Organizing Notes

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

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Location: Brunswick, ME, United States

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

Saturday, August 04, 2018

Keep Space for Peace Week


Click on poster for a better view
 
We urge you to help us spread word about the poster and our theme for Space week this year which is ‘No Space Force’ – the proposal by Trump to create a separate military service whose mission would be the ‘domination of space’ for US power projection and more.

The posters can be ordered by sending us $3 per copy or 12 copies for $10.  You can pay by sending a check to the Global Network at PO Box 652, Brunswick, ME 04011 or by using our secure credit card payment option on our website.  Just click here and in the comment section say how many posters you wish to order.  https://space4peace.networkforgood.com/projects/33958-global-network-against-weapons-nuclear-power-in-space

Please let us know ASAP if your community will hold an event during space week.  Consider organizing a protest rally or vigil making the case that our tax dollars would be far better spent dealing with Climate change and growing poverty rather than furthering the aerospace industry desire to move the arms race into space.

You could also consider showing a space film during space week in your community.  We have quite a selection to pick from at the ‘Space Video’ section on our web site  http://www.space4peace.org    

Many thanks for your support.  Working together we can build our collective movements by making the deadly connections between the issues.

Bruce 

Friday, August 03, 2018

Where did you learn what you know about Russia & Putin?



Who is manufacturing the anti-Putin, anti-Russian hype all across the west?

Who benefits from the increasing dangerous tensions between the US-NATO and Russia?

How much do you independently know about Russia that you did not learn from the mainstream media?

What do you know about the period following the collapse of the former Soviet Union in 1991?  Who were the 'Harvard boys' that were sent in by the US to 'reorganize' the new Russian economy?

How much did you actually know about Iraq before the US 'shock and awe' attack in 2003 and where did you learn what you thought you knew about Iraq?  How did that one work out?

How much do you know about Syria and where did you learn what you presently know?

Bruce

Thursday, August 02, 2018

My coming trip to Russia


I'm starting to work on my Russian Visa application process.  My plan is to visit Moscow and Crimea in the middle of October on a humanitarian Visa.

The idea is to meet Russian people in preparation for a study tour that I will be coordinating in the spring of 2019 (late April to early May).  We want to take some of our GN members and friends to try to cut through the manufactured fog that engulfs the American public mind when it comes to Russia.

How in god's name can Russia ever be responsible for all the things the western media has accused it of doing?  Impossible.

Russia and Putin are 'guilty as charged' in the west because they dare to stand up for their own national interests and sovereignty.  They refuse to become lackeys for Mr. Big.  The corporate oligarchies that run US-NATO can't stand it when they snap their fingers and Russia refuses to take a knee in subservience.

I want to meet these Russian people who are so misunderstood and maligned in my country.  I want to hear what they have to say about their culture and history, their lives and families, Syria, Ukraine, Putin, Star Wars and what the future holds for all of us. I want to ask Russians why does America want to bust Russia's back?

In my lifetime I've never seen such a systemic, coordinated, organized pressure campaign to turn the American people against one man (and one country) like we see today.  I want to step thru that toxic barrier between the west and Russia and hold out my hand in friendship and inquisitiveness.

While I am in Russia (particularly in Moscow) this coming October my hope is to meet with many people who will offer to help me fashion an interesting and challenging study trip for those I bring along when we return in the spring of 2019.

Bruce

Learning how to live in the dissonance



Dr. Cornel West Lecture 'Politics in the Humanities' at Brown University (2018).

Cornel Ronald West (born June 2, 1953) is an American philosopher, political activist, social critic, author, and public intellectual. The son of a Baptist minister, West focuses on the role of race, gender, and class in American society and the means by which people act and react to their "radical conditionedness."

A radical democrat and democratic socialist, West draws intellectual contributions from multiple traditions, including Christianity, the black church, Marxism, neopragmatism, and transcendentalism.

Among his most influential books are Race Matters (1994) and Democracy Matters (2004).

Netanyahu: We own the U.S.



In a leaked tape, Benjamin Netanyahu boasts about making Trump pull out of the Iran Nuclear Deal.

How come this story is not all over the mainstream media?

Wednesday, August 01, 2018

Imagine this....



Imagine this
Canada and Mexico
declare
that because
Washington
is crazy and unpredictable
they feel insecure
and need protection

thus
Ottawa and Mexico City
have invited
Russia and China
to set up joint
military bases in
both their countries
at various points
along the US
northern and southern borders
to defend them
against an increasingly
hostile Washington

How might that go down
in the District of Columbia?

How would CNN, FOX, MSNBC
spin that story?
How about the New York Times
and the Washington Post?

Do you think the Pentagon
would go on nuclear alert?

Would the US rush to
the UN Security Council
with a resolution in hand
calling these new bases
along US borders
naked aggression?

My mother used to say:
What's good for the goose,
is good for the gander.

Bruce


Addendum:

Conn Hallinan writes in Counterpunch

The story goes back more than three decades to the fall of the Berlin Wall and eventual re-unification of Germany. At the time, the Soviet Union had some 380,000 troops in what was then the German Democratic Republic. Those forces were there as part of the treaty ending World War II, and the Soviets were concerned that removing them could end up threatening the USSR’s borders. The Russians have been invaded—at terrible cost—three times in a little more than a century.

So West German Chancellor Helmet Kohl, U.S. Secretary of State James Baker, and Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev cut a deal. The Soviets agreed to withdraw troops from Eastern Europe as long as NATO did not fill the vacuum, or recruit members of the Soviet-dominated Warsaw Pact. Baker promised Gorbachev that NATO would not move “one inch east.”

The agreement was never written down, but it was followed in practice. NATO stayed west of the Oder and Neisse rivers, and Soviet troops returned to Russia. The Warsaw Pact was dissolved in 1991.

But President Bill Clinton blew that all up in 1999 when the U.S. and NATO intervened in the civil war between Serbs and Albanians over the Serbian province of Kosovo. Behind the new American doctrine of “responsibility to protect,” NATO opened a massive 11-week bombing campaign against Serbia.

From Moscow’s point of view the war was unnecessary. The Serbs were willing to withdraw their troops and restore Kosovo’s autonomous status. But NATO demanded a large occupation force that would be immune from Serbian law, something the nationalist-minded Serbs would never agree to. It was virtually the same provocative language the Austrian-Hungarian Empire had presented to the Serbs in 1914, language that set off World War I.

In the end, NATO lopped off part of Serbia to create Kosovo and re-drew the post World War II map of Europe, exactly what the Alliance charges that Russia has done with its seizure of the Crimea.

But NATO did not stop there. In 1999 the Alliance recruited former Warsaw Pact members Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic, adding Bulgaria and Romania four years later. By the end of 2004, Moscow was confronted with NATO in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia to the north, Poland to the west, and Bulgaria and Turkey to the south. Since then, the Alliance has added Slovakia, Slovenia, Albania, Croatia, and Montenegro. It has invited Georgia, Ukraine, Macedonia and Bosnia and Herzegovina to apply as well.

When the NATO document chastises Russia for “provocative” military activities near the NATO border, it is referring to maneuvers within its own border or one of its few allies, Belarus."

Read the full article here 

Tuesday, July 31, 2018

No 'Fleet Week' on Jeju Island



[July 19]

We denounce [South Korean President] Moon Jae-in government who instigates conflicts in the [Gangjeong] village by pushing for the international fleet review in Jeju! No fleet Review!

On July 18, an officer Lee Yong-seok from the Presidential House came to Jeju, asking villagers’ public opinion on fleet review again soon in 2-3 days and offering ‘deal’ that if fleet review is held in Jeju, President Moon would deliver the words of regret and consolation for the villagers’ inner-conflict and suffering caused from the Jeju navy base and that there would be government-supported projects to ‘recover’ community. His remark is total ignorance of villagers’ general meeting on March 30 when villagers expressed their opposition to fleet review by vote.

The village has its own rule including ‘prohibition against double jeopardy,’ and conditions to hold any general meeting. Moon government’s such policy is a forceful demand with sugar-coated lies which totally betray villagers’ democratic decision and ignore the real cause of villagers’ suffering-the Jeju navy base itself. The officer’s visit followed previous visits by a vice-chief of naval operation and another officers from the Presidential House. All such visits occurred within a week. And the next day of the officer Lee’s visit, the Island Council disappointingly postponed to submit resolution draft which opposes the fleet review. All the members had signed in opposition to the fleet review in Jeju.

We denounce Moon Jae-in government who tries to trash villagers’ general meeting vote against fleet review on March 30. The Moon government is instigating conflicts among villagers again rather than helping to ‘recover’ community. What an arrogance! If he truly respects Gangjeong villagers and is to truly apologize to villagers for his complicity in building Jeju navy base in 2007 (Moon was the Chief Presidential Secretary of ex-President Roh Moo-hyun whose government drove for the Jeju navy base in Gangjeong in 2007), he should not allow the fleet review in Jeju! He should also reconsider whether holding fleet review-regardless of venue- fits to the spirit of April 27 Inter-Korean Summit meeting.

Where is disarmament and peace? Why is the Moon government pushing for the international fleet review which would make the Jeju navy base as a strategic [target], not to mention environmental destruction and villagers' suffering!

Submitted by Choi Sung-Hee

Coming this week is the 2018 Grand March for the Life and Peace of Jeju from July 30 to August 4.  The walk will circle the entire island.


Sunday, July 29, 2018

Great interview with Chomsky....



He covers many of the most important points including US interference with the Russian 1996 election (Yeltsen), the US violation of the post-Cold War promise not to expand NATO 'one inch' toward the Russian border, US deployments of so-called 'missile defense' near Russia, and the huge Democratic Party flip-flop on the Russian question after Hillary lost to Trump.

Sunday song