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....
Join us if you can. This spot at the foot of the Wiscasset bridge on US Hwy 1 is a tourist magnet where we will see license plates from all over the country and people from around the world.
Now more than ever we need to be as public as possible about our resistance to endless war$ and the genocide US-Israel are perpetrating on Palestine (Gaza & the West Bank), Lebanon, Yemen and across the African continent.
We've been holding these monthly protests at busy traffic spots all over Maine - north & south, east and west since early 2022.
Our demands:
End U.S. aid to racist apartheid Israel
Stop US-Israeli wars for 'Greater Israel' on Palestine, Iran, Lebanon, Yemen, & Syria
U.S. hands off Latin America & Caribbean (Cuba, Venezuela, Columbia, Nicaragua, Puerto Rico, Haiti)
Peace in Ukraine - No weapons, no money for the Ukraine War
Abolish NATO/No expansion into Asia Pacific
Fund people’s needs, not the war machine
Stop Pentagon climate crimes
Fight racism & bigotry not war
End AFRICOM
No new arms race in outer space
Co-sponsors:
Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space, Maine Natural Guard, PeaceWorks of Greater Brunswick, Communist Party of Maine, Maine Green Independent Party, Citizens Opposing Active Sonar Threats (COAST), Party for Socialism & Liberation Maine, Peace & Justice Center of Eastern Maine, Veterans for Peace - National, United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC), Maine Voices for Palestinian Rights (MVPR), and Diaspora Pa’lante Collective.
Firefighters and residents of south Lebanon have accused the Israeli military of lighting wildfires in the region, as forested areas burned down in blazes sparked by Israeli bombing. Environmental groups said the fires in recent weeks were part of a longstanding Israeli practice of targeting Lebanon’s natural environment. On Tuesday, the Israeli military dropped flares in a wooded area outside Khiam, in south Lebanon, sparking blazes. When firefighters attempted to extinguish the flames, a drone struck close by, forcing them to withdraw, said the head of the civil defence in the Nabatieh region, Hussein Fakih. “Most of our missions are now related to fires,” he said. “There are enormous areas of woodland that have burned, I don’t have the exact figures, but in the areas close to the [frontline], around 30-40% of the land has been affected by fires.”
Iran’s top negotiator & Parliament Speaker, Ghalibaf, says Strait of Hormoz will remain closed until US abides by its MoU responsibilities.
Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur: Apartheid Israel doesn't just fake content to cover its crimes; it now pays to launder them through AI with the pro-IDF feeds of the fake think tank "Hanover Institute".Legacy media enabled this inganno (deception) for decades. Will @OpenAI, @perplexity_ai, @claudeai, etc, do the same?
The Gaza Holocaust will continue: Jared Kushner, after meeting with Netanyahu, says that the US won't "restrict Israel's right to defend itself." He says that if Hamas doesn't disarm over the next 60 to 90 days it'll show "they're not genuine about peace," and it'll give Israel cover to "go and finish the job."
Yanis Varoufakis: The transformation of Greece into an Israeli satellite is proceeding at breakneck speed. This bodes ill for the majority of Greeks, for peace in our region and for Europe and West Asia more broadly. It must be resisted.
Israeli forces raided the grounds of a hospital in the city of Bethlehem in the southern occupied West Bank on Monday evening and assaulted patients and visitors, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. In a statement, the ministry said that “Israeli forces raided the grounds of the Arab Society for Rehabilitation Hospital, terrorized patients and visitors and assaulted some of them.”
Former Israeli PM Naftali Bennett on Gaza: 'We will kick Qatar and Türkiye the hell out of Gaza and bring Egypt in instead. Anyone who allows Qatar and Türkiye to manage Gaza is preventing the disarmament of Hamas. Understand this basic point. You don’t have to be a genius. Egypt detests Hamas. It detests the Muslim Brotherhood. Deeply. If you bring Qatar and Türkiye in to manage the situation, they will strengthen Hamas. If you bring Egypt, together with Israel, in to manage the situation, we will eliminate Hamas.'
Sovereignista on Mecca Defense Pact: Contradictions around Egypt expose rifts in the alliance. Just one day after the signing of the trilateral defense agreement in Mecca between Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan stated that Egypt could become the next participant. Later, President Erdogan made a similar statement in an interview with journalists. However, media reports suggested the opposite. Two versions emerged: Egypt itself does not want to join the alliance and has adopted a wait-and-see position. Reasons? Egypt avoids military blocs to maintain freedom of maneuver. Membership could allegedly harm its relations with the UAE and the US. But most importantly, there is a conflict with the 1979 peace treaty with Israel, which prioritizes obligations to Tel Aviv. Saudi Arabia is opposed. The Kingdom fears that Egypt is too close to the UAE—Saudi Arabia’s main regional rival. The Saudis also see Turkey’s haste as an attempt to seize leadership in the alliance. What does this mean? There are serious disagreements among the participants of the Mecca Defense Pact: Turkey wants Egypt to give the alliance Arab and religious legitimacy. Egypt is the historical center of the Arab world, and Cairo hosts Al-Azhar University, the main spiritual center of Sunni Islam. Without Egypt, the alliance is a “club of wealthy monarchies”; with Egypt, it becomes the “voice of the entire Arab nation.” Additionally, Egypt opens markets for Turkey’s military industry. Saudi Arabia does not want Egypt because it itself claims leadership in the Arab world. In recent years, Riyadh has surpassed Egypt in financial and diplomatic power and does not want to share authority. Egypt’s inclusion, especially in alliance with Turkey and the UAE, would weaken Saudi influence. Riyadh believes that money and military power (Pakistan and Turkey) matter more than Egypt’s cultural authority. Egypt has not yet decided, weighing all the risks, the main one being the legal conflict with the Israeli peace treaty.
Thirteen students were arrested (amongst the many at the protest) after occupying OpenAI’s new D.C. lobbying office. During the protest, the lobbyists fled the building in shame. They didn’t want to face a group of young people who demand a brighter future, where our elections aren’t bought by the very company destroying our communities. If politicians say they’re speaking for us, they need to stop accepting bribes from OpenAI’s super PAC “Leading the Future.” It is on track to spend $200 million in the 2026 midterms. Students like these are leading the future, NOT power hungry greedy corporations and their congressional lackies.
BBC: Britain's new Prime Minister Andy Burnham has said London will continue "to support Ukraine 100%", after Moscow warned of "consequences" following confirmation that British-made drones were used in recent Ukrainian strikes inside Russia. "We are not fair-weather friends, we will be there in Ukraine's hour of need and that won't change," he said. The Russian embassy in the UK earlier accused Britain of "deliberately opting for an escalation of the Ukraine crisis", saying "the deeper its involvement in the conflict... the higher the price it will pay".
Washington Post: US debt has hit $40 trillion months earlier than expected. Faster borrowing — driven in part by lost revenue from invalidated tariffs and endless war$ — means the next debt-limit fight is also likely to arrive ahead of schedule.
With a over a trillion-dollar Pentagon budget, serving our troops rotten food and making them use moldy bathrooms is a choice, not an unavoidable hardship, as are the other decisions made during Pistol Pete Hegseth’s command of the most expensive military on the planet. A picture from aboard the moldy old USS George Washington, which recently underwent an incredibly expensive “complex overhaul” that took six years to finish.
Strategic Culture Foundation: There is a fundamental irony that American economists and strategists struggle to acknowledge openly: the dollar’s main enemy is not the BRICS, nor is it China, nor is it the renminbi. It is the foreign policy of the US itself. Every time Washington imposes financial sanctions - on Russia, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, or hundreds of private entities - it reduces the dollar’s appeal as a neutral and reliable reserve currency. The dollar’s comparative advantage lay precisely in its apparent neutrality: everyone used it because no one expected Washington to prevent its use for legitimate trade purposes. That neutrality has been irreparably compromised. Trump, with his threat of 100 percent tariffs on countries that promote alternatives to the dollar, has made explicit a tension that had always been implicit: maintaining the dollar’s centrality now requires active coercion, no longer merely market forces.
Ukraine has derailed the planned August 20-21 visit of IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi to the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant and the town of Energodar, the Russian Foreign Ministry said. All details had been previously worked out by the IAEA Secretariat and the Russian side. Russia provided the necessary security guarantees, which fully satisfied the Agency. However, Ukraine cynically threatened Grossi, explicitly stating that it could not vouch for his safety if he entered the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant via Russian territory. The Ukrainian threats have once again exposed the true nature of the Kiev regime, the ministry emphasized.
What is ‘Ukrainianism’?: Pot head Nazi (in video below) explains why the former Ukrainian relationship with Russia will cease to exist. The woman announces alliance with WW2 Ukrainian Nazi collaborator Stephan Bandera who lead the killing of tens of thousands of Jews, Poles, Russians and Gypsies alongside Hitler's forces. These current Nazis predominate in western Ukraine near the Poland border. They were used by the US-UK-EU to attack the Russian ethnic Ukrainians in the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine - alongside the Russian border. The attacks began soon after the Obama-Biden-Hillary Clinton-Victoria Nuland orchestrated coup d'état in Kev in 2014. This terrorism, directed by CIA and MI6, has lasted to the present times. It is why Russia eventually went into Ukraine in 2022 after trying years of diplomatic efforts which included the Minsk 1 & 2 agreements that would have ended the war and kept the Donbass as part of Ukraine. Under those agreements (that were never honored by Kiev and its western backers) those in the Donbass would still speak Russian and have local autonomy. But that was not good enough for the US-UK-EU that instead wanted the break-up of Russia and the stealing of the vast resource base of Russia. Thus the war continues.
This reveals how desperate the US military is these days to keep their war mongering ranks up to snuff. (Especially after the recent debacle onboard the USS Abe Lincoln. That story is enough to scare anyone away from joining the military.)
Personnel in the 9th Engineer Battalion though are being offered four days off in 'honor' of the release of the 'Grand Theft Auto VI'.
This 'deal' only applies to those within the battalion who 'are eligible for reenlistment'.
Having been in the US Air Force during the US war on Vietnam, I saw my share of reenlistment gimmicks by the command structure. But this one tops the list.
The US is not backing down from its quest to take down Iran, Russia, China, Brazil, Cuba, Greenland and many other nations. The capitalist loving globalists, and their zionist pals, want to dominate the world and intend to keep the terror fires burning as long as they can.
Thus they need all the troops and sailors they can get their grubby hands on.
So they come up with these lame recruitment and reenlistment schemes in order to bribe unemployed, poor, and down and out men and women to join the military and to stay in for the long haul.
And if that doesn't work out they will likely return to a draft or they can take the ugly path that the Ukrainian government has chosen, where they just grab men off the streets.
Think about all the immigrants now being grabbed off the streets by ICE these days. I'd not be surprised if they began offering them 'citizenship' if they join the war machine. We know that many men from Mexico in the past were offered that deal, went to war for the US, and when they'd done their time, expecting to be citizens, were deported anyway. Breaking the promise of 'citizenship' made by Washington.
The video below shows one man in Kharkov, Ukraine trying to disguise himself as previously injured. Will it work?
Likely not since Zelensky’s goons now scroll social media for such things as they desperately have quotas to reach or likely be sent to the front themselves.
One other example, sad and horrifying, is the 2nd video below of the Zelensky goons trying to grab a kid who looks about 12 years old in Odessa, Ukraine. The kid fights back against the 'recruitment specialist'.
The other night I watched a documentary called Coup 53, a brilliant treatment of the coup that deposed Mohammad Mossadegh as prime minister of Iran in the year the film notes in its title. Taghi Amirani, the director, has produced a superb piece of work, narrated in part by the estimable Steve Kinzer. Today, 19 August, marks the 73rd anniversary of Operation Ajax, as M.I.–6 and the C.I.A. named their covert assault on Iran’s first democratically elected government.
How well I recall learning of the Iran coup during my teenage years, when my eyes were just opening upon how, by the mid–1960s, the United States (and in this case Britain) treated those in foreign lands whose misfortune was to possess resources the world’s newest imperium sought compulsively to control. And how well I recall discovering at the same time the remarkably pervasive ignorance of this conduct among all but a very few Americans.
Late one evening, I must have been 18 or so, this topic came up in conversation with my dear mother. “But no, we wouldn’t do that!” she exclaimed in a tone of anxious disbelief.
“But we did, Mother. If you know where to find the record, what we did is in it.”
My mother lowered her eyes and glanced away. I could see her mind was simply incapable of absorbing the information I had put before her. There was a sort of psycho-emotional blockage. The subject never again came up.
I have long been preoccupied, maybe since those days, indeed, with the question of seeing. And just as much if not more, with the question of not-seeing. This is only natural, it seems to me, given that seeing and not-seeing, the latter vastly more prevalent than the former, is so defining of who Americans are and what makes them so different from other peoples. In a recent interview in Consortium News, Patrik Baab, the conscientious and beleaguered-because-conscientious Berlin correspondent, writer, and podcaster, referred to the “apocalyptic blindness” he finds among Germans. I know this is so, especially among West Germans, having traveled among them recently. But in the way of collective blindness, I must suggest to my friend and colleague, no people are more addicted to total darkness than Americans.
What I saw in my mother all those years ago was a refusal—a refusal to see that could not even understand itself as an act of refusal. I cannot say whether this condition has worsened in the decades since the conversation I had with her in the mid–1960s, but I don’t think this matters much one way or the other. If I have to offer an answer, I think it is both: People see more now than then, people see less now than then. The though requires explanation, obviously.
Among those who watch Taghi Amirani’s film, and I hope many do, I imagine few will be as surprised to learn of Operation Ajax as my mother was. America’s lawless barbarism and all its messes are easier to see now. The plain-as-day defeats of April 1975 have something to do with this. So do digital technologies and the emergence of independent media. The invasion of Venezuela and the blockade of Cuba, the killings-from-the-air of fishermen in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific, the installation of a murderous jihadist in Syria, the genocides in Gaza and the West Bank, the illegal bombing of Iran: There is no missing any of this.
But there is one failure to see that remains, and its persistence is symptomatic, it seems to me, of an empire in its late, desperate phase. This is the steadfast refusal among most Americans to see their complicity in the imperium’s conduct. The two phenomena, the seeing and the not-seeing, go together in this case. People see more, but few are able to see, are honest enough to see, themselves—to see that Americans comprise “a perpetrator population,” a term I cite with admiration and which I will shortly explain.
~ The rest of this interesting article is pay-walled and found here
Hundreds united together in protest on Saturday, 15 August, at RAF Fairford (30 miles from Oxford), where the British government has been letting the US carry out brutal bombing raids of Iran.
We're calling on new UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham to stand up to Trump and end the use of British bases for this illegal war.
There are huge risks that this war will escalate again - and it is dragging the world deeper into economic crisis.
Burnham needs to redirect the hundreds of billions away from war and nukes into climate action, rebuilding our health service, our education system, our transport network and our emergency services. These are the solutions to the real threats we face today.
The Fairford base hosts US B-1 and B-2 bombers as well as U-2 spy planes.
For years Israel has been successfully expanding its influence in Latin America.
Its trade volume with the region is growing, and the number of the countries that plan to transfer their embassies from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem is expected to increase in the near future.
This video is a good background primer on 'Greater Israel' operations.
Zionist Argentinian President Javier Milei is sadly just one example among many how Israel has their hooks into the region.
RT: Tehran and Muscat (Oman) are discussing a parallel Hormuz deal as talks with Washington stall. US President Trump has threatened to 'bomb the shit out of Oman' if it strikes a separate deal with Iran on control of the Strait of Hormuz, despite Oman’s key role as a mediator between Washington and Tehran.
The USS Abraham Lincoln has gone nearly nine months without a port call after Iran's strike destroyed the Navy's Bahrain supply base. Resupply now comes from Diego Garcia, an island 2,200 miles away. Critics says the crew is facing shortages and worsening mental health. Trump dismissed the concerns, saying the carrier would move 'very shortly'. Nine months stranded at sea for a war Israel wanted and America is stuck fighting. New York Times details how the ailing USS Lincoln will now be replaced by the USS George Washington, hobbling over from INDOPACOM, leaving the 7th Fleet with no forward deployed carriers on the critical ‘Chinese front’.
Some have begun to debate the utility of continuing to host large US military installations on their territory. “Trump started this war,” one Gulf official said, “and we are paying the price.” Like others he spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive subject. Anger with the US, the official said, was at its highest point since the US and Israel attacked Iran in February. The Gulf states have relied on Washington as a close security partner and major arms supplier, and Qatar and Bahrain have hosted large US bases. But the frustration is leading some states to consider new arrangements.
Ben Gvir: "There are people there who are not alive. They don't need to live. They are not people. I'm doing them a favor by calling them people." He is calling for the killing of 30 to 50 people in Gaza every night, pushing Palestinians to emigrate, so zionists can begin building Jewish settlements across Gaza.
Officials in Washington are allegedly discussing the possible use of nuclear weapons against Iran as the months-long conflict continues to escalate, former US Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has claimed. Greene, once a prominent MAGA ally, made the allegation in a post on X on Sunday. She said the issue had been raised during strategy meetings, but did not identify those involved. “They are discussing using nuclear weapons on Iran in strategy meetings,” she wrote. “I’m not speculating, I know. And it’s pure evil.” Her warning comes amid reports that Washington has been weighing further escalation in the conflict. The Washington Post reported last month that the US was preparing for a wider war, while the Pentagon has reportedly examined a major ground operation to seize Iran’s enriched uranium.
A recent YouTube interview with Ukrainian pop star Olya Polyakova has caused national uproar. Famous, outspoken, and uninhibited, Polyakova deplored Ukraine’s oppressive and stifling atmosphere. “Are we in a concentration camp, in a camp for political prisoners?” she asked and predicted that “soon, we will all be terrified, frightened mice that sit in their holes and do not even dare stick out their nose.” Polyakova also fearlessly pushed the Zelensky regime’s single most painful button: “They’ll grab someone from your family, or anyone, in the street and you’ll just walk past” pretending not to see anything out of fear, just to be left alone. The conversation quickly turned to Ukraine’s institutionalized manhunts to feed the meat-grinder war.
Yemen military: Saudi Arabia has imported Ukrainian and Colombian mercenaries to operate drones against our forces. They will all fail, and we will teach them a lesson they will never forget, God willing.
The Sunday Times in UK reports that Ukraine has used British-made drones to strike targets deep inside Russian territory. The attacks targeted oil refineries in Volgograd and Yaroslavl, marking a "new stage" in military cooperation between London and Kiev. However, retired Air Marshal Greg Bagwell warned that using British drones against Russia could provide Moscow with grounds to consider UK manufacturing plants as legitimate military targets.
Mysl Polska reported: Zelensky will lose power if the EU stops giving money to Ukraine: “Zelensky will not stop stealing; he has built himself an ideal world in which his corruption goes unpunished,” claims the Polish publication. Zelensky’s political position depends directly on the European Union continuing to provide financial support to Ukraine, adds Mysl Polska.
Labor Notes: News broke last week of a sweeping undercover investigation by the Department of Homeland Security in Minnesota early this year to infiltrate and surveil meetings and obtain the financial records of nonprofit groups and two of the country’s largest unions, the Communications Workers (CWA) and the Service Employees (SEIU). This investigation was behind the indictments of 15 people in June. Minnesota AFL-CIO President Bernie Burnham called the targeting of the labor movement an “unhinged conspiracy theory. Instead of holding federal agents accountable for shooting and killing Renée Good and our union brother Alex Pretti, or addressing the dangerous and deadly conditions within immigration detention facilities,” Burnham said, “the Trump administration continues to weaponize our federal government to intimidate our unions, our communities, and anyone who peacefully opposes their radical authoritarian agenda…They are now bringing back McCarthyism to paint unions and organizations that advocate for workers and families as threats to the nation. It didn’t work in the 1950s when Joseph McCarthy accused anyone he didn’t like of being unamerican and it won’t work for Donald Trump.”
US rejected a UN vote last spring to recognize slavery as a crime against humanity, joining only Israel and Argentina. (52 western nations abstained.) The UN General Assembly adopted the resolution with broad international support. US officials said they had concerns about the wording and possible legal or policy implications. The vote has renewed discussion about historical responsibility, education, human rights, and how countries address the lasting effects of past injustice.
South Korean President Lee Jae Myung on Saturday called for dialogue with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) aimed at achieving peaceful coexistence and eventually replacing the armistice that ended active fighting in the Korean War with a permanent peace treaty. Speaking in a speech marking Korea’s liberation from Japanese colonial rule, Lee said the two Koreas should engage in talks to establish mechanisms that could prevent renewed conflict and reduce tensions on the Korean Peninsula. Lee urged the DPRK and other concerned parties to pursue negotiations to formally end the 1950-53 Korean War, which concluded with a ceasefire rather than a peace treaty.
Island Locals Raise Alarm Over Israeli Tourists 'Colonizing' Protected Land
Israeli tourists are reportedly flocking to the Philippine island of Siargao, and locals are not happy.
Sharon Reed discusses on Indisputable.
"Manila: When reports of an assault by Israeli tourists at a restaurant in Siargao made headlines nationwide, it was not the first such incident to take place on the southern Philippine island in recent months.
This time, however, it went viral, with an increasing number of Filipino influencers calling for a crackdown on visitors from Israel to stop harassment and abuse of local businesses and rules."
People from faith-based groups in Washington, D.C. commemorated the 81st anniversary of the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They called on the U.S. government to "repent for the nuclear sin," abolish its nuclear arsenal, and ratify the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons which deems nuclear weapons are now illegal under international law.
At 8:15 a.m. on August 6, 1945, the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. A second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki just a few days later, on August 9, at 11:02 a.m. The bombs killed over 200,000 people, mostly civilians.
Commemoration actions calling for nuclear abolition were held on August 6th, on the perimeter of the Pentagon, where 17 peacemakers conducted a prayer service and two people were arrested as they processed with a banner onto the Pentagon property, and on August 8th in proximity to the White House, where about 40 people gathered for a prayer service and peace witness.
The commemoration witness near the White House was coordinated by Art Laffin of the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker and John Whitehead from Consistent Life Ethic, and co-sponsored by Dorothy Day Catholic Worker, Pax Christi Metro DC-Baltimore, Consistent Life Network, American Solidarity Party of DC-Maryland, Rehumanize International, Pax Christi USA, Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns, Sisters of Mercy of the Americas Justice Team, Little Friends for Peace, Isaiah Project, Assisi Community, and Franciscan Action Network.
Sumud is an Arabic term meaning 'steadfastness'. The one who uttered these words was martyred, but his words remain a beacon for all free people. The best song ever about the Southern Lebanon freedom fighters. Julia Boutros, the voice of love and true peace. The voice of truth, homeland, and struggle for the sake of land and honor in Southern Lebanon.
Sarah Lazare, In These Times: Dockworkers unions in France, Greece, Basque Country, Turkey, Morocco, and Italy are calling an international day of action “against war and militarization” on October 30. They are demanding an end to “the genocide of the Palestinian people” and the “US-Israeli wars of aggression in the Middle East and against Iran.” “Each union will decide the most appropriate form of mobilization according to its national circumstances, starting from strike action and from a shared commitment to prevent the loading of death and destruction,” reads a joint statement from the unions, which was sent to Workday Magazine and In These Times. Together, the unions represent workers at 40 ports in Europe and the Mediterranean. Their call for an escalation emerged from a meeting of the port workers unions held in Istanbul in May. The announcement also expresses “full solidarity with the peoples of Cuba, Venezuela and Sudan,” and declares that “ports must not be used for the transport of arms, ammunition, military equipment or troops destined for war zones.” “No to the war economy, government rearmament plans, and the project of militarization of ports and strategic infrastructure from [the] EU,” the unions assert in their statement. “Public resources must be used to meet people’s social needs, not to finance war.” Signatories include CGT FNPD in France, ENEDEP in Greece, LAB in Basque Country, LIMAN-IS in Turkey, ODT in Morocco, and ORSA Porti and USB in Italy.
By Antonio Mazzeo a teacher, peace-researcher and essayist committed to the issues of peace disarmament, the environment, human rights and the fight against mafia crime. He focused his work and his denunciations on US and NATO military bases in Italy: "In the coming weeks — I foresee a military escalation of the US armed forces on the African continent, not only in East Africa, where offensive operations in Somalia continue, but there is talk, the US press has revealed, that there are already plans for a massive intervention in the SAEL area, particularly in Mali. And I want to point out that, among other things, the US, with the support of Sigonella and Italian military bases such as those in Vicenza and Naples Capodichino, operated directly by bombing territory in Nigeria."
OrinocoTribune.com: Venezuelan grassroots and Palestine solidarity organizations have condemned the Venezuelan government’s controversial decision to initiate consular ties with the Zionist entity of “Israel,” warning that the measure contradicts the Bolivarian Revolution’s historic anti-imperialist principles and solidarity with the Palestinian people. The latest condemnations from the Brigada 13 de Abril and the Venezuelan Movement in Solidarity with Palestine Al Awda add to an earlier condemnation by the Canaan Palestinian People’s Relief Association, which described the rapprochement as a painful blow to the Bolivarian revolutionary struggle. The Brigada 13 de Abril declared its firm, categorical, and irrevocable opposition to any attempt to resume diplomatic, consular, or commercial relations with the Zionist regime. For these organizations, accepting emergency earthquake assistance cannot become a pretext for rehabilitating Zionism, abandoning Palestine, or shaking hands with a regime whose hands remain stained with Palestinian blood.
Lebanon has received messages indicating that Israel is preparing to launch an offensive to seize the strategic Ali al-Taher ridge, Al Joumhouria reported on August 14, citing a senior security official. The report said Israel is ready for the operation in southern Lebanon and is awaiting a green light from the US, which brokered a ceasefire, between the two countries last June. The security official told the Lebanese newspaper that the US side had informed Beirut that it could not completely prevent the Israeli operation, but had requested that it be a precise, surgical move with minimal civilian casualties and that it not harm the framework agreement. [Don't count on that.]
Economist Michael Hudson on The Regime Change at Home: Iran prepared for punishment, America prepared for spectacle, the war is exposing which system can endure. Higher diesel prices squeeze truckers, fertilizer shortages hit farmers, expensive aviation fuel cuts routes. Beneath the stock market, the chain of payments is tightening across the productive economy. Trump sought regime change abroad, delayed the reckoning until November, and brought the crisis home.
Iran has unveiled a large collection of US & Israeli aircraft & UAV wreckage recovered during the recent war, displayed inside an underground IRGC Aerospace Force base. Iran says some UAVs were also recovered largely intact despite multiple methods to evade air-defense detection and interception. Iran also displayed the remains of a US F-15 shot down on April 3. According to the IRGC, the aircraft was shot down using a new domestically produced air-defense system and missile combined with unconventional tactics, leaving its crew only seconds to react before impact. The IRGC says more than 85% of its air-defense production infrastructure survived the war, allowing production and deliveries to continue without significant interruption. Production rates for several missiles and systems that proved effective during the fighting have reportedly since risen above pre-war levels. Also displayed are Starlink terminals, which Iran says were associated with communications involving US and Israeli UAV operations and networks inside Iran. 171 aircrafts (majority drones) were hit during the war, including 10 crewed aircraft, alongside numerous UAVs and cruise missiles. Iran says the wreckage displayed at the underground facility represents only a portion of the aircraft and drones it has brought down.
Atul Chandra is a co-coordinator of Tricontinental Asia: This summer, students marched through Delhi, India, in cockroach masks. The masks were a response to India’s Chief Justice Surya Kant calling the country’s unemployed youth ‘cockroaches’. India’s youth reclaimed the insult, naming their movement theCockroach Janta Party. After a medical entrance examination was leaked, a wave of students committed suicide and Indian educator and activist Sonam Wangchuk went on a twenty-six-day hunger strike. These events culminated in the resignation of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan on 25 July – the first cabinet resignation forced from Prime Minister Modi’s government in twelve years. The mainstream media has filed these events under the simplistic label of ‘Gen Z’. However, the ‘cockroaches’ are not a generation but a stratum of people whom the economic system treats as disposable – an unwanted surplus of humanity. The young people in Delhi were not protesting their age; they were protesting a socioeconomic system that had failed them. In 2022, graduate unemployment in India stood at 29% – nine times the rate among those who never went to school. In other words, a more educated Indian is more likely to be unemployed. We at the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research call this a class struggle, rather than a struggle between generations. Similar conditions can be found across the region – from Sri Lanka to Nepal. Genuine anger is everywhere, but the outcome is decided by which forces have the organizational capacity to capture it.
Washington Post: American anxiety about AI is becoming a political force in the midterms. More candidates talk about artificial intelligence or data centers on their campaign websites than mention Israel or manufacturing, according to a Post analysis.
Yahoo: US intelligence officials were skeptical of an Iranian assassination threat against Trump that was relayed by Israel and prompted an extraordinary clandestine maneuver that saw him secretly fly out of Turkey in an alternate military aircraft, current. The assassination threat was relayed by the Israeli government to the CIA, where analysts did not view the intelligence as compelling and conveyed that skepticism to Trump administration officials. [In other words Trump knew it was not a real threat but used it to try to rebuild his MAGA base and distract from other pressing issues.]
ProPublica: General Dynamics wasted half a billion dollars to produce shells for Ukraine and delivered zero. The factory located in Texas spent $533 million on unproven Turkish robotic machinery in hopes to automate the process. However, robots caught fire regularly, smashed into equipment, and dropped steel parts. Giant presses required nightly sledgehammer beatings to function. The US Army halted two production lines in 2025, but never made General Dynamics pay back a dime. Since the shutdown, the General Dynamics unit responsible has received $2.5 billion in new contract awards.
After Japan's recent outburst about Russia's ownership of the four southernmost Kuril Islands, Vladimir Putin held a strategic meeting with Godzilla to discuss a plan on how to deal with Japan's ever increasing aggressive behavior and militarism. (BTW look at that stack of papers Godzilla brought with him, the guy really does his homework.)
Photo by Elliot Adams (VFP Korea Peace Team) outside U.S. Army base Camp Humphreys. Thirty buses full of police are lined up on the far left of the photo. August 13, 2026
Currently in South Korea national protest actions are being held at U.S. bases around the country as part of 'U.S. Out of Korea' campaign being organized by a vast coalition of peace groups.
The numbers vary but it is believed that between 48,000-60,000 US military personnel and their families now live on Camp Humphreys. (When regular war games are held the numbers rise.) This would make Camp Humphreys the largest U.S. base outside of the continental United States.
Much of the base expansion was due to the closing of the Yongsan U.S. Army base in downtown Seoul. That base had become a toxic mess and since closing it is still partially unavailable for new usage due to the U.S. essentially refusing to clean-up the damages. They have left it to the ROK (Republic of Korea) government to deal with. That is after the U.S. forced the South Korean government to pay about 90% of the costs to relocate Yongsan to Camp Humphreys.
Of course one reason for the move was the toxic mess at Yongsan. But other reasons I have heard was to move the base about 90 minutes to the south thus making it more difficult for North Korea to hit the base in any war. Plus the ROK government didn't like having Seoul as a prime target.
In 2015 I had the honor to participate in some of these events and below is a report I posted on this blog on August 12, 2015.
Bruce
We were taken to U.S.’s Osan Air Force Base in Pyeongtaek for a guided tour by a prominent local activist.We were driven around the perimeter of the bulging base that is now adding a second runway – likely as a result of Obama’s ‘pivot’ of Pentagon forces into the Asia-Pacific to encircle China.(More airfields are needed for Pentagon warplanes.) In order to make the base expansion possible the U.S. has forced the South Korean government to take even more lands from local farmers.Local citizens and their supporters resisted this land grab by waging a long fierce campaign but their villages and rice fields were eventually stolen.
Osan AFB currently has F-16 and A-10 warplanes stationed there as well as the high-flying U-2 spy planes.In addition the air base hosts PAC-3 (Patriot third generation) missile defense systems that are aimed at China.Their job is to take out the retaliatory response following a U.S. first-strike attack against Chinese nuclear forces. (The U.S. has also recently created a Space Force unit at Osan AFB.)
The tour continued to the nearby US Army base called Camp Humphreys that is also undergoing major expansion. Similar to Osan AFB, the U.S. forced the grabbing of two rice-farming villages near the Army base to provide additional lands for the base expansion. These new facilities at Camp Humphreys will allow the U.S. to move its current base inside downtown Seoul southward making it more difficult for North Korea to retaliate against the U.S. bases following a Pentagon attack on the north.
We had dinner with one rice farmer who lost his land when his village was taken. He and others moved to another nearby location but they couldn't replace their rice farms in the local area. The farmer, now the mayor of his current small village, had to buy new rice land two hours away and must make that long drive back and forth to work in his rice fields. I was told he spent time in prison for “obstructing” the expansion of the Army base during their protest campaign.
The Pentagon currently has in South Korea about 70 bases and military facilities. In order to pay for the current expansion of its bases the U.S. has demanded that the South Korean government pay for the big changes taking place at these military outposts. (My liberal Democrat Congresswoman Chellie Pingree calls it 'burden sharing by the host nation'.) Thus for the Korean people it is a double insult – not only is their government an occupied client state of the U.S. empire but the people must increasingly pay for unwanted toxic and dangerous U.S. military operations inside of their country.
Our guide today several times, while driving us around the perimeter of the two bases, said, “The U.S. is a bad country.” I immediately thought how much I wished the American people could take this tour and hear his words. This remarkable activist also spent time in prison for trying to protect his people from the American assault on their culture and way of life. I was told that he helps take care of the elderly farmers who were not able to purchase new rice fields and now struggle to find ways to make money in order to survive.
I came away from Pyeongtaek feeling sad, ashamed of the U.S., and disgusted with those many American people who don’t really care what happens to the people around the world who are displaced by U.S. military bases – or are killed by the soldiers that make war from these outposts on behalf of corporate capitalism.
Former Mossad chief was just handed full control of one of the biggest U.S. defense tech companies. David Barnea completed his term as Mossad director on June 2, 2026. On August 3 he was appointed Global President and Chairman of Ondas Defense Ltd., the defense division of Nasdaq-listed U.S. firm Ondas Inc., which develops autonomous systems, drones, counter-UAS, and AI-enabled multi-domain defense platforms.
The U.S. military has lost at least 45 MQ-9 Reaper reconnaissance-strike drones since the start of the war with Yemen and Iran. The cost of the lost aircraft may exceed $1.3 billion. Before the conflict began, the U.S. Armed Forces had approximately 185 such drones.
Yemen military: Yemen appreciates Russia's stance in the UN Security Council in condemning the strikes on Sanaa Airport by Saudi Arabia, as it called for lifting the complete siege on Yemen by Al Saud.
By Jonathan Cook @ Consortium News: We are on the brink of a series of catastrophes of our own making that humankind will be exceptionally lucky to survive. There is a path ahead, but being able to see it and where it leads will require — at least from most Westerners — a difficult feat of imagination. We will need to cast aside many of the things we have been taught to most closely identify with. It will demand of us a realisation that our most cherished values are actually harmful. The West has only been superficially democratic — in the sense that everyone gets a vote — for the last century or so. Even then, democracy has been highly restricted and controlled: the public usually gets a choice between two capitalist parties, one more extreme than the other, following a lifetime of exposure to opinions crafted for them by the ultimate beneficiaries of capitalism — the billionaires who own the mass media. The ruling class understands the tide is turning. The world’s resources are finite and running out. Capitalism’s model of mass consumption can only hasten the end. Consumption pollutes the planet. It fuels climate chaos. It decimates other species that sustain a living planet. If individualism is shown to bring only ruin, we are likely to prefer collective ideologies. If greed brings only death, we are likely to prefer cooperation and solidarity. Hope of salvation resides not in iPhones and jeans but in the resurrection of the commons — of public good, of shared wealth.
By Nate Bear The Elaborate Fairy-Tales Justifying The War In Ukraine: It appears that a significant number of people who support the Ukraine war understand that in every other part of the world the US is a self-interested empire using its military power and hegemonic status to assert its influence for geostrategic and political ends. But in Ukraine, apparently, this isn’t the case. In Ukraine the US has shed its imperial ambitions and is merely helping a scrappy little upstart in a fight against its big bully neighbour. In this telling of events, it is Russia which is the imperial power, with the US playing the role of good global citizen. This to me is incomprehensibly fractured logic resting on a seemingly sincere belief that the US can pursue selfless policy in one part of the world because it is a benign empire, but pursues selfish war in another part of the world because it is a malign empire. A truly baffling and incoherent analysis. In 2008, in a conversation with John McCain, Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham, Tony Blair said western strategy “should be to make Russia a little desperate with our activities in areas bordering on what Russia considers its sphere of interest and along its actual borders.” This meeting came just 10 days before the 2008 Budapest summit where the west affirmed that Ukraine and Georgia “will become” NATO members. Those who support this war until the last Ukrainian are the elites in Ukraine, Europe and the US whose husbands, fathers, sons and brothers are not being sent to die an ignominious death. Those who indulge in double-standards, false equivalences and fairy-tale narratives do so to avoid the painful unravelling of their cognitive dissonance. And those who make peace impossible make war inevitable.
SpaceNews: The Pentagon’s push to replenish missile inventories is creating an opening for a new class of manufacturers that say the problem isn’t simply a shortage of factory space. It is how those factories are built. Startups such as Machina, Hadrian and Freeform are applying software, robotics and highly automated production techniques to aerospace and defense manufacturing, challenging a model that has long relied on dedicated machinery, specialized tooling and skilled labor to make relatively small numbers of complex parts. Lockheed is also an investor in Machina through Lockheed Martin Ventures.
It would be wise to recall that during the 2003 'Shock & Awe' US attack on Iraq, then Naval War College instructor Thomas Barnett's new book 'Pentagon's New Map' was published stating that 'America's role in the world will be security export'. He said we won't make cars, TVs, shoes, etc. Our role will be to make weapons and wage endless war to secure the parts of the world not yet under US-NATO control. He called it the 'non-integrating gap'. Iran, Yemen, Palestine, Iraq, Southern Lebanon, Venezuela, Cuba, Russia, China and the African continent all fit these days into that plan. He stated these wars would enable corporate globalization of the world economy. We are still in that place today.
Historic Foreign Policy Speech at American University in Washington DC on June 10, 1963 by President John F. Kennedy: JFK was killed in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963. Compare JFK's words with those of Donald Trump these days.
