Organizing Notes

Bruce Gagnon is coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space. He offers his own reflections on organizing and the state of America's declining empire....

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Location: Brunswick, ME, United States

The collapsing US military & economic empire is making Washington & NATO even more dangerous. US could not beat the Taliban but thinks it can take on China-Russia-Iran...a sign of psychopathology for sure. @BruceKGagnon

Friday, February 27, 2015

Jeju Film & Activists Coming to Bath


Hee Eun “Silver” Park and Paco Michelson, peace activists from the Jeju Island Anti-Naval Base struggle, will be Bath (Maine) on March 20 for film showing at Grace Episcopal Church (Washington St) at 7:00 pm .... and then on Saturday, March 21 they will join the statewide protest at BIW at 11:30 am.

Since 2007, the people of Gangjeong village on Jeju Island and their supporters have struggled everyday against state violence, corporate power, war profiteering, and environmental destruction. They have done so nonviolently and passionately. As a result of their work for peace, the tiny village of Gangjeong now has one of the highest “crime” rates in all of South Korea. More than 220,000 police officers (as of 2012) have been stationed in Gangjeong. So far, more than 700 arrests have been made, leading to approx. 200 court cases for more than 650 people, approx. $270,000 in fines levied, and 46 imprisonments. More than 30 internationals have been blacklisted, deported, or denied entry. All for the “crime” of peacefully resisting the construction of a naval base that threatens villagers’ livelihoods, the local ecology, and the peace of northeast Asia. 

Kiev Conscripts 800 Protesting Coal Miners

 


Translated from Russian by J. Hawk 


The coal miners of Western Ukraine who threatened a large-scale rebellion due to the three- month delay of salaries are being inducted into the army.

800 rebellious miners received notices directly from military commissars who delivered them to the coal mines. 


According to the deputy mayor of Novovolynsk, Eduard Savik, the notices were delivered to coal mines no. 1 and no. 9 in Novovolynsk, which the state is planning to close. That’s where the majority of rebellious miners is employed.


The miners blocked highways several times this winter to protest government policies which does not finance the mines, but instead wants to close them and is not even paying coal miners’ salaries.

Several hundred miners are planning to stage a protest in Kiev on March 3 to force the government to pay them. 

“They are taking revenge for strikes—they decided to simply draft the rebels. Many of my comrades who were blocking highways and were preparing to picket the Ministry of Energy and the Cabinet of Ministers, received draft notices,” says Aleksey, a miner from Novovolynsk. “This is even worse than the 1990s. There was hunger, but there was no war. Now it’s total chaos.”


J. Hawk’s Comment: The post-"Dignity Revolution" Ukraine is, for all intents and purposes, under martial law. The mobilization is a wonderful tool of political repression under a different name. This tactic can be applied to literally anyone in the country. I suppose the irony here is that Volhynia is Western Ukraine. Political repression: not just for Novorossia "vatniks" anymore. That’s the real usefulness of the war—if the war goes away, you couldn’t get away with this. It doesn’t necessarily mean there has to be any actual fighting. An Orwellian “1984”-style fake war, intended to keep the proles in line, will suffice. It seems to be sufficing for the junta. So that part makes perfect sense. 


This one, however, does not. Somebody try to find sense in all of this: Ukraine’s coal powerplants are shutting down due to a shortage of coal, so the government is…closing coal mines in order to reduce government expenditures to meet IMF requirements, which in turn is forcing it to…buy imported coal which is now insanely expensive due to the drop in the value of hryvnya which...will force the government to actually spend more money than if it simply kept the mines open. Somebody nominate these people for a Nobel. 

As an aside, the weak hryvnya makes Ukrainian coal very competitive internationally. There is every reason to keep these mines operating. But no. So the junta knows perfectly well how to employ political repression and start wars. When it comes to running an economy, however, it's a different story. As the old saying goes…

The Dynamics of Possible Nuclear Extinction


Symposium: The Dynamics of Possible Nuclear Extinction  

February 28-March 1, 2015

A unique, two-day symposium at which an international panel of leading experts in disarmament, political science, existential risk, artificial intelligence, anthropology, medicine, nuclear weapons and other nuclear issues will be held at The New York Academy of Medicine on Feb 28-March 1, 2015. The public is welcome.

A project of The Helen Caldicott Foundation

Venue: The New York Academy of Medicine. 1216 Fifth Ave @ 103rd St. NY, NY 10029

THE EVENT WILL BE LIVE STREAMED at: http://totalwebcasting.com/live/hcf

Schedule to date:

DAY ONE: Saturday, February 28

Morning Session

9am Opening Remarks- to be announced
9.15 – 9.30 Moderator Kennette Benedict – Executive Editor and Publisher Bulletin of Atomic Scientists – It’s 3 Minutes to Midnight.
9.35 – 9.55  Theodore Postol – Professor Emeritus of Science, Technology, and National Security Policy, MIT – Striving for Armageddon
10.00 – 10.20  Max Tegmark – Professor of Physics, MIT – Artificial Intelligence and the Risk of Accidental Nuclear War
10.25 – 10.45  Alan Robock – Distinguished Professor, Department Environmental Sciences, Rutgers University – Nuclear Famine and Nuclear Winter: Climatic Effects of Nuclear War, Catastrophic Threats to the Global Food Supply
10.50 – 11.20 Q&A
11.20 – 11:50 tea and coffee
11.55 – 12.15   Steven Starr – Associate of Nuclear Age peace Foundation,  Former Board Member and Senior Scientist for Physicians for Social Responsibility – Nuclear War: An unrecognized mass extinction event waiting to happen.
12.20 – 12.40 Bruce Gagnon – Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space – The Ongoing and Dangerous Militarization of Space
12.45 – 1.05   Bill Hartung – Center for International Policy – Inordinate Power and Pathological Dynamics of the US Military Industrial Complex
1:05 – 1:30 Q&A
1:30 – 2:30 Lunch

Afternoon Session

2:40-3.00   Greg Mello – Los Alamos Study Group – The Role and Funding of the US Nuclear Weapons Labs
3.05 – 3.25   Seth Baum – Global Catastrophic Risk Institute – The Catastrophic Risk of Nuclear War
3.30 – 3.50   Bob Alvarez – Institute Of Policy Studies – Lateral Proliferation Could Trigger a Nuclear Holocaust
3.55 – 4.15   Robert Parry – Investigative Journalist, Consortium News – Ukraine and the Human Factor : How propaganda and passions can risk nuclear conflagration.
4.15 – 4.45 – Q&A 
4.45 – 5.15 tea and coffee
5.00- 7.15  Film - On The Beach

DAY TWO: Sunday, March 1

Morning Session

9.00 – 9.15am  Opening by Moderator Ray Acheson – Director of Reaching Critical Will – Report on Vienna conference
9.20 – 9.40  Holly Barker – Department of Anthropology, University of Washington – Medical, Teratogenic and Genetic Pathology Related to US Nuclear Testing in the Marshall Islands
9.45 – 10.05  Hans Kristensen, Federation of American Scientists – The Status and Trends of the World’s Nuclear Arsenals
10.10 – 10.30  John Feffer – Institute of Policy Studies – Comparison of Spending on US Military Industrial Complex and Prevention of Global Warming
10.35 – 11.05 – Q&A 
11.05 – 11.35   Tea and coffee
11.40– 12.00 Janne Nolan – Elliott School of International Affairs – Hooligans at the Gate: The Checkered History of Arms Control
12.05 – 12:25  Mike Lofgren – Former congressional staffer and author of Anatomy of the Deep State – The Merger of Corporations and the US Government as an Underlying Cause of the Current  Nuclear Situation
12.30 – 12.50 Susi Snyder- (PAX, the Netherlands), Author of the 2013 & 2014 DON’T BANK ON THE BOMB reports – Don’t Bank on the Bomb.
12.55– 1:25 – Q&A 
1.30– 2.30 – Lunch

Afternoon Session

2:35– 2.55  Alex Wellerstein- Assistant Professor of Science and Technology Studies, Stevens Institute of Technology – Personalizing the Bomb
3.00 – 3.20  Hugh Gusterson – Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs, George Washington University will describe his anthropological research over many years studying the culture of nuclear weapons scientists at Livermore and Los Alamos Labs.
3.25 – 3.45  Robert Scheer – author of Star Warriors – The Madness Persists
3.50 – 4.10   Noam Chomsky – Institute Professor and Professor of Linguistics MIT – A Pathology That Could Yield to Catastrophe if Not Cured
4.15 – 4.45   Q&A
4.45 – 5.15   Tea and Coffee
5.20 – 5.40  David Krieger – President Nuclear Age Peace Foundation –Nuclear Zero Lawsuits Brought By the Marshall Islands Against the Nine Nuclear Nations
5.45 – 6.05   Tim Wright – Campaign Director International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons ICAN – Some New and Exciting Solutions
6.10 – 6.30  Dr. Helen Caldicott – President The Helen Caldicott Foundation– While There’s Life There’s Hope

To register click here

Thursday, February 26, 2015

A Nazi Party



A Nazi party in Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine.  Photos of their hero Stepan Bandera (who joined Hitler during WW II to invade Russia) are quite present. These are the people the US-NATO relied on to force the coup last year that put Ukraine into the hands of Washington.

I'd like to get a translation but for now the clip speaks for itself.

More NATO Troops Going Into Ukraine


In recent days NATO members are announcing that they are sending military "trainers" into the Ukraine in order to rescue the failed US-EU war project on Russia's border.

There can be no doubt that these "trainers" will be directing the vicious onslaught against the self-defense forces in eastern Ukraine.

The US has already said they are sending in 600 troops.  Next the UK said they were sending in troops as well.  Poland quickly followed suit and now Canada is hinting they will send a force to Ukraine too.  Can their be any doubt that this is an official NATO declaration of war on Moscow?

New NATO secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg said last fall that the western military alliance could deploy its forces wherever it wants.  At the September summit in Wales NATO leaders agreed to set up a "spearhead" rapid reaction force that could be sent to a hotspot within days, and to pre-position equipment and supplies near Russia (in Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Georgia) to receive the force if needed.

"Next year [2015], at the ministerial meeting, we will take decisions regarding the so-called spearhead, but even before it is established, NATO has a strong army after all.  We can deploy it wherever we want to," Stoldenberg told the state broadcaster TVP Info.

To learn more about the bigger NATO offensive military strategy see the Stop NATO website here

John Pilger on the Rise of Fascism



Why the rise of fascism is again the issue
           
By John Pilger

The recent 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz was a reminder of the great crime of fascism, whose Nazi iconography is embedded in our consciousness. Fascism is preserved as history, as flickering footage of goose-stepping blackshirts, their criminality terrible and clear. Yet in the same liberal societies, whose war-making elites urge us never to forget, the accelerating danger of a modern kind of fascism is suppressed; for it is their fascism.

“To initiate a war of aggression…," said the Nuremberg Tribunal judges in 1946, "is not only an international crime, it is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”

Had the Nazis not invaded Europe, Auschwitz and the Holocaust would not have happened.  Had the United States and its satellites not initiated their war of aggression in Iraq in 2003, almost a million people would be alive today; and Islamic State, or ISIS, would not have us in thrall to its savagery.  They are the progeny of modern fascism, weaned by the bombs, bloodbaths and lies that are the surreal theatre known as news.

Like the fascism of the 1930s and 1940s, big lies are delivered with the precision of a metronome: thanks to an omnipresent, repetitive media and its virulent censorship by omission. Take the catastrophe in Libya.

In 2011, Nato launched 9,700 "strike sorties" against Libya, of which more than a third were aimed at civilian targets. Uranium warheads were used; the cities of Misurata and Sirte were carpet-bombed. The Red Cross identified mass graves, and Unicef reported that "most [of the children killed] were under the age of ten". 

The public sodomising of the Libyan president Muammar Gaddafi with a "rebel" bayonet was greeted by the then US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, with the words: "We came, we saw, he died."  His murder, like the destruction of his country, was justified with a familiar big lie; he was planning "genocide" against his own people. "We knew ... that if we waited one more day," said President Obama, "Benghazi, a city the size of Charlotte, could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world."

This was the fabrication of Islamist militias facing defeat by Libyan government forces. They told Reuters there would be "a real bloodbath, a massacre like we saw in Rwanda". Reported on March 14, 2011, the lie provided the first spark for Nato's inferno, described by David Cameron as a "humanitarian intervention".

Secretly supplied and trained by Britain's SAS, many of the "rebels" would become ISIS, whose latest video offering shows the beheading of 21 Coptic Christian workers seized in Sirte, the city destroyed on their behalf by Nato bombers.

For Obama, Cameron and Hollande, Gaddafi's true crime was Libya's economic independence and his declared intention to stop selling Africa's greatest oil reserves in US dollars. The petrodollar is a pillar of American imperial power. Gaddafi audaciously planned to underwrite a common African currency backed by gold, establish an all-Africa bank and promote economic union among poor countries with prized resources. Whether or not this would happen, the very notion was intolerable to the US as it prepared to "enter" Africa and bribe African governments with military "partnerships".

Following Nato's attack under cover of a Security Council resolution, Obama, wrote Garikai Chengu, "confiscated $30 billion from Libya's Central Bank, which Gaddafi had earmarked for the establishment of an African Central Bank and the African gold backed dinar currency".

The "humanitarian war" against Libya drew on a model close to western liberal hearts, especially in the media. In 1999, Bill Clinton and Tony Blair sent Nato to bomb Serbia, because, they lied, the Serbs were committing "genocide" against ethnic Albanians in the secessionist province of Kosovo. David Scheffer, US ambassador-at-large for war crimes [sic], claimed that as many as "225,000 ethnic Albanian men aged between 14 and 59" might have been murdered. Both Clinton and Blair evoked the Holocaust and "the spirit of the Second World War". The West's heroic allies were the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), whose criminal record was set aside. The British Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, told them to call him any time on his mobile phone.

With the Nato bombing over, and much of Serbia's infrastructure in ruins, along with schools, hospitals, monasteries and the national TV station, international forensic teams descended upon Kosovo to exhume evidence of the "holocaust". The FBI failed to find a single mass grave and went home. The Spanish forensic team did the same, its leader angrily denouncing "a semantic pirouette by the war propaganda machines". A year later, a United Nations tribunal on Yugoslavia announced the final count of the dead in Kosovo: 2,788. This included combatants on both sides and Serbs and Roma murdered by the KLA. There was no genocide. The "holocaust" was a lie. The Nato attack had been fraudulent.

Behind the lie, there was serious purpose. Yugoslavia was a uniquely independent, multi-ethnic federation that had stood as a political and economic bridge in the Cold War. Most of its utilities and major manufacturing was publicly owned. This was not acceptable to the expanding European Community, especially newly united Germany, which had begun a drive east to capture its "natural market" in the Yugoslav provinces of Croatia and Slovenia. By the time the Europeans met at Maastricht in 1991 to lay their plans for the disastrous eurozone, a secret deal had been struck; Germany would recognise Croatia. Yugoslavia was doomed.

In Washington, the US saw that the struggling Yugoslav economy was denied World Bank loans.  Nato, then an almost defunct Cold War relic, was reinvented as imperial enforcer. At a 1999 Kosovo "peace" conference in Rambouillet, in France, the Serbs were subjected to the enforcer's duplicitous tactics. The Rambouillet accord included a secret Annex B, which the US delegation inserted on the last day. This demanded the military occupation of the whole of Yugoslavia -- a country with bitter memories of the Nazi occupation -- and the implementation of a "free-market economy" and the privatisation of all government assets. No sovereign state could sign this. Punishment followed swiftly; Nato bombs fell on a defenceless country. It was the precursor to the catastrophes in Afghanistan and Iraq, Syria and Libya, and Ukraine.

Since 1945, more than a third of the membership of the United Nations - 69 countries - have suffered some or all of the following at the hands of America's modern fascism. They have been invaded, their governments overthrown, their popular movements suppressed, their elections subverted, their people bombed and their economies stripped of all protection, their societies subjected to a crippling siege known as "sanctions". The British historian Mark Curtis estimates the death toll in the millions. In every case, a big lie was deployed.

"Tonight, for the first time since 9/11, our combat mission in Afghanistan is over." These were opening words of Obama's 2015 State of the Union address. In fact, some 10,000 troops and 20,000 military contractors (mercenaries) remain in Afghanistan on indefinite assignment.  "The longest war in American history is coming to a responsible conclusion,” said Obama. In fact, more civilians were killed in Afghanistan in 2014 than in any year since the UN took records.  The majority have been killed -- civilians and soldiers -- during Obama's time as president.

The tragedy of Afghanistan rivals the epic crime in Indochina.  In his lauded and much quoted book, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives, Zbigniew Brzezinski, the godfather of US policies from Afghanistan to the present day, writes that if America is to control Eurasia and dominate the world, it cannot sustain a popular democracy, because "the pursuit of power is not a goal that commands popular passion . . . Democracy is inimical to imperial mobilisation."  He is right. As WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden have revealed, a surveillance and police state is usurping democracy. In 1976, Brzezinski, then President Carter's National Security Advisor, demonstrated his point by dealing a death blow to Afghanistan's first and only democracy. Who knows this vital history?

In the 1960s, a popular revolution swept Afghanistan, the poorest country on earth, eventually overthrowing the vestiges of the aristocratic regime in 1978. The People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) formed a government and declared a reform programme that included the abolition of feudalism, freedom for all religions, equal rights for women and social justice for the ethnic minorities. More than 13,000 political prisoners were freed and police files publicly burned.

The new government introduced free medical care for the poorest; peonage was abolished, a mass literacy programme was launched. For women, the gains were unheard of. By the late 1980s, half the university students were women, and women made up almost half of Afghanistan's doctors, a third of civil servants and the majority of teachers. "Every girl," recalled Saira Noorani, a female surgeon, "could go to high school and university. We could go where we wanted and wear what we liked. We used to go to cafes and the cinema to see the latest Indian film on a Friday and listen to the latest music. It all started to go wrong when the mujaheddin started winning. They used to kill teachers and burn schools. We were terrified. It was funny and sad to think these were the people the West supported."

The PDPA government was backed by the Soviet Union, even though, as former Secretary of State Cyrus Vance later admitted, "there was no evidence of any Soviet complicity [in the revolution]". Alarmed by the growing confidence of liberation movements throughout the world, Brzezinski decided that if Afghanistan was to succeed under the PDPA, its independence and progress would offer the "threat of a promising example".

On July 3, 1979, the White House secretly authorised $500 million in arms and logistics to support tribal "fundamentalist" groups known as the mujaheddin. The aim was the overthrow of Afghanistan's first secular, reformist government. In August 1979, the US embassy in Kabul reported that "the United States' larger interests ... would be served by the demise of [the PDPA government], despite whatever setbacks this might mean for future social and economic reforms in Afghanistan." The italics are mine.

The mujaheddin were the forebears of al-Qaeda and Islamic State. They included Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who received tens of millions of dollars in cash from the CIA. Hekmatyar's specialty was trafficking in opium and throwing acid in the faces of women who refused to wear the veil. Invited to London, he was lauded by Prime Minister Thatcher as a "freedom fighter". 

Such fanatics might have remained in their tribal world had Brzezinski not launched an international movement to promote Islamic fundamentalism in Central Asia and so undermine secular political liberation and "destabilise" the Soviet Union, creating, as he wrote in his autobiography, "a few stirred up Muslims".  His grand plan coincided with the ambitions of  the Pakistani dictator, General Zia ul-Haq, to dominate the region. In 1986, the CIA and Pakistan's intelligence agency, the ISI, began to recruit people from around the world to join the Afghan jihad. The Saudi multi-millionaire Osama bin Laden was one of them. Operatives who would eventually join the Taliban and al-Qaeda, were recruited at an Islamic college in Brooklyn, New York, and given paramilitary training at a CIA camp in Virginia. This was called "Operation Cyclone". Its success was celebrated in 1996 when the last PDPA president of Afghanistan, Mohammed Najibullah -- who had gone before the UN General Assembly to plead for help -- was hanged from a streetlight by the Taliban.

The "blowback" of Operation Cyclone and its "few stirred up Muslims" was September 11, 2001. Operation Cyclone became the "war on terror", in which countless men, women and children would lose their lives across the Muslim world, from Afghanistan to Iraq, Yemen, Somalia and Syria. The enforcer's message was and remains: "You are with us or against us."

The common thread in fascism, past and present, is mass murder. The American invasion of Vietnam had its "free fire zones", "body counts" and "collateral damage". In the province of Quang Ngai, where I reported from, many thousands of civilians ("gooks") were murdered by the US; yet only one massacre, at My Lai, is remembered. In Laos and Cambodia, the greatest aerial bombardment in history produced an epoch of terror marked today by the spectacle of joined-up bomb craters which, from the air, resemble monstrous necklaces. The bombing gave Cambodia its own ISIS, led by Pol Pot.

Today, the world's greatest single campaign of terror entails the execution of entire families, guests at weddings, mourners at funerals. These are Obama's victims. According to the New York Times, Obama makes his selection from a CIA "kill list" presented to him every Tuesday in the White House Situation Room. He then decides, without a shred of legal justification, who will live and who will die. His execution weapon is the Hellfire missile carried by a pilotless aircraft known as a drone; these roast their victims and festoon the area with their remains.  Each "hit" is registered on a faraway console screen as a "bugsplat". 

"For goose-steppers," wrote the historian Norman Pollock, "substitute the seemingly more innocuous militarisation of the total culture. And for the bombastic leader, we have the reformer manque, blithely at work, planning and executing assassination, smiling all the while."

Uniting fascism old and new is the cult of superiority. "I believe in American exceptionalism with every fibre of my being," said Obama, evoking declarations of national fetishism from the 1930s. As the historian Alfred W. McCoy has pointed out, it was the Hitler devotee, Carl Schmitt, who said, "The sovereign is he who decides the exception." This sums up Americanism, the world's dominant ideology. That it remains unrecognised as a predatory ideology is the achievement of an equally unrecognised brainwashing.  Insidious, undeclared, presented wittily as enlightenment on the march, its conceit insinuates western culture. I grew up on a cinematic diet of American glory, almost all of it a distortion. I had no idea that it was the Red Army that had destroyed most of the Nazi war machine, at a cost of as many as 13 million soldiers. By contrast, US losses, including in the Pacific, were 400,000. Hollywood reversed this.

The difference now is that cinema audiences are invited to wring their hands at the "tragedy" of American psychopaths having to kill people in distant places -- just as the President himself kills them. The embodiment of Hollywood's violence, the actor and director Clint Eastwood, was nominated for an Oscar this year for his movie, American Sniper, which is about a licensed murderer and nutcase. The New York Times described it as a "patriotic, pro-family picture which broke all attendance records in its opening days".

There are no heroic movies about America's embrace of fascism. During the Second World War, America (and Britain) went to war against Greeks who had fought heroically against Nazism and were resisting the rise of Greek fascism. In 1967, the CIA helped bring to power a fascist military junta in Athens -- as it did in Brazil and most of Latin America. Germans and east Europeans who had colluded with Nazi aggression and crimes against humanity were given safe haven in the US; many were pampered and their talents rewarded. Wernher von Braun was the "father" of both the Nazi V-2 terror bomb and the US space programme. 

In the 1990s, as former Soviet republics, eastern Europe and the Balkans became military outposts of Nato, the heirs to a Nazi movement in Ukraine were given their opportunity. Responsible for the deaths of thousands of Jews, Poles and Russians during the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, Ukrainian fascism was rehabilitated and its "new wave" hailed by the enforcer as "nationalists".

This reached its apogee in 2014 when the Obama administration splashed out $5 billion on a coup against the elected government.  The shock troops were neo-Nazis known as the Right Sector and Svoboda. Their leaders include  Oleh Tyahnybok, who has called for a purge of the "Moscow-Jewish mafia" and "other scum", including gays, feminists and those on the political left. 

These fascists are now integrated into the Kiev coup government. The first deputy speaker of the Ukrainian parliament, Andriy Parubiy, a leader of the governing party, is co-founder of Svoboda. On February 14, Parubiy announced he was flying to Washington get "the USA to give us highly precise modern weaponry". If he succeeds, it will be seen as an act of war by Russia. 

No western leader has spoken up about the revival of fascism in the heart of Europe -- with the exception of Vladimir Putin, whose people lost 22 million to a Nazi invasion that came through the borderland of Ukraine. At the recent Munich Security Conference, Obama's Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, Victoria Nuland, ranted abuse about European leaders for opposing the US arming of the Kiev regime. She referred to the German Defence Minister as "the minister for defeatism". It was Nuland who masterminded the coup in Kiev. The wife of Robert D. Kagan, a leading "neo-con" luminary and co-founder of the extreme right wing Project for a New American Century, she was foreign policy advisor to Dick Cheney.


Nuland's coup did not go to plan. Nato was prevented from seizing Russia's historic, legitimate, warm-water naval base in Crimea. The mostly Russian population of Crimea -- illegally annexed to Ukraine by Nikita Krushchev in 1954 -- voted overwhelmingly to return to Russia, as they had done in the 1990s.  The referendum was voluntary, popular and internationally observed. There was no invasion.

At the same time, the Kiev regime turned on the ethnic Russian population in the east with the ferocity of ethnic cleaning. Deploying neo-Nazi militias in the manner of the Waffen-SS, they bombed and laid to siege cities and towns. They used mass starvation as a weapon, cutting off electricity, freezing bank accounts, stopping social security and pensions. More than a million refugees fled across the border into Russia. In the western media, they became unpeople escaping "the violence" caused by the "Russian invasion". The Nato commander, General Breedlove -- whose name and actions might have been inspired by Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove -- announced that 40,000 Russian troops were "massing". In the age of forensic satellite evidence, he offered none.

These Russian-speaking and bilingual people of Ukraine - a third of the population - have long sought a federation that reflects the country's ethnic diversity and is both autonomous and independent of Moscow. Most are not "separatists" but citizens who want to live securely in their homeland and oppose the power grab in Kiev. Their revolt and establishment of autonomous "states" are a reaction to Kiev's attacks on them. Little of this has been explained to western audiences.

On May 2, 2014, in Odessa, 41 ethnic Russians were burned alive in the trade union headquarters with police standing by.  The Right Sector leader Dmytro Yarosh hailed the massacre as "another bright day in our national history". In the American and British media, this was reported as a "murky tragedy" resulting from "clashes" between "nationalists" (neo-Nazis) and "separatists" (people collecting signatures for a referendum on a federal Ukraine).

The New York Times buried the story, having dismissed as Russian propaganda warnings about the fascist and anti-Semitic policies of Washington's new clients. The Wall Street Journal damned the victims - "Deadly Ukraine Fire Likely Sparked by Rebels, Government Says". Obama congratulated the junta for its "restraint".

If Putin can be provoked into coming to their aid, his pre-ordained "pariah" role in the West will justify the lie that Russia is invading Ukraine. On January 29, Ukraine's top military commander, General Viktor Muzhemko, almost inadvertently dismissed the very basis for US and EU sanctions on Russia when he told a news conference emphatically: "The Ukrainian army is not fighting with the regular units of the Russian Army".  There were "individual citizens" who were members of "illegal armed groups", but there was no Russian invasion.  This was not news. Vadym Prystaiko, Kiev's Deputy Foreign Minister, has called for "full scale war" with nuclear-armed Russia.

On February 21, US Senator James Inhofe, a Republican from Oklahoma, introduced a bill that would authorise American arms for the Kiev regime.  In his Senate presentation, Inhofe used photographs he claimed were of Russian troops crossing into Ukraine, which have long been exposed as fakes. It was reminiscent of Ronald Reagan's fake pictures of a Soviet installation in Nicaragua, and Colin Powell's fake evidence to the UN of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

The intensity of the smear campaign against Russia and the portrayal of its president as a pantomime villain is unlike anything I have known as a reporter. Robert Parry, one of America's most distinguished investigative journalists, who revealed the Iran-Contra scandal, wrote recently, "No European government, since Adolf Hitler's Germany, has seen fit to dispatch Nazi storm troopers to wage war on a domestic population, but the Kiev regime has and has done so knowingly. Yet across the West's media/political spectrum, there has been a studious effort to cover up this reality even to the point of ignoring facts that have been well established ....If you wonder how the world could stumble into world war three - much as it did into world war one a century ago - all you need to do is look at the madness over Ukraine that has proved impervious to facts or reason." 

In 1946, the Nuremberg Tribunal prosecutor said of the German media: "The use made by Nazi conspirators of psychological warfare is well known. Before each major aggression, with some few exceptions based on expediency, they initiated a press campaign calculated to weaken their victims and to prepare the German people psychologically for the attack .... In the propaganda system of the Hitler State it was the daily press and the radio that were the most important weapons."

In the Guardian on February 2, Timothy Garton-Ash called, in effect, for a world war. "Putin must be stopped," said the headline. "And sometimes only guns can stop guns." He conceded that the threat of war might "nourish a Russian paranoia of encirclement"; but that was fine. He name-checked the military equipment needed for the job and advised his readers that "America has the best kit". 

In 2003, Garton-Ash, an Oxford professor, repeated the propaganda that led to the slaughter in Iraq. Saddam Hussein, he wrote, "has, as [Colin] Powell documented, stockpiled large quantities of horrifying chemical and biological weapons, and is hiding what remains of them. He is still trying to get nuclear ones." He lauded Blair as a "Gladstonian, Christian liberal interventionist".  In 2006, he wrote, "Now we face the next big test of the West after Iraq: Iran."

The outbursts -- or as Garton-Ash prefers, his "tortured liberal ambivalence" -- are not untypical of those in the transatlantic liberal elite who have struck a Faustian deal. The war criminal Blair is their lost leader. The Guardian, in which Garton-Ash's piece appeared, published a full-page advertisement for an American Stealth bomber. On a menacing image of the Lockheed Martin monster were the words: "The F-35. GREAT For Britain". This American "kit" will cost British taxpayers £1.3 billion, its F-model predecessors having slaughtered across the world.  In tune with its advertiser, a Guardian editorial has demanded an increase in military spending.

Once again, there is serious purpose. The rulers of the world want Ukraine not only as a missile base; they want its economy. Kiev's new Finance Minister, Nataliwe Jaresko, is a former senior US State Department official in charge of US overseas "investment". She was hurriedly given Ukrainian citizenship.

They want Ukraine for its abundant gas; Vice President Joe Biden's son is on the board of Ukraine's biggest oil, gas and fracking company. The manufacturers of GM seeds, companies such as the infamous Monsanto, want Ukraine's rich farming soil.

Above all, they want Ukraine's mighty neighbour, Russia. They want to Balkanise or dismember Russia and exploit the greatest source of natural gas on earth. As the Arctic ice melts, they want control of the Arctic Ocean and its energy riches, and Russia's long Arctic land border. Their man in Moscow used to be Boris Yeltsin, a drunk, who handed his country's economy to the West. His successor, Putin, has re-established Russia as a sovereign nation; that is his crime.

The responsibility of the rest of us is clear. It is to identify and expose the reckless lies of warmongers and never to collude with them. It is to re-awaken the great popular movements that brought a fragile civilisation to modern imperial states. Most important, it is to prevent the conquest of ourselves: our minds, our humanity, our self respect. If we remain silent, victory over us is assured, and a holocaust beckons.

www.johnpilger.com

Wednesday, February 25, 2015

Need More Light



This one dedicated to all my peeps.......

U.S. Army on Russian Border



The Washington Post reported today that US military vehicles paraded 300 yards from the Russian border in Narva, Estonia.  You can see the evidence in this video - if you have doubts that it is the US Army then just fast forward to about 3:20 into it and you'll see old glory waving.

The soldiers from the US Army’s Second Cavalry Regiment will probably leave the military hardware in Estonia when they are finished with their "exercises".  This is usually how the Pentagon prepositions military equipment for later use.

Narva sits about 100km from Saint Petersburg - or about 62 miles.  What is the message that the US-NATO are sending to Russia?  How is Moscow supposed to receive this shot across their bow?

What if Moscow had a military unit like this along the US border with Canada or Mexico?  Do you figure it would be a big story on FOX News and CNN? 

More Weapons for US-NATO Proxy War in Ukraine



Defense News reports:

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko announced a deal for unspecified military and technical cooperation with the UAE on Tuesday, and said negotiations are ongoing with the United States and unspecified European nations.

The deal is a sign that Ukraine is not only seeking, but finding defense industry partners outside the region as it wages an uphill fight against Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine.

Poroshenko told reporters at the IDEX show here that he hoped talks with the US would yield an agreement to help Ukraine defend itself. Poroshenko had reportedly planned to meet with chief Pentagon weapons buyer, Frank Kendall, at the show.

The plan is to turn Ukraine into another failed state like Afghanistan, Libya or Syria.

You can sign the petition opposing US arming Ukraine here

Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Latest TV Guest



The latest edition of This Issue features Kay Mann from Brunswick, Maine.  Kay runs the environmental web site Green Energy Maine.
 
Kay discusses climate change and the need for a major redirection towards renewal energy sources around the state.  She also critiques the energy program of Gov. Paul LePage.
 
This show currently plays on 14 public access stations across Maine and has been airing since 2003.

Planning a War in Space


Air Force Space Command Schriever Wargame Concludes

by Staff Writers
Peterson AFB CO (AFNS) Feb 20, 2015

Air Force Space Command's Schriever Wargame recently concluded at Schriever AFB, Colorado. Set in the year 2026, this wargame, named in honor of retired Gen. Bernard A. Schriever, explored critical space and cyberspace issues in depth and investigated the military utility of emerging space systems and cyberspace capabilities.

The objectives of the wargame included: 1) Explore and assess the resilience of a future architecture in a contested, degraded, and operationally limited environment, 2) Identify processes; concepts of operations (CONOPS); and opportunities for tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) development within a future architecture to improve defense and mutual support of all elements of National Security Space, and 3) Examine how future anti-access and area denial (A2/AD) force structures will affect requirements for Air Force space operations and services.

Although the details of the scenario remain classified, the game stressed space and cyberspace planning and deterrence in the context of a future regional conflict. This wargame built on the challenges associated with U.S. and allied space systems featured during previous wargame iterations.

In addition, this year's game highlighted the resilience of a future space architecture that incorporated characteristics of increased flexibility, maneuverability, and situational awareness, as well as the crucial role that U.S. allies and the commercial sector play in space and cyberspace capabilities.

"As a wargame, Schriever 2014 looked at future battle management and command and control systems to provide the commander of U.S. space forces with a warfighting capability," said Lt. Gen. Jay Raymond, the Commander of Joint Functional Component Command for Space and 14th Air Force. "Key take-aways from the game include the importance of multi-domain awareness and integration, the warfighting value of our allies, and the operational contributions of commercial space."

The wargame highlighted the possibility to increase resilience through changes in space architectures, innovative tactics, effective command and control, and shared responsibilities across commercial and allied partners.

As the wargame unfolded, a regional crisis quickly escalated, partly because of the interconnectedness of a multi-domain fight involving a capable adversary. The wargame participants emphasized the challenges in containing horizontal escalation once space control capabilities are employed to achieve limited national objectives.

Approximately 175 military and civilian experts from government agencies around the U.S, as well as Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom participated in the wargame.

Agencies included: Office of the Secretary of Defense, Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, U.S. Pacific Command, U.S. Strategic Command, Headquarters Air Force, Air Force Space Command, Pacific Air Forces, Air Combat Command, Army Space and Missile Defense Command, Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, Naval Research Laboratory, Naval War College, the National Reconnaissance Office, NASA, and the intelligence community. Various commercial entities including Intelsat, Inmarsat, DigitalGlobe, Astrium and SSL Federal participated as well to facilitate the wargame.

This Little Light

The light
is shining bright
upon
Washington
the cherry tree
though
is dead

Inside the dark halls
they avoid the light
and work
overtime
to create fear
in order
to extinguish
the fire
of truth
justice
love
and peace

Imagine,
the noble
experiment
in democracy,
now just
an illusion

The light
is always
there
if we can
see it
touch it
take it

This
little light
of mine
Oh, this.......

They Don't Care About You.....


Monday, February 23, 2015

Sign the Petition to the Senate


To: An Open Letter to the U.S. Senate 

Sign the petition here

Reject S. 452, "A bill to provide lethal weapons to the Government of Ukraine."

Why is this important?

The United States is the leading provider of weapons to the world, and the practice of providing weapons to countries in crisis has proven disastrous, including Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria.

Expanding NATO to Russia's border and arming Russia's neighbors threatens something worse than disaster. The United States is toying with nuclear war.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt played significant roles in orchestrating the political crisis that led to a violent coup overthrowing Ukraine's elected President. Nuland not only exclaimed "Fuck the EU!" on that recorded phone call, but she also seemed to decide on the new prime minister: "Yats is the guy."

The Maidan protests were violently escalated by neo-Nazis and by snipers who opened fire on police. When Poland, Germany, and France negotiated a deal for the Maidan demands and an early election, neo-Nazis instead attacked the government and took over. The U.S. State Department immediately recognized the coup government, and Yatsenyuk was indeed installed as Prime Minister.

The people of Crimea voted overwhelmingly to secede, and that -- rather than the coup -- has been labeled "aggression." Ethnic Russians have been massacred by constant shelling from Kiev's U.S.-NATO backed Army, while Russia has been denounced for "aggression" in the form of various unsubstantiated accusations, including the downing of Flight 17.

It's important to recognize Western interests at work here other than peace and generosity. GMO outfits want the excellent farming soil in Ukraine. The U.S. and NATO want a "missile defense" base in Ukraine. Oil corporations want to drill for fracked gas in Ukraine. The U.S. and EU want to get their hands on Russia's "largest supply of natural gas" on the planet.

We routinely recognize the financial corruption of the U.S. government in domestic policy making. We shouldn't blind ourselves to it in matters of foreign policy. There may be a flag waving, but there is nuclear war looming, and that's a bit more important.

Initial signers (organizations for identification):

David Swanson, World Beyond War.
Bruce Gagnon, Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space.
Nick Mottern, KnowDrones.com.
Tarak Kauff, Veterans For Peace.
Carolyn McCrady, Peace and Justice Can Win.
Medea Benjamin, Code Pink.
Gareth Porter.
Malachy Kilbride, National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance.
Buzz Davis, WI Impeachment/Bring Our Troops Home Coalition.
Alice Slater, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.
Doug Rawlings, Veterans For Peace.
Diane Turco, Cape Codders for Peace and Justice.
Rich Greve, Peace Action Staten Island.
Kevin Zeese, Popular Resistance.
Margaret Flowers, Popular Resistance.
Heinrich Buecker, Coop Anti-War Cafe Berlin.
Dud Hendrick.
Ellen Barfield, Veterans For Peace and War Resisters League.
Herbert Hoffman, Veterans For Peace.
Jean Athey, Peace Action Montgomery.
Kent Shifferd.
Matthew Hoh.
Bob Cushing, Pax Christi.
Bill Gilson, Veterans For Peace.
Michael Brenner, University of Pittsburgh.
Cindy Sheehan: Cindy Sheehan's Soapbox.
Jodie Evans, Code Pink.
Judith Deutsch.
Jim Haber.
Elliott Adams.
Joe Lombardo and Marilyn Levin, UNAC co-coordinators.
David Hartsough, World Beyond War.
Mairead Maguire, Nobel peace laureate, Co founder peace people.
Koohan Paik, International Forum on Globalization.
Ellen Judd, University of Manitoba.
Nicolas Davies.
Rosalie Tyler Paul, PeaceWorks, Brunswick Maine.

Sign the petition here

Time to organize


A German Perspective on Ukraine War


A few years ago I met German peacenik Irene Eckert in Chicago at an anti-NATO protest while the cancerous military alliance was holding its annual meeting in that city.  Irene has been very active on the Ukraine issue and yesterday I sent her a question...see below for her response.

BG:  Can you give me your opinion on Merkel and how much Germany will resist Washington?

IE: Well your question goes right into the heart of the matter and there is no clear answer.

There is an ongoing "dispute" here mainly on the political right over an assumed "limited German sovereignty".  In this debate they keep quoting a secret document from May 21, 1949, the so-named "KANZLERAKTE" according to which every West German chancellor had and still has to be approved by the US-government in the first place, so does her or his policies. Officially the existence of such a document is denied.

Another kind of queer juridical  argument refers to the "enemy clause" in the UN charter (Art 53.2 and Art 107) according to which in times of war or better in case of  a new aggression, German "freedom"  be restricted.

De facto, several "treaties" do exist bearing clauses  that give the US quasi unlimited rights over our territory. From the US point of view we are still under "occupational status", see justification for military bases, US-troops, nukes on our soil. What is also relevant in this context: Our gold reserves presumably have been taken to the US Fort Knox long ago.

Legally this is  all unacceptable of course. It goes to show the neo-colonial US attitude Vis-à-vis her "allies" and "friends" who are all dependent creatures. The US never accepted signing a formal peace treaty with Germany under the pretext of cold war conditions. However, they and not the Russians were the refuseniks.

But at latest with the 4+2 treaty on German reunification (1990) these "reserves" where eventually pushed aside by history.

The four allies: US-USSR-GB-France and East and West Germany signed the treaty, which in official language was supposed to replace a peace treaty, it was officially interpreted and characterised here as de facto peace treaty.

But of course everything is matter of power relations. You probably know Zbigniew Brzezinski's Book "The Only Global Power" (2004) according to which we Germans are simply US vassals.

On the other hand: Mrs. Merkel did sign the Minsk agreement after 17 hours of bargaining. The MINSK AGREEMENT seems a highly relevant  document (see for details on the Russian website Strategic-Culture.org) bearing the signatures of the NORMANDIE Team, signed by Hollande, Merkel, Poroshenko, Putin and the Self Defense Forces and the OSCE representative and the foreign ministers.

German business is suffering enormously under the sanctions on Russia, forced upon Europe by the US and her business interests, [they] offer more or less silent resistance.

The Eastern Ukrainian victory in Debalcevo over thousands of Kiev troops and resistance in Kiev against their war hungry puppet government that pushes the country into further impoverishment are all elements of weakness on behalf of the NATO side. Maybe that Debalcevo is even a Stalingrad in miniature.

Politicians are prone to power relationship inside their constituencies and beyond. So Merkel has to somehow respond to the German business class and the strong anti-war sentiment in the German population. She cannot act as a mere puppet. But business is an unstable factor, I do not fully understand their heterogeneous interests. Merkel is under enormous pressure from various sides....

The peace movement is still completely irrelevant, occupying itself with internal debates. But public opinion, in spite of all the brain washing, is not in favor of  war against Russia.

I hope to have given you somewhat of an answer... 

Sunday, February 22, 2015

History Lesson



In observance of the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Malcolm X, here is a speech he gave in Detroit on February 15, 1964 one week before he was killed.

One who seeks knowledge must desire from a young age to hear the entire truth.
~ Plato
 

Watch the Back Story



Ukraine Crisis... What are the underlying motives?

Read the best article yet on the Ukrainian situation here

See How They Lie



Kiev's Ambassador to Germany admits Neo-Nazis are part of Ukrainian military forces. Without them he says Russia would have defeated us.  He also claims that no Nazi's are part of the government.  

Several lies here.  First, the Nazi's have formed their own independent military units and are not under the control of the Ukrainian government.  See more on that here

Just this morning I watched a video of eastern self-defense forces risking their lives giving covering fire so that 34 of Kiev's soldiers could safely surrender and get on a bus to get away from the front lines.  The Nazi's have been shooting their supposed fellow Ukrainian Army soldiers who try to surrender.  This tells me alot about the kind of people who are in the self-defense forces - helping their 'enemies', who have come to kill them, escape from the Nazi's.  You can see this remarkable video here

Secondly Russia has not invaded Ukraine - miners, farmers, parents, students, artists, and the like have joined the self-defense forces to defend their lands from the Kiev puppet regime whose strings are pulled by the US-NATO.  There are retired men who were once in the Ukrainian Army now joining the self-defense forces in the east.  Some of Kiev's Army have switched sides and joined the self-defense forces.  There are also some Russian volunteers who have crossed the border to help defend their Russian speaking Ukrainian brothers and sisters in the east.

Third the Ambassador claims that there are no Nazi's in the Kiev Rada (parliament).  In fact there are several and many others in various cabinet and government administration positions.  See more here

Sunday Song