Gaza starvation vigil in Brunswick, Maine

 

Four of us stood at the busiest intersection for an hour on a cold and windy one today in Brunswick. We've been coming here every Thursday since early 2022 for peace vigils. We've only missed a couple handfuls of times.

We brought out new signs about the Israel-US starvation strategy today. We definitely got people's attention.

It is beyond despicable that the zionists in Israel-US-EU are getting away with this carnage.

Protests are growing worldwide, which is good, but most governments are doing little to nothing to stop this insanity. Israel should be kicked out of the United Nations immediately.

Yesterday in Portland, Maine 20 folks were arrested for blocking a busy street in the Old Port part of town. You can see the story and photos here.  

We only have 1.3 million people across Maine but anti-genocide protests are steady across the state.

Many people are also joining the national Veterans For Peace call for a 40-day hunger strike.

We must do all we can to stop this unspeakable evil now.

Bruce 

Gaza - Trump - Ukraine - Russia with Bruce Gagnon

It's Our Humanity That's At Stake - The Next Generations

 

By Regis Tremblay

Bruce Gagnon joined me again for a very spirited discussion about the ongoing genocide in Gaza and what if anything can be done. Is Israel finished on the global scene?

I asked how Americans were viewing Trump? He asked how were Russians viewing Trump? We segued to the war in Ukraine and if Trump had any influence.

I asked Bruce why he keeps fighting. Should be the answer of every human. 

Most isolated people on Earth in danger

 

 The Shompen

Uncontacted people on Indian island face genocide in the name of "mega-development"

The Shompen are one of the most isolated peoples on Earth. They live on Great Nicobar Island in India, and most of them are uncontacted, refusing all interactions with outsiders.

Numbering around 300 people, they are now at risk of being totally wiped out by a “mega-development” plan to transform their small island home into the “Hong Kong of India.”

Great Nicobar Island, is small but has extremely high levels of biodiversity. Around 95% of the island is covered in rainforest and it’s home to 11 species of mammals, 32 species of birds, 7 species of reptiles and 4 species of amphibians, all found only here. It’s a place where monitor lizards and crocodiles share the rainforest with macaques and tree shrews, where giant turtles swim among the coral reefs with dugongs and dolphins.

But the Indian government is now planning to transform the Shompen’s small island into the ‘Hong Kong of India', which will totally change their lives forever. Its ‘Great Nicobar Project’ will have a devastating impact on the lives of the Shompen and the neighbouring Nicobarese. As neither peoples have given their consent to the scheme, it violates both Indian and international law.

The authorities plan to create a mega-port; a city; an international airport; a power station; a defence base; an industrial park; and tourism zones, spread over more than 244 square km of land, including 130 square km of rainforest.

There is a petition to sign here but we also need to get the word around.  

Israel-US itching to take down Iran

 

Pepe Escobar: How Iran Plans to Tackle the US.

What happens if Iran is attacked by Israel and the US? 

Will the nuclear deal between US & Iran work out? 

How about block the Strait of Hormuz?

History lesson: Watch the FBI-CIA-NSA

 

 Highly recommend this trailer and film

We saw this movie in 2019. It is a great film.  

 
I am not particularly fond of Clint Eastwood but I'd have to say it was the best film I've ever seen him make.  Surprisingly it was co-produced by Leonardo DiCaprio.  An unusual pair for sure.

The film is about the over reach of the FBI and how they set up security guard Richard Jewell to take the blame after the 1996 Olympic bombing in Atlanta.

The actor that plays the accused Richard Jewell did a stunning performance.

It's an important film as we witness the current stories about FBI-CIA-NSA malfeasance inside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) fascistic actions, growing domestic surveillance, attacks on free speech and assembly, and the escalating attacks on student protests over Palestine.

 

All of the oligarchic actions need an enemy to justify this repression. Many of our governments have long been in the hands of the remnant Nazi cabal that worked hard after WW2 to keep themselves in power. 

 

Alan Dulles ran the CIA from 1953-1961. As a so-called public servant Dulles was most committed to supporting global corporate domination - aka the 'global mafia'.

 

The prevailing ideology in Washington: Pick an enemy like Russia and ride it as far as you can before the horse throws the rider off.  Imagine the money made during those times of supreme tension. The Cold War was a boom for the MIC. They need another one now if they hope to hang onto their pirate power. 

 

(I once read that George H. W. Bush's family had been pirates - made sense to me.)

 

Dulles ensured that Wall Street interests always prevailed inside the deep layers of the US government.

 

Fear (domestic and foreign) must be generated in order to control the quivering masses. 

 

This is a good 'Mr. Big's clampdown warning'.

 

Bruce

Attempted march to Gaza border by peaceniks

Hundreds of Israeli and Palestinian anti-war activists gathered two days ago in the Israeli southern city of Sderot to march towards the Gaza border, calling to end the war. 

“We want to stop this horrible war,” says Itamar Avneri, one of the organisers of the event. 

“We demand our government to achieve a hostage deal and a ceasefire, in order to save lives, Israeli lives and Palestinian lives, end this horrible war and destruction of Gaza, and starting to advance toward real Palestinian-Israeli peace.” 

Police stopped protesters from marching towards the border, resulting in clashes and several arrests. 

Israel let in 9 truck loads of aid into Gaza yesterday as a public relations move and then bombed this warehouse

Julani in a suit: How France turned a pariah into a partner

 

The Cradle

Syria's interim President Ahmad Sharaa’s rise is less a redemption arc than a calculated western project – with France seeking to outmaneuver Russia and reclaim its colonial stake in Syria.

Just a week before his landmark meeting with US President Donald Trump in Riyadh – the first encounter between American and Syrian leaders in 25 years – Syria's self-appointed transitional president, Ahmad al-Sharaa, arrived in Paris.

Sharaa's visit to the French capital, his first to a western nation since assuming power, was meticulously orchestrated. France extended a cautious welcome, limiting reception protocols and refraining from high-level state honors, signaling its intent to assert influence over the Syrian file without fully legitimizing a leader still listed on international terrorism watchlists.

The visit, which required a UN-sanctioned waiver of travel bans for Sharaa and his delegation, culminated in a carefully managed meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron at the Élysée Palace. Macron’s press conference afterward struck a sharp tone, insisting that meaningful changes in the Syrian file remain a prerequisite for international engagement.

France’s calculated hospitality reinforced its ambitions to reclaim influence in Syria. For Sharaa, the trip was a strategic move to project international legitimacy and bury the hardline legacy of his past, including leadership ties to both Al-Qaeda and ISIS.

France’s investment in division

Sharaa – better known as Abu Mohammad al-Julani – has spent nearly a decade reinventing himself. After severing ties with Al-Qaeda in 2016 and rebranding the Nusra Front as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), Julani began selling a more palatable image to international players. Qatari media led the narrative change while Turkiye facilitated much of his rise, allowing him to dominate Idlib in northwest Syria without major external funding.

France, meanwhile, had already begun recalibrating its Syria strategy. In 2017, the French Foreign Ministry commissioned a policy paper from its CAPS think tank advising on a stake in a post-Assad Syria. The recommendation: support reconstruction in areas outside former president Bashar al-Assad’s control – including those under “radical” forces like HTS – as a hedge against Damascus’s resurgence.

The ousted Syrian president has previously placed blame on France for its role in supporting terrorist groups in Syria during the crisis that started in 2011. “France has been the standard bearer of support for terrorism in Syria since the early days of the conflict,” he told journalists in 2017.

French policy hinged on one core idea: prevent reunification under Assad by consolidating de facto zones of control. Paris began discreetly funding civil initiatives in areas controlled by Julani – while the US still had a $10 million bounty on his head – and revived intelligence contacts to address the presence of over 600 French nationals fighting alongside HTS and other militant factions.

While these ties remained largely covert, Julani spent years consolidating his grip on local factions, including foreign contingents. That groundwork laid the foundation for broader western engagement.

Sharaa’s global debut

In February 2020, Julani made his first international play. The International Crisis Group, then led by Robert Malley, published a wide-ranging interview in which Jolani called for HTS’s removal from global terror lists. Malley, later former US President Joe Biden’s Iran envoy, privately urged the White House to open channels with the group.

The former Al-Qaeda leader’s message was unmistakable: HTS posed no threat outside Syria. A few months later, HTS’s chief jurist, Abdul Rahim Atoun, echoed that line in Le Temps, claiming the group sought international aid, not confrontation. It was a quiet nod to France’s ongoing policy of engagement with non-Assad-controlled regions.

Then came the image shift. Western journalists, including PBS’s Martin Smith, met Jolani, who this time donned a suit and tie. It was the debut of a new persona: not a militant commander, but a national leader.

Behind the scenes, Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani – then operating under the alias Zaid al-Attar – brokered HTS’s transformation. In 2017, Shaibani held back-channel meetings with western intelligence figures, including former British diplomat Jonathan Powell, known for negotiating with sanctioned groups.

Ukraine and the French pivot

Russia’s war in Ukraine accelerated France’s recalibration in Syria. Seeking to pressure Moscow – whose forces maintain strategic military footholds in Latakia and Tartous – Paris turned to its long-standing, colonial-era connections as a lever to reassert influence in the region.

While direct support for HTS attacks on Russian targets remains unconfirmed, the group's drone strikes in 2024 – particularly on the Kuweires Airbase – were closely followed by French diplomatic overtures. Macron’s private demands to Sharaa reportedly included a Russian withdrawal from Syria.

France’s parallel outreach to the US-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) – designed to antagonize Turkiye – cemented its dual-track strategy: contain Assad’s influence and hedge against Russia’s hold over Syria.

Protecting minorities: France’s leverage in Syria

When Sharaa stormed Damascus and took office, French and German foreign ministers rushed to Damascus in early 2025. France’s Jean-Noel Barrot dedicated significant time to meeting Christian leaders, reviving France’s colonial-era narrative of minority protection.

For Paris, safeguarding religious minorities remains a convenient entry point for intervention. Alongside Germany – eager to curb Syrian refugee flows – France offered gradual political and sanctions relief in exchange for reforms.

Sharaa responded with a technocratic cabinet, though HTS loyalists retained control of security ministries. Note that recent massacres targeting Alawites in Syria’s coastal and central areas, in addition to sectarian conflicts between HTS-led security forces and the Druze, have only accelerated France’s engagement.

Border tensions with Lebanon added further justification. During his Élysée meeting with Sharaa, Macron brandished historic maps to aid in border demarcation and addressed his guest in unusually candid language, departing from protocol to signal authority.

A mutual harvest

France’s renewed courtship of Syria’s transitional government reflects years of slow cultivation. Julani, now rebranded in a suit as Sharaa, sold his moderation. Macron, seeking regional relevance, bought it.

The two sealed their alignment in a deal brokered with Washington: The SDF, long autonomous, will integrate into the nascent Syrian Ministry of Defense. If implemented, the move will embed French influence deeper into Syrian state structures – and lend Sharaa’s presidency the institutional heft he has long sought.

For Israel, the alignment signals a potential bonus to the strategic and territorial gains it has made since Assad’s ousting: If the west is now openly backing Sharaa as a legitimate authority, normalization with Israel –  a longtime distant prospect – edges a step closer to the realm of possibility.

Cloaked in hypocrisy

 

You can't convince me that the new pope doesn't know the real story of the US orchestrated coup in Kiev, Ukraine in 2014 that installed Nazi death squads as heads of the US hand-picked government's military, security and police divisions.

Is the pope giving blessings to Zelensky to keep resisting true peace negotiations with Moscow? Is the audience with the pope designed to further build western public support for Ukraine's war on Russia? I sure hope not.

Isn't it rather ironic that the US (which started this war and has kept it alive with American taxpayer dollars - Washington sent over $130 billion to Ukraine plus the billions that other western nations donated) is now telling Russia what they must do if they want the war to end?

Talk about arrogance and pure hypocrisy.

RT reports:

“On the one hand, we’re trying to achieve peace and end a very bloody, costly, and destructive war. So there’s some element of patience that is required,” Marco Rubio [US Secretary of State] said in an interview aired on CBS News’ ‘Face the Nation’ on Sunday.

“On the other hand, we don’t have time to waste. There are a lot of other things happening in the world that we also need to be paying attention to. [Like preparing for war with the big fish - China.] So we don’t want to be involved in this process of just endless talks. There has to be some progress, some movement forward,” he added.

The diplomat confirmed that the US is ready to impose further sanctions on Russia if no deal is reached. He expressed confidence that both chambers of Congress would pass Senator Lindsey Graham’s [R-SC] bill introducing 500% tariffs on imports from countries that purchase Russian oil, natural gas, and uranium.

Moscow has rejected demands for an unconditional 30-day ceasefire, insisting that talks must address the “root causes” of the conflict, including Ukraine’s aspirations to join NATO – which Russia considers a threat to national security.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has maintained that a lasting truce would require Ukraine to halt its mobilization drive, stop receiving weapons from abroad, and withdraw troops from Russian territory. He warned that Kiev would likely use a temporary ceasefire to rearm and regroup.

The Russian and Ukrainian delegations spent nearly two hours talking in Istanbul, Türkiye, in the first direct negotiations between the two sides in around three years.

They agreed to a major prisoner exchange involving 1,000 POWs from each side, and decided to continue contacts once each party prepares a detailed ceasefire plan and presents it to the other side. 

Brazilian journalist Pepe Escobar writes about the negotiations in Istanbul:

In March 2022 in Istanbul, Kiev could have stopped the war. [This is when UK's Boris Johnson flew into Turkey and demanded that Ukraine pull out of negotiations.]  Every one of us who were in Istanbul at the time could foresee that Kiev would eventually have to be forced to the table all over again.

So in essence we are back to the same negotiation – with the same top Russian negotiator, competent historian Vladimir Medinsky, heading a delegation composed by pros, but with Ukraine now facing over a million dead; deprived of at least four regions – more on the way; what’s left of its mineral wealth de facto controlled by the US; and a horrendous black hole that passes for an “economy”. 

All the barking by the – European – chihuahuas of war cannot disguise the fundamental geopolitical/military fact: a massive NATO humiliation. Trump’s humongous problem is that he has to manage it – and sell it to domestic public opinion and the global public opinion as some sort of “deal” he struck with Putin.

It’s enlightening once again to go back to Grandmaster Lavrov, always the uber-realist, back in September 2024: “In April 2022, Russian and Ukrainian negotiators reached agreement in Istanbul. If that agreement had been observed, Ukraine would have preserved part of Donbass. But every time another agreement, always accepted by Russia, is broken, Ukraine shrinks in size.”

Now back to the (Great) Game. Kiev negotiators eventually admitting Ukrainian capitulation means a NATO capitulation and an Empire of Chaos capitulation. That’s the ultimate anathema for the US ruling classes. Even an ultra-negotiated, carefully managed Ukrainian surrender will be an impossible sell – not to mention Washington under Narcissus Drowned Trump acknowledging a strategic defeat.

Because that will mean the Empire of Chaos losing Eurasia for good: the ultimate Mackinder/Brzezinski nightmare. Coupled with the consequential solidification of the multi-nodal, multi-polar world. 

Beijing is fully aware NATO’s real goal was always to confront it via Russia. Ukraine was NATO’s pawn to take down Russia then get to China from the West. The goal of the US ruling elites as they configured their thalassocratic empire remains to blockade China from the West by land and sea, using Russia; then use Taiwan as a staging area to blockade China from the East by sea. No wonder control of Taiwan is a Chinese strategic imperative.

As for the tantrum-addicted clown in Kiev, he is merely an actor with no authority whatsoever, negotiations included. He is completely dominated by Ukrainian neo-Nazis who will kill him if and when the war is over. He merely fronts for them and gets paid off. And that’s why – enthusiastically supported by inconsequential London, Paris and Berlin – he’s obsessed to continue a Forever War destroying the very nation he claims to represent.

In the end I have real doubts that a deal will be agreed upon. But let's see just how serious Trump is about ending the war. He could tell Ukraine he is turning off the money pipeline which would surely shut it down real quick. 

If what Rubio says is true, that Washington has other big fish to fry, then the US can't keep sending billions to Ukraine along with various weapons systems that are currently in short supply inside the Pentagon stockpiles.

The US is forcing NATO countries to dramatically increase their donations to the 'war making alliance' that has no true purpose anymore. They are cutting social spending across the EU to cover this war on Russia fund that now has to essentially replace the unstable US contribution. And in those nations we are hearing every day about growing pressure on the public's right to free speech because NATO can't afford an honest debate across Europe on whether the people actually want war with Russia. 

Remember during the Cold War when the US-NATO were pitted against the former Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact? There were certainly tensions between the two nuclear-armed blocs but never did they dare to provoke one another the way we continually see the US-UK-NATO do to Russia today. 

This should be seen as a real sign of western desperation as their economies and military might are collapsing. Thus they turn to the only tool they know. This is what the colonizers historically do - they rule by creating chaos. 

I'd hope that the western citizenry can read the tea leaves and understand that we are being led over the cliff. If we wish to survive we must collectively stand against these corrupt western governments.

Bruce   

Trust big tech? Library of the Future

 

LOTF, Library of the Future. 

In past years the California State University System has "Deselected" well over 2 million print items, and in coming years plans on 'deselecting' many millions more, the goal is 60% of all print in the 22 libraries of the CSU, or about 18 million Books!

Should we rely on AI and computer storage as the repository of all human knowledge? 

Retired Air Force officer Bill Astore writes the following about this story:

Rollerball, with its emphasis on violent sports, hedonism, and corporate rule, where centuries of history get misplaced with a shrug, seems to have been more than prescient. Who knew in 1975, a half-century ago, that the NFL would become so huge, so dominant, so closely aligned with corporate and military imperatives? Who knew that corporations would become “citizens” with free-speech rights that are only limited by the amounts of money at their disposal? Who knew that America would become the number one exporter of energy again, embracing fossil fuels with gusto even as global warming accelerates?

James Caan’s character in Rollerball, Jonathan E., is willing to fight hard for answers that his corporate overlords wish to keep secret. He literally wants to do his own research! But that is a privilege he is not allowed to exercise. So he revolts in the only way open to him—through the game. Through Rollerball.

Interestingly, in 1975 critics didn’t think highly of Rollerball. Not everyone likes violent movies centered on macho sports, of course. But that’s not what Rollerball is about. It’s about a society controlled by corporate entities through bread and circuses. A society where information is tightly restricted, where people are encouraged to look the other way, to not think too hard, to accept passively the decisions of “The Executive Directorate” in the name of comfort and convenience. Nations are obsolete—authoritarian oligarchs control everything.

The oligarchs sell this as utopia; Jonathan E. is not so sure. He wants to learn some history so he can get a sense of how this all came to pass, and whether humans can do better. He senses there’s more to freedom than visits to Disney and shopping. And you might say he learns the lesson of Orwell from 1984: Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.

Sunday song

 

 

U.S. wants to resettle one million Gazans in Libya

Libya has been beset by chaos since NATO-backed forces overthrew long-serving ruler Col. Muammar Gaddafi in October 2011.

SouthFront

The United States is working on a plan to permanently relocate as much as one million Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to Libya, NBC News reported on May 16, citing five people with knowledge of the matter.

The plan is under serious enough consideration that the administration of President Donald Trump has already discussed it with Libya’s leadership, according to the report, which noted that a final agreement has yet to be reached.

The news channel said that Washington offered Libya billions of dollars of funds the U.S. froze more than a decade ago in exchange for the resettlement plan.

More than 53,000 Palestinians have been killed since the start of the Israeli war on Gaza following the October 7 Hamas-led surprise attack. The situation in the Strip, which was devastated by the war, worsened earlier this week as Israel launched a large-scale offensive with the aim of completely defeating Hamas. Over 300 people were reportedly killed in the last three days.

 Three of the sources who spoke to NBC News said that Israel was being kept in the loop about the administration’s talks on the plan.

    “These reports are untrue,” an administration spokesperson told NBC in response. “The situation on the ground is untenable for such a plan. Such a plan was not discussed and makes no sense.”

Another official told the channel that it remains unclear where one million Palestinians from Gaza could be settled in Libya, plunged into chaos following a NATO-backed uprising that toppled and killed Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

The country is now split between the internationally-recognized Government of National Unity (GNU) in Tripoli, which is supported by an array of militia groups and Syrian mercenaries, and a rival government based in Benghazi backed by the House of Representatives and the Libyan National Army (LNA).

The report also noted the logistical challenges involved in transporting one million people from Gaza to Libya, where no airport or a naval port is present.

Trump first suggested that the U.S. could “take over” Gaza and turn it into a “Middle East Riviera” while forcing its Palestinian inhabitants to relocate to Egypt, Jordan, or other countries last February.

Visiting the Middle East earlier this week, the U.S. President again said that he wanted the U.S. to “take” Gaza and turn it into a “freedom zone”.

    “I have concepts for Gaza that I think are very good. Make it a freedom zone. Let the United States get involved and make it just a freedom zone,” he said. “I’d be proud to have the United States have it, take it, make it a freedom zone.”

NBC News didn’t specify if the U.S. was in talks over the plan with the GNU, the LNA or both sides. The areas controlled by the LNA, which is led by Khalifa Haftar, are more stable, while Abdul Hamid al-Dbeibeh, the head of the GNU, is currently facing protests over recent deadly clashes in Tripoli initiated by his allies.  

The CIA’s most recent publicly available estimate of Libya’s current population is about 7.36 million. In terms of population, Libya absorbing 1 million more people would be equivalent to the U.S. taking in about 46 million.  

Author interview: David Talbot on Washington's power mongers

Journalist and Salon.com founder David Talbot interviewed by Readara.com on his book The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government (published by Harper Perennial)

Allen Welch Dulles, the distinguished Wall Street lawyer and son of a prominent family, rose to the helm of the Central Intelligence Agency at a very young age.

With the help of John Foster Dulles, Secretary of State and Allen Dulles’ brother, the longest-serving chief of the CIA molded the secretive organization in a way that often led to secret wars, overthrowing of foreign governments and occasional spying on its own people, all with the support of the U.S. Congress and mostly behind the backs of three presidents.

David Talbot, non-fiction book author and founder of the San Francisco-based web magazine Salon, combs through various government archives and draws from numerous first-hand interviews and sources to build a vivid portrayal of Dulles and the CIA under his leadership.

~ AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY: David Talbot is the author of the New York Times bestseller Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years and the acclaimed national bestseller Season of the Witch: Enchantment, Terror, and Deliverance in the City of Love. He is the founder and former editor in chief of Salon, and was a senior editor at Mother Jones and the features editor at the San Francisco Examiner. He has written for The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, Time, The Guardian, and other major publications. Talbot lives in San Francisco, California.

America’s tale of woe – step up the protests

Donald Trump recently stated that the US won WW1 and WW2. That is news to the former Soviet Union that lost 27 million people while breaking the back of Nazi Germany’s army. The US lost 419,400  dead.

Trump has started a tariff war with much of the world (especially China) that will likely break the back of the US economy. 

The Houthis in Yemen have shot down 22 US MQ-9 Reaper drones that cost $32 million each. In addition, two $60 million fighter jets slid off the deck of a US aircraft carrier recently while under attack as planes were being launched to attack Yemen. A third jet was shot down by the Navy in a ‘friendly fire’ hit. The US has been bombing civilian targets there in retribution for Yemen’s pledge not to allow any Israel-bound supply ships in the Red Sea as long as the Israel-US-UK genocide in Gaza continues. It now appears Trump has waived the white flag and quit the Yemen attacks.

Trump promised not to start any wars but he sure is working hard to break that promise as his neo-con administration is doing everything it can to support the creation of ‘Greater Israel’. Israel is now attacking Lebanon, Syria, Gaza and the West Bank. The Zionists have their sights set on Iran and are pushing Trump to ‘bomb, bomb, bomb Iran’.

Back here at home things are getting worse when it comes to health care, education, infrastructure maintenance and repair, environmental protection, cost of living and our freedoms to speak and protest. For someone who claimed he wanted to ‘Make America Great Again’ Trump sure has taken a wrong turn.

But let’s be fair. Most of these issues were staring the Biden administration in the face during his tenure. Virtually nothing was done as the Democrats were preoccupied funding wars against Russia via the US proxy Ukraine, daily carnage in Palestine, attacks on Yemen, and more. It’s a bi-partisan war machine that runs Washington these days.

Biden officials have admitted they never pressured Israel for a ceasefire.

Former Israeli ambassador Michael Herzog stated, “God did the State of Israel a favor that Biden was the president during this period…We fought [in Gaza] for over a year and the administration never came to us and said, ‘ceasefire now.’ It never did. And that’s not to be taken for granted.”

A sweeping Israeli Channel 13 investigation has exposed the Biden administration’s complicity in Israel’s 19-month war on Gaza. Nine top Biden officials acknowledged avoiding real pressure on Israel—even as the death toll surpassed 30,000. (It is now well over 50,000 – and maybe double considering those still buried under the ruble.) Israeli leaders openly bragged they dragged out the war, playing for time until Donald Trump’s return.

Former National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, Ambassador Tom Nides, and others defended their unwavering support for Israel—even as they admitted enabling a campaign one U.S. aide described as “killing and destroying for the sake of killing and destroying.”

All over the world protests against genocide in Palestine continue but, in the US, Germany and the UK in particular crackdowns on free speech and assembly continue. So much for the ‘exceptional democracy’ of the west!

Trump wants a Star Wars-era ‘Golden Dome’ over the US to protect our nation from counter-strikes after the Pentagon launches their planned wars on China and Russia. Elon Musk’s Space X company is in the lead for the contract as well as seeking hundreds of billions for the colonization of Mars that he so often brags about. Yes, there was method in his madness by becoming part of the Trump administration.

Speaking of which – Social Security is in grave danger of being privatized along with Medicare/ Medicaid, the Veterans Administration (VA), the postal service, Amtrak and much more. The oligarchs are literally draining the public sector and pocketing the cash – sort of like pirates stealing the buried treasure chest.

The desperation shows as we watch the angry words coming from Washington demanding control of Greenland, Canada, Panama Canal, Suez Canal, Ukraine’s resources and much more. The mis-leadership in the White House and Congress know that our day in the sun is over. The myth of American exceptionalism has been shattered by the emergence of the Global South, BRICS+, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and an ever-feisty African continent.

Our Role

Across the beleaguered west (US, UK, EU) we witness populations of depression and some level of resignation to the frustrations of growing oligarch domination. This is not the time to surrender hope and our demand for political sovereignty.

There has been a rise in protests lately across the US but one sad fact is that many of the events are being led by groups funded and coordinated by the Democrat Party. A close look reveals that foreign policy issues are often absent. Virtually nothing about Palestine, or funding the war in Ukraine. It should never be forgotten that much of our domestic economic crisis is currently due to spending $1 trillion a year on the military industrial complex. How can that not be a key issue in any protest?

What could be more important at this time in history than for all of us to tell the bitter truth about what the US role in the world has wrought? How could we not declare that America’s war-state MUST BE DISMANTLED! How could that issue be absent from any public gathering that presumes to right the wrongs across our land?

Most readers of this blog understand these words. But beyond us are legions of ‘progressives’ who for various reasons don’t see fit to make these deadly connections visible for the public.

That is our task – our mission in the coming times. We must never waver or cower under pressures to go along with the flow. The flow will drown us if we are not alert.  

In peace.

Bruce