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, September 21, 2019

UFOs confirmed by Navy




The US Navy has confirmed the UFO footage caught on tape by US military members is authentic. These leaked unidentified flying object (UFO) sightings show the flying objects skyrocketing through air space used for Naval training in 2004 and 2015.

Two of these US military UFOs videos were published by the New York Times and Blink 182 member Tom Delonge's research org in 2017. Delong has long been interested in aliens and UFO video.

Victims of colonialism, racism & climate crisis


WANTOKS - Dance of Resilience in Melanesia (Official Trailer) from Cultures of Resistance Films on Vimeo.

More about WANTOKS:

In 2018, the Solomon Islands, in the South Pacific, hosted the Melanesian Arts & Cultural Festival, celebrating the country’s fortieth anniversary of independence. On neighboring island states, the struggle for freedom continues, as West Papua resists Indonesian occupation and the residents of New Caledonia still live under French rule.

In all Melanesian countries, residents face the common challenge of climate change, as rising sea levels threaten to swallow both land and tradition. In this charged context, captivating performers are using their talents to celebrate local culture and draw international attention to their islands’ plight, with the hope of spurring international solidarity and prompting collective action against the perils of a warming world.

Featuring striking footage from the South Pacific islands, WANTOKS: Dance of Resilience in Melanesia, profiles the artists and activists who are fighting for self-determination while trying to defend their homes against the rising sea.

 Yours,

 iara lee and the whole team
 Cultures Of Resistance Network - Founder 

Friday, September 20, 2019

Fossil fuel boom in America killing the future




The new film follows the U.S. oil supply chain, covering health, climate and environmental justice impacts.

And it points to the president who was central to creating the current reality: Barack Obama.

U.S. empire biggest threat to Mother Earth



Former US military veterans Ken Mayers (82) & Tarak Kauff (77) take a couple of hours out from their three-week walk from Shannon to Malin Head in Ireland to talk about their Shannon Airport St. Patrick's Day peace action.

Eddie Mitchell of Love Leitrim talks about the urgent need to oppose the import of US fracked gas to the Shannon Estuary.

Melting Arctic ice - dangerous American mess below!!!



The melting of Greenland’s ice cap is set to expose Camp Century, a US military base that hid a top-secret project along with its nuclear and other toxic waste. It was meant to be buried forever – entombed in ice.

But the rising temperatures mean that the cold war camp and its hazardous remains could be exposed within decades. Our Chief Correspondent Alex Thomson reports from western Greenland.

Thursday, September 19, 2019

The story behind Yemen's attack on Saudi oil fields




The attack on Saudi Arabia's oil facilities.

How was it possible that Yemen could hit Saudi oil fields with slow lumbering drones while 'mighty' US Patriot missile defense systems failed to work?

This video shares the story - something we can't find in the US media - at least up to this point.

Could it be because the Neo-cons that run Washington want to keep saying that Iran did it - using this event as justification for a full-scale war and regime change in Tehran?

A very good article on the same subject can be found here

Julian Assange's first hack was the Galileo plutonium launch in 1989



I've posted this previously on this blog but with Keep Space for Peace Week coming soon, and Julian Assange wasting away in a British prison, I thought it a good time to re-post.  Bruce


The leaflet above was advertising a protest I organized at the space center in Florida in 1989. This was during the period from 1987-1997 where we held one large protest after the other against the nuclearization and weaponization of space. Sometimes there were 500 people there, frequently about 1,000 came, and our biggest ever was more than 5,000.

In 2011 my son Julian [a debate coach], who grew up attending these events during his childhood, sent me an email with a link to a book written by Suelette Dreyfus with Research by Julian Assange that was published in 1997. The book was called Underground: Front Page. You can find the book here

Julian told me, "Dad, one of the debate topics for the Harvard tournament is about WikiLeaks and I've been doing a lot of research on Julian Assange. Here's a link to a book he worked on...read the first chapter!!!"

So I dutifully clicked on the link.

Much to my surprise I found that the authors began their book with an account of the Florida Coalition for Peace & Justice's 1989 campaign to oppose NASA's launch of the Galileo plutonium-238 space probe that garnered international media coverage. This was the first of three major nukes in space campaigns that I led (the others Ulysses in 1990 and Cassini in 1997).

The authors wrote:

For weeks, the protesters had been out in force, demonstrating and seizing media attention. Things had become very heated. On Saturday, 7 October, sign-wielding activists fitted themselves out with gas masks and walked around on street corners in nearby Cape Canaveral in protest. At 8 a.m. on Monday, 9 October, NASA started the countdown for the Thursday blast-off. But as Atlantis's clock began ticking toward take-off, activists from the Florida Coalition for Peace and Justice demonstrated at the centre's tourist complex.

That these protests had already taken some of the shine off NASA's bold space mission was the least of the agency's worries. The real headache was that the Florida Coalition told the media it would `put people on the launchpad in a non-violent protest'. The coalition's director, Bruce Gagnon, put the threat in folksy terms, portraying the protesters as the little people rebelling against a big bad government agency. President Jeremy Rivkin of the Foundation on Economic Trends, another protest group, also drove a wedge between `the people' and `NASA's people'. He told UPI, `The astronauts volunteered for this mission. Those around the world who may be the victims of radiation contamination have not volunteered.'

I'll always remember the 1989 launch of Galileo because it was delayed over and over again for about a week. The international media was gathered at the Kennedy Space Center tourist area with nothing much to do so each day during that week we'd assemble as many activists as we could get and hold another vigil and news conference which helped us tremendously get the word out around the world about the deadly plutonium space launch.

In chapter 1 of this book is a whole section about a computer worm that got planted inside of NASA's computers during this very time. Was the Galileo delay due to a hacker trying to help us stop that launch? Was a hacker also trying to symbolically "sit on the launch pad"? We've got to learn more about this story. I've already pointed it out to journalist Karl Grossman who helped us break the Galileo story open in 1989.

It just goes to show that you never know who is paying attention to your efforts. Who could have known that Julian Assange, who has become such a big name due to his courageous work with Wiki Leaks, would be moved enough by our campaign to feature it in the first chapter of his book? Maybe it was because it was a classic story about out-of-control technology and the "little peoples" reaction. Any way you cut it one has to acknowledge that it has a nice twist.

One side story should be told here as well. My son Julian was nine years old in 1989 and one day I came home and he had my gas mask on. In his most serious voice he told me, "Don't worry Dad, if Galileo blows up I could wear this gas mask for the rest of my life." He was trying to make me feel better. His words cut right to my heart and my soul and virtually every day since that time I have stayed true to the cause because I believe that no child, my own or anyone else's, should ever have to think of living in a radioactive wasteland wearing a gas mask for their whole life.

Bruce

P.S.

    More detail showing how involved Assange was during our 1989 campaign in Florida to stop the plutonium launch of Galileo space mission can be found here:

    Clip:

    "JULIAN Assange has told the story of his childhood and adolescence twice - most recently to a journalist from The New Yorker, Raffi Khatchadourian, and some 15 years ago, secretly but in greater detail, to Suelette Dreyfus, the author of a fascinating book on the first generation of computer hacking, Underground, for which Assange was the primary researcher ...

    ... Nothing about Assange has ever been straightforward. One of the main characters in Underground is the Melbourne hacker Mendax. Although there is no way readers at that time could have known it, Mendax is Julian Assange.

    IN the late 1980s, Assange joined the underground subculture of hacking that was forming in Melbourne. By October 1989 an attack was mounted from Australia on America's NASA computer system via the introduction of what was called the WANK worm, in an attempt to sabotage the Jupiter launch of the Galileo rocket as part of an action of anti-nuclear activists.

    In an article he later published in the left-wing magazine CounterPunch, Assange would claim the WANK worm attack was "the origin of hacktivism"... 

Evidence: U.S. buys weapons for ISIS in Syria



WAR with Evgeny Poddubny.

This is War, a show about how current conflicts are made, about wars that have ended, are in progress now, or will start soon.

In this show it is revealed that the American government buys weaponry in Eastern European countries and hands them over to terrorist groups in Syria and Yemen.

Earlier, experts supposed this was happening. Now, they have evidence.

Can we acknowledge that the US government is run by a criminal corporate syndicate?

Wednesday, September 18, 2019

Americans like 'political entertainment'



Here it is.....sit back and enjoy the show.

What if Iran had bases on U.S. borders?


Who is the aggressor nation?  What is the agenda?

Who is running this Hollywood script?

Who is making the $$$$$?

Excellent insider interview on U.S. foreign policy



Lawrence Wilkerson, who served alongside John Bolton in the Bush administration, discusses the reasons for Bolton’s firing; Bolton's legacy as a war hawk who promoted regime change and undermined global arms control; the anti-interventionist views of a potential successor, Douglas Macgregor; and the lasting influence of neocons inside the national security state.

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson was the former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell. Currently a distinguished professor at the College of William and Mary.

Tuesday, September 17, 2019

Invitation to International meeting on Ukraine issues via Skype



Dear Friends and Colleagues!

We, the "Red square / Molotov Club" of international political and economical experts, gladly announces the Skype conference on subject of “Western Colonization of Ukraine: GMO’s, NATO weapons, and expanding conflict with Russia”.

The event is going to be held as an open talk conference international wide with use of Skype communication tool.

The date of the event: September 25.

The beginning of the Skype debate starts in 17.00 (05.00 PM) of Central European Time (CET), which is 11.00 A.M. in New York (USA).

The end of the event is in 20.00 (08.00 PM) of Central European Time (CET), which is 2.00 P.M. in New York (USA).

The proposed subjects for debate is:

  • Ukrainian food export to European Union (including GMO’s produced in Ukraine);
  • Ecological security in food export & Ukraine situation;
  • US/NATO expansion including into space;
  • Climate change;
  • Growing Russia-China relationships

We gladly invite our Friends and Colleagues for participation in this talks on such important issues of today's World!

The invited organizations-participants:

  • Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space (USA, UK, EU, etc)
  • Euro-Rus, (Belgium, EU)
  • Union of Political Emigrants and Political Prisoners of Ukraine (Ukraine)
We also ask for every possible participant to send to our organizing unit Your short representation (in one or two sentences) and Your Skype address to our email: mitya.dezhnev@mail.ru  

The contact information of our organizing unit:

+7 901 764 11 87 (for telephone, whatsapp and viber calls and messages)

We are waiting for Your responses with anticipation! And we looking forward to see You in our circle of communication!

Please RSVP to Leonid Ilderkin at mitya.dezhnev@mail.ru  

Got my banner for space week!


Our dear friend Ken Jones, formerly residing and teaching college in Portland, Maine, is now living just outside of Asheville, North Carolina.  He sent this photo with the words - "Got my banner!"

He is planning to work the streets of Asheville during Keep Space for Peace Week in early October.  Ken has signed up for the following:

·       Asheville, North Carolina (Oct 5-12) Each day during the week, members of the local chapter of Veterans for Peace will vigil and conduct a walkabout downtown for an hour carrying the No to NATO banner and passing out flyers. 

Ken came to Maine last June and was arrested with us at the 'christening' protest of another Aegis destroyer at Bath Iron Works when 22 of us were taken into custody for blocking buses and vans when General Dynamics/BIW were ferrying people into the ceremony to give 'the blessing of Jesus' to another killing warship.  Out of those arrested that day nine of us chose not to pay the $60 bail commissioner fee so we spent two nights in the county jail.  Ken was my cellmate.  

The banner Ken is holding was created by Global Network board member Will Griffin.  During space week a similar one will be held in Toronto outside the NATO Association of Canada office by fellow Global Network board member Tamara Lorincz.  

Will, Ken and I went to Jeju Island, South Korea a few years back to join the annual Grand March for Life & Peace around the island organized by the people from Gangjeong village where the U.S. forced the construction of a Navy base in the 500-year old fishing and farming village that has negatively up-ended life in that small community.  It was a hot August journey around the beautiful island and one of the best experiences I can ever recall, walking with hundreds of Korean men, women and tireless children for peace.


Ken and I have many things in common.  He comes from Baltimore, Maryland and I was born near there.  We were both catchers in our years playing organized baseball.  We first met at a protest in Portland many years ago and noticed that we both had made identical protest signs - same words - which I sadly can't now recall what they were.  We are both cherished friends of the Nipponzan Buddhist Monk Utsumi and Nun Denise who are building a peace pagoda in the Smokey Mountains.  Ken is a frequent volunteer in that wondrous project.


We were born to be brothers in the struggle for certain.


Thank you and keep on steppin' dear friend Ken.


Bruce     

Monday, September 16, 2019

Jesus & Capitol Hill don't mix....



Meet The Fellowship, the secret organization at the center of Netflix’s five-part docu-series “The Family,” a project that was made “with unprecedented participation from members of the organization,” which examines the “sophisticated, successful tactics its affiliates use to influence policy-making around the globe.”

In the trailer you’ll see experts and organization members discuss The Fellowship’s “involvement in widespread political scandals, the notorious C Street house and investigate how the immensely private organization works with the current administration.”

Here’s the official description for “The Family,” courtesy of Netflix:

Every February, on the first Thursday, at the same hotel, dignitaries and guests from 100 countries gather in America’s capital for a blessing. While more than 3,000 people attend the National Prayer Breakfast — including every U.S. president since Dwight Eisenhower — the host organization has long shrouded itself in secrecy. Technically, it’s called The Fellowship, but former “brother” members like New York Times bestselling author Jeff Sharlet know the group as The Family.

As he learned firsthand and documented in The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, The Family believes the separation of church and state is unnecessary, and political affiliation is irrelevant. The Family grooms and supports leaders, teaching them that the Bible is a story about power, not mercy – that leaders are chosen by God, not elected.

The docu-series is directed by Jesse Moss and executive produced by Alex Gibney.

Biden stumbles once again



Joe Biden goes off-topic when asked about what would he do to address slavery in the past with a rambling, stuttering reply about showing poor people how to raise their children.

It's clear as hell to me that this recent debate performance in Houston indicates that Biden's day in the sun has passed him by.  But sadly the DNC (Democratic National Committee), which is still run by the Clinton political corporate syndicate, has been insisting that Biden be the next presidential nominee for their party.

Why?  Because the corporations are comfortable that they control Biden even if he has trouble finishing a thought.

During the last election campaign the 'super delegates' were given the power to override the popular will of the party which favored Bernie Sanders.  Much complaint and criticism ensued.  So the party decided that in 2020 the super delegates would not be involved in the first round of voting at the Democratic party convention.

But with so many candidates running in the Democratic party primaries it is highly likely that in the first round at the convention no one candidate will gain enough votes to get the nomination.  That means the convention will go to a second and possibly third round and in that case the corporate-owned super delegates will be back in play.

This means the Democrats are still likely to choose an eventual candidate for 2020 that will be either Biden or someone else who is absolutely in the bulging pockets of the corporate elites (Corry Booker, Pete Buttigieg, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, Beto O'Rourke or even Elizabeth Warren who is owned by the Raytheon Corporation in Massachusetts).

There is no room in the Democratic party for real progressive ideas and policies.  The party bosses will cheat and pull any necessary shenanigans to ensure they cut the heart out of progressive forces leaving them just like in 2016 - support the corporate candidate Hillary Clinton or leave the party.

Bruce

Where I learned about life....


Imagine the early-to-mid 1960's.  My family is living on Ellsworth Air Force Base next to the Black Hills in South Dakota.  We arrived in a blizzard and I begin to ask myself how the native Lakota people were surviving the harsh winter inside of the sub-standard 'shot gun' shacks they lived in - with holes in the worn wooden siding.  This began my journey into learning about native history, culture and spirit.

Another learning I had during this same period was inside the base gymnasium.  I'd take the shuttle bus from base housing where we lived across the air base (loaded with bombers) to the gym.  I had to escape my chaotic family and found solace playing basketball with mostly young black GI's.  They taught me to play the 'street ball' version of the game and it was from them I first heard about Cassius Clay just before his famous fight with Sonny Liston in 1964.  I was 12 years old and soon enough Muhammad Ali became one of my greatest heroes.  I loved his spirit, his brashness and his sense of justice.  When he gave up his world heavy weight boxing title by refusing the Vietnam War draft he taught us all so much about courage and real values.

My family was poor, scraping by on an enlisted man's pay with six kids.  (In those days there was no Food Stamp program, if there had been we would have easily qualified.) I was always skinny and hungry.  At that point I was going door-to-door in the base housing area selling donuts from the local grocery store for 10 cents a bag.  I knew hard work early on.  I also learned how to talk on the fly.

When we moved to Germany in 1965 I became a regular at the Wiesbaden base gym.  While waiting at the shuttle bus stop to return home I'd listen to GI's sing the latest hits which helped form my musical interest in R & B - along with my big sister's Elvis records.  I heard the GI's graphically use curse words, some of which I'd never heard before.

I had no money to go buy french fries at the bowling alley on base, an exciting hangout spot for my peers. Even though I often worked as a caddie at the base golf course on weekends I couldn't afford either the bowling fees or the fries.  I had to use the money I earned to buy my own underwear and socks. Once I went through the gym lockers and removed a few coins from the pockets of several GI's hanging pants - socialism at work.  I made sure I was not greedy, I just took enough to get some fries.

Also during this time while in Wiesbaden I first heard The Kinks on the Armed Forces radio station playing in our kitchen as I helped my mom with dinner. (Since I was always hungry and impatient I found the kitchen was the best place to help deal with both of my needs.) Thus began my life-long love of cooking and this British rock band which became famous for social reflection and satire. This was one of the songs that snagged me.



So I owe much to the bouncing ball.

Bruce

Sunday, September 15, 2019

Join us in Portland Sept 20 - connect militarism & climate chaos


LumenARRT!, 350 Maine, and The Leftist Marching Band take on Climate Change in the Gulf of Maine! from Geoffrey Leighton on Vimeo.

People concerned about the growing connections between militarism and climate catastrophe will be attending various climate student strike events around Maine on Friday, September 20.

In Portland, Maine we will gather at 11:00 am at Lincoln Park (across from City Hall) and move over to City Hall at 11:30.  Bring signs and banners making these deadly connections between the Pentagon (with the largest carbon bootprint of any institution on the planet) and global warming.

If you'd like to learn more about the Pentagon impacts on climate please check this out here

Kiriakou: How did I know Bolton was gone?



Ex-CIA analyst John Kiriakou discusses why he accurately predicted John Bolton’s ouster as National Security Adviser; who might replace him; and the Democratic leadership’s anemic response.

Sunday song