DEMS NEW STALL STRATEGY - "STRATEGIC REDEPLOYMENT"

The reports are coming in from all over the nation. The Democrats are getting pilloried as they shuck and jive on the war. They have an election coming up in fall of 2006 and they want to take back Congress. They are scrambling to find their footing. The Dems think we can have guns and butter - war and health care. I've got news for them - that tune ain't playing no more.

The Boston Globe (click link above for the full article) reported today that the Dems have put Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI), a former Army officer, in charge of coming up with a consensus Democratic plan for the war. His answer? It's called "strategic redeployment." What does that mean? "It's important to note that it's not withdrawal -- it's redeployment," Reed said. "We need to pursue a strategy that is going to accomplish the reasonable objectives, and allow us to have strategic flexibility. Not only is it a message, but it's a method to improve the security there and around the globe."

The Dems new plan is to pull some number of U.S. troops out of Iraq into Kuwait and other new bases in Afghanistan, Southeast Asia and the Horn of Africa. From the new large bases in Kuwait the U.S. would increase Air Force bombing missions over Iraq, increase the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV's) like the Predator pictured above that fly via satellite direction and can drop bombs and fire missiles. For the Iraqi people this means more indiscriminate bombing and more innocent people killed.

When things get really out of hand in Iraq, the "strategic redeployment" plan (it's just the Murtha plan with a new name by the way) will call for an expansion of U.S. Special Forces teams going back into Iraq for quick hits and killings of anyone who dares resist the corrupt puppet government the U.S. has put into place.

The Democrats will sell this to the American public by saying they are pulling the troops out of the war. A few units will be brought home and big ceremonies held so that the public thinks the war is slowing down. The Dems hope that "strategic redeployment" will mean less troops will be killed day to day in Iraq. They hope it will be their ticket to victory in November. But in truth the war will go on.

In fact, the endless war will be expanded with new basing arrangements in Southeast Asia, Africa and Afghanistan. More territory will be occupied and the field of operations against that faceless "terrorism" will be expanded. All this will be done with the Dems full encouragement and support. And guess what? The Pentagon will need lots more money to build these new bases and outposts and Congress - both Repubs and Dems - will give them the money.

The peace movement had better not fall for this bait and switch. The Dems are running an election game on us. They are feeling our pressure and this is their disingenuous response. Peace activists nationwide must see through this latest shell game and call it for what it is. Strategic deception.

The time has come for the peace movement to unembed itself from the Democratic Party. As long as peace activists see themselves as "party" people they will not have the ability to be critical of these kind of cynical moves to co-opt our energies.

I was in Germany right after the U.S. began the invasion of Afghanistan soon after 9-11. The Green Party in Germany supported that invasion and angered the German peace movement. I saw German peace activists publicly condemn national Green Party leaders for supporting the U.S. war. The peace activists understood where their primary allegiance belonged. To the anti-war movement first, and then to a party. If the party goes astray, the peace movement does not follow. We must do the same here in the U.S.

PROTESTING FROM THE MOON

Well I made it to the moon! Bang! Zoom!

I'm pulling out my protest signs and banners and setting up our Global Network anti-nuclear presence here....

NASA was not very happy when they realized I had arrived but since they can't claim they own the moon they can't kick me out. Look for me the next time there is a full moon. I'll be the guy waving the Earth flag.

I can report that NASA has nuclear materials scattered all over this place. I think the cheese is getting contaminated already. They have nuclear rocket landing zones, nuclear powered generating stations and more. I'm worried that my spacesuit might be contaminated already. I read one story in the daily on-line publication, The Moon News, that they were going to do strip mining here with nuclear blasts. Look out below! Or above! Just lookout!

The word is out that the U.S. wants to keep other countries from putting bases here. I think I will try to grab a moon buggy and see what is beyond the horizon. I heard there might be new U.S. military bases going up there that would be used to "deny" other countries access to the moon. If you don't hear from me soon send someone to look for me.

Our new slogan is "No Blood for Helium-3". Keep me in your prayers.

Bruce

TRIP REPORT - NEW MEXICO

This trip report covers the period of February 8-14, 2006 as I traveled to New Mexico on a speaking tour and to organize a protest outside the 23rd Symposium on Space Nuclear Power and Propulsion in Albuquerque.

I began the trip by getting off the plane in Albuquerque and seeing three people with colorful protest signs standing in the middle of the airport waiting to pick me up. Bob Anderson, Jeanne Pahls, and Sally Alice Thompson held NO STAR WARS and NO NUKES IN SPACE signs. I loved the unusual welcome, although I was surprised that Homeland Security wasn't all over them. As I approached them, I heard a few other passengers saying "right on!"

On February 9, Bob drove me south to Silver City for a talk. It was my second time to visit this town and a good gathering of folks from the Grant County Peace Coalition turned out. The talk was videotaped for broadcast on the local cable TV. Marta Green and Rod Rees were the very impressive local organizers of the event.

The next day Bob drove me back to Albuquerque the long way, showing me the beautiful countryside. He said one county we passed through, very much loaded with cowboys, had once tried unsuccessfully to secede from the state.

Later that evening, Bob and I were invited to appear on an hour-long local cable TV show called "Connecting the Dots" hosted by Al Cooper. Al is a Vietnam veteran, and was at Wounded Knee in South Dakota with Bob in the early 1970's when they went to show support for the American Indian Movement (AIM). Al has always focused more on social justice issues. He kept remarking after the show that he finally understood how space technology will be used to become the military arm of corporate globalization.

On February 11, Al drove his wife Allison, Bob, Jeanne and me three hours north to Las Vegas, New Mexico. We had to leave early in the morning in order to arrive in time for an hour-long live interview on a popular local radio station. We were met by Las Vegas Peace & Justice Center coordinator Patricia Leahan who joined us on the show and helped the host of the show interview us. The mayor, running for reelection of Las Vegas, was on just before us; I made a point of listening to him a bit before we went on. He was talking about budget problems and the difficulties of providing all the services the community needed. When it was our turn, I began talking about how expensive the Pentagon's plan for Star Wars is, and how social spending cuts will be necessary to pay for it. This continuity of message was important to help the listeners see the connection between weapons in space and the struggle for local community needs.

Following a great lunch at a wonderful Mexican restaurant, we went to the home of a local supporter where 20 people came to watch our video, Arsenal of Hypocrisy. Then in the evening, 80 people turned out to hear my talk at the local college. I was impressed that all day long, as Patricia took us from place to place she was on the phone calling people, or stopping them on the street, insisting they come to my talk that evening.

I spoke at the Albuquerque Peace & Justice Center on February 12 and invited people to join us the next morning for our space nukes vigil.

On February 13, we began our two-day protest at the Hilton Hotel in Albuquerque outside the space nuclear power symposium. The Nuclear Engineering Department at the University of New Mexico (UMN) is host each year for the symposium. Bob and I have organized these protests for the past dozen years as NASA, Department of Energy, aerospace industry, and nuclear academia come together to plan to move nuclear "everything" into space. The only media coverage we got was a good article in the "Daily Lobo" student newspaper and an interview on the public radio station at UNM.

Later that evening I was invited to address the Albuquerque Chapter of Veterans for Peace. They were very responsive and we had quite an interesting discussion afterward. I talked about how Albuquerque was a key location for the nuclearization and weaponization of space. Besides UNM being a key research and development center for the space nuclear reactor, Kirtland AFB in their city is the directorate for the military space laser program. It is vital, I told them, to expand education and protest action on the space issue in their community. Bob Anderson and Jeanne Pahls, leading a group called Stop the War Machine, have been key leaders in bringing the space issue to Albuquerque for years and need the on-going support of all peace activists in town.

While In Albuquerque I met a woman whose father had been one of the Nazi rocket scientists brought to the U.S. in "Operation Paperclip" right after the end of World War II. Her father, Ernst Steinhoff, had been the guidance department chief at Hitler's V-1 and V-2 test facility at Peenemunde in northern Germany. Once brought to the U.S., the Nazi rocketeers test range moved to New Mexico and the White Sands Proving Ground. One hundred copies of Hitler's V-2 and over 100 former Nazi rocket scientists created the U.S. space program.

Sternhoff went on to work in the aerospace industry on the west coast and eventually returned to New Mexico when he was appointed to a high position at Holloman AFB. Sternhoff's daughter told me that she did not learn about the Nazi holocaust until she was 18 years old. When she approached her mother asking if it was true, her mother said it was necessary and retrieved an old Readers Digest article to explain her side of the story.

The Nazi rocket program in Germany killed tens of thousands of Jews, French resistance fighters, Communists, homosexuals, and prisoners of war, who were all used as slave labor to build Hitler's V-1 and V-2 rocket program. (For more information about this story read Secret Agenda by Linda Hunt.)

On my last day in New Mexico, Bob and I arrived early at the Hilton Hotel and went inside to get a look at the symposium display room. Inside we saw fancy and expensive nuclear power in space displays by NASA, Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Department of Energy, among others. We noticed that NASA was taking participants' pictures and putting them onto postcards with a nuclear-powered moon mining base in the background. We both had them take our photos there, on the moon, inside a space suit.

Since returning home I've told friends that NASA has offered me a job as coordinator of nuclear operations on the moon. The only problem, I tell them, is that NASA is only offering me a one-way ticket!

So thanks to Bob Anderson and Jeanne Pahls for hosting another great visit to New Mexico.

The state of New Mexico has been asked by private space "entrepreneurs" for a $250 million gift from the taxpayers of the state to build a "Spaceport" that they say would be used to launch millionaire tourists into space from the sands of New Mexico.....

And so the struggle goes.

AMERICANS WHO TELL THE TRUTH

Maine artist Robert Shetterly recently painted me as part of a series of portraits he has done called "Americans Who Tell The Truth - A Collection of Portraits and Quotes." (Click on link above in the headline to go directly to Rob's web site so you can view all his portraits.)

I've come to know Rob through Veterans for Peace which made him an honorary member last year. Rob is very active in the Maine peace movement and we got arrested together last December 15 in Bangor at the office of Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME). Rob is an artist who has learned to use his talents to help build the peace and social justice movements. It is truly an honor to have been painted by him.

MOONBASE NUCLEAR

I got home at midnight last night after flying in from Albuquerque, New Mexico. We held two days of protests outside the 23rd Symposium on Space Nuclear Power and Propulsion held at the Hilton Hotel and sponsored by the University of New Mexico's Nuclear Engineering Department.

Bob Anderson and I went into the symposium display room yesterday before the protest began to see what the latest "stuff" was available. We both got our picture taken at the NASA booth and they inserted the photo inside a spacesuit on a postcard with a moon base in the background. Unlike the photo above, all the moon bases we saw in the conference display room had no solar panels. Everything was nuclear. Nuclear rockets took you to the moon and when you get there all power supplies were nuclear. Same with the Mars displays...nuclear rockets to Mars, nuclear powered rovers now driving around Mars, and eventually, nuclear powered mining colonies there too.

Besides NASA, Lockheed Martin and Boeing had big display areas. So did the Department of Energy and the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama where the nuclear rocket is under development. The Idaho National Laboratory had a space nuclear battery display called "Reliable Energy for Space Exploration." NIAC (NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts) had a display called "Grand Visions for Colonization of Space." Included in their PowerPoint presentation were things like "Cyclical Visits to Mars via Astronaut Hotels" and "Redesigning Living Organisms to Survive on Mars".

While in Albuquerque a woman attended my talk, and joined us on the picket line outside the Hilton Hotel, whose father had been one of the Nazi space scientists smuggled into the U.S. after World War II under "Operation Paperclip." She told me that when she learned of the Holocaust at the age of 18 she asked her mother about it. Her mother replied that "It was necessary" and gave her a copy of Readers Digest that had an article explaining that position. Her father was a key member of the Nazi team that created the V-1 and V-2 rockets that Hitler used to terrorize cities like London, Paris, and Brussels with near the end of the war. When the U.S. Army brought the Nazi's to the U.S. they brought along 100 copies of the V-2 rocket that were used to create the U.S. Space Program.

The amount of money now being poured into plans to “colonize” space are staggering. The ultimate goal is to mine the planetary bodies for resources like helium-3, gold, magnesium, cobalt and uranium. The aerospace industry will pocket the profits after you, the taxpayer paid for all the research and development costs. Corporate welfare run amok.

CONVERT THE WAR MACHINE

Been on the road across New Mexico last couple of days. Bob Anderson drove me south to Silver City the other day where I spoke and then we came back to Albuquerque to film an hour long local cable TV show hosted by veteran activist Al Cooper. Then yesterday Al drove us up north to Las Vegas, New Mexico where we did a live hour long radio program on a local station. Then in the afternoon our video, Arsenal of Hypocrisy, was shown to people in the home of a local supporter and following that I did an evening talk at the local university. So a busy day.

Got the day off today back in Albuquerque and have been catching up with e-mails and watching basketball on TV. Tonight I speak at the Albuquerque Peace & Justice Center and in the morning we begin our two days of protest at the annual space nuclear power symposium here in town. The symposium will be loaded with aerospace industry representatives who have their hands out looking for more taxpayer subsidy as they promote the nuclearization and weaponization of space.

We must end the corporate welfare for the aerospace industry if we ever end the arms race and prevent the war machine from moving its deadly and expensive bad seed into space. Our protests in Albuquerque during the next two days are helping to focus the attention of people in New Mexico on how bases like Kirtland AFB here in Albuquerque are central to the development of weapons in space. The University of New Mexico's Nuclear Engineering Department has for years been a central promoter of nukes in space.

My message here is the same as always. Convert the military industrial complex to peaceful production. Build solar power, windmills, and public mass transit systems instead of weapons of war. Use our tax dollars for production of sustainable technologies that provide a future for our children and their children. We must make this demand over and over again. This demand must resonate all over the country and around the world.

OLYMPIA, TEAR DOWN THAT WALL!

Wasting A Lot of Loot (WALL) in Iraq

No, we are not talking about a wall around China Lake in Maine. The wall is the new
one that Sen. Olympia Snowe has built in her Portland office. One end of the wall is to keep Mainers from entering her office to share their deep concerns about the war in Iraq. The other end of the wall reaches all the way to the war torn nation of Iraq where the U.S. is wasting over $10 billion per month - with the full support of Sen. Snowe. (Bush just requested $120 billion for FY 2006 war funding.)

For over a year Mainers have been writing, calling, and visiting the offices of Sen. Snowe asking her to hold a public town hall meeting on Iraq. So far she refuses. Why is she reluctant to share the courage of her convictions with the citizenry?

Now the senator is going one step further. She has just built a wall in her Portland office making it even harder for the taxpayers to visit her with their grievances about the cost of the war. Is democracy being sealed off in Maine?

In the immortal words of Ronald Reagan, we say, "Olympia, tear down that wall!"

If you agree, call Sen. Snowe's Portland office at (207) 874-0883. While you are
at it, also ask her to hold a town hall meeting on Iraq.

HEADING TO NEW MEXICO FOR SPACE NUKES PROTEST

I leave Wednesday for Albuquerque, New Mexico to join protests at the 23rd Annual Symposium on Space Nuclear Power & Propulsion. Each year NASA, Pentagon, and the aerospace industry gather to make plans to move nuclear power into space. The Bush administration has been good to this group, resurrecting the nuclear rocket, now called Project Prometheus. Other space nuclear programs are being expanded and thus the chance of a deadly accident becomes greater as the numbers of dangerous launches will dramatically increase in coming years.

I will start out with talks in Silver City, Las Vegas, and Albuquerque with the protests set for Feb 13-14 outside the Hilton Hotel in Albuquerque where the symposium will be held.

I've been attending these events for more than 10 years and local activist Bob Anderson has always been a wonderful host and speaking tour organizer for me. His friendship is something I really treasure and am always happy to hang out with him for several days of action.

Bob is a Vietnam vet and has been teaching college for many years now. Because of his political activity across New Mexico, he has now lost his teaching position at the University of New Mexico. Bob is a true profile in courage as he never let his career ambitions stand in the way of speaking truth to power.

I spent several hours today listening to the funeral service of Coretta Scott King. George W. Bush was sitting right behind the podium and I was shaken to my bones when Rev. Joseph Lowery (former president of SCLC) got up and moved the crowd to its feet by saying that we know there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, we can't have war and deal with poverty. Bush was just a bit uncomfortable. I said to myself, now that is speaking truth to power. When he was done, Lowery turned and walked right up to Bush and extended his hand. What a moment!

So from Joseph Lowery I go to Bob Anderson. Good men they are.

Mainers Impatiently & Politely Asking Collins (MIPAC)

Mainers Impatiently & Politely Asking Collins (MIPAC)
for a meeting in our state

We know we don't have a lot of money to give her,but after all she is our senator.....

On March 5-7 the powerful Israeli lobby group AIPAC will meet at the Washington DC Convention Center. Sen. Susan Collins will join other speakers like Newt Gingrich and U.N. Ambassador John Bolton at the event.

People in Maine have been trying to get Sen. Collins to hold a public town hall meeting on the Iraq war for the last year. She says she does not like to speak in front of big crowds and will only speak to those concerned about the war one-on-one. (It would appear that the AIPAC meeting in Washington will have a big crowd.) What is it they have that we Mainers don't?

It's confusing to us here in Maine why Sen. Collins will go to speak about the situation in the Middle East with AIPAC but won't talk with her own constituents. Could it be the name? Maybe we need a fancy name like AIPAC.

So we have created a new group to be called MIPAC. It stands for Mainers Impatiently & Politely Asking Collins (MIPAC) for a meeting.

To join MIPAC all you have to do is call the office of Sen. Collins and request she comes home to Maine to meet with those she presumes to serve. While you are at it, call Sen. Olympia Snowe too. She refuses to hold a town hall meeting on Iraq as well.

Call this toll free number to reach both Collins and Snowe: 1-888-355-3588

LYING AND SPYING FOR THE MILITARY MACHINE

Lying about spying is an impeachable offense. When Congress passes a law, like the FISA law that requires the president to get a warrant to spy on the public, and the president flouts the law then he has made an impeachable offense.

Yesterday the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a federal Freedom of Information Act request on behalf of individuals and organizations in six states. Included in that legal action was a request on my behalf and on behalf of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space. The legal action requested from the Pentagon all documents that would reveal monitoring of lawful activities.

“President Bush claims that expanded intelligence powers are necessary to combat terrorism, yet we have evidence the Pentagon is using counter terrorism tools to spy on peaceful groups,” said an ACLU spokesman. “Under the guise of national security and the need to protect the country from another terrorist attack, the evidence so far indicates that the federal government is engaged in a widespread surveillance program aimed at anybody who criticizes the policies of the Bush administration.”

Earlier this month, the ACLU filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of journalists, scholars and attorneys against the National Security Agency (NSA) for illegally intercepting vast quantities of the international telephone and Internet communications of Americans without court approval.

In the mid-1980’s, while working for the Florida Coalition for Peace & Justice in Orlando, Florida, I got a phone call one day. An unidentified person on the phone told me that our organization had been infiltrated by local police agencies and that it was unconstitutional. I went to the Orlando Sentinel newspaper and a friendly reporter helped find out that the call had come from the lawyer for the Central Florida Metropolitan Bureau of Investigation (MBI). This body had been asked by Martin Marietta Corporation (now called Lockheed Martin) to infiltrate and “investigate” our organization. They inserted several operatives we were to later learn and one of them once tried to sell me illegal drugs. Clearly they were doing more than looking out for “illegal” political activity. The newspaper ended up doing a big series of stories on the infiltration and we were able to obtain a portion of the files they were keeping on us. The MBI fired their lawyer and tried unsuccessfully to have him disbarred for violating lawyer-client privilege. The lawyer told the newspaper that he tried to tell the MBI that what they were doing was illegal, and when they would not listen to him, he felt he had no choice but to tip us off to the infiltration.

In the last two years we have learned that NASA, working with the Brevard Sheriff’s Department (space coast) and the Air Force Office of Special Investigations (OSI) out of MacDill AFB in Tampa, have been infiltrating and “investigating” key leaders of the Global Network. The Florida ACLU was able to again obtain a small portion of their intelligence files.

All of this just goes to show that the idea of an engaged and active citizenry, something that is vital to a real democracy, is now considered a danger to the existing government. My experience reveals that this problem of seeing the citizens as an enemy goes beyond Bush. The military industrial complex, the folks who really run our government, have for many years seen fit to label anyone who speaks out against their plan for global domination as a domestic enemy. Until we deal with the fact that we have lost our democracy to these big corporations, nothing much will change.

DANCING WITH THE POLITICOS

A bit late on this report...been suffering from very bad sore throat last couple of days.

On Sunday we had an activists dream day. Over 180 people turned out in Belfast at a public town hall meeting of Maine's Rep. Mike Michaud. Michaud has now organized two such meetings to hear from his constituency on Iraq. He quietly sat and took notes as about 40 people walked up to the microphone and gave wonderfully moving testimony. Not one person spoke in favor of the war. The same themes flowed in and out of the testimony throughout the meeting. Stop the war, bring the troops home now, cut the war funding now, investigate Bush for impeachment crimes. I had tears in my eyes over and over again. How could anyone with a heart not be deeply touched by such passion and wisdom?

Then, with just a few minutes to go before the meeting was to conclude, the Congressman stood up and commented on a few of the easier points that had come up in the meeting....things like yes he supports full funding for the Veterans Administration so returning GI's can get treatment for PTSD....softball stuff. But, much to my total shock, the "good Democrat" Michaud never said a word about the essence of the meeting. Not a word about bring the troops home, war funding, or his position on Bush lies and impeachment investigations. I couldn't believe it, but then again I could.

After telling one of his staff aides that I thought his response to the town hall was "pitiful", twenty-five of us piled into our cars and drove 30 miles north to another meeting being held by Rep. Tom Allen (D-ME). Maine has two congressmen. Allen represents the more southern part of the state where I live and Michaud the northern part. The interesting thing is that Allen was speaking in the second district, not his own, it was Michaud's district. People have been speculating lately that Rep. Allen has senatorial ambitions and on Sunday was out trying to build a base for an eventual statewide run.

There were already 30 people there when we arrived at the Tom Allen meeting. The momentum from our crew immediately turned it into another Iraq town hall meeting. Allen danced and dodged, as he is known to do on tough issues. He was a Rhodes scholar and my perception of him is that while at Oxford he learned to honor and treasure the empire as such "scholars" are taught to do. On Iraq, Mr. Allen says he is against the war but keeps voting for every $$$ that gets requested. He says we can't come home from Iraq just yet, but he also says he is opposed to permanent bases.

I raised my hand and he would not call on me. He has heard from me a couple of times before and my friends say he remembers my trademark hat. I was sitting in the front row, right next to the woman who appeared to be the organizer of the meeting. Allen kept calling on lots of other people and I kept putting my hand in the air and taking it down. Finally, the woman next to me said, "Tom, he has had his hand up a long time." Reluctantly Allen called on me.

By this time Mr. Allen had said that if we wanted things to change we just had to ensure the Democrats would be back in control of Congress. Then everything would be alright...you know how the story goes. So once called on I told the story about Hillary Clinton's trip to Afghanistan and Iraq a year ago February with Sen. John McCain, Russ Feingold, Lindsey Graham, and Susan Collins. I told how they had held a news conference in Afghanistan where they said the U.S. was building six permanent bases in that country. On her return to the U.S. I recalled, Hillary and the right-wing Lindsey Graham were on the Sunday morning news talk shows. I saw Hillary say that "we are going to be in Iraq for a long-time. The American people need to be patient, we've been in Korea for 50 years," Hillary told us.

I told Mr. Allen that leaders of his own political party were telling us we are not leaving Iraq. I asked him why he won't vote against further funding for the war. He danced, he actually has very swift feet. I hear that when in high school he ran track. Actually, very good training for a politician.

Our 25 person crew left the Allen event and went for dinner together. There we processed the remarkable day and did some brainstorming about future actions. We had representation from all over the state in that meeting. We are moving together now…..we will keep the pressure on those that like to dance.

JUSTICE DENIED AGAIN IN AMERICA

My mind turns to the legal system again today as Sam Alito is likely to be confirmed by the Senate early this week. This morning we hear that top Enron Corporation executives Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling begin their criminal trial for stealing Enron investors blind. In recent days we've seen George W. Bush squirm and lie trying to deny association with super-crook Jack Abramoff who earlier this month plead guilty to conspiracy and fraud charges. It has been reported that Abramoff donated $100,000 to Bush campaigns for president, but George W. Bush claims they have never met.

But don't despair friends. There is justice in America. If you have any doubts just turn to the case of the St. Patrick's Four. On March 17, 2003, just two days before U.S. bombs began raining down on Baghdad, 40 year-old Teresa Grady, her older sister Clare, Daniel Burns and Vietnam veteran Peter DeMott decided to take action against the impending illegal invasion (excuse me, liberation) of Iraq.

The group of Catholic Workers from Ithaca, N.Y. entered a military recruiting center and poured their blood on the walls, recruiting posters and an American flag in an act of non-violent civil resistance to what they knew would be countless violations of international law the Bush administration would commit with the coming "shock and awe" invasion.

"We are about caring for the poor, needy and disenfranchised," Teresa later said. "We do this while confronting the political and economic structures that cause poverty." They were ultimately found guilty for their act of conscience. Danny Burns got a 6 month jail sentence, Peter DeMott got 8 months, Clare Grady got 6 months, and Teresa Grady got four months.

Now that might seem fair to the average person. But let's put this all in some context. Let's look at Chief Warrant Officer Lewis Welshofer, the highest-ranker officer charged in connection with prisoner abuse in the U.S. war in Iraq. During a five-day trial prosecutors displayed gruesome pictures of the body of Iraqi Major General Abed Hamed Mowhoush. He was killed by Welshofer when the U.S. Army officer placed the Iraqi general head-first in a sleeping bag, covered his mouth and sat on his chest during a fatal interrogation in November 2003.

Mowhoush's death came two days after he was beaten with rubber hoses by Iraqi contractors working for the CIA. Chief Warrant Officer Welshofer was also present at that interrogation. The next day Welshofer held Mowhoush while water torture was administered.

At the trial Welshofer was found guilty of negligent homicide but found not guilty on the more serious charge of murder. Welshofer was sentenced to a reprimand and fine but escaped jail time. He will forfeit $6,000 in pay and be restricted to the barracks and his workplace for 60 days.

In May, 2005 a similar case resulted in acquittal. Army staff sergeant Shane Werst was found not guilty of premeditated murder for having killed suspected Iraqi insurgent Naser Ismail. Werst shot the Iraqi after a team of Americans had entered the home of Ismail. Werst claimed Ismail lunged for a gun. After shooting the Iraqi, Werst admitted that he fired a pistol into a couch and told another U.S. soldier to put the dead Iraqi man's fingerprints on it.

Can there be any doubt that there are two standards of justice in America today? If you protest for peace you go to jail. The St. Patrick’s Four is just one case in many where anti-war activists are going to jail in record numbers today. But if you murder people in Iraq you are likely to get a slap on the wrist and off you go – back to work.

Something is very wrong here. Who said there needs to be a revolution in America today?

HOLDING RIGHT-WING POWER: BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY

For GOP voters, the 2004 presidential election was little short of miraculous: Behind in the Electoral College even on the afternoon of the vote, the Bush-Cheney ticket staged a stunning comeback. Usually reliable exit polls turned out to be wrong by an unprecedented 5 percent in swing states. Conservatives argued, and the media agreed, that "moral values" had made the difference.

In his latest book, Fooled Again: How The Right Stole The 2004 Election, And Why They'll Steal The Next One Too (Unless We Stop Them), Mark Crispin Miller argues that it wasn't moral values which swung the election -- it was theft.

TERRENCE McNALLY: You're a professor of media studies. According to your bio, you write about "film, television, propaganda, advertising and the culture industries …" Why did you write this book?

MARK CRISPIN MILLER: Out of a sense of civic emergency. I believe that "Fooled Again" makes the case quite persuasively that there is actually no convincing evidence that Bush and Cheney won re-election.

This is a civic story of the utmost importance. It has to do with the dire need for election reform in the United States. But it's also a story about the colossal failure of the American press to do precisely the kind of job that the framers had in mind when they wrote the First Amendment. What they had in mind was that the press would function as a reliable check on executive power. It would keep the people informed about what their government was up to, and it would keep them politically engaged in national debate.

The newspapers, as limited and defective as they were in the 18th century, did perform that function, and I believe they performed that function for much of our history. We now have a corporate media system that is not answerable to the people nor concerned about the people, but [is] in the service of its pay masters. And it is far too close to the government for the health of anything like a democratic system.

One of the points of "Fooled Again" is that this is a story of tremendous importance, as far as a democracy is concerned. Yet the press has for the most part ridiculed those who have come up with very solid evidence of fraud. They've been in the business less of talking about the situation than of preventing anybody else from talking about it. And this includes some of the progressive media as well. In fact, the most hostile reviews that I've received have been in Mother Jones and Salon.

TM: I read the transcript of you on Democracy Now! with Mark Hertsgaard, a progressive journalist who has been fairly dismissive of those questioning Bush's victory. By the end he seemed to be agreeing that everything should be more fully investigated.

I would think that the 2004 election story, if tracked and broken, would be huge for whoever breaks it. Any other thoughts about why it's so ignored?

MCM: We have to understand that for some decades the press has served basically an establishmentarian function. They have the reputation, and they certainly have the self-image, of being terribly skeptical, prone to disrespectful questions, probing dark matters that authority would just as soon have them leave alone. That's a very flattering view of the press but completely undeserved. The press will not deal with any story that goes beyond a particular scandal to cast doubt on the very viability of the entire system. The press in this country will studiously ignore any story that too violently rocks the boat, whose implications are too shattering.

This is not new. Watergate was a story that the press avoided for months and months. Only the Washington Post pursued that story; everybody else made fun of it. Now we look back on Watergate with tremendous nostalgia and self-congratulation, telling ourselves the press saved the system. But since Watergate the press has preferred to deal with meaningless and trivial scandals like the Clinton scandals. They will not talk about 9/11, they will not talk about the theft of the last three elections.

TM: You also include the 2002 congressional election. That one also broke too consistently against predictions?

MCM: That's exactly right. In Colorado, in Minnesota, in Georgia, and in a couple of other states -- there was what we might call "Diebold magic" everywhere. In all these states, you had far-right-wing politicians predicted to lose by pre-election newspaper polls and by exit polls, and all of them won.

TM: Why do you believe the two successive Democratic candidates have given in so easily?

MCM: I think basically Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry this last time are far too concerned with establishment opinion, far too worried that they'll seem to be sore losers, conspiracy theorists, etc. They have therefore refused to go public with what they actually believe. Kerry told me personally on October 28th at a fundraising party that he believes the election was probably stolen.

TM: He then disavowed that in the press, didn't he?

MCM: Exactly -- a few hours after the story broke. The Democratic Party is as much a part of the problem as the Republican Party.

TM: Are there exceptions among the ranks of mainstream politicians? I think of Barbara Boxer and John Conyers. Any others?

MCM: Tom Daschle has told me he thinks very highly of the book and has given me permission to quote him to that effect. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, Rush Holt. There are growing numbers of Democratic politicians who are willing to take the risks of facing the truth on this issue.

Let's put it less dogmatically. All right, maybe I haven't proven that the election was stolen, but I am completely confident that I've provided ample grounds for a serious investigation of what went on last year. It seems to me that any Democrat who refuses to even go for that kind of inquiry is really failing his or her constituency.

TM: -- and failing the voters. As a citizen, it bothers me that we leave it to a Gore or a Kerry, who's thinking about his future reputation or his future career, to stage the protest. I don't care about their careers. I care about my vote getting counted or discounted.

What's the statement that you're willing to make in "Fooled Again" about the 2004 election: stolen? worthy of investigation? evidence clearly shows in six states …?

MCM: The evidence in Ohio, as anyone who followed the story knows, is copious. Bush allegedly won that state by 118,000 votes. As I point out -- and this part of the book is largely based on John Conyers' report to the House Judiciary Committee -- the various stratagems, tricks and tactics used to prevent people from registering, to prevent them from voting, to throw away provisional ballots -- all these add up to a number far greater than 118,000.

TM:: That's news to me. Many people have said, yes, there were long lines, yes, there was disproportionate distribution of voting machines, yes, there was trouble with provisional ballots, yes, there was intimidation -- but the margin was 120,000. You're saying that they add up to over 120,000?

MCM: Oh easily, easily. It was in the urban parts of Ohio that most of this stuff went down. All the urban centers in Ohio were Democratic. If people want to get a strong sense of what was happening at the grassroots level coast to coast last year, go to a website called the Election Incident Reporting System, EIRS. Then type in the name of a state or a county, and you'll get a transcript of all the complaints that were lodged that day by people who called 1-866-MY-VOTE.

Now a lot of them couldn't get through because it was understaffed, but those who did get through left messages. You can find copious firsthand evidence of what the average person had to go through to try to vote against Bush. This didn't happen only in Ohio. Electronic touchscreen machines flipped Kerry votes into Bush votes in at least 11 states.

TM: You say similar practices (and occasionally worse ones) were applied in several other key states -- Florida, Oregon, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona and even New York?

MCM: In New Mexico, for example, we're told that Bush won by some 7,000 votes. We know of over 17,000 Democratic voters who were unable to cast a vote for president because the touchscreen machines in their districts refused to record a vote for president.

These 17,000-plus New Mexicans turned out to vote in Democratic areas, and they didn't record a vote for president. Seventeen thousand is 10,000 more than 7,000. That glitch alone can account for the ostensible victory margin of Bush over Kerry in New Mexico. Greg Palast's new book will have a whole chapter on New Mexico. It's hair-raising stuff, and we haven't heard a word about it. The same kind of thing happened in Iowa, where Bush supposedly won by under 10,000 votes.

Tom Daschle was supposedly beaten in South Dakota by 4,500 votes. There was so much chicanery going on there, that it's easy to argue that John Thunes should not have won. I know Daschle believes he was robbed.

This isn't only a matter of the White House, it's also a matter of the Congress. I don't believe that this government represents the people of this country. The people of this country, however frightened some of them may be by terrorism, are essentially not theocratically inclined. They don't want a Christian republic. They were not happy with the way the government dealt with the Terry Schiavo case. Americans basically believe in the American system of government. Checks and balances, the separation of church and state.

The press kept telling us after the election that a huge outpouring of religious voters account for Bush's miraculous victory. Well that's nothing more than a talking point that the religious right itself put out after the election. There is no statistical evidence whatsoever that there was any increase in the number of religious voters.

TM: The big thing that people seized on was one particular exit poll in which people, when given a choice of a few things, said moral values was the No. 1 reason for their vote. More people answered moral values in 1996 and in 2000 than in 2004. There was actually a drop in the number of people who attributed their vote to moral values in 2004, not a rise.

Let me check a couple of things with you. I've heard that exit polls were most inaccurate -- by a big margin -- in those areas that used electronic voting machines with no paper trail. True?

MCM: That's basically true, and it was particularly noticeable in five swing states. There's a lot of stuff floating around out there in cyberspace about the exit polls. The question of the exit polls has been very badly muddied by a lot of disingenuous argument. Now a lot of people think that it's not a reliable gauge, it doesn't tell us anything. That's actually the result of propaganda obfuscation. The exit polls' sudden divergence, sudden wrongness in these five states is really a remarkable deviation from the norm.

The guy doing the best work on that particular issue is a statistician at the University of Pennsylvania named Steve Freeman, who will have a book coming out in a few months primarily about the exit poll question.

Bogus reasons for why the exit polls were so wrong include the reluctant responder argument, which holds that Bush voters were strangely reluctant to tell exit pollsters how they voted. Well, Freeman has read the raw data at precinct level and has discovered that, as a matter of fact, if anyone showed a greater reluctance to come forward and say honestly who they voted for when confronted with an exit pollster, it was actually the Democrats. There's no evidence of any numerical kind that can support the view that somehow Republicans wouldn't fess up.

TM: I would assume that the very ones being referred to as reluctant are the ones who would be proud to say they voted for God's candidate.

MCM: One of the weirdest things about this whole election business is that one of the two parties has, for over the last year and longer, been vociferously complaining about the dangers of election fraud, and that's the Republican party.

TM: Thus the ID card in Georgia, right?

MCM: Exactly. They're the ones who are always screaming about Democratic fraud, but the Republicans in this last race were really the only ones engaging in election fraud.

This has to do with the peculiarly paranoid quality of the crusading mindset. I believe this theft was to a great extent carried out thanks to a kind of crusader mentality. I've got plenty of evidence in the book that the religious right played an enormously large role in the theft of the election last year.

TM: I think first of Diebold, I think of the Ken Blackwells or the Kathryn Harrises. How does the religious right itself play a role beyond mobilizing its own troops?

MCM: That mobilization is significant when you consider that a lot of those troops have actually become embedded inside the election system.

TM: Local polling officials, that sort of thing?

MCM: One Democratic election judge tried to observe the vote count in Pima County, Arizona. A roomful of polling personnel who all belonged to the same evangelical church in the area started to call him a liberal demon, a liberal scum.

TM: When you talk about a crusader mentality, you basically mean that if you do not support my candidate you are an infidel -- and the ends justify the means?

MCM: Precisely. See, all these crimes that I attest to in the book were committed with impunity by people who regard their political adversaries as demons. And that's not an exaggeration. You know, this government is to a great extent dominated by people who have that metaphysical view of the current political situation.

It is a very serious mistake I believe to think that all of this is happening only because of the excessive greed of certain corporate powers. That greed is decisive It played an enormous role. There is no question about it. But it could not have succeeded without the vigorous grassroots assistance of a lot of people who are religious true believers. And I think that they include the likes of Tom DeLay and others.

TM: I've heard that almost all irregularities worked in Bush's favor. True?

MCM: Absolutely true. I have not yet heard of a single example of a touchscreen voting machine flipping a Bush vote into a Kerry vote. This does not mean it never happened. I'm just saying I haven't heard about it if it has.

TM: I've read that in New Hampshire, Ralph Nader's Green Party campaign paid for an actual recount. They picked the precincts they thought were suspicious, and the hand recount confirmed the actual vote totals and showed that the exit polls were, in fact, wrong. What do you say to that?

MCM: Well, the recount that they paid for found no evidence of fraud in that particular case.

TM: It confirmed the hand recount, showing that the exit polls were in fact wrong. So how does that fit your analysis of the whole scheme?

MCM: The only thing one can say about that with any scientific certainty is that the particular hand count that they carried out did not reveal any evidence of fraud. That does not mean that no fraud was committed. This is a very fine point, but when we're dealing with questions of electoral honesty and accuracy, I think we have the right to make fine points. The distinction must be made -- that particular hand count involved a sample, that sample revealed no fraud, but that does not mean that we can then sit back and say, well, OK, so the exit polls were wrong.

TM: To the question "What is the point of revisiting the last election?" you point out that there has never been a great reform that was not driven by a major scandal. Do you believe that true election reform is not going to happen until the people and the media finally wake up to this?

MCM: I think it's going to depend on the people. It's going to depend on the people simply and irresistibly insisting that the media finally deal with this subject. That's why I wrote the book.

Interviewer Terrence McNally hosts Free Forum on KPFK 90.7FM, Los Angeles (streaming at kpfk.org).

PEAK OIL AND CIVIL LIBERTIES - IN THE SIGHTS OF THE GUN

George W. Bush is on a campaign to justify his war on the American people. He and his team are now appearing everywhere to convince us that spying on us is "good for us." They are saying that intercepting domestic communications is legal. The big lie, repeated often enough, becomes the truth. And it wears the opposition down. Bush is big time into showing all of us that he "won't give up." He wants to protect us.

I believe this is the first-step in conditioning the American people to get used to martial law. We are soon to have a Supreme Court that will give the "president" maximum authority. They will make Bush the king and put the "law of the land" ribbon on top for good measure.

This must be done because of the coming economic turndown that is bound to happen when you are spending $500 billion on a war in Iraq and jobs are leaving the country the way they are. In the past 10 years over $1.3 trillion of American companies have been bought by foreign investors. The U.S. economy is hanging by a thread.

Add to that the reality of peak oil and you can see we are in the sights of the loaded gun. Peak oil means that the world is running out of fossil fuels and experts predict that prices are going to rise for oil, and oil based products, dramatically in the next few years. When that happens food production becomes overwhelmingly expensive, home heating oil becomes overwhelmingly expensive, driving cars or flying becomes overwhelmingly expensive. The economy hits the wall. The people begin to yell and scream and hit the streets. By that time Bush has set in motion the shutdown of freedom of speech in the USA.

Saudi Arabia is reported to be pumping 70% water out of its oil wells these days. When that happens you know we are in trouble.

The way out won't be biofuels - the growing of corn and turning it to fuel. We are going to need all available arable land for food production, which will suddenly be very labor intensive, as oil for tractors and fertilizers becomes cost prohibitive.

We are going to need massive installation of solar but right now Japan is the world's primary producer of solar panels and Germany is buying them all up. There are waiting lists to purchase solar panels. We need to expand solar production and windmill production in the U.S. right now!

When gas hits $7, $8, $10 per gallon we will need an alternative. Hell, we need one now. It is called public mass transit. We need local, state, and national rail systems to go under production today. Forget trying to power your car with vegetable oil. We need trains. We need to get on our bicycles.

Conservation will become a major source of energy. What we don't use won't have to be replaced. This is something that the energy wasting U.S. economy will have to learn and learn fast.

The corporate and political world will suggest we go nuclear so we can continue the mass produced, centralized power system. And when electrical power costs hit the wall, many people will want to go for that quick and "easy" solution. Already we are seeing the early stages of a campaign by the nuclear power industry to prepare the people for this "solution." But nuclear power is not a solution. The massive amount of nuclear waste will remain a huge problem. And we need to move away from "centralized" power. We need to decentralize power creation and distribution. The way to do that is with solar and wind. The problem with solar and wind is that the big corporations can't hook up the meter to it and make you pay them every month the way they now do with coal, oil and nuclear.

The next ten years are going to be very difficult times for us. That is why we all must begin to talk today about where we must go before it is too late. We must talk to each other daily about solar, wind power, and public transportation. We must turn our front and back yards, now heavy fertilized useless green lawns, into healthy organic gardens producing our food. Local food production will literally mean survival.

The sooner we begin to turn this ship the better our future will be. Discount these warnings as ravings of a mad man at your own peril.

Fight for free speech, the right to peacefully assemble, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures now before it is too late. Bush, and his right-wing Extreme Court, are coming with the clamp down.

SECURITY EXPORT TO BE JOB # 1

Ford Motor Company announced today that it will be cutting as many as 30,000 jobs and will shut down 14 factories as a result of continuing losses.

Ford, now hires about 123,000 workers in North America and lost $5.5 billion in those operations in 2005.

General Motors Corporation last year decided to close all or part of 12 plants and 30,000 jobs in the U.S. by 2008.

With China's recent introduction of a car selling for $10,000 in the U.S., Ford and GM have hit the wall. They have been building big SUV's in recent years and now that gas prices are rising dramatically their sales are dropping significantly. The workers on the China car are making $3.50 an hour compared to the good wages and benefits at the unionized auto plants in the U.S.

Television manufacturing in China pays workers there about 50 cents an hour. Thus TV manufacturing is virtually non-existent in the U.S. any more. On and on the story goes......

Secretary of War Donald Rumsfeld has a "strategy guy" by the name of Thomas Barnett. Barnett's job is to teach "military transformation" to high level Pentagon officers and CIA operatives. I've seen Barnett on C-SPAN several times during the past year saying that we are not going to have industrial jobs in the U.S. anymore. The big corporations will move overseas where production costs can be significantly lowered.

America's role in corporate globalization will be "security export" says Barnett. We will build the weapons systems and send our children into endless war in order to protect the profits of the corporate elite. Under corporate globalization, Barnett says, there are places called "the non-integrating gap" that have not yet submitted to the authority of the new world order. The job of the U.S. will be to go into the "non-integrating gap" and make sure these countries comply with the dictates of corporate globalization.

Barnett has identified the gap as the Middle East (where we fight in Iraq today), Central Asia (where we are now building six permanent bases in Afghanistan), Africa (where Barnett says the U.S. will be fighting for oil 20 years from now), and Latin America (where you have Venezuela and others not carrying the water for big business).

Barnett says that the U.S. won't do international treaties anymore because they would limit the ability of the Pentagon to do preemptive first-strike attack on any country that is not complying with corporate globalization.

What does this mean for social spending back home? As the job base dries up in the U.S. so will the tax base at the local-state-federal levels. There will increasingly be cuts in social programs. Education will be cut and privatized so that only the children of the rich can afford, without incurring massive debt, a college education. Thus the only real job prospects for many young people will be in the military - endless warriors. Thus the Pentagon's statement that there will be no need for a draft. When the military is the only job around legions of poor and working class kids will have few other options.

This is the not-so-bright picture that the corporate dominated government of the U.S. is creating for us. It will become a reality if we don't begin to protest now against this re-introduction of feudalism. We must fight to have a fair tax system in the U.S. that does not let the rich, powerful, and corporate elite get away with not paying taxes. We must fight for public education and affordable college options for our kids. We must fight to create new jobs in manufacturing sustainable technologies like solar, wind power and public mass transit systems. We must fight for health care for all. And we must escalate our educational work and action now, before it becomes too late.

U.S. IS ADDICTED TO WAR

GLOBAL WARMING, ROCKET LAUNCHES AND A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE

The snow is gone from the ground outside. The high temperature today was 50 degrees, very sunny, didn’t need a coat on at all. Many say it is the reality of global warming. I believe it.

Yesterday the New Horizons nuclear mission to Pluto lifted off safety from Cape Canaveral. Right afterwards Fox Radio News called to ask my thoughts. Last night, at 1:00 am, CNN International TV news called and interviewed me for five minutes. They put my picture on the TV screen while we talked. I said in both interviews that NASA and the Department of Energy are doing a $300 million expansion of the laboratory in Idaho so that they can process the growing demand for space nuclear missions. The Idaho DoE lab will be busy processing deadly plutonium for NASA’s nuclear-powered bases on the Moon, nuclear rockets for Mars, and reactors for the Pentagon’s weapons in space that would be fired by nuclear power. The plan is to launch more of these radioactive payloads in the coming years. I said that NASA is playing nuclear Russian roulette with our lives. Sooner or later there will be another accident.

The Atlas rocket that carried the New Horizons probe into space punched a bigger hole in the ozone layer above the Earth. The toxic exhaust cloud from the rocket also fell onto the Cape Canaveral national seashore “wildlife preserve” where it contaminated the water and fish died as they do after each launch. Birds eat the contaminated fish and die. On through the food chain the killing goes even without a launch pad accident. No one notices and even “space coast environmental groups” don’t talk about it because the space center is the local job creation machine. We learn to look away.

Many space enthusiasts this week emailed me saying that the Global Network was holding civilization back from this historic journey to find our new home because Earth is a rotting, stinking, dieing planet. Surely, the contamination from the space program has helped make it so. But alas, I am old fashioned. I love this Mother Earth of mine and want to keep it clean and alive. That makes me an anti-technology bum my critics say. One person who wrote in called me “the enemy.”

But in two days time we had well over 8,000 hits on our web site. Not all of them thought badly of us. In fact many have just learned about the nuclearization and weaponization of space. A local weekly newspaper called The Coastal Journal asked me yesterday to come in for an interview. They want to do a feature on what makes an activist like me tick. I went in this morning.

I remarked about the spring weather we are having to the reporter. I talked about how we need now to make a dramatic transition away from polluting technologies and that we must move to sustainable technologies like wind power, solar and public mass transportation. The interview took place in Bath, just blocks away from Bath Iron Works (BIW) where the Navy’s Aegis destroyer is built. I told the story about how a shipyard in Copenhagen, Denmark has been converted to build windmills. Denmark is now the world’s leading producer of wind power. In northern Maine, at a place called Mars Hill, a large windmill farm has been approved by the state for construction. The windmills will be brought in from Denmark. At nearby BIW they announced more layoffs last week.

I asked the reporter, why can’t we make a political demand that our tax dollars be used to create jobs at BIW building windmills, solar and rail cars for a world-class rail system instead of more weapons of mass destruction?

Instead of creating more pollution with toxic rocket fuel, why can’t we citizens demand that our tax dollars be used to develop alternative technologies for space flight that don’t help kill our Mother Earth with each launch? If we don’t make these demands, then who will? If we don’t fight for our children’s future now, it won’t matter if we find a new “home” in space some day. It will have been too late.

NASA LOSING PUBLIC SUPPORT

Our Global Network web site has had well over 5,000 hits today as people learn about our opposition to the launch of the controversial New Horizons mission to Pluto that will carry 24 pounds of plutonium onboard.

The media has begun to cover the danger of the plutonium launch in the last couple of days. I've done interviews on CNN and CBS radio. Newspapers have been calling and the Associated Press story was placed on most internet search sites which brought a lot of people to us. CBS evening news last night made mention of the opposition to launching nuclear power into space and today CNN TV news ran a nice interview with Karl Grossman who gave some background and context to our concerns. Karl has also had a string of op-ed pieces printed in papers across the nation. Our local Global Network leader, Maria Telesca who lives near Cape Canaveral, has been doing media interviews for the last couple of weeks.

Some media folks focus on the fact that only 40 people protested at the space center on January 7. They ask why so few were there after we had 1,000 people at the space center in 1997 protesting the Cassini launch that carried 72 pounds of plutonium onboard?

I also organized large protests at the space center in 1989 against the nuclear Galileo mission and then again in 1990 when Ulysses lifted off with plutonium onboard. After three large protests since 1989 we learned something. Large protests don't mean that you are going to stop the launching of nuclear power into space. Big protests might mean you get more media coverage for a day or two but after that it is all gone and you are back to square one.

In 1998 I left working full time at the Florida Coalition for Peace & Justice so that I could work full-time on space issues with the Global Network. Since that time I have been non-stop on the road, traveling all across the U.S. and all over the world. This effort has enabled the Global Network to dramatically expand the numbers of people who now deeply understand the nuclearization and weaponization of space. We've made two documentary videos. One in particular called Arsenal of Hypocrisy: The Space Program and the Military Industrial Complex, has been a huge seller and has played around the world in homes, churches, on movie screens, at colleges, on cable TV and on Deep Dish satellite TV.

In December, 2005 the Global Network bought three 1/4 page advertisements in the Florida Today newspaper, the paper of record for the space center community. In those ads we laid out our concerns and gave readers information that will never make it into any article that gets published during the New Horizons launch window.

We've learned something over the years. We've learned to be more strategic with our meager resources and we've learned where to put our energies and where not to. The media and NASA would like the public to believe that there is not much opposition to the New Horizons plutonium launch just because we did not organize a big rally at the space center. We know though that NASA is reading this very blog and that they have hired public relations firms to find out what our plans are to oppose the launching of nuclear power into space. NASA has routinely tried to infiltrate our organization. NASA is spending $700 million to fly New Horizons and untold millions dollars more to sell it to the public because their polling data says that the American people are less supportive now than ever of their space program. The public says, “Yes these pictures from space are nice but I’d rather have my tax dollars spent on health care, education, child care, or cleaning up our planet Earth.”

In the end we can say that people around the world are learning that the New Horizons space probe is another controversial space shot with deadly plutonium onboard. With each launch NASA loses more credibility with a skeptical public who understands that space technology can and does fail. After the Hurricane Katrina fiasco the public also has learned an important lesson - don't trust the government when they tell you that they will take care of things after a disaster. When NASA told people in Central Florida this week to just stay inside their homes and turn off the air conditioners, if there was a nuclear accident, that really told the people something very important. In their heart of hearts, most people don't believe the official spin.

In 1997, right before the launch of Cassini, we got a call from Alan Kohn. He told us he had recently retired from NASA and had been the emergency preparedness officer for the past two nuclear launches (Galileo and Ulysses). He told us NASA had no emergency evacuation and clean-up plan. He said it was all a lie. Alan told us that NASA could do nothing if there ever was a nuclear space accident and he believed that eventually there would be one. Alan told this story to the New York Times and CBS 60 Minutes just before Cassini went up. He had the courage to stand up and say what the people fear - if there is a nuclear space accident you are on your own. Home owners insurance won’t cover a space nuclear accident. The federal government has no money to clean up a radioactive Central Florida.

NASA has big plans for nuclear powered colonies on the Moon and nuclear rockets to Mars with nuclear reactors for engines. New Horizons won't be the last launch. Our opposition will not go away either.

CIA ATTACKS WITH UAV'S & DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.

The photo above is an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), a pilot less plane that can fly for hours over the battle space and is equipped with cameras and weapons. UAV's allow the military to see the ground in "real time" because they feed back pictures via satellites in split second time to people sitting at computer screens back in the U.S. at bases like Nellis AFB in Nevada.

The U.S. is using UAV's in Afghanistan and Iraq and just two days ago a similar UAV, called the Predator, was used by the CIA over Pakistan to hit a small village where an al-Qaida leader was suspected to have been. As it turns out the missile from the UAV instead killed 17 people, including six women and six children.

Tens of thousands of Pakistanis held a protest following this incident near the remote village that was hit. Of course U.S. officials defended the strike, as they always do, and promised an investigation. As usual the investigation will show that all "normal procedures" were followed and no one will be held responsible.

A Pakistani senior minister was quoted as saying that "those who were killed were all innocent permanent residents of the village."

This kind of accidental UAV bombing is becoming a regular occurrence in Afghanistan and Iraq. When you have the people far removed from the battlefield, essentially playing with lives like a video game, there are going to be many tragic accidents like this.

One thing I can't help but wonder is why does the CIA now have its own air force of UAV's that they routinely use to attack people with? The CIA, because it is a secret outfit, is even less accountable than the Pentagon is. How will Congress, that has very little information about what the top secret CIA actually does, be able to monitor their bombings or any "investigation" that they will or will not undertake?

It is becoming ever more clear that the implementation of foreign policy today in the U.S. is totally removed from the grasp of the people. The citizens are paying for all these new generations of weapons and our Congress keeps appropriating the money for anything the Pentagon wants. But the citizenry falls further and further behind in actually having any influence with what is done in our name. How can we let that stand?

Our local peace group held a frigid vigil this morning as the local Catholic and Episcopal churches let out. In the wind and snow 12 of us stood and held our signs trying to tug on the heart-strings of those leaving their weekly worship of the prince of peace. Some of them just passed us by as if we were the devil himself. Following the vigil we gathered inside the nearby Unitarian Church basement to watch a 15-minute film about the U.S. total destruction of Falleujah, Iraq. A city the size of Cincinnati, Ohio destroyed and hundreds of thousands driven from their homes. Untold thousands killed, the refugees now still living in tent cities with the children suffering from severe illnesses due to lack of clean water, medical care or decent food. Think of the suffering this population will go through after their exposure to Depleted Uranium dust that they have inhaled following the destruction of their city.

In November the media in Italy released the story that the U.S. had used white phosphorous on the civilian populace there. A U.S. veteran of the Iraq war told Italian correspondent Sigfrido Ranucci this: "I received the order to use caution because we had used white phosphorus on Falleujah. In military slag it is called 'Willy Pete'. Phosphorus burns the human body on contact--it even melts it right down to the bone."

As we approach the national holiday honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. what comes to mind is his famous speech "Beyond Vietnam" in April, 1967. In it Dr. King said, "They must see Americans as strange liberators.....Now they languish under our bombs and consider us, not their fellow Vietnamese, the real enemy. They move sadly and apathetically as we herd them off the land of their fathers into concentration camps where minimal social needs are rarely met. They know they must move on or be destroyed by our bombs.....Now there is little left to build on, save bitterness. Soon the only solid physical foundations remaining will be found at our military bases and in the concrete of the concentration camps we call "fortified hamlets." The peasants may well wonder if we plan to build our new Vietnam on such grounds as these. Could we blame them for such thoughts? We must speak for them and raise the questions they cannot raise. These, too, are our brothers."

King continued, "Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now.....As we counsel young men concerning military service, we must clarify for them our nation's role in Vietnam and challenge them with the alternative of conscientious objection.....We are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.....The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit.....I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin, we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered."

As we think of Dr. King let us remember Iraq and those we've just killed in Pakistan. What is the state of the soul of America today? What are we each to do about it?

ALITO WANTS A KING

I’ve been watching the C-SPAN hearings on TV this week about the confirmation of Supreme Court nominee Judge Samuel Alito.

My first reaction to the guy is that he is a liar. When asked to explain his membership in the Concerned Alumni of Princeton University, which challenged the admission of women and minorities to the institution, Alito told the Senate Judiciary Committee, “Well, Senator, I have wracked my memory about this issue, and I really have no specific recollection of that organization.”

The truth was when he applied to work in the Reagan Administration in 1985 Alito listed the organization on his resume. Why did he do that? Alito obviously thought that showing he was a reactionary would HELP him to get a job with the ultra-conservative Reagan team.

It’s amazing to watch Alito, over the course of several days, have tremendous ability to recall facts, names, legal theory, caseload history, and the like but then when it came to his membership in a bigoted organization – he could not remember a thing! Remarkable.

But my biggest concern about Alito goes beyond that. Alito should not be allowed to be on the Supreme Court because he wants to make Bush a king. It is clear, by studying his 15 year record as a federal court judge, Alito believes in giving the president unlimited police-state powers. His record as a judge shows time and again how he has sided with AUTHORITY to limit the rights of citizens. Alito wants to give corporations greater ability to limit the rights of workers and allow corporations to pollute the environment, screw workers on the job, and limit the ability of Congress to control the excesses of big business. As a federal judge Alito voted against individual rights 84% of the time. Alito is a corporate hack.

Law professor Francis Boyle (Chicago) says about Alito, "Consistent with standard Federalist Society propaganda, Judge Alito preaches the theory of 'unitary powers' for the American Presidency: i.e., that the President is above and beyond any accountability under the U.S. Constitution, to Congress and the Courts, or to the Rule of Law, whether domestic or international. This perverse ideology has been directly responsible for the Bush Jr. administration's torture scandal, kangaroo
courts, the Gulag in Guantanamo and elsewhere ,'extraordinary renditions,'
criminal NSA spying on American citizens, the bogus categorization of 'enemy
combatants,' massive religious and racial profiling against Muslims/Arabs/Asians of Color,wholesale violations of the Geneva Conventions and the Convention against Torture, a criminal war of aggression against Iraq, assassinations, gutting the Bill of Rights, etc."

Alito, as everyone knows, also in 1985 wrote a memo saying there were no constitutional grounds for a woman’s right to an abortion. He has taken the position that a woman must have the “permission” of her husband to seek an abortion. He has voted to allow the strip searching of a 10 year old girl. What is the difference between Alito’s position and the Taliban in Afghanistan?

When Clarence Thomas came before the Senate Judiciary Committee for his Supreme Court confirmation hearings he told them that he would honor legal precedents. But since being on the court Thomas has voted consistently to overturn established law. Alito will likely do the same when it comes to civil rights, voting rights, women’s rights, rights to privacy, and much more.

Unfortunately, with all that said, it appears at this time that enough Democrats are going to support Alito to confirm him without a real fight. There are no signs that the Dems will filibuster his nomination as they very well should.

I will be calling my two “moderate” Republican senators to urge them to vote no. They say they are pro-choice. But I would venture to guess they will vote for Alito. They will put a man on the Supreme Court who wants to make Bush a king and the citizens the serfs to the multi-national corporate agenda.

Hang on folks, it’s going to be a rough ride.

DOUBLE OFFICE OCCUPATION IN PORTLAND

I spent six hours sitting in the office of Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) today in Portland. During that time, as we again read the names of American GI’s and innocent civilians in Iraq who have been killed, we had about 40 people join us. Just two blocks away, in the office of Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) another 25-30 people were doing the same thing in her office. The two protests were organized by Karen Wainberg, the president of Peace Action Maine.

This was the eighth such action held in Maine. As in the past, we called for a town hall meeting so the citizens can have a public opportunity to speak to our two “moderate” senators about this war. They both keep voting for more money for the war and they keep refusing to hold a public meeting. They say they are willing to meet with us individually in the private confines of their office. Sen. Collins has told several of our folks that she does not like “crowds.”

We got a bit of TV coverage and Maine Public Radio gave us a tiny bit on their 5:30 pm news. As usual, the largest newspaper in the state, the Portland Press Herald ignored the action. They rarely, if ever, are willing to report on local peace activity. They have taken the editorial position that they “know” there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The papers says that the U.S. had to invade Iraq because Saddam was a “destabilizing” force in the region. And the paper, amazingly enough, has editorialized that the U.S. had to grab their oil to continue our way of life here at home. Now that is what you call “liberal” bullshit for sure.

So on we go. We know that we have to continue to hold these events, which are now taking 6 ½ hours to finish. When we first began doing the readings 13 months ago it took four hours. But each day the roster of dead grows.

One thing that is happening though is that this group of office occupiers is growing. More and more new people are joining us each time. Today we saw many new faces amongst the people sitting on the office floor reading the names and marking the X’s on the Iraq War Cloth that took up much of the office floor. It won’t be long that we will have to stay all night to finish reading the names.

The politicians think that if they ignore us long enough we will give up and go home. But they underestimate our peace movement here in Maine. We are in it until the end. The sooner our senators get their act together the less headaches they will have over this war.

If you are from Maine, give us a hand and call this toll-free number and ask Snowe and Collins to hold a town hall meeting. If you are from another state, call your own Congressional delegation. 1-888-355-3588

Bring the troops home now! Stop funding the war now! Fund human needs back here at home.

PROTEST AT CAPE CANAVERAL

My friend Maria Telesca from Rockledge, Florida led the protest on behalf of the Global Network at the gates of Cape Canaveral Air Force Station last Saturday. Maria, the mother of two children, has been by our side at space center protests for almost 20 years. She lives in the launch danger zone and is clear what would happen if there was an accident and plutonium release from a NASA mission like New Horizons. The launch will carry 24 pounds of radioactive plutonium and is set for lift-off on January 17.

Maria reported extensive media coverage of the protest and told me that the striking Boeing workers, who normally would prepare the Atlas launch rocket, are still on their picket line near Cape Canaveral's gates. Maria, and the other protestors, walked over after their rally to talk with the striking union workers. She told me the Boeing workers are still warning that the management strike breakers, now doing the rocket preparations, are not qualified to carry out the task. Rumors persist about fuel-tank leaks and further delays in the launch date.

The pro-space web site space.com ran part of our news release on their web site announcing our protest and since then I've had about 25 (mostly nasty) e-mails from folks. Here is a sample from one of them:

"First I just want to say, everyone is entitled to their own opinion. So
here's mine... Ok Your organization is to protect the environment, animals,
people, and the planet. Well one day the earth might not be here, we have
all heard about comets, and asteroids, black holes, supernovae, and such.
Putting earth in harms way, it is in man kinds future that that we leave this
planet behind, being its destroyed, or plain uninhabitable, seeing as how
we’ve damn near used every mineral this planet has to offer, but it is with
nuclear power, and ion drive that we can achieve space travel beyond our
moon, beyond our solar system, to find a new home. NASA is here to help...
let them do their work, help man kind survive, and understand this complex
universe we live in..."

This was one of the milder ones.

I do understand the desire to explore space. But if in doing so we endanger life on this planet after a space nuclear accident then what have we accomplished? For those who say it won't ever happen - that NASA has taken all the safety precautions necessary - well it has happened! Here is a list of past space nuclear accidents.

NOVEMBER 1996: Russian Mars ’96 space vehicle disintegrates over Chile and Bolivia, likely spreading its payload of nearly half a pound of plutonium. Searchers found no remains of the spacecraft which was believed to have burned up. Eyewitnesses saw the flaming reentry over the mountains in the region.

FEBRUARY 1983: Soviet Cosmos 1402 crashes into South Atlantic ocean carrying 68 pounds of Uranium-235.

JANUARY 1978: Cosmos 954 blows up over Canada with 68 pounds of Uranium-235 and other nuclear poisons, much of which is thought to have vaporized and spread worldwide.

APRIL 1973: Soviet Rorsat lands in the Pacific Ocean north of Japan. Radiation released from the reactor was detected.

APRIL 1970: Apollo 13 lands near New Zealand with the 8.3 pounds of Plutonium-238 believed to be still in the spacecraft at the bottom of the ocean floor.

1969: Two Cosmos lunar missions fail. Radiation detected as crafts burn up in the atmosphere.

MAY 1968: U.S. Nimbus B-1 lands in the Santa Barbara channel off California with 4.2 pounds of Uranium-238 but was recovered by NASA.

APRIL 1964: U.S. Transit 5BN-3 hits the Indian Ocean with its 2.1 pounds of Plutonium-238 vaporizing in the atmosphere and spreading worldwide. Dr. John Gofman, Professor Emeritus of Molecular and Cell Biology in the University of California at Berkeley studied the 1964 accident and believes it is a major contributor to the increase in cancers around the world today. Gofman co-discovered protactinium-232, uranium-232, protactinium-233, and uranium-233.

So this is what motivates our protest against the launching of plutonium on rockets that blow up from time to time. It does not take a rocket scientist to understand that space technology can and does fail. Mix deadly plutonium into the equation and you are asking for trouble.

Help us by calling NASA and tell them to cancel the New Horizons mission. Contact:

Michael Griffin
NASA Administrator
300 E. Street SW
Washington DC 20546
(202) 358-0000
mgriffin@mail.hq.nasa.gov

SIR! NO SIR!

Mary Beth and I went to Waterville, Maine today to see the new film Sir! No Sir! which was being shown at the annual film festival there. It is a documentary telling the largely unknown story about the GI resistance movement against the Vietnam war from the mid-to-late 60's through the early 70's. Using interviews, archival footage, and news clips the film does a great job of showing just how big and powerful the movement of GI opposition to the war was.

One story was about the 1,000 person detention camp in Vietnam where largely black GI resisters were imprisoned due to their opposition to the war. The troops, severely mistreated in the jail, went on a rampage and burned the place down.

Sailors assigned to the Kitty Hawk aircraft carrier in San Diego, soon to be shipped out to Vietnam, started a campaign to have their fellow sailors and citizens in the community at large publicly vote (outside shopping malls, movie theaters, bars, etc) on whether the Kitty Hawk should go back to the war or not. The vote was overwhelming NO and forced the Naval commander and politicians to hold news conferences saying the Kitty Hawk would sail back to the war. The debate the GI’s created was inspiring.

Untold stories like this run throughout the film and reveal just how powerful the GI resistance movement was. At my own base in California, Travis AFB, which was the key airlift base for the Vietnam war it was there that I was exposed to the GI resistance movement which helped turn me from a Young Republican for Nixon in 1968 to an anti-war activist by mid-1971. Regular protests outside the gates of Travis created a powerful dynamic inside the base that forced the 15,000 permanently stationed troops on our base to constantly debate the merits of the war. This is why today I am such a believer in protests at military bases and weapons production installations.

Another event the film features are the “Fuck the Army” tours that went to bases around the country and overseas featuring popular entertainers like Jane Fonda, Donald Sutherland, and Country Joe and the Fish. Fonda is interviewed in Sir! NO Sir! and has pledged to help promote it as a tool to build opposition to the war in Iraq.

In a recent interview about the film, filmmaker David Zeiger said, “As you see in the film, there were CBS Nightly News stories about the GI Movement. There is a segment in the film of Walter Cronkite talking about the GI underground press. In the state of Texas, where there was a very large anti-war movement in Austin and Houston, and the center of the Texas movement for a time was at Fort Hood. The armed forces demonstrations were major events for the whole state. I think people knew generally that there was opposition in the military, but they didn’t know the details or how widespread it was. But it was certainly more prominent than people remember it. It has been thoroughly wiped out of any histories of the war.”

Do yourself a favor. Make arrangements to show this new documentary film in your community. Try to help spread the word around any military installations so that GI’s, now on their way to Iraq, get to see it as well.

COAL MINERS NEED JUSTICE

I was drawn to the TV much of yesterday like a moth is drawn to a flame. I watched the broken hearted families of West Virginia coal miners react to the news that 12 of their loved ones had died deep in the Sago mine in Tallmansville, West Virginia. I was touched by the intense emotion recorded by the cameras as people learned of the deaths, three hours after they had been told that their prayers had been answered and a "miracle" had saved the trapped miners.

One woman screamed "they don't care about us," referring to the International Coal Group, Inc. who owns the mine. Another woman wailed that they had been abandoned by God.

I heard one man, whose father was killed in the mine, say that his dad did not like the working conditions but had to do the job so he could "put food on the table." Then just moments later, I saw one journalist say that the miners loved the work so much that "they'd work for half the pay" if they had to in order to stay in the mines. (Do they think we are that stupid - really!)

The Sago mine is a non-union operation that had 200 fines in 2005 for violations of the Mine Health and Safety Act. The Bush administration has cut 170 jobs from the mine safety program in recent years making enforcement of the act more difficult to administer. The man now in charge of the program is a former coal company manager who Bush appointed to monitor the very industry he worked for. The highest fine received in 2005 by the Sago mine was for $800, indicating that the mine safety program was quite lenient on their industry pals.

This was for me something personal. When I was a kid, living in England, we heated with coal. It was delivered to our home and we saw the blackened faced chimney sweeps go door to door in the neighborhood looking for work. It was my job to bring in the coal each day from the outdoor bin. I had tasted coal dust. For me the coal miners strike had some point of context. I've paid attention to the issue over the years.

In 1989 I went to Carbo, Virginia during the year-long Pittston coal strike by the United Mineworkers Union. Nestled in the mountain hollows (pronounced "hollars" by the locals), I sat on the picket line for two full days with the striking workers. At first they were a bit suspicious of me, but after I explained that I worked in the peace movement and had been an organizer for the United Farmworkers Union, they made me feel at home. The men displayed great dignity and fierce determination to protect what little gains they had made after many years of struggle. In that particular instance, they were striking because the Pittston coal company was planning to discontinue medical benefits for pensioners, widows and the disabled. Remembering that many miners suffer from black lung disease, the cut-off of medical benefits at the very time they most needed them would be devastating. I will never forget the sadness I felt when I left the picket line.

So America's eyes and many hearts turned to the coal miners in West Virginia the last couple of days. There are now calls for an investigation from the politicians in Washington. But until we deal with the fact that the coal corporations have unlimited power, and the workers have virtually none, then nothing much changes. Even with a mine safety program, as long as the industry runs the show the law is nothing but a cruel hoax.

Working people in America are being screwed left and right. The Sago coal tragedy is one more warning sign that we are returning to a feudal society. The haves are getting richer and the have-nots are getting poorer -- and dieing. We need more than prayers for the dead. We need to mourn for them, and in their memory, we need to organize like hell.

TIME FOR IMPEACHMENT HEARINGS

George W. Bush now admits that he was spying on the American people. It has also become public that he was doing so, in some circumstances, without obtaining court authorization. This is a violation of the law. I'd say, and I am no constitutional scholar, that such a legal violation is bigger than lying about oral sex in the White House. This is a real challenge for the Republican Party. Can they honor the Constitution by seriously investigating this case? Why do I doubt it?

The Republicans hold all the cards today. They control Congress and are now ensuring that they will control the Supreme Court for years to come. The court will surely make decisions to restrict civil liberties even more as well as give big business greater power to exploit workers and to destroy the environment. Democracy will be redefined even further to basically mean "freedom for big business."

I saw Bush last Sunday doing his impromptu news conference from an Army medical center in Texas. He was very weak, appeared frightened, and had very little conviction in his voice. I would be willing to bet my life that this whole spying scandal is much bigger than has yet been revealed.

Once again though the problem is that the Democrats are not making much noise about this spy case. Sure they are calling for a Senate investigation, but there is no indignation there. It is a pretty bad situation when we have to rely on the Dems to defend our right to be left alone from Bush's "unreasonable searches and seizures."

The Washington DC newspaper, Capital Hill Blue, ran a story a week or two ago saying they had several witnesses that reported hearing Bush say the Constitution "was just a piece of paper." Now this is coming from the man who wants to bring freedom and democracy to Iraq. Shouldn't we be just a little bit worried about our own fragile rights here in the good ole USA?

This whole story is just one more classic example of why it so important that we be out in the streets these days. Use it or lose it!