Organizing Notes

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

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Location: Brunswick, ME, United States

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

Saturday, April 17, 2021

Saturday Matinee: We've gone to the dark side

 

 

A Good American“ is a gripping docu-thriller about a groundbreaking surveillance program, the brilliant mastermind behind it and how a perfect alternative to mass surveillance was killed by NSA-management for money – three weeks prior to 9/11.

Bill Binney was a brilliant cryptologist and long-time National Security Agency (NSA) analyst, since 1997 serving as Technical Director. Binney developed a sophisticated program named ThinThread for gathering data capable of providing clues, in real-time, of potential terrorist threats.

Built-in safeguards would have prevented the massive surveillance methods later exposed by Edward Snowden. Why was this program killed off? And who was behind that?

Friedrich Moser’s eye-opening and deeply disturbing documentary tells the complete story of Bill Binney and those, both inside the NSA and out, who backed ThinThread. A program that gathered data, lawfully, effectively, and more inexpensively, than the now discredited programs pursued by the US and EU governments.

It’s also a chilling account of those willing to go on the record and what happened to them when they tried to expose the truth.

This is how the propaganda works

 


“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” ~ Joseph Goebbels (German Nazi politician and Reich Minister of Propaganda of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. He was one of Adolf Hitler's closest and most devoted associates.)

 

Whether it is the Korean war, Vietnam, Cuba, Panama, Yugoslavia, Iraq, Syria, Yemen or Venezuela - the media big-wigs always run their scripted 'news story' through the corporate meat grinder first. Mr. Big's media underlings review the oligarchy talking points before they are fed to the public. Strictly Madison Avenue and Hollywood stuff. 

The duly-elected Ukrainian government was toppled in 2014 after the US and its 'Euro-allies' worked for many years to spawn 'color revolutions' there.  Always the goal was to turn Ukraine into a failed state right on Russia's border. Washington-Brussels thinking has been to tie Moscow down so it can't challenge other US-NATO ugly moves on the grand chessboard. 

Russia ain't going along with it.  For years I've heard activists dream of a time when some nation would arise to challenge Washington's long bout of arrogance and domination. But Putin has been so demonized by the west (with shitloads of stories invented and placed in western media) that even many activists friends (who normally are very perceptive) just don't see how they have climbed into the tar pit with Mr. Big on this particular issue.  Very sad.

Having religiously studied the Ukraine-Russia issue since 2014 on I've come to the conclusion that the same techniques used by the CIA to run color revolutions around the world are also run here at home. Many were invented here. 

One of those techniques is to place CIA clones into virtually every institution in America. The nation is saturated with intel and surveillance. Also propaganda promotion and neutralizing key leaders that get a big following are other techniques. Paul Wellstone was one of those who they killed.

I have long believed the peace movement (like all other movements outside of Mr. Big's total control) are similarly infiltrated with some paid operatives. They can become top leaders - they get money, media and protection from the oligarchs. Their job is to steer the movements in certain directions that serve the 'interests' of Wall Street and the war machine. 

The Ukraine coup was where I really learned this in 2014.  For about two weeks straight I followed a couple leads from Fazebook and burrowed into several people to learn about their jobs, funding sources, and links to academia (where profs are often funded to steer young minds into acceptable capitalist foreign policy thinking). 

One of them had challenged one of my posts on FB - calling me 'Putinized'. He was quite an unfriendly guy who was using a peace organization page to promote the anti-Russian line.  I discovered he was American and worked in Ukraine prior to the coup. He was hired to help train NGO's in how to reach young people, fire them up, and use their good-hearted enthusiasm for cynical purposes. The energy at the 'Maidan' in Kiev was handed over to the Nazi's who then physically muscled their way into the new government.  The rest is history. US-NATO fingerprints are all over that crime. In addition to CIA there were the National Endowment for Democracy, USAID, State Department agencies, Pentagon, and the Soros 'Open Society Foundation' - among others.

The only foundation that has been built in Ukraine since 2014 is chaos. Check out chaos theory.

Bruce

Friday, April 16, 2021

Words from some internet wags

 

 Azov is a Neo-Nazi Ukrainian National Guard regiment

  • Poison is in everything, and no thing is without poison. The dosage makes it either a poison or a remedy. Paracelsus. [Ukraine President] Zelenski has chosen his poison, aka the west. The dosage at this moment in time certainly has a potential to be a lethal one. No matter what he does now, it will not end well for him or Ukraine. His choices now are as follows:

1. Descalate and look weak in the eyes of the Ukronazi resulting in intense pressure to have him removed.

2.Forge forward with a full scale attack on the Donbass and face complete destruction by the Russian military.

3. Resign and leave with his head attached to his shoulders and live a happy life somewhere in zone A and watch the inevitable full collapse of the Ukraine.

Option 1 & 2 carries with it a potential lethal dose. Any wise person would choose option 3. Let’s see what Zelenski the comedian will do. 


  • I have already said that all of this is a Lead Up to a false flag, planned to be much (much!) bigger than 9/11. Repeating this message again for those who missed that comment. World better get ready for it. Fully recognizing it for what it is that they are seeing when it happens, will be a good start.

  • I think the best action for U.S. interests would be to walk back from the Ukraine mess and seek a diplomatic end to the crisis. Biden, though, has his personal reputation at stake; is this a factor? Biden was one of the people involved in the Ukraine coup; in Nuland’s infamous phone call he was scheduled to hold an “attaboy” meeting with “Yats”. If the Ukraine project fails it reflects on him. While the U.S. would benefit from ending this fiasco, Biden would not. I hope he does not drive this mess into the terminal phase to protect himself.

 

Russia has closed the Kerch Strait until October

 

  • I also think there has been a change in the Russian mood recently. They used to brush off U.S. provocations (which mostly backfired on the U.S.), but now the U.S. actions have Russian and Chinese counter-reactions.

  • This is what you might call a classic “tail wagging the dog” situation in which reality is back to front. The reality is that Washington and its European allies are responsible for engendering a grave escalation in tensions by indulging the reckless authorities in Kiev. Calling on Moscow to de-escalate is akin to a trespassing burglar admonishing a householder to stop shining a light in his eyes and go back to bed.

  • Russia has every right to mobilize military forces anywhere within its borders as a prerogative of its national defense. Moscow has consistently affirmed that it does not present a threat to any nation. Yet American media outlet CNN and others have fabricated reports which purport to show the Russian military preparing to invade Ukraine. This is while up to 30-40,000 NATO troops are currently conducting so-called “war games” along Russia’s entire western border from the Baltic down to the Black Sea. The inversion of reality assumes new heights of absurdity with Western leaders claiming they are “defending” Ukraine and other European countries from “Russian aggression”.

  • Russian troops are in Russia. American troops are being positioned over 8,000 kilometers away from U.S. territory on Russia’s doorstep.

  • Our ruling elites have become a death cult. They loot and cannibalize their own companies and industries. They deliberately destabilize and destroy developing nations. They deliberately cause chaos and death everywhere they can.

  • Asked if the United States was ready, if necessary, to increase its forces on Ukrainian territory, the US ambassador said: "We are constantly monitoring the situation in Ukraine and assessing the needs of the Ukrainian side. There are 160 US troops in Ukraine on a permanent basis and if the demand changes and their number needs to increase, we will take that into account.”

  • The next move on the devil's chessboard. Ukraine is too weak economically and militarily to be able to distract Russia with a regional war. Poland another nation with an extremist government and a grudge, also under US control is plan B. Keep in mind Zelinsky's former occupation before running Ukraine into the ground was a comedian.  

 

 

  • DEFENDER-Europe 21 activities begin this month across Europe and continue through June. DEFENDER-Europe is an annual large-scale U.S. Army Europe and Africa-led, multinational, joint exercise designed to build strategic and operational readiness and interoperability between U.S., NATO allies and partners.

Biden's magic tricks - watch both hands

 

 

Yesterday I watched with outrage, and some amusement, as Joe Biden held a press briefing (only took two questions at the end as he started to walk away).

Here are a few things he said and some of my reactions - in parenthesis:

 

  • Elections are sacred (that is a joke coming from the US which interferes in other nations elections quite routinely. This Democratic party talking point of 'Russian interference in US elections' for more than four years running has yet to be proven with any real evidence).
  • Biden brought up the alleged 'SolarWinds cyber hack' (which again has not been proven with the slightest bit of evidence. Intelligence agencies can make all kinds of claims but who will confirm if they are true? The mainstream media? Hardly).
  • Biden announced new expulsions of Russian diplomats and new sanctions. (More of the same).
  • Biden claimed he wants 'a more stable relationship' with Russia. (Anyone who is closely following US moves in Ukraine, and the surrounding regions, clearly understands that it is Washington that is 'destabilizing' things in that part of the world.  Just today it was announced in Russian media, not in western media, that Washington, Oslo Sign Revised Deal to Allow Expansion of US Military in Norway.
  • Biden droned on with claims that the US was eager to extend the New Start Treaty, wants better communication, wants to meet Putin in person someplace in Europe, and that now is the 'time to deescalate'. (Yes, the US wants Moscow to pull its troops back from inside its own border with Ukraine. All the while the US continues with arming Kiev's Nazi army, NATO expansion, war games on Russia's border and Pentagon troop deployments in Norway, Poland, Romania, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and more! Hardly a fair trade.)
  • Biden concluded by saying, 'I'm opposed to Nord Stream 2 - that issue is still in play'. (The undersea natural gas pipeline from Russia to Germany has continually been challenged by Washington. The US instead wants Europe to buy LNG fracked gas, transported on ships across the Atlantic, at a much higher price.  German industry wants Nord Stream 2.)
  • This morning I heard on BBC radio that Ukraine's comedian-president Zelensky was in Paris.  Germany and France for years have been trying to get Ukraine to implement the Minsk agreements between Kiev and the Donbass.  Kiev signed the agreements but has never honored them.  
  • Ukrainian forces violated the Minsk agreement ceasefire 36 times over the past week, said DPR People’s Militia deputy chief-of-staff Eduard Basurin. The enemy used mortars, IFVs, anti-aircraft guns, and grenade launchers to target 16 DPR townships.

 


  • So is the US really serious about a stable relationship with Russia and deescalation in the region? No.  Check out the Rand Corporation study that clearly lays out the US strategy of destabilization and break up of Russia into smaller countries in order for western fossil fuel corporations to get their greedy hands on the resources that are beneath the melting Arctic ice.

Bruce 

What did the Dems do for us in Wisconsin?

 


In the first of a series of video comments from viewers, Ann Morrison, who lives in rural Wisconsin, talks to theAnalysis-news about why her neighbors vote for Republicans and Trump and against the Democratic Party. 

Trade deals, deregulation of agriculture and insults of voters have driven rural voters away from the Democrats who did nothing for them when they were in power.

Thursday, April 15, 2021

More Washington hypocrisy....

 


Excellent journalist Aaron Mate and comedian Ron Placone join Jimmy Dore to discuss more Washington hypocrisy.

Ukraine wants to put Hungary at war with Russia

 
Statement of the Hungarian Community for Peace

 
The Ukrainian leadership has called on NATO to help it reconquer Crimea from Russia. 

As Hungary is a member of NATO, it means that it wants to involve Hungary in a war against Russia. Neither NATO nor the Hungarian government refused the call of Kiev, although it did not say it would comply with it. 

The Hungarian Peace Community demands from the government of Viktor Orbán to firmly and publicly reject the Kiev call! Let it know that our country not only does not want to go to war with Russia, but also does not give its territory to the preparations for war and the march against Russia! 

We protest against the government’s complicit silence in circumstances where NATO has commanded 40,000 troops to the Russian border from the Baltics to the Black Sea and American warships are sailing towards Crimea. 

The Hungarian government must say no to the war plan! You must reject Kiev's adventure policy! Hungary has an interest in a peaceful settlement. 

Let us mediate for a peaceful solution, rather than serving interests beyond the ocean! Kiev can deceive us the least with the slogan of defending democracy! We have a clear picture of the nature of Ukrainian “democracy”: warfare against their own people in Eastern Ukraine, law enforcement against Russians, Hungarians, Ruthenians, and others! 

We must behave neutrally in our well-conceived interests!

Ukraine, US bomb in Europe

 

Aviano airbase in northern Italy


The Art of War

By Manlio Dinucci (il manifesto, Italy)

The Aviano base [in northern Italy] US F-16 fighters are engaged in "air operations" in Greece, where the Iniochos 21 exercise began yesterday. They belong to the 510th Fighter Squadron stationed in Aviano, whose role is indicated in its emblem: the atom symbol with three lightning strikes the earth, flanked by the imperial eagle. Nuclear attack aircraft are therefore those engaged by the US Air Force in Greece. 

Greece granted the United States the use of all its military bases in 2020. F-16 and F-15 fighter-bombers from Israel and  United Arab Emirates also participate in Iniochos 21. The exercise takes place on the Aegean-sea near an area including the Black Sea and Ukraine, where the US Army's Defender-Europe 21 maxi exercise is concentrated.

These and other military maneuvers are focused on Ukraine making Europe a great parade ground, and create a growing tension with Russia. 

After having disrupted the Yugoslav Federation by inserting the wedge of war [1999 under Clinton] into its internal fractures, now NATO stands as a champion of the territorial integrity of Ukraine. 

The President of the NATO Military Committee the British Stuart Perch, who is head of the Royal Air Force, meeting in Kyiv with President Zelenskyy and Chief of Staff Khomchak declared that "the NATO allies are united in condemning the illegal annexation of Crimea by Russia and its aggressive actions in Eastern Ukraine". He thus repeated the usual version according to which Russia would have forcibly annexed Crimea, ignoring that it was the Crimean Russians who decided in a referendum to break away from Ukraine and re-enter Russia to avoid being attacked by the neo-Nazi battalions of Kyiv like the Donbas Russians. 

In 2014, the same neo-Nazis were used as an assault force in the Maidan square putsch, triggered by Georgian snipers who fired on demonstrators and policemen, and in subsequent actions: they set villages on fire, burned activists alive in the Odessa Chamber of Labor, massacred unarmed civilians in Mariupol, and bombed Donetsk and Lugansk with white phosphorus. 

A bloody coup d'état under the US/NATO direction with the strategic aim of provoking a new cold war in Europe to isolate Russia and at the same time strengthen the influence and military presence of the United States in Europe. 

 



The conflict in Donbas - where populations have organized with their own popular militias in Donetsk and Lugansk Republics - went through a period of relative truce with the opening of the Minsk talks for a peaceful solution. 

But now the Ukrainian government withdrew from the talks on the pretext that it refused to go to Minsk since Belarus is 'not a democratic country'. At the same time, the Kyiv forces resumed their armed attacks in Donbas.  

Stuart Perch praised Chief of Staff Khomchak on behalf of NATO for his "commitment to finding a peaceful solution to the conflict", Khomchak declared that the Kyiv army "is preparing for the offensive in Eastern Ukraine" and "the participation of NATO allies is expected" in this operation. 

It is no coincidence that the conflict in Donbas was reignited when Antony Blinken took over the post of Secretary of State in the Biden Administration. Antony Blinken has Ukrainian origin, he was the principal director of the Maidan Square putsch as Deputy National Security Adviser in the Obama-Biden Administration. 

As Obama's Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland – who in 2014 was the assistant director for the US [Maidan coup operation in Kyiv] operation that cost more than $5 billion - to establish a "good governance" in Ukraine (as she declared). 

It is not excluded that at this point they have a plan to promote an offensive by Kyiv forces in Donbas supported in fact by NATO. It would confront Moscow with a choice that would still be to Washington's advantage: either to let the Russian populations of Donbas be massacred, or militarily intervene in their support. 

They play with fire - not figuratively - by lighting the fuse of a bomb in the heart of Europe.

Wednesday, April 14, 2021

Why the constant demonization of Russia?

 

 

My Zoom presentation on Monday night sponsored by New Hampshire Peace Action on the Russian question.

We had a good audience and I answered some questions from the participants at the end.

Bruce

I was a casual supporter of Tulsi Gabbard when she ran last year for president. But was very disillusioned when she endorsed Biden.  I have to give credit where it is due, she makes a strong statement here.

Tuesday, April 13, 2021

Presente Ramsey Clark, human rights fighter – 1927-2021

 

 

By Sara Flounders–Co-Director of the International Action Center

Ramsey Clark was a founder of the International Action Center and inspired the political activists who used its structure to defend liberation struggles, oppose U.S. wars of aggression, defend political prisoners whether in U.S. prison-industrial complex or in the U.S.-backed dictatorships worldwide. IAC militants joined international delegations that defied the blockade of Cuba and sanctions on Iraq, contested the U.S.-NATO war on Yugoslavia or joined the wave of resistance then sweeping Laten America.

He guided the production of hundreds of books and videos, mass meetings, internet campaigns and demonstrations the IAC organized.

We salute Ramsey Clark, who died April 9, 2021, an outspoken defender of all forms of popular resistance to oppression, a leader always willing to challenge the crimes of U.S. militarism and global arrogance. He remained optimistic that the power of people could determine history. His courageous voice will be missed.

Ramsey Clark will be remembered by people and struggles around the world as a prominent  individual who used his name, reputation and legal skills to defend people’s movements and leaders who the corporate media had thoroughly demonized.

Clark’s early belief in the U.S. role turned, through harsh experience and observation of what he considered U.S. war crimes, to a determination to challenge U.S. policy and defend the victims of U.S. aggressions regardless of personal cost. His actions, leadership and writings showed his political development over the past 60 years, above all, his actions.

Born into a prominent Texas family in 1927, his father Supreme Court Justice Tom Clark, Ramsey was raised to believe in the power of U.S. laws. He came of age at the apex of U.S. power at the end of World War II and experienced the U.S. empire’s long decline and decay. He was appointed assistant attorney general in 1961 during the John F. Kennedy administration and attorney general during the Lyndon Johnson administration in 1967.


The 1960s power of the Civil Rights Movement and Black liberation struggle demanded sweeping change in government. As attorney general Clark enforced desegregation of schools across the South and  supervised the drafting of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and Civil Rights Act of 1968. He drafted housing legislation and enforcement of Indigenous Nations Treaty rights.

Unlike nearly every other Cabinet level official, who leveraged their post into a multi-million dollar career after leaving government, Ramsey Clark leveraged his role as former attorney general to act for the impoverished and voiceless.

Vietnam, Iran, Cuba, Venezuela

In 1972 he traveled to North Vietnam during President Richard Nixon’s bombing campaign. He was in Tehran, Iran in 1979 on days when millions of Iranians braved machine guns of the Savak Police and overturned the brutal U.S. backed shah and his whole regime. He visited Cuba numerous times to challenge the U.S. blockade and express deep admiration for the dramatic changes the Cuban Revolution made possible.

Along with demonstrations of tens of thousands against U.S. wars in 1991 and 2003, Ramsey Clark headed significant mass meetings in Solidarity with Cuba at Javits Convention Center in 1992 and with Bolivarian Venezuela at Town Hall in 2005,

Clark stood by the 1979 Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua and the struggle for liberation of El Salvador in the 1980s against a U.S. backed dictatorship. He traveled to Panama after the December 1989 U.S. invasion to document the enormous toll in life.

While many embraced the collapse of the Soviet Union as ending the Cold War and ushering in an era of peace and prosperity, Clark held the view that this would lead to endless wars of U.S. expansion and an effort to recolonize many countries.

Opposed U.S. war on Iraq


At great personal risk Ramsey Clark traveled to Iraq during the height of the 1991 U.S. bombing. Extending personal courage to political and legal skill, he wrote a 19-point indictment of the Bush administration for War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity that resonated around the world.

The indictment became the basis of a Commission of Inquiry that held mass popular hearings in 19 countries and 26 U.S. Cities. Ramsey attended every mass hearing. The final tribunal was held in New York City in February 1992 before thousands of people and international delegates. The events drew strong media coverage around the world, and total censorship in the corporate U.S. media.

During the years of the deadliest sanctions on Iraq that caused the death of a half-million Iraqi children within four years, Ramsey brought international delegations each year to challenge and expose the impact of the sanctions.

These fact-finding and human rights delegations almost always included videographers, journalists and photographers to document the impact on defenseless civilian populations. He encouraged others to also organize solidarity delegations.

Following the 2003 U.S.-British invasion and occupation of Iraq and under even more dangerous conditions, Clark traveled to Iraq numerous times. He provided legal defense for Saddam Hussein, Iraq’s captured president, who the U.S. and its Iraqi lackeys put on a show trial.

Though the outcome was inevitable, Clark was determined to expose that the real crime was the U.S. destruction of Iraq and was unapologetic for his defense of Saddam Hussein. Three of his Iraqi defense lawyers were assassinated for their role defending him. Saddam Hussein was executed on Dec. 30, 2006.


Sudan, Yugoslavia


In 1998 the U.S. bombed a small pharmaceutical plant producing the only anti-malaria drugs in Sudan claiming it was a secret VX Nerve gas facility. Ramsey immediately organized doctors, pharmacists and videographers to expose this crime against the civilian population.

In the biggest and most dangerous aggression in European borders since 1945, the U.S., determined to expand the NATO military alliance into the Balkans and Eastern Europe, launched the 1999 war to dismember and destroy Yugoslavia, during the Bill Clinton administration. Ramsey Clark was in Yugoslavia twice during the 78 days of relentless U.S. bombing, expressing solidarity with people under attack documenting that the Pentagon consciously targeted civilians.

Clark gave priority to visiting bombed schools, hospitals, market places, water purification plants, grain silos and pharmaceutical plants, as he did in other countries the U.S. bombed. Following the war, he drew up a public indictment of Clinton and other leaders of NATO countries and inspired a mass People’s Tribunal on U.S. war crimes in Yugoslavia, whose final hearing was in June 2000.

Clark dared to meet with Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic in Yugoslavia during the U.S. bombing and later at the Hague after the kidnapped president faced an international kangaroo court the U.S. established to try Yugoslav leaders. Ramsey’s view was that the wrong leaders were being charged. According to his indictment for the 2000 tribunal, Clinton should have been in the dock, along with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and the corresponding leaders of Germany, Britain, France and other NATO powers.

U.S. political prisoners

While much of Ramsey Clark’s work focused on defense of nations under attack by the U.S., he also defended dozens if not hundreds of political prisoners of the empire, in and outside the United States. These included Indigenous activist Leonard Peltier; Imam Jamil Al-Amin (aka H. Rap Brown), who is held in a Super Max prison. He and Lynne Stewart were willing to defend Egyptian Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman. (For her role, Stewart was charged and imprisoned).

 


He supported independence for Puerto Rico and freedom for its many political prisoners. He traveled to Peru to defend U.S. citizen Lori Berenson, held by Peru’s dictatorship and to the Philippines. He defended Jose Maria Sison against “terrorism” charges. Clark publicly supported Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani woman tortured in Afghanistan and serving 86-year sentence in U.S. Federal prison as well as Mumia Abu-Jamal Pennsylvania State Prison.

He traveled to Nepal when a revolutionary upheaval brought in a new government and to DPRK North Korea to protest against U.S. war games and nuclear threats.

Solidarity with Palestine

When Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was targeted by U.S. and Israeli forces, Clark met with him in Lebanon, and later traveled to Gaza under total Israeli shutdown and met with Hamas leadership.

Clark’s long years of support of the Palestinian struggle for liberation meant Zionist forces always denounced him.

Clark denounced every aspect of the “U.S. War on Terror” as a War Against Islam with endless military operations, sanctions, drone strikes, regime change operations, assassinations, secret detentions and a series of bases throughout Africa to Central Asia and the Gulf States.

In 2011, NATO imperialists took advantage of an opening provided by the Arab Spring and the mass upsurge that overthrew the dictatorships in Tunisia and Egypt, to open a 220-day bombing of Libya and murder Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. This destroyed the country with the highest standard of living in Africa.

U.S. imperialism then turned its full efforts into pulling down the government of Syria. Ramsey traveled to Syria several times in an effort to again focus attention on the impact of U.S. subversion on civilians. Traveling at personal risk, Clark exposed what U.S. sanctions, the arming of tens of thousands of mercenaries and then bombing vital infrastructure was doing to whole countries.

Even as decades rolled by Ramsey maintained an intense schedule of listening to and involving activists in challenging projects, along with speaking, traveling and consulting with peoples under attack.

Notes from a Zoom call from Ukraine & Russia

 


On Sunday I joined a Zoom discussion led by an activist friend in Russia.  On the call were people from Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, Russia and the US. Below are notes that I took which seemed most important to share - not in any particular order.

  • Several weeks ago President Zelensky in Kiev began acting even more 'strange' than before. He actively suppressed his already very weak 'progressive' opposition; got hard and clamped down on any TV stations that dared to be a tiny bit even-handed when it came to the Donbass issue; and showed even more obedience to Washington and London by having his army kill more Russian-speaking Ukrainian citizens who live in the Donbass as a way to draw Russia's military closer to the border. All of this was intended to get more money for his failing state. Zelensky (a popular TV comedian was made president by one of the key oligarchs in Ukraine) has seen his popularity drop to at most 10% in recent times as he has delivered on none of the promises he made about peace or reviving the economy.
  • The Ukrainians on the call felt that Zelensky's recent move to dramatically expand the numbers of his military forces along the Donbass line of contact was primarily political theater. It was a demonstration of force but not the initiation of a war that Kiev would surely lose.  But, the Ukrainian's underscored, 'unexpected things could quickly develop' that could trigger a war so we can't underestimate the danger.
  • I asked what the US wanted out of the current tensions.  The answer was that Washington wants to exercise its power in Eastern Europe - to show its dominance to the EU and to Russia. Typical bully behavior.
  • The view of those on the call was that the two places in the world where war is most likely to occur in the near future is Ukraine and Taiwan.
  • The Lithuanian on the call asked us to pay close attention to what his country and Poland are doing in conjunction with the US-NATO. This person was jailed in Lithuania for five years due to his human rights work against the right-wing government. Lithuania and Poland are NATO members. Article 5 of the NATO Treaty is 'collective defense'. Collective defense means that an attack against one ally is considered as an attack against all allies. The right-wing governments in Poland and Lithuania are daily provoking hostility with Russia.  If Russia could be drawn into a conflict then NATO would theoretically have justification to respond in force.
  • Continued deployments of new NATO military units from Germany, US, UK and other NATO nations in Lithuania are dangerously poking Russia.  They bring in large amounts of heavy military hardware and often leave it once they rotate out. Peaceful people in Lithuania worry why their country is becoming so militarized.
  • The armies of nations near Russia are being integrated into the military structures subordinate to the US under the auspices of NATO. As part of the growth of the US military budget, since 2017, spending on increasing funding for the armies of Eastern Europe, including Ukraine, has been steadily growing.
  • During the past year the US-NATO promoted an unsuccessful 'Color Revolution' inside Belarus. Those who oppose the current Belarusian government are allied with Poland and Lithuania. Check the map above and see what an alliance of those three countries could do if they all were taking marching orders from Washington. Belarus provides electricity to Lithuania - they are ethnically related but on opposite political sides. The US and UK are dangerously sowing the seeds of division in this region.
  • The US Navy expanding operations in the Black, Baltic and Arctic Seas are creating more tensions and could also be a trigger for war.
  • Capitalism's need to control and consume resources is what drives most of these current war mongering activities.
  • When the anti-fascist activists in these embattled regions learn about solidarity activities in the US or Europe it gives them a great feeling.  Please keep doing what you can to help us prevent a terrible war.
  • Keep a close eye on Russia's smallest oblast (region) of Kaliningrad which is an exclave located 200 miles away from the border of Russia proper. Kaliningrad was a spoil of World War II, allocated from Germany to the Soviet Union at the Potsdam Conference that divided Europe between the allied powers in 1945. The oblast is a wedge-shaped piece of land along the Baltic Sea between Poland and Lithuania, approximately one-half the size of Belgium. The oblast's primary and port city is also known as Kaliningrad. This region could be an ignition point for war if attacked by a very aggressive Poland which is clearly in Washington's pocket.

  • When the USSR existed, there were fewer wars .... fear is a great sin .... Russia must be respected, not afraid.
  • Unwittingly, the Ukrainians will help many people around the world to withdraw American bases from their lands as they watch what the US is doing.
  • Some elements of Hitler's fascist 'Rat line' in Eastern Europe are still in operation in the region and around the world. Some of the eastern European fascists moved to the US and Canada after WW II. Today Canada is a big supporter of the regime in Kiev.
  • There is growing concern that Turkey's President Erdogan will help Kiev. Erdogan has to get all those ISIS terrorists he has been sending to Syria and Libya off his payrolls and food lines. Having a few thousand AQ and ISIS fight to their death in Ukraine is perfect for Erdogan. They would replace many reluctant Ukrainian troops.
  • One American on the call said that we in the US must do more to reach out to younger anti-fascists in our country about what is happening in Ukraine
  • Quote from Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov: ′′ Questions are asked: what is the Russian Federation doing on the border with Ukraine? The answer is very simple: we live there, this is our country. But the question is, what does the US do in the form of its ships, soldiers, who constantly organize some NATO activities in Ukraine, thousands of kilometers from its own territory, while it remains unanswered .′′
  • China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Algeria, Angola, Belarus, Bolivia, Cambodia, Cuba, Eritrea, Laos, Nicaragua, Saint Vincent, Syria, Venezuela, and the Palestinians have formed a group to defend the UN Charter on the promotion of legality over force. The group said in a letter it will "strive to preserve, promote and defend the prevalence and validity of the UN Charter .... while providing a platform for, among others promoting the prevalence of legality over force."  It calls for dialogue, tolerance, and solidarity, adding these are at the core of international relations and remain vital for the peaceful coexistence among nations.

Bruce

Monday, April 12, 2021

Who is next in line?

 

 

Baseball has recently started and a limited number of fans are back in the stands.  I am glad to see that. I've been watching baseball my entire life and one necessary ingredient for the game is the spirit of the people.  It is a way for the community to gather. Humans need one another.

Sadly we live in a time of high-technocracy where the 1% rulers don't need so many of us anymore.  They have a multi-faceted program of thinning the population (wars, cutbacks in social spending, bad medical care, etc ) but under international law virtually all their actions are crimes against humanity.

The Nazis are not gone

While in college I worked part-time for a disabled woman. I did yard work and anything else she needed. She was writing a book on genocide and one day sent me to the library to make copies of resource documents. I found one book she wanted that had a copy of Hitler's 'Caloric Reduction Intake Schedule' that was used in the Warsaw, Poland ghetto.

Apparently by this time the gas chambers were full (and becoming well known) so a more 'subtle' measure was needed in order to reduce the Jewish population of Warsaw. They scientifically broke down the numbers on how to kill large numbers of people in a 'less visible' way. 

And it worked.  Just as it works today in Palestine, Yemen, in the Amazon forest or the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation in South Dakota. 

One should question the humanity of the 1% - they are so greedy and their spiritual connection to all the rest of life around them appears dead. It's like we are from two separate planets. 

I don't know about you but (even at my age) I am angry knowing they are working overtime to keep up with their high-tech created quota of those who need to be 'returning to their maker' ASAP.

There is no justice in this insanity. 

Talk about feelings of exceptionalism - these cats think they are god. 

Not my god.

Bruce

Sunday, April 11, 2021

Book review: The real story about fascist America

 


 

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 big 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.

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

Sunday song