Let's all make it a better year in 2022

 

My prayer

for the new year.....

peace, 

love,

truth,

economic justice,

determination,

honesty, courage,

environmental integrity,

cooperation,

and good health

A short personal check-in

 

Mary Beth and I have been walking when weather permits during recent days. We had a fairly long walk in the cold but sunny Maine weather just before lunch yesterday.

My lungs are still challenged and I am generally weak but slowly improving. Several medical professional friends have been advising us how I can make the slow transition back to health.

In the meantime I am finding a bit of energy each day to read and watch more of my favorite YouTube commentators. I just finished reading RFK Jr's #1 bestselling expose of Anthony Fauci.

Needless to say this is monumental 'truth telling' book which I can't recommend strongly enough. Fauci, and his Big Pharma agents, should have been jailed long ago. RFK documents the hell out of the long (all the way back to AIDS/HIV) criminal Fauci syndicate but only the subservience of the corporate media and Congress protects him and the corrupt 'industry' from their wrong-doings.

The other thing deeply imprinted in my heart and mind are the daily dangerous US-NATO efforts to push Russia toward war. A compliant EU plays the role of a whimpering US lapdog. There can be no doubt that the world stands at the abyss of global nuclear war - again with the corrupt corporate media misleading and misinforming the people of the planet. Why does the public continue to go along with these media manipulations?

I'm not likely to be able to write each day - my hands and my mind are far too shaky still - but the will is steadily returning for me to engage.

I send you all my love and deep thanks for your prayers, candles and kind thoughts.

Best wishes to all.

Bruce 

Our national interest is peace and collective security

 

Statement by the Hungarian Community for Peace

Hungary can only benefit from the common security system of Eastern and Western Europe. Therefore, the Hungarian Peace Community calls on the government and the parliament to play an active role in establishing a pan-European security system as soon as possible. 

In order for such a collective system to emerge, the Hungarian political leadership must not push the NATO cart further east, but let our NATO allies know that our country is not interested in encircling Russia, but in recognizing and guaranteeing Russia's right to security. 

The Peace Community sees that if Hungary persevered in NATO's expansion to the east and opted for confrontation instead of taking steps towards neutrality, our energy and military security could be jeopardized. 

The eastern opening policy of the Hungarian government offers an opportunity for Hungary to build a bridge instead of digging a trench. Take advantage of this opportunity! Let us not allow our own allies to turn us against those who want to work with us on an equal footing and in a spirit of mutual respect for our mutual benefit!

Let us remain true to the spirit of Helsinki, to the construction of the collective security system, the foundations of which were laid in Hungary in the 1970s, in the heyday of Hungarian diplomacy. 

In this constructive spirit, the Hungarian Peace Community wishes a Happy New Year to Hungary, Europe and the peoples of the world.

Edited by Hungarian Community for Peace
Magyar Békekör

Double down on war with Russia?

 

EU economic policies in Europe in disarray. 

Why not blame it on Moscow.....

Rumor mill & confirmation:

In the meantime, the Donbass authorities have identified the chemical substances US military contractors have brought to the cities of Mariupol, Krasnyi Liman and Avdeevka: botulinum toxin and dibenzoxazepine.  These chemical weapon were brought over from the USA by USAF contracted aircraft and are now deployed by 120 US mercenaries.

Russian military expert (and long-time Moscow friend Vladimir Kozin) confirms the following: 

As to the US Chemical weapons agents delivered to Kiev - it has been confirmed by Russian Federation Def Minister Shoigu and Donbas head of Government. Moscow has interpreted such delivery as an intention to engineer a provocation of "The White Helmets" - type they have done in Syria several times. And to invade Donbas after that. There are 10,000 US GIs in Ukraine now. Putin, Shoigu and Lavrov promised not to attack Ukraine. At the same time they declared that RF would not sit idle if Kiev will attack Donbas. There are 1 million Russians living in Donbas now.

God bless you, Bruce, and your family.

Sunday song

 

NATO's Holiday wish to Russia

 

Happy XMAS

Covid brain fog

 

 

I've had covid now for three weeks.

I went to the Togus VA hospital and tested Positive.

It's not been easy for me to keep up with blog posts.

Please be patient with me.

Bruce

German Green Party Foreign Minister squeezes Nordstream 2

 

 

Germany's Baerbock Threatens Nord Stream 2, Raises Gas Prices; US Expels Diplomats, G7 Splits

The Judicial Kidnapping of Julian Assange

 

 By John Pilger

    “Let us look at ourselves, if we have the courage, to see what is happening to us”

    – Jean-Paul Sartre

Sartre’s words should echo in all our minds following the grotesque decision of Britain’s High Court to extradite Julian Assange to the United States where he faces “a living death”. This is his punishment for the crime of authentic, accurate, courageous, vital journalism.

Miscarriage of justice is an inadequate term in these circumstances. It took the bewigged courtiers of Britain’s ancien regime just nine minutes last Friday to uphold an American appeal against a District Court judge’s acceptance in January of a cataract of evidence that hell on earth awaited Assange across the Atlantic: a hell in which, it was expertly predicted, he would find a way to take his own life.

Volumes of witness by people of distinction, who examined and studied Julian and diagnosed his autism and his Asperger’s Syndrome and revealed that he had already come within an ace of killing himself at Belmarsh prison, Britain’s very own hell, were ignored.

The recent confession of a crucial FBI informant and prosecution stooge, a fraudster and serial liar, that he had fabricated his evidence against Julian was ignored. The revelation that the Spanish-run security firm at the Ecuadorean embassy in London, where Julian had been granted political refuge, was a CIA front that spied on Julian’s lawyers and doctors and confidants (myself included) – that, too. was ignored.

The recent journalistic disclosure, repeated graphically by defence counsel before the High Court in October, that the CIA had planned to murder Julian in London – even that was ignored.

Each of these “matters”, as lawyers like to say, was enough on its own for a judge upholding the law to throw out the disgraceful case mounted against Assange by a corrupt US Department of Justice and their hired guns in Britain. Julian’s state of mind, bellowed James Lewis, QC, America’s man at the Old Bailey last year, was no more than “malingering” – an archaic Victorian term used to deny the very existence of mental illness.

To Lewis, almost every defence witness, including those who described from the depth of their experience and knowledge, the barbaric American prison system, was to be interrupted, abused, discredited.  Sitting behind him, passing him notes, was his American conductor: young, short-haired, clearly an Ivy League man on the rise.

In their nine minutes of dismissal of the fate of journalist Assange, two of the most senior judges in Britain, including the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Burnett (a lifelong buddy of Sir Alan Duncan, Boris Johnson’s former foreign minister who arranged the brutal police kidnapping of Assange from the Ecuadorean embassy) referred to not one of a litany of truths aired at previous hearings in the District Court – truths that had struggled to be heard in a lower court presided over by a weirdly hostile judge, Vanessa Baraitser. Her insulting behaviour towards a clearly stricken Assange, struggling through a fog of prison-dispensed medication to remember his name, is unforgettable.

What was truly shocking last Friday was that the High Court  judges – Lord Burnett and Lord Justice Timothy Holyrode, who read out their words – showed no hesitation in sending Julian to his death, living or otherwise. They offered no mitigation, no suggestion that they had agonised over legalities or even basic morality.

Their ruling in favour, if not on behalf of the United States, is based squarely on transparently fraudulent “assurances” scrabbled together by the Biden administration when it looked in January like justice might prevail.

These “assurances” are that once in American custody, Assange will not be subject to the Orwellian SAMS – Special Administrative Measures — which would make him an un-person; that he will not be imprisoned at ADX Florence, a prison in Colorado long condemned by jurists and human rights groups as illegal: “a pit of punishment and disappearance”; that he can be transferred to an Australian prison to finish his sentence there.

The absurdity lies in what the judges omitted to say. In offering its “assurances”, the US reserves the right not to guarantee anything should Assange do something that displeases his jailers. In other words, as Amnesty has pointed out, it reserves the right to break any promise.

There are abundant examples of the US doing just that. As investigative journalist Richard Medhurst revealed last month, David Mendoza Herrarte was extradited from Spain to the US on the “promise” that he would serve his sentence in Spain. The Spanish courts regarded this as a binding condition.

“Classified documents reveal the diplomatic assurances given by the US Embassy in Madrid and how the US violated the conditions of the extradition “, wrote Medhurst, “Mendoza spent six years in the US trying to return to Spain. Court documents show the United States denied his transfer application multiple times.”

The High Court judges – who were aware of the Mendoza case and of Washington’s habitual duplicity — describe the “assurances” not to be beastly to Julian Assange as a “solemn undertaking offered by one government to another”. This article would stretch into infinity if I listed the times the rapacious United States has broken “solemn undertakings” to governments, such as treaties that are summarily torn up and civil wars that are fuelled. It is the way Washington has ruled the world, and before it Britain: the way of imperial power, as history teaches us.

It is this institutional lying and duplicity that Julian Assange brought into the open and in so doing performed perhaps the greatest public service of any journalist in modern times.

Julian himself has been a prisoner of lying governments for more than a decade now. During these long years, I have sat in many courts as the United States has sought to manipulate the law to silence him and WikiLeaks.

This reached a bizarre moment when, in the tiny Ecuadorean embassy, he and I were forced to flatten ourselves against a wall, each with a notepad in which we conversed, taking care to shield what we had written to each other from the ubiquitous spy cameras – installed, as we now know, by a proxy of the CIA, the world’s most enduring criminal organisation.

This brings me to the quotation at the top of this article: “Let us look at ourselves, if we have the courage, to see what is happening.”

Jean-Paul Sartre wrote this in his preface to Franz Fannon’s The Wretched of the Earth, the classic study of how colonised and seduced and coerced and, yes, craven peoples do the bidding of the powerful.

Who among us is prepared to stand up rather than remain mere bystanders to an epic travesty such as the judicial kidnapping of Julian Assange? What is at stake is both a courageous man’s life and, if we remain silent, the conquest of our intellects and sense of right and wrong: indeed our very humanity.

~ John Pilger can be reached through his website: www.johnpilger.com  

 

Action item: 

After 'The Royal Court of Justice UK' allowed extradition of Julian Assange, Wikileaks just dumped all of their files online. Yep. Everything from Hillary Clinton's emails, Vegas shooting done by an FBI sniper, Steve Jobs' HIV letter, PedoPodesta, Afghanistan, Syria, Iran, Bilderberg, CIA agents arrested for rape, WHO pandemic... Happy Digging! Here you go, read and pass it on...

Index file: https://file.wikileaks.org/file/?fbclid=IwAR2U_Evqah_Qy2wxNY12FMqFC5dAFUcZL5Kl4FIfQuMFMp8ssbM46oHXWMI
 

Sunday song

 

The tragic farce of the 'Summit for Democracy'

 

The art of war

By Manlio Dinucci (il manifesto, Italy)

On December 9-10, President Biden hosted the "Summit for Democracy" which brought together worldwide "leaders of government, civil society, and private sector." The online guest list included 111 countries. Among these guests are 28 of the 30 NATO members: Turkey and Hungary are missing but, on balance, there are Israel and Ukraine together with 26 of the 27 EU members except Hungary. 

The Summit was held to "provide them with a platform to defend democracy and human rights at home and abroad, to face through collective action the greatest threats facing democracies today". This will initiate "a year of action to make democracies more reactive and resilient", which will culminate with the second Summit  to "build a community of partners committed to global democratic renewal".

Joe Biden thus maintains what was announced in his electoral program, a global Summit of the "nations of the free world", first of all to "counter Russian aggression, keeping NATO's military capabilities sharpened and imposing on Russia the real costs for its violations of international norms" and, at the same time, for "building a united front against China's offensive actions and violations of human rights". In this way, the United States will once again "play the leading role in writing the rules. "The defense of democratic values - reiterated Biden as President - is stamped in our DNA as a nation".

What is imprinted in the DNA of the United States is demonstrated by approximately one hundred wars of conquest that have characterized its history. According to a documented study by James Lucas, only the series of wars and coups d'état - carried out by the USs from 1945 to the present day in over 30 Asian, African, European, and Latin American countries - has provoked 20-30 million deaths, hundreds of millions of injured people (many of them remained disabled), plus a polluted number of deaths, probably hundreds of millions, caused by the indirect effects of wars: famines, epidemics, forced migrations, slavery, and exploitation, environmental damage, subtraction of resources from vital needs to cover military expenses. 

In the bloodiest wars - Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq - US military forces were directly responsible for 10-15 million deaths. The bloodiest coup was organized in 1965 in Indonesia by the CIA: it provided the Indonesian death squads with the list of the first 5,000 Communists and others to kill. The number of people killed is estimated between half a million and 3 million.

 

Joe Biden himself, promoter of the "Summit for Democracy", had a leading role in part of this story. In 2001, as chairman of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, he supported President Bush's decision to attack and invade Afghanistan, and, in 2002, he promoted a bipartisan resolution authorizing President Bush to attack and invade Iraq. In 2007, he passed a plan to break up Iraq into three regions - Kurdish, Sunni, and Shiite - functional to US strategy. 

In 2009-2017, as vice president of the Obama administration, he participated in the planning and execution of the wars against Libya and Syria and the putsch in Ukraine, in which Biden played a direct and decisive role.

With regard to internal democracy, it is enough to remember that, according to official statistics, the police killed about 1,000 defenseless citizens every year in the US, mainly blacks and Hispanics. 

Suffice it to recall that the United States wants to sentence the journalist Julian Assange to 175 years in prison for bringing to light their war crimes. The British judiciary has approved his extradition to the USA. 

Meanwhile, on December 6, Britain co-hosted a preparatory event for the Summit, entitled "Defending Democracies from Disinformation", and focused on "best practices for promoting an open and transparent information system". 

Disposable populations or human interconnections?

 

Vandana Shiva is an Indian scholar, environmental activist, physicist, food sovereignty advocate, and anti-globalization author. 

Based in Delhi, Shiva has written more than 20 books. 

Shiva founded the Research Foundation for Science, Technology, and Natural Resource Policy (RFSTN), an organization devoted to developing sustainable methods of agriculture, in 1982. 

She has traveled the world spreading a powerful message of oneness and interconnectedness.

Human rights in the Donbass

 

I was asked to send a statement to the Donbass (eastern Ukraine along Russian border) for a December 9 event by my host, a labor leader, when I traveled there in late 2019. 

Here is the invite:

The public movement 'Peace for Lugansk region' invites you to participate in "the People's Forum", on 09 December. This is a discussion platform in the format of a talk show. The topic of the forum is 'Our struggle for rights, values, ideals'.

The main problem is that the international community ignores the fact of human rights violations during the war in Donbass. We would like to hear your point of view on this issue. You can record it in a video.

 

Best regards, 

Andrey 

Question time: Please define Mr. Big......

 

• OK. I've heard your questions about what I mean by Mr. Big. I use the expression frequently to share my feelings about the current corporate oligarchic takeover of the US and most nations around the globe. So feel free to pick one or more explanations below that work for you.

Big Pharma, Big Ag, Big Bottled Water, Big Oil, Big MIC, Big Box, Big Deal, Big Tech, Big Media, Big Hollywood, Big Sugar, Big Auto, Big Airlines, Big Banksters, Big Intel, Big Tobacco, Big Chemical, Big Sex, Big Courts, Big Corruption.... 

• One question that is quite current is this one: 'Biden might be half-asleep but he's not really that stupid is he to start a war with Russia? What is really going to happen in Ukraine?'

My guess is that Biden is not in charge. The CIA runs the show. Who is Secretary of State Antony Blinken anyway? Did you ever hear of him before he got plunked into his current post? Have you watched him smirk every time he talks with a Russian or Chinese diplomat? These people in Washington are not serious about calming tensions. They don't really negotiate anything. Hell, they want to ramp up chaos everywhere! 

OK, I'll get to your question. Will there be war? The CIA & State Department neo-cons know they can't beat Russia or China. They couldn't beat Afghanistan after 20 years. But they are good at the slow bleed and that is their goal with Russia. Washington though would not mind if Ukraine attacked Crimea for example - which would mean that Moscow would hit back hard. Then the US-NATO war machine would squeal like a pig and go running back to the UN and demand more sanctions on Moscow. Plus we'd see further expansion of NATO - not only along the Russian border but also into the Asia-Pacific to 'protect us from an aggressive China' as well. And of course Washington will squeal to the EU and pressure Germany to cancel the Nordstream-2 pipeline that is to deliver Russian natural gas.

 

Now that the Biden-Putin 'summit' took place I expect that nothing much will happen. Russia won't attack unless attacked. In late November the western media said Russia would attack Ukraine on December 1, 2 or 3. Didn't happen. Now the same media is saying it will happen in January or February. (They can drag this game out for months distracting us from all kinds of issues they don't want people to notice.) When the 'last deadline' passes with no Russia offensive we'll likely hear from the western media that Moscow didn't attack because of the 'tough threats' from Biden to Putin. This is the game Washington plays.

 

• Here is another question: 'Hey, what is going on with V-P Harris? Some of her top staff are quitting and not saying very nice things about her?'
  

My guess is that Harris was only put on the ticket to draw black votes during the last election. She has never had favorable ratings with the public so the word is out that she will be kicked-off the ticket in the next presidential election. Thus her staff are jumping ship. Biden will be gone as well. So it will be a clean slate for the Dems as they try to resurrect their flagging hold on Congress and the White House. 

It's too early to predict who the Dems will turn to - their stable is quite empty. One could guess the Dems will try Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg but he has no national base,  although the media could push him hard. Maybe they will bring back Hillary Clinton - ha, ha. It certainly won't be Tulsi Gabbard who is toying with the Republicans these days. Really I can't think of a single Dem national leader of any consequence. Can you? How about former Gov. Andrew Cuomo? Oops, not gonna be him either.....

 

• Another question: 'I'm not a religious person but is it possible for us to love one another instead of treating each other with disdain?'

I like your question. Yeah, can't we all get along? Actually I started out as a Young Republican in 1968 working on the Nixon campaign. What did I know at the time? Not much. My point though is I've found good, well meaning people in every turn during my life. As a young repub, in the military, in all my years as an organizer. I've even met some nice cops now and then. 

During the early 1990's, while organizing a protest at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, we forgot our big banner at the front gate. I called the head of security and asked if he had seen it. He said, 'Let me look around.' He called me right back and said, 'Meet me at Sonny's BBQ in Cocoa Beach and I'll give it to you.'  We became friendly over time. He respected what we were trying to do.

If you get past the surface you never know what you will find. Stay open, don't fall for the 'divide and conquer' BS,  treat everyone the same way you'd like to be treated. Love thy neighbor. Take the log out of your own eye. Turn the other cheek. 

Be a human being.

• Final question: 'How do you expect us to stop all the crazy crap I read about on this blog? What is the magic bullet?'

There is none. No full-page advert in the New York Times will solve our problems. No magical election of the perfect politician will do it. No hero riding in on a white horse is coming to save us. 

But if we want to move the public we need to create experiences where people can see things for themselves. That is the way most people learn and change - by having experiences that bring them a sense of reality.  Each of us have gifts - we need to honor them and use them for the greater good. We all need to be bolder - time is short.

Bruce 

North Korea war planning....

 

The US Wants South Korea to Help Take on the Chinese Military

 

By Dave DeCamp, Antiwar.com

The US and South Korea are preparing to update their plans for a potential war with North Korea to reflect what Washington says is an advance in Pyongyang’s military capabilities. But now that the US is so focused on China, the new war plans will also address countering the Chinese military in the region.

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin met with his South Korean counterpart, Suh Wook, in Seoul on Thursday. In a joint statement, the two military leaders noted “the importance of preserving peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait,” marking the first time Taiwan was mentioned in a joint release from the defense chiefs of the US and South Korea.

In May, President Biden and South Korean President Moon Jae-in also mentioned Taiwan together for the first time. This reflects how the US has shifted its position towards Taiwan. Washington no longer views the island as an issue between US-China relations and now views it as an opportunity to counter Beijing.

“We see [South Korea] now as a net provider of security not just on the peninsula but across the region,” an unnamed Pentagon official told Voice of America. The official said the US and South Korea will be “looking at ways where we can coordinate our defense cooperation in the region, and specifically capacity building throughout the region.”

The US’s desire for South Korea to become more involved militarily in the region fits in with Seoul’s plans to develop new weapons. Earlier this year, the US lifted restrictions on South Korea’s ability to develop and possess long-range missiles.

Previously, South Korea could not develop missiles with a range greater than 800km (497 miles). Now, Seoul can develop any type of long-range ballistic missile, potentially putting China in range.

Who seeks security?

 

Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov: 'No single state including Ukraine and Georgia has the right to seek security at the expense of others.'

Ukrainian refugee in Russia comments on possible war

 

I was on a Zoom call yesterday with some activists from around the globe led by GN advisory board member Leonid Ilderkin from Russia. We discussed the current Ukraine-Russia situation.

Leonid (a refugee in Russia from Ukraine since the 2014 US orchestrated coup d'etat in Kiev) said that last spring when these same tensions were happening that he did not believe war would start. He proved to be correct. Now, Leonid says, he is not so sure.

The principle reason Leonid said was that the Nordstream 2 pipeline from Russia to Germany, that will deliver natural gas, is a key factor. The US has always opposed the pipeline because Washington wishes to control the European energy market by shipping more expensive LNG (fracked) gas on ships from the US to Europe. Now that the pipeline is finished Germany just has to give their final approval to start it.

Another key point is the new German government has a Foreign Minister from the Green Party that dislikes Russia and China. She is more allied with Washington. The German business community supports the pipeline because Russian gas would be much cheaper for them.

As it turns out, if the US was to prevail then the LNG gas on ships would dock in Poland so that nation becomes a key player in all of this. Leonid suggested the question was who has the most influence with Poland? Germany or the US?

At the same time the United Kingdom is building naval bases in the Black Sea for Ukraine. So that adds another complicating dimension to the equation. In the meantime those on the call suggested that peace people worldwide should immediately be speaking out more directly opposing any Ukrainian or US-NATO military operations aimed at Russia.

Leonid felt confident that Russia would not likely initiate any such military operations unless the Donbass (eastern Ukraine) or Russian territory (particularly Crimea) was attacked first.

 In an email exchange after the call Leonid told me:

About the issue of the Ukrainian conflict, I can say again, I am not sure the clashes of bigger scale will not happen within the nearest 2 months. Number of factors give the ground of worries. Number one factor is the opportunity to stop the Northstream 2 if the conflict in Ukraine will sparkle. Number two is the general situation in European peninsula about the ongoing attempts of England to step into European continental affairs, using the support of Poland and Baltic countries against influence of Germany and France.

 

That is why, most likely, USA will not promote the provocative strike of Ukrainian forces against Russian. But English will (most likely in the entrance of Crimean peninsula). Most likely, Russian will respond with the missile and aviation strike. The probability of a strike on the ground is the list option. Nevertheless, the Russian air strikes in response will lead to some deeper split between Russia and EU, and that will be exactly the purpose of England and partially will support the war fraction in US.

 

Russian want to avoid this scenario by much of efforts. But most likely, they will not succeed. The attacking forces of Ukraine will strike not Donbass, but Crimea. The only force to stop it, can be US diplomacy that can break the English plan. Will US implement it is the question?

Bruce

Sounds like a war....

 

 

Truth being told here....

Sunday song

 

Is US-NATO provoking Russia in Ukraine because of energy resources?

 

We are constantly told that tensions are rising dramatically between US-NATO and Russia over Ukraine.
 
What is actually driving the conflict along Russia's border these days?
 
GN board member Will Griffin again has produced another important video that takes us deep into the reasons for growing conflict between the US-NATO and Russia. (Ukraine is just a tool that is used by Washington to destabilize the region.)
 
In the end the video makes quite clear it is mostly about energy. Europe is in an energy crisis and Russia has built the Nordstream-2 pipeline to send natural gas to Germany and beyond. The US has long opposed this pipeline because Washington wants Europe to buy more expensive fracked (LNG) gas from the US - sent overseas via ships.
 
With the melting Arctic Sea it will be possible to drill for fossil fuels in that region. But Russia has the largest border with the Arctic. The video shares how the Rand Corporation (that compiled the Vietnam-era Pentagon Papers) has created a plan to break Russia into smaller nations thus making it easier for western fossil fuel corporations to control the Arctic.
 
The US-NATO count on the western public to miss the real story driving these dangerous military escalations along Russia's borders.

An organizer’s dilemma

  What to do about the burning issue of our time?

 

I’ve been a political organizer since 1978 when I quit college to go to work for the United Farm Workers Union (UFW). After my training in California I was sent back to Florida, where I lived at the time, to organize Black and Hispanic fruit pickers.

An organizers primary job is to understand a particular issue well enough to be able to help the public grasp the concern so that they can react and help in some way to deal with the problem.

By nature I am a cautious person so going out on a limb is not my first inclination. I study things first, talk with others to get a reading on how they view the issue, then begin to form my own way of talking about it. Thus my hope is always to find a path to help move others (and myself) into reflection and ultimately action. But over the years I’ve learned that sometimes I have to step out no matter who is coming along with me if I think it is the right and timely thing to do.

The current controversy about covid, the jab, QR codes, mandates, lock-downs and growing social division has caused me many sleepless nights. I’ve been watching an inordinate number of videos (with doctors, scientists, patients, etc.), reading countless articles, watching protest videos from around the globe as increasing numbers reject the GreenPass mandates, and much more.

I’ve not taken any covid vaccines largely because I don’t trust Big Pharma. I’ve learned enough about how the system works – the boards and committees that ‘give approval’ for often untested vaccines are loaded with industry representatives who have serious conflicts of interest. The profits are enormous from new vaccines thus we see the demonization of proven off-patent medicines (like Ivermectin) that are cheap and thus a ‘threat’ to Big Pharma profits.

I don’t criticize anyone else for taking the vaccine or wearing a mask (my own wife Mary Beth reluctantly took the J & J jab). People do what they need to do. But at least I'd like to have a principled dialogue with people. I believe we all can learn from one another if we stay open.

That has turned out to be challenging at times – having honest and heartfelt discussions with friends and associates. Some people I know (from liberals to self-professed radicals) are unwilling to even have serious conversations.

Thus witnessing this current trend of clampdown on discussion and increasing government mandates has moved me to write this. I’ve made a list below of some experiences during my life that inform why I am generally suspicious of authority. I believe it is a survival technique.

I’ve learned to trust my heart, my mind, and my senses of smell and taste when it comes to various issues. Somethings just don’t smell or taste right to me. That leads me to undertake wider investigation. I am driven to learn, to understand, and to react as best I can.

 

• Growing up in a military family we often moved. In the winter of 1962 we went from England to South Dakota (Ellsworth AFB). We arrived in our family station wagon in the middle of a blizzard and from the back seat of the car I noticed what I call ‘shot gun shacks’ – old wooden houses with lots of holes in them. I shuddered to think how cold anyone might be living in those flimsy houses. I later learned they were Native people – Lakota. This began an intense process of investigation about Lakota (and other tribes) culture, history, and current conditions. In this process I learned how the US Army gave native people smallpox-laden blankets in order to kill those living on lands the government wanted. This was genocide.

• In 1963 I was 11 years old and in the lunchroom at my school when we were told that President John F. Kennedy had been killed. As I grew older I became an avid reader about independent  investigations of his assassination and have never swallowed the scripted story about Lee Harvey Oswald as the lone shooter. I’ve long believed the 'alternative story' that JFK was killed by the CIA and organized crime.

• A few years after JFK’s death I decided I wanted to be an FBI agent so I could fight against organized crime. I felt that I needed to get a jump on the career and sent away for an FBI correspondence course I found in some publication. It was from this that I learned about fingerprints and other such things. But the most important thing I learned was M.O. – Modus Operandi – every criminal has one – a way of repeating their same bad behavior over and over again. I eventually decided (while watching cops beat up civil rights and anti-war protesters on TV) that I could not participate in ‘law enforcement’ and later concluded my peace & justice work is all about fighting corporate organized crime. I often look for the MO.

• While in the Air Force (1971-1974) during the Vietnam War I read the ‘Pentagon Papers’ which was the inside history compiled by the Rand Corporation of the corruption and deceit by our government in selling the war to the public and to Congress. This left a huge mark on my soul.
  

 

• While working for the UFW (1978-1980) we spent much time standing outside grocery stores trying to get shoppers to boycott iceberg lettuce and grapes in solidarity with striking farm workers in California. We’d talk to the public about the terrible way farm workers were exploited by the corporate growers and the pesticides that the buyers of these products were consuming. It was tough sledding as most people didn’t want to hear about it.

• From 1980 to 1983 I organized in the Black community in urban Orlando, Florida around a slew of social justice issues. One day a Black man I knew quite well pulled me aside and thanked me for my work in his community. He told me, “Unlike many white people who come into our community you never tried to take from us.” But then he told me that I ought to go work where the real problem was. He said it was the white community that had their foot on the necks of Black people. He suggested I take on that challenge knowing that the only way to help the Black community was to change the white world. I agreed and thanked him.

• So it was then that I began to organize full-time in the peace community – mostly among liberal white folks. They were largely college educated people, middle to upper class, often heavily ‘invested’ in the stock market and the 'system' and in the main largely reluctant to get too radical. They were often concerned about their social status - what might people think of them if they got too politically frisky? I will always remember a talk I did in Daytona Beach in the mid-1980’s on nuclear weapons where a white middle class woman stood up and said as she walked toward the door, “You expect me to go to my bridge club and talk about all of this? If I did that I’d lose all of my friends”. I learned then that many liberals come to such meetings for ‘political entertainment’ but when it comes to putting your body on the line there were far too many social costs.

• Around this same time bottled water began to become ‘popular’. It was sort of a social status thing to walk around with some new brand name bottle of water. It was then that I thought someday these capitalists are going to have us buying gas masks so we can get clean air.

 

• On June 12, 1982 after watching C-SPAN coverage of the massive protest in New York City against nuclear weapons, the network switched to a right-wing conference featuring Lt. Gen. Daniel Graham, the head of Star Wars (Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative). In the Q & A someone asked about the protest going on in NYC and he said, “We are moving into space. They don’t have a clue. Let them keep doing what they are doing.” It was in that moment that I began researching the space issue and began taking people to the Kennedy Space Center to protest military space launches. Our first protest only had eight of us there. People were slow to respond. By 1987 we had well over 5,000 for a protest against the first-flight test of the Trident missile at the same spot. That taught me that it takes time for folks to come around. They want to see who else is getting involved before they stick their toe in the water. Again it’s in large part a sociological phenomenon.

• In 1999 (during Bill Clinton’s time in the White House) the US-NATO launched a war on Yugoslavia in order to break that Communist nation up into smaller countries enabling the capitalist block to take control of the region. I tried to get people to protest this war (where the US-NATO dropped depleted uranium bombs) but a Democrat was in office so most liberals I was working with didn’t want to publicly stand against their preferred political leadership.

• On 9-11 I was in the waiting room at the dentist office and watched the media coverage of planes crashing into the twin towers in New York on the TV. I could smell and taste this false flag event. My mind flashed back to the Pentagon Papers and other times in US history where our nation was led into a war. When I got home I pulled out my world atlas and began to study that little known country called Afghanistan.
  

 

• In 2014 I was one of the few Americans in the peace movement that immediately began writing and commenting about the US orchestrated coup d’état (by Obama, Biden, Hillary Clinton, and Victoria Nuland) in Ukraine. I was sometimes called a commie and a fool – even by some people on the ‘left’. 

• I went to Ukraine in 2016 and then to Russia and the Donbass after that to learn for myself what was really going on in the region. During the Trump years I didn’t buy the ‘Russia-gate’ bullshit pedaled by the corporate media and the leadership of the Democrat party.

• Once the covid plandemic began I tried sharing some information with one long-time friend and they told me to ‘Fuck off’. At that point the right-left ‘divide and conquer’ was well underway in the US and around the globe. Some of my closest friends and peace associates (who ordinarily complain about corporate endless resource wars) suddenly were touting the line from New York Times (remember shock and awe in 2003?), Washington Post, CNN, NPR, BBC, MSNBC (particularly Rachel Maddow) and more. Some of them mocked me and have called me ‘anti-vaxer’ (which I am not) and ‘horse paste ingester’. I’d try to share what I learned from doctors, scientists and about people who had died from the covid vaccine but most people didn’t want to hear it.

• Soon after covid vaccines became available I was at a local bakery in Bath (which had to recently close due to the lock-downs) and I noticed a man and woman my age bragging how they just got the jab. They felt so safe now as they ordered GMO-free pastries at the shop. That moment jumped out at me after recently watching a short video clip of Bill Gates and his wife describe how they were injecting little African kids in the arm with ‘GMO-based vaccines’.
  

• I have five sisters. One of them, just a bit older than me, lives in Iowa and recently came down with covid. She has not taken the jab. She got a prescription for Ivermectin (which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2015)  from a courageous doctor. Without that treatment (which is being used all over the world, particularly in poor countries that can’t afford the expensive Big Pharma vaccines) her life could be on the line.

• I honor all those who dare raise uncomfortable questions about this covid bio-weapon that I believe was first created at the Fort Detrick US Army ‘Futures Command’ lab in Maryland. Anthony Fauci sold the ‘gain-of-function’ technology to China’s Wuhan laboratory where it was likely leaked - accidentally or not.  (Gain-of-function refers to experiments that intentionally modify a pathogen to create the ability to cause or worsen disease, enhance transmissibility, and/or create novel strains with potential to cause global spread in humans.) 

 

• I honor those (on the right or the left) who show courage and challenge the profit-centered Big Pharma industry.

• I honor Robert F. Kennedy Jr who has dared to challenge the ‘official line’ and daily takes hits from people who claim to be ‘progressive’ but don't appear able to see the writing on the wall. RFK Jr urges people to read the last chapter of his new book about Fauci where he clearly exposes the CIA, the military industrial complex and Big Pharma for working together to create this plandemic while making massive profit and destroying democracy.

 

• I honor those who continue to publish articles and videos that question the mainstream corporate covid narrative and routinely get their posts removed from social media in the ‘land of the free and home of the brave’. Where is the ACLU on this growing mass surveillance program now underway with QR codes, mandates and lock-downs? How can this nation (and much of the world) consider themselves democratic anymore?

• I end with a quote from the great philosopher (and New York Yankee baseball catcher) Yogi Berra who said, “You can take ‘em to the ballgame, but you can’t make ‘em go in.” 

That has become my organizing philosophy. I’ll keep trying….

Bruce