Will Griffin is so talented

Will Griffin (The Peace Report) liked my post below and made this short video.  He is so amazing.

We are lucky to have him on the board of the Global Network helping us expand our reach on social media.

Will is an Iraq and Afghanistan war vet who is turning his outrage from those experiences into positive transformative action.

Best to you Will always.

Bruce

New Year's resolution....

Parents and grandparents could explain to the children:

• I'm sorry I had to play tennis when there were protests.
• I don't like to get involved in controversial politics.
• You can't beat city hall - why bother?
• I might lose my job if I got involved with those groups.
• I might get my name on some FBI list if I went to those meetings.
• What would my friends and family think of me if I worked with people like you?
• I've got better things to do with my money than donate to one of those causes.
• We are all going to die anyway so why bother?
• Don't worry - be happy.
• I'm not that smart and those in government seem to know what they are doing anyway.
• I heard on NPR that everything was going to be OK.
• Think of all the jobs we get from these industries. You people just want to shut everything down!
• I wanted to help but had to put three kids through college.
• My spouse threatened to leave me if I went to one of those meetings.
• These things didn't directly impact me or my family.
•  I'm sorry but I am a capitalist and support this system.  Look what it has done for me.  This system is about freedom first and foremost.
• Should we all just live in caves?
• I read the New York Times every day so I know what is going on.

In one way or the other I've heard just about all of these excuses during my time as a full-time social justice, peace and environmental organizer - since 1978.

Most people find one or more reasons from the list above to justify spending their lives in denial of apparent reality.  The techno world and capitalism have transformed many people into automatons.  It's very sad but a fact of our time.

The goal would be that people would rediscover their spiritual connection to our Mother Earth and one another before it is too late.

It might be a bit romantic on my part but I often think about all those in my long family lineage who got our relations through the ice ages, droughts, famines, plagues, wars and the like. Now during this moment on Earth some are giving up the ghost.  I can't understand why anyone would surrender when our #1 job as a human being is to protect our children and the planet - both are the future.

It's a broken spiritual connection that we all suffer from that keeps us locked in our prison.

Best wishes in the New Year.  

Bruce

Sunday song

Living in an empire

Published by Will Griffin

 

The American Empire Defined in 3 ways:

1. National Security Spending
2. Empire of Bases
3. Status of Forces Agreements

Ultra-right Ukrainian journalist gets response from Putin

Vladimir Putin: "As long as Ukraine is run by the Russophobes who don't realize what's best for their own people this unhealthy situation will continue regardless of who holds power in the Kremlin."

Journalists from around the world asked Putin questions during the recent 3-hour news conference.

The unfriendly question from the Ukrainian journalist indicates that Putin is not shy about taking questions from anyone.

Screws getting tighter

The corporate directed screws are getting tighter.  Info has power and Mr. Big is feeling the heat from an increasingly informed and connected global population.  The Internet is now being caged - like a protest zone - what the oligarchy calls a 'free speech zone'.

That means you can speak out all you want but only in controlled and acceptable locations.  In the high-tech world that means the corporate entities control the Internet and can put you in a box so that few ever see or hear from you.

This Twitter suspension of @NoWarinSpace is the perfect example of where we are being sent - one could call it Internet prison.

On Fazebook I've seen my numbers of people viewing my personal page (and the Global Network's page) declining.  These fancy new algorithms are ensuring that if you are a certain type of organization or a thinking activist you will be put to the end of the queue where few will see your posts.

This is a key reason I still believe in having a street mailing address for Global Network members.  We can actually send them a newsletter via the post and so far the amount of government intervention on that communication process appears to be limited.

But the Internet is another story - its just a matter of time that Fazebook, this blog and more could all go the way of @NoWarinSpace.

Anything that disrupts the profit drive - whether the 'space force' or fossil fuel extraction - is being identified as the enemy and mega high-tech powers will be used to silence those voices.

Free speech is the latest endangered species.  Rattle your chains while you still can - use them or lose them.

Bruce

Holiday historical review.....

It helps to know our own history - many Americans don't.

Oliver Stone shares the stories of those who fought to make the nation live up to its much celebrated hype about freedom, democracy and justice.

He also reviews the coming to power of the corporate oligarchies who have sought to drown democracy throughout history.

Only by knowing our history do we avoid repeating the mistakes of the past.

We are spiritually disconnected from the past....

Trudell (who died at age 69) calls on us to protect our spirit.  We live in a world now where spirits get eaten by the materialist, consumerist, greed filled, techno world.

Some holiday music

Can't imagine a world without love....

My year end thoughts

Hollywood and
Madison Avenue are good
at what they do,
one must admit,
they train our minds,
make us laugh
and cry
as they stick
it to us,
the neon gods

We are branded meat

Mr. Big
is feasting on us
but don't worry
there is a pill
for heartburn

How about a pill
for heartbreak?

MB and I have been singing the blues for the past week.  I play an old blues three-chord progression on my guitar and we make up stories about our 'moving' experiences as we sing along.  It's been a wonderful gift and a great way to stay close and let go of tension.

We are packing, weeding out stuff, slimming down - getting ready for our small apartment in Brunswick.  We've done dump runs, countless trips to Goodwill and even the Restore.  It's a good process and one that should be done while you still have the energy for it.  One reason we are not politically free people is because the system has got us consuming and collecting.  It keeps us all in a prison of sorts.

The Addams-Melman House, after 12 wonderful years, is hard to let go of.  Not only for us but also for many of our friends.  The community here over time really got a strong hold on alot of people.

I'd like to call our new upstairs apartment, in an old farm house which was converted to five apartments, the AMH annex.  Not annexed by Russia - no Putin was not responsible for us selling the AMH.  Although the local BIW establishment will be glad to get us out of town.

But don't worry because Brunswick is only 10 miles from Bath.  So I'll be back. I'm a circuit riding activist - sharing the words of the people.  Shut it down - this global extraction operation is killing our mother.  Some want to go terraform Mars, I just want to take care of the home spaceship.

Brunswick is a junior Ivy-league college town - 20,000 people.  MB can walk a couple blocks and take the bus to work in Portland - and with winter here she will appreciate not driving in the snow.

Bowdoin College will be a block away and I hope to watch some basketball games there.  There is not alot of energetic political activity at the college - might want to work on that a bit.

I can't get no satisfaction out of this political world I live in.  Needless to say I am driven to speak out - no matter the condition we might be in.  I've wondered alot during my life about where this drive comes from?

In the end it comes from a deep sense of outrage because I grew up on military bases and went to their schools.  They taught me about freedom, democracy, liberty, consumerism, cynicism and a fierce sense of justice.  Once I figured out that it was a lie on behalf of Mr. Big I became determined that I had to challenge the power.

Early on I wanted to be a policeman or FBI agent.  Then I saw cops busting heads of anti-war protesters on black-and-white TV and I saw the FBI gunning down the Black Panthers.  I gave up on that career path but made a promise to myself I'd find some way to fight the mobsters.

I end the year grateful to all who support the work I and others do to make the 'founding words' real in our current world.  I appreciate all that find some way to rattle their chains.

Let's make it ring in 2019.  I can't imagine living in a world without love.

Bruce

Selling the war machine on Christmas

By Will Griffin - The Peace Report

What would Jesus say about this?

Sunday song

A love story with Mother Earth

Putin on Trump's Syria pullout tweet

Vladimir Putin: " We haven't seen any signs the United States is withdrawing its troops. But I admit it's quite possible. Moreover, we are going the path of political control over the situation. Currently, we have the issue of creation of a constitutional committee on the agenda."

How many world leaders hold a 3-hour news conference with hundreds of international media present?

I believe he answers questions quite directly - something we've not seen from the US in a very long time.  Could this be another reason for the demonization of Putin?  He talks too straight.

Bruce

Vive la liberté!

U.S. laws to support anti-BDS movement

Award-winning author and host of “On Contact” Chris Hedges joins Rick Sanchez to discuss the anti-BDS legislation sweeping the US, an effort to protect Israel’s public image by muzzling the Boycott, Divestment & Sanction (BDS) movement, which seeks to put economic pressure on Israel and bring attention to the plight of the Palestinians. Hedges says “Israel can no longer control its narrative or hide the brutality of their apartheid system.”

Korea Updates

Sung-Hee Choi in Gangjeong village on Jeju Island standing in front of the main gate at the new Navy base

• Many progressives in South Korea believe that a U.S.-centered approach on the current peace process (rather denuclearization of North Korea) is too risky and won't address real issues. They want to push for a Northeast Asia Collective Security Framework, Northeast Asia Nuclear Weapons Free Zone, etc. I agree with them. The arms race in Northeast Asia is going mad and driving us to a hell! In the year when two Koreas are taking significant steps toward peace, Japan is on a fast track toward hyper-militarism. Very few pay attention to the military threat and ambition that Japan poses.  ~ Simone Chun
•  Trump’s demand that South Korea increase its funding for U.S. troops deployed there has reportedly soured on-going negotiations over the Special Measures Agreement (SMA) between the two countries. The SMA’s five-year contract expires December 31 and currently requires South Korea to pay $830 million per year to the U.S. for the 28,500 U.S. troops based there.
• CNN’s recent report on “new missile base activity” in North Korea is deceptive, said a South Korean media outlet. CNN had reported on December 6 that new satellite images it obtained exclusively reveal that “North Korea has significantly expanded a key long-range missile base.”   The Yeongjeo-dong missile base has been known to the outside world since as early as 1999 when North Korea test-launched its Daepo-dong 1 and 2 missiles, according to the South Korean media outlet Voice of People (VOP). And one of the satellite photos that CNN published as evidence of new construction activity near the missile site has a 2004 date stamp, VOP noted.
• South and North Korea held working-level talks on December 13 to hold a groundbreaking ceremony for the inter-Korean railway project. A group of South Korean officials and experts traveled to North Korea for a joint railway survey of 400 kilometers of the western Gyeong-gui Line as part of efforts to connect major railways along the divided peninsula.  
• A retired army general under investigation for illegal surveillance jumped off a building in an apparent suicide on December 7. Lee Jae-su, former chief of the Defense Security Command (DSC), was being probed for his alleged involvement in illegal surveillance of the bereaved families of the victims of the 2014 Sewol Tragedy. The sinking of the Sewol ferry killed 304 passengers aboard, mostly high school students on a field trip to Jeju Island.

Thanks to ZoominKorea for much of this information

One small part from Putin's 3-hour news conference....brilliant response to a question from a worried father if there will be a nuclear war

Vladimir Putin: "There's the tendency of lowering the threshold of application. There's an idea of creating low-yield nuclear weapons not for applications on a global scale, but a tactical scale. Some experts in the West even express such a thought that there's nothing terrible in using such weapons. The lowering of the threshold may lead to a global nuclear catastrophe."

Latest This Issue

My latest This Issue show with Maine filmmaker Regis Tremblay on the western demonization of Putin and Russia.

This was the 146th edition of the show which airs on about 15 local public access stations across Maine.  It's been on the air since 2003.

Thanks to all those who help produce the show.

You'll notice that the sound from Regis drops way down half-way thru the show.  His microphone fell down inside his shirt.  The crew in the booth decided to keep going anyway.  Regis and I didn't even know it had happened. They turned up his microphone and it turned out OK.

Bruce

U.S. occupies Okinawa

The U.S. has 32 military bases on the Okinawan island.  The people want them gone yesterday!

Dr. Annmaria Shimabuku is professor of East Asian Studies at New York University. She and host Will Griffin discuss U.S. militarism and Japanese capitalism on the island of Okinawa. 

Nearly 20 percent of the island is controlled by the Pentagon. At the same time, Okinawa suffers from a history of Japanese racism, capitalism, and exploitation.

The inside story behind Washington's war on Russia

As I've often written the US goal is to break Russia into smaller countries giving the western corporate oligarchies better access and control of their vast resource base.

This fascinating documentary gives both historical perspective on this process as well as updates us on the current realities of this regime change plan for Russia.

The American media daily talks about alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election but this film absolutely shows how the US (thru an alphabet soup of US funded agencies like the CIA, National Endowment for Democracy, Freedom House, US Agency for International Development, Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, George Soros money at Open Society Foundations, and more) work to destabilize Russia and other nations in order to put puppets in place who will do Washington's bidding.

Putin is hated in the west because he tried to put a stop to this process in his country.  When George W. Bush declared his 'love' for Putin during his administration Washington figured they had Vladimir in the bag.  When Putin stood up to the west the process of demonization took off and today is running at an Olympic pace.

If anyone speaks up to call out this western regime change plan they are often labeled 'Putin worshipers' in order to back them off and to isolate them.  This is how the powers that be get away with their plan for 'full spectrum dominance'.

I've lost a few friends over the years because I refuse to choke down the red, white and blue pill that is handed out to political activists in the west.  If you refuse to swallow the Madison Avenue anti-Russian script you get isolated.  It means you are supposed to sit back and watch as World War III is being planned.

I'm not interested in being a lap dog.  I am not about to keep my mouth shut as Washington spends one trillion dollars per year on the military and tries to take over the world on behalf of corporate interests.

Call me what ever you like - just don't call me after the nuclear explosions and say, "Bruce, what happened?"

Why didn't we speak up while we could?

Bruce

At our last Saturday Advent vigil at Bath Iron Works we were joined by a one-year old who insisted on holding a sign.  He helped hold his aunt's sign which read:  We love Workers...We want a different product.

We had 26 folks which is good for this time of year in Maine at a vigil.  Next Saturday will be our final vigil for the Advent season.

Dan Marks (the father of the young sign holder) also had a great Letter to Editor in the Portland Press Herald the morning of the vigil. It reads:

Shift BIW’s reliance on military

We need to transition toward jobs that build a sustainable infrastructure here at home. 

Last Sunday, General Dynamics-owned Bath Iron Works launched the last of three death machine “destroyers.” Two weeks ago, Rep. Chellie Pingree signed on to the “Green New Deal.” The two actions may seem unrelated, but they are not.

The Green New Deal would create “green” jobs by shifting the nation’s energy use to fossil fuel alternatives. The military is the single greatest contributor of fossil fuel emissions. Rep. Pingree correctly notes in her news release that the effects of climate change are already being felt here, from lobster and shellfish to rates of asthma and tick-borne illnesses.

And don’t forget the immense suffering exacted around the world through the direct action and support of our military – be it in Yemen, Gaza or among the Central American refugees on our southern border. Resources are consistently pulled away from humanitarian aid, health care and education while the military-industrial complex grows. General Dynamics is one of the greatest examples of corporate welfare in the country. This year, we added to their handout with state tax incentives. “Jobs” is always the argument for the handouts.

Ensuring that the hardworking people at BIW have viable employment is paramount. Transitioning jobs away from dependency on military spending toward building a sustainable infrastructure here at home is a way to do that. Let’s drop the false narrative that BIW in its current form is the only way for people to work. Let’s envision a new BIW, one that builds the future’s needs.

A dedicated group is working to gain the support of BIW workers in this transition. Come join us and we can build that future together! We are meeting on Saturday and on Dec. 22 at 11:30 a.m. on Washington Street, in front of the BIW administrative offices in Bath. Don’t lose hope, or your power!

Dan Marks
North Yarmouth 

Finding your truth....

Ferment is all around us
many colors
many cries for justice,
peace and sustainability

the masses are afraid,
angry
and confused

Who should we believe?
Many ask
and painfully allow
the question to freeze them
into
no action,
complicity
by silence

The answer
is find your own truth
read more,
listen deeper,
see with your eyes
and heart,
allow yourself
to feel

then you will know
your truth
from your own
experience

But experiences
won't come
by hiding
from the world

no matter
its condition....

Bruce

Sunday song

Hoka Hey!

Selling coal at climate change conference

A U.S. energy official says “no country should have to sacrifice economic prosperity or energy security in pursuit of environmental sustainability” during a U.N. climate discussions in Poland.

Preston Wells Griffith, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of International Affairs at the Department of Energy, spoke at a U.S. government-sponsored event Monday in Katowice, responding to criticism of the U.S. administration's policy of supporting the fossil fuel industry. Zlatica Hoke reports.

'I don't care about being popular'.....

Fifteen-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg addressed the U.N. plenary in Katowice, Poland, condemning global inaction in the face of catastrophic climate change.

She says it all.....

They create a failed state and call it freedom

• Despite tweeting just last week that a $716 billion military budget was ‘crazy’, Donald Trump has reportedly reversed course and instead committed to the highest budget in history.

I am certain that, at some time in the future, President Xi and I, together with President Putin of Russia, will start talking about a meaningful halt to what has become a major and uncontrollable Arms Race. The U.S. spent 716 Billion Dollars this year. Crazy!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 3, 2018

“It’s 750. Secretary Mattis secured that over lunch with the president,” an administration official told Politico, who first released the information, although an official announcement is yet to be made. It’s unclear what exactly changed Trump’s mind. He had been floating a 5% reduction in military spending for 2020, from the originally proposed (and already record-breaking) $733bn to $700bn – but Pentagon officials had told him on Friday that anything less was “a risk”, and could have “disastrous consequences”.

• One key reason for the change in Trump's thinking could be the growing cost of maintaining the existing Pentagon war machine.  One example is the US Navy has lost the equivalent of 17 ships for operational duty this year due to maintenance backlogs and delays in repair, according to an analysis from the Government Accountability Office (GAO). Add to that cost overruns for nuclear subs, destroyers, F-35 planes and the toll climate change is taking on Navy bases, like Norfolk in Virginia, that are presently sinking.  How will the government pay for these hefty increases?  The plan is to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
• Congresswoman-Elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) has drafted a Green New Deal that fails to acknowledge the existence of the US military as an environmentally destructive force, and the military budget (over 60% of discretionary spending) as a potential source of revenue. A petition has been created to demand that she confront the Pentagon’s staggering global bootprint. The US military is the world's largest institutional consumer of fossil fuels and the largest source of greenhouse gasses. Almost 900 of the EPA's 1,300 Superfund sites are abandoned military bases, weapons-production facilities or weapons-testing sites.

• The Bangor Daily News reported this week that the next Zumwalt 'stealth' destroyer to be 'christened' at Bath Iron Works in Maine will be the USS Lyndon B. Johnson (DDG 1002).  Named after the Vietnam war-era president who hailed from Texas, the war ship will be christened in the spring.  LBJ was driven from office after serving one term because of his expansion of the Vietnam War.  LBJ is also believed to have been integrally involved in plans to assassinate President John F. Kennedy who he took over for after JFK was killed in Dallas.
• America's puppet government in Ukraine has recognized Bandera followers (that collaborated with the Nazis and murdered hundreds of thousands of ethnic minorities including Poles, Jews, Czechs and Russians) as WAR VETERANS who will receive retirement benefits and other privileges from the government. We grieve for all the good people in Ukraine whose country has been overtaken by the dark forces.  We remember those in Ukraine and the former Soviet Union (27 million) who gave their lives fighting the Nazi invasion during WW2. Countries that support Ukraine's current regime are hypocrites pushing democracy and human rights over the cliff. 

 Bruce

Macron is president of the rich

Protests in France are about much more than a gas tax.

Good update by Jimmy Dore.

New day in Mexico?

We now see a politically experienced president in Mexico - gone are the days when Mexico kowtows to the US.

This will mean a more sovereign economic and foreign policy, says Vijay Prashad of Tricontinental Institute for Social Research.

It will be quite interesting to watch how far Mexico can go without the direct interference of Washington.  The US has long seen Mexico as their backyard (like much of Latin America) and has repeatedly interfered in politics there.

There can be little doubt that the massive drug trade in Mexico is directly linked to the US and I can't count how many times over the years I've heard or read that agencies like the DEA, FBI, and CIA play a role in those illegal operations.

Any efforts to truly fight corruption in Mexico will inevitably rub up against US mobsters and oligarchies who make big $$$ running drugs.

Got to wish Lopez Obrador the best of luck and hope he is for real.

Bruce

The wedding of neo-liberalism & fascism

After performing in Brazil, Roger Waters (Pink Floyd) discusses the rise of Jair Bolsonaro and the murder of Marielle Franco.

See part two of the interview here

Nazis in Ukraine's Army

RT reports that Ukraine's puppet President Petro Poroshenko has met the country's elite troops – paratroopers – ahead of their redeployment to bolster the “partial” martial law state. One of the soldiers openly sported an insignia of a Hitler Waffen SS division.

One of the troopers, standing just a few steps away from Ukraine's president proudly displayed the insignia of the 3rd SS Panzer Division Totenkopf right on his chest. Here he is:

As World War II kicked off, the Totenkopf Division was created from the SS personnel of death camps and SS paramilitary units, involved in the massacres of Polish civilians. The unit fought both on western and eastern fronts during the war, committing more war crimes in progress. The division, as well as all the other SS troops were deemed war criminals during the Nuremberg trials.

The Ukrainian Army, and newly formed National Guard, are riddled with Nazis who claim as their hero Stepan Bandera who hailed from the western part of the country.  Bandera was a Nazi collaborator who welcomed Hitler's invasion of the former Soviet Union and whose forces murdered 60,000 members of the Polish minority in Ukraine.

Stepan Bandera (center) is the guiding light of Nazis in Ukraine today that are being funded, trained and directed in the US-NATO effort to draw Russia into a war with Ukraine.

US Army Special Forces from Fort Carson, Colorado are regularly assigned to a base in western Ukraine where they have been training the newly formed National Guard which is full of these Nazis.  See the video of Obama's Ambassador Pyatt to Ukraine making a trip to visit the training base here.

It was Pyatt that played a key role (along with Hillary Clinton's deputy Victoria Nuland) in the 2014 coup d' etat the US engineered in Kiev.   He was the one famously on the phone with Nuland plotting who would run Ukraine after the coup when Nuland said, 'Fuck the EU' - meaning it did not matter who the Europeans wanted to lead Ukraine.  You can listen to that phone call here.

Anyone who claims there is a 'rough equivalence' between the US-NATO and Russia is living in a dream world.  The US-NATO spend well over 50% of the global total of all military spending - Russia spends 3.8%.  Russia is not trying to replicate the former Soviet Union - they are obviously trying to protect their borders from fast approaching US-NATO military forces.

In the west the media is chock full of CIA operatives.  In the west colleges and universities are loaded with instructors that get their funding at some level from the military industrial complex and their foundation friends like the George Soros 'Open Society' foundation.  That means the western anti-Russian line is ever present in the high-level education systems and media in the US, Europe and beyond.

The US-NATO are dangerously attempting to do what Napoleon and Hitler failed to do - smash the Russian state and break it up into pieces giving the western resource extraction corporations free hand to grab the enormous resource base of the country.

Wake up and smell the stinking western agenda. We are on the brink of WW III.

Bruce

French Yellow Vests demands

Here is the full list of our demands, which go well beyond the abolition of a punitive diesel tax: 1. zero homeless (urgently) 2. much more progressive income tax (much more tax bands) 3. Living wage at 1300€ net (currently at 1050€) 4. Promote small business in towns and slow the development of large-scale commercial developments on the outskirts of towns (which encourage the use of cars) 5. Large-scale national plan to insulate houses 6. Tax the multi-nationals and lower taxes for small businesses 7. Universal social security (including for self-employed who are excluded from the system today) 8. Maintain a solidarity based state pension (today's pensions are paid by the social contributions of today's workers, and so on from generation to generation) 9. No pension below 1200€ per month 10. Abolish carbon tax 11. All public representatives (TDs) paid average industrial wage, expenses controlled 12. Wages and pensions indexed on inflation 13. Protect French industry, no delocalization 14. Abolish the EU Posted Workers Directive which allows employers to escape social contributions. Limit contractual workers in large companies, permanent contracts should be the norm 15. Seriously tackle tax evasion (80 billion€) and declare the debt "odious", end austerity 16. Tackle the root cause of forced migration 17. Improve treatment of refugees and especially child refugees. 18. Civics classes and language classes for newly arrived migrants 19. Fix a maximum wage at 15,000€ per month 20. Increase of handicapped allowance 21. Guarantee a job for all unemployed fit to work 22. Cap on rents and more affordable and student accommodation built 23. No privatisation of state infrastructure 24. Re-nationalisation of electricity and gas companies 25. Immediate end to closure of post-offices, small schools, small hospitals and local rail networks 26. Ban for-profit retirement homes, no profit off the backs of our old people 27. Maximum 25 students per class at all levels of schooling 28. People's referendum initiative introduced so that people can propose laws if over 700,000 signatures obtained 29. Extra funding for justice system including police and army 30. Retirement age set at 60 or 55 for those having worked in physically demanding jobs 31. End ex-presidents’ privileges 32. Tax maritime and aviation fuel (today tax free)

U.S. created Central American refugee crisis

It's a similar story to the refugee crisis now in Europe - with people running from US-NATO war zones in Syria, Libya, Yemen, Afghanistan, Iraq and all over the African continent.

The war mongers know that when they create wars there will be a refugee crisis.  They do it intentionally to destabilize countries - and the media helps pit the people of a particular nation against the refugee as if they were the cause of the crisis that made them flee from home.

No one wants to flee their homeland - refugees do it because they have no choice.

Stop the wars and the destabilization of nations and the refugee crisis will halt.

Bruce

Sunday song

Revolutionary Congress? Let's hope so....

Gary Cohen, former CEO Goldman Sachs addressing new members of Congress today: "You guys are way over your head, you don't know how the game is played."

No Gary, YOU don't know what's coming - a revolutionary Congress that puts people over profits. https://t.co/ZLML2qzAW6

— Rashida Tlaib (@RashidaTlaib) December 6, 2018

See more on this story here

Yellow Vests Rise Against Neo-Liberal ‘King’ Macron

By Diana Johnstone in Paris 

Every automobile in France is supposed to be equipped with a yellow vest. This is so that in case of accident or breakdown on a highway, the driver can put it on to ensure visibility and avoid getting run over.

So the idea of wearing your yellow vest to demonstrate against unpopular government measures caught on quickly. The costume was at hand and didn’t have to be provided by Soros for some more or less manufactured “color revolution”. The symbolism was fitting: in case of socio-economic emergency, show that you don’t want to be run over.

As everybody knows, what set off the protest movement was yet another rise in gasoline taxes. But it was immediately clear that much more was involved. The gasoline tax was the last straw in a long series of measures favoring the rich at the expense of the majority of the population. That is why the movement achieved almost instant popularity and support.

The Voices of the People

The Yellow Vests held their first demonstrations on Saturday, November 17, on the Champs-Elysées in Paris. It was totally unlike the usual trade union demonstrations, well organized to march down the boulevard between the Place de la République and the Place de la Bastille, or the other way around, carrying banners and listening to speeches from leaders at the end. The Gilets Jaunes just came, with no organization, no leaders to tell them where to go or to harangue the crowd. They were just there, in the yellow vests, angry and ready to explain their anger to any sympathetic listener.

Briefly, the message was this: we can’t make ends meet. The cost of living keeps going up, and our incomes keep going down. We just can’t take it any more. The government must stop, think and change course.

But so far, the reaction of the government was to send police to spray torrents of tear gas on the crowd, apparently to keep the people at a distance from the nearby Presidential residence, the Elysee Palace. President Macron was somewhere else, apparently considering himself above and beyond it all.

But those who were listening could learn a lot about the state of France today. Especially in the small towns and rural areas, where many protesters came from. Things are much worse than officials and media in Paris have let on.

There were young women who were working seven days a week and despaired of having enough money to feed and clothe their children.

People were angry but ready to explain very clearly the economic issues.

Colette, age 83, doesn’t own a car, but explained to whoever would listen that the steep raise of gasoline prices would also hurt people who don’t drive, by affecting prices of food and other necessities. She had done the calculations and figured it would cost a retired person 80 euros per month.

“Macron didn’t run on the promise to freeze pensions”, recalled a Yellow Vest, but that is what he has done, along with increasing solidarity taxes on pensioners.

A significant and recurring complaint concerned the matter of health care. France has long had the best public health program in the world, but this is being steadily undermined to meet the primary need of capital: profit. In the past few years, there has been a growing government campaign to encourage, and finally to oblige people to subscribe to a “mutuelle”, that is, a private health insurance, ostensibly to fill “the gaps” not covered by France’s universal health coverage. The “gaps” can be the 15% that is not covered for ordinary illnesses (grave illnesses are covered 100%), or for medicines taken off the “covered” list, or for dental work, among other things. The “gaps” to fill keep expanding, along with the cost of subscribing to the mutuelle. In reality, this program, sold to the public as modernizing improvement, is a gradual move toward privatization of health care. It is a sneaky method of opening the whole field of public health to international financial capital investment. This gambit has not fooled ordinary people and is high on the list of complaints by the Gilets Jaunes.

The degradation of care in the public hospitals is another complaint. There are fewer and fewer hospitals in rural areas, and one must “wait long enough to die” emergency rooms. Those who can afford it are turning to private hospitals. But most can’t. Nurses are overworked and underpaid. When one hears what nurses have to endure, one is reminded that this is indeed a noble profession.

In all this I was reminded of a young woman we met at a public picnic in southwestern France last summer. She cares for elderly people who live at home alone in rural areas, driving from one to another, to feed them, bathe them, offer a moment of cheerful company and understanding. She loves her vocation, loves helping old people, although it barely allows her to make a living. She will be among those who will have to pay more to get from one patient to the next.

People pay taxes willingly when they are getting something for it. But not when the things they are used to are being taken away. The tax evaders are the super-rich and the big corporations with their batteries of lawyers and safe havens, or intruders like Amazon and Google, but ordinary French people have been relatively disciplined in paying taxes in return for excellent public services: optimum health care, first class public transport, rapid and efficient postal service, free university education. But all that is under assault from the reign of financial capital called “neo-liberalism” here. In rural areas, more and more post offices, schools and hospitals are shut down, unprofitable train service is discontinued as “free competition” is introduced following European Union directives – measures which oblige people to drive their cars more than ever. Especially when huge shopping centers drain small towns of their traditional shops.

Incoherent Energy Policies

And the tax announced by the government – an additional 6.6 cents per liter for diesel and an additional 2.9 centers per liter of gasoline – are only the first steps in a series of planned increases over the next years. The measures are supposed to incite people to drive less or even better, to scrap their old vehicles and buy nice new electric cars.

More and more “governance” is an exercise in social engineering by technocrats who know what is best. This particular exercise goes directly opposite to an earlier government measure of social engineering which used economic incitements to get people to buy cars running on diesel. Now the government has changed its mind. Over half of personal vehicles still run on diesel, although the percentage has been dropping. Now their owners are told to go buy an electric car instead. But people living on the edge simply can’t afford the switch.

Besides, the energy policy is incoherent. In theory, the “green” economy includes shutting down France’s many nuclear power plants. Without them, where would the electricity come from to run the electric cars? And nuclear power is “clean”, no CO2. So what is going on? People wonder.

The most promising alternative sources of energy in France are the strong tides along northern coasts. But last July, the Tidal Energies project on the Normandy coast was suddenly dropped because it wasn’t profitable – not enough customers. This is symptomatic of what is wrong with the current government. Major new industrial projects are almost never profitable at first, which is why they need government support and subsidies to get going, with a view to the future. Such projects were supported under de Gaulle, raising France to the status of major industrial power, and providing unprecedented prosperity for the population as a whole. But the Macron government is not investing in the future nor doing anything to preserve industries that remain. The key French energy corporation Alstom was sold to General Electric under his watch.

Indeed, it is perfectly hypocritical to call the French gas tax an “ecotax” since the returns from a genuine ecotax would be invested to develop clean energies – such as tidal power plants. Rather, the benefits are earmarked to balance the budget, that is, to serve the government debt. The Macronian gas tax is just another austerity measure – along with cutting back public services and “selling the family jewels”, that is, selling potential money-makers like Alstom, port facilities and the Paris airports.

The Government Misses the Point

Initial government responses showed that they weren’t listening. They dipped into their pool of clichés to denigrate something they didn’t want to bother to understand.

President Macron’s first reaction was to guilt-trip the protesters by invoking the globalists’ most powerful argument for imposing unpopular measures: global warming. Whatever small complaints people may have, he indicated, that is nothing compared to the future of the planet.

This did not impress people who, yes, have heard all about climate change and care as much as anyone for the environment, but who are obliged to retort: “I’m more worried about the end of the month than about the end of the world.”

After the second Yellow Vest Saturday, November 25, which saw more demonstrators and more tear gas, the Minister in charge of the budget, Gérard Darmanin, declared that what had demonstrated on the Champs-Elysée was “la peste brune”, the brown plague, meaning fascists. (For those who enjoy excoriating the French as racist, it should be noted that Darmanin is of Algerian working class origins). This remark caused an uproar of indignation that revealed just how great is public sympathy for the movement – over 70% approval by latest polls, even after uncontrolled vandalism. Macron’s Minister of the Interior, Christophe Castaner, was obliged to declare that government communication had been badly managed. Of course, that is the familiar technocratic excuse: we are always right, but it is all a matter of our “communication”, not of the facts on the ground.

Maybe I have missed something, but of the many interviews I have listened to, I have not heard one word that would fall into the categories of “far right”, much less “fascism” – or even that indicated any particular preference in regard to political parties. These people are wholly concerned with concrete practical issues. Not a whiff of ideology – remarkable in Paris!

Some people ignorant of French history and eager to exhibit their leftist purism have suggested that the Yellow Vests are dangerously nationalistic because they occasionally wave French flags and sing La Marseillaise. That simply means that they are French. Historically, the French left is patriotic, especially when it is revolting against the aristocrats and the rich or during the Nazi Occupation. ( The exception was the student uprising of May 1968, which was not a revolt of the poor but a revolt in a time of prosperity in favor of greater personal freedom: “it is forbidden to forbid”. The May ’68 generation has turned out to be the most anti-French generation in history, for reasons that can’t be dealt with here. To some extent, the Yellow Vests mark a return of the people after half a century of scorn from the liberal intelligentsia.) It is just a way of saying, We are the people, we do the work, and you must listen to our grievances. To be bad, “nationalism” must be aggressive toward other nations. This movement is not attacking anybody, it is strictly staying home.

The Weakness of Macron

The Yellow Vests have made clear to the whole world that Emmanuel Macron was an artificial product sold to the electorate by an extraordinary media campaign.

Macron was the rabbit magically pulled out of a top hat, sponsored by what must be called the French oligarchy. After catching the eye of established king-maker Jacques Attali, the young Macron was given a stint at the Rothschild bank where he could quickly gain a small fortune, ensuring his class loyalty to his sponsors. Media saturation and the scare campaign against “fascist” Marine LePen (who moreover flubbed her major debate) put Macron in office. He had met his wife when she was teaching his theater class, and now he gets to play President.

The mission assigned to him by his sponsors was clear. He must carry through more vigorously the “reforms” (austerity measures) already undertaken by previous governments, which had often dawdled at hastening the decline of the social State.

And beyond that, Macron was supposed to “save Europe”. Saving Europe means saving the European Union from the quagmire in which it finds itself.

This is why cutting expenses and balancing the budget is his obsession. Because that’s what he was chosen to do by the oligarchy that sponsored his candidacy. He was chosen by the financial oligarchy above all to save the European Union from threatening disintegration caused by the euro. The treaties establishing the EU and above all the common currency, the euro, have created an imbalance between member states that is unsustainable. The irony is that previous French governments, starting with Mitterrand, are largely responsible for this state of affairs. In a desperate and technically ill-examined effort to keep newly unified Germany from becoming the dominant power in Europe, the French insisted on binding Germany to France by a common currency. Reluctantly, the Germans agreed to the euro – but only on German terms. The result is that Germany has become the unwilling creditor of equally unwilling EU member states, Italy, Spain, Portugal and of course, ruined Greece. The financial gap between Germany and its southern neighbors keeps expanding, which causes ill will on all sides.

Germany doesn’t want to share economic power with states it considers irresponsible spendthrifts. So Macron’s mission is to show Germany that France, despite its flagging economy, is “responsible”, by squeezing the population in order to pay interest on the debt. Macron’s idea is that the politicians in Berlin and the bankers in Frankfurt will be so impressed that they will turn around and say, well done Emmanuel, we are ready to throw our wealth into a common pot for the benefit of all 27 Member States. And that is why Macron will stop at nothing to balance the budget, to make the Germans love him.

So far, the Macron magic is not working on the Germans, and it’s driving his own people into the streets.

Or are they his own people? Does Macron really care about his run of the mill compatriots who just work for a living? The consensus is that he does not.

Macron is losing the support both of the people in the streets and the oligarchs who sponsored him. He is not getting the job done.

Macron’s rabbit-out-of-the hat political ascension leaves him with little legitimacy, once the glow of glossy magazine covers wears off. With help from his friends, Macron invented his own party, La République en Marche, which doesn’t mean much of anything but suggested action. He peopled his party with individuals from “civil society”, often medium entrepreneurs with no political experience, plus a few defectors from either the Socialist or the Republican Parties, to occupy the most important government posts.

The only well-known recruit from “civil society” was the popular environmental activist, Nicolas Hulot, who was given the post of Minister of Environment, but who abruptly resigned in a radio announcement last August, citing frustration.

Macron’s strongest supporter from the political class was Gérard Collomb, Socialist Mayor of Lyons, who was given the top cabinet post of Minister of Interior, in charge of national police. But shortly after Hulot left, Collomb said he was leaving too, to go back to Lyons. Macron entreated him to stay on, but on October 3, Collomb went ahead and resigned, with a stunning statement referring to “immense problems” facing his successor. In the “difficult neighborhoods” in the suburbs of major cities, he said, the situation is “very much degraded : it’s the law of the jungle that rules, drug dealers and radical Islamists have taken the place of the Republic.” Such suburbs need to be “reconquered”.

After such a job description, Macron was at a loss to recruit a new Interior Minister. He groped around and came up with a crony he had chosen to head his party, ex-Socialist Christophe Castaner. With a degree in criminology, Castaner’s main experience qualifying him to head the national police is his close connection, back in his youth in the 1970s, with a Marseilles Mafioso, apparently due to his penchant for playing poker and drinking whiskey in illegal dens.

Saturday, November 17, demonstrators were peaceful, but resented the heavy teargas attacks. Saturday November 25, things got a big rougher, and on Saturday December 1st, all hell broke loose. With no leaders and no service d’ordre (militants assigned to protect the demonstrators from attacks, provocations and infiltration), it was inevitable that casseurs (smashers) got into the act and started smashing things, looting shops and setting fires to trash cans, cars and even buildings. Not only in Paris, but all over France: from Marseilles to Brest, from Toulouse to Strasbourg. In the remote town of Puy en Velay, known for its chapel perched on a rock and its traditional lace-making, the Prefecture (national government authority) was set on fire. Tourist arrivals are cancelled and fancy restaurants are empty and department stores fear for their Christmas windows. The economic damages are enormous.

And yet, support for the Yellow Vests remains high, probably because people are able to distinguish between those grieved citizens and the vandals who love to wreak destruction for its own sake.

On Monday, there were suddenly fresh riots in the troubled suburbs that Collomb warned about as he retreated to Lyons. This was a new front for the national police, whose representatives let it be known that all this was getting to be much too much for them to cope with. Announcing a state of emergency is not likely to solve anything.

Macron is a bubble that has burst. The legitimacy of his authority is very much in question. Yet he was elected in 2017 for a five year term, and his party holds a large majority in parliament that makes his destitution almost impossible.

So what next? Despite having been sidelined by Macron’s electoral victory in 2017, politicians of all hews are trying to recuperate the movement – but discreetly, because the Gilets Jaunes have made clear their distrust of all politicians. This is not a movement that seeks to take power. It simply seeks redress of its grievances. The government should have listened in the first place, accepted discussions and compromise. This gets more difficult as time goes on, but nothing is impossible.

For some two or three hundred years, people one could call “left” hoped that popular movements would lead to changes for the better. Today, many leftists seem terrified of popular movements for change, convinced “populism” must lead to “fascism”. This attitude is one of many factors indicating that the changes ahead will not be led by the left as it exists today. Those who fear change will not be there to help make it happen. But change is inevitable and it need not be for the worse.

~ Diana Johnstone is the author of Fools’ Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO, and Western Delusions. Her new book is Queen of Chaos: the Misadventures of Hillary Clinton. The memoirs of Diana Johnstone’s father Paul H. Johnstone, From MAD to Madness, was published by Clarity Press, with her commentary. She can be reached at diana.johnstone@wanadoo.fr   

"Preble Street Resource Center saved my life"

This is where Mary Beth works.....nice to see something good on TV for once.

Killer plastics

The real Bush story

By Regis Tremblay

US Military's Carbon 'Boot'print Largest in World

Listen to "US Military's Carbon 'Boot'print Largest in World" on Spreaker.

In this special segment of "By Any Means Necessary" Bruce Gagnon, Coordinator with Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space joins the show to talk about the US military's global carbon 'bootprint', the bad economics of military spending, why people fear speaking out on US environmental degradation, and the international solidarity efforts to combat climate change.

He also discussed the need to convert the military industrial complex and called for the US military to be transformed into the 'Natural Guard' that would work to help deal with communities devastated by big weather events due to the climate change.

Report On Militarism: The International Conference Against US/NATO Bases

By Roger Harris

For the first time in the history of humanity, the technical means are at hand to eliminate poverty if resources were not diverted to making war. World hunger could be abolished with only a small diversion from military budgets. The only luxuries that so-called middle-class Americans would have to forego would be the Blue Angels air show and drone-bombing wedding parties in the Middle East. Yet, military spending is expanding, and with it global poverty.

On November 16-18, some 300 peace activists representing over 35 countries gathered in Dublin, Ireland for the first International Conference Against US/NATO Military Bases to address this tragic paradox of the technical ability to serve humanity and the political proclivity by the ruling circles in the West to do the opposite. Roger Cole of the Irish peace organization PANA identified the twin threats to humankind of global warming and global war, both driven by accelerating militarization.

Ajamu Baraka of the US-based Black Alliance for Peace highlighted the reactionary role of the US and its allies, which have by far the largest military expenditures in the world. The material basis for the absence of peace and the accelerating proliferation of military bases, in his words, is US imperialism.

Guantánamo was the first of the world network of US foreign military bases, according to keynote speaker Dr. Aleida Guevara from Cuba, daughter of Che. Cuba opposes this violation of national sovereignty. Today the US possesses some 1000 foreign military bases with troops stationed in over 170 countries.

Australian Annette Brownlie of IPAN warned of a new Cold War. The recent US National Security Strategy document, focusing on “great power confrontation,” signals open preparations for direct military confrontation with nuclear-armed Russia and China.

David Webb of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in the UK [and the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space] explained that the US is the only nation with nuclear weapons based outside its soil. US policy is to develop “usable” nuclear weapons in an enhanced first-strike capacity. Missile defense, he reproved, is the shield for the sword of nuclear weapons. The purpose of missile defense is to protect the aggressor against the inevitable retaliation after a first nuclear strike.

Margaret Flowers of Popular Resistance reported that the recent US midterm elections brought in more Congressional representatives with military or security state backgrounds. The duopoly of the two US “war parties” is united in supporting an accelerated arms race. Well over half of the US government’s discretionary budget now goes to the military.

Unlike so much liberal and progressive political discourse in the US, which is obsessed with the personality of President Trump, the international perspective of this conference penetrated that distracting fog and concentrated on the continuity of US militarism regardless of who sits in the Oval Office.

The session on the environmental and health impacts featured testimony on the toxic effects of military bases in Okinawa, Czech Republic, and Turkey. The US Department of Defense is the world’s largest polluter.

National Coordinator of the Irish Trade Union Federation and Secretary of the People’s Movement, Frank Keoghan, described the transformation of the European Union (EU) into a war project with the recent rush to create a single EU army. Ilda Figueiredo from the Portuguese Council for Peace and Cooperation and another activist from France warned that the drive for an EU army would transform all national military bases into NATO bases and would in effect allow “nuclear bomb sharing.”

Margaret Kimberley of the Black Agenda Report chaired the Africa session. South African Chris Matlhako and Kenyan Ann Atambo discussed the dependency of African states on foreign aid, which is used as a tool to facilitate the occupation of Africa by foreign militaries.

Paul Pumphrey of Friends of the Congo described the development of US strategy in Africa, which has used African proxies to allow domination and extraction of valuable resources such as coltan from the Congo. Now the strategy also includes direct occupation by the US military. George W. Bush established AFRICOM in 2008 with just a single acknowledged US military base on the continent, followed by an explosion to some 50 bases and a military presence in practically every African nation under Obama.

The session on Latin America and the Caribbean outlined the immediate threat of military intervention in Venezuela, caught in the crosshairs of US imperialism. Veteran Cuban peace activist Silvio Platero of MOVPAZ condemned the continuing US blockade of Cuba and the colonial status of Puerto Rico. Speakers from Colombia (now a NATO partner), Argentina, and Brazil reported that their right-wing governments are cooperating militarily with the US.

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mairead Maguire from Ireland made an impassioned plea for all-out support of WikiLeaks whistleblower Julian Assange, “our hero of truth,” lest he die in a US prison.

The conference concluded on a high note of unity among the international peace forces. Conference coordinator Bahman Azad of the World Peace Council closed with a call to first educate and then mobilize.

Actions are being planned in Washington, D.C., around the 70th anniversary of NATO on April 4th. Coincidentally that is the date of the assassination of Martin Luther King and of his famous speech a year before when he presciently admonished, “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today is my own government.”

~ Roger Harris is on the board of the 33-year-old anti-imperialist human rights organization, Task Force on the Americas (taskforceamericas.org), and is active with the Campaign to End US-Canadian Sanctions Against Venezuela (https://tinyurl.com/yd4ptxkx).

What's in a name

When Boobus Americanus was a young lad and delivered groceries, he was called a boy.

When he worked at the mill, he was called a hand.

When he labored in the fields, he was called help.

When he worked at the co-op he was called a partner.

When he worked as a bagger at Wal-Mart's, he was called an associate.

When he was unemployed he was called a bum.

When he joined the military he was called a grunt.

When he went overseas, he was called a patriot.

When he arrived overseas, he was called cannon fodder.

At his funeral, he was called a hero.

-~ By Herschel Sternlieb (formerly from Brunswick, Maine) who is now living in a nursing home in Washington DC waiting for the 'inevitable' as he calls it.  In the meantime he has given me permission to print any of his many fables that are appropriate to the times we are living in.

Mary Beth and I traveled to Washington last weekend to see Hersch who we love and admire having sat at his knee for the last 15 years soaking up his wit and wisdom.

Bruce

Learning to live with nature....

Climate change requires we convert the U.S. war machine now!

Banner made by artist Russell Wray from Hancock, Maine

This is the message we will be carrying to Bath Iron Works (BIW) during the next Navy destroyer 'christening' protest.  (We don't know the date of that event yet.)

At this point 53 people from across Maine and the US have signed up to commit non-violent civil disobedience outside the shipyard during the ceremony.  Others will be there at the protest to hold signs and banners like the one above calling for the conversion of the shipyard to build sustainable technologies so that we can give the future generations a real chance to live on our Mother Earth.

Sadly I must admit that some environmental groups are very reluctant to recognize the cold hard facts that the Pentagon has the largest carbon boot print of any single institution on the planet.  We cannot effectively deal with the ravages of climate change by ignoring the colossus in the middle of the tea shop.

Over the years we have heard some say that while they agree that BIW must be converted if we wish to deal with climate change they fear going public with that demand because they are timid about angering the workers at BIW.  They say they don't want to negatively impact jobs.

OK fair enough.  Of course we all want the workers at BIW (and at any other military industrial facility) to keep their jobs.  In fact Brown University in Rhode Island has done the definitive study on just this point and they have found that conversion to building sustainable technology creates more job.  Let me repeat - the transition from building war machines to sustainable production creates more jobs.  See the Brown study here.

Once we share that information you'd think that the reluctant environmental activists would say 'OK that makes great sense.  Let's do it."  But most still remain timid.  Why?

I can only speculate but I've come to the conclusion that many (not all) enviros are really afraid to confront the #1 mythology of America that says we are the 'exceptional nation' - that America deserves to rule the global roost and that anyone who questions that military mythology is unpatriotic and potentially a 'red'.  So they become frozen by the worn out notion that if you don't stay silent about the war machine you must be a commie pinko type.

At this point it becomes instructive to look back to the controversial days in America when we had that other deep evil economic institution called slavery. Many were opposed to that system of production but they were afraid to directly confront it because they wanted to stay away from arguing with their friends and neighbors and wanted to be liked more than they wanted to see real change happen.

The great abolitionist Frederick Douglass met many people like that during his day and this is what he said to them: 

“If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”

So the lesson here is that if we are truly serious about protecting the future generations (if that is still even possible) then we have to give up timidity - we have to non-violently confront the institutions blocking serious progress on dealing with climate change - and we can't keep ignoring the massive impact that the US military empire and war machine has in creating this current calamity!

In simpler words - it's time to get real - to fish or cut bait - to shit or get off the pot.  Take your pick.

Time is running out.

Bruce