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, January 07, 2023

Out my window

 


It snowed again last night and this morning it is so beautiful outside. Quiet, fresh white snow, the world feels safe to me in these fleeting moments.

I'm having trouble these days. I feel the descending fog of depression come over me as I read the latest threats from the US-NATO against Russia. More weapons from Washington, Paris, London and Berlin on the way to the Nazi-led puppet army. (Denmark, Finland and Poland are also considering arming Kiev forces with some battle tanks.) The constant refrain from the west is that it will be a long war

There is even still talk of the US deploying nuclear weapons in Ukraine. Already the US has them in Turkey, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Italy and soon the UK.

The continual shelling of the Donbass kills more civilians each day.  In recent times the Kiev regime has shelled the largest and most important hospital in Donetsk two days in a row. Schools and playgrounds have been shelled with weapons provided by the west. See more on this story here

The Russians offered a 36-hour ceasefire for the Orthodox Christmas holiday but Zelensky (under orders from Washington I am certain) turned it down. In fact just one minute after the ceasefire was to begin at midnight the Ukrainian army shelled civilian targets again in Donetsk.

I've noted in recent weeks how major US peace groups in the US and Europe have been repeatedly calling for a ceasefire for Xmas. Some of them included these calls with an appeal for funds for their 'work to stop the war'. 

Once Russia declared the holiday ceasefire and the US and Ukraine trashed the proposal I've not seen many (if any at all) angry responses from these same groups calling out the US-NATO for refusing the offer. I might have missed something - let me know if I did.

My point though is sadly many so-called peace groups hit the Russia demonizing mantra repeatedly no matter what Moscow does. This has been happening ever since the US orchestrated coup in Kiev in 2014. When Russia repeatedly offered serious negotiations proposals to prevent this war hardly any mainstream peace groups even made note.

These proposals included mutual security for Russia, Ukraine and Europe. They called for a rollback of NATO expansion, no NATO military operations in Ukraine, the closure of US missile launch bases now deployed in Romania and Poland (a Cuban missile crisis in reverse) and much more.

This whole war could have possibly been prevented had western 'peace groups' fought to make those serious and rational proposals by Moscow a priority. But they didn't because the proposals came from Moscow and most of these groups (whose constituencies at least in the US are predominantly loyal Democrat party members, and key funders of these groups) largely ignored them.

I've seen recent national polls that show that Biden's war on Russia is supported in large percentages by self described liberals. I can damn near guarantee that if Trump was the current president, and waging a war against Russia, most of these liberals would be howling angry and calling for an end to the war.

Political party in the US trumps good sense, rationality and peaceful foreign policies.

So all of this makes me despair for our future.

The US and the EU cannot abide by the coming multi-polar world. They are determined to claw and fight Russia, China, Iran and others in the global south every step of the way.

Will the recent change in the House of Representatives to Republican control change any of this? Will the Repubs stop the flood of weapons and money to Ukraine? See ZeroHedge article on the concessions made by the Repubs to end their Speaker of the House standoff here

We shall see soon enough.

Bruce 

History lesson: Origins of Zelensky - oligarchy wars in Ukraine

 


 

This report is ironic given that, since Ukraine’s war with Russia began [in February 2022], Radio Free Europe along with the rest of the Western media has depicted Zelensky as something equivalent to a reincarnation of Winston Churchill and Mother Teresa, driving a campaign for his nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize and inspiring a flamboyant musical tribute during the 2022 Grammy awards. 

See much more on the history of Zelensky and his oligarch backers here

Friday, January 06, 2023

Prisoner: 'Zelensky is a mutt'

 


 

 "Ukrainian war prisoners: ‘We were left at our positions as fodder’

◽️ According to Nikolay Ponomarenko, the company commander was not with his subordinates on the fore front, but near Slavyansk. The battalion command has never been to the forward positions. According to the prisoner of war, he even does not know his commanders.

◽️ The Ukrainian supreme commander-in-chief has also lost credibility in his army. ‘Zelensky is their puppet. He is good as an actor, but, as a president, he is weird’.

◽️ According to the prisoner of war from the Armed Forces of Ukraine Bogdan Semenchuk, they ‘were left as fodder’. In the military commissariat, he had been told that he would not be sent anywhere during six months, but Semenchuk turned out to be sent to the fore front almost instantly, without any adequate training.

◽️ The prisoner of war urges his compatriots to lay down their arms, and to surrender in order to save their lives."

How could Russia trust the west again?

 


 

Thursday, January 05, 2023

Jill Stein: 'NATO is a disaster....people want diplomacy'

 


 

In this episode of The Source, we talk with activist and former Green Party of the USA presidential candidate Jill Stein about the Russian war in Ukraine

We examine the background to the war and discuss possible solutions. 

Wednesday, January 04, 2023

Aaron Maté guest hosts Jimmy Dore Show

 


 

The usual line on why NATO has to support Ukraine with untold billions of dollars revolves around the freedom-loving people of Ukraine, but hard-line old school cold warrior Oliver North doesn’t bother with that, explaining to a Fox News host that the $110 billion dumped on Ukraine is “money well spent” because it’s helping to debilitate the Russian army while also funneling many of those billions into the pockets of red, white and blue-bleeding American weapons manufacturers. 

Just like St. Ronald Reagan used to do! 

Guest host Aaron Maté and former U.S. Marine and weapons inspector Scott Ritter discuss North’s open shilling for military contractors at the taxpayers’ expense.  

_______________________________________________________________________

It's a good show - highly recommend it.

Bruce 

John LaForge in German jail 4 nuke protest

 


American Activist First to be Jailed in Germany for Protesting U.S. Nuclear Weapons Based There

January 3, 2023 - Amidst heightened nuclear tension between NATO and Russia in Europe, for the first time a U.S. peace activist has been ordered by a German court to serve jail time there for protests against U.S. nuclear weapons stationed at Germany’s Büchel Air Force Base, 80 miles southeast of Cologne. (Order attached) The Koblenz Regional Court notice of August 18, 2022 requires John LaForge to report to JVA Billwerder in Hamburg on January 10, 2023. LaForge will be the first American ever jailed for a nuclear weapons protest in Germany.

The 66-year-old Minnesota native and co-director of Nukewatch, the Wisconsin-based advocacy and action group, was convicted of trespass in Cochem District Court for joining in two “go-in” actions at the German airbase in 2018. One of the actions involved entering the base and climbing atop a bunker that likely housed some of the approximately twenty U.S. B61 thermonuclear gravity bombs stationed there.

Germany’s Regional Court in Koblenz affirmed his conviction and lowered the penalty from €1,500 to €600 ($619) or 50 “daily rates”, which translates to 50 days incarceration. LaForge has refused to pay and has appealed the convictions to Germany’s Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe, the country's highest, which has not yet ruled in the case.

In the appeal, LaForge argues that both the District Court in Cochem and the Regional Court in Koblenz erred by refusing to consider his defense of “crime prevention,” thereby violating his right to present a defense. Both courts ruled against hearing from expert witnesses who had volunteered to explain the international treaties that prohibit any planning for mass destruction. In addition, the appeal argues, Germany’s stationing of the U.S. nuclear weapons is a violation of the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), which explicitly forbids any transfer of nuclear weapons between countries that are parties to the treaty, including both the U.S. and Germany. The appeal also argues that the practice of “nuclear deterrence” is an ongoing criminal conspiracy to commit vast, disproportionate, and indiscriminate destruction using the U.S. hydrogen bombs stationed at Büchel.

Over a dozen German anti-nuclear resisters and one Dutch citizen have been jailed recently for nonviolent actions taken at the controversial NATO “nuclear sharing” base.

For more information, contact:

Marion Küpker, Hamburg, Germany CET
+49 172 771 3266, mariongaaa@gmx.de
Felice or Jack Cohen-Joppa, Tucson, AZ, USA MST

Tuesday, January 03, 2023

2023 Global Network Membership Renewal

 
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Popham beach in Maine

 






 

MB and I walked on Popham beach (Maine) yesterday - unseasonably warm and quite beautiful as you can see.

Click on the photos for a better view.

Bruce 

On the Influence of Neo-Nazism in Ukraine

 


 

 A short history of neo-Nazism in Ukraine in response to NewsGuard’s charge that Consortium News published false content about its extent.

By Joe Lauria
Special to Consortium News


The U.S. relationship with Ukrainian fascists began after the Second World War. During the war, units of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-B) took part in the Holocaust, killing at least 100,000 Jews and Poles.  Mykola Lebed, a top aide to Stepan Bandera, the leader of the fascist OUN-B, was recruited by the C.I.A. after the war, according to a 2010 study by the U.S. National Archives.

The government study said, “Bandera’s wing (OUN/B) was a militant fascist organization.” Bandera’s closest deputy, Yaroslav Stetsko, said: ““I…fully appreciate the undeniably harmful and hostile role of the Jews, who are helping Moscow to enslave Ukraine…. I therefore support the destruction of the Jews and the expedience of bringing German methods of exterminating Jewry to Ukraine….”

The study says: “At a July 6, 1941, meeting in Lwów, Bandera loyalists determined that Jews ‘have to be treated harshly…. We must finish them off…. Regarding the Jews, we will adopt any methods that lead to their destruction.’”

Lebed himself proposed to “’cleanse the entire revolutionary territory of the Polish population,’ so that a resurgent Polish state would not claim the region as in 1918.” Lebed was the “foreign minister” of a Banderite government in exile, but he later broke with Bandera for acting as a dictator. The U.S. Army Counterintelligence Corps termed Bandera “extremely dangerous” yet said he was “looked upon as the spiritual and national hero of all Ukrainians….”

The C.I.A. was not interested in working with Bandera, pages 81-82 of the report say, but the British MI6 was. “MI6 argued, Bandera’s group was ‘the strongest Ukrainian organization abroad, is deemed competent to train party cadres, [and] build a morally and politically healthy organization….’”  An early 1954 MI6 summary noted that, “the operational aspect of this [British] collaboration [with Bandera] was developing satisfactorily. Gradually a more complete control was obtained over infiltration operations … “

 


Britain ended its collaboration with Bandera in 1954. West German intelligence, under former Nazi intelligence chief Reinhard Gehlen, then worked with Bandera, who was eventually assassinated with cyanide dust by the KGB in Munich in 1959.

Instead of Bandera, the C.I.A. was interested in Lebed, despite his fascist background. They set him up in an office in New York City from which he directed sabotage and propaganda operations on the agency’s behalf inside Ukraine against the Soviet Union.  The U.S. government study says:

    “CIA operations with these Ukrainians began in 1948 under the cryptonym CARTEL, soon changed to AERODYNAMIC. … Lebed relocated to New York and acquired permanent resident status, then U.S. citizenship. It kept him safe from assassination, allowed him to speak to Ukrainian émigré groups, and permitted him to return to the United States after operational trips to Europe. Once in the United States, Lebed was the CIA’s chief contact for AERODYNAMIC. CIA handlers pointed to his ‘cunning character,’ his ‘relations with the Gestapo and … Gestapo training,’ [and] the fact that he was ‘a very ruthless operator.’”

The C.I.A. worked with Lebed on sabotage and pro-Ukrainian nationalist propaganda operations inside Ukraine until Ukraine’s independence in 1991. “Mykola Lebed’s relationship with the CIA lasted the entire length of the Cold War,” the study says. “While most CIA operations involving wartime perpetrators backfired, Lebed’s operations augmented the fundamental instability of the Soviet Union.”

See the rest of this important article here

Monday, January 02, 2023

CIA running Ukraine war aimed at Russia

 


 

 

The CIA is using the intelligence agencies of a European NATO ally to launch sabotage attacks inside Russian territory, according to a report by journalist Jack Murphy.

why do you think they are doing this scare-mongering?

 


 

What is the purpose of this mainstream media article?

A) Oligarchs fear they are losing control?

B) Washington's desperation?

C) Early step in a PR campaign to back out of Ukraine?

D) Create more Russia-phobia that will 'justify' US-NATO first-strike on Moscow?   

E) Sell more clicks at their web site? 

F) It’s good for business – M-I-C-C?


Aria Bendix,Taylor Ardrey
Yahoo!News 

 January 1, 2023

    A nuclear attack on US soil would most likely target one of six cities: New York, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, or Washington, DC.

    But a public-health expert says any of those cities would struggle to provide emergency services to the wounded.

    The cities also no longer have designated fallout shelters to protect people from radiation.


The chance that a nuclear bomb would strike a US city is slim, but nuclear experts say it's not out of the question.

A nuclear attack in a large metropolitan area is one of the 15 disaster scenarios for which the US Federal Emergency Management Agency has an emergency strategy. The agency's plan involves deploying first responders, providing immediate shelter for evacuees, and decontaminating victims who have been exposed to radiation.

For everyday citizens, FEMA has some simple advice: Get inside, stay inside, and stay tuned.

But according to Irwin Redlener, a public-health expert at Columbia University who specializes in disaster preparedness, these federal guidelines aren't enough to prepare a city for a nuclear attack.

"There isn't a single jurisdiction in America that has anything approaching an adequate plan to deal with a nuclear detonation," he said.

That includes the six urban areas that Redlener thinks are the most likely targets of a nuclear attack: New York, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Washington, DC. These cities are not only some of the largest and densest in the country, but home to critical infrastructure (like energy plants, financial hubs, government facilities, and wireless transmission systems) that are vital to US security.

Each city has an emergency-management website that informs citizens about what to do in a crisis, but most of those sites (except for LA and New York) don't directly mention a nuclear attack. That makes it difficult for residents to learn how to protect themselves if a bomb were to hit one of those cities.

"It would not be the end of life as we know it," Redlener said of that scenario. "It would just be a horrific, catastrophic disaster with many, many unknown and cascading consequences."
Cities might struggle to provide emergency services after a nuclear strike

Nuclear bombs can produce clouds of dust and sand-like radioactive particles that disperse into the atmosphere — what's referred to as nuclear fallout. Exposure to this fallout can result in radiation poisoning, which can damage the body's cells and prove fatal.

The debris takes at least 15 minutes to reach ground level after an explosion, so a person's response during that period could be a matter of life and death. People can protect themselves from fallout by immediately seeking refuge in the center or basement of a brick steel or concrete building — preferably one without windows.

 



"A little bit of information can save a lot of lives," Brooke Buddemeier, a health physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, told Business Insider. Buddemeier advises emergency managers about how to protect populations from nuclear attacks.

"If we can just get people inside, we can significantly reduce their exposure," he said.

The most important scenario to prepare for, according to Redlener, isn't all-out nuclear war, but a single nuclear explosion such as a missile launch from North Korea. Right now, he said, North Korean missiles are capable of reaching Alaska or Hawaii, but they could soon be able to reach cities along the West Coast.

Another source of an attack could be a nuclear device that was built, purchased, or stolen by a terrorist organization. All six cities Redlener identified are listed as "Tier 1" areas by the US Department of Homeland Security, meaning they're considered places where a terrorist attack would yield the most devastation.

"There is no safe city," Redlener said. "In New York City, the detonation of a Hiroshima-sized bomb, or even one a little smaller, could have anywhere between 50,000 to 100,000 fatalities — depending on the time of day and where the action struck — and hundreds of thousands of people injured."


Some estimates are even higher. Data from Alex Wellerstein, a nuclear-weapons historian at the Stevens Institute of Technology, indicates that a 15-kiloton explosion (like the one in Hiroshima) would result in more than 225,000 fatalities and 610,000 injuries in New York City.

Under those circumstances, not even the entire state of New York would have enough hospital beds to serve the wounded.

"New York state has 40,000 hospital beds, almost all of which are occupied all the time," Redlener said.

He also expressed concern about what might happen to emergency responders who tried to help.

"Are we actually going to order National Guard troops or US soldiers to go into highly radioactive zones? Will we be getting bus drivers to go in and pick up people to take them to safety?" he said. "Every strategic or tactical response is fraught with inadequacies."
Big cities don't have designated fallout shelters

In 1961, around the height of the Cold War, the US launched the Community Fallout Shelter Program, which designated safe places to hide after a nuclear attack in cities across the country. Most shelters were on the upper floors of high-rise buildings, so they were meant to protect people only from radiation and not the blast itself.

Cities were responsible for stocking those shelters with food and sanitation and medical supplies paid for by the federal government. By the time funding for the program ran out in the 1970s, New York City had designated 18,000 fallout shelters to protect up to 11 million people.

In 2017, New York City officials began removing the yellow signs that once marked these shelters to avoid the misconception that they were still active.

Redlener said there's a reason the shelters no longer exist: Major cities like New York and San Francisco are in need of more affordable housing, making it difficult for city officials to justify reserving space for food and medical supplies.

"Can you imagine a public official keeping buildings intact for fallout shelters when the real-estate market is so tight?" Redlener said.
'This is part of our 21st-century reality'

Redlener said many city authorities worry that even offering nuclear-explosion response plans might induce panic among residents.

"There's fear among public officials that if they went out and publicly said, 'This is what you need to know in the event of a nuclear attack,' then many people would fear that the mayor knew something that the public did not," he said.

But educating the public doesn't have to be scary, Buddemeier said.

"The good news is that 'Get inside, stay inside, stay tuned' still works," he said. "I kind of liken it to 'Stop, drop, and roll.' If your clothes catch on fire, that's what you should do. It doesn't make you afraid of fire, hopefully, but it does allow you the opportunity to take action to save your life."

Both experts agreed that for a city to be prepared for a nuclear attack, it must acknowledge that such an attack is possible — even if the threat is remote.

"This is part of our 21st-century reality," Redlener said. "I've apologized to my children and grandchildren for leaving the world in such a horrible mess, but it is what it is now." 

Sunday, January 01, 2023

Happy new year - protect the future generations

 


 

Now more important than ever - no US-NATO war with Russia, China or Iran. 

Take it to the streets....

Best wishes for a better year in 2023. 

Please help make it happen.

Bruce

Sunday song