Info Alert!

 

•  Israel (no surprise) is now bombing hospitals in Iran  https://x.com/szade15/status/1934523642076959044 

• Someone in Malaysia is rumored to be organizing a 1,000 boat fleet to Gaza.
• How long can this Israeli society -- which has for years gone almost entirely unscathed as its military unleashes utter devastation on lesser forces and civilian populations -- withstand prolonged destruction from a well-equipped foe like Iran?  

• I read that Pakistan warned that if Israel nukes Iran it will nuke Israel.
• US intelligence agencies have reaffirmed that there’s no evidence Iran is developing nuclear weapons or that Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has reversed his 2003 fatwah that banned the production of weapons of mass destruction.
• Israel’s main objective in this new hybrid war against Iran is regime change, creating instability and chaos, and even the disintegration of Iran. The outcome of this war will have a significant impact on the future balance of power in the Middle East.

• 300 starved aid seekers waiting for food near US-backed distribution centres in Gaza have been killed, and 2,469 others injured by Israeli forces since May 27.

• After 20 months of Israel killing and starving Palestinians in Gaza, Western leaders were just about to pressure Israel to stop it. But now, because of Iran, they won't.

• Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu said that after dealing with Iran, Israel would turn its attention to Pakistan. 

• Iran officially suspends cooperation with the IAEA, cutting off access to nuclear sites, data, inspections, and notifications.

• Macron and von der Leyen (EU) backed Israel’s aggression, then scolded Iran for retaliating. When rules apply only to enemies, they’re not rules—they’re weapons.

• International journalists are allowed into Israel to report the destruction caused by Iran but not into Gaza to report the genocide carried out by Israel.

• Israeli forces raided the cells of Palestinian captives after some allegedly expressed joy during rocket fire on Israel—part of Minister Ben Gvir’s policy of punishing any show of Palestinian resistance or joy.  https://x.com/DropSiteNews/status/1934355474624766414

• Iranian spokesperson: “America will be seen as a partner in Israel’s atrocities. We do not claim all Americans - or even all US policymakers - support the aggression of the Zionist regime. But Israel couldn't have done such brazen acts without US…”

• The Iraq playbook is back & the media won’t question it. Iran has no nuclear weapons. Israel — on trial for genocide — does. Iran signed the NPT & has allowed IAEA inspections. Israel hasn’t — & its leaders face ICC arrest warrants. Beware of politicians beating the drums of war.

• Iranians need to wake up to the fact that they’re dealing with outright psychopaths in Washington, people completely detached from reality and drunk on power.

• The arrested Mossad agents in Iran started to speak. Iranian intelligence forces discovered a 3-story building in Rey, south of Tehran, fully stocked with explosives and drones.

• Evil is the quiet bureaucracy of complicity. The complicity of silence, and the silencing of dissent. It is the everyday and the mundane.

• AWACS planes from Turkey (NATO) are spying on Iran and helping the Israelis choose targets for bombing.

• China may have quietly entered the war zone, sending a cargo plane to Tehran in what some are calling a direct and dangerous challenge to both the United States and Israel.

• Apartheid in its splendor. During airstrikes, shelters are for Jews only. Palestinian citizens of Israel not allowed to enter.

• Supporters of Tehran's creation of nuclear weapons have no place in Iran's politics, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said on Monday. Iran, however, has the right to use nuclear energy and conduct nuclear research, he added. 
• Netanyahu is angry at Americans for not wanting to go to war for him tells ABC News: "Look, I understand America First. I don't understand America Dead." 
• Ran Huldai, former commander of the Israel's air force and mayor of Tel Aviv said 'We have to reach an agreement (on a truce). We have to accept this reality and understand that we are not going to win this war'.

• Russia has fulfilled Istanbul promises to Ukraine. The bodies of over 6,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been handed over to Kiev as agreed, lead Russian negotiator Vladimir Medinsky has announced.

• Ex-CIA Larry Johnson: 'Israel’s initial euphoria over its Friday morning strikes on Iranian targets is fading as Israeli inhabitants get a taste of their own medicine. Israel’s much touted Iron Dome is a total bust.'

• A large number of 28 tanker aircraft were recorded in the last few hours taking off from the U.S. eastward across the Atlantic Ocean. Many more military assets are also being given to Netanyahu as he pushes Trump to join Israel's war on Iran.

Eric Schmidt's warmongers conference on AI-- the veil is OFF

  

The Grayzone's Max Blumenthal visits the 2025 AI Expo of the Special Competitive Studies Project in Washington DC and gets a deeply disturbing look at the future of the US national security state – before he's kicked out for asking one too many questions. 

Sponsored by a who’s who of Big Tech firms like Google, as well as private spying and cyber-warfare outfits such as Palantir, the conference featured heads of major US intelligence agencies, the Secretary of the US Navy, Chairman of the Pentagon joint chiefs, members of Congress, drone manufacturers, and universities recruiting for the CIA and other intelligence branches. 

Ukrainian, Israeli, and Taiwanese officials were on the scene to represent that frontline proxies of American empire sustaining the arms industry through their demand for massive military aid. As were professional regime change operatives from countries whose governments the US is determined to topple.

Portland Protest: Stop genocide, no war on Iran, zionists are terrorists

 

In memory of those dying at the hands of Israel-US-NATO we send our prayers and resolve.... to keep organizing to stop this run-a-way oligarch fascist criminal syndicate... we pledge our resistance to this desperate colonialist attack on Palestine and Iran. But their day in the sun is over. The whole world says so. 

 

 

 

We must stand against these rotten corpses of governments in Washington and beyond. They lie, steal and slaughter anyone who stands in the way of their corrupt agenda. 

Israel today is fighting in Gaza and the West Bank, in Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and now Iran. It's their ugly plan for Greater Israel. It looks like 2025 could be the year of the fall of apartheid zionist/neo-con Israel. 

Of course AIPAC and big corporate donors on Wall Street are the true leaders of this dangerous attempt to create WW3 as their last ditch ploy to take down BRICS+.

But the people of the world are demanding that all governments IMMEDIATELY suspend any relations with the terrorist state of Israel. Tel Aviv has always been the junk yard dog for the western colonial powers as they attempted to take control of the Middle East. 

The Gaza genocide challenges every human on Earth to decide if this mad-cap zionist operation should be allowed to stay in power. Yes or no?

Yesterday we heard alot about Kings Day rallies all over the place. One of the men who came to our protest at Woodford's Corner in Portland had first attended the much bigger Kings Day event in downtown Portland. This activist expressed surprise and disappointment in the rally organized by Democrat party activists. 

He said they were singing the national anthem and giving a cheer to the Army for 250 years of  brutal operations. (The first thought that came to my mind was Wounded Knee.) 

Another activist reported in our closing circle that he earlier ran into US Senator Angus King (I-ME) at the No Kings event up the road in Freeport (home of L. L. Bean). King approached our friend who quickly asked him when he was going to cut the funding for Israel's war machine.

The always smug Angus King is a long time captive of the General Dynamics destroyer shipyard at Bath Iron Works and the Kittery naval submarine repair facility. He loves the proxy war on Russia. 

The two-faced senator, always so humble, told our friend, "I'll think about it".

At lunch after our protest I suggested when folks got back home they ought to write to King and ask him if he was done 'thinking about halting the funding for zionist genocide'. 

I sent King my message via his website. I told him that his disdainful words to my friend made him out to be a small man and a slave to the corporate chain gang. He's an arrogant war monger who hates the rising Palestinian struggle. He's an Israeli agent posing as a US senator. 

I think I heard that Angus King's son was planning to run for governor in Maine. Would they call him Angus II? King's dream of a Maine dynasty must be denied.

Angus King at his charming best in Freeport - most liberals love him. It's all surreal. 

What we know from Iran is that they have taken seriously the declaration of war on them by Israel and the US along with various underlings in UK, Germany, Jordan, Syria (since the orchestrated coup), and various members of the 'royal' Arab states led by Saudi Arabia.   

Last night Iran began their second round of missile strikes throughout Israel. Tel Aviv's Iron Dome repeatedly failed as Iran flooded the zone with decoys, drones and various missiles. Yemen is also firing some missiles into Israel.

Iran and its allies are mostly targeting Israeli military bases, HQ of Mossad, and other likely key military operation centers such as radar and communication stations. The Haifa Oil Refinery was hit in northern occupied Palestine which supplies more than 60% of Israel’s fuel needs, from gasoline and diesel to jet fuel for the Air Force.

China and Russia, plus many other nations, have expressed support for Iran. They all strongly condemn Israel for its arrogant and brutal actions. 

So what does Israel's deep state do next? Will they drop the nukes or just keep the war going until every Palestinian is dead? How long will they bomb Iran? Will the US 'officially' come to save Israel by helping to attack Iran?

That is our world today.

Keep paddling friends,

Bruce  

Photos by Mary Beth Sullivan 

Our next statewide monthly protest will be held in Lubec, Maine on July 26 at 1:30 pm 

Sunday song

 

They love chaos

 

The chaos theory.

Divide them,

divert them,

wear them down.

Escalate the terror,

pretend you care

about the people,

when you 

really don't.

 

From the chaos

the oligarchs

maintain brutal

'control & domination'. 

 

Two words 

the deep state 

lives for. 

 

America first

is a colonizers slogan.

An ugly dark mentality,

that reeks of insanity.

 

We have to repeatedly 

ask

who is the deep state?

 

What role does

Wall Street, CIA, AIPAC,

the war machine,

and the City of London 

play in this program

of endless war,

and chaos?

 

Call it what you wish,

I  like to say

it's Mr. Big. 

 

How we going to deal with it? 

 

Bruce

Vets protest Trump's parade

 

Brilliant words by this veteran.

Global South reports:

Who is Iran fighting?

Israel yes.  But they are also fighting and let me quote: “Israel says it is intercepting drones above Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Syria.” 

Above Iraq, Israeli planes were getting refueled, by the US and Britain. U.S. fighter jets take off from Al-Udeid airbase in Qatar.

Jordon opened its airspace to Israeli jets.  Jordanian Armed Forces report that the Royal Jordanian Air Force has intercepted multiple missiles and drones entering Jordanian airspace.

American, Israeli and British fighter jets all active above Syria and Iraq to intercept Iranian drones.

A comment from Iranian Professor Marandi: "American bases have been used in Turkiye, Qatar, the UAE, and Bahrain to help the Israelis – and it’s not just the Americans, it’s the British as well. In reality, such unprovoked strikes strengthen Iran, unify the public, and deepen hatred toward the aggressors and their backers,” says the Tehran University Professor.

It's beyond obvious that the US-Israel-NATO and these Middle Eastern (western colonizer) puppets want to start WW3. 

 Former CIA officer Larry Johnson writes:

    I believe that Israel’s attack was part of a planned international intelligence and military operation, which included the participation and support of the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Germany. We got the first clue on May 31, when a UN watchdog issued two reports designed to create a narrative that Iran is a rogue nuclear state.
    
    This tactic was employed in 2002/2003 to gin up a justification to attack Iraq, who the US insisted had weapons of mass destruction. We now know it was a lie, but the propaganda was effective in producing support in the US and Europe to invade Iraq. We’re seeing a similar effort today, only this time Iran is being falsely accused of enriching uranium to build a bomb. The Iraq WMD lie, like the current calumny against Iran, only has one purpose… justify military action in order to achieve regime change. 

According to the Council on Foreign Relations, the US operates military sites across at least 19 locations in the Middle East, including eight permanent bases in Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. The think tank estimates that there are currently between 40,000 to 50,000 US troops in the region. 

CIA: International & Domestic Terrorism

 

I've previously shared some passages from this important book about the CIA. While few will read the entire thing at least many can read some excerpts from it.

Douglas Valentine undertook a detailed study and analysis of the CIA's 'Phoenix' program of counterinsurgency in Vietnam.  He interviewed many of the key players who created and directed Phoenix.  Then Valentine took what he learned from the Vietnam program and shows how it has been refined and implemented in El Salvador, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and more recently in Ukraine.  He chillingly illustrates how the Department of Homeland Security (created in response to 9-11) is being constructed to serve as the domestic version of the Phoenix program. 

The book is endorsed by highly respected figures like NSA whistleblower John Kiriakou, academic Peter Dale Scott who came up with the tag 'deep state' and the truth-telling Robert Parry (founder of Consortium News). 

If you want to see the big picture of US empire, understand how it works, understand who many of the insiders are (or have been), and get a glimpse into what is coming to America in the near future - then I highly recommend this book.  See more of Valentine's words just below. 

Bruce

• The CIA influences politics in foreign nations in many ways.  CIA officers are constantly funneling money to all political parties, right and left, and establishing long-range agents to monitor and manipulate political developments.  That's standard operating procedure.

• The history of the US intelligence operations in Ukraine is educational.  OSS officers [of the US] in WW II released Stepan Bandera from prison in 1944.  Bandera was a Nazi collaborator whose militia slaughtered Poles, Jews and communist workers on the eastern front.  The US recruited Bandera so he could fight the advancing Soviet Union [as it fought Hitler's Army]. Nothing has changed.  Just over ten years ago the CIA initiated its 'Orange Revolution' for the same purpose - to thwart the Russians.  It was one of the first color revolutions and it involved the same people the CIA employed in its [Kiev] coup in 2014.  

• [T]he CIA has been operating with [fascist] Ukrainian exiles since the end of WW II, when they hired General Reinhard Gehlen.  Gehlen had been the chief anti-Soviet spy for the German Army.  US Army intelligence hired Gehlen in 1945, but as soon as the CIA was formed it grabbed him and put him in charge of Eastern Europe.  The CIA used this former Nazi to re-activate the spy networks he had in Ukraine, Poland, Latvia, all the Eastern European countries, and these old Nazi spies and saboteurs went to work for the CIA.

• [CIA] created a new Digital Directorate so it can more perfectly control Internet information.... Just as the CIA is at the forefront of propaganda on the Internet, its science and technology division is at the forefront of shaping the industries that run the world.

• Certainly people have to be reminded, and the young have to learn, that America's policy of war crimes for profit cannot exist without the complicity of the mainstream media, which shamelessly exploits our inclination to believe that our leaders behave morally.

• America's ruling National Security Establishment has expanded covert paramilitary operations from 60 nations in 2008, to 120 in 2013.

• In 1967... the CIA's Counterintelligence staff were creating the MHCHAOS program in Langley, Virginia, to spy on members of the anti-war movement, and turn as many of them as possible into double agents.... Chaos was super-secret because it was illegal for the CIA to engage in domestic operations.

• [The US has] the World Bank and the IMF strangling countries with debt, like the banks are strangling college students and home owners here.  The War on Terror is the best thing that ever happened to US capitalists and their secret police force, the CIA.  Terrorism is the pretext that allows the CIA to coordinate and transcend every government agency and civic institution, including the media, to the extent that we don't even see its wars anymore.  Its control is so pervasive, so ubiquitous; the CIA has actually become the Phoenix.

• Not coincidentally, the outlawing of narcotic drugs turned the issue of addiction from a matter of 'public health' into a pretext for expanding police forces and reorganizing the criminal justice and social welfare systems.

• Heroin smuggled by 'CIA people' into the US was channeled by Mafia distributors primarily to African American communities.  Local narcotics agents then targeted disenfranchised blacks as an easy way of subduing or criminalizing them, reducing their community organizing and voting power, thereby preserving the white ruling class's privileges.

• [T]he CIA for years had sanctioned the heroin traffic from the Golden Triangle region of Burma, Thailand and Laos into South Vietnam as a way of rewarding top officials for advancing US policies.

• [D]ozens of narcotics prosecutions have been dismissed on national security grounds due to the participation of CIA assets operating in trafficking organizations around the world.

• [In 1975] the [Congressional] Church Committee, as it was known, was investigating the CIA's many and varied illegal activities.  But rather than bring about the total destruction of the Agency, the Church Committee concluded that allegations of drug smuggling by CIA assets and proprietaries 'lacked substance'....The Rockefeller Commission likewise gave the CIA a clean bill of health.

• People think this [CIA drug trade] is something that started in Central America during Iran-Contra, but it started in China when the US backed Chiang Kai-sek in the 1920s. The only way that Chiang Kai-shek could finance his government was through the opium trade....The US has been engaged in an unstated policy since the 1920s of supporting its political allies by allowing the leadership to make fortunes dealing drugs.... With the support and blessings of the CIA, several top generals in South Vietnam had franchises in the drug trade.

• Corrupting the leadership of a country in order to keep it in your pocket is integral to maintaining an empire.  It is a well-established colonial policy.  The two main facets of Phoenix - controlling the 'upper tier' people in a foreign government by corrupting them, and terrorizing the lower tier into submission - come together in the mid-70s in Central America and explode with Iran-Contra in the 1980s.

• The US has had an unstated policy of smuggling guns to militant factions in Mexico's Northern states that are continuously fighting against the central government.  It's one of the ways of keeping the central government weak, so that Mexico can never develop into a strong economic or political adversary.... Several presidents of Mexico have been agents of the CIA.... No one talks about it, but the CIA has an operations officer engaged in covet actions in every province and state in Mexico, including along the border.

• These things were planned 70 years ago.  After WW II, the big brains in industry and government prepared to rule the world....The CIA and military hire the smartest anthropologists, sociologists and psychologists to figure out how to do this stuff.  They have it down to a science called the Human Factors.

• We need to develop a collective historical consciousness to understand the predicament and to be able to do something about it, to stop being manipulated by the press on a daily basis.  The media have us trained like sex-texting teenagers to focus on things that have nothing to do with how our perceptions of events are being controlled.  It is important for people to take a broader view and to try to put these things in perspective, not only to understand what is happening now, but to see where things are going in the future and to plot a way to deal with it.

• From the time [my book] The Phoenix Program was published in 1990, I'd witnessed a gradual escalation of belligerent nationalistic rhetoric, accompanied by an outpouring of revisionist Vietnam War history. The reactionary Reagan, Bush and Clinton regimes had waged a series of increasingly militant and covert action initiatives, from El Salvador to Iraq to Serbia, in a calculated and well-publicized attempt to purge the Vietnam Syndrome from the fragile American psyche.

• In its 2000 policy paper 'Rebuilding America's defenses,' the neocon Project for a New American Century worried that the transformation of American armed forces through "new technologies and operational concepts" was likely to take too long, "absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor."

• Symbolically, 9/11 wiped the slate clean.  All the moral prohibitions on the rabid right were lifted, and all the rage they had cultivated during the degenerate Clinton regime was unleashed, under the aegis of counterterrorism, on nations sitting on vast oil reserves, as well as suspected terrorists, domestic dissidents, and the flag-waving American public as well.

• The CIA does nothing unless it can be assured of plausible deniability, and the Homeland Security apparatus is an infinitely large space in which the CIA can hide operations aimed at manipulating society and managing the political control of the American people.

• The psychological warfare campaign blossomed on 9/11; the warmongers saturated the airwaves and editorial columns with propaganda calling anti-war protesters "un-American" and equating them with terrorist sympathizers.  The propaganda has never stopped.  As it was during the Vietnam War, peace protesters and civil rights activists have become enemies of the state and, hence, targets of the Homeland Security infrastructure. 

 

• [T]he Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has fusion centers which operate in every state and major city, just like Phoenix intelligence and operations centers were set up in Vietnam.  Every law enforcement entity in a state or city sends a representative to the local fusion center, which tries to anticipate threats through analysis of shared intelligence....Along with the FBI's task forces, fusion centers serve as cover for domestic CIA operations. 
  

• Ultimately, the DHS is about protecting the haves from the have-nots, just like Phoenix coordinators were protecting large land owners from Vietnamese revolutionaries fighting for agrarian reform.

• Since the creation of the Homeland Security protection racket, over eight trillion taxpayer dollars has been moved from social programs into "internal security" programs that have provided the National Security Establishment with over 250,000 cadres to pacify the flag-waving American public.

• For a glimpse into the future look at Israel, which has had a leading role in teaching Americans "how to do it".  There, administrative detention makes it okay to round up civilians, detain and torture them indefinitely, destroy their homes with bulldozers, cast them to the four winds, and steal everything they own simply because they are Palestinians.

• Theoretically, only five percent of the population needs to be organized in this fashion in order to wield control over the indifferent 90% and defeat the five percent that form the resistance.

• If America's policy of conducting war crimes is ever to end, people of conscience must expose the dark side of our national psyche, the part that allows us to employ terror to assure our world dominance.

David Cameron threatened ICC prosecutor

 

EXCLUSIVE: UK's David Cameron threatened ICC prosecutor over Israel arrest warrants.

The Brits keep trying to run the world even though their empire collapsed long ago. But once 'King of the Hill' it is hard to let go.

We also see the UK's MI6 helping to run the Ukraine terrorist state these days directing their continued attacks on Russian civilians both in the Donbass region and into Russian territories like Kursk, Belgorod and Bryansk.  

Very important interview with Pepe Escobar

 

Pepe Escobar: 'That which does not kill us makes us stronger'. 

George Galloway and Pepe talk about the growing possibility of a nuclear war as the US-NATO keep provoking Russia as if they are attempting to force a nuclear response from Moscow. 

A really important interview for sure. They taped this from Moscow where they have been both been attending high level meetings. 

Bruce 

UN vote calling for end to Gaza genocide

UN General Assembly ADOPTS resolution that demands an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire in the war in #Gaza. 

In favor: 149 Against: 12 Abstain: 19

Note the USA voted against -  no surprise.

Israel's fake Iran bomb threat getting old

 

It's all actually about REGIME CHANGE IN IRAN. 

See more at Simplicius

In the early hours of June 13, Israel launched a massive military operation, carrying out an unprecedented air campaign involving more than 200 fighter jets, which struck over a hundred targets across Iranian territory in near-simultaneous waves. 

Meanwhile, the Iranian Red Crescent reported that Israeli strikes affected no fewer than 60 locations across eight key provinces.

The most eye-opening part of the strikes was the claim by Israeli sources that the strikes incorporated deliberate political and ‘diplomatic’ deception, which appears to imply that Trump and co’s various statements of de-escalation were part of the trap set to lull Iran into a false sense of security before ruthlessly assassinating Iranian leadership in a cowardly sneak attack.

'Sisi is a coward and hates Palestine'

 

"Partially because he's weak, partially because he hates the Palestinians." 

Speaking to Middle East Eye, Egyptian journalist Hossam el-Hamalawy explained Egypt's refusal to lift Israel's blockade on Gaza and allow aid through the Rafah crossing. 

Attributing Egypt's policy both to "regional decline" and Sisi's "cowardice", Hamalawy added that Egypt saw the Palestinians as a source of political instability and pressure for democratic governance rather than a cause to be supported.  

zionists attack Iran

 

Live feed from Iranian PressTV here (Now being blocked in the US. It worked last night. Obviously they don't want us to hear from Iranian sources. Keep trying though.)

The attack comes after weeks of simmering tensions following the collapse of renewed negotiations over Iran’s civilian nuclear program. Multiple news outlets reported last month that Israel had discussed potential strikes on Iranian nuclear sites with the United States.

The Israeli Air Force is currently striking dozens of sites across Iran, including civilian apartment buildings, facilities linked to its nuclear program and other military infrastructure and well as key military leaders.

US President Donald Trump recently accused Tehran of “slow-walking” the negotiations and reiterated that his objective is the complete dismantlement of Iran’s nuclear program. 

Iran has denied pursuing nuclear weapons, maintaining that its nuclear activities are solely for civilian purposes.

Netanyahu has launched this attack as his only way to stay in power.

Israel is a genocidal state that must be sanctioned by the entire world, kicked out of the United Nations and Netanyahu and his murderous cronies must be jailed for life - at the least.

Bruce 

From Mexico and North Africa to Gaza

 

Iran prepares response if attacked by Israel-US

 

Sputnik

Israel is fully prepared to launch an operation against Iran and has already briefed US officials, CBS News reported earlier. It added that anticipating potential Iranian retaliation, particularly against American targets in Iraq, the US has advised some citizens to leave the region.

Iranian military and government leaders have already met to plan their response to a possible Israeli strike, The New York Times reports. 

A barrage of hundreds of ballistic missiles will be launched at Israel without hesitation, a senior Iranian official warned. 

Iranian officials also reacted to remarks by US General Michael E. Kurilla, the head of Central Command, as he testified before a House committee that he had presented Donald Trump with “a wide range of options” for a potential strike against Iran. 

Iran’s mission to the UN denounced General Kurilla’s comments in a social media post as “militarism” that “fuels instability.” 

The US has begun evacuating non-essential personnel and family members from its embassies and military bases in the Middle East in light of escalating tensions with Iran.

June 12, 1982 - Opening My Eyes to Militarization of Space

 

On June 12, 1982 I was living in Orlando, Florida watching C-SPAN TV coverage of the one million person march in New York City opposing nuclear weapons.  This event was timed to coincide with the United Nations Special Session on Disarmament.

It was the largest protest in American history.

After C-SPAN coverage of the disarmament march concluded they switched to a right-wing conference where President Ronald Reagan's head of Star Wars (Strategic Defense Initiative) Lt. Gen. Daniel Graham was speaking.  During the question period after his talk he was asked by one participant, "Gen. Graham they say there were almost a million people marching in NYC today against nuclear weapons.  Aren't you worried?"  Graham responded, "No, I think it's great.  They are out there protesting against nuclear weapons and we are moving into space.  They don't have a clue.  Let them keep doing what they are doing."

I was stunned and my first thought was the cowboy movies I had watched as a kid.  The phrase "Head them off at the pass" flashed through my mind.  Here I was living in Central Florida, literally just less than an hour from Cape Canaveral, and I indeed had no clue.  I decided in that moment to start learning about the militarization of space.

It was the next year in 1983 that I became the state coordinator for the Florida Coalition for Peace & Justice (FCPJ).  In that job I repeatedly organized protest events at the space center against military satellite launches, launches of missiles, launches of nuclear powered space probes and more.  

In 1987 over 5,000 people attended a rally and march the FCPJ organized (with huge help from National Mobilization for Survival) to protest the first flight test of the Trident II nuclear missile from the Cape. We called it 'Cancel the Countdown'. 

Famous baby doctor and peace activist Dr. Benjamin Spock joined our 1987 protest at the space center in Florida. He was the first to climb over the base gate in protest of the planned launch. Well over 200 were arrested.

In 1997 we had over 1,000 people join us again at the Cape to protest the launch of the deep space Cassini mission that carried 72 pounds of deadly plutonium-238 into space. In between I organized many other protests at the space center.

At a 1990 event at the space center a man approached me and opened a bag and pulled out a NASA flight suit and invited me to put it on as I got our rally going. So I did. I announced to the crowd that I had applied for a new NASA program called the 'First Activist in Space' and had been selected to ride on the space shuttle. Many in the crowd took me seriously and shouted Nooooooooo! Then I told them there was just one problem....NASA was only going to give me a one-way ticket. By then they caught the joke and laughed. 

Out of those actions, along with the Colorado Springs-based group Citizens for Peace in Space (and journalist Karl Grossman), we created the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space in 1992.

So June 12, 1982 is a date I'll never forget.  

As we now face Trump's proposal for the Golden Dome missile shield (a repeat of Reagan's SDI) I can connect the dots back many years.

Our peace in space work is more important than ever.  

Bruce 

Gagnon letter on Palestine in Portland newspaper

How much longer will the genocide in Palestine go on? Both Gaza and now the West Bank are under relentless attack. 

In Gaza, starving people are being shot by Israeli forces as they try to get the scraps of food that is being allowed to trickle in by Tel Aviv. Every day on social media we witness the photos of skin and bones children. Hospitals have been repeatedly bombed thanks to deliveries of munitions from the U.S. and NATO allies. 

Palestine is one of the largest failures of the United Nations. Israel flouts international law because of America’s veto power at the U.N. 

Genocide and ethnic cleansing will not make Israel or America great. We look away at our peril.  

I am ashamed of our nation’s role in this catastrophe. But I continue standing on the street with my Palestine solidarity sign a couple times each week. What else can I do? Washington is not listening to our cries for justice and peace. 

Bruce Gagnon
Brunswick    

SpaceX is an environmental disaster

 

By Brian Lada, AccuWeather meteorologist and senior content editor  

Starship is the largest rocket ever launched by SpaceX, but a test flight on May 27 ended in a massive explosion, sending a tremendous amount of debris into the Gulf. 

Since the explosion, debris from the uncrewed booster, which was larger than the Statue of Liberty, has been washing up along the beaches of Mexico, revealing the extent of the environmental fallout from the launch. 

"I personally inspected 40 kilometers of beach, and the findings were shocking: clearly, millions of plastic fragments are reaching the shoreline. This puts the entire marine ecosystem at high risk, negatively affects local fishing communities, and poses a threat to boats that may collide with the floating tanks," Conibio Global A.C. posted on Facebook on June 1. 

"Without a doubt, our eight years of efforts to protect the Kemp’s ridley sea turtle an endangered species are now facing maximum risk. In just a few days, hatchlings will begin to emerge, and we will be forced to release them on a beach covered in harmful debris, which they might mistake for food," the post read. 

Some of the debris has a "SpaceX" label on it, making it unmistakable where the wreckage originated. 

The items range from small pieces of metal and plastic to 4,500-pound tanks that were part of Starship's fire suppression system.  

This is not the first time a SpaceX rocket explosion has left a mark on the environment. In January, a Starship test flight broke apart over the Turks and Caicos with debris washing up on beaches across the region for weeks. 

Blue Origin, another rocket company, also conducted a test launch of a large rocket in January, with debris being found in the Bahamas. 

The FAA is requiring an investigation into the recent SpaceX Starship explosion.  

The caravan to Gaza is rolling!

 

 

• Thousands of people from Tunisia and Algeria are traveling across North Africa, aiming to rally more supporters as they go, to break the Jewish siege on the Gaza Strip!

• HODEIDA, Yemen June 10 (YPA) – Hodeida port, west of Yemen, was subjected on Tuesday to a new Israeli bombing. Security sources said that the shelling targeted the port docks. This repeated Israeli bombing aims to dissuade Yemen from its supportive stance towards the Palestinian people, who are being subjected to a Zionist genocidal war in the besieged Gaza Strip. The Israeli navy did the shelling of the port.  

• GAZA, June 09 (YPA) – Dr. Munir al-Bursh, Director General of the Ministry of Health in the Gaza Strip, confirmed on Monday that hospitals in the Strip are on the verge of complete collapse due to the severe shortage of fuel and electricity. Dr. Al-Bursh warned that vital departments such as intensive care, emergency, and incubators will witness “mass death” within the next 48 hours if fuel is not delivered immediately. He explained that the remaining fuel supply is not sufficient for more than two days and that the destruction of oxygen stations and the fuel shortage are disrupting all vital health services. Dr. Al-Bursh described the situation as catastrophic, noting that hospitals will turn into “cemeteries” in light of this severe shortage that threatens the lives of patients, especially children in incubators. He also pointed to a severe shortage of medicines and medical supplies.
• We all must step up and stretch ourselves to do something more to stop the genocide in Palestine. 

• Latest Palestine/Yemen/Iran reports from Mahmood OD

Ukrainian troop desertions rise - Kiev refuses too accept returned bodies

Ukrainian journalist Volodomyr Boiko reports that a whopping ~91,000 Armed Forces Ukraine (AFU) have already deserted from the armed forces in 2025 alone.

This is why several NATO nations (Poland, Sweden, US, France, UK, Germany and others) have been sending in mercenaries (and so called 'advisers') to augment the depleted AFU forces. 

No one can seriously deny that this war on Russia is, and has been, a full-blown NATO war. 

These desertions by AFU troops tell the real story about how much Ukrainian soldiers support western puppet Zelensky's war. 

After agreeing in Turkey to exchange bodies of dead soldiers Zelensky has refused to accept 6,000 bodies of his own troops likely because families of dead soldiers are supposed to receive compensation that someone in Kiev has been pocketing.

RT 

Return of bodies to Ukraine

At the recent Russia-Ukraine peace negotiations in Turkey one agreement was made to return the dead bodies of soldiers each side had.

Russian officials have unveiled the identities of nearly 100 fallen Ukrainian soldiers who were among the more than 6,000 Moscow has offered to return to Kiev in a unilateral humanitarian gesture during the latest round of direct talks in Istanbul.

The Istanbul talks resulted in an agreement to exchange at least 1,000 prisoners on both sides, including critically ill and younger detainees. Russia also offered to return over 6,000 fallen Ukrainian soldiers for proper burial. 

The first convoy, carrying the remains of 1,212 troops, arrived at the designated exchange point on Saturday – but the Ukrainian side failed to appear, according to Lieutenant General Alexander Zorin, a member of the Russian negotiating team. 

“The Ukrainian side unexpectedly postponed both the acceptance of bodies and the exchange of prisoners of war for an indefinite period,” Zorin said. 

The governor of Russia’s Zaporozhye Region, Evgeny Balitsky accused Kiev of deliberately obstructing the return of the bodies, alleging that Ukrainian authorities are trying to conceal the scale of their military losses and avoid paying compensation to the families of the dead. 

“As long as a Ukrainian soldier is listed as missing, his family will not receive a single hryvnia in aid,” the governor said. “This is a calculated attempt to hide the losses and save money.”  

"Kiev's disregard for their own fighters has been evident throughout the special military operation," Russian military analyst Viktor Litovkin tells Sputnik. "They don’t retrieve the dead from the battlefield. They don’t evacuate the wounded." 

The Kiev regime avoids identifying the dead — no ID means no compensation to relatives. "They don’t pay for those listed as missing. No body, no money. They don’t pay parents or provide insurance for the dead," Litovkin explains. 

"It’s the [Nazi] Banderite style — careless toward those who fight, and vengeful, even brutal, toward civilians who don’t support their politics or ideology." 

Litovkin believes pressure from the West will force Kiev to accept the bodies and exchange POWs.