Space week report with photos & links

 

Darth Vader made a personal appearance at Bath Iron Works in Maine on last day of Keep Space 4 Peace Week....

Vigil in the English rain at US Air Force base Croughton near Oxford. The base is a major space warfare communications relay outpost. (They call if an RAF base but it is totally controlled by the US.)

 

Art Laffin (Dorothy Day Catholic Worker House) held a vigil in front of the White House in Washington and at the Pentagon during space week.

Merrimack Valley People for Peace at Raytheon space technology factory in Andover, Massachusetts

Protest on side of busy highway in Maryland just next to NSA HQ where they spy on the world. Same with next photo as well.

Reject Raytheon hits the streets of Asheville, North Carolina to say Keep Space for Peace. Raytheon is building an aircraft engine factory that the group has been opposing for the past year or so. Same with next photo.

Protest at Bath Iron Works in Maine during another Aegis destroyer 'christening' ceremony at the shipyard. The sign indicates that the 'missile defense interceptors' onboard these warships have proven to be effective as anti-satellite weapons (ASATS) during a 2008 test from an Aegis destroyer made at the shipyard. Called 'Operation Burnt Frost' the Navy fired the interceptor and knocked an aging US military satellite out of orbit.

Lisa Savage from Maine Natural Guard makes the deadly connections between climate crisis and the Pentagon's enormous carbon bootprint. See the full protest rally video of speakers here

Maine Artist Russell Wray reminds us that the Navy's sonar is known to be a regular killer of sea mammals. Russell makes beautiful wooden sculptures of whales and dolphins.

The Global Network's Space Alert! newspaper came out just in time for Keep Space for Peace Week. If you'd like to get one/or more copies just let us know and we'll mail it to you.

 

 

 

A space 4 peace key chain arrived during the week from death row inmate and artist James P. Anderson at San Quentin prison in California.

We did five Zoom webinars and a podcast during space week. See below for info on them and links to most of them.

• Podcast interview with Christian Sorensen (Air Force veteran and researcher on the military industrial complex). Christian is now on the Global Network's Advisory board. See podcast here
• October 2 BIW 'christening' rally video here
• October 2  Zoom webinar by Oxfordshire (UK) peace campaign here
• October 3  GN Zoom webinar called 'Linking Militarized Space and Climate Crisis - Latest news from US & Europe' here
• October 6 Zoom organized by Centre for Aviation and Space Laws on Kolkata, India. Workshop on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space with several Global Network speakers. Organized by new GN Advisory Board member Dr. Sandeepa Bhat here

Finally mainstream media admits the truth about Ukraine

 

 

Big western 'democracy' nations have been training the Nazi's in Ukraine.

The mainstream corporate media has finally admitted that the US, European Union members states, and Canada have been training Nazi-saluting fascists to fight Russian speaking citizens in Ukraine whose only crime is they live near the Russian border and speak Russian.

This is state-sponsored terrorism.

The Ottawa Citizen newspaper in Canada reports on new study done by American University. This is what many of us have been saying since the 2014 US orchestrated coup d'état in Kiev where Nazis were installed into prominent high level positions in the new government.

That government began waging war on the Donbass region of Ukraine - on the east side of the country.

If you'd like to see Obama's training program of the Nazi's in Ukraine by Army Special Forces from Fort Carson, Colorado click here

Space activism flashback: Opposition to 1997 Cassini plutonium launch news conference

 

This video covers a news conference held in 1997 at the National Press Club in Washington opposing the launch of the Cassini space probe and was covered by CSPAN on cable TV. The news conference was organized by the Florida Coalition for Peace & Justice where I worked for 15 years.  The Florida Coalition was one of the founding members of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space in 1992.

Our anti-Cassini campaign lasted for three years and it became a rousing international effort.  Alan Kohn (one of the speakers in the news conference and former head of NASA's emergency preparedness operation) told us after the launch of Cassini that a friend of his working in the White House informed him that they received more communications opposing the Cassini launch than any other issue in the history of the White House. 

Groups in England, Germany, Australia and from throughout the US sent cards, letters, emails and faxes to then President Clinton calling for the halt of plans to launch the deadly mission.  One of my favorite stories at the time was about citizens from Tasmania, Australia who set up a fax machine one Saturday in front of their capital building and sent 1,000 faxes to the White House opposing the launch.

 

Well over 1,000 citizens marched to the front gates of the Cape Canaveral space launch base in 1997 just days before NASA launched the Cassini space probe that carried 72 pounds of deadly plutonium-238. Many climbed over the fence in an effort to sit on the rocket launch pad and were arrested.

Another favorite story was the restaurant waitress from Detroit that saw a small story in her local paper and called the office to ask how she could help.

Also speaking in the news conference is world renowned physicist Dr. Michio Kaku and journalism professor Karl Grossman, one of the founding members of the Global Network.

You can see an example of the news coverage we got at the time from the Orlando Sentinel newspaper here. My favorite line in the article was:

Even NASA is impressed.

"It's getting more publicity, and they're very organized," NASA spokesman George Diller said.

Now-a-days it is harder to get this kind of media coverage of our work on space issues due to corporate consolidation and their control over the media. 

That is why it is good to reflect on our efforts over the years.

Bruce

A class war on the people....

Professor of Pedagogy Maria Nikolakaki (Greece) connects all of the dots on how the world has been changed by the deliberate design of global forces. 

She says we are moving from an old world that is dying to a new corporate dominated world that is emerging.

An update from Snowden

 

In part 1 of Russell Brand's discussion with Edward Snowden he explains the methods used to advance the most dangerous conspiracies and threats to our freedoms. 

Prices explode in the gas battle

The art of war

By Manlio Dinucci (il manifesto, Italy)

The gas price explosion hits Europe at the critical moment of economic recovery after the disastrous effects of the 2020 lockdowns. The explanation, claiming it is due to the growth in demand and decline in supply, hides a much more complex scenario, where financial, political and strategic factors play a primary role.

The United States accused Russia of using gas as a geopolitical weapon, reducing supplies to force European governments to enter into long-term contracts with Gazprom, as Germany did with the North Stream pipeline. Washington pressed on the European Union to free [itself] from "energy dependence" on Russia [rather than] making itself a "hostage" to Moscow.

Basically, as a result of this pressure long-term contracts with Gazprom for Russian gas import have dropped in the EU, while purchasing on the spot (or cash) markets have increased, where gas lots are purchased and paid for in cash throughout the day. The difference is substantial: while you buy gas with a  long-term contract at a low price, which is kept constant over the years, in the spot markets you buy gas at volatile prices, generally much higher, and determined by financial speculations in the Commodities Exchange.

Huge quantities of mineral and agricultural raw materials are purchased with future contracts, which provide for delivery on a set date and at the price agreed upon at the time of signing. The strategy of powerful financial groups, that speculate on these contracts, is to raise the prices of raw materials (including water) to resell futures at a higher price.

To get an idea of the speculative transaction volume of the Commodities Exchange, just think that only the US Chicago Mercantile Exchange with offices in Chicago and New York carries out 3 billion contracts a year for one million-billion-dollar amount (over ten times the value of world GDP, or the real value produced in a year in the world). In 2020, while the world economy was largely paralyzed, the number of futures and similar contracts reached a record level of 46 billion, 35% more than in 2019, causing a rise in commodity prices.

At the same time, the US is pressing the EU to replace  Russian gas with US gas. In 2018, in the joint declaration between President Trump and European Commission President Juncker, the European Union pledged to "import more liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the United States to diversify its energy supply". The gas that arrives in the EU is extracted in the US from oil shale with a fracturing technique that causes very serious environmental damage; gas is then liquefied by cooling it to 161 ° C and transported by gas carriers to around 30 terminals in Europe, where it is gasified again. US gas, despite enjoying State benefits, remains much more expensive than Russian gas and, in order to enter the market, it needs gas general price to remain at high levels.

Add to all this the "gas pipeline war", a war that Italy paid dearly when in 2014 the Obama Administration, in agreement with the European Commission, blocked South Stream, the gas pipeline at an advanced stage of construction which would have brought low-cost Russian gas directly to Italy via the Black Sea under the agreement between Italian Eni and Gazprom. Russia has circumvented the obstacle with the Turk Stream which across the Black Sea carries Russian gas to the European border of Turkey, continuing to supply Serbia and Croatia in the Balkans. On  September 29 in Budapest, Gazprom and the MVM Energy Company signed two long-term contracts for the supply of low-cost Russian gas to Hungary for 15 years. A defeat for Washington, weighed down by the fact that Hungary and Croatia are part of NATO.

Washington will certainly respond not only economically, but politically and strategically. We pay the bill with the increase of gas invoices, and the cost of living in general. 

Mind-bending warfare (or F-ing with your head)

 

 

Behind NATO’s ‘cognitive warfare’: ‘Battle for your brain’ 

waged by Western militaries

 

By Ben Norton (The Grayzone)

NATO is developing new forms of warfare to wage a “battle for the brain,” as the military alliance put it.

The US-led NATO military cartel has tested novel modes of hybrid warfare against its self-declared adversaries, including economic warfare, cyber warfare, information warfare, and psychological warfare.

Now, NATO is spinning out an entirely new kind of combat it has branded cognitive warfare. Described as the “weaponization of brain sciences,” the new method involves “hacking the individual” by exploiting “the vulnerabilities of the human brain” in order to implement more sophisticated “social engineering.”

Until recently, NATO had divided war into five different operational domains: air, land, sea, space, and cyber. But with its development of cognitive warfare strategies, the military alliance is discussing a new, sixth level: the “human domain.”

A 2020 NATO-sponsored study of this new form of warfare clearly explained, “While actions taken in the five domains are executed in order to have an effect on the human domain, cognitive warfare’s objective is to make everyone a weapon.”

“The brain will be the battlefield of the 21st century,” the report stressed. “Humans are the contested domain,” and “future conflicts will likely occur amongst the people digitally first and physically thereafter in proximity to hubs of political and economic power.”

While the NATO-backed study insisted that much of its research on cognitive warfare is designed for defensive purposes, it also conceded that the military alliance is developing offensive tactics, stating, “The human is very often the main vulnerability and it should be acknowledged in order to protect NATO’s human capital but also to be able to benefit from our adversaries’s vulnerabilities.”

 

In a chilling disclosure, the report said explicitly that “the objective of Cognitive Warfare is to harm societies and not only the military.”

With entire civilian populations in NATO’s crosshairs, the report emphasized that Western militaries must work more closely with academia to weaponize social sciences and human sciences and help the alliance develop its cognitive warfare capacities.

The study described this phenomenon as “the militarization of brain science.” But it appears clear that NATO’s development of cognitive warfare will lead to a militarization of all aspects of human society and psychology, from the most intimate of social relationships to the mind itself.

Such all-encompassing militarization of society is reflected in the paranoid tone of the NATO-sponsored report, which warned of “an embedded fifth column, where everyone, unbeknownst to him or her, is behaving according to the plans of one of our competitors.” The study makes it clear that those “competitors” purportedly exploiting the consciousness of Western dissidents are China and Russia.

In other words, this document shows that figures in the NATO military cartel increasingly see their own domestic population as a threat, fearing civilians to be potential Chinese or Russian sleeper cells, dastardly “fifth columns” that challenge the stability of “Western liberal democracies.”

NATO’s development of novel forms of hybrid warfare come at a time when member states’ military campaigns are targeting domestic populations on an unprecedented level.

The Ottawa Times reported this September that the Canadian military’s Joint Operations Command took advantage of the Covid-19 pandemic to wage an information war against its own domestic population, testing out propaganda tactics on Canadian civilians.

Internal NATO-sponsored reports suggest that this disclosure is just scratching the surface of a wave of new unconventional warfare techniques that Western militaries are employing around the world.

Read the rest of this article here

Independent journalists - who is funding 'Rappler'?

 

Maria Ressa - awarded the Nobel Peace Prize - is promoted by the Western media as a heroic, brave, independent journalist standing up to the government of the Philippines and its president, Rodrigo Duterte.

What is left buried in articles about Maria Ressa is that she’s actually a US citizen funded by the US through the National Endowment for Democracy and her media platform - Rappler - is a purveyor of anti-China rhetoric serving US interests at the cost of the Philippines’ own best interests.

The irony of Ressa winning a “peace prize” is Rappler’s propaganda aims at stirring up conflict - not avoiding it. 

The Nobel Peace Prize has really gone astray. They've given the prize to the likes of:

• Teddy Roosevelt (1906)
• Woodrow Wilson (1919)
• Henry Kissinger (1973)
• Barack Obama (2009)

Warmongers for sure.

Certainly some good people have been awarded the peace prize over the years but there can be no doubt that the 'prize' is used to boost the interests of the western (US-NATO) economic and foreign policy program. 

The US-NATO agenda in the Asia-Pacific is to send the message to all governments in the region - 'cut your economic ties with China or you will suffer. Do as we say and you will be rewarded - you might even win the Nobel Peace Prize'. 

Do you trust big pharma?

 

Money talks in Washington.

The lower drug costs bill is wildly popular with the public but opposed by corporations, who are buying votes to stop it. 

We tracked the timeline of corporate money to Reps. Scott Peters, Kurt Schrader, & Kathleen Rice, who are trying to weaken the bill. It is utterly damning.

Sunday song