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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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, August 07, 2021

Comply or be demonized?

 

Loom workers

 

I have not taken the covid vax jab.

I don't trust the corporate agenda nor the US biological warfare program centered at Ft. Detrick in Maryland.

I do believe the virus is real - created by the Pentagon and passed on to other labs including Wuhan, China by Dr. Fauci's corrupt hands.

How did covid get leaked and where did it first emerge? Or did it happen in many places around the world simultaneously? I have no idea.

Is the global corporate agenda pushing vaccine passports? Absolutely.

Why? For social control.

Is Mr. Big trying to thin out global population? Could be - along with bad national healthcare in many nations - like in the US.

Are the global corporate oligarchs making big money off the vax and lock-downs? Of course they are.

Is it wrong to discuss covid, the vax and passports in public?  If you believe in democracy then it is fine to debate/discuss this huge life changing situation. If you are a closet corporatist then no, you are likely to want to shut down debate and conform with directives from on-high? What could be wrong with being inquisitive and wanting to get more information - from many different sources? Especially when lives are in the balance. One does not have to believe everything one reads/hears. But more info is a good thing.

Is it right for people to be afraid? Of course, we have no idea what is coming in the months and years ahead. But we should not allow ourselves to become frozen by fear, and manipulated by the corporate owned media. Think for yourself and talk to people about what is going on. 

No one knows everything that is currently happening - no matter which side of the street they are standing on.

Treat each other with respect - no matter what they think. Honor the life in one another.

Bruce

Friday, August 06, 2021

Remembering the Koreans who also died in Hiroshima-Nagasaki

 

Memorial to Koreans killed in Hiroshima

 

By Makiko Sato

Thank you for writing on Hiroshima-Nagasaki, the guinea-pig GI soldiers, and Allen Dulles.

In case you don't know: Allen Dulles deceptively protracted the negotiation with his Japanese counterpart, regarding Japan's condition after nearing unconditional surrender as demanded by the Allies, suggesting that the emperor might be able to keep his status, actually only buying time so that the Manhattan project team could complete 'Fatman.'

This story is known to some Hiroshima citizens.

I just want to say that you had better include the historical fact that nearly as many Koreans having brought to Hiroshima died (according to Sung-Hee Choi, the number was around 80,000) as those Japanese directly died of the bombs.

I checked it, after Sung-Hee's suggestion, with the director of the Korean institution in Hiroshima.

He let me know at that time (more than 10 years back) that Korean forced laborers in Hiroshima were made to stay at poor dwelling huts in a suburb where there were no lighting at night.

So, he wrote that Korean forced laborers should not have died directly because of the bomb.

The bomb was precisely dropped onto the bridge in the city-center, at the busiest time in the morning.

The US forces must have researched for the most exact possible place and time to attain the highest death number.

So I realized that they, 80,000 Koreans, according to Sung-Hee, died because of the strong radiation effects, doing such forced work of burning burnt bodies of Japanese citizens, maybe on the day and on and on, because those Koreans were only left-behind man-power for the cleaning-up of the city.

~ Makiko Sato is a Global Network member who some years ago organized a speaking tour for Bruce Gagnon in her community in Japan.

History lesson: Brutal British empire

 


From famine to deindustrialisation and paying for the world's largest army, there were no advantages to India in being part of the British Empire.

Aaron Bastani on what the British really did to India.

Correction: Graphic at 03.18 should say "1700" not "1800".  

PS The Brits taught the US virtually everything Washington knows. 

Thursday, August 05, 2021

Hiroshima-Nagasaki: The story they want us to forget

 

Hiroshima ground zero

The world's first nuclear explosion occurred on July 16, 1945, when a plutonium implosion device was tested at a site located 210 miles south of Los Alamos, New Mexico, on the barren plains of the Alamogordo Bombing Range, known as the Jornada del Muerto (day of the dead). 

US President Harry Truman ordered the first atomic bomb to be dropped on Hiroshima, Japan on August 6, 1945. Days later (August 9) Washington dropped a second bomb on Nagasaki. 

Official figures of those killed by the atomic bombs is well over 150,000 from the two cities. More than 100,000 were injured with most likely dying. Then over the years many thousands have died from the initial radiation poisoning. 

Trip to Hiroshima & Nagasaki

On a trip to Japan for memorial events at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1984 I met many Hibakusha (survivors of the US bombing attacks in 1945). One told the story that after the bomb was dropped the US military would not initially allow medical personnel to come tend the injured. Instead US radiological teams came in to study the effects of the bombing on the people. Arms and legs were cut off and taken back to the US. Photos were taken. Skin samples and blood were taken. The Japanese people were lab rats for the Americans to study.

 


When I returned home to Orlando, Florida where I was working for the Florida Coalition for Peace & Justice I decided that I had to share this story with the larger community. The Orlando Sentinel newspaper had a regular column called 'My Word' so I sent in a piece about what the Hibakusha told me. The paper refused to print it saying that I could not prove what I had written. 

We've been dealing with this same kind of censorship ever since. 

A soldier's story

In 1997, while still working for the Florida Coalition, we were organizing a campaign to stop NASA's launch of 72 pounds of deadly plutonium-238 to be used for on-board heat and power on a deep space mission called Cassini. Prior to the launch we were holding a rally at Cape Canaveral (now called Cape Canaveral Space Force Station) and before we began an older man walked up to me and asked to speak. I asked him what he wanted to say.

He said that when the first a-bomb was exploded at Alamogordo in 1945 he was just a new recruit in the Army. He was a paratrooper. His unit was put on a transport plane and dropped into the mushroom cloud. The troopers were then medically tested and put on a train for a long trip around the country. While on the train every now and then it would stop and the GI's would be medically tested again.

He said it wasn't until years later he learned that at each stop was a Department of Energy (DoE) nuclear lab that helped work on the bomb program. The GI's were tested for time, space, longitude, latitude and other key variables. This man told me he was dying of cancer. His daughter had cancer. He was the only member of his unit that chuted into the toxic bomb cloud still alive. 

 

US soldier guinea pigs watching the first atomic bomb test

Needless to say I invited him to speak and listened closely as he warned us never to trust NASA safety claims when they launch nuclear devices into space.

This is a history Washington wants us to forget  

I recently heard Vladimir Putin say that some number of young people in Japan these days think it was Russia that dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This mis-education is being done to turn the Japanese people into an uncritical US ally as the US-NATO make their aggressive military moves on China and Russia.

We can't let the world ever forget the true story of August 6 & 9, 1945. 

What kind of nation would do these terrible things?

Never forget!

Bruce  

Wednesday, August 04, 2021

Biden Escalates Airstrikes in Somalia

 


by Dave DeCamp Antiwar.com

The Biden administration is escalating airstrikes in Somalia after a long pause in the US drone war against al-Shabaab. The US bombed Somalia on Sunday, the third time in less than two weeks and the third official airstrike in the country of Biden’s presidency.

US Africa Command (AFRICOM) said in a press release that the airstrike was conducted near Qeycad, Somalia, on August 1st. The US-backed Somali government said the airstrike “destroyed a large al-Shabaab firing position” that was engaged with members of Danab, a Somali commando force trained by the US.

The press release said AFRICOM’s “initial” assessment found “no civilians were injured or killed given the remote nature of where this engagement occurred.” AFRICOM almost always claims there are no civilian casualties in its airstrikes in Somalia, but the Pentagon is notorious for undercounting civilian deaths. And whenever journalists make it to the scene of a US airstrike in Somalia, they usually find that civilians were killed.

The first airstrike in Somalia under Biden was carried out on July 20th. Before that, the last time AFRICOM reported a strike in the country was on January 19th, President Trump’s last full day in office. Trump significantly escalated the air war in Somalia and dropped a record number of bombs on the country.

During his final months in office, Trump withdrew nearly all of the 700 troops that were stationed in Somalia. But they were redeployed in East Africa, and most of the US drones that bomb Somalia are based in neighboring Djibouti and Kenya, so the air war can continue. Now the head of AFRICOM is pitching the Biden administration on sending troops back to Somalia.

Glen Ford Presente!

 

 

Glen Ford, a veteran broadcast, print and digital journalist who hosted the first nationally syndicated Black news interview program on TV before going on to found the Black Agenda Report (BAR) website, has died, according to reports. He was 71 years old.

Chris Hedges interviewed Glen Ford in 2017.  

I was lucky to be on the same speaking platform with Glen twice over the years. When Peter Woodruff and I had a weekly radio show at the Bowdoin College station for six years we often played short commentaries recorded by Glen. 

He was always articulate and was not timid about telling the hard truths.

He will be missed for sure.

See more about Glen at BAR here

Bruce

Tuesday, August 03, 2021

Gold Rush in Space

 



SOAPBOX PODCAST AUGUST 3, 2021

Guest: Bruce Gagnon

Topic: Stooges in Space (Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Richard Branson)

This week, Cindy chats with Bruce Gagnon from the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space and Keep Space for Peace Week.

Click here

If you're interested in China....

 

 

I highly recommend this discussion about China - and the ridiculous Washington policy towards the 'Indo-Pacific' region. 

  • The white Anglo-oligarchs in the US and the EU are more than desperate as they witness their declining influence and control over much of the world. They've fucked it all up. War, climate crisis, greed and pillaging of the working people and the poor. Disrespect of other nations sovereignty. It's a violation of the spirit of life. It must come to an end now. And what then is put in capitalism's place? What is the likely move of Mr. Big as the mega-machine tries vainly to hold onto power - both here at home and globally.
  • Joe Biden sent Wendy Sherman to China. Her orders were to lecture the Chinese on morality and 'rules of the road'. Washington loves that phrase - rules of the road. Who wrote them? Show me them on paper please. They are rules that shift when the US says so. Washington does not do international law anymore.

Sherman is the Deputy Secretary of State since April 2021. (She is a foreign policy 'specialist' that comes out of the Harvard system. The same Harvard that was largely created with money made by the eastern (Boston-New York) blue-bloods during the evil opium trade that kept the Chinese subjugated. Britain had fought two wars in favour of the opium trade in the 19th Century, crushing Chinese efforts to halt its importation, largely from India.)

  • In the video Alexander Mercouris dissects the US State Department 'Official Read Out' of what it claims happened at the recent meeting in Tianjin.  Mercouris has studied both the Chinese and US documents. They don't always jive.

As it turns out Wendy Sherman says she was in talks with Foreign Minister Wang Yi.  (Yi has been the foreign minister since March 2013.)

  • According to Mercouris the Chinese had Sherman have diplomatic talks with a lower level foreign policy representative. In the US version of the Readout it claimed that Sherman met with Wang Li. The Chinese know the US is not interested in real dialogue. The US-NATO want control and domination. So China knows there were not really any serious proposals on the table for negotiation. Moscow maintains the US-NATO war machine is 'agreement averse'. 

The US State Department sent out a news release saying that Sherman 'met' Wang Li. She didn't actually negotiate with him. Wang Yi knows he'd be wasting his time. As Wang Yi aptly put it, "If the United States has not got the knack of how to get along with other countries on an equal footing by now, then it is our responsibility, together with the international community, to give the US the missed class."

  • The US is trying to convince the rest of the world that Washington-Brussels is still in the game. But the game is changing.

  • So does the US-NATO really think they can win a war against China, Russia, Iran and more? After a string of debacles in Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, Yugoslavia, Libya, Iraq, and Afghanistan does Wall Street and the military industrial complex think they can pull off a miracle and beat Beijing and Moscow?
  • It's supreme ignorance, arrogance, incompetence, and spiritual death. The US is a violent and broken culture. Just look at most of the movies playing in US theaters. Dark, dirty, violent and lifeless. A picture with no hope, joy, beauty or love. 
  • In the end Mercouris asks if the US or China are bluffing about war. You decide for yourself.

Bruce

Monday, August 02, 2021

Shut down the bio-war operations

 

Demand an Immediate Global Ban on Gain-of-Function ‘Biomedical’ 
and ‘Biodefense’ Research!
 

PETITION

By Organic Consumers Association

I call on the U.S. and all world governments to stop funding and to immediately shut down all Gain of Function research, including the genetic engineering of viruses.

A growing number of scientists and experts now believe that COVID-19 originated in a lab, likely in Wuhan, China, as the result of gain-of-function experiments.

Scientists have been conducting gain-of-function research for decades, despite warnings about the risks, and questions about the benefits.

In July, 2014, 327 international scientists signed a consensus statement  calling for a moratorium on gain-of-function research, or what the group called “Potential Pandemic Pathogens.”

Citing biolab safety lapses, the Cambridge Working Group wrote:

“For any experiment, the expected net benefits should outweigh the risks. Experiments involving the creation of potential pandemic pathogens should be curtailed until there has been a quantitative, objective and credible assessment of the risks, potential benefits, and opportunities for risk mitigation, as well as comparison against safer experimental approaches.”

On the advice of scientists, gain-of-function research was shut down in 2014. Unfortunately, funding resumed in 2017. It’s time to shut it down again, permanently.

Taking a virus and engineering it to be as infectious and transmissible as possible to humans serves no reasonable purpose, certainly non commensurate with the potential risks.

Conducting these experiments in light of hundreds of reports of safety violations, accidents and near-misses—as disclosed in a 2015 investigation by USA Today—is the very definition of insanity.

Scientists Marc Lipsitch and Alison P. Galvania, both signers of the Cambridge consensus statement argued in 2014 that gain-of-function research violates the Nuremberg Code of ethics. In a paper they co-authored they wrote:

“The Nuremberg Code, a seminal statement of clinical research ethics, mandates that experiments that pose a risk to human life should be undertaken only if they provide humanitarian benefits that sufficiently offset the risks and if these benefits are unachievable by safer means.”

The COVID-19 global pandemic has ravaged human lives and brought global economies to the brink of collapse.

But what’s perhaps more devastating than the pandemic itself, is the knowledge that this virus was knowingly engineered in a lab by scientists for no other reason than that they could—because the technology, and the funding, were readily available.

It’s time to recognize that there is no benefit worth the existential threat posed by this reckless, and pointless, gain-of-function research.

It’s time to direct our financial and human resources to solving threats like global warming, instead of creating disasters for which no good solutions exist. 

Sign here

Should we trust the FBI?

 


Krystal and Saagar go over the evidence confirming that the FBI completely set up the Michigan Gov. Whitmer (Democrat) kidnapping plot. 

By now we should understand that the FBI is a rogue outfit?  

Was this caper an effort to ensure that Joe Biden won Michigan last November?

Sunday, August 01, 2021

Sunday song