The Phony North Korea Threat

How many nations has North Korea attacked since the 1950's?

How many nations has the US attacked and forced regime change during that same period?

What country has military bases all over South Korea, Japan, Okinawa, Guam and Australia?

Which country organizes regular war exercises on the Korean peninsula aimed at the north and is encouraging Japan to rearm and develop offensive military capability?

Who is the real threat to peace on the Korean peninsula?

Which nation still refuses to negotiate and sign a final peace treaty to officially end the Korean War?

Veterans Mobilization in Washington

May 29-30 in Washington DC.  All  are invited to participate.

Video by Will Griffin (VFP).

Korean War is Not Over

As tensions with North Korea rise and the media continues to push for red lines in President Trump’s foreign policy, what historical context is missing from the conversation? Is the North Korean government simply irrational and belligerent or are historical forces behind Pyongyang’s behavior?

Mark Selden, senior research associate in the East Asia program at Cornell University, joins RT America’s Anya Parampil to discuss.

The US has long refused to sign a peace treaty with North Korea - officially the war is still on.

Previous U.S. Attacks on North Korea

Inside Fort Detrick, Maryland in the early days

I first wrote this blog entry in 2006 after reading an amazing book called “A Plague Upon Humanity” by Daniel Barenblatt. It reveals the hidden history of Japan’s biological warfare program before and during WW II.  Since we are currently in deep concern that the Trump war team will bomb North Korea it seems like a good time to retell this important story.

Barenblatt begins by revealing how Japan created a phony pretext in order to start the Manchurian war. In September 1931 Japanese army engineers secretly blew up the Japanese-owned South Manchurian Railway near Shenyang. The Japanese government then immediately blamed the explosion upon Chinese soldiers garrisoned nearby. Japan then attacked the Chinese troops, sleeping in their barracks at the time. A war was underway.

Early on Japan set up a biological warfare (BW) unit led by Shiro Ishii. BW units were established throughout Manchuria and China in Japanese army occupied territory. At these locations Chinese freedom fighters and civilians were used as lab rats and were given lethal doses of bubonic plague, cholera, smallpox, typhus and typhoid. Bodies of infected prisoners were cut open, often while people still lived, to study the effects of the biological contamination. Japan’s BW program used infected rats and fleas, dropped from airplanes, to spread the deadly diseases killing entire Chinese villages. Hundreds of thousands of innocent Chinese civilians were killed by Japan.

As WW II widened throughout the Pacific, Japan took their BW campaign to Japanese occupied islands. Japan also sent disease laden animals into Russia in hopes of spreading disease into that country. American prisoners of war were experimented on in Japanese labs as well.

Following Japanese surrender at the end of WW II one would have thought that these crimes against humanity would have been exposed and punished, similar to Nazi war crimes at the Nuremberg trials. But this was not the case. General Douglas MacArthur made a deal with Japan’s chief BW expert, Shiro Ishii, protecting him from prosecution by literally covering up the entire BW story. Ishii and his BW team gave their expertise to the US. According to Barenblatt, “Not only did they escape war crimes proceedings and public scrutiny by virtue of their cooperation with the US occupation authorities, they also became prominent public health officials and respected academic figures in Japanese university and government circles. A few became quite wealthy as executives of pharmaceutical companies.”

The Soviet Union knew about Japan’s BW program and in late 1949 called for Ishii to be apprehended and tried by the US occupation forces in Japan as the ringleader of the secret Japanese program. In response, Gen. MacArthur’s office in Tokyo denounced the Soviet charges of Japanese biological warfare and a US cover-up as evidence of communist propaganda.

In fact on March 13, 1948 the US War Department cabled instructions to Gen. MacArthur in Japan to give “immunity” to Japanese BW operatives. “Information retained from Ishii and associates may be retained in intelligence channels,” the instructions concluded.

There were war crimes trials in Japan after WW II. B.V.A. Roling, the last surviving judge from the Tokyo trials, who represented the Netherlands on the international tribunal, learned of this American deception many years later. “As one of the judges in the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, it is a bitter experience for me to be informed now that centrally ordered Japanese war criminality of the most disgusting kind was kept secret from the Court by the US government,” Roling wrote. The US should be “ashamed because of the fact they withheld information from the Court with respect to the biological experiments of the Japanese in Manchuria on Chinese and American prisoners of war,” he said.

In the 1950’s Ishii was secretly taken to the US to lecture at Fort Detrick, Maryland on how to best conduct germ warfare. And as the Korean War heated up, Ishii was used by the US to advise on how to spread deadly disease in that war against North Korean and Chinese forces. North Korea, China and the Soviet Union all claimed in 1951-52 that the US Pentagon was using germ warfare on a large scale in the Korean War.

The Chinese showed footage and photographs of metallic US shells that snapped open upon hitting the ground, releasing a swarming cargo of insects that unleashed bubonic plague, smallpox, and anthrax. This method of delivery had been a favorite of Japan’s BW program.

Barenblatt notes that an international scientific investigating team, headed by a highly noted British biochemist from Cambridge University, did research in Korea and issued a report saying that sudden appearances of insects and spiders, of species not normally known in the region, in winter, and in association with the dropping of strange containers and objects by US military planes were evidence of bio-warfare. Lab tests performed on fleas discovered in such unusual circumstances, positively showed the presence of bubonic plague bacteria.

In some cases, US military jets, usually F-86 fighters, had flown over Korea dropping masses of fowl feathers tainted with anthrax.

In 1956 American journalist John Powell was charged with 13 counts of sedition for trying to expose the US BW campaign in Korea. In 1953 former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover brought Powell before congressional committees charging him with “un-American activities.” Years later, in the 1980’s, Powell’s story was finally aired in an article in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.

So as we today hear China warning about the re-arming of Japan, with full support and encouragement of the U.S., can we not see some historical precedent for their worry? Both Japan and the US have shown, since WW II, that they will use extreme measures to subdue Korea and China in the quest for control and domination of the Asia-Pacific.

As the US today doubles its military presence in the Asia-Pacific region, can there be any doubt that China and North Korea have not forgotten the stories of the past? Stories that to most Americans are unknown and long covered up.

Bruce

America is in Big Trouble

I spent 90-minutes standing by this mailbox in Brunswick today, along with six other members of our local group called PeaceWorks, handing out tax day flyers to the public.  The others stood by the doors to the Post Office while I took my usual spot at the drive-up mail box.  I helped people put their tax returns in the box and tried to hand them our flyer.  At most 40% took one from me.

One older woman drove by and gave me the finger.  A former Brunswick town councilor (Joanne King), a Republican, rudely stepped on the gas before I could even make my kind offer of the flyer.

An old timer - retired Navy man - walked up and asked me if I 'had served' expecting me to say no which would then allow him to lecture me on patriotism.  But when I told him yes I had been in the Air Force during the Vietnam War he had to catch his breath.  Soon enough though he told me that the country was cutting the military budget and "Our troops don't have guns and our planes won't fly" because of these cuts.  I told him that was not true and then he told me "You should be proud".  I told him I was ashamed of our country - all the lies Washington told to sell the Vietnam War, the Iraq War, and now the Syria take down.

He walked into the post office and by that time the local newspaper had sent a reporter to take our photos and interview some of us.  As the old timer was leaving in his car he noticed the reporter and called him over to his car.  I heard him tell the reporter, "These people are lying."

I told the reporter that I've been standing at post office mail boxes for the past 30 years on tax day trying to get the public to understand how much of their $$$$ is wasted on endless war.

It's hard work because the vast majority of Americans don't really want to know.  If they know, and internalize the information, then they might have to do something about it.  If they think of all the innocent people their tax dollars have killed around the world then they might be compelled to stand up and speak out.  But that would be unpopular and most folks want to go along to get along.

Thank goodness there were some driving and walking by who gave us a positive sign.  It shows that at least a few people are still thinking for themselves.

Needless to say America is in big trouble.

Bruce

Non-Stop War by the U.S.

Agneta Norberg holds a list of US wars since the Korean War.  Agneta lives in Stockholm, Sweden and chairs the Swedish Peace Council.

Agneta is also on the board of the Global Network and was with us in Huntsville, Alabama for our recent 25th annual space organizing conference.

Imagine the kind of country we'd have in the US if we'd not wasted our national treasury on endless war.  We could have free health care for all, free education, a world-class public transit system, solar power on every house and business across the nation and much more.

Sign the Petition

Plans for Domination of Space

A presentation by David Webb, Chairman of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament UK, on the history of Huntsville, Alabama's connections wih the US weapons industry, starting from its production of chemical weapons and its importation of Werner von Braun and other Nazi rocket scientists, up to its becoming the modern-day Mecca for America's development and production of conventional and nuclear missiles, electronics, guidance systems and space weapons.

Dave speaks here at the 25th Annual Conference of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, held at Huntsville, April 7-9, 2017.

Sunday Song

Close Call in French Election

With eight days to go before France's April 23’s first round vote, the colourful, cultured and cantankerous far-leftist has the frontrunners on the defensive.

Suddenly, the grumpy far-leftist -- a showman in a Chairman Mao jacket who openly admired late Venezuelan populist leader Hugo Chavez -- holds the mantle of France’s most popular politician. In the course of a whirlwind month, the 65-year-old Jean-Luc Mélenchon surged nine spots to number one in weekly glossy Paris Match’s opinion poll. A full 68 percent of those surveyed hold “favourable opinions” of the far-left candidate, the poll by the Ifop-Fiducial firm showed.

Reprinted from France24.com 

Raging Over MOAB - It's a Real Bomb!

MOAB was a field test in Afghanistan - and a demonstration to China and Russia that US-NATO have a big bomb that can destroy underground nuclear missile silos in a Pentagon first-strike attack.  It is a warning from Washington that 'we will come after you hard' unless you surrender to our corporate domination.

It's a gutsy, provocative and desperate move on the part of US-NATO.  They know their empire is waning and it is a last ditch move to hang on to global control.

Russia has countered with: "We won't fight the next war with the west on Russian soil.  We will hit you hard in the US and in Europe if you attack us."  The Russians lost 27 million to the Nazi invasion during WW II and are not eager to experience that again.

So the US-NATO dropped the MOAB in Afghanistan to shock the world.  Trump is rolling the fat dice.  MOAB though was a nail in Trumps coffin - the world is figuring out that chumming around with Washington causes your clothes to stink - the foul odor wears off on the 'alliance members'.

The American people are actually tired of war but they generally keep quiet about it because they want their neighbors to like them. Social control is very sophisticated here in the USA.

We had our last Lenten peace vigil at BIW this morning - 20 of us out there on a warm sunny day.  One of those attending told a story about BIW employees being asked to head to San Diego, California where the new $4-6 billion Zumwalt 'stealth' destroyer is stationed after leaving Bath.  The ship keeps breaking down and they need BIW workers to come fix it.

During the vigil two local liberals walked by and thanked us for protesting at the shipyard.  They'd just come from an anti-Trump protest here in town this morning.  The protest was calling for Trump to disclose his tax returns and for Congress to escalate the alleged Trump-Russia connection investigations. Front groups have been created in many cities across the nation by local Democrats to carry out the orders from the Democratic Party as they flounder in Congress and have reached back to the McCarthy-era where anti-Communism was the primary organizing strategy.  Since the Democrats won't fight for the working class, poor people, the environment, or peace anymore all they have to offer is recycled red-baiting.  The Dems are so unpopular now they have to create these front groups in order to get people out onto the street.

These Dems, all fired up about Trump's tax returns, won't be seen standing with a sign opposing his wars or his call for another $54 billion in military spending.  Democrats want to be liked and steer clear of 'controversial issues' like war and peace.  The party discourages such concerns - for obvious reasons.  The kickbacks to the party from the big corporate donor$ are far more important.

As the two liberals walked by I read the small sign they carried about Trump's taxes and I asked them if they were also concerned about Trump's wars.  "He's got MOAB now," one of them declared!

MOAB
the new bikini
that thin
swimsuit
named after
US nuke tests
on Bikini Island
in the Pacific

Look for
a new series
of designer fashions
this summer
called
the MOAB
mens and
womens sizes
liberals will need
a way to express
their outrage

Look
I'm the new rage
I've got a MOAB!

Bruce

Capitalism in Crisis

In this episode of On Contact, Chris Hedges explores capitalism in crisis with Richard Wolff, professor of economics emeritus at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.

From Brexit, to labor protests in France, to Italy’s financial woes, they discuss the effects of austerity on the working class. RT Correspondent Anya Parampil looks at the fallout of Britain’s decision to leave the European Union.

Good Friday Action at Hancock Drone Base in New York

Activists in the Syracuse, New York area held another protest at the Hancock Airfield drone base today.  Here is their news release:

Good Friday commemorates the crucifixion of Jesus.  Recognizing that 70% of our nation identify as Christian, we come to the gates of the Hancock drone base to make real the crucifixion today.  As Jesus and others were crucified by the Roman Empire, drones are used by the U.S. Empire. In Roman times, crosses loomed over a community to warn people that they could be killed whenever the Empire decided. So, too, our drones fly over many countries threatening extrajudicial killings of whoever happens to be in the vicinity.

On this Good Friday, we recall Jesus’ call to love and nonviolence. We’re asking this base and this nation to turn away from a policy of modern-day crucifixion. Let’s embrace Jesus call to build the Kingdom of God on Earth instead of killing suspected enemies and innocents, including children. In the process, we are also crucifying Children, Families, Love, Peace, Community, Diplomacy, Rule of Law, US Constitution, UN Charter, US Treaties and Due Process.

 

What if our country were constantly being spied upon by drones, with some of us killed by drones? What if many bystanders, including children, were killed in the process? If that were happening, we would hope that some people in that attacking country would speak up and try to stop the killing. We’re speaking up to try and stop the illegal and immoral drone attacks on countries against which Congress has not declared war.

Today’s civil resistance action is one chapter in Upstate Drone Action’s six-year nonviolent campaign to expose the Hancock AFB war crimes. The drone resistance is linked to the world wide efforts to ground killer drones and end all US wars. Since 2010 there have been over 170 anti-Reaper arrests at Hancock Airbase.

Those arrested today: Ex-CIA analyst of 32 yrs. Ray McGovern, Jessica Stewart, Ed Kinane, Tom Joyce, James Ricks, Joan Pleune, Mark Colville, John Amidon, Brian Hynes.

These Cats are Very Sick

I've long believed, backed up by ample historical evidence, that many of these media talking heads actually work for the CIA.

The Senate's Church Committee hearings on the CIA (Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities) in 1975-76 proved this position to be true.

The goal of these media agents is not to inform the American people in order to ensure we have a vibrant citizens democracy.  Rather their job is to distort the news, fabricate evidence to justify endless war, discourage the public from speaking out, and drown the spirit and will for democracy amongst the people.  And these cats are very good at what they do.

As I wrote yesterday - these media manipulators work for the dark side.  Anyone who calls the launching of deadly cruise missiles 'beautiful' is clearly working for the devil.  If the American people had any damn sense these people would be run out of town immediately!

But the thing that really gets me is this - I can think of some so-called peaceniks (liberals, lefties, progressives, etc) who watch this bullshit and then go on email or Fazebook and regurgitate these same lies with real conviction.  You'd think by now these 'peace people' would know the score and would not fall for these lies - again and again - but that is not the case.

One begins to wonder this - are there also some number of 'intelligence operatives' inside the peace movement?  Their job being to sit inside a 'sleeper cell' for years and then when the big push comes they pop up and defend the war machine - the break-up of Yugoslavia - the Libya take down - the Russian demonization - NATO expansion - the lies about Syria - the justifications from Washington for the military encirclement of China via the 'pivot' into the Asia-Pacific - and more.

If you think I'm making this stuff up just consider the list serve of a major 'peace and justice' coalition here in the US where for the past two years there have been daily posts by these 'agents' defending US military operations in Ukraine and Syria and relentlessly attacking anyone who disagrees with them.  It's mind blowing.

Beware of those that spread lies on behalf of the dark side.

Bruce

No THAAD Tour

The Stop THAAD steering committee organized a speaking tour in the U.S. to have Rev. Seong-Hye Kim, a South Korean Won Buddhist, traveling the country talking about the recently deployed U.S. Missile Defense system THAAD to South Korea.

During her tour, Rev. Kim spoke at the 25th Annual Space For Peace Conference held in Huntsville, Alabama, which was organized by the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space.

The Fix was In

Saudi and Israeli intelligence are believed to be the ones who set this gas release in motion in order to pressure the US to increase its military operations in Syria.  It's called a 'false flag' event - just like 9-11 was, the Gulf of Tonkin incident in Vietnam, and the phony sinking of USS Maine in Havana harbor. 

The story goes on and so do the lies. 

Bruce

Talk by Key Korean-American Activist

Hyun Lee is a New York City-based writer and activist. She is a member of the Solidarity Committee for Democracy and Peace in Korea. She is also a Korea Policy Institute fellow and a member of Nodutdol for Korean Community Development.

Lee is co-creator of ZoomInKorea, an online news source for the Korean Peninsula: http://www.zoominkorea.org/

Recovering But Truly Inspired

Former Hitler rocket scientist Werner Von Braun was brought to the US after WW II under 'Operation Paperclip' to create the US space program from Huntsville, Alabama.  Inside the city's Space & Rocket Museum there is a shrine built for him.  

My energy is slowly returning after spending a couple days in bed earlier this week.  That all-night drive from Boston to Huntsville just about finished me off as I arrived in rocket city with a sore throat and barely able to talk.  Fortunately the Global Network has many exceptional people in our midst who jumped in and took over key conference tasks allowing me to mostly sit back and enjoy the show.

Our new GN board member Will Griffin (Veterans For Peace from Georgia) has been using his youthful and inspired energy to post videos of many of the conference talks on the Internet.  You can see them here

I went outside this morning and played around with our wood shed making room for a new batch of wood we will order once the last of the snow in the back yard has melted.  I always love playing with the wood - it helps me get out of my head for awhile and the exercise is helpful.

Yesterday I ordered garden seeds for spring planting that is still a few more weeks away.  I always remember the words from our beloved Tom Sturtevant who was one of the founders of Veterans For Peace in Maine.  Tom always asked me on Memorial Day if I had our peas in the ground yet.  He was a Korean War Navy veteran who served on an aircraft carrier and often recalled how the US bombed every building in North Korea during that ugly war.  The North Koreans had to live underground and came out at night to tend their fields so they would not starve.  Now today the US is itching to unleash 'shock and awe' upon them once again.

It can't be repeated often enough that the US has become emotionally and economically addicted to war.  We've been killing and stealing lands and resources since before the founding of this nation.  Most Americans, for various reasons, are not particularly interested in reflecting on our violent history.  Few are willing to take a deep look at our collapsing economy and the epidemic of depression that exists amongst our people - largely due to our endless wars and our tendency to devalue life at home and abroad.

Martin Luther King, Jr. put his finger on this in 1967 when he said, "“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”  That is America's story.

Remarkably what inspires me is the millions of good people all over the planet who keep the lights of love, justice, and peace burning.  Inside the Global Network there are many such loving souls and other similar organizations are full of such devoted peaceniks.  Imagine how much worse things would be without these steadfast and determined people.

There is not doubt that the dark forces are out to try to dominate the planet.  Their greed and lust for power has put them into an epic struggle against the forces of light.  I am proud to be part of the love team and will keep giving it my all as long as I take breath.  What an honor to be alive with the simple mission to ensure that all future generations have a chance for life on this small spinning orb.

The humans, the plants, the animals, the water, the air - we are all related.

Bruce

Can't Stop Endless War Until We Deal with Jobs

Mary Beth Sullivan's (from Bath, Maine) talk on conversion of the Military-Industrial Complex to a Peace Economy.

This talk was given at the 25th Annual Space Organizing Conference in Huntsville, Alabama organized by the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space.

Critics Corner: Speaking Truth about Syria

BBC interview with former British Ambassador to Syria Peter Ford who tells the truth - words that few are willing to say.   Thanks Mr. Ford!

Then the Bolivian Ambassador to the United Nations speaks truth to the world.  Few nations are willing to publicly speak out against the US lies about Syria.  Thanks Bolivia!