflix produced House of Cards series about the corruption in Washington.  James had not heard of it, MB and I are just new to the show.  (I read that the show has become popular in China.  I can imagine why, show just how corrupt the US government is to blunt some of the corruption charges always aimed at Peking.)

Before James left in a cab at midnight, on icy streets, we both shared our admiration for the Brecht poem that he sent me days ago.  We talked about the life of Brecht, his isolation from his German homeland during WW II (living in Sweden, Finland and Los Angeles.)  He was called before the House Un-American Activities hearings in Washington (talk about corruption!) and asked if he was a communist and who else was as well.  After the war he ended up living in East Germany where he was given a theatre by the state so he could produce his plays.  He obviously had to learn to walk the political tight-rope there to some degree.... but don't we all?

As James was leaving last night I asked him the question that I always ask at least once each visit....what do we do now?  Last night he gave his best answer yet......local work connected to the bigger picture.

Create local media, take on local corporate and/or corrupt institutions, build a movement to convert the military facility in our own community, make sparks fly, make waves, make positive demands, force the local power structure to show themselves and deal with you......have some fun with it and keep the spirit in a good way.

BURDEN OF PROOF

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,The Daily Show on Facebook

KNOWING THE BACK STORY

In Venezuela the CIA is funding and directing protests against that government - a government the US corporate oligarchy has long wanted to take down.  It's about the oil in Venezuela.  Not all protests are truly on the mark.  Some protests, like in Venezuela, are doing the work of the corporate elite.  It helps us to know the back-story.

The Democracy Now video just below about Ukraine tells a similar tale about the street protests there.  It might look like the Occupy movement in one sense - but in the real world a significant part of the street violence is coming from long-standing fascist forces inside Ukraine that historically sided with Hitler during his attempts to invade the former Soviet Union.

So take a look at the bigger picture for a moment.  NATO military expansion, right up to the border of Russia, along with "missile defense" deployments encircling the Russian Federation, all serve to seriously destabilize the region.  There can be no doubt that corporate dominated governments in the US and Germany are trying to overthrow the Ukrainian government. (They each have their favorite candidate to be the 'new leader' in the Ukraine.  That internal conflict between the US and Europe led to the now famous "Fuck the European Union" comment by Victoria Nuland, Assistant US Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs.)   How would you expect Russia to respond?

This is the Obama project.  Make a serious run to hand Ukraine, Georgia, Venezuela, Libya, Syria and Iran over to the global corporate oligarchy.  It's quite a list.  Obama's task is aided by the fact that legions of liberal Democrats are either afraid or reluctant to oppose his reckless foreign policy.  If George W. Bush was still on the throne those Dems would be in the streets pulling their hair out of their heads.  Many Democrats have proven to be unreliable allies of the peace movement. It's very tragic.

The already severely overburdened peace movement in the US now has an even bigger challenge.  In addition to our work on drones, missile defense, the Asia-Pacific 'pivot', Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, ........ we now have to look up and see the possibility of war between the US and Russia..... and likely civil war in Venezuela. 

I've long heard that the US wants to break Russia into pieces - Balkanize them - like was done by Clinton to Yugoslavia and like has essentially been done to Iraq.  By breaking Russia into pieces, by fomenting chaos inside and along the borders of Russia, the corporate oligarchy makes their play for control of Russian natural gas (they have the world's biggest supply) and large stocks of oil. Look at the map and see how much of the thawing Arctic Ocean Russia borders. The western oil corporations want to drill there too.

This is how world wars get started!  If you back Russia and China into a corner sooner or later they will have to respond. This is just what the military industrial complex wants.  Imagine the profits….. and where would the money come from for a new Cold War with Russia?  Yeah that's right - call it the 'final solution' that ends once and for all social progress back home here in the US of A. 

Time to awaken from the 'American dream world'.

THE REAL STORY ABOUT UKRAINE

A short-lived truce has broken down in Ukraine as street battles have erupted between anti-government protesters and police. Last night the country’s embattled president and the opposition leaders demanding his resignation called for a truce and negotiations to try to resolve Ukraine’s political crisis. But hours later, armed protesters attempted to retake Independence Square, sparking another day of deadly violence. At least 50 people have died since Tuesday in the bloodiest period of Ukraine’s 22-year post-Soviet history.

While President Obama has vowed to "continue to engage all sides," a recently leaked audio recording between two top U.S. officials reveal the Obama administration has been secretly plotting with the opposition. Democracy Now speaks to Stephen Cohen, professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at New York University and Princeton University. His most recent book, "Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War," is out in paperback. His latest Nation article is "Distorting Russia: How the American Media Misrepresent Putin, Sochi and Ukraine."

PROCESS OF CONVERSION

A friend here in Bath wrote me this morning and said he and his wife stumbled across this talk last night while channel surfing on TV.  I have no idea where it was playing.  He said his wife, who is now reading my book, named me the "peace bomb" after watching the talk.

The 2006 talk was hosted by the Society for Peace and Social Justice at the Chautauqua Institute in New York. The video ends with bonus coverage of footage of me being interviewed on two different radio shows while at Chautauqua.

NEWS ROUNDUP

• AP reports: 

Megan Rice, an 84-year-old nun, was sentenced Tuesday to nearly three years in prison for breaking into a nuclear weapons complex and defacing a bunker holding bomb-grade uranium, a demonstration that exposed serious security flaws at the Tennessee plant. Two other peace activists (Michael Walli and Greg Boertje-Obed) who broke into the facility with were sentenced to more than five years in prison, in part because they had much longer histories of non-violent civil disobedience. The Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee holds the nation's primary supply of bomb-grade uranium and was known as the "Fort Knox of uranium." In her closing statement, Rice asked the judge to sentence her to life in prison, even though sentencing guidelines called for about six years. "Please have no leniency with me," she said. "To remain in prison for the rest of my life would be the greatest gift you could give me." She said the U.S. government was spending too much money on weapons and the military, and she told the judge about the many letters of support she had received, including one from youth in Afghanistan. "This is the next generation and it is for these people that we're willing to give our lives," she said.

• In a new piece called Myth: China is a Military Threat Retired Royal Navy Commander Robert D. Green from New Zealand writes that "The Chinese correctly see that the greatest US weakness is the Pentagon’s stranglehold on US foreign and domestic policy. With military industry interests in every political constituency, over-powerful lobbyists rebuff any major Pentagon budget cuts. This is slowly but surely bringing the US economy to its knees, and destroying the morale and health, let alone lives, of young Americans."

• The Los Angeles Times reports:

The Obama administration is making contingency plans to use air bases in Central Asia to conduct drone missile attacks in northwest Pakistan in case the White House is forced to withdraw all U.S. forces from Afghanistan at the end of this year, according to U.S. officials. The CIA and the military used an air base in Uzbekistan to conduct drone flights until the U.S. was evicted in 2005, said Brian Glyn Williams, a University of Massachusetts professor and author of the book "Predators: The CIA's Drone War on Al Qaeda." The military also has used a base in Kyrgyzstan to conduct air operations, including moving troops and supplies into Afghanistan. The Pentagon said last fall that it would shift those operations to Romania this summer. Last month, Maj. Gen. Michael K. Nagata, commander of U.S. special operations in the Middle East and Central Asia, visited Tajikistan, which abuts Afghanistan's northern border, for talks on "issues of bilateral security cooperation" and "continued military cooperation," according to a U.S. Embassy statement in Dushanbe, the capital.

• In an article posted on Counterpunch Franklin Spinney writes in part:

In the late 1980s, the leaders of the west promised Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev that they would not expand eastward if the Soviet Union pulled out of Eastern Europe and ended the Cold War.  That promise was not kept.  A triumphal West stuck it to the Soviet Union’s  greatly weakened Russian successor, by incorporating the former Warsaw Pact countries into NATO and the EU.  But that was not enough to sate the lust of the neo-liberal triumphalists in search of a new imperium.  Their next move tried to incorporate the Caucasus country of Georgia — a country more a part of Central Asia than of Europe — into the West’s sphere of influence.  That turned out to be a bridge too far; the Russians intervened militarily to put a stop to the lunacy. But events in the Ukraine suggest that stop may have been viewed as a temporary speed bump on the pathway to rolling back Russia’s geography to the years of Ivan the Terrible.

INSPIRATION FROM INDIA

• For the third time during recent weeks J. Narayana Rao (3rd from left in brown sweater) has organized another space issues workshop in Nagpur, India where he lives.  Rao is a retired railroad worker and a long-time peace activist.  He's recently created a powerpoint presentation and appears to have first used it at his Feb 18 talk at the National Institute of Social Work. His brief report about the presentation is worth reading:

Today another workshop on “Space For Peace” has been held with the help of Power point presentation in the B.P. National Institute of Social Work, Nagpur, India.  65 post graduate students,7 staff staff members and the Principal Dr. Sanjay Tulankar were present. I explained all the issues involved in the Space for Peace issue like various UN Treaties, Vision for 2020, the USSR entry into the space, danger of weaponisation of space, Space Debris, efforts to avoid an Arms Race in the Space,  Role of Global Network and the ensuing Space for Peace week in October 4-11 2014.

The Principal Dr. Sanjay Tulankar has been so impressed and wanted me to train 5 of the Lecturers of the Institute as resource persons on this issue so that they can visit schools and colleges and talk in the local language i.e Marathi. I have been thrilled with this proposal and agreed to do so. This institute will respond in a big way to observe the Space for Peace Week this year.

J. N. Rao

• Rao is an inspiration to those of us who know him.  He is not a young man anymore but is a joyful and determined peace worker.  He rides around Nagpur on a scooter.  When MB and I toured India in 2006 it was Rao who organized our two-week visit.  And he worked us hard, sometimes doing 3-4 events per day.  We went to primary schools, colleges, service clubs and more.  Once we both spoke at a general assembly of students.  While the talks were happening MB was folding origami paper cranes and putting them on a table upon the stage where we sat.  After things were over a teacher and swarm of students wanted her to teach them to fold.  So they all sat on a cement door stoop and folding they learned.  I was sitting on another stoop signing class books of the students.  I didn't just want to sign my name so I wrote different small phrases from my talk in each book hoping that if they shared my words with one another it would recycle the key elements of my presentation and better stick in their minds and hearts.  

• My last time in India Rao took me on an unforgettable trip via train and then van through busy and dangerous mountain roads to Kashmir. We visited Srinagar.  Martial law was declared while we were there and I saw first hand the kind of future the corporate oligarchy is making for all of us around the globe - internal conflict and growing instability.  You can see my blog post from Srinagar here. Below is just a bit from that particular blog.

As I continue to read the book by former Indian Naval Chief, Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat, he makes all this even more clear. One important strategy of corporate globalization he reminds the reader is “balkanization.” They did it in Yugoslavia when they broke apart that socialist country by fueling ethnic conflicts. Bhagwat says the global corporate agenda is now the same everywhere, fuel the rage and divide the people against one another. Then sell weapons and steal natural resources and exploit cheap labor as the people fight one another.

Bhagwat writes:

"Therefore, the big question is whether the Indian military is being nudged to reorient itself to moving away from defending India and Indian interests to such unending, quests as ‘furthering regime changes, democracy, and the smoke-screen, of the global war on terror’, under U.S. auspices."

• I was moved to put the Bertolt Brecht poem on the blog yesterday after reading it.  (James Williamson who lives in Cambridge, MA sent it to me.) Brecht's words jumped out at me..... the same fears and haunting contradictions of living today.  And he ended it with such human clarity, trying to learn how to be friends with each other - especially at a time when Mr. Big wants to turn us into violent chaos. Reading that poem for me was like taking the wafer at communion.  Yes great spirit I do recommit to trying to be friends with myself and others on our spinning orb.  Please help me stay strong. Amen.

GIVEN TO ME ON EARTH

 

Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956)

To those born later

I

Truly I live in dark times!

Frank speech is naïve. A smooth forehead

Suggests insensitivity. The man who laughs

Has simply not yet heard

The terrible news.

What kind of times are these, when

To talk about trees is almost a crime

Because it implies silence about so many horrors?

When the man over there calmly crossing the street

Is already perhaps beyond the reach of his friends

Who are in need?

It’s true that I still earn my daily bread

But, believe me, that’s only an accident. Nothing

I do gives me the right to eat my fill.

By chance I've been spared. (If my luck breaks, I'm lost.)

They say to me: Eat and drink! Be glad you have it!

But how can I eat and drink if I snatch what I eat

From the starving

And my glass of water belongs to someone dying of thirst?

And yet I eat and drink.

I would also like to be wise.

In the old books it says what wisdom is:

To shun the strife of the world and to live out

Your brief time without fear

Also to get along without violence

To return good for evil

Not to fulfill your desires but to forget them

Is accounted wise.

All this I cannot do.

Truly, I live in dark times.

II

I came to the cities in a time of disorder

When hunger reigned.

I came among men in a time of revolt

And I rebelled with them.

So passed my time

Given to me on earth.

I ate my food between battles

I lay down to sleep among murderers

I practiced love carelessly

And I had little patience for nature’s beauty.

So passed my time

Given to me on earth.

All roads led into the mire in my time.

My tongue betrayed me to the butchers.

There was little I could do. But those in power

Sat safer without me: that was my hope.

So passed my time

Given to me on earth.

Our forces were slight. Our goal

Lay far in the distance

Clearly visible, though I myself

Was unlikely to reach it.

So passed my time

Given to me on earth.

III

You who will emerge from the flood

In which we have gone under

Bring to mind

When you speak of our failings

Bring to mind also the dark times

That you have escaped.

Changing countries more often than our shoes,

We went through the class wars, despairing

When there was only injustice, no outrage.

And yet we realized:

Hatred, even of meanness

Contorts the features.

Anger, even against injustice

Makes the voice hoarse. O,

We who wanted to prepare the ground for friendship

Could not ourselves be friendly.

But you, when the time comes at last

When man is helper to man

Think of us

With forbearance.

                                                                    [1940] 

NATIONAL SECURITY LAWS BLIND REAL JUSTICE

Lee Seok-ki, center, greeted supporters last fall outside the South Korean National Assembly in Seoul

A South Korean court today sentenced a left-wing lawmaker to 12 years in prison and six colleagues to shorter terms for allegedly plotting a "pro-North Korea rebellion in the event of a war on the Korean Peninsula".

Prosecutors also asked judges to strip United Progressive Party (UPP) MP Lee Seok-ki of his civic rights for 10 years following his eventual release from prison. The UPP is a small party with only six seats in the National Assembly.

In South Korea it is illegal under the "National Security Law”, which was created by the occupying Japanese WW II imperial Army, to criticize US military bases in that country or to call for reunification between North and South Korea.

Lee Seok-ki has described himself as the victim of a “witch hunt” by South Korea’s spy agency, the National Intelligence Service (NIS). Many believe the NIS is using the show trial to distract the public from overwhelming evidence that the intelligence agency interfered in the last national election in favor of right-wing President Park Geun-hye's "successful" campaign.

President Park is the daughter of former brutal dictator Park Chung-hee. During Park’s iron-fisted rule from 1961 to 1979, dissidents were tortured and sometimes executed on charges of "plotting" against South Korea.  While on my previous trips to South Korea I met many older activists who spent as many as 20-25 years in prison for opposing the Park dictatorship.

Both the past and present Park regimes in Seoul were and are obvious US puppets.

 One blogger described Lee Seok-ki's alleged crime this way:

Lee Seok-ki also described North Korea as a strong nation and South Korea as an American colony. More specifically, he said the United States had controlled Korea by using its two-party political structure to affect a divide-and-rule strategy. He thought American imperialism was falling apart, though, and that as the weakest link in the American imperialist chain, the Korean Peninsula would be the central stage of the global revolution to throw off the American imperialist yoke.

How many activists around the world could be accused of the same so-called crime of naming the US as an imperialist occupying power?  How many activists around the world daily call for the US military bases in their country to be removed? Under the South Korean National Security Law I could be arrested for naming the US an imperial power.

Through the lens of the Jeju Island non-violent Navy base resistance we've seen how the right-wing government of South Korea does the bidding of the US corporate war machine.  The fascist response of the current puppet government in Seoul should make us all aware of the slippery slope we now tread on right here in the US. 

SUNDAY SONG

NO COWERING IN IRELAND

Imprisoned peace activist Margaretta D'Arcy has reiterated her assertion that Shannon Airport's runway is being used improperly for the purposes of war, and has called on the Minister for Defence Alan Shatter to stop defending the indefensible military use of the airport. Speaking to John Lannon and Edward Horgan of Shannonwatch this Monday, she said that the State has a responsibility to ensure the proper use of the airport and to protect it against security threats.

"The fact that Niall Farrell and I could walk out onto the runway at Shannon demonstrates that it is not secure." said Ms D'Arcy. "The military use of the airport presents grave risks to the people in the airport or living nearby, as well as being in contravention of international laws and against the wishes of the majority of Irish people".

A PRIMER ON IRAN

Hamid Dabashi is the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. He received a dual Ph.D. in Sociology of Culture and Islamic Studies from the University of Pennsylvania in 1984, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University. He wrote his dissertation on Max Weber's theory of charismatic authority with Philip Rieff (1922-2006), the most distinguished Freudian cultural critic of his time. Professor Dabashi has taught and delivered lectures in many North American, European, Arab, and Iranian universities.

Professor Dabashi has written twenty-five books, edited four, and contributed chapters to many more. He is also the author of over 100 essays, articles and book reviews on subjects ranging from Iranian Studies, medieval and modern Islam, and comparative literature to world cinema and the philosophy of art (trans-aesthetics). His books and articles have been translated into numerous languages, including Japanese, German, French, Spanish, Danish, Russian, Hebrew, Italian, Arabic, Korean, Persian, Portuguese, Polish, Turkish, Urdu and Catalan.

HELP THE BOYCOTT OF SODASTREAM

This morning, after first shoveling a large dump of wet heavy snow, I met local Episcopal Deacon Carol Huntington at a coffee shop in our downtown Bath shopping area.  We prepared to cross the street to a popular local store called Now You're Cooking where we had an appointment with the owner.  We carried a letter asking him to stop selling SodaStream carbonation devices or other products made by this company.

SodaStream manufactures these machines within an Israeli settlement in occupied Palestinian territory. These settlements are illegal under international law and are obstacles to peace.

The store owner brought us into his office and had three of his staff join us.  Carol, who has been to Palestine twice in the last 16 months, and I asked him not to continue supporting this unethical enterprise built on lands stolen from the Palestinian people.  We handed him the letter full of signatures from people who live in the Midcoast of Maine.  Carol shared with him a church produced document called "Steadfast Hope: The Palestinian Quest for Just Peace."  It chronicles the history of Israel's illegal theft of Palestinian lands and the ever expanding settlements that to this day keep grabbing even more land and water.

The store owner was polite and made the case that he likes to let his customers decide for themselves what they will and will not purchase.  He said many of his products come from China but he does not support the way that government is run.

The boycott of SodaStream is having an impact.  Bloomberg Businessweek recently reported that, "SodaStream slumped 3.3 percent to $35.34 in New York [stock exchange], the lowest since Nov. 20, 2012. The stock plunged 26 percent on Jan. 13 after SodaStream reported worse-than-forecast preliminary earnings for 2013."

I reminded the store staff of the recent global celebrations of the life of Nelson Mandela.  I suggested that South African apartheid was ultimately defeated in large part due to global economic boycotts and sanctions of that nation.  The bantustans in South Africa, virtually identical to the reservations on Indian land across the US, are in fact what we see today in Palestine.  The people face cultural genocide as their lands are taken, their ability to grow food is destroyed, and their remaining villages are separated from one another by the occupation wall.

The store owner did tell us that he was hearing from some of his customers about the boycott though he said he has about 200 people who he supplies with SodaStream products.  We told him that this effort was not directed at him personally but that we wanted to be upfront and inform him that we will continue to ask others in the community to share their feelings about SodaStream with him.

As we left the store I told the shop owner and his staff that they needed to learn more about the history of the Palestinian land that the SodaStream factory sits on today.

If you live in the Midcoast and are at all inclined to support the SodaStream boycott we ask you to contact Now You're Cooking in Bath and share your feelings.

Wherever you live you can help bring justice to the Palestinian people by lending a hand to the boycott of Israeli products as long as that nation continues to enforce their apartheid system on the people of Palestine.

WHAT'S WITH THAT WEATHER?

• The snow is coming again now, up to 18 inches in some parts of the state, the media plays it up big.  Everyone is beginning to fear climate change but we are still not allowed to talk about the subject in any meaningful way - particularly the military aspects of weather modification.

• In 1999 I was part of a small group that went to Puerto Rico to support the people's occupation of the island of Vieques that was then a bombing range for the US Navy.  It's was thrilling and humbling to visit the occupied island as Puerto Ricans waged an ultimately long but successful campaign to kick the Navy out.  The island is now faced with serious environmental impact from the years of pounding with US ordnance .

We were invited to Puerto Rico by a group called the Comité Contra las Experimentaciones Ambientales. They were the organization that led the protests against NASA in 1998-99, which forced cancellation of the Coqui Two rocket, launches in the town of Vega Baja. The Coqui Two were a series of atmospheric experiments by NASA. The rockets released chemicals into different layers of the atmosphere in order to test their effects on communications and radar signals. Protests forced NASA to close down the operation after eight tests even though 11 had been scheduled. (See my report at the time here) 

Learning about the NASA-Pentagon weather modification experiments was deeply disturbing to me.  We are talking about people who are playing-testing-toying with the whole web of life in order to "control" nature and use it as a weapon of war.  It is shocking...... it is the work of the devil.

• There are many theories, and wild claims at times, by folks trying to get to the bottom of the whole question of weather modification for corporate control.  But when we see Monsanto in action - destroying natural seeds - and we see Nestle - grabbing local water supplies, even here in Maine - the picture becomes murkier and clearer at the same time.  The corporate war is on and they will do anything to win.  They are crazy.  They have a spiritual disconnection with the real world.  It is like Avatar.

• On Saturday at 3:00 pm, we hope the storm will be gone by then, David Swanson from Virginia will speak in Brunswick at the public library (and later that evening in Portland at USM).  He is a very creative, funny and dedicated pro-peace activist.  He puts all the pieces together and has made important re-discoveries that connect us to massive anti-war sentiment amongst the people just after WW I.  The US signed an international treaty to outlaw war, which of course today is totally ignored by our war machine government.  David has the kind of spirit that wants to reconnect us to times when we were more united and filled with determination to end war.  He helps us rediscover our power as humans. And he will make us laugh a bit as well...

MILLION$ TO MAR$

 Read it and weep - and discourage your kids from taking the nuclear bomb to Mars.....


Universe Today reports:

    SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is a huge fan of Mars exploration and Mars colonies, and in a new interview he says a launch system to send people to the Red Planet could be available in 10 to 12 years. Requirements: it has to be big, and it has to be launched frequently to send millions of people and tons of cargo space wards.

    “We need to develop a much larger vehicle, which would be a sort of Mars colonial transport system, and this would be, we’re talking about rockets on a bigger scale than has ever been done before. It will make the Apollo moon rocket look small,” said Musk in a recent CBS interview, referring to the 363-foot (110-meter) behemoth that was the Saturn V.

Examiner.com brought this key piece of the issue into focus - what about nuclear power?

Musk did not elaborate about what this super rocket would look like or what technology it might contain. However, back in the late 1950s and early 1960s a group of researchers developed a concept of a spacecraft that would be propelled through the use of nuclear bomb detonations under Project Orion. The project was terminated soon after the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. In any case the problems of nuclear fallout and electromagnetic pulse caused by the detonation of hundreds of nuclear bombs in the Earth’s atmosphere were never resolved.

Certainly a nuclear bomb propelled spacecraft, as large as a World War II battleship, carrying hundreds of colonists, would certainly fit Musk’s vision. One way to make it work might be to build the ship in pieces in Earth orbit, beyond the magnetosphere, and then only use the nuclear bomb drive in deep space. Assembling such a vehicle would take a considerable number of launches of conventional heavy lift rockets and a construction project that would dwarf the International Space Station.

For whatever reason, Mr. Big is anxious to get to Mars.  Is it because they know something we don't?  Is it because there is huge money to be made selling us this project of Mars exploration and colonization?  The aerospace industry has said that space development will be the largest industrial project in human history. 

Who is going to pay for it?  They are only now privatizing space operations because the taxpayers paid all the years of research & development (R & D) via NASA.  The public pays the R & D and the corporations are brought in once there is ‘opportunity’ for private profit. 

Mars though is far away and a dangerous ride it would be.... so much investment is still necessary and they want the public to pay for it.  The global citizen is being asked to pay for space technology R & D - it's the high tech jobs everyone keeps talking about.  So we pay for the freight and once the package gets successfully to the station Mr. Big is waiting at the loading ramp to receive it.

They sell us this vision of new life on an exciting red planet.  Most people could care less.  I am a little suspicious of anyone who is so eager to move from this beautiful planet Earth (in spite of its current environmental crisis) to a dead barren red planet - what is going on there? 

Is this some sci-fi movie where a team of ship-wrecked aliens land on Earth, mess everything up and turn the earthlings into slaves to build an escape vehicle back to Mars?  I try to keep an open mind - anything is possible these days......

While we are on this story..... the aliens here are fully in control of the CIA, NSA, Wall Street and such.  They drive BMW's and were somehow linked to Operation Paperclip.  (But that one will wait until a later chapter.) The aliens want us to not only build them an escape vehicle - they also want us to set them up with some fancy residential colonies on Mars.  Terraform the planet so life will be sustainable there.  The nuclear industry is eagerly behind this program.  They envision these colonies to be very dependent on nuclear power generation.  And even nuclear rockets could give Mr. Musk the ‘lift capacity’ he needs to send millions to Mars. 

Do they mean millions and millions of dollars are going to Mars or are they talking about sending people?  I can see the strapped-in suckers now riding on the ‘heavy lift nuclear bomb' with destination Mars painted on the side.  Mars or Bust!  Bust they go and we could eat radiation forever.  Is this the aliens Earth population control program? Dr. Strangelove is back.

Wake up….it’s just a bad dream.

Beware of the hustlers.

A SONG FOR THE TRIP TO MAR$

TODAY IS THE DAY

• Today is the NSA action day.  All you have to do is make a call or send an email - and share the action with others.  This is the kind of action day that helps decide whether we have any rights at all or we become a full-blown police state.  Just go here to help the cause.

• We had a meeting at the house yesterday of a group of Bath residents, and one from Arrowsic, to plan a public forum on the diversification/conversion of the local shipyard at Bath Iron Works (BIW).  They make nothing but warships there now.  We'll hold the event in June and have a potluck supper along with it.  We are going to try to bring in a couple speakers with expertise on this issue so it should be exciting.  Coming out of our committee meeting we had folks volunteer to meet with BIW administration to invite them to be part of this public discussion.  Another one of our folks yesterday agreed to check with his union leadership at BIW and request that they speak at the event as well.

• Our friend Peter found two great videos by accident the other day - or should we call it providence?  The scene is Labor Day in 1994.  President Bill Clinton comes to BIW and endorses diversification of the shipyard.  Also speaking that day was former Maine Sen. George Mitchell, Rep Tom. Andrews, and the union president of the BIW local as well as the president of the International Association of Machinists.  They were all begging for conversion/diversification – bring back commercial shipbuilding!  Now our challenge is to get the current crop of leaders to just match that mark.  It's sad to see how far things have slipped in these years.  We've got to regain the initiative.

• I've just been reading a biography of Bertolt Brecht the German playwright who got caught in the middle of the Nazi party taking power prior to WW II.  I wanted to learn about the challenges they faced during that period and was eager to learn more about how Brecht thought and spoke about those times.  He was an inspiring man who, once Hitler's blitzkrieg began, still believed he had to keep creating plays that could inform and inspire the people to popular rebellion.  I see many historical similarities to our present moment in the US. 

• Brecht wrote:

There are uncritical people who have doubt
And there are scrupulous people who never take action…
With the murderer’s axe raised above their heads
They ask themselves whether he isn’t human too…
You can make mistakes
By acting with too little thought,
But the mistake in time of danger
Is to go on thinking too long.

• The marriage of corporations and government - especially the government with the biggest military machine on the planet - is fascism.  It's dangerous and deadly.  Put your ear to the railroad tracks and hear the train coming.

STANDING UP FOR INDEPENDENT MEDIA

Investigative journalists Jeremy Scahill and Glenn Greenwald join Democracy Now for their first interview upon launching The Intercept, their new digital magazine published by First Look Media, the newly formed media venture started by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar. Greenwald is the journalist who first broke the story about Edward Snowden’s disclosures on the National Security Agency. He was previously a columnist at The Guardian newspaper. Scahill is producer and writer of the documentary film "Dirty Wars," which is nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

"We are really about a journalistic ethos — which is not doing things like helping the U.S. continue its targeting of U.S. citizens for death, but by being adversarial to the government," Greenwald says. "Telling the public what it ought to know, and targeting the most powerful corporate factions with accountability journalism." Greenwald and Scahill founded TheIntercept.org with filmmaker Laura Poitras.