Mixed Bag of Rants

ROK stands for Republic of Korea (South Korea).  This provocative military alliance is being aimed at China (Photo from Jeju Island)

• The US has made Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and Mongolia partners in the cancerous NATO as it becomes a 'global military alliance' on behalf of corporate capitalism.  Any nation that gets in the way of total corporate domination of the world economy is being taken down - thus we saw Libya get zapped by the NATO war machine and presently we witness Syria under full NATO attack.  Russia and China are on the take down list and will both be the recipient of the expanding militarization of the ROK-US-Japan military alliance.  (Few know that Russia borders North Korea and during the Korean War Gen. Douglas MacArthur had US warplanes fly over the border into Russia to bomb Vladivostok trying to pull Russia into the war.  Russia didn't take the bait.) 
• Email and Facebook is full of posts about the right-wing militias taking over a national wildlife refuge in Oregon.  The anti-government groups say they are protecting their constitutional rights to use lands as they wish.  Bullshit!
• CounterPunch reports: In the high desert of central Oregon, lies Harney County, a site of a long-festering and intense confrontation between federal officials and the militant property rights movement. Here federal Fish and Wildlife Service agents sought to fence off a wetland that had been trampled by a rancher’s cows on the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge about thirty miles south of the dust-caked town of Burns. In an affidavit, Earl M. Kisler, a Fish and Wildlife Service enforcement officer, said that rancher Dwight Hammond had repeatedly threatened refuge officials with violence over an eight year period. On one occasion Hammond told the manager of the federal refuge that “he was going to tear his head off and shit down his neck.” According to the affidavit, Hammond threatened to kill refuge manager Forrest Cameron and assistant manager Dan Walsworth and claimed he was ready to die over a fence line that the refuge wanted to construct to keep his cows out of a marsh and wetland.
• It's obvious that these self described 'constitutionalists' don't like federal protection of wildlife areas.  They want to graze cattle on federal lands without paying rent, they want to mine federal lands that prohibit such environmentally destructive practices, and they ultimately want to do away with all federal land holdings.  These militias are carrying water for big corporate interests who want to do resource extraction on federal lands.  The corporations are using the 'constitutionalists' as storm troopers to try to bully local/state/federal governments to turn all lands over to them to do as they see fit.  
• Many people are now saying, and I believe they are exactly right, that if black activists were occupying some federal space with weapons they'd be shot on sight.  If Mexican-Americans were doing the same thing they'd be shot dead.  If Muslim-Americans were occupying some federal preserve they'd be called terrorists and would be bombed.  But when right-wing white guys occupy lands that were originally stolen from Native Americans the government goes easy on them.  Pure hypocrisy.  
• There is an impeachment rally at the state capital in Augusta, Maine tomorrow at 11:00 am.  Our right-wing Gov. Paul LePage has committed many cruel impeachable offenses and so far the state legislature has been afraid to take him on.  But a growing groundswell from the public has put the impeachment issue on the agenda and three progressive members of the legislature have introduced calls for impeachment hearings.  So I'll be joining that crowd at the capital in the morning.