March 18 'No war with Russia' protest in Maine

 

Click on the photos for better view. Pictures by MB Sullivan

 

We had 50 folks come from all over Maine today to our protest in conjunction with the national event at the White House in Washington.

We met at a very busy intersection in Westbrook (near Portland). It was attended by people from six political parties in the state. (Maine Green Independent Party, Communist Party of Maine, Libertarian Party, Portland Republican Party, People's Party of Maine, and Party for Socialism & Liberation of Maine.)

We had a steady and huge amount of honks, waves and peace signs from the cars passing by. Everyone was really pumped by the experience. We all agreed that the 'worm is turning' and that the public (all across the political landscape) is not happy about the Biden administration and Congress funneling $113 billion to the proxy war in Ukraine that is aimed at Russia (and soon China as well).

We had a good mix of all ages at the event - something that has been a long time coming in Maine as the peace movement here has been aging.

We had a final closing circle and invited people to share why they had come. It was very moving to hear those present applaud for the speakers from various political parties. I made sure to make the point that there are good people in all the parties and political organizations and we must resist the 'divide and conquer' efforts by the corporate oligarchs that run our country.

Today was a great example of what is indeed possible if we try with good faith and a cooperative spirit to work together. We can come together in solidarity. We don't have to agree with each other on every single issue. But today was a resounding call that we must oppose this suicidal US-NATO permanent war path.

More to come. Stay tuned.

Keep paddling.

Bruce

PS Try as we might we did not get every single person into a photo. We are sorry for that.

Update: We have decided to hold another no war event at the busy intersection in Topsham, Maine on Saturday, April 15 at 1:30 pm. This is very near the Hwy 295 Topsham exit. The intersection is on the corner of Hwys 196 & 201. Lee Toyota is on one of the corners. 

U.S. is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world

There is nothing to worry about the China-Russia ties, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said, responding to Washington's "concern" over China's relations with Russia.

The U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price said on Wednesday that "we are concerned because these two countries share a vision. They share an intent."

Ex-military whistleblowers important for deeper understanding

 

 

Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom

U.S. Intelligence Community is Doing Group Think on Steroids.

Larry Johnson is interviewed.

Johnson is a veteran of the CIA and the State Department’s Office of Counter Terrorism. He provided training to the US Military’s Special Operations community for 24 years. 

It should not be discounted that ex-military whistleblowers are increasingly speaking out about US neo-con led foreign and military policy. This significant info and analysis is crucial for a clear understanding of the fact that Washington is now owned and run by corporate globalist interests.

Elections coming to NSW in Australia

 

 

The New South Wales government has made a tourism ad ahead of the coming election, and it’s surprisingly honest and informative....

French rising against Macron's mean-spirited policies....

 

 

Macron has ignored the French parliament and unilaterally ordered that pensions must be delayed by two additional years.

Workers across the nation are outraged and protesting in mass.....

Why don't the deplorables appreciate the neo-cons?

 

The devil is in the details....

 

The neo-cons own Biden,

they made sure he ascended
to the presidency,
they had the dirty goods on him.

A long career
of doing what Mr. Big wanted,
made him a 'trusted' servant.

His role in the Ukraine coup,
his personal peccadillos,
the many accusations 

about bribes taken,
his subservience to the insurance industry,
his loyalty to the war mongers
who control Washington,
this long track record
got him the job

he always wanted,
despite his growing dementia. 

The neo-cons

needed a front man

to deflect the heat

while they 

schemed behind the curtains

that hide much of what happens

inside the darkness 

of the White House,

as they 

'fight for freedom'.

Whose freedom you might ask?

They knew Biden's dementia

would insulate him.

The media would be directed

to protect Uncle Joe

at all costs.

Ignore his 

many blunders.

Their decision to insert

the lite-weight

Kamala Harris as VP

would limit the calls

for Biden to resign

prematurely. 

 

The neo-cons

became giddy with self-satisfaction. 

They now believed

they could rule the world.

 

 

 

Despite the growing fears

of economic collapse at home,

banks failing,

the possibility of nuclear war

with Russia

and China,

environmental decline

advancing by the day,

horrific train wrecks,

unaffordable healthcare,

ever rising inflation....

the 'loyal party base'

could be counted on

to stand by their man

no matter how bleak

things get.

Mr. Big

and his crony 

oligarch allies,

clink their glasses

in an arrogant toast

to their brilliance

and crowning success

in facing down

the ungrateful

Global South that is

clamoring for

a Multi-polar future.

 

The neo-cons

toy with our lives

knowing that they

are in charge

of this 

exceptional drive

to bring neo-feudalism

to the people of the world.

If only these 

disposable deplorables

would appreciate 

what the globalists

have done

for them.

 

Bruce  

Civil war coming to Israel?

 

Mounted policemen block a protest march in Tel Aviv, Israel, March 16

 

Gush Shalom Statement, March 13, 2023  

Who is talking of  stability?  

The Americans, together with
The Jordanians and the Egyptians
Convened a conference
With the aim of
"Stabilizing the situation
On the West Bank".

Only stabilization -
No one is still talking
About a solution.

But can stability be achieved
When hundreds of
Violent settlers set out,
In an organized and
Systematic way,
To burn down
A whole town,
With the open
Encouragement of
Senior government ministers?

Can stability be achieved
When the Palestinian Authority
Is weakening and
Losing support and legitimacy
Among its own people?

When young Palestinians
Are determined to rebel
And take up arms
Against the occupation,
Even at a very real risk
To their lives?

Can stability be achieved
When the army tries
To put down the
Palestinian uprising
By means of constant raids
On Palestinian
Towns and villages
And killing any Palestinian
Who tries to
Resist the soldiers?

Can stability be achieved
When the Knesset votes
To impose the death penalty
On "terrorists", in spite of
Israel's own army and
Security services warning that
This measure would
Be harmful?

And can stability be achieved
When a government
In which settlers hold
Senior positions
Launches an all-out attack
Also on the democratic rights
Of Israeli citizens?

When Israeli society
Has become more
Divided and polarized than
At any time in its history,
To the point where
There is talk of
An impending civil war?

It has become clear
For all to see
That the continued occupation
Cannot be stabilized.
The occupation is
Inherently unstable.

US Navy turning Australia into full-service submarine hub

By Dave DeCamp 

Antiwar.com

Australia is set to spend over $100 billion over the coming decades on submarines under the AUKUS deal 

The US Navy wants a full-service submarine hub in Australia that can oversee all underwater activity in the Asia Pacific, including production and repairs, Defense News reported.

The report cited comments from Navy Secretary Carlos del Toro, whose vision will be possible under AUKUS, the military pact signed between the US, Britain, and Australia in 2021 as part of an effort to build alliances against China.

AUKUS focuses on technology-sharing and will give Australia access to American and British nuclear-powered submarine technologies. Del Toro said that AUKUS is about “being able to repair our submarines much further out, being able to build them in Australia as well, too, and create that much more presence in the Indo-Pacific where we need it the most.”

President Biden, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak are expected to unveil the details of AUKUS submarine deals on Monday during a meeting aboard a submarine in San Diego. Australia is expected first to purchase American Virginia class attack submarines, which will be delivered in the early 2030s. 

Australia will then purchase a new British-designed submarine, called the SSN-AUKUS, that’s expected to arrive in the 2040s. The ultimate goal is for Australia to be able to build its own SSN-AUKUS submarines with US or British-provided nuclear propulsion. Over the next few decades, Canberra is expected to spend over $100 billion on the plan. 

The submarines Australia will acquire are not expected to be armed with nuclear weapons, but that could always change. Either way, China views the submarine buildup as a provocation since the underwater craft will be used to patrol the waters of the South China Sea. The US also has plans to deploy more troops and aircraft to Australia as part of its buildup, including nuclear-capable B-52 bombers.  

U.S.-NATO strategy: Attack Crimea next

 

 

SouthFront 

 

Kiev threatens Crimeans 

Amid the wave of loud claims on the upcoming Ukrainian offensive on Crimea, the Kiev officials do not hide the Nazi nature of their goals. Adviser to the head of the office of the President of Ukraine turned to direct threats to the citizens of the Russian peninsula.

The tourist season in Crimea this year will be “hot,” said Mikhail Podolyak, adviser to the head of the office of the President of Ukraine, in his recent interview.  

  “Ukraine will explain that it needs to be treated not with respect, but with great fear,” he claimed.

Podolyak believes that the population od Crimea has always been “oriented incorrectly” and did not understand that there is a state of Ukraine. Today, Kiev is publicly declaring its wet dreams of changing the people’s mind and force them to treat the terrorist Kiev correctly, i.e. with great fear.

The Kiev regime does not stop claiming its rights on the strategically important peninsula. However, it openly admits that the population of Crimea did not even acknowledge such a state as Ukraine and has always identified itself as Russian.

Podolyak’s claims once again confirm that:

•     Nazis are in power in Ukraine;

•     they are still ready to force the Russian people to “love Ukraine” by military and terrorist means, as they have been trying to do for a decade in Crimea as well as in the republics of Donbass;

•    that the Crimeans made the right choice during the referendum in 2014, which indeed showed the true will of the population of the peninsula.

 

In 2014 Crimean citizens watched the chaos in Kiev on TV during the Obama administration orchestrated coup d'etat, Crimean people immediately self-organized a referendum asking to return to the Russian Federation.

The Kiev regime has completely lost the country’s statehood. It has no means to rebuild an economy that has been in decline for decades and has been badly damaged by years of hostilities. Kiev has no means to restore its own regions, not to mention Russia’s Donbass and Crimea, which it dreams of returning by force, realizing that the population of these regions will never voluntarily become part of the Nazi Ukraine.

Ukraine has been sold to the West, and Kiev will have to pay for all the “support” from NATO. For Kiev, control of Crimea is just a populist narrative disseminated by officials to assure the population that they lose no hope of wining the Russians. For Washington, control of Crimea, which it would gain if the Russian army failed, is control of a strategically important peninsula from which it could threaten the European part of Russia and prevent Moscow from its power in the Black Sea.

Control of Crimea is vital to Moscow, which it is likely to fight for by all means, including nuclear weapons.

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Any US-NATO directed attack on Crimea would very likely be a key trigger that could escalate into nuclear war. 

Good luck trying to find water, shelter, food after such a global nuclear battle. If you even live long enough to need those things. Hiroshima & Nagasaki times 100%.

I've got a new sign and held it during vigils in the area. Getting interesting reactions. It reads Nuclear war with China and Russia?!!?

We've got to get more folks thinking about that very question.

We had 19 people at Bath Iron Works shipyard last Saturday for Lenten vigil. BIW is owned by General Dynamics and they build Navy Aegis destroyers which are outfitted with nuclear-capable cruise first-strike missiles. They also can launch so-called 'missile defense' interceptors that are key elements in Pentagon first-strike planning - what they call Prompt Global Strike. 

During our closing circle in front of the BIW admin office building, Mary Beth brought up the recent news that a Bath-built Navy Aegis destroyer had recently ported at the new base on Jeju Island, South Korea. 

Because of the nature of this US-forward deployed naval warship aimed at China, our friends on Jeju Island are now targets. Most Americans have no idea - nor do most of them appear to be at all interested. Why? You take a crack at that one. Leave your ideas in the comments.

Best wishes to all.

Bruce 

Drug Warriors of Ukraine

 

SouthFront

During the ongoing Russian military operation in Ukraine, Russian forces find not only a large amount of foreign weapons, but also drugs in numerous captured Ukrainian positions. This is the main tool used by the Ukrainian military commanders to motivate their subordinates. It turns out that it is not patriotic feelings that support the Ukrainian army and Nazi military formations, but drugs and psychotropic substances.

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky himself sets an explicit example of “patriotism” to the Ukrainian soldiers and regularly appears drugged in public. Ukrainian soldiers do not lag behind their leader and are also heavily addicted to drugs and various “war chemicals”. 

Ukrainian military commanders, who are interested in boosting the morale of their fighters, are turning a blind eye to the use of psychoactive substances on the military positions. In fact they personally control the supply of drugs to their units. 

Another Ukrainian artilleryman captured by the DPR fighters who admitted that he had shelled civilians in Mariupol, confirmed that almost all Ukrainian servicemen are using drugs.

Earlier, during the battles for the city, a drug laboratory of the notorious Right Sector Nazi battalion was captured by Russian forces in the village of Sopino near Mariupol, where the cheapest illegal drugs were produced.

A lot of drugs are produced at home laboratories, while there is industrial scale of drug production in the country and numerous logistical chains for transporting foreign drugs, including through humanitarian and military aid channels from NATO countries.

Drug trafficking to Ukraine is controlled at the highest level. In particular, it is supervised by the Security Service of Ukraine throughout the country’s independence.

~ See videos of POW's telling their drug stories while in Ukraine army here

Bad economic news: Does Washington know what it is doing?

 

George Galloway

"INTERVIEW: Professor Richard Wolff on being in Yale economics class with current US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who learned everything alongside him and betrayed it all.

India's view on U.S. bank collapse

 

Firstpost

Biden Tries To Avert A Banking Crisis In the U.S. 

 

Vantage with Palki Sharma.

President Joe Biden has said the US will do "whatever is needed" to shore up the banking system. 

This comes after two American banks collapsed in less than 48 hours.

Is the US under threat of another major financial crisis? 

Palki Sharma tells you more.

South Korea: Stop U.S. war games aimed at NK & China

 

South Korean civil groups on Saturday rallied near the Office of the President in Seoul to protest against the upcoming military drills with the U.S. scheduled from March 13 to 23. 

South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol on Friday vowed to strengthen deterrence against threats from the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) by establishing a nuclear planning and implementation system with the United States. He also said South Korea will step up joint military drills with the U.S., which worried South Korean people that such large-scale drills could lead to direct confrontation.

Forced conscription in Ukraine

 

Kiev has taken to rounding up men 16-65 years of age on the streets, dragging them into vehicles and sending them to the front lines with little to no training and armaments. The perfect description of 'cannon fodder'

By Petr Lavrenin (Odessa-born political journalist and expert on Ukraine and the former Soviet Union)

Cases where law enforcement officers have applied force when handing out conscription notices and illegally delivered men to enlistment offices have given rise to public discontent. However, the Ukrainian authorities clearly have no intention of pausing enlistment because the situation remains critical at some sections of the front. 

The Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) are losing their grip on fortified areas around Artyomovsk (Bakhmut), and taking huge numbers of casualties, according to the Guardian and other media outlets. Meanwhile, Kiev continues to issue mobilization summonses and is sending people without proper training. 

Men of military age are being hunted down, and videos showing military commissars going to extreme lengths to hand out summonses, including by force, constantly circulate on social media. 

Odessa, in particular, stands out in this respect. For example, military commissars were caught driving around the city in ambulances. When they came across men of the appropriate age, they stopped, handed over summonses and drove on. After videos emerged on social networks, local military commissars had to explain themselves and claimed that they were given the ambulance to use for their work. 

The case of Bogdan Pokito received particularly wide attention. The 33-year-old resident of Ternopol was handed a summons at a bus stop at the end of January and, without any military training, sent to the front near Artyomovsk, where he died just a few days later.  

Ukraine badly needs conscripts, but the enthusiasm of military-age men is declining and the authorities know it. 

In August 2022, the Ministry of Health calculated the approximate number of Ukrainians who will suffer from mental disorders in the aftermath of the war. At the time, Minister Viktor Lyashko predicted that 15 million people would be affected. “We are already predicting in absolute terms the number of people who will suffer from mental disorders as a result of this war — that’s over 15 million people. These are the people who will at least need psychological support,” the official said. 

It is still unclear how many people the Armed Forces of Ukraine plan to draft in the near future. But over the past two months, about 30,000 servicemen have been sent to Western Europe for training. These are mostly people without prior military experience who need to be trained on Western equipment. Add to this the number of conscripts required to urgently replace losses at the front and those needed for auxiliary work outside the active war zone, and the figures may drastically grow. 

~ Reprinted in part from a much larger article that ran in RT

~ ~ See this short video on Ukrainian troops killing civilians in the Dombass region of eastern Ukraine where the Russian-ethnics predominate 

Swedish researcher: U.S. did Nordstream

 

Swedish researcher Jan Oberg, the co-founder of the Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research, alleged that the U.S. had both the motive and the capability to blow up the Nord Stream pipeline in order to wage an "economic war" against its European allies for selfish gain. 

Oberg said U.S. sales of higher-priced LNG [fracked] gas (at 4X the sale cost in the US) to European countries since the explosions belie its motive.

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One must wonder why the leading enviro groups are saying virtually nothing about the massive methane release after Biden's Nordstream attack as well as the damage done in the US during the fracking process. Surely these are HOT environmental issues. 

If Trump was in office those groups would be screaming. Are they so quiet now because many of them get funding from foundations/donors linked to the Dem party?

Bruce

The EU empties the arsenals to fill the arsenals

 

After each US-NATO war game near the Russian border, the weapons used

 are sent to Poland and stored at this Pentagon weapons hub for future use. The US-NATO have been planning this proxy war in Ukraine for many years.

EU plans for long-war against Russia

By Manlio Dinucci (Italy)

The defense ministers of the 27 EU countries meeting in Stockholm approved the plan - Josep Borrell, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy presented it - for "the joint purchase of large-caliber ammunition". The meeting was attended by the Minister of Defense of Ukraine (despite the fact that Ukraine is not a member of the EU), who "explained what are the military needs of Ukraine". Borrell said: "We are in times of war and we must have a war mentality."  

He then illustrated the Plan, which includes three phases:  

1) To draw artillery shells, especially 155 mm ones, from stocks of EU Member States and immediately supply them to Ukraine. The money comes from the European Peace Facility (EPF), which has already set aside €3.6 billion (paid by European citizens) for this purpose. 

2) To achieve an agreement between the 27 EU Member States for the joint purchase of 155 mm shells by signing the first seven-year contracts as early as next month. This is a "massive order" both to restore and augment national stockpiles and to secure supplies to Ukraine. 

3) To ensure the long-term increase of ammunition production in Europe support defense industries to secure supplies to Ukraine in the long term. (The EU expects to supply about one million artillery shells).  

Borrell also communicated that “by the end of March, our Military Assistance Mission will train more than 11,000 Ukrainian soldiers. By the end of the year, we expect to  train 30,000 soldiers.” The EU has allocated 18 billion euros to support Ukraine (they are always paid by European citizens). It also summed up the purpose of the Plan with these words: "To win peace, Ukraine must win the war. And that is why  we must continue to support Ukraine in order to win the peace.” The European Union thus openly goes to war against Russia within the framework of the increasingly dangerous US-NATO strategy. 

In Moscow, the assassination of Konstantin Malofeev, CEO of the Tsargrad group, has been foiled. It is the same type of attack with a bomb placed under his car as the kind of attack that killed journalist Daria Dugina in August 2022. It is part of a series of terrorist attacks against Russian journalists and media managers, carried out by the Ukrainian secret services under US-NATO direction. 

Sunday song