Tell me, who are the real warmongers?

 

 

 

Let's be honest here....

 

What most people in the west know about Vladimir Putin and Russia they learned from the corporate media over the last 25 years. 

 

The same media that pushed 'shock and awe' in Iraq in 2003.

Time to find out for yourself before we all crash and burn.

A rally in front of the US Embassy in Kiev

 

Photos from Anti-Empire

Protest in Ukraine for peace that calls out US's warmongering.

Please note that this event was not reported in US media. No surprise of course.

US-NATO wish to wage war against Russia down to the last Ukrainian soldier.

This US-NATO fomenting war in Ukraine is pure evil.

My hope is that this attitude pictured above in Ukraine is growing quickly across their nation - and most importantly by Zelensky in Kiev.

Bruce  

Ukraine-Russia Sitrep

 

 

Official news appeared testifying that Ukraine will soon attack civilians in Donbas by heavy weapons : diplomatic and administrative staffers from foreign Embassies and Consulates located in Ukraine have been instructed to go back home. Such countries are: Canada,  Latvia, Finland,  Estonia, Japan, New Zealand, the USA, the UK, the Netherlands, plus Russia, etc. Usually, diplomatic personnel are recalled before the war is imminent.

The root cause of a potential war in Europe is Ukraine, openly backed by the USA, the UK, the EU and NATO  who are supplying ultra-nazi regime in Kiev with heavy weapons and advisers, intending to regain Donbas, but not Russia.

Ukraine has massed 150,000 troops near Donbas. Its General Staff has already approved the Ukrainian Armed Forces' invasion into Donbas.

Kind regards,
Dr. Vladimir Kozin
 
Member, Russian Academy of Military Sciences
Member, Russian Academy of Natural Sciences 

No U.S. bases in Slovakia

 

Thousands rallied in the Slovakian capital against a military defense treaty between Bratislava and Washington, which would enable the US military to use two Slovakian air force bases for 10 years, as well as to provide money to maintain them.  

 

Who is running the show at the White House?

 

 

Biden went on to get testy with his interviewer, shooting down a question about the definition of “temporary” inflation by suggesting host Lester Holt was “being a wise guy with me a little bit,” but adding that he understands that “that’s your job.”

Who runs Washington? I believe it is the CIA and the top chiefs of the corporate oligarchy - those who serve on the inter-locking boards of directorates. Been that way for many years. Abraham Lincoln complained about too much corporate power. It is likely a key reason he got killed in 1865.

Mr. Big is the resource extractionists, pharma, MIC, banksters, big tech, big ag, aerospace, corporate media and the like.

All the presidents are selected to serve a particular function. Divide the people against one another, read the script from a teleprompter, never shirk when given 'war orders', and rob the public blind. Wear a flag pin, a WW II bomber jacket when visiting the troops and always salute when boarding Air Force One.

That is basically the job description. Leave the rest to Mr. Big.

Do a good enough job and you'll possibly get a second term.

Welcome to America, the land of the free and home of the brave.

Bruce

AUKUS caucus: Republicans and Democrats find a topic they agree on

 

By Farrah Tomazin

Washington: Members of the US Congress are considering creating an “AUKUS caucus” to sharpen Washington’s focus on the strategic military pact announced last year to help Australia acquire nuclear-powered submarines.

As US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken prepares to travel to Australia this week, Democrats and Republicans are in talks to create a special group on Capitol Hill solely dedicated to AUKUS – the three-way alliance between America, Britain and Australia designed to deter China in the Indo-Pacific.

In an interview with The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald, Democratic congressman Joe Courtney – a co-chair of the bipartisan Friends of Australia Caucus – said he believed AUKUS would be one of the most important strategic moves the US undertakes in decades.

While it was going to take time for Americans to grasp its significance, he said there was high interest across both sides of politics in Washington to ensure that “support is there on the Hill to make sure it succeeds”.

“We were actually talking about forming a new caucus called the AUKUS caucus,” said Courtney, who is also the chairman of the Seapower and Projection Forces subcommittee in the House of Representatives.

“We’ve currently got separate caucuses that members belong to, but it makes sense to have a group of us focused on this particular arrangement.”

The AUKUS agreement was announced in September last year, controversially ending the contract given to France in 2016 to build 12 diesel electric-powered submarines to replace Australia’s Collins submarine fleet.

Instead, all three countries involved will work together to build a class of nuclear-propelled submarines and associated technologies, starting with an 18-month study to work out what is achievable.

In announcing the policy in September, US President Joe Biden spoke of the need to maintain a “free and open Indo-Pacific”. China and Russia, meanwhile, condemned the alliance in a statement over the weekend, saying it increased the danger of an arms race in the region.

The Friends of Australia Caucus that Courtney co-chairs – which also includes, among others, Republican representatives Mike Gallagher and Roy Blunt, and Democrat representative Dick Durbin – was launched in 2017 to bolster the alliance between the US and Australia, and is one of dozens of bipartisan caucus groups in Washington.

 

While much of the focus of AUKUS had been centred on the development of submarines, Courtney said, the Biden administration had made it clear it was part of a much larger strategy and would also result in a broader suite of technologies.

Therefore, he said, there was good reason to create a broader bipartisan group with links to other countries that could benefit, such as New Zealand and Japan. If created, the “AUKUS caucus” would be yet another sign of the growing importance of Australia’s alliance with America.

Another potent example emerged last month when a Washington think-tank, the Centre for International and Strategic Studies, launched an inaugural Australia Chair position to sharpen its focus on US-Australia relations.

Former US State Department policy planning staffer Dr Charles Edel, who was also an associate professor of Strategy and Policy at the US Naval War College was appointed to the role. He said that while the alliance was mostly positive, there was “some major work ahead of us if it’s going to achieve lift”.

“That’s especially true when it comes to sharing sensitive technology, accelerating force posture initiatives, building the necessary industrial and logistical capabilities to support these moves, and figuring out how to secure supply chains on everything from energy to critical minerals,” he said.

Edel added that “we are also now seeing something of a role-reversal between the US and Australia”. “It used to be that the US wanted Australia to be more involved in their own region. Now, we’re seeing Australia – after mounting pressure by China in multiple domains over the past half-decade – doubling-down on the United States.”

US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken travels to Australia, Fiji and Hawaii this week for talks with America’s Indo-Pacific allies.

In Canberra, he will meet with Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Foreign Minister Marise Payne. Blinken will also attend the fourth foreign ministers meeting of the so-called “Quad” alliance, which also takes in the US, India and Japan.

The meeting is the first Quad get together since Biden hosted leaders at the White House in September. In a briefing to reporters, Daniel Kritenbrink, who is US assistant secretary of state of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, said “the key message that the secretary will take with him on this trip is that our partnerships deliver”.

“In this era of intense competition, changing strategic landscapes, economic coercion and, of course, this very difficult global pandemic, there is no greater partnership than what we are trying to accomplish through the Quad with Australia, India and Japan,” he said. 

History of Congo: Forbidden to be Independent

 

By Eduardo Galeano (Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone)

In the middle of 1960, the Congo, until then a Belgian colony, celebrated its independence.

Speech followed speech, and the audience was melting from heat and boredom. Belgium, a strict teacher, warned of the dangers of freedom. The Congo, grateful pupil, promised to behave.

Then Patrice Lumumba's speech exploded and ruined the party. He spoke out against the "empire of silence," and through him the silenced found a voice. He paid homage to the fathers of independence, the murdered, the imprisoned, the tortured, and the exiled, who throughout so many years had fought "to bring to an end the humiliating slavery imposed on us by force."

His words, received in icy silence by the Europeans present, were interrupted eight times by ovations from the Africans in the audience.

That speech sealed his fate.

Lumumba, recently released from prison, had won the first free election in the Congo's history, and headed up its first government. But the Belgian press called him a "delirious and illiterate thief." In Belgian intelligence cables, Lumumba was dubbed Satan. The director of the CIA, Alan Dulles, sent instruction to his agents: "The removal of Lumumba must be an urgent objective."

Dwight Eisenhower, president of the US, told British Foreign Secretary Lord Alec Douglas-Home: "I wish Lumumba would fall into a river full of crocodiles."

Lord Douglas-Home took a week to replay: "Now is the time to get rid of Lumumba."

And the minister for African affairs of the Belgian government, Harold d'Aspremont Lynden, offered his own opinion: "Lumumba must be eliminated once and for all."

 

At the beginning of 1961, a firing squad of eight soldiers and nine policemen commanded by Belgian officers shot him along with his two closed collaborators.

Fearing a popular uprising, the Belgian government and its Congolese tools, Mobuto Sese Seko and Moise Tshombe, covered up the crime.

Two weeks later, the new president of the US, John Kennedy, announced: "We will not allow Lumumba to return to the government."

And Lumumba, who by then had already been killed and dissolved in a barrel of sulfuric acid, did not return to the government.

Resurrection of Lumumba

The assassination of Lumumba was an act of colonial reconquest.

The Congo's mineral wealth, copper, cobalt, diamonds, gold, uranium, oil, gave the orders from the depths of the earth.

The sentence was carried out with the complicity of the United Nations. Lumumba had a good reason to mistrust the officers of troops that claimed to be international, and he denounced "the racism and paternalism of people whose only vision of Africa is lion hunting, slave markets, and colonial conquest. Naturally the would understand the Belgians. They have the same history, the same lust for our wealth."

Mobutu, the free-world hero who trapped Lumumba and had him crushed, held power for more than 30 years. The international financial institutions recognized his merits and showered him with generosity. [US President George H. W. Bush called Mobutu 'family'.] By the time he died, his personal fortune was nearly equal to the foreign debt of the country to which he had devoted his best energies.

But Lumumba had announced: "History will one day have its say. It will  not be the history taught in the United Nations, Washington, Paris or Brussels. Africa will write its own history."

The tree where Lumumba was executed still stands in the wood of Mwadingusha. Riddled with bullets. Like him.

SpaceX satellites falling out of orbit after solar storm

 

Up to 40 of the 49 SpaceX small satellites launched last week have either reentered the atmosphere and burned up, or are on the verge of doing so. 

SpaceX says that the deorbiting satellites "pose zero collision risk with other satellites and by design demise upon atmospheric reentry [burn up] — meaning no orbital debris is created and no satellite parts hit the ground." 

Because these satellites (no matter their size) are made with high-tech components, when they burn up they create a chemical stew that falls to Earth and is spread by the winds. The toxic elements get into the water, our air and our bodies.

Astronomers are distressed that these mega satellite constellations will ruin nighttime observations from Earth. The International Astronomical Union is forming a new center for the protection of dark skies.

Jobs issue update from Kodiak, Alaska

 

I asked my long-time contact in Kodiak, Alaska to give me an update on the number of jobs being created there since the establishment of the spaceport 25 years ago. Kodiak is a pristine environment known for bears, eagles and salmon. 

Maine legislative sponsor of the bill to create 'Maine Space Authority' Sen. Daughtry (D-Brunswick) testified on February 8 at the state capital saying, 'Millions & millions & millions of $$$ into states who have done this. 3.5 - 4.5 thousand jobs potentially, maybe $1.5 billion impact on our state. And will improve our infrastructure issues around internet'.

Bruce

 

Well, the Kodiak launch site has produced very few full-time jobs in over 20 years, other than janitorial person and site watchman/security.  In between launches there is hardly any activity out at the site.  

From the beginning, the launch site was promoted as being economically good for Kodiak but since the Alaska Aerospace Corporation (AAC) is a state agency located on state land, it does not pay any taxes whatsoever to the Kodiak Borough. There are a handful of businesses who make money sporadically such as hotels, rental car company, restaurants, etc. when people come to town for a launch but otherwise the launch site has done nothing to help local residents as a whole, such as keeping property taxes lower, etc.  On the other hand, residents lost access to areas of prime state land and having to look at more and more fenced off areas with every new launch pad.

 

 

 

What started out as 1 launch tower/pad has now turned into 8 launch pads. The AAC leases out launch pads to the launch companies (Astra Space, ABL Space) and also sub-leases a section of state land to ‘Space X‘ for its radar tracking system, but Kodiak Borough gets no profits from any of that.  The state of Alaska has not seen any profits from launch operations either in over 20 years.

In the beginning the state put up a large amount of money to help build the launch site and the Alaska Aerospace Corporation was supposed to pay the state back in dividends once the site was up and running but the state has not seen one dime back in dividends in over 20 years.  The state finally stopped giving funding to the launch site some years ago because it was not profitable and state was not getting any returns for its investment.

If it were not for U.S. Government funding the Kodiak launch site could not stay afloat.  For FY 2022 Congress approved a total of $11 million funding to the Alaska Aerospace Corporation (AAC) and then the AAC applied for a government ‘stimulus’ grant for another $2 million.  I don’t see how the state of Maine can possibly afford to support launch sites unless the U.S. Government (Air Force, MDA, Space Force, etc.) fully funds them.

The supposedly ‘private’ launch companies that have launched from Kodiak all receive federal/military funding, including Astra Space.  I read a news article recently that said Astra Space is looking to build more launch pads in other areas, so perhaps it is looking in your direction(?). 

By the way, Astra Space has another launch scheduled from Kodiak between Feb 20-27.  Then, ABL Space is scheduling its first launch from Kodiak the end of March.  It was supposed to launch in January but the FCC did not approve its license because of a noncompliance with radio frequency, so ABL submitted a new application and is waiting for FCC approval.  These launch companies think they can come to Kodiak and do whatever the heck they want and no one will be the wiser.

Hopefully your state doesn’t fall for all the ‘good for the economy’ ‘BS’ talk like Alaska did 25 years ago.

Take Care—

Carolyn Heitman

Kodiak 

Canada: Truckers respond as police tighten their grip on protests

 

These working class people are holding remarkably peaceful protests in Ottawa, Canada - a nation that claims to be a democracy.

Their request is a national public discussion about vaccine mandates. In various countries around the world the governments are lifting mandates and forced isolation.

The truckers (I heard that a high percentage of them have been vaccinated) are primarily upset by the imposition of the QR code mandates that they see as violation of civil liberties.

These remarkable trucker and farmer protests are inspiring people all over the world. 

The national government in Canada is now appearing to be forming a military-style plan to round up  and arrest the truckers in order to break-up their movement. Instead of sitting down and talking with them - and forming policies that work for everyone - the federal government instead seems to be heading toward a hard-fisted approach. It reminds me of when Obama sent in the cops all over America to break up the Occupy movement in late 2011 and early 2012.

No matter where you stand on vaccines (I believe it is a personal medical issue) I must say that I am impressed with the love, the caring, the sharing, and the centered-ness I've witnessed while watching many of these videos from Ottawa and around Canada where the support for these working people is growing by the day. 

That is what the Canadian government fears most - the public increasingly supports these non-violent, determined and respectful truckers/farmers and their families.

From what I've seen these folks don't appear to be goons, criminals, terrorists or any of the other names they have been called by the current government and media.  They might be conservatives but that doesn't change the fact they have something important to say to all of us about growing surveillance society. I wish more people on the 'left' were talking about this.

I wish them all the best in the days ahead. 

Bruce 

PS: The ruling government in Canada and their police agents are sending in 'agent provocateurs' (as often happens at protests in the US, I've experience them myself) in order to create incidents that will then discredit the protests. The truckers are not taking the bait.

'Robotic Information Regime' aimed at all of us

 

Latest video made by Will Griffin (Global Network board member and Iraq & Afghanistan war veteran).
 
He reviews the history of US surveillance with the help of writings from Alfred McCoy. (McCoy is Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He specializes in the history of the Philippines, foreign policy of the United States, European colonisation of Southeast Asia, illegal drug trade, and CIA covert operations.)
 
Will then takes us to the present moment where military intelligence and surveillance has been turned into a wide-ranging surveillance program aimed at the global public.
 
Today it is called the 'Robotic Information Regime' which includes the Pentagon's Cyber Command.
 
The intelligence collection industry is a threat to all of us around the world. This information collection cadre is made up of 854,000 civil servants, military personnel and private contractors with top-secret security clearances.

 

Shadows of the American Century
 

Historian Alfred McCoy has tracked the origins and development of the current global surveillance apparatus and provides us a framework to help us understand this complex set of state institutions and corporate monopolies. In his book, In the Shadows of the American Century, he tracks the origin point and development of what he calls ‘information regimes’.
 
Starting about 150 years ago, new technologies arose which provided the ruling classes of the US the methods to begin surveilling, tracking, spying and collecting information in a highly organized way. Since then, McCoy states that there have been 3 information regimes: the manual information regime, the computerized information regime, and the robotic information regime.

 

The citizens are now the enemy
 
With two major interventions raging, in Iraq and Afghanistan, Washington accelerated its development of electronic surveillance, biometric identification, and unmanned aerial vehicles. These new technologies and methods are now creating a new, third robotic information regime. Some have argued that a “fourth branch” of government has been created, the Intelligence Branch.
 
The intelligence apparatus has massively grown in the past one hundred years, from 1917, when Van Deman first established the Military Intelligence Division with 1,400 personnel to today where nearly one million employees carry top secret security clearances. By 2010, over 854,000 employees across the country held top secret security clearances.

 
Read the full text from Will's video here

Find all Global Network social media links here

Mickey or mouse?

 

 

Biden just nominated a former Trump judicial nominee, GOP donor, and corporate lawyer as a federal judge. One more log on the fire to ensure Mr. Big runs everything.

Trump and Biden are corporate hacks, entertainers and bag men. They get paid and promoted for doing the work of ensuring the public are distracted and divided - all without conscience.

How any thinking person can fall for these games is way beyond me.

We are on the path into total totalitarianism. 

Believing that either of these two political parties can offer us anything is dysfunctional thinking.

 

The vast majority of Americans do not vote for a good reason. The fact that legions of people are now registering to vote as an 'Independent' is a good and telling sign.

But don't sit back thinking that some magic-bullet politician is going to save us. 

The only way we get out of this deal alive is if everyone stands up - shows leadership - because at the national level we have no real leaders. Sen. Bernie Sanders refuses to call for peace/respect toward Russia. Those Washington 'democracy' windows are slammed shut. Same for the 'squad' in the Congress. They are afraid to speak out. 

To understand where Washington's elite are heading it helps to look at sports in the DC area. The former Washington 'Redskins' changed their racist name (after many years refusing to do so) to the Washington Football Club. But that didn't last long - they've now changed to the 'Washington Commanders'. Their logo looks like it came from the Pentagon. 

To me this is a sign that the American people are being steadily brainwashed using every available mechanism to accept (and cheer for) continued military global aggression on behalf of corporate oligarchs. At the Pentagon (since the 2003 invasion of Iraq) they say that America's role in the world economy is 'security export'.

 

So we have to do the hard political work and I hope everyone will find some way that they can use their life skills to further this struggle for survival - we do it for the future generations.

Giving up (while tempting at times) is not an serious option.

Bruce

Sitrep: From Maria’s office

 

Opinion by Maria Zakharova (Russian Foreign Ministry's Spokesperson)
 

Josep Borrell’s [Spanish Argentine politician serving as High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy] recent deliberations (https://eeas.europa.eu/headquarters/headquarters-homepage/110293/tensions-rising-our-eastern-borders-unity-remains-our-strength_en) about the future of Europe, published in his blog on January 30 have confirmed my long-time suspicion that his blog has a life of its own and that the EU’s foreign policy chief may not even know what exotic texts are posted there on his behalf.

The new entry plays on the Western media’s psychedelic phobias about “Russia’s aggressive actions against Ukraine.”

However, time goes on, yet Russia has not invaded Ukraine. The plan of the United States and its British allies, who have ordered this tune, is clear: invent the “Russian threat,” announce their resolve to fight it heroically, stage a provocation and eventually declare victory over Russia.

Their goals are to divert public attention from domestic political crises, invest billions of dollars into arming “fragile democracies” and use the situation to reinforce their “invincible” image, which has been frayed by the debacle in Afghanistan.

As for the European Union, we never doubted its biased stand on the conflict in Ukraine. The EU is trying to protect its sphere of influence, which it outlined back in 2013 when Brussels was unscrupulously pushing for an association agreement with Ukraine despite the arguments of the legitimate government in Kiev.

Ultimately, Ukraine has not been admitted to the EU club and is unlikely to be admitted any time soon. In fact, the ongoing Western performance has killed any hope that Ukraine can be admitted to a respectable association: who needs a country that could be “invaded by Russia any day?” NATO has done Ukraine a very bad turn indeed.

President Vladimir Zelensky has announced that the “patriot games” waged over the past few months cost Ukraine $12.5 billion, or 8 percent of Ukraine’s GDP of $155.6 billion.

A new emergency macro-financial assistance (MFA) programme for Ukraine of up to €1.2 billion was ceremoniously announced on January 24. This is almost ten times less than Ukraine has lost from the latest round of anti-Russia hysteria and will only increase Ukraine’s debts. As the EU has admitted, nearly 90 percent of its assistance (€15.1 billion of the €17 billion it has provided since 2014) was issued in the form of loans, which Kiev will have to repay.

As they say, with friends like this, who needs enemies? But then, we have warned more than once that Ukrainians’ interests are the least of Western concerns.

https://t.me/MariaVladimirovnaZakharova/1833

History lesson: Putin warned west about U.S. missile deployments

 

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FRN

2016 St Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF), Vladimir Putin urged international journalists to report genuinely on the impending danger that is a nuclear arms race.

Back in 2007, Putin informed the Western world that Russia will develop its defensive weaponry to counter US advances eastward. This was stated in response to the US 'missile defense' MD system in Europe that was being developed at the time (and previously prohibited in international law.)

In 2002, the United States unilaterally and without consultation with Russia, withdrew from the landmark Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty. President George W. Bush noted that the treaty is “now behind us,” describing the ABM Treaty as a Cold War relic.

Signed in 1972, the ABM Treaty barred both the US and the USSR/Russia from deploying national defenses against long-range ballistic missiles. The treaty was based on the premise that if either superpower constructed a strategic defense, the other would build up its offensive nuclear forces to offset the defense. 

The superpowers would therefore quickly be put on a path toward a never-ending offensive-defensive arms race, as each tried to balance its counterpart’s actions. Until Bush took office, the Treaty was referred to as a “cornerstone of strategic stability” as it facilitated later agreements, reducing U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear arsenals.

The US, assuming that a weakened Russia will never again be in a position to counter US hegemonic power, proceeded to encroach on Russia’s borders through the manipulation of international law and mythical NATO objectives.  

 

Rare TV coverage of a Maine peace protest

 

Lisa Savage represents us well during TV coverage yesterday of our protest against war with Russia. 

Thirty of us gathered in the snow and cold in Topsham, Maine at a busy intersection.

Sunday song