Besiege the Embassies, weapons factories & U.S. bases!!

 

A popular call is gaining traction, particularly to people in Egypt, the Gulf, Algeria, Morocco, Iraq, Jordan, the Emirates, Bahrain, Turkey and to all the free people of the world everywhere.

The northern Gaza Strip is undergoing a genocide in every sense of the word, which has been allowed due to lack of concerted action.

The least that can be done is to besiege the embassies of Israel and the complicit states. This is a simple ask. Head to the zionist embassy or consulate, the American embassies, German, French, and British embassies. Protest them - repeatedly.

Encourage action in all places including factories that make weapons to give to genocidal Israel. Protest at US bases around the world - god knows there are plenty of them.

If not now, when?

~ Reprinted in part from GlobalSouth

Weekly (Friday @ 2:30 pm) protest at General Dynamics facility in Saco, Maine where they make guidance systems for bombs given to Israel

Sunday song

 

Selling Palestine

 

AJ+

“Everything you love about America, right here in Israel.” 

While Israel decimates Palestinians in Gaza, real estate firms are touring the U.S. looking for buyers to purchase property in Israel and in illegal West Bank settlements. 

Expo organizers say these events are open to the public, but sources we spoke with said they were given a “rabbi test” and denied entrance. 

AJ+ traveled to the town of Teaneck, New Jersey, where a modern Orthodox Jewish community is confronting pro-Palestinian protesters who want an end to Israel’s war on Gaza and to these Israeli real estate conventions. 

Meanwhile, residents told us that town council members are using their power and relationships with high-profile politicians to smear pro-Palestinian voices and give political cover to these real estate events – which could violate local and federal discrimination laws. 

These dueling dynamics have turned small communities like Teaneck, NJ, into a powder keg of hostility. 

AJ+ reporter Angie Nassar traveled to Teaneck to find out how folks are turning up for Palestinians and rejecting allegations of antisemitism for criticizing Israel.

Radical history lesson: Acpuncture in the South Bronx

 

Bronx Anti-War Coalition

The core of the movement captured here is alternative treatment and a burgeoning form of what we now call harm reduction.

Fifty years ago, Dr. Shakur & the chapters of Black Panther Party & Young Lords desperately tried to help the opiate-ravaged South Bronx through care and not incarceration. 

Hiking Quoddy State Park @ Lubec, Maine

 

The fresh smell of the pine trees was like Christmas.

A lovely hike and the view was of course stunning.

The clang of the buoy was mystical.

Bruce

Bonus shot: The prettiest fishing boat in Lubec is this yellow charmer. We head home in the morning.

Meet actionists who shut down Elbit Systems

 

To mark a year of genocide in Gaza, we publish this powerful interview with two Israeli dissidents who took part in a Palestine Action siege of the Elbit HQ. 

Elbit Systems HQ in the UK is in the city of Bristol.

Elbit is owned by Israel.

Elbit has weapons production facilities in dozens of nations around the world. By offering 'jobs' in these facilities Israel is essentially purchasing international support for its genocidal activities in Palestine, Lebanon and Syria.

Visit to Lubec & Campobello Island

Gull Rock in Hancock, Maine

Tidal Falls in Hancock

Wharf at Compobello Island

Campobello Island

Light house on Campobello

FDR's summer cottage on Campobello

Fishing boats in Lubec near our hotel room

MB and I have taken a week off and gone north in Maine. We first stopped for two nights at the home of dear friends Russell & Akemi Wray in Hancock. Akemi has a pottery studio called Gull Rock - a spectacular place right on the water. Russell creates amazing art work and sculpture.  

Russell took me for a long electric bike ride that led to the Tidal Falls near his home (pictured above). He and Akemi are great activists who MB and I have been working with since we moved to Maine in 2003. Russell came on many of the peace walks I organized up and down the state over the years.

We then drove to Lubec which has the eastern most point of the US at Quoddey Head State Park just outside of town.

Today we drove from Lubec over the FDR bridge to Campobello Island and the Roosevelt Campobello Int'l Park which is jointly run by the US and Canada. This beautiful location was the summer home of former US president Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR). We took the tour of FDR's summer cottage on the island. Every year during his youth and early adulthood FDR spent summers on Campobello. 

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

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

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

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

Tomorrow we'll go for a hike at Quoddy Head State Park. We've been there once before and love this place. It's quiet here now in Lubec as autumn has come and the masses of summer tourists have returned home. It's the time of year I most enjoy visiting such places. We have to search hard for restaurants that are still open but that is part of the charm of this wonderful community.

Bruce 

Operation Paperclip: Eisenhower, the CIA & NASA

 

Was Dwight D. Eisenhower a peace-loving president or a master manipulator? 

In this eye-opening episode, we uncover the shocking truth behind Eisenhower's presidency, from his secret deals with Nazi scientists to the rise of the CIA and the military-industrial complex. 

Prepare to question everything you thought you knew about American history.

Be sure to read this amazing book:  The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Power by David Talbot 👉 Click here 

Cubans turn out for Palestine

 

President Miguel Diaz-Canel led thousands of Cubans in a march through Havana to express solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza. 

"Israel has adopted a totally irrational, imperialist and genocidal behaviour that forces us to continue to express our rejection and condemnation of what is happening in the Palestinian territories," said a protester. 

The demonstrators, including around 250 Palestinian medical students living in Cuba, carried a large banner that read "Long live free Palestine". President Diaz-Canel was also among those wearing the Palestinian keffiyeh.

Open letter from Brian Eno & Yanis Varoufakis to the judges of ICC

ICC is located in The Hague, Netherlands

 pressenza

On October 7, Brian Eno and Yanis Varoufakis appealed to the International Criminal Court to do its duty. To uphold international law by prosecuting self-evident war crimes in Israel-Palestine, lest genocide becomes normalised across the world.

Dear judges of the International Criminal Court,

When we heard in January that the Court on which you sit had decided to hear the case concerning the situation in Israel-Palestine, we were encouraged. Humanity needs an International Criminal Court that upholds the rule of law and is prepared to investigate the most serious allegations of violations of international law.  

Today, on 7 October 2024, exactly one year after the start of the latest and most brutal phase of the 76-year-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict, we feel the need to address you directly. Not only because of the increasing cruelty of what is happening west of the Jordan River, but also because of the dangerous precedent that would be set if a state could operate so far outside the international consensus of acceptable behaviour in times of conflict. Unless such violations are sanctioned by a court such as yours, states will carry out war crimes with greater impunity in the future. 

For it is now beyond dispute: Israel’s Government has set out to eliminate systematically every aspect of Palestinian life in Gaza. We have already seen: 

• The most intensive bombing of a densely populated urban area in living memory
• The most deliberate starvation of a population since the Second World War
• The systematic destruction of health facilities
• An unprecedented number of journalists and UN personnel killed

The Israeli government has attacked schools, universities, libraries, archives, cultural centres, heritage sites, mosques and churches. Professors and teachers have been killed, along with their students and often their entire families. Meanwhile, under the cover of the Gaza conflict, Israeli settlers, protected by IDF soldiers, are evicting Palestinians from their ancestral homeland in direct violation of every principle of international law. 

These are not merely violations by a government. The international community has no reason to expect that a change of government will bring the Israeli state back into the fold of international law. 

On 19 July 2024 the International Court of Justice ruled as unlawful Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. Five days later, the Israeli Knesset voted 65-9 to ignore the ICJ ruling and provocatively described the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem as part of “the Land of Israel”. To prove further its contempt for international law and the institutions humanity created after the Second World War to support it, last Wednesday Israel’s government banned UN Secretary General Guterres from entering the country. 

So here is the question: When can we expect indictments from your Court? 

Today is the anniversary of the beginning of the bleakest chapter of a tragedy that our generation will be answerable for, to future generations. Today humanity needs more than ever a court like yours, where impartial legal minds from around the world can reach consensus on standards of legal conduct in war and its aftermath. Your role is vital, and we implore you to act immediately. 

Thank you,

Brian Eno and Yanis Varoufakis

~ Brian Eno is a British producer, composer, keyboardist, and singer who helped define and reinvent the sound of some of the most popular bands of the 1980s and ’90s and who created the genre of ambient music.
~ Yanis Varoufakis grew up during the Greek dictatorship of 1967-1974. He later became an economics professor and was briefly Greek finance minister in 2015.

Protest 'Maine Space Conference' @ Portland Oct 24

 

 

Join us to protest militarization of space
Thursday, Oct 24
11:00 am to 1:00 pm

Holiday Inn By the Bay
88 Spring St Portland, Maine

 

Thursday, October 24 will mark the second year we've protested outside of the 'Maine Space Industry Conference' where they are pushing to turn our state into a space weapons production and launch site.

 

Current projects in Maine by the aerospace industry include testing hypersonic missiles at the former Loring AFB near Limestone and Caribou.

 

In addition bluShift Aerospace (based in Brunswick at the former naval air station) is being funded by NASA and the US Space Force to build mini-satellites and launch them near Acadia National Park. The plan is to fill up Lower Earth Orbit (LEO) with as many US-NATO satellites ASAP that would be used for military purposes (dual use). 

 

The Space Force is supporting many launch companies around the globe to fill LEO up before China and Russia can put more satellites into space. 

 

Since all warfare on Earth is now coordinated by space tech there is military advantage to take control of LEO and deny its use to others.

 

Most Mainers know little about our state's growing role to turn space into the next war zone. Big $$$$ is being dangled before the eyes of Maine political leaders. 

 

We've heard it all before. Lots of jobs, no enviro impacts, and the adventure of exploring space.

 

Help us tell the aerospace industry they are not wanted in Maine.

'This panel below will explore the evolving landscape of space security, focusing on defining acts of aggression and violations of international law in outer space. Discussions will cover national defense policies, including the role of cyberspace, and address contested strategies in space and the Arctic'.

~ Photos are from last year's protest at the Maine Space Conference

What gives the U.S. the right to lecture other nations on morality?

 

Journalist Liam Cosgrove confronts State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller on US foreign policy during the daily press.

Pray and protest

 

Mother tried to protect her child. 

This photo tells the entire story of zionist arrogance, brutality and evil nature. 

Israel must be kicked out of the UN now, along with the US!

How can the world allow the US-Israel to get away with these genocidal crimes?

Don't stop doing what ever you can to confront this madness!

We are all responsible for these war crimes continuing!

Our silence is complicity with this evil!

Bruce

Sunday song

 

Harris: 'I learned the power of my pen'

 

Kamala Harris brags about the power of the "swipe of my pen" when discussing her time as a prosecutor in California.

This is a resurfaced clip from May of 2019 in which Harris fantasizes about her powers over the public. 

A dangerous omen for us.

Eponeyous substructure in Saco (and worldwide)

A scene from a recent street protest in front of General Dynamics weapons plant in Saco, Maine

 

I had a dream last night. Maybe it was a vision. I was with a group of people who were going to see a movie entitled 'Eponeyous Substructure'. I woke up at 4:30 am with this in my head and went to my desk to write it down so I wouldn't forget.

Then I went back to bed and began composing this blog post in my mind.  By 5:00 am I had the draft done so got out of bed again and turned my computer on and began to write.

In my dream before or after the movie a bunch of us were celebrating a birthday. A cake was brought forth which appeared to be made of a jello-like substance. It was eponeyous. I define that word as 'weak, fragile, flimsy'. When someone tried to cut the cake it didn't hold together.

(Once out of bed and on the computer I looked up the word online. I can't ever recall hearing the word before. I found a similar word eponymous which means 'An eponymous character in a play, book, etc. has the same name as the title'. This definition does not relate to my dream word - eponeyous.)

So back to my story.

Yesterday I drove south one hour to Saco, Maine for the weekly Friday Palestine (and now Lebanon) solidarity protest in front of General Dynamics (GD) weapons facility. I've been here about 5-6 times. They make the guidance systems for big bombs that the US is providing to Israel and are being used to level multi-story apartment blocks in Gaza and Beirut. (See this article)

We arrived at GD at 2:30 pm, just in time for the 3:00 pm shift change. Workers drove out in their vehicles and made a left or right turn onto the busy street in front of GD. If you look at the photo above I would be standing at the tail end of the line with my sign. 

Just across the street from GD is an elementary school and while we were there lots of young kids were on the playground just yards away from us. Our folks were chanting using two bull horns so the kids were quite interested in the show. They were eventually chased away from the fence by their overseers.

There were basically two kinds of vehicles that came out of GD. Many of the workers were driving the big pick-up trucks that I would say are similar to US Navy destroyers. These are the power boys who turned right in a screeching 'pedal to the metal' rush. Many of them as they passed our protest line shot us the middle finger.

But the real story is the other kinds of vehicles that took the right turn out of GD and passed by where I was standing. They were men and women driving 'sensible' cars. Family cars. They did not screech when they turned onto the street. And the key point is that 7-8 of them flashed peace signs or waved in a way that they wanted us to notice.

This was a sign that things inside GD have become eponeyous.

(I consider myself sort of an expert on reading people inside vehicles while I am on the street holding signs. I have lots of experience doing the sociological research of public opinions during this process. I've been doing it regularly since 1978. I currently hold signs at least three times a week on the street. Over the years I organized 10 peace walks (5 in Florida and 5 in Maine) that were usually 2-3 weeks in length. We protest regularly at BIW where Navy Aegis destroyers at built in Bath, Maine. BIW is owned by GD as well. We see lots of big trucks there.)

So my point is that the protests in Saco have unearthed the eponeyous nature of the work force. Due to the protest there is some level of discussion (and debate) going on inside GD. And some number of workers want to let us know how they feel by screeching their tires or flashing us peace signs. This is a good thing.

My own history

The reason I love and believe in standing outside weapons production facilities and military bases is because this is how I changed from a Young Republican to an independent thinker and anti-imperialist peacenik. 

In 1971 (during the US war on Vietnam) I joined the Air Force and after my training was sent to Travis AFB in California. This was an airlift base for the war. GI's came to Travis and got on planes to fly to Vietnam. When the planes returned they brought the walking wounded and body bags of dead troops. Most weekends there were small protests outside the base main gate. 

Protest outside Travis AFB in early 1970's

These protests created much debate inside the base about the war. In the barracks at night, in the chow hall and on the job we talked about the war - our conversation enlivened by those standing outside the gate with their signs. Little did they know the impact they were having.

The substructure of the war machine at Travis became eponeyous - weak, fragile and flimsy.

The OSI (Office of Secret Investigation) on the base would instruct all supervisors at Travis to warn their especially young underlings (like me) to stay away from the main gate on a coming weekend when they learned a protest was planned. They didn't want our minds tarnished. The OSI knew the debate going on inside the base got enlivened when the protests were held outside the gates.

You can't quantify or qualify the impacts of these kind of events in an empirical sense. You just have to believe they work which then compels one to keep doing them. The goal is to make the military machine eponeyous. 

Freedom lost in Deutschland

Let me finish with a story from Germany. I was scrolling through Twitter the other day and saw a short video from some unknown German city. The scene was an outdoor cafe where several young men were drinking coffee. One was wearing a T-shirt with a Palestinian flag on it. Suddenly several police (die polizei) approached the table and grabbed the young man and hauled him to a nearby paddy wagon and threw him inside. 

Another recent video that went viral was of a young boy (maybe 8 years old) being chased by a gang of polizei because he was carrying a Palestinian flag. They eventually caught him and arrested him.

These two examples from Germany are further indications of a growing international eponeyous substructure. It's a western collapse of culture - a collapse of freedom of speech - a collapse of democracy. The fear of truth by the ruling war mongers.

So this was my dream and my daily reality. 

Feel free to join the movement and help expose the eponeyous substructure.

Bruce 

U.S. has leverage over Israel but refuses to use it

 

During an interview with Al Jazeera, senior political analyst Marwan Bishara discussed the United States' ongoing support for Israel at the UN Security Council, highlighting that the US has repeatedly blocked resolutions aimed at providing humanitarian aid and ceasefires during the conflict in Gaza. 

He noted that the death toll among Palestinians nears 42,000. 

Bishara emphasized that the US's actions suggest complicity in a genocide in Gaza, attributing this to America's imperial interests rather than a double standard. 

He argued that US interests drive its foreign policy, often disregarding the value of Palestinian lives compared to those of other nationalities.

A tiny sign of hope - we need alot more of it

 

Protests are held in major Israeli cities, including Tel Aviv, every Saturday where people take to the street calling for a ceasefire in Gaza following nearly a year of conflict between Hamas and Israel.

Come on Israel - all over the world people hate our two zionist nations, the US & Israel - more than ever. Things just can't continue this way. It's a dead-end street.

The world needs to hear all our voices for peace, freedom, dignity and sovereignty much louder and with much more determination.

Other wise we are all going up in flames.

You want your loved ones released from being held hostage. But the thousands of Palestinians held in brutal bondage - including children - must be released too. The torture of Palestine must immediately end. Gaza and the West Bank must be free from the daily attacks. They need food, water, health care and a safe place to rest their tired souls. They need to rebuild their torn lives.

The attacks on Lebanon must stop too. And on Syria as well. No war with Iran either. The zionist dream of 'Greater Israel' must perish.

I imagine there are many good people in Israel - but all we ever see and hear are the genocidal war crimes from your so-called leaders and your killer soldiers.

If Israel has any true spirit and morality left the world needs to see and hear it.

Now is the time.

Bruce 

Disinformation, NATO and the Ukraine War

 

Tamara Lorincz is a PhD candidate in Global Governance at the Balsillie School for International Affairs (Wilfrid Laurier University). Tamara graduated with an MA in International Politics & Security Studies from the University of Bradford in the United Kingdom in 2015. She was awarded the Rotary International World Peace Fellowship and was a senior researcher for the International Peace Bureau in Switzerland. 

Her research interests are the military’s impacts on the environment and climate change, the intersection of security and peace, gender and international relations, Canadian defence and foreign policy, feminist foreign policy, disarmament, resistance to NATO, and military sexual violence. 

Recently, Tamara had a run in with Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) when returning from a peace conference in Russia. 

Dimitri Lascaris sat down with her to discuss this on going climate of Russian paranoia and how U.S and NATO backed organizations are operating from with in Canada to push a certain kind of narrative about the on going conflict in Ukraine.

Tamara is also a board member of the Global Network. She will be one of the presenters on Oct 13 during the Global Network's Space Issues Webinar.

Ukraine troops kill thousands of Russian ethnics

 

SouthFront

During the escalation since February 17, 2022, 39,975 Ukrainian attacks on civilians were recorded. 

The Ukrainian military has launched 580 strikes with the US-made HIMARS MLRS, ATACMS missiles, and a GLSDB bomb supplied by NATO warmongers.

As a result, 5,090 civilians were killed in the Republic, including 152 children. 7,151 more civilians were wounded. In total, since 2014, 9,464 civilians were killed and 14,970 others were wounded in the Donesk People's Republic.

These numbers don't count those who have been killed or wounded in the Lugansk People's Republic.

Both the DPR and LPR are in the Russian-ethnic Donbas region along the Russia border.