The Imperial Candidate

Why We’ll Keep Going Back to BIW

By Bruce K. Gagnon

I recently returned from a nearly month-long trip to South Korea where I, and two others from Veterans For Peace, visited several farming villages that have been devastated by the expansion of bases for US military operations in the region.

While gone I missed the West Bath Court arraignment for the Zumwalt 12 arrestees. We were arrested at BIW during the June 18 ‘christening’ of the second Zumwalt stealth destroyer. Bar Harbor lawyer Lynne Williams represented me in court on Aug. 2. Our group of peace protesters pled not guilty to the charges filed against us for blocking the road and gate in front of BIW. We are scheduled to return to court in September and November before jury selection and trial is scheduled in December.

While in South Korea our delegation visited two 500-year-old fishing communities that have been torn apart to build an Air Force base and a Navy base. The bases have caused tremendous suffering for villagers who have fed their families and lived in harmony with nature there for so long. But the Obama-Hillary Clinton ‘pivot’ of 60 percent of Pentagon forces into the Asia-Pacific region necessitates more ports-of-call, airfields, and barracks for the US imperial operation now aimed at China. When America demands they be moved out of the way, these villagers become expendable.

We spent six days walking around Jeju Island in the intense early-August heat. There a Navy base has been built that will port the Aegis and Zumwalt destroyers built at BIW. More than 600 people from throughout South Korea came to the island to support the Gangjeong villagers who have been fighting unsuccessfully for the last eight years to stop the base.

Two teams of 300 each headed east and west around Jeju Island taking six days to complete the 5th annual Grand March for Life and Peace. It’s no coincidence that five out of the 12 of us arrested at BIW on June 18 have been to Jeju Island over the years to stand with the people as they opposed the base construction. The villagers suffer from depression as they watch their way of life dying. The 2,000- person village is currently being besieged by more than 5,000 Korean and American naval personnel.

I also spent considerable time in Seoul attending various protests against the announced deployment of the US THAAD (Theater High Altitude Area Defense) ‘missile defense’ system. The Pentagon plans to stick it on the mainland in the farming village of Seongju (population 10,000). The right-wing South Korean government, following orders from Washington, likely chose this village because it had backed the conservative government by a margin of 85 percent in the last national election. But that has now changed. Just before I arrived in South Korea the residents of Seongju held a mock funeral where they announced that they had, en masse, resigned from the ruling party. Then, just before I left Korea, 900 of these same residents took the sacred step of sitting together and shaving their heads. In Korea this is a big deal. It indicates the commitment to fight to the death, and in this case many women also joined the hair shaving, which is rare.

I know it’s really difficult for many Americans to understand all of this because we think of ourselves as the ‘exceptional nation’ bringing peace and democracy to the rest of the world. The warships built at BIW are seen by most Mainers as symbols of American freedom, but these days people in places like South Korea, Okinawa, Japan, Philippines and Guam only see suffering when the US military arrives in their communities.

From Oct. 11-26 there will be another peace walk through Maine similar to the ones we have organized over the past five years. This walk will be called ‘Stop the War$ on Mother Earth’ and will draw links between our endless wars for oil and the ravaging of our planet by the fossil fuel industry.

We’ve just had the hottest summer in recorded human history and you’d think the nation would go on a massive campaign to reorder our society to solar, wind, tidal power and mass transit production instead of picking a fight with China and Russia. It would make more sense to convert BIW from war making to peaceful pursuits and help give future generations a fair chance at survival. Unfortunately, while we crash and burn, the American people seem distracted by the ongoing circus sideshow on corporate TV.

For the sake of our children and world peace we’ll keep protesting the building of war ships at BIW.

- Bruce K. Gagnon is a member of PeaceWorks and lives in Bath

Defending Okinawan Forests from U.S. Marine Base

Okinawa: Villagers confront Japanese riot police attempting to force through the construction of US Marine Corps helipads in the Yanbaru jungles.

Japan Times reports:

Since July, the Japanese government has been conducting a massive police campaign in the Takae district of Higashi village that has left at least five demonstrators hospitalized, infringed upon press freedoms and been condemned by Gov. Takeshi Onaga, media unions and local residents.

Asked for comment on the injuries and blocking of reporters, the State Department referred The Japan Times to the Japanese government and U.S. Department of Defense. Anna Richey-Allen, spokesperson for the department’s East Asia and Pacific Bureau spokesperson, then issued a stock statement unrelated to the inquiries.

Likewise, USMC Public Affairs Officer George McArthur declined to comment on the alleged rights’ violations. The U.S. Marines in Okinawa also rejected an interview request from The Japan Times to discuss the helipad construction. Despite the request being made 10 days in advance, McArthur dismissed it on the grounds of it being “short-fuse” (sic). 

Veterans for Peace delegation currently in Okinawa at Takae......

Delusional Thinking

Setting Up the Straw Man for Rigged Elections

We know that US elections have been rife with manipulation for many years.  We know that major league voter suppression and voting machine manipulation have been around for a long time.

In recent days the allegations (and that is all they are) that Russia is hacking voter roles across the US appears to be part of a larger operation being undertaken by the ruling oligarchy in the US.

The American people have become the enemy and cannot any longer be trusted with a proper honest voting system.  So those who are running this corporate oligarchy (that is disguised as a democracy) are now moving to put our national voting system into the hands of Homeland Security.  Why?  Because the Russians are coming!!!!!!

Truthfully, playing this Russian card serves two primary purposes.  First to scare the public into accepting that we have to put Homeland Security in charge of voting which will give them a free pass to manipulate the voting machines beyond our wildest imagination.

Secondly this further demonization of Russia helps set up the provocative foreign and military policy planned by Hillary Clinton once she takes charge in Washington.  She is likely to win in a landslide - either because the non-stop Trump circus sideshow campaign will work its magic - and/or the voting machines will be programmed to make her vote tally jump like a Jack in the Box.

Some political activists across the US are already asking the legitimate question, "At what point do we acknowledge that elections in America are a waste of time - a rigged game - and we should be boycotting them?"

The way things are going these days that idea of election boycott might come sooner than any of us imagined possible.

Bruce

Preparing for 16th Annual Keep Space for Peace Week

No Missile Defense 
Stop Drones Surveillance & Killing
Stop the Endless Wars 
No to NATO
End Corporate Domination of Foreign/Military Policy
Convert the Military Industrial Complex
Deal with climate change and global poverty

It's that time of year when the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space begins to compile a list of local actions planned around the world in conjunction with Keep Space for Peace Week.

Just this morning I emailed out the first list which is always a bit slim but you've got to begin some place.  Before long folks will start sending in notices about events they plan and just before space week starts the list is always quite impressive.

So far we've heard from folks in England, Australia, Sicily, Germany, Venezuela and in the US who are organizing events.  

This year we are likely to see some events come from South Korea as activists there are in the middle of a huge campaign against the Pentagon deployment of the THAAD 'missile defense' (MD) system in the melon farming community of Seongju.  I've previously written about the raging campaign there to oppose this provocative US deployment.

So-called MD is a key component in the US first-strike attack planning program.  MD is a layered program with various systems each playing a role in providing the 'shield' after the US first-strike sword lunges into the heart of Russia or China.

THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) is just the latest in a series of US MD deployments now being stationed at bases encircling Russia and China.  The PAC-3 (Patriot 3rd generation) MD system is presently deployed near Russian and Chinese borders.

The Navy's Aegis destroyer-based SM-3 (Standard Missile-3) MD program is bumping up along the coasts of Russia and China and has about the best testing results of any of the Pentagon's MD programs.

US drone bases in the US and around the globe are often key targets of space week protests.  In order to fly the drones they must be guided by military satellites and ground down-link stations that are strategically placed around the world.  These same installations help the US Space Command coordinate the aggressive MD system as well.

Our actual goal, as we mark our 16th year of organizing Keep Space for Peace Week, is to help increase public understanding about how the Pentagon has taken over the space program in order to "control and dominate" space on "behalf of the war fighter" and corporate interests.  All US military operations these days are coordinated and directed by space technology.

The Pentagon and the aerospace industry have bragged for many years that Star Wars (the name given to describe all of this) will be the largest industrial project in the history of Earth.  In fact this program is so expensive that the US can't afford to pay for it alone - thus the reason the Pentagon is rounding up the allies to get involved in this military space program.  But all allied military space technology systems must be "inter-operable" with US space operations which of course means that everything is run through Pentagon satellites, ground-stations, and command and control centers with the US at the top of the "kill chain".

How does all of this get paid for?  Obviously the cost of space warfare technology is one key reason we see major emphasis on domestic austerity budgets in the US and across allied countries.  They are robbing from the poor and the working class to fund these space technology programs that are making the few at the top very rich.  Better we convert these weapons factories and build solar power, wind turbines, mass transit systems, tidal power and other things that help us deal with our real problem today - climate change.

Our poster for Keep Space for Peace Week is heavily focused this year on Pentagon MD deployments around the world.  You can see the poster here

Anyone can participate in space week - you can help by writing a Letter to the Editor of your local newspaper, put up some of our space week posters around your community, or hold a house party and show one of our many videos which can be seen here.

Please let us know if you plan to organize a local event during space week this year. We welcome your solidarity in our campaign to keep space for peace.

Bruce

Working on the 2016 Peace Walk

MB and I just got back from a four-day trip to Downeast Maine where we spent a couple days being a tourist and walking along the beautiful rocky Atlantic coast.  We stayed our first night in Eastport and then our second night with friends in Hancock.  Our artist friend Russell Wray is the one who made this dolphin and banner (above) for our walk through Maine last year.

Russell is now working on the banner design for our Maine peace walk this October 11-26 that will travel from the Penobscot Nation on Indian Island (Old Town) inland to Dexter, Pittsfield, Unity, Waterville, Augusta, Norway, and Lewiston.  Then the walk will come back to the coast and head south from Brunswick, Freeport, Portland, Saco, Kennebunk, York Beach, and then end in Kittery at the Naval submarine shipyard.

The theme this year is Stop the War$ on Mother Earth as we attempt to connect the dots on our major challenges ahead.  There is no way we can flourish on this planet unless we deal with climate change and we can't stop climate change unless we deal with the certain fact that the Pentagon has the largest carbon bootprint on the Earth.

We think we are going to have a bigger walk this year than ever before for numerous reasons.  I hope most of them are obvious to you.  We've also got the best organizing committee yet for this walk, the 5th such one I've helped to organize through Maine.

On the last two days of our trip MB and I redrove the first half of the walk route because we needed to add two new night stop venues into our planning.  This was the third time to drive this route and each time you see new things - beautiful landscapes, the way of life of local folks, possible break stops along the road and more.

Peace walks are always magic and this one will have its own special qualities.  We will be honored to be led again by Buddhist monks and nuns from the Nipponzan Myohoji order.  This Buddhist order is known for leading peace walks and building peace pagodas around the planet.

This will be the 10th walk I have helped to organize - five in Florida when I worked there and five here since moving to Maine in 2003.

It gets into your blood these peace walks do - you see so many opportunities to reach 'beyond the choir' - alot of people clamor that we need to do more than preach to the choir so this process of walking the state, carrying a sign with my message, works well for me.

Bruce

Update on Ukraine Situation

The US-NATO war project in Ukraine has stalled.  Europe is growing tired of the Kiev regime and the US has made such a mess of things there is little room for maneuvering.

Here is a good overview of the situation. 

Sunday Song

Demonizing Russia Good for War Machine Profits$

A wonderful book I'd highly recommend is Crazy Horse: The Strange Man of the Oglalas by Mari Sandoz. I want to share one story from the book.

After gold was discovered in the Black Hills the U.S. Army was sent in to clear the Indians out of their paha sapa even though they had been promised in a previous treaty that they would "own" this territory as long as the grass grew green. The inevitable battle led to Custer's last stand and the resulting major military campaign to bring the "hostiles" onto reservations in the dusty lands of southwest South Dakota.

Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull held out as long as they could. But the cold winters and diminishing buffalo and other wild game forced them ultimately to surrender. This process literally broke the hearts of the people. The conditions of surrender were that they had to give up their guns and their horses - essentially their very way of life.

The government was to provide them with all they needed from then on. Food, clothes, and even tepees. But they soon found out the promises were not honored. The blankets they were given were so thin they could not keep the people warm at night. The flour had bugs in it and the bacon was rancid. The people could not even go and hunt anymore as their guns and horses were gone. They continued to starve and die. But they honored their word to the white man's government and stayed peaceful.

The weapons contractors, that had grown rich from the Indian wars in the 1860's, were getting restless. This peace with Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull was cutting into their previous enormous profits. So they came up with a plan.

They created a national public relations campaign and had artists create renderings of Crazy Horse on the war path again killing farmers and raping white women and children. These stories were placed in the big newspapers across the country and the public became outraged. Soon the Congress appropriated more funds to return the "hostiles" to the reservation.

In fact, during this campaign of deception, Crazy Horse was sitting in his tepee on the reservation without a gun or horse to his name.

When you think about it the story is virtually the same today in Iraq. The government creates a pubic relations campaign about weapons of mass destruction and then sells the story using the mainstream media to justify a war and make enormous profits for the weapons corporations.

When I was in the Air Force, during the Vietnam War, I learned how they did the same thing to sell that war as I read The Pentagon Papers - the government's own secret history of how they lied to create that war.

The process is again under way today in Asia-Pacific as we see the U.S. beginning to provoke and demonize China and Russia in a new arms race that would bring huge profits to the war industry.

They say that every criminal has an MO - modus operandi - method of operation. When I was young I wanted to be an FBI agent when I grew up so I could fight against organized crime.

Then one day I woke up and realized that the military industrial complex was the essence of organized crime. So I took myself to the peace movement where I could fulfill my boyhood promise to work for "truth, justice, and the American way."

Sometimes I wonder if the fate of Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull and the other native people will be the fate of the American people of today as well. In order to pay for endless war the government, clearly under the control of the military industrial complex as former President Dwight Eisenhower warned us, is now moving to destroy social progress in our country as they cut education, health care, and the like. In a way I wonder, are we now being brought onto the reservation too?

Under the New World Order job # 1 of corporate globalization is to maximize profits internationally. Allegiance to country is a thing of the past. Corporations move overseas to seek the lowest wage workers possible. Unemployment grows and the local tax base drys up as jobs leave the U.S. The process of corporate disinvestment in America is underway. The Pentagon says that "security export" will be our role under corporate globalization. Endless war.

What can we learn from the time of Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull?

Crazy Horse is remembered for these words: "A very great vision is needed and the man who has it must follow it as the eagle seeks the deepest blue of the sky."

What is our vision for the future of North America and for our Mother Earth?

Bruce

Maine's Racist Governor Loses Grip Once Again

Our Gov. Paul LePage here in Maine has a long history of raging against critics who challenge his racism, frequent gross exaggerations and outright lies.

Just a couple days ago LePage went after the Democrat in the state legislature who chairs the Health & Human Services Committee in the House of Representatives. 

The dispute is over whether Blacks and Hispanics from out-of-state are the primary reason drugs are flowing into Maine.  LePage claims he has a three-ring binder full of photos of Black & Hispanic faces who have been arrested for these crimes.  Law enforcement officials in LePage's home town of Lewiston were quoted on the radio saying that 90% of those arrested for drugs in their city are white.

The FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Service reported that, in 2014, 1,211 people were arrested for selling or making drugs in Maine, and, of those, 170 – or 14.1 percent – were black.

After seeing LePage (who is a big supporter of Trump and whose daughter has been hired to work on the Trump campaign) do this repeatedly over the last six years in office one might wonder when the Democrats who control the state House will vote in favor of impeachment articles that have previously been filed against LeRage.

The man is sick and should not be leading our state government.  He belongs in a program for alcoholic abusers.

Bruce

I Am Free

Protests Widen in South Korea Against U.S. THAAD Deployment

Thousands of South Koreans in the city of Gimcheon have joined protests against the planned deployment of an advanced US 'missile defense' system called THAAD near their city.

Protests against THAAD have erupted almost daily across the country since the announcement of the decision by Washington to deploy the system which will be aimed at China and Russia.

White Helmets Equals Black Ops

Funded by US AID - that should tell you something.....

White Helmets are nominating themselves for the Nobel Peace Prize.  I'd guess that Obama will send a letter of recommendation on their behalf.

Russian Students Speak Out

Now the shoe is on the other foot.  Let's see how the American people feel when others around the world call into question US moral depravity..... and rightly so.

Protecting Our Water

Water is life
piss oil
into the lakes
rivers
oceans
we kill
the future

Money
is god
worshipped
by too many
on bended knees
every morning
as they pray
over the stock
reports

Blinded
by their love
for the green frog $kin
can't $ee
our connection
to the sacred
Mother Earth

Money trumps
clean water
clean air
clean food

the truly crazy
among us
think they can
buy health
and long life

Our way out?

Reorient our nature
away from
dog$ eat dog$
to a spiritual
connection
to all life

that is the greatest
gift
the best treasure
the highest reward
when we give
our relatives
a future
on this spinning orb
zooming thru space

Hoka Hey!

Bruce

October 11-26 Penobscot Nation to Kittery, Maine

Walk route

• Oct 11 (Penobscot Nation on Indian Island)
• Oct 12 (Dexter)
• Oct 13 (Pittsfield)
• Oct 14 (Unity)
• Oct 15 (Waterville)
• Oct 16 (Augusta)
• Oct 17 (Norway)
• Oct 18 (Lewiston)
• Oct 19 (Brunswick)
• Oct 20 (Brunswick day off)
• Oct 21 (Freeport)
• Oct 22 (Portland)
• Oct 23 (Saco)
• Oct 24 (Kennebunk)
• Oct 25 (York Beach)
• Oct 26 (Kittery)

Provoking Nuclear War by Media

By John Pilger

The exoneration of a man accused of the worst of crimes, genocide, made no headlines. Neither the BBC nor CNN covered it. The Guardian allowed a brief commentary. Such a rare official admission was buried or suppressed, understandably. It would explain too much about how the rulers of the world rule.

The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague has quietly cleared the late Serbian president, Slobodan Milosevic, of war crimes committed during the 1992-95 Bosnian war, including the massacre at Srebrenica.

Far from conspiring with the convicted Bosnian-Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, Milosevic actually “condemned ethnic cleansing”, opposed Karadzic and tried to stop the war that dismembered Yugoslavia. Buried near the end of a 2,590- page judgement on Karadzic last February, this truth further demolishes the propaganda that justified Nato’s illegal onslaught on Serbia in 1999.

Milosevic died of a heart attack in 2006, alone in his cell in The Hague, during what amounted to a bogus trial by an American-invented “international tribunal”. Denied heart surgery that might have saved his life, his condition worsened and was monitored and kept secret by US officials, as WikiLeaks has since revealed.

Milosevic was the victim of war propaganda that today runs like a torrent across our screens and newspapers and beckons great danger for us all. He was the prototype demon, vilified by the western media as the “butcher of the Balkans” who was responsible for “genocide”, especially in the secessionist Yugoslav province of Kosovo. Prime Minister Tony Blair said so, invoked the Holocaust and demanded action against “this new Hitler”.  David Scheffer, the US ambassador-at-large for war crimes [sic], declared that as many as “225,000 ethnic Albanian men aged between 14 and 59” may have been murdered by Milocevic’s forces.

This was the justification for Nato’s bombing, led by Bill Clinton and Blair, that killed hundreds of civilians in hospitals, schools, churches, parks and television studios and destroyed Serbia’s economic infrastructure.  It was blatantly ideological; at a notorious “peace conference” in Rambouillet in France, Milosevic was confronted by Madeleine Albright, the US secretary of state, who was to achieve infamy with her remark that the deaths of half a million Iraqi children were “worth it”.

Albright delivered an “offer” to Milosevic that no national leader could accept. Unless he agreed to the foreign military occupation of his country, with the occupying forces “outside the legal process”, and to the imposition of a neo-liberal “free market”, Serbia would be bombed. This was contained in an “Appendix B”, which the media failed to read or suppressed. The aim was to crush Europe’s last independent “socialist” state.

Once Nato began bombing, there was a stampede of Kosovar refugees “fleeing a holocaust”. When it was over, international police teams descended on Kosovo to exhume the victims 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”. The final count of the dead in Kosovo was 2,788. This included combatants on both sides and Serbs and Roma murdered by the pro-Nato Kosovo Liberation Front. There was no genocide. The Nato attack was both a fraud and a war crime.

All but a fraction of America’s vaunted “precision guided” missiles hit not military but civilian targets, including the news studios of Radio Television Serbia in Belgrade. Sixteen people were killed, including cameramen, producers and a make-up artist. Blair described the dead, profanely, as part of Serbia’s “command and control”. In 2008, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, Carla Del Ponte, revealed that she had been pressured not to investigate Nato’s crimes.

This was the model for Washington’s subsequent invasions of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and, by stealth, Syria. All qualify as “paramount crimes” under the Nuremberg standard; all depended on media propaganda. While tabloid journalism played its traditional part, it was serious, credible, often liberal journalism that was the most effective – the evangelical promotion of Blair and his wars by the Guardian, the incessant lies about Saddam Hussein’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction in the Observer and the New York Times, and the unerring drumbeat of government propaganda by the BBC in the silence of its omissions.

At the height of the bombing, the BBC’s Kirsty Wark interviewed General Wesley Clark, the Nato commander. The Serbian city of Nis had just been sprayed with American cluster bombs, killing women, old people and children in an open market and a hospital. Wark asked not a single question about this, or about any other civilian deaths.

Others were more brazen. In February 2003, the day after Blair and Bush had set fire to Iraq, the BBC’s political editor, Andrew Marr, stood in Downing Street and made what amounted to a victory speech. He excitedly told his viewers that Blair had “said they would be able to take Baghdad without a bloodbath, and that in the end the Iraqis would be celebrating. And on both of those points he has been proved conclusively right.” Today, with a million dead and a society in ruins, Marr’s BBC interviews are recommended by the US embassy in London.

Marr’s colleagues lined up to pronounce Blair “vindicated”. The BBC’s Washington correspondent, Matt Frei, said, “There’s no doubt that the desire to bring good, to bring American values to the rest of the world, and especially to the Middle East … is now increasingly tied up with military power.” 

This obeisance to the United States and its collaborators as a benign force “bringing good” runs deep in western establishment journalism. It ensures that the present-day catastrophe in Syria is blamed exclusively on Bashar al-Assad, whom the West and Israel have long conspired to overthrow, not for any humanitarian concerns, but to consolidate Israel’s aggressive power in the region. The jihadist forces unleashed and armed by the US, Britain, France, Turkey and their “coalition” proxies serve this end. It is they who dispense the propaganda and videos that becomes news in the US and Europe, and provide access to journalists and guarantee a one-sided “coverage” of Syria.

The city of Aleppo is in the news. Most readers and viewers will be unaware that the majority of the population of Aleppo lives in the government-controlled western part of the city. That they suffer daily artillery bombardment from western-sponsored al-Qaida is not news. On 21 July, French and American bombers attacked a government village in Aleppo province, killing up to 125 civilians. This was reported on page 22 of the Guardian; there were no photographs.

Having created and underwritten jihadism in Afghanistan in the 1980s as Operation Cyclone -- a weapon to destroy the Soviet Union -- the US is doing something similar in Syria. Like the Afghan Mujahideen, the Syrian “rebels” are America’s and Britain’s foot soldiers. Many fight for al-Qaida and its variants; some, like the Nusra Front, have rebranded themselves to comply with American sensitivities over 9/11. The CIA runs them, with difficulty, as it runs jihadists all over the world.

The immediate aim is to destroy the government in Damascus, which, according to the most credible poll (YouGov Siraj), the majority of Syrians support, or at least look to for protection, regardless of the barbarism in its shadows. The long-term aim is to deny Russia a key Middle Eastern ally as part of a Nato war of attrition against the Russian Federation that eventually destroys it.

The nuclear risk is obvious, though suppressed by the media across “the free world”. The editorial writers of the Washington Post, having promoted the fiction of WMD in Iraq, demand that Obama attack Syria. Hillary Clinton, who publicly rejoiced at her executioner’s role during the destruction of Libya, has repeatedly indicated that, as president, she will “go further” than Obama.

Gareth Porter, a samidzat journalist reporting from Washington, recently revealed the names of those likely to make up a Clinton cabinet, who plan an attack on Syria. All have belligerent cold war histories; the former CIA director, Leon Panetta, says that “the next president is gonna have to consider adding additional special forces on the ground”.

What is most remarkable about the war propaganda now in flood tide is its patent absurdity and familiarity. I have been looking through archive film from Washington in the 1950s when diplomats, civil servants and journalists were witch-hunted and ruined by Senator Joe McCarthy for challenging the lies and paranoia about the Soviet Union and China.  Like a resurgent tumour, the anti-Russia cult has returned.

In Britain, the Guardian’s Luke Harding leads his newspaper’s Russia-haters in a stream of journalistic parodies that assign to Vladimir Putin every earthly iniquity.  When the Panama Papers leak was published, the front page said Putin, and there was a picture of Putin; never mind that Putin was not mentioned anywhere in the leaks.

Like Milosevic, Putin is Demon Number One. It was Putin who shot down a Malaysian airliner over Ukraine. Headline: “As far as I’m concerned, Putin killed my son.” No evidence required. It was Putin who was responsible for Washington’s documented (and paid for) overthrow of the elected government in Kiev in 2014. The subsequent terror campaign by fascist militias against the Russian-speaking population of Ukraine was the result of Putin’s “aggression”. Preventing Crimea from becoming a Nato missile base and protecting the mostly Russian population who had voted in a referendum to rejoin Russia – from which Crimea had been  annexed – were more examples of Putin’s “aggression”.  Smear by media inevitably becomes war by media. If war with Russia breaks out, by design or by accident, journalists will bear much of the responsibility.

In the US, the anti-Russia campaign has been elevated to virtual reality. The New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, an economist with a Nobel Prize, has called Donald Trump the “Siberian Candidate” because Trump is Putin’s man, he says. Trump had dared to suggest, in a rare lucid moment, that war with Russia might be a bad idea. In fact, he has gone further and removed American arms shipments to Ukraine from the Republican platform. “Wouldn’t it be great if we got along with Russia,” he said.

This is why America’s warmongering liberal establishment hates him. Trump’s racism and ranting demagoguery have nothing to do with it. Bill and Hillary Clinton’s record of racism and extremism can out-trump Trump’s any day. (This week is the 20th anniversary of the Clinton welfare “reform” that launched a war on African-Americans). As for Obama: while American police gun down his fellow African-Americans the great hope in the White House has done nothing to protect them, nothing to relieve their impoverishment, while running four rapacious wars and an assassination campaign without precedent.

The CIA has demanded Trump is not elected.  Pentagon generals have demanded he is not elected.

The pro-war New York Times -- taking a breather from its relentless low-rent Putin smears --  demands that he is not elected. Something is up. These tribunes of “perpetual war” are terrified that the multi-billion-dollar business of war by which the United States maintains its dominance will be undermined if Trump does a deal with Putin, then with China’s Xi Jinping.  Their panic at the possibility of the world’s great power talking peace – however unlikely – would be the blackest farce were the issues not so dire.

 “Trump would have loved Stalin!” bellowed Vice-President Joe Biden at a rally for Hillary Clinton. With Clinton nodding, he shouted, “We never bow. We never bend. We never kneel. We never yield. We own the finish line. That’s who we are. We are America!”

In Britain, Jeremy Corbyn has also excited hysteria from the war-makers in the Labour Party and from a media devoted to trashing him. Lord West, a former admiral and Labour minister, put it well. Corbyn was taking an “outrageous” anti-war position “because it gets the unthinking masses to vote for him”.

In a debate with leadership challenger Owen Smith, Corbyn was asked by the moderator: “How would you act on a violation by Vladimir Putin of a fellow Nato state?”

Corbyn replied: “You would want to avoid that happening in the first place. You would build up a good dialogue with Russia … We would try to introduce a de-militarisation of the borders between Russia, the Ukraine and the other countries on the border between Russia and Eastern Europe. What we cannot allow is a series of calamitous build-ups of troops on both sides which can only lead to great danger.”

Pressed to say if he would authorise war against Russia “if you had to”, Corbyn replied: “I don’t wish to go to war – what I want to do is achieve a world that we don’t need to go to war.”

The line of questioning owes much to the rise of Britain’s liberal war-makers. The Labour Party and the media have long offered them career opportunities.  For a while the moral tsunami of the great crime of Iraq left them floundering, their inversions of the truth a temporary embarrassment.

Regardless of Chilcot and the mountain of incriminating facts, Blair remains their inspiration, because he was a “winner”.

Dissenting journalism and scholarship have since been systematically banished or appropriated, and democratic ideas emptied and refilled with “identity politics” that confuse gender with feminism and public angst with liberation and willfully ignore the state violence and weapons profiteering that destroys countless lives in faraway places, like Yemen and Syria, and beckon nuclear war in Europe and across the world.

The stirring of people of all ages around the spectacular rise of Jeremy Corbyn counters this to some extent. His life has been spent illuminating the horror of war. The problem for Corbyn and his supporters is the Labour Party. In America, the problem for the thousands of followers of Bernie Sanders was the Democratic Party, not to mention their ultimate betrayal by their great white hope. In the US, home of the great civil rights and anti-war movements, it is Black Lives Matter and the likes of Codepink that lay the roots of a modern version.

For only a movement that swells into every street and across borders and does not give up can stop the warmongers. Next year, it will be a century since Wilfred Owen wrote the following. Every journalist should read it and remember it.

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

~ John Pilger originally hails from Australia.  Arriving in London, Pilger freelanced, then joined Reuters, moving to the London Daily Mirror, Britain's biggest selling newspaper, which was then changing to a serious tabloid. He became chief foreign correspondent and reported from all over the world, covering numerous wars, notably Vietnam. He became the youngest journalist to receive Britain's highest award for journalism, Journalist of the Year and was the first to win it twice. He also has created many award winning documentaries.

Reports from the Imperial Project

• Great cartoon above - full of truth.  The Washington-based 'liberators' are now setting up a 'no-fly zone' in northern Syria where US troops have been deployed - uninvited by the legitimate Syrian government.  The US has 'warned' Syria and Russia (who was invited by Syrian government) that their planes had better stay away from the area or else.  Of course this just happens to be the area where most of Syria's oil is located (surprise, surprise) and the US intends to break this region off and put it in the hands of more compliant forces who will allow US-Israeli agents to make money off the sale of the Syrian oil.  A perfect scam - of course the American people are being told the US is there to defend the Syrian people against their brutal President Assad who they keep reelecting by wide margins.  But it doesn't really matter, in this case, what the Syrian people actually want.
• I taped my new This Issue public access TV show today and the guest was Kyle Bailey talking about the November 8 referendum in Maine on the question of Ranked Choice Voting.  If it passes RCV would allow you to rank your choices in order of preference on future ballots.  A real good idea.  It's worked well in the last two Portland, Maine mayoral elections.
• The US has proposed a second option to the South Korean government for deployment of the THAAD 'missile defense' system set to go into the melon farming community of Seongju.  Due to massive protests in Seongju, and solidarity protests across their country, the movement against THAAD has become a big deal in South Korea.  So with that in mind the Pentagon is now offering to move the deployment site 18-kilometers away to a golf course - maintaining that any worries about the radar system's electro-magnetic radiation would thus be resolved.  The people are not buying it but the 'head man' of Seongju county (and a group of South Korean veterans) met with the government on their own accord to listen to the offer.  When residents learned about this they were furious and made their continued opposition widely known.  Seems like it might be time for a new 'head man'.
• This coming weekend Mary Beth and I will drive north along the coast for a couple days of mini-vacation since we've had little time together this summer.  On the way back down the coast we'll drive the route for the coming October 11-26 Maine Peace Walk - the theme this year will be Stop the War$ on Mother Earth.

Bruce

Indians Loading Sacred Pipes Frighten Cops

Our Responsibility to Dream Life into the Future

Sherri Mitchell is a member of the Penobscot Nation in Maine. She reflects on the way of life of indigenous peoples living in harmony with the earth and all things. Powerful and inspiring.

Sherri will be one of the pot luck supper hosts and ceremony speakers on October 11 on Indian Island (near Old Town) when the 5th Maine Walk for Peace begins its two-week journey through Maine starting at the Penobscot Nation.   

See more of Sherri's bio here

Video by Regis Tremblay.

Activists Instruct Military to Disperse and Desist at Drone Base

The folks in northern California continue their monthly protests and non-violent civil resistance at the Beale AFB drone base just north of Sacramento.

I lived at Beale from 1969-1971 when my step-father worked on the spy plane cameras for the SR-71.  I was fortunate to join these folks doing an action with them last March.  We were arrested and then federal charges against us were dropped before we had to make an appearance in court.

This particular action in the video is brilliant and ironic. 

Bruce

Untangling the Syrian War

Western media are working overtime to confuse public opinion and suppress efforts by some to deconstruct the entire Syrian mess. Social media, and even some 'peace movement list serves, are loaded with agents of the imperial war project that slam those who try to take a fair look at this issue.  (It is my experience that Pentagon operatives and some elements within the right-wing of the Democratic Party are behind these attacks.)

It has been obvious to me for a long time that the US, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Israel and Turkey have been the predominant funders, supporters and weapons suppliers of ISIS.  The goal has been to break Syria into pieces - taking the oil in the north away from the government.

Recently, following the failed coup in Turkey, the government there is moving away from NATO and toward Russia and Syria.  How far Ankara will go in this breakaway from US control is uncertain.

Enter the Russians, Iran, Hezbollah, and now China on the side of the Syrian government.  They have basically determined that the US's long-term goal after taking down Syria is to then destabilize and destroy Iran.  From there Russia and China are on the list for regime change and balkanization.

The Russian military was invited by the Syrian government to come to their country.  The US was not invited which makes Pentagon military operations there a violation of international law.  The US often talks about the 'rule of law' but as we have repeatedly witnessed over the years, Washington is quick to violate international law in order to get what it wants.

Russia and China appear to have made the decision that backing the current Syrian government, which has huge majority support of the people, is key to creating regional stability and protecting themselves from the US-NATO endless war onslaught.

For a deeper understanding of the whole Syrian story, and how the war actually began, please read the excellent article by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. which can be found here

Bruce

Sunday Song

Korean Version

Blame the Russians.....

There are calls in the US media for the Pentagon to hack Russian servers, as payback for the alleged hacking of Democratic party e-mails earlier this year.

War Incorporated

We Hear What You Say

Children of god
feed
on children of Earth
so says
Indian activist
spiritualist
John Trudell

One does not sell
the Earth
that the people
walk on
we are the land

Predators tried
civilizing us

Crazy Horse
we hear
what you say
one Earth
one mother
One does not sell
the Earth the people
walk upon

How do we sell
the stars?
How do we sell
the air?

Crazy Horse
we hear what you say
We are
the 7th generation

Organize Local Events during October 1-8

Please let us know what and when you plan events during the week of local actions.  We'll widely share the list with other groups around the world and the media.

Still More from Korea Trip

On August 14, Veterans For Peace members Bruce Gagnon and Will Griffin - on a 3-week peace tour in South Korea - joined a demonstration against the U.S.’ decision to deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile defense system in South Korea.

CNN is a Chump Network

Russian Scholar Stephen Cohen says Donald Trump is being wrongly linked to Putin and criticized because he's trying to end the new Cold War.

THAAD Speech at Seoul Rally

Excerpts from my speech about THAAD at the big rally on August 14 in Seoul and follow-up interview with Coop TV.

At the end of the talk I shared information about the Global Network's October 1-8 Keep Space for Peace Week of local actions around the world.  I invited the audience to consider organizing anti-THAAD events during that period of time and then I presented our poster to one of the leaders from the Seongju village.

Bruce

Olympic Fun

Since I missed all the Olympics while in Korea I found this piece to be quite a laugh.

Years ago at an international peace conference in Greece I learned that the Olympics were originally founded as a disarmament policy.  Each year the winner of the Greek city-state games had to go home and tear down the walls surrounding their city.

Wouldn't it be great if the cumulative winner of the Olympics these days had to go home and totally disarm!?  If that was the case the US likely wouldn't be spending alot of time and energy trying to get Russia banned from the games.

Bruce

Native Americans Resist Oil Pipeline

The Perfect G.O.P. Nominee

New York Times
Sunday Review

By Maureen Dowd

WASHINGTON — SPEAKING of crazy …

All these woebegone Republicans whining that they can’t rally behind their flawed candidate is crazy. The G.O.P. angst, the gnashing and wailing and searching for last-minute substitutes and exit strategies, is getting old.

They already have a 1-percenter who will be totally fine in the Oval Office, someone they can trust to help Wall Street, boost the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, cuddle with hedge funds, secure the trade deals beloved by corporate America, seek guidance from Henry Kissinger and hawk it up — unleashing hell on Syria and heaven knows where else.

The Republicans have their candidate: It’s Hillary.

They can’t go with Donald Trump. He’s too volatile and unhinged.

The erstwhile Goldwater Girl and Goldman Sachs busker can be counted on to do the normal political things, not the abnormal haywire things. Trump’s propounding could drag us into war, plunge us into a recession and shatter Washington into a thousand tiny bits.

Hillary will keep the establishment safe. Who is more of an establishment figure, after all? Her husband was president, and he repealed Glass-Steagall, signed the Defense of Marriage Act and got rid of those pesky welfare queens.

Pushing her Midwestern Methodist roots, taking advantage of primogeniture, Hillary often seems more Republican than the Gotham bling king, who used to be a Democrat and donor to Democratic candidates before he jumped the turnstile.

Hillary is a reliable creature of Wall Street. Her tax return showed the Clintons made $10.6 million last year, and like other superrich families, they incorporated with the Clinton Executive Services Corporation (which was billed for the infamous server). Trump has started holding up goofy charts at rallies showing Hillary has gotten $48,500,000 in contributions from hedge funders, compared to his $19,000.

Unlike Trump, she hasn’t been trashing leading Republicans. You know that her pals John McCain and Lindsey Graham are secretly rooting for her. There is a cascade of prominent Republicans endorsing Hillary, donating to Hillary, appearing in Hillary ads, talking up Hillary’s charms.

Robert Kagan, a former Reagan State Department aide, adviser to the McCain and Mitt Romney campaigns and Iraq war booster, headlined a Hillary fund-raiser this summer. Another neocon, James Kirchick, keened in The Daily Beast, “Hillary Clinton is the one person standing between America and the abyss.”

She has finally stirred up some emotion in women, even if it is just moderate suburban Republican women palpitating to leave their own nominee, who has the retro air of a guy who just left the dim recesses of a Playboy bunny club.

The Democratic nominee put out an ad featuring Trump-bashing Michael Hayden, an N.S.A. and C.I.A. chief under W. who was deemed “incongruent” by the Senate when he testified about torture methods. And she earned an endorsement from John Negroponte, a Reagan hand linked to American-trained death squads in Latin America.

Politico reports that the Clinton team sent out feelers to see if Kissinger, the Voldemort of Vietnam, and Condi Rice, the conjurer of Saddam’s apocalyptic mushroom cloud, would back Hillary.

Hillary has written that Kissinger is an “idealistic” friend whose counsel she valued as secretary of state, drawing a rebuke from Bernie Sanders during the primaries: “I’m proud to say Henry Kissinger is not my friend.”

The Hillary team seems giddy over its windfall of Republicans and neocons running from the Trump sharknado. But as David Weigel wrote in The Washington Post, the specter of Kissinger, the man who advised Nixon to prolong the Vietnam War to help with his re-election, fed a perception that “the Democratic nominee has returned to her old, hawkish ways and is again taking progressives for granted.”

And Isaac Chotiner wrote in Slate, “The prospect of Kissinger having influence in a Clinton White House is downright scary.”

Hillary is a safer bet in many ways for conservatives. Trump likes to say he is flexible. What if he returns to his liberal New York positions on gun control and abortion rights?

Trump is far too incendiary in his manner of speaking, throwing around dangerous and self-destructive taunts about “Second Amendment people” taking out Hillary, or President Obama and Hillary being the founders of ISIS. And he still blindly follows his ego, failing to understand the fundamentals of a campaign. “I don’t know that we need to get out the vote,” he told Fox News Thursday. “I think people that really wanna vote are gonna get out and they’re gonna vote for Trump.”

Hillary, on the other hand, understands her way around political language and Washington rituals. Of course you do favors for wealthy donors. And if you want to do something incredibly damaging to the country, like enabling George W. Bush to make the worst foreign policy blunder in U.S. history, don’t shout inflammatory and fabricated taunts from a microphone.

You must walk up to the microphone calmly, as Hillary did on the Senate floor the day of the Iraq war vote, and accuse Saddam of giving “aid, comfort and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda,” repeating the Bush administration’s phony case for war.

If you want to carry the G.O.P. banner, your fabrications have to be more sneaky.

As Republican strategist Steve Schmidt noted on MSNBC, “the candidate in the race most like George W. Bush and Dick Cheney from a foreign policy perspective is in fact Hillary Clinton, not the Republican nominee.”

And that’s how Republicans prefer their crazy — not like Trump, but like Cheney. 

Total Opposition to THAAD in Seongju

The local Seongju TV reports 908 people shaved their heads as an expression of opposition to the THAAD, in a park of Seongju, Kyungsang province of Korea.

Remembering the day of August 15, the 71th anniversary day of Korea's liberation from Japanese colonization, the original plan was to have 815 people. But more than 900 people volunteered for shaving hairs.

Not only men but women, too. It is told to be a record that such numbers of people got shaved in a same spot and day. The blue is a symbolic color of anti-THAAD protest in Seongju which has 45,000 population.

In Korea to shave your head is an act that indicates total commitment to the struggle.  It is also rare that women shave their heads.

It's Called Genocide

Little to no access to water, food, electricity, sanitation, proper healthcare – these are just some of the things that have resulted from the Israeli siege of Gaza. And Dr. Mads Gilbert has got something to say about it.

Last Day in Korea

Our last day in Seoul began with Will Griffin and I participating in a debriefing meeting this morning along with the large Japanese delegation.  During that meeting I passed out Keep Space for Peace Week posters and flyers (October 1-8) and invited Korean and Japanese participation in the event.

My words had to first be translated into Korean and then Japanese as you see in the above clip.

Then Will and I joined a 15-person protest next to the US Embassy in Seoul during the lunch hour and it was interesting to watch the reactions of embassy personnel read our Veterans For Peace banner as they passed by.  The Korean activists involved in this anti-THAAD protest were handing out flyers and getting signatures on a petition.

The VFP flag Will and I were holding is one that I delivered to the Korean VFP group several years ago at the request of Korean War veteran Tom Sturtevant from Maine.  He has since passed away and our VFP chapter in Maine was named after him.  Tom would have been happy to know that the flag he sent to Korea was still being used - especially right outside the US Embassy.

I leave for home tomorrow.  It's been a busy and wonderful trip to Korea this summer.  Very hot but as usual the people we met were outstanding activists and we especially must give thanks to our two guides/translators Juyeon Rhee and Hyun Lee who were not allowed into the country.  Even know they were born in Korea they were still denied entry into the country prior to this trip starting because of their anti-THAAD efforts back in the US.  But they continued to coordinate our trip on a daily basis by phone and email ensuring that other guides/translators were found to help us along the way.

Bruce

More Photos from Seoul Events

Just arrived at the US military base Yongsan in downtown Seoul yesterday for rally and march near the base gates.  This THAAD prop was later set on fire by the protesters and the police immediately came and extinguished it which created a toxic cloud that was not fun to breathe. (CLICK ON THE PHOTOS FOR A BETTER VIEW)

As we marched by the US base a long line of police stood on one side of the road for as far as the eye could see.  Some even stood on top of the long rows of police buses parked on the opposite side of the street. 

I think most of the police were relieved that nothing happened - they are largely drafted for 18 months and get to choose between being in the Army or the police.  We were told they prefer the police because they have an easier time but then have to increasingly pull duty going up against protests.

One of the leaders from Seongju where the US wants to deploy the THAAD 'missile defense' system at the huge rally last night. The formally conservative community of Seongju voted 85% in favor of the right-wing dictator (President Park, daughter of former brutal dictator) in the last election.  Since they learned about THAAD the community of 10,000 has overwhelmingly resigned from the right-wing political party.  They now say that THAAD should not be deployed anywhere in South Korea and that the dangers of 'missile defense' must be understood throughout East Asia.  Seongju residents have become heroes to the peace movement in South Korea. 

Near the end of the rally last night, standing on the stage before the crowd of 10,000 people (here I am next to the leader of the progressive KCTU labor federation) they put on the screen behind us a rally of thousands happening at the same moment in Seongju.  We heard a speaker there and then both crowds - in Seoul and Seongu sang the same song together.  It is things like this that lead me to repeatedly say that Koreans are the best organizers that I have ever seen.  They really know how to put on a show.  
  

After attending another rally and march this morning honoring National Liberation Day from Japanese Occupation we marched through the center of Seoul.  Then we were taken to the National Assembly building where the Korea International Peace Forum was held.  I was proud of Will Griffin from Veterans For Peace who spoke on behalf of our two-person American delegation to an audience of Korean and Japanese activists.  A Chinese professor was not allowed into the country nor were our two Korean-American guides/translators from New York City.  One woman said during the event that "The three being stopped from entry shows how afraid the South Korean government is of growing solidarity with the movement against THAAD."

A photo of the international guests and peace forum organizers at the end of the event today. A proposal was made to establish the International Network for Peace in Korea and I pledged to take this initiative to the Global Network to get our organization's support for this new organization.  One South Korean organizer said, "We don't really expect anything from the US - we do expect people in East Asia to work together in solidarity to prevent war."  It is my hope that activists in the US will quickly learn that since no peace treaty was ever signed after the Korean War Armistice (ceasefire agreement) it means that the Korean peninsula remains a serious trigger for WW III. The US is the one that refuses to sign a peace treaty with North Korea.  I believe the reason is fairly simple - as long as the war is officially still on with North Korea then the US can 'justify' its occupation of the peninsula which ultimately is aimed at China and Russia.

Han Chung-mok (Standing Representative, Korean Alliance of Progressive Movements) concluded the peace forum today with these words:  "Solidarity and unity is the way we have to confront the endless wars of capitalism."

Solidarity must be active and on-going to be effective against those suffering under the boot of US military repression and war.  The Korean people know suffering deeply as they were ravaged by the US-led assault on their nation during the Korean War.  Since 1953 the US military presence in Korea has been nonstop and as we've repeatedly seen on this trip (and previous ones) the Pentagon continues to grab the lands of the Korean people for US base expansion as Washington prepares for war with China and Russia.

Korea is on the front-lines of this war preparation and will pay a tremendously heavy price should war break out.  Already the Pentagon has put into motion military plans to launch a pre-emptive strike on North Korea that could trigger nuclear war.

Will the American people continue to sit on the sidelines and let our country devastate Korea a second time?  Will the American people ever move beyond calling for a vague and relatively uncontroversial 'peace' on their protest signs and move into active solidarity which would change the very nature of our protests at home forcing us to spell out the real steps that would being true peace and reunification to the Korean peninsula.

NO THAAD in Korea!
Close US Bases in Korea!
No Anthrax in Seoul and at Osan AFB!
Stop US Military Exercises in Korea!
No Navy Base on Jeju Island!
Sign a Peace Treaty with North Korea!
End US Nuclear Hypocrisy - Cancel Obama's $1 Trillion Nuclear Weapons Upgrade Program!

Bruce

Big Crowds in Seoul

This short video shows two of the four events Will Griffin and I attended yesterday.

One was a large peace march in front of the US Yongsan military base in downtown Seoul.  The primary issues addressed in the preceding rally and march were continual Pentagon war exercises in Korea, THAAD deployments by the Pentagon and the recent trip by the Navy Vice-Admiral who commands the 'missile defense' (MD) program.  The Vice-Admiral came to South Korea and said that the THAAD would not be integrated into the US's MD program but instead would be a stand alone system and would only aimed at North Korea - not China.

The US has been telling similar lies about the MD deployments it has made in Turkey, Romania and Poland.  In that case the US claims the MD systems in those countries are aimed at Iran not Russia.  These are of course total fabrications of the truth.

The second thing that the Vice-Admiral said is that the radar's electro-magnetic radiation will not have any health impacts on the local populations.  The Pentagon refuses to do any health studies under public scrutiny.  I'll always remember the case in Cape Cod, Massachusetts where the people demanded that the state force the Pentagon to do a study about the early warning/MD radar there but the military has refused to do so - why does the Pentagon refuse?  Many people on Cape Cod have long maintained that their health has been affected by the radar - particularly they believe an increase in cancers is related to the radar.

Following the march in front of Yongsan we moved to a huge rally at the Seoul City Hall where 10,000 people gathered to protest against THAAD deployments in Seongju.  I was honored to be able to speak to the audience and at the end of my brief talk I presented our next Keep Space for Peace Week poster to a representative from Seongju.  The rally lasted four hours and included many wonderful cultural expressions that the Korean people use to educate and entertain those attending.



Today we are back out on the street for another mass march to celebrate Korea's liberation from fascist Japanese colonization.  One speaker last night said that Korea suffered terribly under Japanese colonization and now suffers under the American version of colonization.  The Korean people don't want to be occupied anymore.  They desperately want to reunify all of Korea in a peaceful and just way.

Bruce

Sunday Song

Grow the Change

The Wars Just Keep On Coming......

President Obama just authorized air strikes in Libya to combat ISIS, making it the fourth country that the United States is bombing in its unofficial, undeclared War on Terror - and the media barely reported it. The Resident breaks it down.

Gee, let's vote for the Democrats who promise peace and then expand the wars!  Great idea!

No THAAD Rally in Seoul

Tomorrow August 14 Sunday, 7 PM Seoul City Hall Square protest the missile defense system THAAD to be placed on the Korean Peninsula by the US.

Let's get together! No THAAD rally tomorrow on Aug 14, 7 pm at Seoul City Hall Square. Let's go together!

Jeju Peace March (with English Subtitles)

Film by Will Griffin, video produced by Zoom in Korea

Clinton Sold Favors to Big Donors While At State Department

More on Hillary 'pay to play' - favors for big donors to Clinton Foundation - major corruption while she was Secretary of State..

This won't stick to her though one person in the video says because Trump's craziness is worse.

It just goes to prove what I have been saying for a long time - Trump's campaign is solely to help distract the public from Clinton's corruption.  And the strategy appears to be working very well!

Bruce

A Look at North Korea

Will Griffin gives us a view from the DMZ.....

DMZ: Disney World of Military Recruitment

Yesterday Will Griffin and I were taken north to the DMZ (Demilitarized Zone) between North and South Korea.  We were joined by several South Korean activists who specialize in Imjin River protection and landmines.  My son Julian and his friend Emily (both also visiting South Korea) joined us for the day as well.

We began by going to the overlook area between North and South where the Imjin River helps create a natural barrier between the two nations.  Then we moved to another part of the DMZ where we walked down a tunnel (one of four) that North Korea created to allegedly infiltrate the south.  This tunnel gradually sloped downward eventually equaling 24 stories below the ground.  What began as an extremely hot place soon got colder and colder as we headed downward.  Coming back up was quite a challenge.

I could not help but wonder if the South Korean government's demonization of North Korea for the tunnels, at what is essentially a DMZ tourist trap, might be better explained as a defensive effort on the part of the north to send troops deep into southern territory after a US-South Korea attack on the north.

I know that during the Korean War the US bombed every standing target in North Korea and the people, in order to survive, had to move underground.  At night they would come outside to tend their farms and then return underground during to day in order to stay safe.  It is likely they kept digging tunnels after the war in order to have a way to militarily respond in the event they were ever attacked again.

Today 600,000 South Korean military are stationed along the DMZ.  About 2,000 US troops are also along the border.  These days most US troops are being moved south to get them out of range of North Korean artillery.  New bases and expanded bases to the south are now home to more than 25,000 US troops.  At those bases the US has high-tech weapons systems that allow them to wage war from a 'safe distance'.

The DMZ tour finally took us to a former US Army outpost called Camp Greaves that has been turned into a 'youth hostel' where tourists are taken to pretend they are in the Army.

As our bus arrived in 'Camp Greaves' a young woman dressed in military attire (with a cheer leading skirt) boarded the bus to explain we could go inside air conditioned tents and try on a military jacket, make ourselves dog tags, put on a military back pack, and experience the actual setting for a film about South Korean 'peace keeping missions' around the world that is now popular on TV throughout the Asia-Pacific. In fact the woman later said when we got into the tent, pointing to a chair Will was sitting in, the TV star "sat right here".  Will quickly got up and left the tent.

One of our guides told us that local farmers said this former US Army base was known as a major toxic contamination zone.  (All US military bases are infamous for oil, solvent, and jet fuel pollution that poisons the local groundwater supply.) The thought that today kids are brought to the 'youth hostel' and put in dorms that were once military barracks is rather concerning.  (I hope they are drinking bottled water rather than from underground wells.)

I walked around the base a bit and saw other old barracks being taken over by nature.  Soon they will be covered completely and ultimately will collapse under the weight of mother nature.

I see this process of nature taking over the base as symbolic of the reality that these US military outposts of empire are contradictions in nature.  These bases are not sustainable in time - due to cost, due to pressure inside of South Korea for them to be closed, and due to pressure inside the US for our tax dollars to be used at home for human development and physical infrastructure repair rather than endless war.

When we earlier had stood at the DMZ tourist overlook site peering out at the Imjin River into North Korea I asked the two South Korean activists from the area what they were thinking.  One of them said he was feeling "A sense of longing to go to North Korea to see for himself what is actually going on there."  But under the last two right-wing presidents South Korea has stopped the progress previously made in steps toward reunification.

Where once union workers from the South would go play soccer with workers in the North, these days the doors to reestablishing brotherhood have been closed.  The current Park administration, more in line with US interests, has escalated tensions and shut down talk of reconciliation.

It appears to me that Washington is hell-bent on war against China and Russia.  There is a deep sense of fear, despair and disempowerment with many of the people and activists here. Many young people feel they have no future in South Korea as the economic divide between rich and poor widens.  People care but don't know what to do.

War, and rumors of war, keep the people (whether in South Korea or the US) distracted from fighting against our growing impoverishment by the corporate elites.  In the US the circus sideshow 'election' between Clinton and Trump is designed to ensure that the nation does not seriously reflect on these same key issues.

It is clear that the globalization of the corporate agenda must be met by the globalization of the peace, social justice and environmental movements.  We are all in the same boat now and must face our common enemy together.

Bruce