Digging a deeper & deeper hole......

Executive producer and activist Jean-Louis Bourgeois and director Bob Cohen recently released their full-length film which covers the endless war in Afghanistan. The hour-long film features former commandant of the US Marine Corps, former state department officials-turned-activists like Matthew Hoh, Afghan-American activist Shukria Dellawar, well-known author and activist Phyllis Bennis and more. The film provides a narrative of how leaving Afghanistan is not only necessary but also the only way to end the war.

Nearly 18 years after US forces invaded Afghanistan in the wake of 9/11, the Afghan conflict has become America’s longest and costliest war. Yet today, the Taliban insurgents are stronger and control more territory than ever before.

Featuring former commanding officers of the US military, combat veterans, political analysts and American and Afghan peace activists, this documentary deconstructs the reasons why the the war has failed and has dragged on for so long, while also offering solutions on how the United States can exit Afghanistan and not make this an endless war.

See the entire documentary here

Sunday song

Yes it is true, the Nazis even shell churches....

"Something spiritual is happening here, I think. Right after we installed a cross in the center, exactly two weeks ago, [intense] shelling began. Right into the city center, right at this place! It feels like some sort of spiritual warfare" - tells Father Ioannes who came to Kominternove to help parishioners of recently burnt down church.

Saint Spyridon church is suffering through all years of war. It's shining dome is an easy target for Ukrainian army forces. Walls are wrecked by shrapnel, front door is pierced all the way through by bullets. Four mortar shells landed around the church just two days ago. Nevertheless, few but resilient parishioners of Kominternove continue to come to the church service. Faith is almost all they have left.

This settlement in the South of Donetsk Republic is often shelled by incendiary munitions. Houses are burning almost every night and on the 5th of July as a result of direct hit, the roof of the church caught on fire.

DPR military [self defense forces] and local residents had to put out the fire under the constant shooting from large-caliber machine-guns. It's a kind of a habit here, that as soon as a house catches on fire, Ukrainian shelling becomes more intense to hinder people from saving their homes. Luckily, all icons have been rescued and services will be held in St Spyridon's church again very soon.

Sign Petition: No Weapons to Nazi Regime in Ukraine

To: U.S. President Trump and Canadian President Trudeau

Stop U.S. transfer of offensive weapons and military training for the puppet regime in Ukraine. Stop Canadian arms sales and funds for ammunition to Kiev.

Why is this important?

Since the U.S.-directed coup d'état in Kiev, Ukraine in 2014 more than 10,000 have been killed as the puppet government in Kiev has been attacking its own citizens in eastern Ukraine. Nazis (now part of various security departments in the Ukrainian government) have been trained, armed and directed to attack Russian ethnic citizens living in the Donbass region near Russia.

US Special Forces from Fort Carson, Colorado are repeatedly sent to western Ukraine to train Kiev's military.

Schools, hospitals, day care centers, churches, airports, rail stations, and civilian residences are repeatedly attacked by Ukraine's nationalist forces.

Canada is also now increasing its military support for Kiev's terror operation against its own citizens.

Sign the petition here and please share.

It's all the rage....

Homeless Rage in America

By Mike Hastie

Yesterday I was driving in Portland, Oregon,

when this homeless woman stepped in front

of my car and just started to scream.

I had my camera on the floor next to my legs,

so I grabbed it real quick and took this picture.

Being a photojournalist, I simply wanted proof

of what I was witnessing.

Sitting next to me was Brian Willson,

who witnessed U.S. atrocities in Viet Nam.

In the back seat was a Nicaraguan woman by the

name of Ulda.

She was visiting the U.S. for the first time.

When she was a small child she remembers eating

only banana roots, because her family didn't have food

to eat because of the U.S. funded Ronald Reagan War.

In the past two years, 200,000 people have moved

to Portland from all over the country.

Rents have gone sky high, just like other cities across

the nation.

Homelessness is an avalanche--tents popping up

like wild flowers everywhere.

Streets are littered with trash everywhere.

Arguments on many street corners.

You can feel the stress everywhere.

Anyone reading my words knows exactly what I am

talking about.

In fact, I doubt if I could say anything in this post that

people don't already know by heart.

It's happening!

You can't spend 50% of U.S. tax dollars on the violent military,

without eventually turning this country into an economic

war zone.

So, Mike, what's your point?

My point?

The world is finally getting even.

The Scream is finally being heard.


And, to think, I once thought being in

Viet Nam would never come home to roost.

Picture taken July 1, 2019

Donbass still on fire

By Erwan Castel in Alawat blogspot

In a war, an attrition strategy “is a strategy in which the objective is to wear out the fighting forces and enemy reserves…"

During his meeting with the OSCE leader, the new [Ukrainian] President Zelensky said on June 13 about the conflict in Donbass: “For me, this is the main goal: stop the war, stop the shooting... ”

In fact, exactly the opposite has occurred; Since the inauguration of the new US puppet of Kiev, a new murderous military escalation has been launched by Ukrainian forces [armed, trained and directed by the US] on the entire Donbass  [Russian ethnic eastern part of Ukraine] front, placing the clown-president on the same murderous path as his predecessors Turchinov and Poroshenko.

And during these early days of July, the Ukrainian forces continue their terrorism against the Donbass, with new deadly attacks against [the self-defense] soldiers of the Donetsk and Lugansk Republics, and also against the civilian population that they defend.

Of course, we are, fortunately, far from the butcheries experienced in the wars of the past, as for example during the Somme offensive of the first world war or the fire bombing of Dresden during the next world war.

However, it is now clear that Kiev, with a criminal genocidal intent, is trying to bleed the Donbass Russians, applying a strategy of slow hemorrhage all along the 470 kilometer front, and a policy of terror on the residential areas that are close to it.

Thus, north of Gorlovka, on Tuesday, July 2, 2019, the Ukrainians again bombed residential areas of the village of Zaitsevo, destroying new civilian homes.

According to the United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in charge of the conflict in Donbass, between April 2014 and June 9, 2019 there have been 3,332 deaths among the civilian population of Donbass, with more than 7,000 injured. And since then, civilian casualties are experiencing another significant increase, about twenty civilians have been injured during this month of June.

    On the military side, the Ukrainian forces continue to violate the Minsk agreements on a daily basis, causing significant losses in the ranks of the Republican defense forces. Thus during the month of June between 35 and 50 militiamen have been killed on the front and dozens of others wounded by a Ukrainian strategy that seeks: on the one hand to hit precisely targeted republican positions using their artillery or anti-tank missile systems; and on the other hand to maintain offensive pressure by multiplying the “contact zones” by a systematically occupying the neutral zone situated between the lines.

In addition to bombing residential areas and Republican defensive positions, Ukrainian forces are still seeking to occupy the “gray area” between the lines, making it shrink a little more each month for three years now.

Of course, this strategy is also not inconsequential for the Ukrainian “Combined Forces Operation”, which also regularly suffers significant losses in its operations against Republican defensive positions, either by our defense forces or by the minefields that dot this “gray area”.

On July 1, in the Mariupol sector, a unit of Ukrainian naval infantry carrying out an offensive reconnaissance had 4 killed and 6 wounded during the Republican response.

Elsewhere, on the northern front of the Donetsk People’s Republic, another Ukrainian unit had to abandon an advanced position near the Gorlovka defenses.

Although the Ukrainian losses are numerically larger than those of the Republican forces, it is necessary to put them however in perspective of the existing balance of power which is about 4 for 1 in favor of Kiev and the duration during which the Ukrainian army reinforces new modern equipment and procedures.

Kiev is therefore playing the clock and the numbers, continuing to cause a slow hemorrhage of Donbass, large enough to weaken in the medium term the defensive forces whose reserves are obliged to reinforce the contact zones created by the Ukrainians (to compensate for the reaction time that has become non-existent), but too weak to provoke Russian intervention and/or to revitalize military operations on the ground, which would lead to excessive Ukrainian losses and internal and international political protest.

In the 6th century BC, the Chinese general and strategist Sun Tsu already said that “the war needs victories but does not like the duration”. This theorem is still valid and we observe here and there, when a Blitzkrieg cannot bring victory, to develop battles or even wars of attrition to which are generally added other attributes, sanitary, economic, political and media, or more recently cybernetic for example.

Russia, faithful to its measured diplomacy and its sense of proportional response, reacts to this war of attrition suffered by the Donbass, and avoiding military intervention as much as possible, with increased and progressive support of the populations of Donetsk and Lugansk, which it accompanies, and assists the modernization and military standardization, the socio-economic project and their integration within the Russian Federation first administrative, as in the recent opportunity to access Russian citizenship.

Reprinted from here

Sign the petition 'No Weapons to Nazi Regime in Ukraine' here

Trump in Korea

Can Trump Achieve Peace With North Korea? from Rising Up With Sonali on Vimeo.

GUEST: Hyun Lee. U.S. National Organizer of the group Women Cross DMZ.

BACKGROUND: President Donald Trump made history on Sunday when he became the first sitting US president to step into North Korea, accepting an invitation by leader Kim Jong Un. Meeting Mr. Kim in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), he stayed on North Korean territory for only about a minute before returning to the South Korean side.

After what had appeared last year to be major progress in US-North Korean relations, ties between the two nations soured. But Trump and Kim, who claim to have a personal affinity for one another, seem ready to revive a detente.

It is not yet clear what the terms of the detente will be. Some are speculating that rather than requiring North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons technology, the Trump administration may only require a nuclear freeze.

Lastest Space Alert at printer

• Nancy Randolph (from Topsham, Maine) and I finished the latest edition of Space Alert.  It now goes to the printer and it will be in the mail around July 9. It's always a collaborative and fun process with Nancy as we put this newsletter together.  I gather the articles, photos and cartoons and Nancy does the design and layout.  We kick it back and forth a few times before it is finished. 

• Nancy told me today that she was somewhere over the weekend and some folks were talking about the recent arrests at Bath Iron Works just 10 miles up the road from Brunswick.  Some were criticizing us daring to block traffic and disrupt the destroyer 'christening'.  They felt some types of  'free speech' are just out of bounds. She told them basically that free speech is most needed when it goes against the prevailing mythologies. I thanked Nancy and said that alot of people say they support 'free speech' but actually they only want to 'allow it' when it agrees with them.  When they don't agree with the issue at hand is when they think you've gone 'out of bounds'.

• We had more articles than we could use this time.  I want to thank Will Griffin (The Peace Report) for most of the photos from the Russia trip.  It was also great that he could go from Russia to Finland to represent the Global Network at peace events there opposing US-NATO war games underway in the northern Nordic region.  The war games were aimed at Russia.  The US is pressuring the hell out of Finland and Sweden to join NATO and allow their military to be subordinated to the Pentagon - the tip of the spear.
• This Space Alert has a triple-focus.  Our Russia trip, Trump's Space Force proposal now before Congress, and the need to shut down the steroidal NATO war machine.  NATO has been used by the US to circumvent the UN's authority in order to unilaterally pursue multiple wars around the world. There will be lots of anti-NATO organizing this fall at the time of the next big meeting of NATO in London on December 3-4.  We also tried to weave in other key issues into the paper like conversion of the military industrial complex, climate change, and growing poverty as Washington shakes down the public to pay for endless war on behalf of corporate interests.  Mr. Big always wants more.
• If anyone would like to help us distribute some copies of the newsletter please let us know.  We can mail them to you and all we ask in return is help covering the postage.  Let us know how many you want and we will send them.  Please share the link to the online version of Space Alert at the GN website here. 

Bruce

The choir doesn't know this song.....

Just over fifty years ago, the first satellite was spun into orbit. Space filled us with optimism and awe. But were we in fact just staking out a new war zone? Space weapons feature prominently in science fiction, but how close are we to seeing real weapons systems in space? Today, 1000 active satellites are officially recorded as circling the earth. Most countries use satellite technology. And 45 nations own their own orbiting satellites. By shutting down a few satellites, the infrastructure of an entire country or continent can be paralyzed.

Now, the United States is the Master of Space. It dominates as the owner and user of space systems, both civilian and military. "Full spectrum dominance" - control and dominance of land, sea, air and, more recently, space, is still the goal of some within the U.S. Defense Department. But what are the realities behind these aims? Trying to track down what the Defense Department is spending on space weapons projects is a tricky business.

When Hitler had the first V2 missile launched in 1944, the weapons race in space officially began. Masters of Space is the saga of the emerging competition between the major industrial nations to control space and the fine line between space-faring and space warfare.

With unprecedented access to present and former US military personnel, and insights from anti-weapons activists, as well as military analysts, Masters of Space explores space as a "new arena for war".

Masters of Space is directed by Denis Delestrac for Lowik Media and Coptor Productions.

He's gone Injun....

Walking amongst the needles

The wind talking to Tatanka through the pines

Remembering the people

whose faces appear in the sacred rocks

Let’s not forget them

They know how to live on this land

I’ve been here since the early 60’s

when we pulled into Rapid in a blizzard

The smell of the sweet grass

the pounding of the drum

the keening voices
the howling wind

crawled inside me

My heart is still at Wounded Knee

I recall telling the southern
suburban school kids

in the 80’s about the people

Drawing lines on the chalkboard

linear thinking,
capitalism,
is killing

our spirit
and our mother

My son visited in the womb

but it’s in his blood now too

It passes from one to another

The love for the people
the love of nature

Even if you don’t know it

My heart gets big when I see the hills that

look black from a distance

The view from the wind swept butte

reminds me that this land

will always belong to all our relatives

The arrogance of the white way

drops dead in time

Like they say in the movies,

he’s gone Injun 

Bruce

Sunday song

Comedy break: Asians needed

Grossman & Gagnon on their weekly show....

Listen to "Militarization in Space" on Spreaker.

A regular Thursday segment deals with the ongoing militarization of space. As the US continues to withdraw from international arms treaties, will the weaponization and militarization of space bring the world closer to catastrophe?

Brian and John speak with Prof. Karl Grossman, a full professor of journalism at the State University of New York, College at Old Westbury and the host of a nationally aired television program focused on environmental, energy, and space issues, and with Bruce Gagnon, coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space. 

 coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space

Amazing - must watch

They finally got me.....

This financial business (above) in Orlando, Florida put the sign up in the early 1990's.  The interesting thing about it was that the building was right on the downtown entrance to the interstate highway (I-4) that was flooded with cars at the end of each workday.

A friend saw it and took the photo.  That particular message stayed up there for some time.  They were complaining about all my organizing in the Orlando-area and also the protests I was then regularly organizing at the Kennedy Space Center around the Star Wars program.

I've spent a few days in jail here and there over the years.  Once after a Cape Canaveral protest I did five nights in the lock up.  But I've never been too eager to spend time in jail.  I'm an organizer and figure my place is out on the street stirring the pot.

The owner of this business would be happy though to hear about my couple of days in jail over the past weekend. I wanted write a bit about the experience - one that I can say was quite remarkable.

But first a qualifier.  The jailers and police in Maine are generally a bit different from other places where I have been 'apprehended' while doing protests across this land.  They tend to be much less anxious in Maine to bust heads and inside the jail they were more at ease.

With that said, all things were not Shangri-la at the Two Bridges Regional Jail in Wiscasset, Maine. The jail was the project of Lincoln and Sagadahoc counties and holds minimum, medium and maximum-security inmates.  I am told it is a privatized jail but could not find any information on the Internet about who owns it.  The terrible food served there is produced by the Aramark Corporation.

Here are some general observations about the jail:

• Inmates report that they have barely edible oatmeal virtually every morning.  We also had cardboard-like potatoes and watered down apple juice during our time there in addition to the oatmeal.  
• In an advert online for jobs at Two Bridges jail one person wrote:  "Pros - free lunch, always off 2 or 3 days off in a row every other weekend off. Cons - understaffed, high turnover rate, staff morale low due to nature of the job." [Might be wise to add under the Cons - the food.]

• If you want extras like coffee, tea, salt, pepper, mayo, shampoo and the like you have to purchase it from the jail 'commissary' - one more way to turn a profit for the private corporation that owns the joint.  Many inmates purchase packages of Ramen noodles to eat in their cells since they are always hungry.  Our group of five men protesters gave some of our food away to other inmates which they gladly accepted.
• We repeatedly heard that it costs the two counties 'utilizing' the jail $150 a day to house the prisoners.  We also heard that .22 cents a day is spent feeding the inmates.  Could have been a rumor but the same information came from both men and women pods.  The whole private prison industry needs to be investigated.  The taxpayers and the inmates are being ripped off.  Sadly few media do investigative journalism any more.
• At one point I had a splitting headache and asked the jail guard for two aspirin.  He blew me off.  An inmate heard me and went into his cell and returned with a small packet containing two aspirin which he had purchased.  I gave him my apple and told him 'good trade'.

• Our men's cell block had an upstairs and a downstairs.  Each cell had two steel bunk beds, one toilet, one sink, one chair, and one tiny table.  The light was always on.  When the downstairs cell mates were allowed out to eat, shoot hoops, watch TV, play games or walk around the 'pod', the cells upstairs were locked down.  Then they switched and the upstairs inmates were sent downstairs and the lower cells were locked down.

• Everyone was issued a plastic cup and a plastic 'spork'.  Food was served on ugly brown thick plastic trays.

• We all were also given blue jail clothes, two thin sheets, a blanket, extra underpants, pants, towels, socks - many of which were tattered.
• It was so cold in the lock up that I was shivering at times and came home with a severe sore throat.

• The blue plastic mattress was about two inches thick which made sleeping very hard to do on top of the steel frame bed.  It didn't help that on Sunday night they ran a very loud floor cleaning machine downstairs until 12:30 am.

• We had one rectangular window in our cell (my cell mate was fellow protester Ken Jones from North Carolina).  We could see a wild patch of yellow buttercups and robins bounding around but were not allowed to go outside.

• The official jail handbook was 41 pages long and it was all we had to read for our first 24 hours until we learned about a well hidden drawer downstairs where a few books were available.  Each day one copy of the Portland Press Herald newspaper was available for the 70-some inmates.  Most of them checked it out when they could find it. 

• The handbook has a lengthy dress code for those who visit inmates.

• Our cell was 12 ft by 7 ft.

• When we arrived at the jail we learned that word had already spread about our protest and our arrests.  Many of the inmates thanked us for our protest at BIW and urged us to 'keep it up' when we left.  That included one very intimidating inmate with ripplin muscles who told one of our guys that he has family that works at the shipyard.

It was no fun to be in jail but I'm glad we refused to pay the $60 bail commissioner fee which landed us in the joint.  Other inmates couldn't believe we refused to pay such a small fee - one guy we met has a $15,000 bail and has been in jail for quite some time because he couldn't pay it. (This particular guy was the most welcoming to us and helped us navigate our way during our time.) Many have to stay locked up for months until their trails are held.  The entire bail system is unjust and should be ended.  The bail commissioners make big money off the system.

One of my best moments was while I was walking in circles around the lower pod to get some exercise.  A young black man locked inside his cell tapped on the window and held up the newspaper story about our arrests.  He fist bumped me on the small cell window.

The four women protesters inside the jail told similar stories about their experiences and they made some deep connections with other women inmates.

In the end these inmates are predominately working class who are mostly good people who have made some mistakes.  The American 'corrections' system is not about helping people become better citizens - in fact it is a profit driven clamp down program directed at poor and working class people who have become superfluous populations.  Due to mechanization, robotics, computerization and off-shoring of jobs tens of millions of people in this country are no longer 'needed' by the capitalist system.  So instead of educating them, these unwanted people are locked into cold steel dungeons and little to no effort is made to 'rehabilitate' them.

Other countries, Norway comes to mind, have a very humane way of handling people who have broken the law.  But America isn't into being human - it's all about making money and punishing the men and women of our society who have no place in this dog-eat-dog culture.

I befriended one young man during my time in Two Bridges jail.  He has cerebral palsy, walks with a limp, and has had problems with depression and alcohol.  He's in jail for a month.  A sweeter guy you'd never find anywhere.  We are going to get together once he gets out.  I want to help him in any way I can.  Meeting him was worth my two nights in a lousy bed - with little sleep and an aching back.

Bruce

More BIW protest photos

We blocked buses and cars going into the June 22 'christening' of a destroyer at Bath Iron Works from three locations.  This particular one is near the North Gate.  Buses from 'Park & Ride' spots shuttled people wanting to attend the event into the shipyard. These photos are not in much of any order but you will get the drift.  (Photos taken by Mary Donnelly, Regis Tremblay and Roger Leisner.  Click on them for a better view.)

Sam and Akemi are supportive partners of two of our folks who were arrested.  They come from farther north in Maine.

People lined up across from BIW near the North gate

In the closing circle after those arrested had been taken away by police.

A new banner made by a local artist collective

Those joining the closing circle - something that is done at each BIW protest.

The iconic crane at BIW that is no longer used for anything except to hold a tree at Christmas time.

Some of our most dedicated long-time local peaceniks.

Standing near the North Gate. Dan (left) and Dixie were both arrested.

A local mother and her son who is now a veteran of these protests.  He helps reduce our average age quite a bit. We are doing these protests so that the future generations (human, plant and animal) may have life on Mother Earth.

Folks near the North Gate blocking a bus that came off the bridge.  Instead of driving to BIW's gates on their normal routes they went way out of the way in order to escape our protest.  But we had people at all the gates and were successful in blocking several buses, vans and cars.

One of our key organizers Lisa Savage from Solon, Maine.  She is a school teacher and often speaks about how schools in our state are being defunded while the Pentagon budget grows like a cancer.  Lisa organized our news conference last Friday in Portland as well. She coordinates the group called Maine Natural Guard.

A committee of our friends (mostly from the Blue Hill peninsula) recently created a brochure that carries this graphic for statewide distribution.  We ran out of our first order and made a 2nd printing request.  Hancock artist Russell Wray designed the banner.

This is an entrance to the North Gate where several of us were arrested for blocking cars wanting to enter the parking lot.  We had just been arrested when this picture was taken.

I began the day telling about a June 20 protest at the Hancock drone base near Syracuse, New York where eight activists were arrested for blocking the air base main gate.  The base is where Air Force personnel remotely pilot missile-firing robotic Reaper drones over Afghanistan (and probably elsewhere). These classified operations result in the terrorizing, maiming and killing of uncountable numbers of unarmed and undefended innocent families.  There have regularly been many protests at this base with a huge number of arrests.  They are a real inspiration to us in Maine.

More of those in the closing circle after those arrested had been taken to the county courthouse for processing.

Artists Rob Shetterly and Natasha Mayers helping to block the back of the bus near the North Gate.

A group near the North Gate.

Local environmental activist who has long been working on climate change.

Mark Roman (left) getting cuffed near the North Gate.

Jason Rawn & Rosie Paul singing near the North Gate.  Rosie keep folks talking and singing throughout the action.

Sadie from California sharing some words of solidarity.

George & Maureen Kehoe Ostenson (Smilin' Trees Disarmament Farm in Hope, Maine) have been organizing protests at BIW longer than anyone else I know.  All during Lent and Advent and at other times of year they gather us to bear witness to the U.S.'s misplaced priorities.

Russell with the banner in front of a bus early on at the South Gate

Ken (from North Carolina) and Mary Beth having helped block a bus at the South Gate.

Russell and Connie at the South Gate before a bus arrived.  They both were arrested for helping to stop a bus.