THAAD Protests Continue in South Korea

Understanding Mr. Big's Domination Program

I first heard Thomas Barnett (then an instructor at the Naval War College) do a version of this talk called Pentagon's New Map around 2002.  I watched the three-hour version on CSPAN one evening.  He was on that occasion introduced as the "strategy guy" for George W. Bush's Secretary of War Donald Rumsfeld.

Barnett's arrogant presentation was ultimately about how the US's job under corporate globalization would be "security export".  We won't have jobs in the USA anymore because corporations have gone looking for cheaper labor.  So we will build weapons and wage war for declining resources on behalf of the corporate agenda.  One could call it chaos theory.

Barnett says that we have to bring down those around the world in the "non-integrating gap" with forces he calls "Leviathan".  But following shock and awe, Barnett suggests, we need to do the next step much better - what he calls "systems administration".  These troops will never come home, he likes to say, meaning they will essentially run a particular country that has been taken over by Mr. Big.

Some years back I saw that Lockheed Martin was getting contracts from the Pentagon to teach new generations of "systems administration" warriors.  Clearly we are talking about running the global empire for capitalism.

It's worth watching the video to have a clearer understanding.

Bruce

Don't Let This Story Die

One of the best anti-war documentaries of all time!

I had a call today from a newspaper reporter in San Diego, California where Veterans For Peace is now organizing a protest against an upcoming airshow.  The reporter wanted to find out why and when we began organizing air show protests here in Maine.

MB and I moved to Brunswick, Maine in 2003 and we began organizing protests at the Navy air station in the town soon after arriving.  A couple of times we held a Friday-Sunday 48-hour vigil and fast at the front gate of the former Navy base when the Blue Angels were coming to do an air show.  We asked folks to join us at any time during the weekend and many did - even in the middle of the night Tom Sturtevant and Tom Whitney came to sit with us in the dark at the gate.

During the George W. Bush presidential years more people turned out for local protests - sometimes hundreds.  Then when Obama became president the numbers dried up overnight (as Democrats foolishly thought that Obama would stop our wars) and if lucky we got 50 folks to an airshow protest.

While on the phone with the San Diego reporter I asked her if she knew about the Vietnam war sailors revolt in her city that is reported on in the film above. She said no.  So I emailed her the link and told her she needs to watch it.

Sailors organized a campaign to say they didn't want their aircraft carrier stationed in San Diego to go back and bomb Vietnam again.  They set up make shift polling stations all over the community and held an election asking the public if they wanted the ship to sail or stay home.  It's a great story and should never be forgotten.

Please do watch, and share, this great documentary.

Bruce 

Loukie Lofchie Presente!

Video by Eric Herter

Climate Change Alert!

While the world's attention is on Texas, floods in Bangladesh, India and Nepal have killed 1,200 people and affected 16 million others.

It's time for the US military to be converted to The Natural Guard that would be used in America and around the world to help organize and provide humanitarian aid in these increasingly urgent natural disasters.

Demand it repeatedly.....

The Coming Storm

It's sadly ironic that one of the strongest regions of global warming deniers is the south/southwest of the US - with Texas being one of the top denier states.  One can't help but wonder what folks there are now thinking about Hurricane Harvey's relationship to climate change?

Some contend that government weather modification operations and general climate change increased the severity of the storm. We've been hearing for years that warmer seas evaporate more quickly. Warmer air holds more water vapor. So, as temperatures rise around the world, the skies store more moisture and dump it more intensely.  There is a proven link – known as the Clausius-Clapeyron equation – which shows that for every half a degree Celsius in warming, there is about a 3% increase in atmospheric moisture content.

Houston is the most populous city in the state of Texas and the fourth-most populous city in the United States. It has a population of 2.3 million and an area of 667 square miles (1,730 km).  This hurricane has caused major havoc and it will be incredibly difficult and expensive to recover from this massive storm any time soon.

As I've listened to a bit of the news reports on the radio (I don't watch TV so I can't talk about what they are saying on the boob tube) Texas officials have called the storm a 1,000 year flood event.  So they do acknowledge that this 'event' is not normal but there does seem to be some serious reluctance to mention the connection to climate change.

Even the Pentagon has said that climate change will have serious implications for their operations so clearly, in spite of what they might say, the government does know that climate change is staring us in the face.

My guess is that the ruling elites want to down play global warming because they don't want to 'alarm' the public and have a restless nation demand fundamental change - moving us away from our obvious fossil fuel addiction.  The oligarchic forces that control Washington today are in large part the fossil fuel industry and they are more than reluctant to interrupt their profit stream no matter what the consequences.

But ultimately at some point you'd think the public would take this slap across the face by Mother Nature as a serious wake-up call and begin to realize that these kinds of weather 'events' are going to be more common in the coming years and will affect many more of us.

One final word on this climate change issue.  Sadly as I scan the landscape of climate change activism it is fairly easy to see that the vast majority of environmental groups working on global warming do not dare go near the issue of the Pentagon's #1 carbon bootprint on the planet.

I can't help but wonder how in the world those groups think they can begin to deal with this mega-issue without calling for the conversion of the war machine this very second?!

Why are they so silent on the military's massive contribution to this coming storm?  Shouldn't the public ask them?

Bruce 

Politics Art Roots Culture

By Will Griffin (Veterans For Peace)

Space. Every community needs it. In Michigan City, Indiana, two Iraq veterans turned anti-war activists have been focusing their energy on creating a vibrant, all-inclusive safe place for community members to gather, share ideas, create projects, and display their work. Vince Emanuele and Sergio Kochergin call it PARC – Politics Art Roots Culture.

If you’re an activist, organizer, artist, musician, or just someone that wants to engage with your community, this is the place to do it. Every town in America needs a place just like PARC. We all need places to share our ideas, speak to each other face-to-face, create projects together, and collect ideas on moving forward. Having a space to do this is what changes society.

If you’re an activist-organizer reading this, where was the last place you had a meeting? At a coffee shop? At a church? Somewhere in a place that you couldn’t call yours? Yeah, me too. I’m also tired of buying coffee in order to have a place to sit down with my friends.

Keep Space for Peace Week

Please let us know ASAP if your community plans any local events during the week of Oct 7-14.

Maine Airshow Protest Photos

Photos by Peter Woodruff

More photos by Ellen Davidson can be seen here

Sunday Song