A collection of spirits (good & not so nice)

• Washington is walking away from another arms control treaty with Russia - the Open Skies Treaty that allows each nation to fly over the others with spy planes to ensure they are keeping to various treaty agreements.  But the US don't do treaties no more....

• Iran is shipping oil to Venezuela but the Pentagon is threatening to intercept them.  This would be piracy - not really anything new when it comes to America.  The US sees the coming collapse of empire and knows the window is closing fast.  That is the reason for so many desperate 'last ditch' acts to remain Mr. Big - on top of the heap.  In the end Washington is willing to risk nuclear war with Russia and China.  Both mainstream political parties are engaged in this bloody game of Monopoly.  It is a circus.

• I'm following closely the status of Major League Baseball - will there be a season this year?  Appears to be coming closer to starting but issues between the club owners and the players over $$$ are at hand. Sadly it appears the minor league teams won't have a season.  I miss baseball.  Now and then I've been watching Baltimore Oriole World Series games from the old days online.

• Will we beat these sadistic people running much of the world or will we perish?  Like anyone else, I think about it alot and get asked the question frequently - can we stop them?  What can we do?  I would agree it looks bad - between climate crisis, economic collapse and the possibility of space/earth war we could all go down hard.  But I have no control of the outcome.  I was told many years ago by Quaker Al Geiger from Jacksonville, Florida that I was trying to carry the whole world on my shoulders.  He said I ought to just do my best, work hard, have a good spirit and let go of worrying about results.  Hearing his words one day, while we had lunch in the shade of a cedar tree on land he donated to the Florida Coalition for Peace & Justice, I felt liberated.  It's not all my responsibility - just do my bit and give it all I got.  These days Al is in a senior recovery center and has battled two bouts of the virus.  He's now in his 90's and one of the greatest men I've met in my life.  I love him.

• Mask or not to mask?  Vaccines?  Was the corona virus created in a military sponsored lab in the US and sent to China with funding from Dr. Anthony Fauci?  Was it from a bat?  One of the reasons people are so confused is because we've learned to question EVERYTHING if we hope to understand anything.  It's in the interests of the corporate ruling class to make us afraid, disoriented and servile.  I'm always going to drift to the side of more information, more voices, more choices.  I have enough confidence that if I gather lots of info then I will figure things out.

• The Oakland Institute reports:

• As a condition for a US$8 billion loan package from the International Monetary Fund, Ukraine was forced to lift a 19-year moratorium on the sale of agricultural land in April 2020.

• Amidst an ongoing economic crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic prevented street protests against the lifting of the moratorium by Ukrainians who are overwhelmingly opposed to the law.

• Opening the sale of land will benefit Western agribusiness interests [like Monsanto] and oligarchs who will now further consolidate ownership of land and intensify large scale, industrial agriculture in “Europe’s Breadbasket,” at the expense of Ukrainian farmers.

• While conditionalities accompanying Western foreign assistance are common practice, the way Ukraine has been forced to put its land for sale has no precedent in modern history.

On April 28, 2020, President Volodymyr Zelensky signed a bill into law authorizing the sale of farmland in Ukraine, lifting a moratorium that has been in place since 2001. This bill is part of a series of policy reforms that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) conditioned a US$8 billion loan package upon. Faced with a serious economic crisis, an ongoing civil war, and the rapidly escalating COVID-19 pandemic, Ukraine risked plunging into default without the package.

• And on we go.....hope to see you somewhere soon. Stay strong for the future generations.

Bruce