Protest the horrors of the endless US-NATO war$

 

Women sea divers from Jeju Island, South Korea

 

In “The Last of the Sea Women,” an extraordinary band of feisty grandmother warriors wage a spirited battle against vast oceanic threats. Often called real-life mermaids, the haenyeo divers of South Korea’s Jeju Island are renowned for centuries of diving to the ocean floor—without oxygen —to harvest seafood for their livelihood. 

Today, with most haenyeo now in their 60s, 70s, and 80s, their traditions and way of life are in imminent danger. But these fierce, funny, hardworking women refuse to give an inch, aided by a younger generation’s fight to revive their ancestral lifestyle through social media. 

Peering into what drives haenyeo young and old, this moving documentary zeroes in on their tight-knit friendships, savvy independence, and infectious sense of empowerment, unfolding into an uplifting tale of women taking on world powers to protect their beloved ocean and inspiring a new generation.

The US forced the construction of a naval base for American and NATO warships in Gangjeong village on Jeju Island. The dredging of the seabed, the construction and now the visiting destroyers, submarines and aircraft carriers are having dramatic impacts on the ocean life. 

In addition Jeju is being further  militarized as a space production and launch center have come to the island as the US drags South Korea into the space warfare gambit aimed at China. 

Toxic pollution from the satellite production process and the resulting dirty launch exhaust will increase the damage to Jeju's world heritage coral reefs just offshore that once thrived with sea life. 

Space week report from UK

 

During Keep Space for Peace Week 2024, local activists across the UK rallied alongside Space Watch UK to protest the UK's participation in the ongoing militarisation of space. 

From Whitehall to Yorkshire, communities gathered to call for a halt to UK military developments in space, highlighting the absence of transparency, accountability, and public consultation with which these continue to be pursued. 

Space Watch UK campaigns to highlight, scrutinise, and resist the UK's military space programmes. 

Find out more: https://spacewatch.uk/key-issues/ 

Follow Space Watch: https://x.com/SpaceWatchUK1 

Space Watch is a project of Drone Wars UK. 

Ukraine Nazis continue killing Russian-ethnic civilians

Retreating Ukrainian soldiers embittered by defeats are randomly killing Russian-ethnic civilians in the eastern Donbass region and in Kursk.

 

This has been the Ukraine-US-NATO strategy since soon after the coup d'etat in Kiev orchestrated by the Obama-Biden administration in 2014.

 

From 2014 to 2022 the US-NATO trained, armed and directed Ukrainian army killed and wounded tens of thousands of Russian-ethics in eastern Ukraine, along the Russian border.

 

Russia worked diplomatically for years to end those killing, fostering the Minsk 1 & 2 agreements that would have ended Ukraine's war on the Donbass but Kiev continually violated the agreements. 

 

Former leaders of Germany and France, co-signers of Minsk agreements, publicly admitted in 2022 that they, along with Ukraine, never intended to honor Minsk. They just used the agreements to stall for time to build up the Ukraine military for a final assault on the Donbass.

 

Thus in February, 2022 Vladimir Putin stated that the west 'played us' and launched the military campaign to drive Ukraine's army out of the Donbass region which included mercenaries from US-UK-NATO as well as active duty military officers from those nations (including the CIA) that were actually running the war. The US has also long provided space surveillance and targeting data for Ukraine's strikes on the Donbass with NATO supplied weapons.

 

This war was always intended to bring 'regime change' to Moscow in order for the west to take control of Russia's vast resource base - particularly in the Arctic region as climate change melts the sea ice making it possible to drill-baby-drill there.

Russia knows all about the Nazis that today predominate in western Ukraine. During WW2 the Soviet Union lost nearly 30 million citizens from the German invasion. As Hitler's army sweep through Poland and into the western Ukraine, nationalist Stepan Bandera gathered his Ukrainian followers and joined the Nazis to kill tens of thousands of Poles, Jews, gypsies and Russians. 

 

After the US coup in Kiev in 2014 Bandera's modern followers were brought into the US trained Ukraine Special Forces units and sent to the Donbass to kill their fellow Ukrainian Russian-ethnic citizens.

 

Today in the western city of Lviv a monument to Bandera stands. 

 

Nazis were installed in the new US created government after the 2014 coup. They took control of the several of the top internal security and military department posts.

Bruce 

True zionist goals

 

Speaking at Likud-backed conference on Monday, Israeli settler leader Daniella Weiss says thousands of settlers are ready to move to Gaza, and Palestinians have 'lost the right' to be there. 

Addressing the conference, which was also attended by Israeli Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and Knesset members from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party, Weiss called for Palestinians living in Gaza to be relocated to other countries. 

Weiss, the leader of Nachala, an orthodox settler movement which organised the conference, said there were six settler groups and more than 700 families looking to settle in Gaza, where more than 42,600 Palestinians have been killed since Israel launched its war in October last year. 

Bringing truth to General Dynamics bomb plant in Saco, Maine today

Shrouds covered in fake blood were placed at the entrance of General Dynamics as workers arrived this morning. Some workers drove over them before the police moved them to either side of the driveway.

 

Gaza today

Forty citizens turned up early this morning in Saco, Maine for a protest at the General Dynamics (GD) bomb plant. They make the guidance systems for the bombs the US provides to Israel that are daily being dropped on Gaza and Lebanon.

We arrived at 6:30 am and unloaded a large amount of shrouds that were filled with newspaper, empty plastic bottles and rags. Fake blood (made from food dye) was poured onto the shrouds and across the worker driveway entrance. The police were very angry when they arrived and ordered the group to move them. The police ended up moving the shrouds to both sides of the wide entrance themselves.

I was again serving as the police liaison and when the Saco police chief approached me it felt like he wanted to hit me. He was raging. It was still early and the kids had not begun to arrive at the school across the street. A sound system was blaring the sounds of bombs exploding. (This sound was shut down well before the school kids arrived.)

At one point the chief came up and told me he was going to arrest the next person that cursed into the sound system. After the exploding bomb sounds were turned off there were a series of speakers. One of them used the word 'shit' and the chief unnecessarily threatened to make an arrest. It seemed to me at that point the chief was looking for trouble.

As always in Saco the two-lane road between the bomb plant and the school was jammed with cars. Volunteers were offering flyers to passing motorists. Some took them. We got our usual good number of honks or peace signs and waves. We did of course get some middle fingers and one driver waved a small Israeli flag outside his window as he passed by. 

When the half empty big school busses eventually came by the kids were of course curious. I saw one young girl flash a peace sign. I imagine that once at school they were talking about the protest. Those that fear we might have traumatized the kids might also consider the really dumb decision to build a bomb plant across the street from a school. How about the daily images of Israel indiscriminately killing children in Gaza? Don't they think these school kids in Saco see them every day on social media?

Is it any surprise though that all across the world people are engaged in escalating protests against the US-EU-Israeli genocide in Palestine that has now also moved into Lebanon. Anyone shocked that people of conscience would be out in the streets challenging this madness must be living in a dream world. Of course we are going to hold dramatic protests in a desperate attempt to shake the public from their slumbers.

After WW2 the Nuremberg law that followed the war stated that every citizen has a 'moral obligation' to resist genocide when it is happening before our very eyes. 

There was no violence at GD today. No one even tried to get arrested. Last I heard we still have a right in this country to protest against government policies - especially when the US is funding, arming, and helping to direct attacks on Palestine and Lebanon using Pentagon space surveillance which is facilitating the genocide.

I was proud to be there today holding my sign that reads, 'Stop funding Israeli terrorism'. It should actually say 'Stop funding US & Israeli terrorism'. 

As long as I can I will continue to stand against these war crimes - these crimes against humanity.

Free, free Palestine!

Bruce 

~ Watch and read coverage of the protest from one local TV station here

U.S. Election Musings

 

Moon of Alabama

The current presidential election cycle is the least attractive I have ever watched.

Donald Trump is doing his usual talk giving promises which no one believes he will keep.

Kamala Harris is as disagreeable as many have feared. She is basically an empty vessel with a tendency to authoritarianism. The vessel is ready to be filled with whatever new war project the neo-conservatives - see Liz Cheney - are planning for.

Biden was and is clearly beyond the point of pursuing another presidency. Moving him aside was the best thing the Democrats could do. Offering Harris as a replacement - without any campaign, vote or legitimization - was the worst thing they could do. They will rue this mistake.

My hunch is that Trump will win the election. What policies will follow will largely depend on the people he will select to run the show. He had previously chosen people who were opposing and sabotaging his policies. He lacked the authority and/or will to rein them in. I do not believe that he has learned from it.

Whoever may win the presidency will anyway not make a big difference.

I expect the new president to double down on the anti-Russian project in Ukraine and on support for the genocide the Zionist are committed to finish. The U.S. will continue to be bogged down in Europe and west-Asia. The 'pivot to Asia' to counter China's rise will continue to stall. The economic standing of the U.S. will continue to deteriorate.

This is good news for China, Russia, the BRICS project and those involved in it. As the old world order continues to drag itself down the new one gains time and space to evolve from it.

BRICS: Building a new world

 

By Manlio Dinucci (Grandangolo on Byoblu TV, Italy)

The 16th BRICS Summit, chaired by Russia and held in Kazan, capital of the Republic of Tatarstan, was attended by 35 countries and 6 international organisations. The acronym BRICS comes from the initials of the group's five founding members: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. In 2024, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates joined BRICS, which became BRICS+'BRICS PLUS'. By the time of the 16th Forum, some 30 countries - including Algeria, Bangladesh, Bahrain, Venezuela, Pakistan, Malaysia, Azerbaijan and Turkey - had applied for membership.

The 10 BRICS + countries account for more than 46% of the world's population, in fact about half considering their high population growth rate. By comparison, the G7 (US, Canada, UK, Germany, France, Italy, Japan) represent less than 10% of the world's population. In 1992, the combined GDP of the G7 countries accounted for more than 45% of world GDP, while the combined GDP of the five countries that would later join the BRICS (in 2009-2011) accounted for 16%. 

By 2023, BRICS' share exceeds 35%, while G7's falls to 29%. The gap will continue to widen. By the end of 2024, the BRICS are expected to grow by 4% on average, higher than the G7's 1.7%. The BRICS account for about a quarter of global merchandise exports and some dominate key markets such as energy resources, metals and food. 

The New Development Bank is becoming a major investor in the largest technology and infrastructure projects in the BRICS region. In this region, where the dollar and the euro used to dominate international transactions, the share of national currencies has risen to 65%. The share of the dollar and the euro has fallen below 30%. 

At the same time, the BRICS are building a vast infrastructure network: the Northern Sea Route and North-South Transport Corridor, which Russia opened after NATO and the EU blocked transit routes to the West; the Russia-Mongolia-China Road and Rail Economic Corridor; the New Silk Road from China to Europe; and many others in Asia, Africa and Latin America. 

"In Kazan," President Putin said at the press conference at the end of the summit, "we reaffirmed that BRICS is not a closed format. It is open to all those who share its values. The members of the group are ready to work on common solutions without external impositions or attempts to impose narrow approaches on anyone. BRICS must respond to the growing demand for cooperation in the world. Accordingly, we have paid special attention to the issue of possible expanding BRICS by creating a new category called "Partner States".

The Western view is diametrically opposed. Emblematic is the alarm expressed by the Foreign Policy Research Institute, an influential US think-tank: "If the US does not act, the BRICS are likely to grow in strength, align their foreign policies against US interests, and have the potential to disrupt the global order that has so far averted major conflicts."

Sunday song

 

AI, Autonomy, and Arms Race: The Evolving Role of Autonomous Weapons

 

 Click here for better view of these images

Technological advancement has brought unprecedented change in every sphere of human life. The military domain is no exception, with militaries worldwide increasingly engaged in reaping from technological development for strategic and tactical advantages on the battlefield. 

Worldwide, the Navy, the Air Force, and the Army are developing weapons that can operate autonomously. Fully Autonomous Weapons. What has been called `autonomy` in weapon systems is fast emerging. Weapons are gradually designed to function autonomously and reduce the role of humans. 

The world has already witnessed the deployment of these weapons on the battlefield. In recent years, from the deployment of a Turkish autonomous attack drone in Libya to AI-powered drones by Ukraine and Russia to the use of Israel`s Lavendar’ and ‘Gospel’ systems in Ghaza, LAWs are already on the battleground. 

This emerging autonomy on the battlefield has raised concerns over its role in warfare.

~ Read the entire article here

Carlin: The system sucks

 

George Carlin: 'The owners of this system don't give a damn about any of you. They want obedient workers.

And now they are coming for your Social Security so they can give it to their friends on Wall Street'.

Protest outside Maine Space confab

A dozen folks joined our protest outside the Holiday Inn by the Bay in Portland, Maine yesterday as we protested the 2nd Annual Maine Space Conference.

Behind us, in the photo above, are the windows to the hotel lobby so many conference attendees saw us as well as those coming in and out of the hotel during our two hour vigil.

Mary Beth spoke using our bullhorn about how the US aids Israeli attacks on Gaza and Lebanon by sharing US space recon and surveillance info for targeting purposes.

I gave the general history (as I know it from the early 1980's to the present) about the US campaign to 'control and dominate space' on behalf of corporate globalization.

The sound was bouncing off the hotel walls and the large buildings on the other side of the street so I am quite certain than inside the hotel they were hearing the racket we were making on the outside.

(I noticed one young man across the street sat on the grass and listened to my entire rap.)

Big plans are underway in Maine to test hypersonic missiles, produce and launch dual use satellites (military/civilian) in order to fill up already congested and contested LEO (Lower Earth Orbit) and much more. The newly created US Space Force (in 2020) is currently funding bluShift Aerospace (based here in Brunswick) to build rockets to launch these mini-satellites into LEO.

The aerospace industry is making a play to set their teeth into as many state economies across the US and in allied nations around the world as possible (South Korea, UK, New Zealand, Australia, Japan, etc) in order to overwhelm China and Russia in the coming battle to be the 'Master of Space'.

The aerospace industry has long bragged that 'Star Wars' will be the largest industrial project in the history of Earth. The industry publication Space News reported years ago that they needed a 'dedicated funding source' to pay for all of their space plans. They wrote they were sending their lobbyists to Washington to secure this funding source and called it the 'entitlement programs' which officially are Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and what is left of the tattered welfare programs. 

Thus if we wish to beat the militarization, weaponization and nuclearization of space we must also fight to defend social progress, environmental care and the like. 

We will continue to build opposition to the new space arms race here in Maine and beyond.

The Global Network Against Weapons &  Nuclear Power in Space (founded in 1992) is entrusted with this mission to keep space for peace.

We invite you to help us in any way you can.

Bruce

The Choice this Election is between Corporate & Oligarchic Power

 

 By Chris Hedges

There is a civil war within capitalism. Kamala Harris is the face of corporate power. Donald Trump is the mascot of the oligarchs. Either way, we lose.

The choice in the elections is between corporate and oligarchic power. Corporate power needs stability and a technocratic government. Oligarchic power thrives on chaos and, as Steve Bannon says, the “deconstruction of the administrative state.” Neither are democratic. They have each bought up the political class, the academy and the press. Both are forms of exploitation that impoverish and disempower the public. Both funnel money upwards into the hands of the billionaire class. Both dismantle regulations, destroy labor unions, gut government services in the name of austerity, privatize every aspect of American society, from utilities to schools, perpetuate permanent wars, including the genocide in Gaza, and neuter a media that should, if it was not controlled by corporations and the rich, investigate their pillage and corruption. Both forms of capitalism disembowel the country, but they do it with different tools and have different goals.

Kamala Harris, anointed by the richest Democratic Party donors without receiving a single primary vote, is the face of corporate power. Donald Trump is the buffoonish mascot for the oligarchs. This is the split within the ruling class. It is a civil war within capitalism played out on the political stage. The public is little more than a prop in an election where neither party will advance their interests or protect their rights.

George Monbiot and Peter Hutchison in their book “Invisible Doctrine: The Secret History of Neoliberalism,” refer to corporate power as “housebroken capitalism.” Housebroken capitalists need consistent government policies and fixed trade agreements because they have made investments that take time, sometimes years, to mature. Manufacturing and agriculture industries are examples of “housebroken capitalism.”

You can see my interview with Monbiot here.

Monbiot and Hutchison refer to oligarchic power as “warlord capitalism.” Warlord capitalism seeks the total eradication of all impediments to the accumulation of profits including regulations, laws and taxes. It makes its money by charging rent, by erecting toll booths to every service we need to survive and collecting exorbitant fees.

The political champions of warlord capitalism are the demagogues of the far right, including Trump, Boris Johnson, Giorgia Meloni, Narendra Modi, Victor Orban and Marine Le Pen. They sow dissension by peddling absurdities, such as the great replacement theory, and dismantling structures that provide stability, such as the European Union. This creates uncertainty, fear and insecurity. Those that orchestrate this insecurity promise, if we surrender even more rights and civil liberties, that they will save us from phantom enemies, such as immigrants, Muslims and other demonized groups.

The epicenters of warlord capitalism are private equity firms. Private equity firms such as Apollo, Blackstone, the Carlyle Group and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, buy up and plunder businesses. They pile on debt. They refuse to reinvest. They slash staff. They willfully drive companies into bankruptcy. The object is not to sustain businesses but to harvest them for assets, to make short-term profit. Those who run these firms, such as Leon Black, Henry Kravis, Stephen Schwarzman and David Rubenstein, have amassed personal fortunes in the billions of dollars.

Trump’s cohort of Silicon Valley backers, led by Elon Musk, were what The New York Times writes, “finished with Democrats, regulators, stability, all of it. They were opting instead for the freewheeling, fortune-generating chaos that they knew from the startup world.” They planned to “plant devices in people’s brains, replace national currencies with unregulated digital tokens, [and] replace generals with artificial intelligence systems.”

Billionaire Peter Thiel, a founder of PayPal and a Trump supporter, has waged war on “confiscatory taxes.” He funds an anti-tax political action committee and proposes the construction of floating nations that would impose no compulsory income taxes.

Israeli-American billionaire Miriam Adelson, widow of casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, with an estimated net worth of $35 billion, has given Trump $100 million for his campaign. While Adelson, who was born and raised in Israel, is a fervent Zionist, she is also part of the club of oligarchs who seek to slash taxes for the rich, taxes that have already been cut by Congress, or diminished through a series of legal loopholes.

The economist Adam Smith warned that unless rentier income was heavily taxed and put back into a financial system it would self-destruct.

The wreckage private equity firms and the oligarchs orchestrate, is taken out on workers who are forced into a gig economy and who have seen stable salaries and benefits eradicated. It is taken out on pension funds that are depleted because of usurious fees, or are abolished. It is taken out on our health and safety. Residents of nursing homes, for example, owned by private equity firms, experience 10 percent more deaths — not to mention higher fees — because of staffing shortages and reduced compliance with standards of care.  

Private equity firms are an invasive species. They are also ubiquitous. They have acquired educational institutions, utility companies, and retail chains, while bleeding taxpayers hundreds of billions in subsidies which are made possible by bought-and-paid-for prosecutors, politicians, and regulators. What is particularly galling is that many of the industries seized by private equity firms — water, sanitation, electrical grids, hospitals — were paid for out of public funds. They cannibalize the nation, leaving behind shuttered and bankrupt industries.

Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner document how private equity works in the book “These are the Plunderers: How Private Equity Runs-and Wrecks-America.”  

“Routinely lionized in the financial press for their dealmaking and lauded for their ‘charitable’ giving, these unbridled capitalists have mounted expensive lobbying campaigns to ensure continued enrichment from favorable tax laws,” they write.

“Hefty donations have won them positions of power on museum boards and think tanks. They’ve published books on leadership extolling ‘the importance of humility and humanity’ at the top, while eviscerating those at the bottom. Their companies arrange for them to avoid paying taxes on the billions in gains that their stockholdings generate. And, of course, they rarely mention that the companies they own are among the largest beneficiaries of government investments in highways, railroads, and primary education, reaping massive perks from subsidies and tax policies that allow them to pay substantially lower rates on their earnings,” they explain

“These men are America’s modern-age robber barons. But unlike many of their predecessors in the nineteenth century, who amassed stupefying riches by extracting a young nation’s natural resources, today’s barons mine their wealth from the poor and middle class through complex financial dealings.”

You can see my interview with Morgenson here.

The housebroken capitalists are represented by politicians such as Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Barack Obama, Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron. But “housebroken capitalism” is no less destructive. It pushed through the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the greatest betrayal of the American working class since the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act, which placed crippling restrictions on union organizing. It revoked the Banking Act of 1933 (Glass-Steagall) which separated commercial banking from investment banking. Tearing down the firewall between commercial and investment banks led to the global financial meltdown in 2007 and 2008, including the collapse of nearly 500 banks. It pushed through the elimination of the Fairness Doctrine by the Federal Communications Commission under Ronald Reagan as well as the Telecommunications Act under Bill Clinton’s presidency, allowing a handful of corporations to consolidate control of media outlets. It destroyed the old welfare system, 70 percent of the recipients of whom were children. It doubled our prison population and militarized the police. In the process of moving manufacturing to countries such as Mexico, Bangladesh and China, where workers toil in sweatshops, 30 million Americans were subjected to mass layoffs according to figures compiled by the Labor Institute. Meanwhile, it piled up massive deficits — the federal budget deficit rose to $1.8 trillion in 2024, with total national debt approaching $36 trillion — and neglected our basic infrastructure, including electrical grids, roads, bridges and public transportation, while spending more on our military than all the other major powers on Earth combined.

These two forms of capitalism are species of totalitarian capitalism, or what the political philosopher Sheldon Wolin calls “inverted totalitarianism.” In each form of capitalism, democratic rights are abolished. The public is under constant surveillance. Labor unions are dismantled or defanged. The media serves the powerful and dissident voices are silenced or criminalized. Everything is commoditized from the natural world to our relationships. Grassroots and popular movements are outlawed. The ecocide continues. Politics is burlesque.

Debt peonage and wage stagnation ensures political control and the further consolidation of wealth. Banks and corporate financiers enslave not only individuals with debt peonage but also cities, municipalities, states and the federal government. The rise in interest rates, coupled with declining public revenues, especially through taxation, is a way to extract the last bits of capital from citizens, as well as from the government. Once individuals, states or federal agencies cannot pay their bills — and for many Americans this often means medical bills — assets are sold to corporations, or seized. Public land, property and infrastructure, along with pension plans, are privatized. Individuals are pushed out of their homes and into financial and personal distress.

“The head of Goldman Sachs came out and said that Goldman Sachs workers are the most productive in the world,” the economist Michael Hudson , author of Killing the Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Destroy the Global Economy, told me. “That’s why they’re paid what they are. The concept of productivity in America is income divided by labor. So if you’re Goldman Sachs and you pay yourself $20 million a year in salary and bonuses, you’re considered to have added $20 million to GDP, and that’s enormously productive. So we’re talking with tautology. We’re talking with circular reasoning here.”

“So the issue is whether Goldman Sachs, Wall Street and predatory pharmaceutical firms, actually add ‘product’ or whether they’re just exploiting other people,” he continued. “That’s why I used the word parasitism in my book’s title. People think of a parasite as simply taking money, taking blood out of a host or taking money out of the economy. But in nature it’s much more complicated. The parasite can’t simply come in and take something. First of all, it needs to numb the host. It has an enzyme so that the host doesn’t realize the parasite’s there. And then the parasites have another enzyme that takes over the host’s brain. It makes the host imagine that the parasite is part of its own body, actually part of itself and hence to be protected. That’s basically what Wall Street has done. It depicts itself as part of the economy. Not as a wrapping around it, not as external to it, but actually the part that’s helping the body grow, and that actually is responsible for most of the growth. But in fact it’s the parasite that is taking over the growth.”

“The result is an inversion of classical economics,” Hudson said. “It turns Adam Smith upside down. It says what the classical economists said was unproductive – parasitism – actually is the real economy. And that the parasites are labor and industry that get in the way of what the parasite wants – which is to reproduce itself, not help the host, that is, labor and capital.”

The Weimarization of the American working class is by design. It is about creating a world of masters and serfs, of empowered oligarchic and corporate elites and a disempowered public. And it is not only our wealth that is taken from us. It is our liberty. The so-called self-regulating market, as the economist Karl Polanyi writes in “The Great Transformation,” always ends with mafia capitalism and a mafia political system. A system of self-regulation, Polanyi warns, leads to “the demolition of society.”

If you vote for Harris or Trump — I have no intention of voting for any candidate who sustains the genocide in Gaza — you are voting for one form of rapacious capitalism over another. All the other issues, from gun rights to abortion, are tangential and used to distract the public from the civil war within capitalism. The tiny circle of power these two forms of capitalism embody, exclude the public. These are elite clubs, clubs where wealthy members inhabit each side of the divide, or at times go back and forth, but are impenetrable to outsiders.

The irony is that the unchecked greed of the corporatists, the housebroken capitalists, created a small number of billionaires who became their nemesis, the warlord capitalists. If the pillage is not halted, if we do not restore through popular movements control over the economy and the political system, then warlord capitalism will triumph. The warlord capitalists will cement into place neo-feudalism, while the public is distracted and divided by the antics of killer clowns like Trump.

I see nothing on the horizon to avoid this fate.

Trump, for now, is the figurehead of warlord capitalism. But he did not create it, does not control it and can easily be replaced. Harris, whose nonsensical ramblings can make Biden look focused and coherent, is the vacuous, empty suit the technocrats adore.

Pick your poison. Destruction by corporate power or destruction by oligarchy. The end result is the same. That is what the two ruling parties offer in November. Nothing else. 

'Biden-Harris are Israel'

 

The Biden-Harris administration has aided and abetted genocide. 

The argument they still deserve our vote is not only politically naïve but is also built upon a bed of lies. 

We must show courage in this election and vote for a third party. 

This is not only morally the correct position; it is the only way to build long-term political leverage for the American Muslim community. 

BRICS + keeps growing and the dollar will crash

 

During the 16th BRICS Summit in Kazan, Russia, South African President Ramaphosa said BRICS should be a tool for global peace and progress. 

He also called for an end to the conflicts in the Middle East and called for a ceasefire. 

 

As the latest Russian meme says:

"We demand written guarantees of BRICS non-expansion to the West"

Gaddafi on zionist control of America

 

"Americans are good people. They have no aggressions against us and they like us as we like them. They must know I don't hate them. I love them.… I hear it is a complex society inside. Many Americans don't know about the outside world. The majority have no concern and no information about other people. They could not even find Africa on a map. I think Americans are good, but America will be taken over and destroyed from the inside by the Zionist lobby. The Americans do not see this. They are getting decadent. Zionists will use this to destroy them."  ~ Muammar Gaddafi

Economic policies of Libya under Gaddafi

Nationalization of the oil sector

Shortly after taking power, Gaddafi took control of the oil industry from foreign companies and nationalized it. This move allowed the Libyan government to gain significant revenue, which was redistributed to improve public services such as healthcare, education, and housing.

Agricultural reforms

Gaddafi launched land reform policies aimed at breaking up large privately-owned estates and redistributing the land to the landless and poor. This was part of a broader initiative to promote self-sufficiency in food production and to weaken the power of the traditional elite who owned much of the country's arable land.

Economic diversification 

Efforts were made to diversify the economy away from heavy reliance on oil by developing other sectors like agriculture, manufacturing, and tourism. 

Housing and infrastructure development

One of Gaddafi's most notable policies was the declaration that housing is a basic human right. His government embarked on extensive construction of new housing units and infrastructure projects to improve living conditions and modernize the country's infrastructure.

Education

Education was made free at all levels, from primary school to higher education. This policy was aimed at ensuring that every Libyan had access to education regardless of their background. There was a particular emphasis on female education, which Gaddafi promoted as part of his broader agenda to empower women and promote gender equality in Libyan society. Gaddafi's regime also expanded technical and vocational education programs. These were designed to align with Libya's economic diversification efforts and reduce foreign labor dependency.

Healthcare

Healthcare services were provided free of charge to all citizens. This included everything from routine check-ups to complex surgeries and was part of a broader vision to improve the general welfare of the population. The government invested heavily in healthcare infrastructure, building hospitals, clinics, and other healthcare facilities across the country.

Following the take down of Gaddafi and his government by the US-NATO orchestrated civil war, people from across the African continent were being sold as slaves from the broken Libya. 

Israeli-US agent Hochstein threatens Lebanon

Hochstein meets Lebanon's parliament speaker Nabih Berri

The Cradle

US special envoy [Israeli born] Amos Hochstein visited Beirut on 21 October for talks with Lebanese officials about an Israel–Hezbollah ceasefire, saying that an agreement based on UN Security Council Resolution 1701 is not enough.

“We’re going to have a substantive conversation with the Government of Lebanon, with the Government of Israel, about how best to bring about a cessation of hostilities to end this conflict,” Hochstein said after his meeting Monday with Lebanon’s parliament speaker Nabih Berri, a Hezbollah ally.

Current negotiations between the Lebanese and Israeli governments for a ceasefire have been based on UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which set the conditions for ending the July War in 2006.

The resolution requires Hezbollah to disarm and that Israeli forces, who had invaded Lebanese territory during the war, not enter Lebanese territory without the permission of the Lebanese government.

However, Hochstein said in Beirut that even if Lebanon and Israel commit to Resolution 1701, it is not enough.

“For the US and the rest of the world that will come in to support Lebanon’s economic and military efforts, we need to be assured that this won’t lead to another round of conflict in a month, a year, or two years,” he stated.

“This is why a mere public commitment to 1701 is not enough. We need to work on not just updating 1701 but ensuring that practical measures are put in place.”

By doing so, Hochstein, who was born in Israel and fought in the Israeli army, appeared to be promoting Israel’s conditions for a ceasefire in Lebanon.  

Axios reported Sunday that Israel is demanding its forces be allowed to continue ground operations within Lebanon, referred to as “active enforcement,” to make sure Hezbollah does not rearm and rebuild its military infrastructure close to the border, in exchange for agreeing to a ceasefire.

Israel also wants its air force to have freedom to violate Lebanese airspace with its warplanes, the report added.

A US official told Axios it is highly unlikely that Lebanon and the international community would agree to Israel’s conditions.

Hochstein also seeks to separate the Gaza and Lebanon fronts, which is another Israeli goal.

“I want to be very, very clear,” Hochstein said, stressing that “tying Lebanon’s future to other conflicts in the region was not and is not in the interest of the Lebanese people.”

Hezbollah has insisted that a ceasefire can only be reached in Lebanon if there is a ceasefire in Gaza, where Israel has been committing genocide of Palestinians for the past year.

While Hochstein claims to seek a ceasefire, several US and Israeli officials who spoke with POLITICO in late September said he and Brett McGurk, the US National Security coordinator for West Asia and North Africa, told Israeli leaders that Washington “agreed with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s broad strategy to shift Israel’s military focus to the north against Hezbollah.”

Hochstein’s visit on Monday follows a night of heavy bombing in Beirut’s suburbs. Israel unleashed a massive wave of airstrikes across Lebanon on the evening of 20 October, targeting buildings linked to Hezbollah’s Al-Qard al-Hassan financial institution, which provides interest-free loans to citizens, among other services.

Russian poet on relations with the west

 

 Remember: “…there can be no alliance between Russia and the West either for the sake of interests or for the sake of principles, that there is not a single interest in the West, not a single aspiration that would not plot against Russia, especially against its future, and that would not try to harm it. And that is why Russia’s only policy towards the Western powers is not an alliance with one or another of these powers, but their disunity, their division. For only when they are disunited from each other do they cease to be hostile to us – out of impotence, of course, never – out of conviction.” 

Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev, 1864

Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev was a Russian poet whose work continues to be studied and admired in Russia and internationally. His poetry often explores philosophical themes such as the relationship between humanity and nature, the nature of love, and the power of fate. He is considered one of the greatest Russian lyric poets of the 19th century, and his work is known for its concise and suggestive language, as well as its vivid imagery.

Tyutchev belonged to the generation of Russian poets who emerged after Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin, and he was influenced by the Romantic movement in European literature. However, Tyutchev's poetry has a distinct metaphysical quality that sets him apart from other Romantic poets. He was deeply interested in the mysteries of existence, and his poetry often grapples with questions of faith, doubt, and the meaning of life.

The themes explored in Tyutchev’s work, and the way in which he approached them, prefigured elements of Russian Symbolist poetry that would appear at the end of the 19th century, specifically in the work of Valery Yaklovich Bryusov and Andrey Bely. While he was not widely recognized as a major poet during his lifetime, Tyutchev's reputation grew in the 20th century, as critics and readers came to appreciate the depth and originality of his work. 

Oct 24 'Maine Space Conference' protest news release

 

News Release: Concerned citizens to protest militarizing space at 'Maine Space Conference' October 24

Mainers concerned about the environmental and security risks of building rocket launch sites on the Maine coast will be in Portland on Thursday, October 24 outside the Maine Space Conference from 11:00 a.m. until 1:00 p.m. Picketing outside the Holiday Inn by the Bay for the second consecutive year will bring attention to the risks and environmental harm of building rocket launch sites and other facilities for use by the U.S. Space Force, a branch of the Pentagon.
 
Bruce Gagnon coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space, explained why members of his organization will picket the conference:
 
“The Maine Space Conference is promoting the militarization of space. Efforts are being made to test hypersonic missiles at the former Loring Air Force Base. bluShit Aerospace is receiving funding from the U.S. Space Force to launch 'dual use' (military/civilian) mini-satellites into dangerously congested Lower Earth Orbit.  

Promises of lots of jobs, little to no environmental impacts, and peaceful exploration of space are the standard claims made at a myriad of potential new launch sites the U.S. military is exploring around the world.

The U.S. and Israel have been blocking a space weapons ban treaty (PAROS) at the United Nations for more than 25 years.
 
Our nation cannot afford to pay for a new expensive arms race in outer space.”
 
Lisa Savage of Solon, founding member of the Maine Natural Guard and Green independent candidate for U.S. Senate in 2020 said, “The fact that a rocket launch site could be an attractive target for military strikes concerns me. Also, some of the corporations involved in the conference this year – for example, Teledyne – directly profit from the U.S.-Israel genocide in Gaza.”
 
Environmental leader Hillary Lister of Augusta opposes rocket launches in Maine due to pollution concerns: “Rocket launches put wildlife, fisheries, and waters at risk no matter what type of fuel is used. Risk of fire is always present and the standard solution is PFAS foam. Also, waste and debris from rocket launches and satellites contribute to already serious plastic pollution on our land and in our oceans.”

~ More information on existing rocket launch sites may be found at the website No Toxic Rockets for ME 

'Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.'
~ Henry David Thoreau  

US authorizes CIA mercenaries to run biometric concentration camps in Gaza

By Dan Cohen

A private intelligence corporation billed as "Uber for war zones" is preparing to create what Israel hopes will be the model for supplanting Hamas rule in Gaza.

The Biden administration has approved the deployment of 1,000 CIA-trained private mercenaries as part of a joint U.S.-Israeli plan to turn Gaza’s apocalyptic rubblescape into a high-tech dystopia.

Starting with Al-Atatra, a village in the northwestern Gaza Strip, the plan calls to build what the Israeli daily Ynet calls “humanitarian bubbles” – turning the remains of villages and neighborhoods into tiny concentration camps cut off from their environs and surrounded and controlled by mercenaries.

This comes as Israel carries out daily massacres and ethnic cleansing in northern Gaza, enacting the proposal known as The Generals’ Plan, originally crafted by former national security chief Giora Eiland to turn Gaza into “a place where no human being can exist.”

The plan, approved by White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, calls for the Israeli military to clear out pockets of Palestinian resistance, which it has failed to achieve, demonstrated by the recent killing of Israeli Colonel Ehasn Daksa, the highest ranking officer to lose his life in the year long war.

48 hours after stamping out resistance, they plan to erect separation walls around the neighborhood, forcing its residents, and no one else, to enter and exit using biometric identification under the CIA contractors’ control. Those who do not accept the biometric regime would be refused humanitarian aid.

This plan, first reported by Israeli journalist Shlomi Eldar, allocates $90 million for the residents to rebuild their homes, and calls to appoint a “local sheikh” to the position of "head of the council.”

The plan is a 21st century reboot of Washington’s infamous, failed Strategic Hamlet Program during its war in Vietnam in the 1960s, updated with a modern biometric program the US military-industrial complex has incorporated into its operations since, in particular, the beginning of the so-called “War or Terror.” (The U.S. has even created a little known agency called the Defense Forensics and Biometrics Agency to advance this). 

‘Uber for war zones’

The company at the forefront of this plan is called Global Delivery Company, described in its promotional materials as a “Uber for war zones.” Israeli-American businessman Moti Kahana owns it and employs several top Israeli and American military intelligence officials, including retired U.S. Navy Captain Michael Durnan, retired U.S. Special Forces captain Justin Sapp, former Israeli military intelligence division head Yossi Kuperwasser, and former Israeli military chief intelligence officer David Tzur.

Kahana has played a key role in the dirty war against Syria in the 2010s and worked with the CIA-backed Free Syrian Army to provide food and medical care to militants and civilians alike. GDC has also been involved in Ukraine, where it collaborated with the Zionist organization, the American Joint Distribution Committee, to operate a refugee camp in Romania near its border with Ukraine. He has also been in negotiations to free the former Israeli military intelligence officer Elizabeth Tsurkov, who was detained in Iraq in 2023.

Kahana’s Gaza plan has been in the works since at least February, 2024. He presented the plan to establish these electronic cantons – what Jewish News referred to as “gated communities” – to the White House, State Department, and Defense Department, as well as Netanyahu. U.S. officials did not respond. While the Israeli military had agreed, the Israeli prime minister shot it down. “What’s the rush?” he quipped.

The Israeli military has also been in talks with Kahana to deploy its mercenaries to secure the Netzarim corridor, which bisects the Gaza Strip.

The GDC’s CIA mercenaries would be in full control of humanitarian aid, thereby supplanting Hamas and ending its governance, they figure, achieving a long-term goal of the Israeli war.

“If the pilot goes through successfully, it will be the model for the rehabilitation of Gaza and will result in the suppression of Hamas's civilian control in the Strip,” notes Eldar.

The plan resembles a proposal published in the U.S. Department of Defense’s top journal, written by Likudnik think tanker Omer Dostri, who was appointed as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s spokesperson in August 2024. 

~ Uncaptured Media is a multi-media project of investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker Dan Cohen, dedicated to investigating all aspects of the permanent war state, both domestic and abroad. It rejects the obsolete left/right paradigm that divides us along artificial political lines, and focuses on power structures and the figures that enjoy protection from scrutiny by the traditional media class.

Keep Space for Peace Week webinar video now available

 

Webinar Speakers were:

• Dave Webb: Space as an aid to War & Genocide (GN board convener, UK)
• Tamara Lorincz: Canada’s Role in NATO (Canadian Voice of Women for Peace)
• Peter Burt: UK's expanding space programmes in the spotlight (Space Watch UK)

• Sung-Hee Choi: NATO expansion & space industry in South Korea (Activist, Jeju Island)

These talks were followed by Q & A with the audience

 

Links to all GN social media sites at https://linktr.ee/space4peace  

Pathetic Europeans green-light Israel to continue war crimes

By Finian Cunningham

The “appeasement” argument is entirely appropriate regarding Israel and genocide in Gaza and Lebanon.

It’s almost hilarious if it wasn’t so damnable. The Israeli regime is attacking United Nations peacekeepers and all the pathetic European governments can muster is a mealy-mouthed plea “that these attacks must stop immediately.”

Some 15 members of the UN’s Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) have been injured so far after the Orwellian-named Israeli Defense Forces attacked their bases. There are credible reports of IDF tanks deliberately crashing into a UNIFIL base, a watchtower being blown up by Israeli artillery, and chemical weapons fired at peacekeepers.

UNIFIL is deployed in Southern Lebanon under a United Nations Security Council resolution to uphold a peace deal brokered after the 2006 war with Israel. Israel’s invasion of Lebanon last month and the ongoing bombardment of the entire country is a gross violation of the UNSC resolution 1701.

Troops from 16 European nations participate in the UNIFIL peacekeeping operation, with France, Italy, and Spain providing the largest contingencies.

The European Union issued a statement: “The EU condemns all attacks against UN missions. It expresses particularly grave concern regarding the attacks by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) against the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), which left several peacekeepers wounded. Such attacks against UN peacekeepers constitute a grave violation of international law and are totally unacceptable.”

It added: “We are also deeply concerned by Hezbollah’s continued launch of rockets into Israel that has to stop, and by IDF strikes in densely populated areas of Lebanon, causing a heavy toll on civilians and the displacement of many. We urge all parties to respect International Humanitarian Law, in all circumstances.”

Israeli attacks on Lebanon

Note how the European governments sneakily hedge and qualify the condemnation of the Israeli regime and insinuate that Hezbollah is also involved in “all attacks against UN missions.” 

The European response to Israeli attacks on its UN troops is pathetically craven. The empty bluster about “grave concern” is nothing but a green light for Israel to continue its war crimes.

Ironically, the European NATO armchair generals like to invoke the “appeasement” argument when they talk about how important it is to stand up to Russia over Ukraine. That argument is completely baseless in the case of Russia and Ukraine. However, it is entirely appropriate regarding Israel and genocide in Gaza and Lebanon, where the Europeans are the most contemptible appeasers.

In the same week that the Israeli regime attacked UN peacekeepers in Southern Lebanon, it blew up a UN-run school for refugees in Gaza killing dozens, and it incinerated women and children sheltering in tents outside a UN-supported hospital.

The Israeli genocide in Gaza, now extended to Lebanon, has absolute contempt for the UN and international law. The UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has even been declared persona non grata by the Israeli regime.

Israel’s psychopathic prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has the gall to tell the UN to get its peacekeepers out of Southern Lebanon, “out of harm’s way.” With twisted logic, he claims that Hezbollah is using the UNIFIL troops as “human shields.” This is the same perverse logic that Netanyahu’s fascist regime has used to justify the murder of over 42,000 Palestinians who were described as human shields for Hamas.

As a sign of protest, Spanish prime minister Pedro Sanchez has urged the European Union to suspend a free trade agreement with Israel. Sanchez’s call will be ignored. Just like French president Emmanuel Macron’s call to halt weapons exports to Israel was ignored.

Meanwhile, this week, the European Union imposed trade sanctions on Iran over dubious allegations that it has supplied ballistic missiles and drones to Russia for the conflict in Ukraine. Iran and Russia have strenuously denied the allegation. But the EU has no hesitation in imposing the sanctions.

~  Finian Cunningham is a former editor and writer for major news media organizations. He has written extensively on international affairs, with articles published in several languages.