Book review: One of my favorite books

 

I wrote this book review in 2016 but now seems like a good time to repeat it. 

I've just finished reading the book The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government.  I would say without any hesitation that this was one of the top 3-4 most important books that I have ever read.  I highly, highly recommend that everyone read it.

There is so much I learned from the book and I've been studying the whole US-Nazi connection after WW II for many years - but author David Talbot really wrote a spell-binding book - it's like reading a real life mystery story.  You come away from the book with a very clear understanding how the US became the corporate fascist state that we have today.

The biggest story for me in the book is the one about Reinhard Gehlen.  Talbot writes, "During the war [Maj. Gen.] Gehlen had served as Hitler's intelligence chief on the eastern front. His Foreign Armies East (Fremde Heere Ost) apparatus relentlessly probed for weaknesses in the Soviet defenses as the Nazi juggernaut made its eastward thrust.  Gehlen's FHO also pinpointed the location of Jews, Communists, and other enemies of the Reich in the 'bloodlands' overrun by Hitler's forces, so they could be rounded up and executed by the Einsatzgruppen death squads.  Most of the intelligence gathered by Gehlen's men was extracted from the enormous population of Soviet prisoners of war - which eventually totaled four million - that fell under Nazi control.  Gehlen's exalted reputation as an intelligence wizard, which won him the Fuhrer's admiration and his major general's rank, derived from his organization's widespread use of torture."

 

To make it quick and simple, Maj. Gen. Gehlen made a deal with Allen Dulles (then running the precursor of the CIA called the OSS) that if he and his team were spared trial at Nuremberg he'd turn over his 'rat line' of fascist operatives throughout Europe and would work for the US.  Gehlen was brought to the US and put through loyalty tests and eventually sent back to the newly created West Germany where he was put in charge of intelligence in the post war 'free' Germany.

Gehlen's post-war operatives across Europe where used to disrupt and destroy left-wing attempts to win electoral victories in European countries (Operation Gladio).  His death squads were used to target the Algerian independence movement. Gehlen and Dulles worked overtime to destabilize the Soviet eastern bloc taking great pleasure in making Stalin hyper-paranoid thus getting him to overreact and launch brutal internal crackdowns on innocent Soviet citizens.

Talbot quotes JFK White House staffer Arthur Schlesinger Jr. saying he was offended by "the notion of American spooks" like Dulles and other leading post-war CIA operatives "cheerfully consorting with people like General Reinhard Gehlen....There was something aesthetically displeasing about Americans plotting with Nazis, who had recently been killing us, against Russians, whose sacrifices [27 million killed during the war] had made the allied victory possible."

Talbot painstakingly reveals how Dulles used his CIA rat line to set up the JFK assassination in 1963.  One of the key players in the killing of President Kennedy was the CIA agent William Harvey who worked closely with Gehlen's notorious fascist organization, and Gehlen came to consider Harvey a "very esteemed [and] really reliable friend."

In the spring of 1968, soon after the killing of Sen. Bobby Kennedy, Allen Dulles took the time to write to the last Kennedy brother Ted sending his "sympathy and regards".  Talbot reports that Dulles hated Bobby and had used his seat on the President Lyndon Johnson appointed Warren Commission to smash any hopes for a true investigation into the killing of JFK that Dulles had been a key mastermind in executing.  Bobby had been privately hoping to expose Dulles and the CIA as the killer of his older brother if he were to be elected president.

Talbot shares that in the fall of 1968 the main social event of the season for Dulles was "the Washington fete in honor of Reinhard Gehlen, the West German spy chief Dulles had resurrected from the poison ashes of the Third Reich.  On September 12, Gehlen's US sponsors threw a luncheon for him, and that night there was a dinner for Hitler's old spy chief at the Maryland home of Heinz Herre - Gehlen's former staff officer on the eastern front, who had become West Germany's top intelligence liaison in Washington."

One could easily say that the US and German fascists had all the bases covered.

Why then have the American people, and the people of the world, been largely ignorant about this ugly history of the resurrection of the Nazi war machine during the post WW II years?  After viewing the video below about the CIA's clandestine infiltration of US and international media it is no surprise that the public has been spoon fed only what the propagandists, disguised as democratic patriots, wanted people to know.  History has been rewritten to suit the needs of the deep state.

 

Who controls the media?

In 1977, Rolling Stone Magazine alleged that one of the most important journalists under the thumb of the CIA's media control program called Operation Mockingbird was Joseph Alsop, whose articles appeared in over 300 different newspapers. Other journalists alleged by Rolling Stone to have been willing to promote the views of the CIA included Stewart Alsop (New York Herald Tribune), Ben Bradlee (Newsweek), James Reston (New York Times), Charles Douglas Jackson (Time Magazine), Walter Pincus (Washington Post), William C. Baggs (The Miami News), Herb Gold (The Miami News) and Charles Bartlett (Chattanooga Times). According to Nina Burleigh (A Very Private Woman), these journalists sometimes wrote articles that were commissioned by the CIA's Frank Wisner (director of the Office of Special Projects). The CIA also provided them with classified information to help them with their work.

Operation Mockingbird had a major influence over 25 newspapers and wire agencies. These organizations were run by people with well-known right-wing views such as William Paley (CBS), Henry Luce (Time and Life Magazine), Arthur Hays Sulzberger (New York Times), Alfred Friendly (managing editor of the Washington Post), Jerry O’Leary (Washington Star), Hal Hendrix (Miami News), Barry Bingham, Sr., (Louisville Courier-Journal), James Copley (Copley News Services) and Joseph Harrison (Christian Science Monitor).

The American democracy story is illusion created by what author Bertram Gross called "three piece suit fascism" years ago in his book entitled Friendly Fascism: The New Face of Power in America.  But to emerging democracy movements around the world, brutally suppressed by the CIA and its death squad agents, there was nothing friendly or democratic about these tactics.  Because of the relative affluence of America during this period the public was docile and easily keep under control by the manipulations of the media and the political circles controlled by the deep state.

Now that the American imperial project is crashing and burning the story has begun to emerge and the blinders of deception are steadily falling from the public's eyes.  What comes next is unknown but until the American people learn the real story behind this 'Hollywood democracy' little can change for the good.  

Bruce

Haunani-Kay Trask Presente!

 

The Hawaiian movement for self-determination was forever changed by the fierce and unapologetic leadership of the late Haunani-Kay Trask. A loving obituary written by one of Trask’s mentees explores her powerful legacy.

In her book, From a Native Daughter: Colonialism and Sovereignty in Hawai‘i, Haunani-Kay took on the tourism industry and the “prostitution” of Hawaiian culture, the desecration, and ecocide committed by the U.S. military on Hawaiian land, and the haole-settler-colonial systems of power and economy. 

Money talks at Bath police department

 

Holding banner with retired career Navy warrant officer George Goodwin

 

Four of us from Veterans For Peace (VFP) were at the Navy compound gate at Bath Iron Works (BIW) again yesterday during the lunch hour. We've been going there twice a month since May in anticipation of the 'christening' of another destroyer (USS Carl Levin).

Last week several of us met with the new Bath police department chief at his request to discuss our protest at the upcoming ceremony. I had run into Chief Andrew Booth a while back and we had a brief discussion about the upcoming event. I asked him if he knew the date of the christening ceremony and he said he did not but promised to let us know as soon as he heard something definitive. It was then he asked for a sit-down meeting with us.

When we met with him last week he changed course and said he'd not be letting us know anything about the ceremony date until it was made public in the media.

Booth is the third Bath chief I've dealt with since moving to Maine in 2003. In the past I'd get a call from the police department when they learned of a date and we'd discuss in general terms our protests. They'd even offer to close off a side street just across from the BIW gate, where the public would enter to attend the ceremony. We'd put our sound system there and gather in the closed off street. Now they are unwilling to do that unless we apply for a permit and pay a fee.

A couple of years ago some of us went to trial in the Bath Superior Court for blocking the BIW entrance gate at a previous christening. During the course of the trial it became apparent to the presiding judge that the Bath police department was essentially an appendage of BIW - which is owned by the General Dynamics Corporation. The judge threw the case out.

It appears to me that this relationship between Bath police and BIW/GD has become even stronger under the new chief. One would assume that the police department owes loyalty to the citizenry as well as the largest employer in the city and would do their best to serve both masters. But after our meeting with Chief Booth it became clear to me that the allegiance of his department is solidly in the pocket of the mega-corporate weapons maker. 

(It should be noted that some Bath police officers retire from the force and then go to work for BIW security.)

This is very troubling and for me it means that having any honest relationship and future dialogue with the Bath police department will be increasingly problematic.

Money talks more than ever in Bath.

Bruce

The nuclear race acceleration

 

The Art of War 

By Manlio Dinucci (il manifesto, Italy)

At the Redzikowo base in Poland, work began on the installation of the Aegis Ashore system at a cost of over 180 million dollars. It will be the second US missile base in Europe, after the Deveselu base in Romania, which became operational in 2015. The official function of these bases is to protect US forces in Europe, and  NATO's European allies, with the 'shield' of SM-3 interceptor missiles, from the 'current and emerging threats of ballistic missiles from outside the Euro-Atlantic area'. 

 

In addition to the two land installations, there are four ships equipped with the same Aegis system, they are deployed by the U.S. Navy at the Spanish base of Rota, and cross the Mediterranean, the Black and Baltic Seas. The US Navy has about 120 destroyers and cruisers armed with this missile system.

Both ships and Aegis land installations are equipped with Lockheed Martin Mk 41 vertical launchers: vertical tubes (in the body of the ship or in an underground bunker) from which the missiles are launched. Lockheed Martin, illustrating its technical characteristics, documents that the vertical launcher can launch missiles for all missions: anti-missile, anti-aircraft, anti-ship, anti-submarine, and attack against land targets. Each launch tube is adaptable to any missile, including 'those for long-range attack', and the Tomahawk cruise missile. It can also be armed with a nuclear warhead. 

It is therefore impossible to know which kind of missiles are actually in the vertical launchers of the Aegis Ashore base in Romania and which missiles will be installed in the Polish base. Nor which missiles are on board the ships crossing at the limits of Russian territorial waters. Unable to check, Moscow might assume there are also nuclear attack missiles. The same scenario in East Asia, where the Seventh Fleet Aegis warships cross in the South China Sea. The main US allies in the region - Japan, South Korea, Australia - also have ships equipped with the US Aegis system.

 
This is not the only missile system the US is deploying in Europe and Asia. General McConville, chief of staff of the United States Army,  in his speech to the George Washington School of Media and Public Affairs stated last March that the US Army is preparing a "task force" equipped with 'long-range precision fire capability that can go anywhere, consisting of hypersonic missiles, medium-range missiles, precision strike missiles' and that 'these systems are capable of penetrating anti-aircraft barrage space'. The general pointed out that 'we plan to deploy one of these task forces in Europe and probably two in the Pacific'.

In such a situation, it is not surprising that Russia is accelerating the deployment of new intercontinental missiles with nuclear warheads that, after ballistic trajectory, glide for thousands of kilometers at hypersonic speed. Nor is it surprising to hear the news, published by the Washington Post, that China is building over one hundred new silos for intercontinental ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads. The arms race takes place not so much on a quantitative level (number and power of nuclear warheads) as on a qualitative one (speed, penetrating capacity, and geographical location of nuclear carriers). 

The response in case of attack or presumed attack is increasingly entrusted to artificial intelligence, which must decide the launch of nuclear missiles in a few seconds. It increases the possibility of nuclear war by mistake, this chance was risked several times during the Cold War.

The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons was adopted by the United Nations in 2017 and entered into force in 2021, so far 86 States signed it, and 54 countries ratified it. None of the 30 NATO countries and the 27 EU States (except Austria) ratified it. In Europe, only Austria, Ireland, Malta, San Marino and the Holy See have joined. None of the nine nuclear countries - the United States, Russia, France, Great Britain, Israel, China, Pakistan, India, North Korea - ratified or even signed it.

Report from Maine: End the US Blockade against Cuba Now!

 

By W. T. Whitney Jr

The two struggles have continued for decades, even centuries. Cubans fight to end slavery; gain independence from Spain and the United States; and, for 60 years, protect their socialist revolution. Ruling classes in the United States sought to annex Cuba, then to control Cuba’s economy, and for those 60 years have clamped down on the audacity of Cubans who struggle for independence and socialism.

Justice-seeking peoples in the United States have joined in struggle to defend Cuban independence and/or Cuba’s revolution. This report from Maine takes note of two rainy day rallies on July 25, each of 25 or so people and each one held in protest of the U.S. blockade of Cuba. One was in Bangor, the other in Brunswick.

These protesters and other Maine people know that the blockade is purposed to overthrow of Cuba’s socialist government. The author of a 1960 State Department memo – born in Houlton, Maine – made that perfectly clear.

These Mainers were joining in solidarity with demonstrations carried out on July 25 throughout the United States, for example, in Washington, Seattle, San Francisco, Fresno, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Albuquerque, Dallas, Milwaukee, and Pittsburgh. In Washington, Cuban-Americans calling for Puentes de Amor (Bridges of Love) gathered with supporters in Lafayette Park to protest the blockade. They had walked from Miami to Washington.

 

Lots of Maine people know that Cuba is at another watershed moment. Many recall the onset in the early 1990s of Cuba’s “Special Period,” which was resulted from the fall of the Soviet Bloc. The powers in Washington at that time sought to finish off Cuba’s revolution. The “Cuba Democracy Act” of 1992 was their big tool.

Similarly, the Biden presidency now takes advantage of three phenomena: economic and healthcare havoc wrought by the Covid 19 pandemic, the Trump administration’s intensified blockade restrictions,
and mounting shortages in Cuba of money and goods essential for human survival.

Now Biden inveighs against supposed autocracy in Cuba. His administration remains silent when elected officials viciously threaten Cuban leaders. He and they follow a script fitted out for anti-government demonstrations like the ones playing out in Cuba on July 11. These surely reflected U.S. financial support provided over decades for internal subversion in Cuba. Accompanying them was a massive social-media assault against Cuba’s government orchestrated from abroad.

U.S. media have long cast a blind eye to the political movements in the United States mobilized on behalf of Cuban independence and Cuba’s revolution. Those rallying in Maine on July 25 were testifying to their relevance now.

In 1992, at the beginning of Cuba’s Special Period, veteran Maine activists traveled to the island. Sensing big troubles ahead for Cuba at the hands of the U.S. government, they formed the Let Cuba Live Committee of Maine. The new organization undertook to educate and activate fellow Mainers.

Let Cuba Live arranged for the Pastors for Peace leader Rev. Lucius Walker Jr, to speak before a large crowd in Monument Square, in Portland, Maine on July 21, 2001 – 20 years and four days prior to the
protests reported here.

“In issue after issue, in area after area, Cuba lights the way,” Lucius Walker insisted; “Cuba has established the fact that it is the leader in the world community in the affirming of and guaranteeing the rights of the poor people of this world.”

 

That was not news for the ruling classes in the United States for whom revolutionary Cuba was a threat. Therefore, as pointed out by Lucius Walker: “if we really want to see the world continue to have hope and possibility for the creation of a new society, we must support Cuba.”

Let Cuba Live of Maine – see www.letcubalive.org – admits to gratification. The slogan that is the group’s name now resonates widely.

It’s the title of an appeal to President Biden that, endorsed by 400 prominent activists, may be viewed in a full-page advertisement appearing in the July 23 New York Times. To see the open letter to Biden, go to www.LetCubaLive.com.

The twin rallies putting forth the demand of no more blockade broke new ground in Maine. They gained support from multiple statewide organizations that oppose U.S. imperialism and war-making and/or try to make good on socialist aspirations.

What follows are excerpts from remarks offered by some of the rally participants at talk-sessions that concluded the two affairs. A listing appears below of the organizations claiming commentators and many participants as members.

Here’s Barbara West: “We are not gathered today simply to demand a reduction in the criminal measures the US has taken against Cuba for 61 years.  We are here to insist on respect for Cuba as a sovereign country … We insist that land in Guantanamo occupied in defiance of the Cuban people be vacated. … Our respect for Cuba as a sovereign nation, with its people fully able to chart their own path without any US interference, is really our agenda today.”

And Michael Mosely: “I do not believe that there is a difference between a Hispanic family in Maine and a Hispanic family in Cuba. Just like there is no difference between a Black family in Maine and a Black family in Africa. We are all under the same system fighting the same fight.”

And Daniel Carson: “In the over six decades that the United States has enforced such a cruel blockade, the Cuban government has reported that economic losses resulting directly from the blockade total $144.4 billion dollars. These figures are those of 2020. Excluded is an additional $5.4 billion in economic losses this year. When adjusted for dollar depreciation over the life of the blockade the number becomes $1.098 trillion … So when [U. S. leaders] proclaim Cuba to be a failed state or
that the Cuban revolution has failed: this is a bold-faced lie. The truth lies in those numbers. That’s why we are here today to say, “End the blockade!”

And Bruce Gagnon: “The US has an MO (modus operandi), a way of repeating its regime change behavior as it desperately attempts to hang-on to its place as 'king of the hill'. But due to $27 trillion in debt, more than 800 costly military bases around the world, and long-time disinvestment in our own nation, America's 'imperial project' is destined to collapse. US efforts to force regime change in Cuba - like in Nicaragua, Venezuela, Bolivia and other nations – are destined to fail.”

And Ed Jurenas: “When the U.S. talks about democracy, it is hypocritical. It does not support the most basic democratic right to self-determination, but viciously opposes it. And in regard to the economic
democracy championed by Cuba – free health care, free education, a right to housing, the just distribution of food – the U.S. is silent in its shame. Cuba ascribes to economic democracy, something the U.S. is incapable of practicing.”

Most of the participants in the Maine rallies belonged to one or more of these organizations: the Let Cuba Live Committee of Maine, Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space, Maine Veterans for Peace, Maine Socialist Action, Maine Democratic Socialists of America, and the Maine Communist Party. The latter group had responsibility for organizing the rallies.

Lucius Walker has the last word (July 21, 2001): “We must name the powers. We must stand against the powers. And we must realize that in the course of doing so, we wrestle not just with flesh and blood, but with principalities and powers, against spiritual wickedness in high places. We cannot be deterred because they say evil things about us, because they revile us, because they put us in jail. We must continue to march, to work, to struggle, to be in solidarity no matter what obstacles they put in
our way, because we are the future hope of the world!"

~ Tom Whitney, Jr. is a long-time justice and peace activist in Maine and a member of Let Cuba Live. Tom is a retired family practice doctor and is respected by many in his community. He lives in South Paris, Maine.

Remembering Korea: July 27th isn’t just another day

 

by Ramsay Liem

July 27, 2021 marks the 68th anniversary of the Korean War Armistice Agreement, a battlefield truce that temporarily halted combat during the Korean War. That pause continues to define the state of relations between the United States and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, North Korea) to this day. Absent a peace agreement the armistice maintains a tenuous hold on mutual U.S. – North Korean hostilities that erupt periodically as in Trump’s 2017 threats of “Fire And Fury” over the North’s nuclear program.

Yet for most Americans July 27 is just another day. Like the Korean War itself, the armistice signing is largely forgotten or was never really known. But for Koreans who survived the war and now reside in the United States, forgetting is more complicated. Years ago, I began one of the First Projects to interview elders about their lives dating to the war and collaborated with Scholars, Artists, and Filmmakers to create public memory spaces for healing, public education, and reconciliation. Some of the most paradoxical memories that people shared were about the original armistice day, July 27, 1953.

H. Kim: “I did hear news – of course I heard. But I heard it carelessly. Because it was hard to live, very very hard, I didn’t remember everything.”  

A. R. Menzie: “The signing of armistice, we didn’t even know the war ended…”

These non-remembrances were extremely perplexing. I had expected great joy at the cessation of horrific fighting that resulted in Three Million Civilian Casualties much like the sentiments people associated with August 15, 1945, the date of Korea’s liberation from 35 years of Japanese Colonial Rule.

H. Kim: “I was so happy, um.. I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy when Independence Day came and you know, I didn’t eat for days and…I was out in the streets, rejoicing.”

T. Kim: “1945, August 15 … so that was big, big event, but armistice signed in 1953. I—I don’t think that was big event because nobody really knew.”

The first Korean War armistice day was just another 24 hours of an endless purgatory of capricious death, ruined livelihoods and futures, and dashed hopes for post-colonial nation building promised at the collapse of the Japanese empire.

M. Lee: “There is no conception [that] the war is over, cease-war or not, there is no such conception at all. Just everything is broken…”

For some, Armistice Day was associated with family separation. J. Chun was a teenager living in Kaesong in southern Korea when war broke out. One day he left home to find his father who had gone further south looking for more secure shelter. By chance his father began his return to Kaesong just as he set out and they missed each other. A short time later armistice talks began in Kaesong and a cordon was drawn blocking civilian movement into and out of the city.

“That’s the end of it…I cannot see my father and my family anymore. He couldn’t get out, I couldn’t get in.”

Forced to survive on his own he suffered a second blow from the armistice negotiations. As part of the agreement, the border between northern and southern Korea was redrawn. Kaesong, originally in the South, suddenly became part of the North and was now permanently closed to him. It was the final nail in his coffin. Yet, even he, twice victimized by the war, could barely recall armistice day, just another moment of enduring hardship.

“Wow, I don’t…I don’t…’53…I don’t remember right now. I’m not sure where I heard about that.”

This story and others like it open a window into a forgotten war and its painful truths: scorched earth warfare by U.S.-led United Nations Forces that Nearly Erased Life And Property in northern Korea, the Destruction Of Irrigation Dams threatening the starvation of millions and constituting a war crime, and an outright confession that “over a period of three years or so… killed off — what — 20 percent of the population.” (Air Force General Curtis Lemay). This unrestrained violence occurred a mere 5 years after the U.S.-Led Partitioning Of Korea at the close of WWII and creation of an occupying military government in the ‘liberated” south. The partition exacerbated right wing – left wing animosities among Koreans and heightened the likelihood of all-out civil conflict. A year of North – South Border clashes erupted in all-out war on June 25, 1950 abetted in the south by U.S. led UN forces and in the north by China and to a lesser extent, the Soviet Union.

Three years following the armistice signing the United States introduced Tactical Nuclear Weapons into the South in direct violation of Article II, A, 13, D. of the agreement, marshalled decades of steadily hardening sanctions against the North, established a large permanent military presence in the South – 28,500 soldiers today, and introduced the largest annual war games in the Asian theater. The United States currently holds Wartime Control of U.S. and South Korean troops under a Combined Forces Command.

Collective forgetting of this tortured and ongoing history has consequences. It creates a public susceptible to a popularized narrative of North Korea as a failed, paranoid state ruled by a bizarre, ruthless family dynasty with irrational hatred toward the United States and capable today of threatening the U.S. mainland with ICBMs. Nowhere in this scenario is there any acknowledgement of the seven decades of mutual U.S.-North Korean hostility let alone an unfinished war held in check by a mere military truce. Absent this tortured context, U.S. insistence that North Korea fully disclose and dismantle its nuclear program as a condition for sanctions relief and consideration of a peace agreement appears measured and rational when in fact it amounts to a demand for complete surrender. Total capitulation by North Korea would never have been accepted in 1953 and it Will Not Be Today .

U.S. administrations have adopted variations of this stance for 68 years with no meaningful progress in resolving hostilities with North Korea. To the contrary the impasse has only intensified to the point where renewed fighting, by accident or intention, would have Catastrophic Global Consequences.

The Biden administration has an opportunity to demonstrate a genuinely new era of statesmanship on the world stage by supporting passage of important Congressional Initiatives calling for a binding peace agreement with North Korea, humanitarian assistance to the North, and support of Korean American reunification with family members in the DPRK. Each offers a meaningful step toward resolving a forgotten truce in a forgotten war that has persisted for nearly seven decades. Failing to adopt them would align the current administration with its 16 predecessors since the armistice signing and sustain the threat of a catastrophic conflict. It should also raise serious questions in a mindful public whether or not framers of U.S. foreign policy have ever seriously entertained ending hostilities with North Korea, a perceived threat that justifies a permanent U.S. military foothold on the Korean peninsula and Asian mainland. This prospect is eminently plausible in light of the Biden administration’s Escalating Competition with the People’s Republic of China and the geostrategic value of a forward base in Korea.

Though little known, the Korean Armistice Agreement and the war it holds in abeyance are a “Still-Present-Past.” Their grip on contemporary U.S. Korea policy remains virtually uncontested because the truths of American self interest in the country’s longest war have been largely erased from public memory. July 27, 2021 is not ‘just another day.’ The current administration and especially the public at large need to take note of this anniversary date and recognize that the tortured history it signifies persists to this day. In fact, the Armistice Agreement itself called for negotiations forthwith to achieve a Peace Settlement in recognition of the impermanence of a truce. That requisite has languished since 1953. The time to fully abide it is now.

~ Ramsay Liem is Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Affiliated Faculty, Center for Human Rights and Social Justice, Boston College and is also president of the Channing and Popai Liem Education Foundation that fosters understanding of U.S.-Korea relations.

Flights of fantasy

 

Escaping from taxation.

 

Escaping from Earth gravity.

 

Escaping from reality.

 

Put the space stooge bums 

in jail,

let them try to escape 

from behind bars.

 

Under-developed

personalities,

still children,

these space stooge

billionaires are.

 

It is a trip,

a big trip,

an ego trip. 

Bruce

Senate Armed Services votes more $$ for Pentagon than Biden requested

Defense Business Brief
July 23, 2021    
            
Last Thursday, the Senate Armed Services Committee voted 23-3 to recommend adding $25 billion to the Biden administration's $715 billion Pentagon budget proposal in its markup of the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act.

Surprisingly little notice taken of this in alternative media. 

Only 3 members of the Committee - E. Warren (D);  T. Cotton (R); J. Hawley (R) - voted against adding $25 billion to Biden's Pentagon budget.

This is a list of Committee members:

Democrat party members (13)    

Reed, Jack (RI), Chairman
Shaheen, Jeanne (NH)
Gillibrand, Kirsten E. (NY)
Blumenthal, Richard (CT)
Hirono, Mazie K. (HI)
Kaine, Tim (VA)
King, Angus S. (ME)
Warren, Elizabeth (MA)
Peters, Gary C. (MI)
Manchin, Joe (WV)
Duckworth, Tammy (IL)
Rosen, Jacky (NV)
Kelly, Mark (AZ)
    

Republican party members (13)

Inhofe, James M. (OK), Ranking Member
Wicker, Roger F. (MS)
Fischer, Deb (NE)
Cotton, Tom (AR)
Rounds, Mike (SD)
Ernst, Joni (IA)
Tillis, Thom (NC)
Sullivan, Dan (AK)
Cramer, Kevin (ND)
Scott, Rick (FL)
Blackburn, Marsha (TN)
Hawley, Josh (MO)
Tuberville, Tommy (AL) 

Japan teams up with U.S. for 'regime change' in Beijing & Moscow

 

Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov delivers important message to Japan about Kuril Islands and the potential peace treaty. 

He begins by sharing how some in Japan believe it was the former Soviet Union that dropped the first atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

History is being re-written by Tokyo and Washington as they join in a fascist alliance to attempt 'regime change' in Beijing and Moscow.

How will this turn out for the pair of imperial nations?

How will this turn out for the world? 

(Be sure to hit the CC - English subtitles)

'Just because he can'....

 

 

Comedian Jimmy Dore gets a call from Al Pacino who asks why Bezos went into space.

Sunflowers in my garden

The birds and the bees are quite happy with my blooming sunflowers.

Sunflowers are the symbol for nuclear disarmament.

Sunflowers also are what environmental scientists call hyper-accumulators -- plants that have the ability to take up high concentrations of toxic materials in their tissues.

After the Hiroshima, Fukushima, and Chernobyl nuclear disasters, fields of sunflowers were planted across the affected landscapes to help absorb toxic metals and radiation from the soil. New research now suggests that sunflowers (Helianthus) might be as good for the environment as they are pretty to look at.

Here is what the same spot looked like just six months ago.

This is why Mainers love to garden. After a long hard winter folks here want to see some flowers. Though the snow is wonderful and beautiful in its own right - the multitude of colors, smells and tastes from the garden make spring and summer special here.

Mainers joke that we have only two seasons in our state. The first is winter and the other is called 'road repair' season.

I must say that our summer so far has been quite crazy. First real hot and hardly any rain at all - Maine has been experiencing drought conditions. Then during the past two weeks we've had lots of rain - one storm partially flooded our basement. So there is no doubt that climate crisis is creating more unpredictable and extreme weather shifts.

Bruce

Sunday song

The Funnies: Pretentious space stooges

History lesson: US-NATO war on Serbia

 

Negative impact of NATO on Serbia & Montenegro and on the world 

By Batko Milacic  (Independent analyst)

After Yugoslavia’s (Serbia) President Slobodan Milosevic refused to accept the so-called Rambouillet Agreement in 1999, which in reality was NATO ultimatum that demanded from Serbia and Montenegro to allow NATO troops to occupy the province of Kosovo as well as that NATO can build bases in Serbia, and that all NATO personnel have diplomatic immunity, which means that they could not be held criminally responsible in Serbia and Montenegro, NATO aggression was launched without any authorization from the United Nations. 

The intervention was called humanitarian under the pretext of stopping the persecution of Albanians. Western media machine led against Serbs constantly negative media campaign. In media presentations by CNN and the BBC, the Serbs were the modern Nazis and Albanians the Jews. After they successfully presented the Serbs as the bad guys, NATO had a free hand to open aggression and excessive force. Western claims about tens of thousands of killed Albanians later turned out to be completely false. The real death toll in Kosovo before NATO aggression was revealed after the war and it was around 2,000 with the majority of the killings committed by the armed terrorist-separatist group, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). The KLA, previously classified by Washington as a terrorist organization, was elevated in the run-up to the war as the sole legitimate representative of Kosovo’s Albanian population. The KLA, working in close collaboration with US sponsors, sought to create as much violence and death as possible in order to pave the way to Western intervention.

The war against Serbia and Montenego lasted for 78 days. Hospitals, factories and schools were destroyed, along with bridges, roads and military infrastructure. The airstrikes killed around 2,500 people and wounded another 12,500. The bombing destroyed and damaged 25,000 housing units, 470 km of roads and 595 kilometers of railroad were disabled. 14 airports, 19 hospitals, 20 health centers, 18 kindergartens, 69 schools, 176 cultural monuments and 44 bridges were damaged while 38 were destroyed, according to Serbian estimates. 

During the bombing, 2,300 air strikes were carried out on 995 facilities across the country. NATO launched 1,300 cruise missiles, bombed Serbia and Montenegro with 37,000 “cluster bombs”, using prohibited ammunition with depleted uranium. The decision to bomb Serbia and Montenegro was made for the first time in history, without the approval of the UN Security Council. One of the NATO airstrikes used laser-guided bombs to take out railway bridge in southern Serbia, killing at least 10 people on a passenger train. A deliberate attack on the Serbian TV broadcaster RTS in Belgrade took lives of 16 civilian workers. This was the first case that the media house was declared a legitimate military goal. In one of the most provocative acts of the war, NATO carried out a strike on the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, killing three men. Washington claimed that the bombing was an “accident”. The “humanitarian” intervention to halt “ethnic cleansing” has resulted in massive ethnic cleansing. After NATO arrived, 250,000 Serbs were expelled from Kosovo.

Also, the 2004 unrest in Kosovo is the worst ethnic violence case in Kosovo since the end of the 1998–99 conflict. The violence erupted in the partitioned town of Mitrovica, leaving hundreds wounded and at least 14 people dead. The unrest was precipitated by misleading reports in the Kosovo Albanian media which falsely claimed that three Kosovo Albanian boys had drowned after being chased into the Ibar River by a group of Kosovo Serbs. That is why Albanians are embarking on a coordinated action against Serbs, in which they have committed numerous crimes. Given the magnitude of the action, it is clear that this ethnic cleansing was planned and not spontaneous. Here, too, the question must be asked whether it is possible that NATO intelligence services did not have operational information that Albanians were preparing attacks on Serbs, with the aim of ethnic cleansing of Kosovo. The answer is obvious, especially if we keep in mind that NATO forces have peacefully observed the ethnic cleansing of Serbs, even if their primary task in Kosovo is to maintain peace and order.

Years later, International courts in Pristina have prosecuted several people who attacked several Serbian Orthodox churches, handing down jail sentences ranging from 21 months to 16 years. However, these are extremely small numbers of people and with small penalties. The absolute majority of criminals were not punished. A part of the destroyed churches have since been rebuilt by the Government of Serbia and in cooperation with the Serbian Orthodox Church and the UN mission in Kosovo. However, almost none of the exiled Serbs returned to Kosovo. It is important to note that NATO forces have peacefully observed the ethnic cleansing of Serbs, even if their primary task in Kosovo is to maintain peace and order.  

Bill Clinton visited the new US war base Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo in 1999. The primary purpose of the war against Serbia was to ensure the break-up of the Communist Yugoslavia into smaller nations that would allow US-NATO access to a strategic part of eastern Europe that was never possible during the Cold War with the former Soviet Union. The war was sold as 'humanitarian intervention' just like the US attacks/occupations of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria. George W. Bush visited Camp Bondsteel in 2001 and then V-P Joe Biden went to the base in 2009 to underscore the bi-partisan support for the break-up and colonization of the nations of the former Yugoslavia.

It is clear to every objective analyst that NATO carried out aggression in 1999 against Serbia and Montenegro. Everything that happened after 1999 proved that NATO’s primary goal was not the protection of human rights, but the abuse of this idea for classical geopolitical possession of strategic space, in this case, the southern Serbian province of Kosovo. [The US created the Camp Bondsteel war base in Kosovo in 1999.] The Serbian army fought heroically in Kosovo and it was not defeated on the battlefield. The withdrawal of the Serbian army from Kosovo was caused by an open threat from the West that it will exert over Serbia humanitarian destruction of the whole country. When the destruction of infrastructure did not gave results, NATO began hitting hospitals, trains full of passengers and throwing away so-called graphite bombs that destroyed the electrical network and left entire cities without electricity. Cluster bombs were thrown in the cities, and bombardment of depleted uranium kills Serbs even today.

 

NATO forces continued aggression on the rest of Serbia, by other means. Immediately after the bombing the regime change operation was supported, after which embassies of Western countries and international organizations that the West controlled began to “reform Serbia”. Shortly after the arrival of pro-Western authorities in Serbia, in October 2000, “the reform of the Serbian army” began. The majority of proven war officers were retired, while the number of soldiers was so low, to the level, at which the security of the country was seriously threatened. Through its agents of influence, the West played a major role in separating Montenegro from Serbia. High and primary education were, and still are literally destroyed, media has been dominated by foreign corporations. Yet again, two decades later, despite its propaganda and corruption of the elite, NATO is still undesirable among the ordinary people. Montenegro became a member of NATO by political violence, against the will of the citizens. Serbia and Republic of Srpska continue to resist. 

Corona sparks flying.....

 

 

Fauci is getting scared and desperate.

Pretty damning information in this video by Jimmy Dore (a comedian who does the news).

As this story unfolds (as it inevitably will) we hear Joe Biden call on social media corporations to deny anyone from sharing this much needed debate. 

More and more evidence emerges that covid-19 was created as a bio-weapon first at Ft. Detrick, Maryland, then passed on to lab at University of North Carolina and then sold to the Wuhan lab in China.

What is Washington afraid of?  

Isn't the US the 'exceptional' democracy?

Let the informed debate continue!

Climate change report: Jeff Bezos & the new wild west show

 

 

Jeff Bezos (the richest man in the world) successfully took his new wild west rodeo show to the edge of space and once returning to Mother Earth had the audacity to lecture us earthlings on a few things.

Yahoo news reported Bezos saying:

“We need to take all heavy industry, all polluting industry, and move it into space. And keep Earth as this beautiful gem of a planet that it is.” 

In this same interview, Bezos discussed his plans to expand Blue Origin's space tourism business over the coming decades, a venture that has the potential to pump massive amounts of carbon and other chemicals into the atmosphere. Unlike ground-based emitters like cars or coal-powered plants, rocket emissions are expelled directly into the upper atmosphere, where they linger for years. 

Dr Stuart Parkinson, Executive Director of Scientists for Global Responsibility, writes:

....the fuel combination used by [Bezos is] a higher carbon fuel. Research by the University of Colorado indicates that this can damage the stratospheric ozone layer – not only leading to higher levels of damaging ultra-violet radiation reaching the Earth’s surface, but also causing a global heating effect likely to be considerably greater than that from the carbon emissions alone. And the aim of these journeys? A few minutes of ‘zero-gravity’ experience and a nice view. It is hard to see this as anything more than environmental vandalism for the super-rich.

As the CEO of Amazon, for years Bezos fought against company efforts to unionize, even amid credible reports of inhumane, exploitative conditions for Amazon delivery drivers and warehouse workers. He said, “I also want to thank every Amazon employee and every Amazon customer because you guys paid for all of this.” 

The truth is that virtually all space technology 'research and development' since the dawn of the space age was done by NASA and the military industrial complex. That means the taxpayers paid for it. And now when it is possible to make gobs of money from space tourism, colonization and mining, the capitalist dominated US government is eager to privatize space operations. They don't care what the rest of the world thinks. America, after all, is the 'exceptional' nation.

It was during the Obama administration that a new law called Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act, sometimes referred to as the Spurring Private Aerospace Competitiveness and Entrepreneurship (SPACE) Act of 2015, was signed by the president.

The UK Independent reported in 2015:

Much of the ownership of space is regulated by the “Outer Space Treaty”, a document that was signed by the US and Russia among other countries in the 1960s. As well as saying that the moon and other celestial objects are part of the “common heritage of mankind”, it says that exploration must be peaceful and bans countries from putting weapons on the moon and other celestial bodies.

The US government has now thrown out that understanding so that it can get rid of “unnecessary regulations” and make it easier for private American companies to explore space resources commercially. While people won’t actually be able to claim the rock or “celestial body” itself, they will be able to keep everything that they mine out of it.

Planetary Resources, an American company that intends to make money by mining asteroids, said that the new law was the “single greatest recognition of property rights in history”, and that it “establishes the same supportive framework that created the great economies of history, and will encourage the sustained development of space”.

 

So Bezos was wearing the cowboy hat as a message to the world that a new 'gold rush' has begun in space and that it will be controlled by rich fat-cat psychopaths like him. They intend to circumvent United Nations space law like the Outer Space and Moon Treaties that state the 'heavens are the province of all humankind'.

Bezos does not care that each and every one of his joy-ride space launches punches a larger hole in the Earth's ozone layer exacerbating our climate crisis. This is all about him, his money, his fame, and his super-sized ego.

If we hope to survive on planet Earth, and give life to the future generations, then the global public must demand that space stooges like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Richard Branson, and the rest of their ilk, are restrained and prevented from playing god.

Bruce 

End the Korean War!

 

Global Collective Action : 

Send Your Photo to End the Korean War 

July 12 ~ 27, 2021

#19530727 #EndtheKoreanWar #KoreaPeaceAppeal 

This upcoming July 27 marks the 68th anniversary of the signing of the Korean Armistice Agreement. For too long, the people on the Korean Peninsula have lived in an unfinished war that has only been paused for a while. We can’t just wait any longer! Let’s end the Korean war with peace-loving people around the world. 

Ahead of July 27, The Korea Peace Appeal Campaign invites you to join the Global Collective Action: Let’s End the Korean War! Sign the Korea Peace Appeal. The action aims to bring together voices of people from all over the world to move from ceasefire to peace by ending the Korean War. 

During the Action Week, we will collect “peace photos” from all over the world, and hold signature campaigns, marches and press conferences in various places in South Korea. 

Wherever you are, please join us for Korea Peace!

HOW TO PARTICIPATE 📸

Step 1: Take a photo holding the sign for Korea Peace 

• Print your choice of sign 👉 here or You can make your own creative sign :) 
• Take a photo holding the sign. You can go to a landmark near you with your friends to take photo! 

Step 2: Post on Facebook, Instagram or any social media platform of your choice with the following caption 

70 years is enough. Let’s End the Korean War! 

Sign the Appeal to end the unresolved War 

👉 en.endthekoreanwar.net

#19530727 #EndtheKoreanWar #KoreaPeaceAppeal 

Step 3: Send the photo to the campaign via endthekoreanwarnow@gmail.com to let the campaign show the collective action of photos on the website 

Step 4: If you have not sign the Korea Peace Appeal yet, please sign it and add your voice 👉 here 

 

 

Step 5: Get your friends, colleagues and family to do the same! 

Your photos from all over the world will be... 

• released to South Korean press
• posted as an advertisement on a subway station in South Korea! 

* Hashtag, #19530727 means 27 July 1953, the date of signing the armistice.

 

 

U.S. pushing Ukraine for membership in NATO

James W. Carden: Isolating Russia, By Land and By Sea


This [past] weekend saw the conclusion of NATO’s Sea Breeze 2021 naval exercise in the Black Sea. According to information released by the Brussels-based alliance, the 13 day exercise included roughly 5,000 troops, 32 ships, 40 aircraft and 18 special operations and dive teams from 32 countries.

The drill commenced only days after the British navy’s HMS Defender was fired upon by Russian aircraft as it made its way through the waters off the coast of Crimea in an ostensible show of support for Ukraine’s territorial sovereignty.

Meantime, Ukrainian, Polish, Lithuanian and American ground forces will convene in western Ukraine for another military exercise. According to Reuters, the drill, “Three Swords-2021,” will involve “more 1,200 servicemen and more than 200 combat vehicles and will last from 17 to 30 July at Yavoriv training ground in Lviv region.”

The center of the action, Yavoriv, is where the US and Ukraine operate a joint military base called the Joint Multinational Training Group-Ukraine base. It might be worth asking: How many Americans know that we have a military base in Ukraine? How many know that American taxpayer dollars account for 90 percent of foreign military aid to Ukraine?

The Ukrainian president  – no doubt at the urging of Washington, DC’s well-connected and well-funded Ukraine Lobby – recently announced that Ukraine would become a member of NATO because the alliance reiterated the language of the 2008 Bucharest summit (“NATO welcomes Ukraine’s and Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership in NATO. We agreed today that these countries will become members of NATO…”) in its June communique.

Taken together, these seem unnecessary and provocative actions intended to raise the already high level of tension between Russia and the West. These actions are also morally questionable since they raise Ukraine’s (utterly unrealistic) hopes of joining NATO when, in reality, the alliance will not and can not bring them on. As ACURA’s Anatol Lieven recently pointed out in a piece for the Quincy Institute’s Responsible Statecraft, “It has been abundantly clear since 2014 that the United States, NATO and Britain will never in fact fight to defend Ukraine. To suggest otherwise is to engage in public deceit   – and to create the possibility that Ukrainian hotheads may believe this empty suggestion, the way the Georgians did in 2008 when they attacked Russian positions in South Ossetia in the mistaken belief that the U.S. would fight to save them from Russia’s retaliation.” If there is to be a peaceful denouement to the Ukrainian crisis, the US should be putting its weight behind the efforts of France and Germany to resolve the outstanding issues via the Minsk process rather than wasting taxpayer dollars in a futile, and potentially dangerous, show of military might 4,500 miles from American shores.

~ James W. Carden serves as an adviser to American Committee for US-Russia Accord 

UK support for US Space Force

 

The US space-radar facility at Fylingdales in North Yorkshire, England

By Dave Webb

An opinion piece by Prof. Dave Webb in response to speculation over the weekend of another US radar station on UK soil to further US Space Force efforts at space domination (covered on BBC, Guardian, Sky news & The National).

The willingness of the UK to host another US military space facility seems like another ill-informed and short-sighted move in Boris Johnson’s vision of Britain remaining a significant force in the world. Although the proposed high powered radar installation is dressed up as being for our ‘security’ and to keep track of the increasing amount of space objects, it can also be viewed as an escalation of the militarisation of space. It will heighten international tensions and, as space systems are crucial for all US military activity, will make the UK even more of a target in any US military confrontation.

The US has been working to achieve and maintain a dominance in outer space since the launch of the Russian Sputnik in 1957. According to US Space Force, obtaining a full knowledge of all space objects (Space Situational Awareness, SSA), ”enables the continuous preparation of the battlespace in order to fight and win a war in space. Simply put, SSA is Space Battle Management”. The identification and tracking of objects in orbit is carried out by a global system of powerful telescopes and radars. Once orbital characteristics have been obtained their positions can be accurately predicted. However, recent developments in mini satellites which move swiftly in highly elliptical Low Earth Orbits and also of satellites that can be manoeuvred in space are adding to problems. Also, in this time of suspicion and distrust, it has become necessary to be able to study each object in more detail.

The US radar at RAF Fylingdales in North Yorkshire is already part of the US Space Surveillance Network run by the US Space Force. One of its roles is to detect and track missiles targeted at the US for their missile defence system. But missile defence is not purely defensive – it can also be used to reduce or eliminate any retaliation following a nuclear first strike. Menwith Hill, the huge US Spy Base, also in North Yorkshire, is another component of US missile defence, acting as a downlink station for a US space-based missile detection and tracking system.

 

The government is also eager to cash in on the predicted trillion-dollar space industry. Overcome by the possibility of more money for their already rich friends, they are ignoring environmental and other objections and, with the help of Lockheed Martin, are establishing rocket launch sites around the UK. Other states are also getting involved and tens of thousands of satellites are being launched to provide super-fast [5G] wi-fi communications for civilian and military use – with unknown effects on health and the environment.

This dramatic increase in space objects and the dependence on satellite numbers also means that accidents or failures become more likely. Such a failure in vital military space components could lead to catastrophic consequences and instead of blindly following the US line of space domination and control, the UK should explore ways in which an arms race in outer space can be prevented and space can be explored and used peacefully by all nations.

~ Dr. Dave Webb is chair of the UK's Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and also is the board convenor of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space

Where is our freedom of speech?

 

Biden demands censorship aimed against domestic public debate.

Who benefits when the government and corporations collude to control information?

'Robust enforcement strategies' of social media....what does that mean?

Break the silence....

 

Abby Martin's second feature film is an anti-imperialist environmental documentary. Join her on the journey, and help make it possible, at https://earthsgreatestenemy.com

Aerospace industry wants your Social Security

 

Years ago I read in the aerospace industry newspaper Space News that they were sending lobbyists to Washington to 'secure a dedicated funding source' for all of their many plans for space.  

The industry journal reported they had identified the source for future funding for 'everything space' - they called it the 'Entitlement programs' which officially are Social Security, Medicare (for the old), Medicaid (for the very poor) and what little is left of the 'social safety net'.

Medicare will turn 56 on July 30, and Social Security has its 86th anniversary on August 14. These are programs that the ruling corporate oligarchs have always hated and want defunded.

In fact, 85% of Americans 50 and older oppose cutting these vital programs. Republican and Democrat voters feel almost exactly the same in their strong support for these programs which people paid for with their taxes over their working lives.

Social Security is the main source of income for more than 34 million older households. For many, it is nearly all their income. And of the 62 million people covered by Medicare, half have incomes of less than $27,000 a year.

Because the benefits people receive from these programs are so vital, older Americans expect Congress to protect and strengthen them.

Yet a bipartisan bill was recently introduced in Congress to cut these programs. The 'Time to Rescue US Trusts (TRUST) Act' would set up groups of a dozen lawmakers with the power to recommend cuts to these essential programs. (Just the name itself reveals that this legislation is one very bad deal.)

If only seven members of these so-called 'rescue committees' approved of changes, they would be fast-tracked in the House and Senate, with no adequate debate among lawmakers within traditional committees and no amendments permitted on the floor of the House or Senate.

No democracy there - just more dirty tricks.

There is unity among the banksters, the military-industrial complex, and the 1% - they want control of all those accumulated savings that have gone into Social Security and Medicare trust funds for their own devious and selfish purposes.

Don't let them have it. Fight like hell to maintain and expand these very important programs that came out of the vigorous people's struggles for social justice during the Great Depression-era and since.

Bruce

~ Parts reprinted from AARP Bulletin  

Sunday song

 

Prevent a new arms race into space

 

The Global Network's latest Space Alert! show with Journalism Professor Karl Grossman and long-time peace activist Alice Slater. 

 

They both live in New York and each serve on the boards of the Global Network.

 

They discuss PAROS (Prevention of an Arms Space in Outer Space) and the long-history of the US blocking Russia and China's attempt to create a new treaty at the United Nations to ban all weapons in space.

 

Also discussed is the current drive by the nuclear industry to move their toxic product into space to power mining colonies on the planetary bodies, to power rockets to Mars and to provide power for space weapons.