Swarmed By DNC Narrative Control Bots

I just can't help myself. I keep leaving online comments and submitting letters to editors pointing out the hypocrisy of liberal Democrats on the Gaza genocide. As I said on Dan Yaseen's Speaking Truth to Empire radio show yesterday, we are told we must support Harris in order to save democracy, but what democracy? 

No Palestinian was allowed to speak at their convention. Journalists were arrested covering protests outside in Chicago and their cameras were broken by police. 

Prior to the convention, Harris told genocide protesters to shut up with a now iconic condescending statement that has since generated many a meme.

Here's the new thing though -- now my online posts draw a veritable swarm of loyal Democrats. Viewed together their comments makes a comprehensive playbook of the DNC strategy to win this election. 

Let's play a game -- which ones do you think are bots and which are actual people?

Here's the wildest one so far:

If you're not steeped in false dichotomy thinking you may have to read that more than once to grasp the argument calling these lies into service. Here's a simpler version:

The orange man is so bad that he's still controlling bad policy emanating from Biden-Harris who have now been in office for 3+ years!

Other tactics on display include outright lying:

Charging election fraud silence on the part of notorious Right-winger i.e. me:

Playing with semantics:

 

Reinforcing false dichotomy:

Smear the Green Party candidate I'm supporting:

Alternatively, smear me:

Miscellaneous:

Incoherent is an entire category in itself. Here I'll include just one example:

And my personal favorite:

"This is not the year" is getting quite shopworn by now, isn't it?

Onward to November!

Peacewashing The War In Ukraine

It's hard to argue with the view that NATO is a lot better at winning narrative competitions than it is at winning wars. From "How Nato seduced the European Left" by Lily Lynch on Unherd:

Previously, in the Nordic countries, Atlanticists have had to sell war and militarism to largely pacifist publics. This was achieved in part by presenting Nato not as a rapacious, pro-war military alliance, but as an enlightened, "progressive" peace alliance.

Fast forward to last week when a self-styled "peace summit" in Vienna produced the absurd statement shared above, eliciting the following statement from participant Magyar Békekör:

From the final text of the declaration issued by the International Peace Bureau, which emerged from obscurity, even the passage in the original draft, which mentioned NATO’s “co-responsibility”, was omitted.

In their closing statement, the organizers of the conference demand an immediate ceasefire and negotiations to end the war in Ukraine. Civilian diplomatic intervention is envisaged at their countries’ embassies, including the Russian one, while condemning Russia.

The group organizing the peace conference did not demand the opinion of the participants in approving the final declaration, nor did they initiate an open discussion about it. At the end of the “peace summit” it was read aloud, as if meeting with everyone’s agreement. [emphasis mine]

Manufacturing consent for an ongoing war of choice by the U.S./NATO in Ukraine is not peace work, despite window dressing provided by the presence of luminaries of the Democratic Party-aligned "peace" movement in the U.S. like Joseph Gerson and Medea Benjamin.

Lynch, like many, sees the NATO war on the former Yugoslavia as a turning point.

Kosovo changed everything. In 1999 — the 50th anniversary of Nato’s founding — the alliance began what academic Merje Kuus has called a “discursive metamorphosis”. From the mere defensive alliance it was during the Cold War, it was becoming an active military compact concerned with spreading and defending values such as human rights, democracy, peace, and freedom well beyond the borders of its member states. The 78-day Nato bombing of what remained of Yugoslavia, ostensibly to halt war crimes committed by Serbian security forces in Kosovo, would forever transform the German Greens.

I remember a principal from a military family urging me to read a tome on "Responsibility to Protect" when he was my supervisor and I was teaching about genocides, around 2005. I thought the notion absurd at the time and quite possibly dangerous. 

Events in the decades since have shown my fear was not misplaced.

As some have argued persuasively, NATO's purpose is not to win wars but to generate profits for uber wealthy military-industrial titans that own and operate the U.S. government.

So what looks like failure to the general public e.g.

Documented equipment losses from Ukraine's spring offensive

looks like success to them e.g.

Peek into the stock portfolios of Congress or the Supreme Court and you'll see a built in incentive to keep pushing wars and never mind about winning, or even ending, them.

It gets worse. Lynch on new strategies to prey on younger people:

In February, Nato held its first ever gaming event. A young employee of the alliance joined popular Twitch streamer ZeRoyalViking to play Among Us and casually chat about the danger disinformation poses to democracy.* With them was a mountaineer influencer and environmental activist named Caroline Gleich. As their astronaut avatars navigated a cartoon spaceship, they spoke about Nato in glowing terms. By the event’s end, the stream had turned into a recruitment effort: the alliance employee talked about the perks of his job and encouraged viewers to check the Nato website for employment opportunities in fields such as graphic design and video editing.

I've written before about the hollowing out of major "peace" organizations here in the U.S., and about the role of major "environmental" organizations in maintaining consent for the Pentagon's climate crimes. 

This is the result of designating wars as Republican or Democratic Party projects: liberals hate the former while cheerleading for the latter. 

I'm part of a small group opposed to all of the U.S./NATO's many wars -- no matter what letter happens to be after the name of the person currently in the White House.

--

*My note: The "dangers of disinformation" is a signature trope of the DNC-social media-corporate media-narrative- management complex, which others have covered in depth here and here.

Ukraine Narrative Fraying, But Weapons Will Continue To Flow

My photo of our vigil in Portland, Maine January 19, 2022

Some truth from official sources has begun leaking out: Ukraine is losing in the NATO proxy war against Russia. Two Polish officials said so, Condoleeza Rice in the Washington Post said so, and the mainstream/lamestream press began admitting it as well. The wrong conclusion is that more weapons will ensure Ukrainian victory, but that did not stop the U.S. and NATO from pledging more weapons.

Ukraine's government has come a bit unraveled this week with key advisor Oleksiy Arestovych resigning and then being arrested and put on the Mirotvorets kill list for (accidentally?) admitting that Ukraine caused a Russian missile to go off course and fall on an apartment building killing 44 civilians in Dnipro. 

Then there was the mysterious crash of a helicopter carrying all the top officials of the Ministry of the Interior, an accident which killed all aboard plus some children from the kindergarten it fell on.

Next, the president of Ukraine addressed the World Economic Forum at Davos looking pale and strained and claiming to be uncertain whether the president of Russia is actually alive. (Cue the Twitter cocaine addict jokes. Of course substance use disorder is no joke for its sufferers, nor do most of us have any way of knowing if Zelensky is among them.)

But some things remain unchanged. Western cheerleaders of the war effort are falling all over themselves to pledge their support for "democracy" in a country that banned opposition parties and "free speech" in a country that banned the use of Russian, the first language spoken by many of its citizens. Ajamu Baraka's essay in Black Agenda Report, "The Ukrainian Solidarity Network: The Highest Stage of White Western Social Imperialism" is well worth a read for the context to understand why alleged leftists are siding with the fascists at this time.

My photo of our vigil in Portland, Maine January 19, 2022

So, as part of a week of anti-imperialist and anti-war actions organized by members of UNAC for Martin Luther King, Jr. week (see the full list here) a hardy band of the unconfused stood in Portland, Maine yesterday at the evening commute.

We were on the second shift after a mid-day vigil in nearby Brunswick that occurs weekly. At that event a surprising number of passersby had expressed agreement with our anti-NATO stance remarking "Ukraine is the most corrupt country in Europe" or "Ukraine is full of Nazis" before the light changed and they drove away. This felt like a shift in public opinion, barely discernible but distinct from our past experiences with the public around this issue.

My photo of our vigil in Portland, Maine January 19, 2022

A few positive reactions in Portland were offset by a woman who rolled down her window to claim unspecified atrocities were happening at the hands of the Russian military and then shouted, "You should be ashamed!" before zooming off in her Tesla. Note: we were not ashamed to speak up for the truth as we understand it, Western propaganda on Ukraine notwithstanding.

I'm not sure when we'll be back in Portland, but the hour-long vigil at 11:30am in front of the Tontine Mall in Brunswick will continue weekly for now. 

Narrative Management On Ukraine At My Alma Mater

About a zillion years ago, I earned a history degree from Bowdoin College. I was a scholarship student and incurred some debt, but the price of a college education had not yet climbed into the stratosphere (currently $78,300 per annum). 

Today I live in another part of Maine but I often go to Brunswick to vigil for peace near my old campus. Yesterday, I attended the third in a series of talks on Ukraine.

Sponsored by the college's Russian Department the lecture was, as advertised, an opportunity to bash the Russian Federation. Although I did not attend the first two lectures in the series, several friends did and reported back on delivery of a seamless CIA narrative on Ukraine (seamless except for my friends' comments during Q & A that is). 

On November 18, I had a letter to the editor published in the student paper The Orient on the problem of one-sided information control at a liberal arts college:

I see the college is hosting a series of lectures on Russia-Ukraine, the first of which was already held (virtually) on October 27 when Ukrainian scholar Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed delivered “Russia’s War On Ukraine: Culture, Memory, Politics.”

I missed the lecture, so I can’t be sure how much the Orient’s coverage omitted, but I was troubled by Shpylova-Saeed’s neglect of historical context. She is quoted as saying, “There was very little understanding of what Ukraine was back in 2014,” but I doubt that she is unaware of the CIA’s involvement in a coup that year overthrowing Ukraine’s elected government. That event is well-documented, including the involvement of the U.S., and led directly to the civil war in which tens of thousands died prior to 2022. One may disagree with Russia’s entry into the conflict or argue about its motivations, but to ignore the context entirely while focusing on the “big man theory” that “bad Putin” is responsible for all of the death and suffering in Ukraine is silly.

Noting that two more lectures are planned in this series, dare I hope that more informed and balanced views will be shared on November 17 and December 1, perhaps by people who have read the RAND Corporation’s report from 2019, “Overextending and Unbalancing Russia: Assessing the Impact of Cost-Imposing Options.”

Ironically, Senior Lecturer in Russian Reed Johnson was quoted as saying of the lecture series, “[we] feel very strongly about the importance of talking and teaching about these events so there’s a better understanding of that context, how we got here.”

May it be so.

Last night's lecture was similarly disappointing. 

Leon Kogan, a Boston College lecturer, titled his talk "Blame it on Pushkin: Rethinking Russian Culture During the War in Ukraine." The textual  focus was a recent poem by Andrey Orlov, “I’ve read to the middle the list of ships," which Kogan read in Russian while projecting his own translated version in English. (I would love to give you a link to the poem, but I am unable to find one.)

The poet had employed a ships metaphor assigning various (all male) cultural heroes of Russia such as Pushkin, Dostoevsky, et al. and some cultural icons like ballet, to indict Russian imperialism. Kogan deconstructed the poem for us and introduced a related concept from  Hannah Arendt about the responsibility of even passive people for the crimes of their empire.

I thought this was highly relevant to those of us sitting in the largest empire on the planet.

My comment to that effect was scoffed at by Kogan.

Two of my friends offered context on the notion of Russia's alleged imperial designs i.e. the CIA-sponsored coup in Ukraine in 2014, and relentless NATO expansion since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Predictably, these truths were characterized as "conspiracy theories."

One of my friends distributed a Ukraine issue of Peace & Planet News that we'd brought along. He was warned by a Bowdoin professor that he was "abusing the privilege" of attending the lecture series. "Aren't they public meetings?" he asked the prof. "They are for now," she replied. 

(This suggests that Bowdoin may go the direction of nearby Bath Iron Works which has steadily restricted access to their public events over the years in response to our truth telling there.)

As an alumna I could probably still wangle an invite. It's worth the effort because my audience is not a visiting lecturer who's busy kissing the NATO ring. 

Cherishing the hope that I had helped introduce a glimmer of doubt about the prevailing narrative in the minds of even one of the students who were present, I went home satisfied.

Proxy War In Ukraine Has Unintended Consequences Corporate Press Are Hiding

Censored mural by Peter Seaton in Melbourne was immediately attacked by Ukranian officials in Australia for its message of shared humanity and the longing for peace. It used to depict Russian and Ukranian soldiers hugging, but has now been painted over.

I've written previously about the intense narrative control that is a key feature of the U.S./NATO proxy war with Russia in Ukraine. As the military becomes an increasingly undesirable option for young people in the U.S. (currently only 9% would consider enlisting, according to Pentagon researchers) the pressure is on to make sure Ukrainians are the ones fighting and dying in the imperial war to topple Russia.

This necessitates:

Lying about the progress of the war and repeatedly claiming Ukraine is "winning" when it is doing no such thing (former U.N. military expert Jacques Baud's current analysis of this is worth a read).

Promoting false claims about the Russian military shelling its own POW camp or the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.

Current headlines on Cold War propaganda outlet Radio Free Europe's website

Mischaracterizing the combatants, as Yale professor Timothy Snyder did recently in Foreign Affairs: "Russia, an aging tyranny, seeks to destroy Ukraine, a defiant democracy." (Actually, Ukraine is resolutely undemocratic at this point in its history and maintains a "hit list" of everyone, including international rock stars, who doesn't support the official narrative -- while Putin's approval rating among Russians last month was over 80%.)

Coordinating messaging in corporate media internationally so that specific key words e.g. "unprovoked" are repeated ad nauseum without examination of copious evidence to the contrary.

Suppressing narratives in the alternative press and on social media (and, apparently, the sides of buildings) by canceling accounts, deleting archives, unleashing trolls, and shadow banning.

Intervening to squelch any attempt at peace talks between Russia and Ukraine.

Source: TeleSUR "In Prague, 70,000 people took to the streets on Saturday [Sep 3] to protest against the sharp rise in energy prices and to demand a neutral position on the war in Ukraine. Photo: Twitter @oriolsabata"

Blaming Russia for the fact Europe is reeling from the effects of economic sanctions that cut off much of Europe's fuel supply -- for home heating, among other uses.

At a time when Russian pipeline gas supplies have been in free fall, the EU had no choice but to ramp up imports from the US at all costs, generating unprecedented profits for US gas suppliers, Lin Boqiang, director of the China Center for Energy Economics Research at Xiamen University, told the Global Times on Saturday.

Pushing the false claim that the Russian economy is in trouble after six months of war in Ukraine. In fact, the ruble has never been stronger while the nations of the world are abandoning the petrodollar like rats fleeing a sinking ship. And as of this week the € is trading below the US$, a two-decade low for that currency.

What's a U.S. taxpayer to do? 

Find some sources of reliable information (you can use many of the links above for that purpose), grow your own food, and diversify your heating fuels. Note that false narratives enrich weapons manufacturers, but will do little to keep you warm and fed this winter.

Is Indivisible The Invisible Hand Of The Ukraine War Thought Police?

Much of the narrative control in my area around the Ukraine war has been taken up by liberal Democrats, many affiliated with the so-called grassroots group Indivisible.

When I blogged about being the turd in the punchbowl at an alleged peace demonstration that was actually a pro-NATO, anti-Russia event in California I had not yet figured this out. I was just surprised to find myself at a rally for Ukrainian nationalism where people couldn't figure out why I was carrying this sign:

A former ally in the mascot retirement battle took great issue with my stating that George Soros was the money behind the color revolutions movement in Europe. She accused me of antisemitism (I had not at the time realized that Soros was Jewish but I do now) and of consuming and sharing antisemitic tropes from the dregs of the right-wing internet (something I never do because I try to practice mental hygiene while still following the news of the day). At the time I removed Soros' name due to her objections and because it was an aside in a post about the pressure to abandon anti-imperialist analysis of the war in Ukraine.

She was wrong. 

Soros is deeply involved in Ukraine present and past. 

This is clear now that I've had more time to read up on this aspect of the current war.

Indivisible is an organization with deep ties to the Open Society Foundations founded by Soros. It sprang up as a sort of Tea Party wannabe during the heyday of the demagogue with bad hair who became our 45th president. Indivisible is currently infiltrating and pushing aside peace organizations in Maine. Narrative control is their trademark and is accomplished sometimes by online shouting matches and sometimes by overwhelming numbers of Ukraine flag wavers at well-established vigils for peace.

I began to notice that the talking points of Indivisible members in New England were curiously alike.

Not just the perjoratives routinely assigned to the Russian Federation's president, but the recurring theme that dissenting voices have no right to speak up. And if they dare to speak up anyway, they are routinely accused of being aligned with Putin, or 45, or white supremacists, etc.

Then a friend mentioned that ads for an Indivisible leader in Maine who is running for District Attorney ended with rapid fine print narration that included funding from...Soros. I reached out to Jackie Sartoris' campaign to ask if I had misheard this and got a prompt response from the campaign manager explaining that those are PAC ads and not within the control or purview of the candidate. Also that Indivisible Brunswick was a "grassroots" group operating independently of the national organization.

So I shared with the campaign manager some of what I'd found:

"Of Indivisible’s 2017 revenue, 35 percent was raised through small dollar donations, and 65 percent was received through major gifts and foundation grants." source: https://www.indivisibleannualreport.org/financials/

"Angel Padilla, Indivisible Project’s policy director, previously worked as an analyst with the National Immigration Law Center (an organization funded by grants from Soros’ Open Society Foundations).." source: https://indivisible.org/staff.

Today I had already decided to peek behind the curtain that obscures the workings of narrative management around the U.S./NATO proxy war with Russia in Ukraine only to discover that, by coincidence, I was suspended yesterday from posting in the VFP Discussion Group on Facebook. The group is run by moderators that might as well work for the Pentagon and they like to note that it's a private group not affiiliated with VFP (odd choice for a name in that case). They decide what are acceptable and unacceptable news sources -- with guidance from the same government that is silencing and shadow banning dissenters on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Google search.

I wonder, does that fact that Veterans for Peace (VFP) national has been in dire financial straits the last couple of years have anything to do with the shift in narrative to defend U.S. government warmongering policies under a Democrat? Or to silence dissenters? It's impossible to say for sure but these are questions worth asking. The Russia Working Group of VFP recently reported having a heated discussion that included a fellow calling various people "communists." Research on Ben Schrader turned up his claim of a visiting professorship at Central European University, sometimes called "George Soros University" because it was created with an endowment from Soros and because, as board chair, he would confer diplomas.

Also sad is observing the Democracy Now! media organization become more and more aligned with the Democratic Party, probably due to accepting support from the Open Society Foundations, the Ford Foundation, and the like. DN! touted the faux humanitarian White Helmets of Syria and has done some serious flag waving for Ukraine. Is it worth mentioning that DN! is strapped for cash, too?

Source: Caitlin Johnstone

A final note on the subject of narrative control: I see that the neo-Nazi Azov battalion that the U.S. taxpayer has been arming has revised its logo. Having the Buffalo mass shooter targeting Black grocery shoppers wear the same design as the background for the Azov logo was...inconvenient. So Azov removed it. 

I'll bet they wish they could scrub the internet of evidence of past usage, but that would be difficult. Keep sharing!

What Goes Around Comes Around: Whipping Progressive Warmongering 2.0

President Obama, VP Biden, & Hunter Biden in 2014, the year Ukraine's elected government was toppled by a CIA-sponsored coup and Hunter got a lucrative job in the Ukranian energy sector. Image source: Getty Images via DK.com

There are many roots apparent in weaponizing Ukraine as a cat's paw to fight Russia.

The most significant but least visible is the goal of weakening China's ally before proceeding to attack them. One of the more visible roots is that our current president was VP during the Obama years when wars became ok with liberals because they were promoted by a handsome, articulate Black man. 

Image source:  Shutterstock via Institute for Policy Studies

The culture wars we have are meant to replace the revolution we need. 

We are led to believe there is a fundamental difference between wars waged by Democrats vs. wars waged by Republicans. There isn't, because their corporate sponsors in the weapons industry are the exactly the same and because many in Congress own stock in those corporations. So while Ukranians die, they profit.

My good friend Bruce Gagnon stumbled on an old report back from a "progressive" phone call designed to whip up support for Obama's surge in Afghanistan. It is of interest primarily because the mechanisms of manufacturing consent are so visible. I'm reposting it here so we have it handy as we reflect on why the U.S. government is galloping toward WW3 and possible nuclear confrontation while suspending women's reproductive rights, presiding over crushing inflation and runaway climate change, failing to deliver healthcare, and literally looking away as the pandemic death toll reached 1,000,000. Daily assaults on independent voices attempt to silence dissent: Abby Martin, Lee Camp, Chris Hedges, Alice Walker, Consortium News, MintPress News -- a long list, and growing. The Department of Homeland Security, which was created -- like the war in Afghanistan -- after the unfortunate events of 9/11, now has a Disinformation Governance Board. 

When you've lost the consent of the governed, narrative management is largely futile. Cue the next disaster!

First posted Dec 2, 2009 at space4peace.blogspot.com

DECEPTIVE PROGRESSIVES CALL FOR SUPPORT OF OBAMA'S WAR

This morning I got an email from a friend who tipped me off to a conference call for "progressives" to discuss Obama's Afghanistan speech last night.

The call announcement included this: "The narrative so far is that the left is against sending more troops and the right is for it,” said Jim Arkedis, Director of the National Security Project at the Progressive Policy Institute. “But that’s not the reality of the situation. There are reasons for progressives to take heart from much of the President’s new strategy, as well as reasons to tread carefully. We want to make sure all those voices are heard.”

This made me quite interested so I dialed in. The call began with everyone in the audience on mute as the following people make opening statements.

* Rachel Kleinfeld, CEO, Truman National Security Project
* Jim Arkedis, Director of the National Security Project, Progressive Policy
Institute
* Gen. Paul Eaton (Ret.), Senior Adviser, National Security Network
* Andy Johnson, Director, Third Way National Security Program
* Lorelei Kelly, Director, New Strategic Security Initiative
* Brian Katulis, Center for American Progress
* Frankie Sturm, Communications Director, Truman National Security Project (Moderator)

Frankly I had never heard of any of these people before and I've been working in the "progressive movement" for the past 30 years. A couple of the organizations they work for I had heard a bit about - they are DC-based "think tanks" that usually are heavily funded by corporations to project their message.

Here is a bit of what some of them said in the opening:

Rachel Kleinfeld: "Thrilled by last night's speech....it's a realistic goal we have been given...dismayed that progressives don't see that his will reduce the violence of this war."

Jim Arkedis: Described himself as a former counter-terrorism analyst at the Pentagon....."Think of the US like an NFL defense....by adopting this counter-insurgency strategy it essentially takes the other sides offense off the field.....this is about peace and stability." He slammed Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) who was on the news this morning criticizing the plan as being from the "far left."

Lorelei Kelly: "Progressives need to abandon the old talking points from Iraq and Vietnam....progressives need to get inside this debate, President Obama is trying to create a new way....these policies need support....The American military is probably the most progressive agency we have today."

One of them brought up CodePink's recent visit to Afghanistan and subsequent statements made by Media[sic] Benjamin to say that some peace groups understand that we need to stay there and stabilize the country. Another called Obama's plan the "full spectrum approach" that progressives must support - we "need the military" to get to a positive conclusion.

Finally they unmuted the listeners and then opened it up for "questions". I didn't ask a question but instead read a quote from the Robert Scheer article which came from former Marine captain Matthew Hoh where he said, “In the course of my five months of service in Afghanistan … I have lost understanding and confidence in the strategic purpose of the United States’ presence in Afghanistan. … I have observed that the bulk of the insurgency fights not for the white banner of the Taliban, but rather against the presence of foreign soldiers and taxes imposed by an unrepresentative government in Kabul.”

A woman listener from West Virginia (CodePink) said she had family killed in these wars and they need to stop. A woman from Georgia said we need to end the wars. A man from upstate New York said they were organizing protests and that Obama had betrayed us.

Next they put us on mute again and told us that we could only ask questions and that we'd better be good. When they unmuted I accused them of trying to silence the voices of the people as it was clear that they only wanted us on the call to listen to the talking points put out by the White House.

I know this is true because last spring I did a couple blogs about the Obama administration daily sending out talking points to groups like these that today hosted this "conference call". You can see one such story about this by Jermey[sic] Scahill here

One of the groups mentioned by Scahill in his article is the Center for American Progress which was represented on the call today as one of the "expert" speakers.

While on the call I quickly did an Internet search on the Truman National Security Project just to see what I could learn about them. Their advisory board stands out like a sore thumb:

Advisory Board
Madeleine K. Albright
Principal, The Albright Group LLC

Leslie H. Gelb
President Emeritus, Council on Foreign Relations

William Marshall
President, Progressive Policy Institute

William J. Perry (former Clinton Secretary of Defense)
Senior Fellow, Hoover Institute

John D. Podesta (former Clinton operative)
President and CEO, Center for American Progress

Wendy R. Sherman
Principal, The Albright Group LLC

First chance I got I read the list off and commented that it was now abundantly clear to me that this call was intended to deliver Obama team talking points to us and that they were not in the least interested in what we had to say.....these folks organizing this call came from the right-wing of the Democratic Party I said...... earlier I had strongly challenged one of them who stated that the peace movement should stop protesting and support Obama's plan!

 

They couldn't wait to finish the call and I am happy to say that it did not go as well as they had hoped. I thank Mark Roman for tipping me off and I want to warn everyone to be on the lookout for these "pseudo progressives" who will now be coming out of the woodwork to tell the public and the media that only the far-left is against Obama's war in Afghanistan. Good "progressives" they will say are going to support Obama's war surge.

 

In the old days they used to call these folks "Scoop Jackson Democrats" after the senator from Washington state who was a pro-war leader. They have wised up and now call themselves progressives and will steal the rug out from under our feet if we are not watching closely.

Bruce K. Gagnon
Coordinator
Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space

You no longer need to look for such pro-war progressives. They are shouting at you from every corner that Ukraine must be defended, and that your dissent is not only unwelcome but downright seditious. Trained to hate the Russian Federation's president and assign blame for Ukranian suffering solely to him, their diatribes have a signature: use of the same nasty and insulting terms for that person. 

Trained to love Ukraine's president, whose background as an entertainer has proved almost as convenient as his Jewish heritage, used constantly to deny the truth that it is actual Nazis we are arming. 

Some in Congress would even have us declare war and send troops (rather than just trainers and mercenaries) to fight by their side. How much would your congressperson and senators stand to profit if the U.S. openly declares war on Russia?

How much more dangerous would it be than bullying an impoverished country like Afghanistan?

What use will money be if humans and their works are reduced to ashes and radioactive rubble by nuclear war?