New World Order Geography Quiz!

Source: https://li-mac.org/projects/social-fragments/yankee-go-home

With even the policy wonks of the U.S. empire admitting that their collective reputation and influence on "the rest of the world" are in tatters, it's time for a new world order geography quiz. Multipolarity, here we come!

Can you name the outlined countries on these maps? Answers are at the end with embedded links to recent news of their moves toward independence from U.S. control (or, in one case, flouting public opinion to make a "defense" agreement with the empire).

Map A - recently withdrew from US-led ‘Combined Maritime Forces’ in the Persian Gulf

Map B - U.S. officials claim it is about to be brought under the hegemon's "nuclear umbrella"

Map C - NATO is on the ground stoking sectarian violence here and appears to be preparing to bomb this nation -- again

Map D - university students nationwide staged protests demanding their prime minister not sign a "Defense Cooperation Agreement" with the U.S. before public review occurred (he signed it anyway)

Map E - African National Congress General Secretary Fikile Mbalula hails from this nation; he recently scolded a BBC reporter about British war crimes when criticized for not sanctioning Russia as demanded by the U.S.

Map F - nation with a long coastline on the eponymous Persian Gulf, it recently achieved rapprochement with rival Saudi Arabia in an agreement brokered by China

Map G - this nation's president sent a letter to President Biden this month complaining that, "the U.S. government, specifically through USAID, has for some time been financing organisations openly against the legal and legitimate government I represent"

Map H - a war-torn nation that recently rejoined the Arab League after a long absence

Map I - agreed with visiting Iranian President to no longer use the U.S. dollar for trade between the two nations

In case you missed my first two geography quizzes, you can find them here and here.

Answers:

Map A - United Arab Emirates

Map B - Taiwan (not a nation, rather a province of China)

Map C - Serbia

Map D - Papua New Guinea

Map E - South Africa

Map F - Iran

Map G -  Mexico

Map H - Syria

Map I - Indonesia

Moral Injury For Memorial Day

My garden is blooming red, white, and blue for Memorial Day though the red is poppies, a symbol reminiscent of the blood soaked fields of Europe after WWI. The paperwhites remind me of my grandmother who would force bulbs to bloom indoors each year to get through mud season, and they also remind me of the older version of Memorial Day which was more memorial in general and less of a frenzy of patriotism. I now know the holiday originated from ceremonies a Black community held to remember fallen soldiers after the civil war that seems to have involved more flowers than flags.

The blue is provided by forget-me-nots and who could forget the people once near and dear to us now departed?

It is the living dead, the veterans struggling with moral injury, who say year after year how hard this day is for them. The more unjust our imperial wars seem, the fewer people are willing to participate (about 9% these day), and the harder the narrative machine grinds out flags and gushy rhetoric thanking veterans who often don't wish to be thanked.

Moral injury is often misdiagnosed as PTSD, which is a real injury from wars also but different being about fight-or-flight alarms your brain can't turn off. Moral injury is about the images burned into your memory of innocents, often children, suffering from the actions of your side who you can no longer see as the good guys. It's about forgiving yourself for the unforgivable, and on top of it putting up with a culture that insists on glorifying the most shameful episodes of your life.

Cannon fodder is, by definition, of little interest to the empire managers who use bodies to further their business ambitions.

Each year I put flowers on my family gravesite in a nearby town. Not buried there is my maternal grandfather, a conscript sent into Nagasaki after the nuclear bombing there. Not an affluent man, he refused his G.I. benefits on the grounds that he didn't want anything from a government capable of that level of evil. 

My other grandfather is buried nearby. He is the one who told his son who was keen to enlist to fight communism in Korea, Don't believe them when they say the next war is a good one. There is no such thing. Of course my father went anyway but missed seeing combat, and he passed his father's observation down through the generations. No one has enlisted since.

This does not stop the local veterans organization from putting a flag in a veteran medallion holder on my younger brother's grave each year. Likely they're confusing him with our grandfather due to sharing a first name. I've asked them to stop but every year they don't, and every year I remove all the flags from my ancestors and sibling's graves.

I even remove the flag from my grandfather's grandfather's grave, a veteran of the civil war who shot himself, albeit years later. I'm the only one keeping up the old family graves at this point, so I figure it's my call.

I put out pots of geraniums and those remind me of my grandmother, too. A white lilac the family planted for my mother is in bloom for Memorial Day, fragrant and ephemeral as life. I'll march with the peace contingent in a parade tomorrow that required legal action to allow any peace messages at all. 

Memorial Day, 2015, Topsham-Brunswick parade

The U.S. as a whole seems to be suffering from moral injury as we destroy country after country in our lust for imperial spoils. Diseases of despair like suicide, depression, and substance use disorders including death by overdose continue to climb. No amount of glorious flag waving changes any of that.

There's a lot to remember on Memorial Day. 

Dissent, Protests Continue To Grow In Maine

UU Church members in Topsham, April 15, 2023

You meet the nicest people when you engage in peace building work. In fact, that's how I met my husband twenty years ago, and we're still at it.

Luke is a new friend while Regis and I have known each other for years. I appreciated this opportunity to talk about how the U.S. public perceives the U.S./NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine based on where they seek information, and how we're bringing our messages of dissent to the general public on Saturdays in Maine.

Interested in learning more about anti-nuclear war ambassador Samantha Smith and her diplomacy with the U.S.S.R.? Check out her page and the educational project associated with her memory on the website Americans Who Tell The Truth.

Belfast, May 20, 2023

Throwing Rocks Under Russia's Skates

When I was a kid, police knocked on my door in Los Angeles responding to a complaint by neighbors that I had attacked their son. I explained that the older boy had been throwing rocks under my skates repeatedly despite my demands that he stop. After my busy mother declined to intervene, I grabbed a curtain rod from my garage to make him stop. The police accepted my self-defense argument and went away.

The rock throwing stopped after that, for good.

My toddler grandson started at a new day care recently. The care provider told us that any time a child in her care feels threatened by another child coming too close or trying to grab a toy they're playing with, she teaches the child to say "SPACE!" accompanied by an outstretched, talk-to-the-hand gesture. "It's not a question," she explained. "It's a demand, and it needs to be respected."

It seems to me, and to the U.S. intelligence veterans listed below their recent full page ad in the New York Times, that the Russian Federation has been demanding "SPACE!" with regards to NATO since the fall of the Soviet Union. In other words, for decades.

Alice Slater's cogent response to the recent G7 summit held in Hiroshima as an ominous warning of continued U.S. nuclear belligerence included this reminder:

U.S. allies in nuclear crime include five NATO countries with U.S. nuclear bombs on their territory—Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, Turkey—and Japan of all nations, ironically, under its nuclear umbrella which is abandoning its Peace Constitution under US pressure and will become a NATO affiliate instead of urging that all the G7 nations join the new Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons which they have all boycotted and rejected. [emphasis mine]

“The US leads the way in dishonoring its Non-Proliferation Treaty obligation for “good faith efforts” for nuclear disarmament and has never acted in “good faith”.

China is now also having rocks thrown under its skates in Taiwan and the South China Sea. Any response it makes beyond demanding "SPACE!" will be misrepresented in the corporate press most in the U.S. rely on, as a method of building the case for a proxy war on the Belt and Road Initiative leader now commanding the world's economy.

The U.S. could not subdue insurgents in Afghanistan, one of the poorest countries in the world, but pretends it can win against military powers like Russia and China.

Nuclear weapons are likely to be the only way the U.S. could prevail over a Russia-China alliance currently supported by most of the Global South.

And the G7 met in nuclear victim city Hiroshima to remind us, not so subtly, of that grim fact.

Protester: I Came Here So I Wouldn't Feel So Alone

Yesterday in Belfast, Maine around 40 peacebuilders came together at a big intersection on Route 1. Our statewide coalition has now brought anti war, pro peace messaging monthly to seven different locations over the course of the costly NATO war against Russia in Ukraine: four times at various locations in Portland, twice in Westbrook, twice in Topsham, Bath, and now Belfast.

I admit that I went grumbling as I wanted a day at home, but I smiled all the way back after standing with several friends I hadn't seen in a while. And, as with each of these monthly events, I met new friends, most on the younger side; one had just arrived from Florida and came looking for kindred spirits. I felt fortunate, indeed, to be part of the beautiful "conscience of the community" (and it didn't start to rain until we were almost home).

Our circle round in conclusion produced a few common themes: the role of the military-industrial profiteers in stoking endless wars, and the suffering of people in war zones and war economies where basic needs go unmet. Bring our war dollars home!

One person said that they and their partner are creating a new family and they worry about their child's future with the threat of nuclear war hanging overhead.

One person was brought to tears telling of the persistent refusal of their church's congregation to follow its own professed beliefs and criticize war making. Frustrated Christians have been a consistent presence at our protests, with individuals from various denominations expressing some version of, "I came here so that I wouldn't feel so alone in my opposition to this war."

One person noted that Flora, Earth Goddess, had joined us, inspired by Bread and Puppet. Her presence warmed the hearts of many who have stood for peace with her over the years.

One person brought the portable megaphone that allows us to include everyone's voice in our closing circle. Much appreciated!

One person responded to the prompt, Tell us why you're here, with "Where else would I be?"

Amen to that! 

Growing coalition

These groups are now co-sponsors of our series of protests: Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space, Maine Natural Guard, Peaceworks of Greater Brunswick, Communist Party of Maine, Party of Socialism & Liberation Maine, Maine Green Independent Party, Citizens Opposing Active Sonar Threats (COAST), People’s Party of Maine, and Peace & Justice Center of Eastern Maine.

Our demands

• Peace in Ukraine - No weapons, no money for the Ukraine War

• Abolish NATO – End U.S. militarism & sanctions!

• Fund people’s needs, not the war machine!

• No war with China!

• Protect Earth's environment from the deadly insult of war!

• End U.S. aid to racist apartheid Israel!

• Fight racism & bigotry not war!

• U.S. hands off Haiti!

• End AFRICOM!

Protest schedule for summer

Saturday June 24 at 1:30pm

Lewiston (Veterans Memorial Park, stand by the bridge)

link to Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/803066811174128

Saturday July 22 at 1:30pm

Augusta (Civic Center intersection on Route 27 at I-95)

Saturday August 19 at 1:30pm

Ellsworth (Route 1 intersection with Main St.)

Saturday September (exact date TBD)

Skowhegan (Margaret Chase Smith bridge at confluence of Routes 2 & 201)

Review: Circle In The Darkness By Diana Johnstone

Today I'm sharing my review of a book that's not new but has new significance for our understanding of geopolitical realities unfolding in Europe today.

CIRCLE IN THE DARKNESS: Memoir of a World Watcher 

by Diana Johnstone Clarity Press, 2020

With German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock cheerleading the proxy war in Ukraine and telling reporters that Russian President Vladimir Putin had better make a 360 degree turn or else, many of us wonder what happened to turn Green Party members in Europe toward supporting NATO’s wars. Now that I’ve read this rich memoir by Diana Johnstone, former press secretary for the Green Group in the European Parliament that preceded the EU, I can see how it happened. And probably why.

Paris, 1967 AFP/Getty Images

Johnstone’s story starts long before the current three party coalition government took power in Germany. When she found herself a divorced single mother in an era when the history department of her state university declared that they didn’t “give teaching positions to women,” she switched disciplines, moved to France, and still found time to join the vibrant expatriate antiwar movement of the Vietnam era. A self-described “timid militant,” Johnstone found herself studying French literature for a Ph.D. and French colonialism in “Indochina” for her own edification.

 

It wasn’t long before she found her true path: journalism. Reflecting on the conditions she describes for reporters in the mid 20^th century compared with today’s harsh, even fatal consequences for authentic reporting shows how profoundly things have changed. Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh once received a Pulitzer prize and was published in major outlets eager to share his exposé of events like the My Lai massacre coverup. He’s now spurned by his former publishers and must self-publish in order to report on “How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline.” Johnstone’s long career straddled this divide.

 

She identifies the moment when the Green Group in Europe lost its soul as occurring in 1995 during NATO’s war to break up the former Yugoslavia. “Something grave..happened to the Greens. They..allowed mass media choice of star personalities to determine a major policy issue.” As mainstream media today continues its shift toward infotainment requiring colorful personalities to cover in lieu of challenging government officials, her experiences seem prescient. A legion of photogenic performers like Foreign Minister Baerbock continue to entertain while the real decisions affecting the fate of the world are made in secret, deep behind the façade of elected personalities.

Nevada, 1951

A quote from Albert Einstein serves as Johnston’s epigram and the source of her title: “As our circle of knowledge expands, so does the circumference of darkness surrounding it.” Today, the circumference of darkness is ever widening; in Eurasia with proliferating nuclear weapons, and globally as war moves into outer space, darkness threatens to engulf us.

Stoking Civil War To Stave Off The Revolution We Need

Detail from "America This Week: On Homeland Security's New Snitching Game"

Two men in my family gave the moms carte blanche to do whatever we wanted to do this morning. So, here goes!

I was tempted to construct this blog post as a series of screenshots from articles recently remembered by the web browser on my phone. It would look something like this:

Mother's Day in the U.S. has me thinking of the mothers and grandmothers of the children in Gaza targeted by Israeli bombing last week. The kids had to die because their elders are Palestinian resistance leaders, according to Israel.

This hilarious block of Matt Taibbi's article on censorship -- allegedly on the grounds that the article was "hate speech" -- has since been lifted following an outcry by Taibbi's readers.

Mary Beth Sullivan's excellent letter to the editor is behind a paywall at the Portland Press Herald so here's a photo from the paper copy:

I write this blog to keep my head from exploding as I consider the news of the day. 

The item below has my head continuously exploding as I try to process the marriage of artificial "intelligence" to East German Stasi-style culture where every person is an informer. This coupling is sure to produce multiple Frankenstein's monsters, but this particular example of our corporate overlords stoking civil war to stave off the revolution we so badly need is chilling to say the least. 

As Matt Taibbi and Walter Kirn discuss, the Department of Homeland Security created in the wake of 9/11 now turns its attention to so-called domestic terrorists. In other words, your tax dollars are being used to fund a program that will train your neighbors and their kids to inform on you lest you become a threat to domestic tranquility. Or what's left of tranquility in a land where there is a mass shooting on average every two weeks, where more people of color are incarcerated than anywhere else on the planet, and where industrial and military  pollution render human life tenuous.

Here's a link to the full article on Racket News.

After they discuss the so-called Resilience Project and the "DHS OTVTP Choose Your Own Adventure Online" for inter-American spying, Taibbi and Kirn go on to have a literary discussion about a short story. Because they suspect that very soon we will be constrained in discussing political realities and current events, and we'll have to do so mainly via metaphor.

If this reminds you of what you were taught about life in Soviet Russia, it should. If this doesn't remind you of what you're discovering about tech platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and reddit colluding with the U.S. government to surveil and censor users, it should.

A final thought. Am I the only one who thinks the name "substack" for the self-publishing platform I've been reading and just began publishing on is reminiscent of the Soviet-era term samizdat?

Dissent Is Possible!

Some of the dissenters who gathered at Woodford Corner, Portland, Maine on May 6 

Noam Chomsky famously called the U.S. population the most propagandized people in history, and one has only to read the comments on this local report of our Saturday antiwar protest to feel this truth. Of course as my good friend Bruce Gagnon pointed out in his post about our protest, the military employs numerous keyboard warriors tasked with leaving derogatory comments on any news of dissent from the Pentagon's warmongering. (You can thank President Obama for making it legal for U.S. taxpayers to fund our own propaganda. Government-funded propaganda aimed at audiences in other countries is de rigueur, and I don't want to pay for that, either.)

We have a graphic artist with us now! TY Elizabeth Olbert for the cool poster.

The reporter interviewed several of us and while I spoke with her at length, I'm thrilled that she chose to quote something I often say about protesting: 

“My target audience is the kid in the back seat who asks his parents what we’re doing,” she said. “The young person has seen dissent is possible.”

Good to see that we remembered the massacre of trade unionists by neo-Nazis in Odessa May 2, 2014

Our gathering of 40 or so people and dogs again covered the gamut of political opinions but we are united in our objection to sending even one more dollar for the war in Ukraine. Many of us also object to NATO belligerence and the ramping up of aggression aimed at China.

Longtime peace activist and defender of marine life Russell Wray was interviewed as having come the farthest to stand at Maine's busiest intersection in Portland. 

“We’re basically involved in a proxy war with Russia. The risk of getting into actual war with Russia is very high, and that could escalate to nuclear war,” Wray said. “If we get into a war with Russia, that’s it. We have to do what we can to try to prevent this from happening. A war with Russia could end life on this planet.”

But based on our broad demands we saw and heard many dissenting views including that National Press Freedom Day was a farce in the U.S. as the name Julian Assange can pass no government official's lips. He's only the most prominent journalist of his generation, certainly the one with the biggest impact on history for revealing the war crimes of the U.S. in Iraq (some, ironically, that targeted journalists). 

Portland residents Bill and Ursula Slavick supported the demand that the U.S. taxpayer stops funding apartheid Israel's brutal war crimes against the Palestinian people.

Tom Nadolski of Brunswick had NO WAR, NO NATO on one  side of his sign and the other side referred to the now iconic (but heavily suppressed) report by Pulitzer prize winner Seymour Hersh,"How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline." I also liked Tom's quote in the paper a lot (and I appreciated that the reporter talked to some of the younger people among us oldsters who've been protesting U.S. lies and wars of aggression since Vietnam).

“I don’t want war. I have a couple of nephews I’d like to see become teenagers,” he said. “I think our billions of dollars could be spent in a more productive way than killing people.”

Up next in our protest series in Maine, we'll bring our messages to some additional locations:

Saturday May 20 at 1pm in Belfast (route 1 near Hannaford)

Saturday June 24 at 1:30pm in Lewiston-Auburn (Bernard Lown Peace Bridge)

exact date in summer TBD in Ellsworth (Union River Bridge)

Our demands:

• Peace in Ukraine - No weapons, no money for the Ukraine War
• Abolish NATO – End U.S. militarism & sanctions!
• Fund people’s needs, not the war machine!
• No war with China!
• Protect Earth's environment from the deadly insult of war!
• End U.S. aid to racist apartheid Israel!
• Fight racism & bigotry not war!
• U.S. hands off Haiti!
• End AFRICOM!