Daily search for water in Gaza - Maine's Jewish leaders complain about anti-Israelism

Every morning in Gaza, the search for water begins.

Video journalist Bisan Owda follows children carrying heavy water containers, families waiting for water trucks, and the people working to keep one of the few desalination plants still running.

Along the way, Bisan reveals what has been destroyed, why clean water has become so hard to find, and what it now takes to provide water for millions of people in Gaza.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

This video story is direct evidence of genocide by Israel.

Today in Maine's Portland Press Herald an article appeared with this headline: Maine Jewish leaders push back on Gaza genocide accusation against Israel

Some of the most outrageous parts in the article included this: 

Fifteen Jewish leaders in Maine, including the rabbis of synagogues around the state, called in a rare joint statement for politicians not to accuse Israel of genocide for its war in Gaza.

The statement, released Friday by the Jewish Community Alliance of Southern Maine, noted that the allegation was “becoming a staple of rhetoric in Maine politics” on the left and argued that it was supercharging antisemitism in Maine. 

“Compassion for Palestinians does not require the adoption of hateful and misleading language,” the leaders wrote. “Advocating for peace does not require participation in a ‘Holocaust inversion’ against the Jewish community. And political leadership does not require demonizing one community in the service of another.”

To challenge the genocide accusation, the group of Jewish leaders cited the Israeli government’s support for a polio vaccination campaign in Gaza in 2024. 

The newspaper did not allow comments to be made under the article.

It appears to me that many leaders inside Jewish and zionist communities across the US are ramping up criticism of those who call out Israel's obvious genocidal wars in Palestine, Lebanon, Iran and Yemen as we approach the November mid-term congressional elections.

They likely fear that the usual AIPAC massive spending to defeat those critical of Israel is losing much of its power. Thus they must figure a more direct intimidation of the public and candidates who oppose Israel's apartheid system is necessary by using the standard antisemitism line.

Cry me a river to the sea....

Bruce

Tell the children

Parents and grandparents could explain to the children:

• I'm sorry I had to play tennis when there were protests.
• I don't like to get involved in controversial politics.
• You can't beat city hall - why bother?
• I might lose my job if I got involved with those groups.
• I might get my name on some FBI list if I went to those meetings.
• What would my friends and family think of me if I worked with people like you?
• I've got better things to do with my money than donate to one of those causes.
• We are all going to die soon anyway so why bother?
• Don't worry - be happy.
• I'm not that smart and those in government seem to know what they are doing anyway.
• I heard on NPR that everything was going to be OK.
• Think of all the jobs we get from these industries. You people just want to shut everything down!
• I wanted to help but had to put three kids through college.
• My spouse threatened to leave me if I went to one of those protests.
• These things don't directly impact me or my family.
•  I'm sorry but I am a capitalist and support the system.  Look what it has done for me. This system is about freedom first and foremost.
• Should we all just live in caves?
• I read the New York Times every day so I know what is going on.

In one way or the other I've heard just about all of these excuses during my time as a full-time social justice, anti-imperialist and environmental organizer - since 1978.

Most people find one or more reasons from the list above to justify spending their lives in denial of apparent reality.  The techno world and capitalism have transformed many people into automatons and consumers.  It's very sad but a fact of our time.

The goal would be that people would rediscover their spiritual connection to our Mother Earth and one another before it is too late.

It might be a bit romantic on my part but I often think about all those in my long family lineage who got our relations through the ice ages, droughts, famines, plagues, wars and the like.

Now during this moment on Earth some are giving up the ghost.  I can't understand why anyone would surrender when our #1 job as a human being is to protect our children and Mother Nature - both are the future.

It's a broken spiritual connection that we all suffer from that keeps us locked in these prisons.

Best wishes to the future generations.

Bruce

50% of America can't afford food or gas

In this episode of 51/49, James exposes how corporate profit-driven food inflation is being weaponized by Congress to quietly pass a massive new surveillance law.

This reveals how the Combating Organized Retail Crime Act gives Homeland Security and local retailers sweeping authority to collect your personal data, track your location via AI cameras, and construct a permanent digital dragnet under the guise of "stopping shoplifting". 

Lubec, Maine protest on Canadian border (FDR's cottage via drug money)

It took MB and me four hours to drive from Brunswick to Lubec for our monthly vigil on Saturday. We got there early so did two hours in the sun, but cooled by a nice ocean breeze from just across the road.

We made good use of the buried telephone poll stumps to hook signs up to. Our friend and host Lynn had already attached her home made cardboard signs to many of the posts.

The border entry point for Canada was just blocks from where we set up so the traffic was steady for our entire visit. 

I made a game of trying to remember the out-of-state license plates as they passed by. I counted more than 20 states other than Maine. These are the ones I could remember: Connecticut, South Dakota, North Carolina, Wyoming, Vermont, Florida, Alabama, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Texas, Rhode Island, California, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Maine and Canada.

We had seven with us (six from out of the area) and Lynn who has lived in Lubec for 50 years. She is a strong activist in the community but does not get a lot of physical support from local folks - thus our trip to stand with her.

The reason for so many out-of-state cars was that just across the bridge from Lubec into Canada is a big tourist facility called Campobello - the former summer home of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.  Every year during his youth and early adulthood FDR spent summers at Campobello. 

In 2024 MB and I took the tour of Campobello and I wrote the following on this blog: 

During the tour the guide was talking about FDR's grandfather Warren Delano Jr. who made a fortune, lost it, and remade another during his life. FDR's mother inherited the fortune and used the money to help pave the way for FDR to become Governor of New York and president. She also used the family fortune to purchase Campobello. In front of the group on the tour with us I asked the guide, 'How did FDR's grandfather make his fortune'? She whispered to me 'the China opium trade'. Then she paused and repeated the same answer loud enough for everyone on the tour to hear. No one appeared to react. I really respected our guide for being honest.

FDR's summer 'cottage' in Campobello, Canada

I knew this story about FDR's family fortune coming from the importation of opium from India to China, and getting generations of Chinese addicted to opium, because I read a riveting book entitled The China Mirage: The Hidden History of American Disaster in Asia.  This so-called 'trade' led to the Opium Wars between China and the western powers during the mid-19th Century. 

As it turns out former US Sen. John Kerry's (D-MA) maternal great-grandfather also made his Boston-based fortune via the same opium trade. The funds from this illicit drug biz funded the founding of Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Columbia universities as well as the first transcontinental railroad across the US. So it's instructive to reflect on the fact that leading American 'blue-blood' political families were drug dealers. Thus I don't have any trouble thinking of the ruling elites (including the slave traders from many of these same families) as criminals. 

This of course is a little known story in our country. The opium trade was sold to the American people 'innocently' as just the 'China trade'. (Think lovely art, dishes, silk and tea.)

During our Lubec vigil on Saturday we were pleased at the response we got from well over 50% of those driving past us. Honks, waves and thanks from so many of those in the vehicles. Once again we're see the growing evidence that the public is not buying the US-Israel illegal and immoral wars on Iran, Palestine, Lebanon and beyond. 

Now if we could just activate these folks across the nation to do more to help end this madness! 

Upcoming events: 

• Hiroshima day protest at Bath Iron Works on Thursday  August 6 at 11:30 am. Meet in front of admin building on Washington Street in Bath. 
• Next monthly anti-imperialist protest will be held on Saturday, September 12 in Wiscasset on US Hwy 1 at the bridge just across from the famous tourist trap Red's Eats (coincidentally owned by a family named Gagnon). We meet at 1:30 pm. 
• Keep Space for Peace Week protest at Bath Iron Worrks on Saturday, October 3 at 11:30 am. Meet in front of admin building on Washington Street in Bath. 

Join us if you can. 

Bruce

 ~ Photos by MB Sullivan  

Burnham dances right on cue as warmonger puppet PM

By Finian Cunningham

Britain is being run by a puppet regime whose purpose is to sell war.

One week after becoming prime minister, Andy Burnham delivered on his assigned role to ramp up Britain’s militarism and support for Ukraine in the NATO proxy war against Russia.

Burnham hosted Ukrainian so-called president, Vladimir Zelensky, at Britain’s top naval base in Portsmouth on board the aircraft carrier, HMS Queen Elizabeth.

“It’s no accident that we meet here,” Burnham told Zelensky with British and Ukrainian troops in the background. He went on to say that Britain has Ukraine’s back “one hundred per cent” and that the meeting was a signal to Russia that London was “not backing down” in its support for the Kiev regime.

In those words, “it’s no accident”, Burnham let it slip. This was indeed a calculated show of deeper British military involvement in the four-year proxy NATO war against Russia. Note that Zelensky was not received at Downing Street, which would have been strange enough. No, he was welcomed on board Britain’s flagship aircraft carrier.

Zelensky is the first foreign leader to be hosted by Burnham since he took over at 10 Downing Street on July 20. That speaks volumes about Burnham’s assigned priorities. Forget about domestic issues and dealing with the cost-of-living crisis for Britons that Burnham has appeared to be concerned about. The top priority is militarizing the British economy and sticking it to Russia.

In their meeting in Portsmouth, Burnham said he discussed increasing supplies of anti-ballistic missiles to Ukraine and scaling up Ukraine’s manufacturing capability of drones. In a provocative step, Burnham said that London was providing Ukraine with greater access to Britain’s electronic warfare system, Stone Cloak, which is aimed at intensifying drone strikes deep in Russia. British and NATO-supplied drone technology and targeting logistics have already enabled Ukraine to increase deadly strikes on Russia in recent months, with hundreds of civilians killed. Burnham is giving notice that Britain is aiming to increase the lethality of these weapons by enabling them to evade Russian air defenses.

Also on the agenda in Portsmouth was British navy training for Ukrainian troops to step up attacks in the Black Sea against Russian ships, including civilian cargo vessels carrying grain exports. Of course, this is couched in the language of “defense” and “counter-measures”.

For his part, Zelensky said that he was looking forward to setting up a “big, big factory” in Britain for manufacturing drones for Ukraine. If that goes ahead, Burnham is putting a target on Britain for Russian retaliation.

~ Finian Cunningham is a former editor and writer for major news media organizations. He has written extensively on international affairs, with articles published in several languages.

U.S. using Philippines as trigger for war with China

Analyst KJ Noh on the near-miss war between South and North Korea and how it's possible the real thing will happen. 

The 3.6 million South Korean military is directly controlled by the U.S. which could set it off  'with a snap of its fingers.'  

U.S. ramping up the militarization of South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, Guam, Philippines, Australia and New Zealand to be used as the proxies to initiate war with China.

Trump's latest TACO lies

• Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman personally urged President Trump to de-escalate amid fears that new US strikes on Iranian energy targets could trigger a major regional war. Meanwhile, Qatar, UAE, Turkey, and Pakistan are all pushing for diplomacy. 
• Qatari mediation – mediators separately held talks with Iranian and US officials over reopening the Strait of Hormuz, with “some progress” reported.
• Iran’s armed forces, early this morning, carried out drone strikes against terrorist group positions in Sulaymaniyah and Erbil, Iraq. During these attacks, U.S. Army supplied C-RAM defense systems were activated to intercept the suicide drones, but the drones successfully struck their predetermined targets. Iran has pledged that it will not tolerate any terrorist activity against its national security via Iraqi Kurdistan, and will certainly suppress it.
• An Iranian source close to the negotiating team told Fars News that no agreement has been reached regarding the reopening of the Strait of Hormoz, and the reports regarding this, are false. A well-informed military source also said that as long as the US continues its hostile actions, the Strait of Hormoz will remain closed, and vessels will only be allowed to pass through the designated route with authorization from the IRGC Navy. 

Sunday song

True story: Russia's long conversation with the U.S.

 

Russia: The Soviet Union no longer exists, can you let us into NATO like everyone else?

USA: No

Russia: Okay, but can you please not threaten us by expanding NATO to the East?

USA: No

Russia: Alright, we saw you're developing new missile systems, will you let us work on them with you?

USA: No

Russia: Fine, hypersonic missiles it is, but can you at least not put military bases right in front of our borders?

USA: No

Russia: Well, you just carried out a military coup to overthrow a democratic election in Ukraine, can we still have a friendly relationship with them?

USA: No

Russia: Gotcha, but the people of Crimea are really pissed off about that coup, can you please let them have independence?

USA: No

Russia: Roger, but surely you can at the very least stop bombing the civilians living in Donbass, right?

USA: No

Russia: Huh, we've been trying to find a diplomatic solution for a 8 years but you refuse to even talk to us... I guess that if you want to use military force to solve issues so much we have no choice but to do the same.

USA: OH MY GOD PUTIN IS A MADMAN, AN IMPERIALIST GENOCIDAL DICTATOR, LITERALLY THE SECOND COMING OF HITLER, WE MUST STOP HIM AT ANY COST BEFORE HE TRIES TO CONQUER ALL OF EUROPE!

the funnies

Rep. Jeffries is the Democrat Minority Leader in the US House of Representatives

U.S. leaves Iraq & bombs it again

• Trump said on Thursday he would resume a full-scale war against Iran unless the United States receives 100% of what it wants. "If we don't get 100% of what we want, absolutely," Trump told French LCI news channel, when asked whether he was considering resuming a full-scale war with Iran.

• Strait of Hormoz closed again: Iran announced due to the continued aggressive actions of US military forces in the region, passage through the Strait of Hormoz remains impossible. Once stability and calm are restored, all requests will be reviewed according to their order and schedule, and permits will gradually be issued.

• Al-Monitor:  American forces have begun withdrawing from their last position in the country, beside Erbil airport in the Kurdistan Region. Every Patriot anti-missile battery has already been removed and sent somewhere undisclosed. The bulk of the troops and their heavy equipment are gone. According to sources the pullout began last week, which means the air defences were being packed up before CENTCOM and Saudi Arabia struck seven Iraqi provinces on Wednesday and killed at least 20 members of Iraq's own security forces.  They cleared their people out first, then dropped the bombs, and left. [They likely bombed any hardware or facilities that might be useful to Iraq.]

• Telegraph: "Friedrich Merz is drawing up secret plans to prevent German pro-Kremlin 'traitor states' from obstructing Nato’s plans to defend against a Russian invasion. German officials fear the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party could frustrate the movement of allied forces through two eastern states it is expected to win in September elections." European ‘democracy’ has deteriorated to such an extent that nations now routinely wage wars of sabotage against themselves, in order to preserve the globalist system of control their leaders are beholden to.

• Gevorg Mirzayan, associate professor of political science at Russian Academy of Sciences: "Yes, it will be a humiliating defeat – but hardly less humiliating than after Afghanistan and even more so Vietnam. Yes, the value of the US as an ally for the Middle Eastern monarchies will fall, but even after that, they will not look for any alternatives. Yes, Iran will remain nuclear – but it will be nuclear anyway. Yes, the departure will be a blow to Trump's rating - but if the US president, for example, is able to seize Cuba before the midterm elections, then he will win back all the rating losses. After all, for the American population, the capture of the Island of Freedom is much more important than some Middle Eastern stories. However, Trump dismisses this pragmatism. Not because he is stupid or stubborn, but because there is much more at stake in the Iranian campaign now than his personal status or even the Iranian atom. The stake in this campaign is the entire Western-centric world order. In the lid of the coffin, in which Iran is now hammering the third nail - after two Russian ones."

• Ukraine’s deadly attack on an Iranian cargo ship named Anna in the Caspian Sea was Vladimir Zenensky’s “gift” to Israel and the US, the former senior commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Hossein Kanani Moghaddam, told RT. The strike, which killed one Iranian sailor and injured another came three days before Zelensky and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu traveled to Washington for talks with US President Trump. “This shows that Zelensky, on the eve of his trip to America, wanted to give a gift to the Zionists and Trump, and thus took this action,” Moghaddam said.

• The Italian mafia is seeking to buy up some of the 800,000 firearms reportedly missing or stolen from Ukraine since 2022, including drones and other advanced arms, senior prosecutors have warned. The Il Fatto Quotidiano newspaper reported that much of the arsenal consisted of European military supplies intended for Kiev. The outlet noted that European law enforcement authorities have struggled to track the flow of these arms, given that Western governments conceal the details of their extensive military shipments to Ukraine. The weapons have since reportedly ended up on the European black market and are now said to have attracted the attention of Cosa Nostra, the Sicilian Mafia, which would like to upgrade its arsenal with military-grade systems.

Ukrainian Secret Service HQ in Kiev

• Boeing is reluctant to share the technology used in the warheads it manufactures for the Patriot PAC-3 interceptor missiles which Ukraine and its Western supporters want to manufacture in Europe, German media outlet Die Welt has reported. Trump announced earlier this month that Ukraine would receive a license to produce the Patriot systems. Manufacturing was expected to be based in a European NATO country, potentially Germany, where the facilities would be considered safe from potential Russian attacks. Die Welt correspondent Christoph Wanner outlined several obstacles facing the initiative, including what he described as Boeing Defense’s unwillingness to transfer sensitive technology to foreign partners. 
• UK CND: Andy Burnham became the latest Prime Minister to visit BAE’s Barrow shipyard. Alongside new Defence Secretary, Wes Streeting, he pledged the government’s commitment to weapons of mass destruction and announced the annual £8.4 billion for the replacement of Britain's Vanguard fleet, with the new nuclear-armed Dreadnought submarines. Burnham chose to promote war and nuclear weapons as good for the economy - announcing that thousands of apprenticeship roles will be created in the industry. Yet for the hundreds of billions poured into 'defence', it is notoriously jobs-poor. The government's own data shows that for the same level of spending, health and social care creates double the number of jobs.

• The Guardian: Russia has struck a factory of an American drone manufacturer in Kiev for the first time. During one of the recent attacks on Kiev, a facility of the American company, Terminal Autonomy was hit, where the AQ-400 Scythe and AQ-100 Bayonet combat UAVs were produced. These drones feature AI guidance: even if the connection is lost or the drone is subjected to Russian electronic warfare, it continues its flight and independently strikes the target.

• MSN: The Department of Homeland Security alerted employers this week that it had officially ended humanitarian protections for 350,000 Haitian immigrants, triggering mass layoffs that threaten to disrupt summer travel and destabilize an array of essential institutions and industries up and down the East Coast and across the Midwest. Nursing homes terminated hundreds of workers, including nursing assistants, dietary aides and housekeepers. At airports contractors terminated scores of Haitian workers, including janitors, cabin cleaners and wheelchair attendants, according to union leaders at Service Employees International Union. At Florida schools, landscapers, bus drivers and other staff were fired. The tumult comes about a month after the US Supreme Court granted the Trump administration permission to cancel the humanitarian program, known as temporary protected status (TPS), potentially stripping permission to live and work in the US from as many as 1.3 million immigrants from Haiti, Syria and a dozen other countries. [Recent white immigrants from South Africa will not be sent away. Just people of color from 'suspicious nations'. The goal is to rid the US of as many people of color whose children would become US citizens. It's all about controlling elections in the years ahead as America changes from a predominately racist white nation to one of majority people of color.]

Trump's sons getting rich from dads moves

The President of Kazakhstan calls Donald Trump and the rest is a story about corruption....

The monsters of the darkness....

One of the chief settler organizers of the zionists is demanding that Gaza be for the chosen ones featured in this short video. 

Trump increasingly worried & angry as his war flops

• The Islander CENTCOM announced they lit up IRGC targets across Iran at 10pm Eastern last night: Here’s the official version. 'At precisely 10:00 PM EST on July 29, US Central Command claimed a series of precision strikes against dozens of IRGC sites inside Iran - command nodes, missile and drone facilities, coastal radar, and naval assets.' They say it was in response to Iranian ballistic missiles launched the previous day at US forces in the region. All those missiles, they insist, were intercepted. More than 50,000 American troops remain on high alert across the Middle East. Iran already told anyone paying attention that any further use of Gulf territory as a launchpad would be treated as participation. Kuwait has allowed itself to become one of those launchpads. If that continues, Kuwaiti soil may not remain sovereign for long. Tehran has the range, the inventory, and the political will to make that a reality. Hormuz is already running on Iranian forbearance. Bab el-Mandeb is under Yemeni control. Now the Empire is daring the region into a wider fire while its own interceptor stocks and strategic petroleum reserve both run critically low. Hello $150 oil! Iran will hit back. The only question is how many more 'precision' nights the Empire thinks it can afford before the cost arrives at the pump and at the bases that still believe the fairytale they are safe. 

• IRGC announced Iranian missile struck the Muwaffaq al Salti Air Base, in Jordan, targeting & destroying 3 US F-35 fighter jets & damaging 3 others. The attack also killed several US officers & technicians. This was in retaliation for the US bunker-buster bomb attack on residential homes in Qeshm that killed 3 family members and orphaned 2 children. Iranian Civil defense teams miraculously rescued the two children transporting them to a hospital. How was this a legitimate target? The war crimes keep piling up as the US becomes more desperate. 

• New York Times: Hundreds of Jordanian political, legal, and public figures have signed an open letter demanding the withdrawal of US forces from Jordan. They call the American presence a security, political, and economic risk pulling the country into a war it wants no part of. Most Jordanian outlets refuse to publish the letter, and organizers warn signatories could be jailed. 

• NBC News: Reports indicate that Trump is frustrated by the lack of progress in ending the war with Iran and by divisions within his administration over strategy. Some officials support continued military action, while others warn that prolonged strikes could deplete US weapons stockpiles and escalate the conflict. [As well as destroying the global economy and most of the western imperial nations who vainly refuse to accept the coming multi-lateral world.]

• Iran’s Army (Artesh) says it targeted: US military power generators; Navigation system; Administrative buildings; Logistical and support buildings at Sheikh Isa Air Base, Bahrain.
• The yellow line is 2026: Total US “Big 4” inventories from crude including the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, gasoline, distillates and jet fuel have fallen off a cliff since spring. No other year on the chart, not even the worst stretches of 2022 (Ukraine war) comes close to this kind of sustained collapse. The Empire is burning through its last real buffer while two of the world’s most critical oil chokepoints answer to Iran and Yemen. Paper sanctions never stopped Russian nor Iranian barrels. Physical control of the straits is a different game entirely. When the cushion is gone, price is the only remaining signal. There is massive cost to waging an illegal war of terror and aggression on adversaries you vastly underestimate.

• Speaking to Al Mayadeen on Tuesday, Professor Mohammad Marandi in Iran said the UAE has committed “enormous injustices” against the Iranian people and has been complicit in the US assault on Iran and the killing of thousands of Iranians. He noted that the UAE is now seeking de-escalation, adding that Iran has been engaging with all countries hosting US bases, including the Emirates, with varying responses and levels of progress. Marandi stressed that if the US attacks Iran and escalates the war, Iran will retaliate, and countries hosting US bases “will not be forgiven.” He warned that if Washington targets Iran’s critical infrastructure, “Iran will retaliate against those countries that have hosted the Americans and have facilitated the aggression against Iran,” because without these countries, “the US cannot carry out aggression.”
• Stars & Stripes: Nearly 100 U.S. troops have been injured in the Iran war in the past two weeks, the Pentagon said following growing attacks on American service members in the Middle East. A large portion of the wounded are suffering from head trauma which has led some military health experts to worry that traumatic brain injuries - caused by damage to the brain that can impact thinking, movement and emotion - could become the signature injury of this war, as in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. [As these severe injuries are increasing, Trump's Wall Street team are cutting the Veterans Administration budget as they begin to privatize the VA. When the injured troops return home the medical care for them will not be what it used to be.]

• There were 1,275 mosques in Gaza before October 2023. Israel has now completely destroyed 1,050 of them and partially damaged 191 others. That is not collateral damage. That is the systematic erasure of a civilization's spiritual architecture, one building at a time. Yesterday, Israeli jets added another name to the list. Al-Muttaqin Mosque in central Gaza City was struck and destroyed, along with the tents sheltering hundreds of displaced Palestinians who had gathered around it. These were not combatants. They were families who had already lost their homes to earlier strikes and were living under canvas near a house of worship. Both the mosque and the tents are now rubble. 

• The Trump administration wants to sell 2,840 acres of Ohio’s only national forest for oil and gas drilling. The Bureau of Land Management announced it will auction off land in Wayne National Forest for fracking, despite the protected forest being home to multiple endangered species. A month ago, this would've been illegal. But Trump just gutted the Endangered Species Act - clearing the way for Big Oil to take over Wayne National Forest. (Due to Washington's massive debt Trump wants to sell off as many of the nation's assets as possible to his Wall Street oligarchic buddies. They will likely reward Trump with a cut of the action as well.)

• Leo S. Lo, Dean of Libraries; Advisor to the Provost for AI Literacy; Professor of Education, University of Virginia: Artificial intelligence systems are thirsty, consuming as much as 500 milliliters of water – a single-serving water bottle – for each short conversation a user has with the GPT-3 version of OpenAI’s ChatGPT system. They use roughly the same amount of water to draft a 100-word email message. That figure includes the water used to cool the data center’s servers and the water consumed at the power plants generating the electricity to run them.

• As recent conflicts consume weapons at a ferocious rate, America’s defense industrial base is becoming more prepared to sustain a major war, according to a new report. “The trends are moving in the right direction,” Jerry McGinn, co-author of a study for the Center for Strategic and International Analysis, told Defense News. Pistol Pete Hegseth has vowed to “transform the entire acquisition system to operate on a wartime footing.” Roughly 10,000 new firms have entered the market in the past two years and nontraditional companies received over $120 billion in contract obligations in FY 2025, adding 'competition and innovation' to the sector. Munitions contract obligations have risen 330% since FY 2010. Spurred by this increased demand and depleted inventories, the Pentagon is signing multiyear agreements with munitions producers and suppliers. Also notable is federal investment in rare earths, which has seen production soar from 95 tons in 2022, to 8,900 tons in 2025. Nonetheless, 'the erosion of domestic rare earth manufacturing capacity and the rise of Chinese control took decades to unfold, however, and it will take several years of enduring effort for the US and its allies to build, scale, and sustain the production capacity of these key defense inputs.'

• Eric Arnow writes: The new commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Mykhailo Drapatyi, stated that Russia as a nation have no right to exist, and that only “criminal elements” have lived in Donbas their entire lives. After his appointment as Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Drapatoy was finally allowed to speak to journalists. During his first interview, the general stated that he did not consider Russians equal to Ukrainians. According to him, Russians had never been civilized for “thousands of years,” waging wars of conquest and attempting to build an empire. And their behavior hasn’t changed. The West’s 500 year implacable and relentless war against ‘The Rest’, is headed for a climax. It will not and cannot allow sovereignty of other nations. Indeed, it views itself as The Garden, despite the fact that Eurasian civilizations existed long before European and  the US were even founded. Somehow the US thinks it should determine what Iran should be. Iran was unified as a nation under the Median kingdom in the 7th century BC. Russia, for its part, goes back at least 1,000 years. The Mongols invaded in 1240, followed by Poles, Swedes [repeatedly], French, Germans, and even the English attacked Russia three times, and the US attacked once after the Russian Revolution of 1917, and the Wall Street plunder in the 1990s after the demise of the former Soviet Union.

• Ukraine (with full US-NATO-EU support) began the war on the Russian-ethnic parts of their own country in 2014 by attacking eastern Ukraine along the border with Russia. For years Moscow tried to settle it with the Minsk 1 & 2 agreements which France, Germany and Ukrainian leaders later admitted they signed just to buy time to build up Kiev's military so they could keep the killing going. It's been going on ever since. [Now in Kiev the people are spending alot of time in the underground. They should have realized that Russia's patience had obvious limits. Ukraine should surrender while they still have something to hold on to.]

Lubec, Maine protest coming Saturday

Our August statewide monthly protest will be held in the beautiful seaside town of Lubec here in Maine, at the Canadian border.

Quoddy Head State Park is next door to Lubec. One of the best parks in the state.

We've been doing these monthly events since early 2022 opposing endless war$.

We like moving them around the state in order to reach as many corners of Maine as possible. Especially in the summer lots of tourists see our signs and banners as well. 

Often times great activists feel isolated in these otherwise quiet corners of the state. But by holding events in these sometimes far-away places we connect with folks who can then feel part of the larger statewide movement. And they always have something special to add to the kettle!

It's putting solidarity into action! 

On September 12 we go to Wiscasset on US Hwy 1 at the bridge just across from the famous tourist trap Red's Eats (coincidentally owned by a family named Gagnon). We meet at 1:30 pm.

Join us when you can. 

Bruce 

Robert Barnes : What Trump's Inner Circle Tells Him

Lots of insider political gossip about Trump's info flow, decision making, the many failures he is now making.

Barnes knows Trump well. 

Why did U.S. & Saudis attack Iraq?

Elijah J. Magnier is a veteran war-zone correspondent and political analyst with over 35 years of experience covering the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). He specializes in real-time reporting of politics, strategic and military planning, terrorism and counter-terrorism; his strong analytical skills complement his reporting. 

His in-depth experience, extensive contacts and thorough political knowledge of complex political situations in Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Sudan and Syria make his writings mandatory reading for those wishing to understand complicated affairs that are routinely misreported and propagandized in the Western press.

Magnier has covered many of the key wars and military clashes in the region, including the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the Iraq-Iran War, the Lebanese Civil War, the Gulf War of 1991, the 1992 – 1996 war in the former Yugoslavia, the 2003 US invasion of Iraq and subsequent war and occupation, the second Lebanon War in 2006, as well as the more recent wars in both Libya and Syria. 

Having lived for many years in Lebanon, Bosnia, Iraq, Iran, Libya and Syria, Elijah J. Magnier possesses unique insights into local cultural and tribal affairs, geopolitical realities and trends, and the history of a region that continues to pose challenges for both its residents and the world. 

History lesson: 12,000 Chinese workers built America’s Transcontinental RR

They stood at the foot of the mountains everyone else had already refused. The granite walls of the Sierra Nevada rose like a barrier meant to stop history itself, and for a time, they did. Early crews hired by the Central Pacific Railroad walked away, defeated by altitude, snow, and danger. 

Then the company turned to Chinese laborers already living in California. Fifty men were hired. They did not leave. Within a few years, more than 12,000 Chinese workers made up nearly the entire workforce, climbing into storms and ice for lower wages, paying for their own food, and sleeping in fragile camps while winter buried the mountains around them.

They were mocked as weak, yet they accomplished what others could not. Suspended in baskets over cliffs at Cape Horn, they drilled into solid stone, placing explosives by hand while the wind moved beneath their feet. Through Donner Summit, they carved tunnels through unyielding granite using black powder and muscle alone. 

Avalanches swept away camps. Explosions ended lives that records barely counted. In 1867, thousands of Chinese workers organized one of the largest labor strikes of the nineteenth century, demanding fair pay and humane hours. Supplies were cut off in response, hunger used as a weapon until survival forced them back to work. Still, on April 28, 1869, their crews laid ten miles of track in a single day—a feat that has never been surpassed.

When the final spike was driven at Promontory Summit on May 10, 1869, dignitaries gathered, speeches were given, and photographs captured the triumph of a nation joined coast to coast. 

The men who made that moment possible were asked to step aside before the cameras clicked. Their labor stretched across 1,776 miles, binding the US together while recognition passed them by, and even citizenship remained out of reach for decades. 

The railroad changed a continent, but the silence surrounding those workers lasted almost as long as the tracks themselves—and it leaves us wondering how many foundations of history were built by hands the world chose not to see. 

Narco Rubio publishes paranoid activist blacklist

The Grayzone's Max Blumenthal and Aaron Mate on Secretary of State Marco Rubio's publication of a paranoid blacklist of antiwar American activists, and how he's exploiting it to make the case for a military invasion of Cuba. 

Trump & Bibi: What next?

• Boss Bibi giving fresh orders to everyone, including Rubio and Pistol Pete Hegseth. Also to Ukraine's drug addict puppet President Zelensky further down this post. Pretty clear who runs the show. (No sound in the videos but the picture tell the story.)

• Patrick Lawrence writes: What will the Trumpster do? This is the question on many minds just now. In brief, Trump is going to have to decide what it is he will lose and then figure out how to lose it — either a war, on one hand, or on the other the global economy, the American electorate, and the midterm elections. Accepting defeat in the Iran war will be a messy schmear the American public cannot read for what it is, and it will never be called a defeat. In my view we are in for some variant of “peace with honor”—another name for the other side’s victory, as coined after Vietnam’s triumph in 1975. When and how this is presented remains to be seen, but I do not see any alternative open to Trump. I have previously argued that Trump would continue aggressing against Iran because he has been so thoroughly a captive of the Israelis. For Trump it was Israel über alles, as I put it earlier in the war. But there now seems to be no more obliging the psychotic, war-obsessed Netanyahu and all the monied Zionists Trump has served until now. If he betrays them—and absent a crystal ball or a Ouija board I expect him to do so out of sheer self-interest—we will at that moment be witnessing the making of history.

• The seized Iranian “TOSKA” ship by the US Navy carried dialysis supplies and vital medical equipment for Iranian civilians. Before, the US claimed its blockade would not seize/stop ships that transported food or medical equipment, well that turned out to be an outright lie. Finally released.

• Yemen military: "Saudi Arabia, along with America, has begun bombing sites in Iraq. We condemn and denounce all this brutal aggression, and this aggression will not pass without a response."
• Brian Berletic: US pauses its attacks on Iran once again to begin rearming, reorganizing and eventually restarting hostilities at a time of its own choosing; The pause also cools off energy markets the US is deliberately disrupting and dismantling to its benefit – but in a way that doesn’t trigger a united front against US disruptions; The war on Iran is part of a wider war on multi-polarism the US continues to wage – if the war on multi-polarism continues, so will the war on Iran; US foreign policy is driven by unelected corporate-financier interests, not politicians, thus any analysis or solution based on the notion “politicians” instead of the largest corporations in the US are making decisions is destined to fail.

• Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has accused New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani of “fomenting hate” following the mayor’s call for his arrest in relation to the war in Gaza. Speaking to Fox News on Sunday, Netanyahu dismissed the ICC case against him as “bogus” and said he would still travel to New York despite Mamdani’s calls for his arrest. Accusing the mayor of “fomenting hate,” the Israeli leader said: “He’s supposed to be the mayor of all New Yorkers – Jews, Christians, Muslims, everyone. But he’s trying to turn one group against the other.”
• RT: Three-quarters of Poles have expressed a negative attitude toward Ukraine's Vladimir Zelensky, according to a recent poll. The disapproval comes amid an ongoing scandal over Kiev’s veneration of Nazi collaborators involved in the mass killing of Poles during World War II. Zelensky sparked outrage in Poland in May by giving an elite commando unit a “heroes of UPA” award referring to the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, which carried out an ethnic cleansing campaign targeting mostly Polish Catholic residents of what is now Western Ukraine, which resulted in over 100,000 deaths. He and other top officials declared that “no one will ever dictate to Ukrainians which heroes to honor.” 

• Al Mayadeen: The Israeli embassy in Canberra has publicly challenged proposed changes to the Australian Labour Party’s policy on Palestine, drawing attention to what appears to be an unusual attempt by a foreign government to influence an internal party debate, The Guardian reported. In a four-page statement released on Monday, the embassy criticized sections of Labour’s draft national platform ahead of the party’s conference in Adelaide this week. The proposed platform includes stronger language opposing the occupation and “annexation” of Palestinian territory, as well as Israeli settler violence in the occupied West Bank. The intervention is notable because the Labour platform is an internal party document debated and approved at the party’s national conference every three years. Foreign governments rarely issue detailed public objections to policies that remain under discussion within an Australian political party.

• Oregon Capital Chronicle: In a sign of the economic times, multibillion dollar grocers Walmart and Amazon have among the most listed employees on publicly funded health care, according to an analysis of Oregon Health Authority data. Not all employees at the companies qualify for employee-sponsored health care. “One in six of the most listed employers on Medicaid forms in Oregon was a major grocer and retailer,” the publication reported.
• Sovereignista: This week Bloody Bibi and Zelenski are both in Washington. Neither was welcomed on a red carpet or with senior US officials meeting them. With Trump, it will be like a rerun of a macabre and grotesque. Unfortunately it is a circus that we have to pay attention to. There is a trend of a coalescence of the Ukraine War (Ukraine hitting a Iranian carrier in the Caspian Sea) with the War on Iran and region. The Ukrainian soldiers in Iraq are not necessarily mercenaries but soldiers on the payroll, just the same as they are in West Africa in the Sahel. Ukraine is not only selling weapons to any shadow military group or drug cartel, but soldiers as well. War is indeed a racket. Iraq’s National Security Advisor, Qasim al-Aboudi, says that Ukrainian cells are active throughout Iraq, participating in false flag attacks. 'Ukrainian intelligence cells carry out attacks in Iraq and falsely attribute them to various factions. We arrested individuals and elements who confessed that they were working for Ukraine,' al-Aboudi said. The issue concerns attempts to internationalize the conflict with Russia as much as possible through attacks on an Iranian vessel and facilities of the Caspian Pipeline Consortium. According to Ukraine’s allies, this is being presented as a global conflict that threatens their own interests, said Konstantin Kosachev, Deputy Speaker of the Russian Federation Council. He also expressed hope that Iran and Kazakhstan would find a way to respond, while not allowing themselves to be drawn into Kiev’s agenda. Dmitry Peskov stated 'Kiev’s terrorist activity is growing around the world, including Iraq, underscoring the importance of achieving the goals of Russia’s special military operation.'

• Pink Floyd co-founder Roger Waters has denounced Europe’s military buildup and escalating confrontation with Russia, arguing that Western governments are steering the world toward catastrophe while arms manufacturers and political elites profit from perpetual war. Speaking Monday on The Sanchez Effect, Waters said calls for European NATO members to increase military spending to 5% of national GDP were “effing insane.” He questioned how Western leaders could even contemplate a direct conflict with Russia, given the Soviet Union’s decisive role and immense losses during World War II. “I often say to people, do you know who the Russian people are? They won the Second World War, for God’s sake. Twenty-five million of them died, saving the world for us,” he said. “And you want to have a war with them? How dumb.”  

• United Farm Workers Union (UFW): Last night we joined the ACLU and our other partners in asking the court to block ongoing federal immigration raids based on shocking newly disclosed records, body camera footage and sworn testimony from government officials. In a video cited in the filing, one agent said to another: “Yeah, just plug us in wherever you see some tonks…,” while other agents guessed whether people were “wet” simply based on appearance. “Tonks” is a derogatory and violent term understood to refer to the sound of a flashlight striking a migrant’s head. “Wet” is short for “wetback” and is a racist slur historically directed at Mexican and other Latino immigrants crossing the Rio Grande. “A year ago, farm workers across California were terrorized by brutal and unconstitutional raids based on racial and class profiling,” said Teresa Romero, president of the United Farm Workers Union, a plaintiff. “Today, the fear left behind by those raids continues. Farm workers go to work afraid they may not come home, even as they put food on all of our tables. The workers who feed this country deserve so much better.” This motion asks the court to prohibit immigration agents from stopping or detaining people because they appear to be low-income or working class and Latino. The court has scheduled a hearing on the motion for September 24. [In coming years people of color will become the majority population in the US. Thus the racist Trump administration is doing all it can to ship people of color out of the country now, no matter their legal status.]

• Consortium News: In a wide-ranging conversation with Chris Hedges about her new book, Crime and No Punishment: Wealth, Power, and Violence in America, Political scientist Marie Gottschalk traces how deregulation, mass incarceration, militarized policing, endless war, media consolidation, and bipartisan deference to corporate power converged to create the conditions for today’s authoritarian politics. The result, she argues, is a country where state violence at home and imperial violence abroad reinforce one another — and where Trump’s rise represents not a break from the American system, but its logical consequence. Marie Gottschalk’s Crime and No Punishment is about far more than crime. It is a sweeping examination of how the US built a political and economic order that punishes ordinary people while increasingly protecting the powerful.

• reddit: Nvidia chip founder Jensen Huang recently explained, the future of AI depends on continuous knowledge sharing between AI models. (Some people call this "LLM poisoning.") The idea is that they will then incorporate the "poisoned" framing into all the material they generate -- both as part of phony AI websites and as answers to queries -- so that these lies ultimately dominate our collective information space. When these two stories are read together one after another, a deeply disturbing pattern emerges. A rush is on to destroy the legacy of human culture and replace it with a fiction-filled, privatized digital twin that has been bought, paid for, and -- because of its digital nature -- is utterly controllable. This tactic is at the heart of colonialism's playbook.
• Edward Snowden’s Ominous Warning to the World: These Programs, Mass Surveillance is NOT about public safety.  It is not about terrorism. It is about power. It is about economic espionage.  It is about diplomatic manipulation. And it is about social influence. It is about understanding the actions of everyone in the world as carefully as they can, no matter who they are, no matter how innocent their life. But we see how these same technologies are being applied to create what they call the social credit system.