Long Range Missiles Flying Both Ways But Who's At The Controls?

 

In the puppet show that is U.S. national politics, the best time to ramp up a war is when no one really knows which puppet to pretend is calling the shots. Giving the green light to ATACAMs long range missiles fired into Russia this week by Ukraine with a lot of U.S. help and also to Shadow Storm long rangers from the UK -- we all know Biden isn't mentally capable of this. But it's convenient for headlines and propaganda purposes to assign him this agency. 

And to posit that this is all being done in a big rush before the incoming administration can bring peace. Uh huh. A less peaceful group than those appointed by 47 thus far would be challenging to assemble.

Then there's coverage of the initial Russian response, which was to use its Intercontinental Ballistic Missile for the first time ever. The ICBM released five other missiles over Ukraine that air defense systems there could do nothing to intercept. These were not nuclear missiles but a point being made by use of the delivery system is: they could have been.

Back to the U.S. lurching toward Armageddon with who exactly at the wheel? Here's an unsubstantiated internet rumor to chew on:

https://x.com/TonySeruga/status/1858728300899979298

The intermingling of corporate interests and a form of government that nobody believes is "for the people" is just about complete. Faced with the fact that very few want to be soldiers in the imperial wars corporations said, Great, we'll just replace them with a lot of expensive hardware, like drones. We borrow the money to finance this, CEOs make big bucks, and winning is not the point.

People say that the alphas[sic] all have bunkers with fantastic life support systems and elaborate security provisions. Or that some of them will be blasting off for outer space to escape nuclear war fallout. 

This fails to explain in my mind how the lust for even more wealth could bring someone to the brink of destroying Eden, our planet.

I can only hope for cooler heads in Russia and China to prevail, or possibly for coders anywhere to figure out how to interfere with the ultimate deployment.

Hey, a girl can dream.

Fascists Won WWII: Hear Me Out

These times are so confusing. The candidate Democrats insist I must vote against in order to stop fascism just published an op-ed in The Hill, co-authored by RFK Jr., warning that we must avert nuclear war. I'll admit I did not have that on my bingo card for 2024.

As a writer I was struck by how well-written it was -- by a staffer or two no doubt. When running for office, candidates can employ good writers able to state large truths clearly and elegantly. But once in office, imperial war mongers must employ hacks to spin elaborate confabulations to conceal even small amounts of truth.

Nukes were first used on Japan allegedly to defeat fascism there (but really to warn the communist USSR that we had two different kinds ready and waiting to use on them). Then Nazi rocket scientists and Japanese biological warfare experts were whisked away to the U.S. to found NASA and work for the Pentagon.

The Nuremberg show trials helped goad the United Nations into declaring the final European settler colonial project as Zionists were given Palestine.

Italian partisans fighting fascism in 1945

I'm reminded of something my friend told me her father said about fighting in Europe with the partisans.  Just as they had apparently defeated fascism, he said, the Zionists betrayed the socialist revolution and instead went for the land grab that is Israel.

Weaponizing antisemitism confused a lot of people, because the Nazis were emblematic of antisemitism taken to its murderous Final Solution. Generations of Jewish people around the globe were confused by slogans like "a land without a people for a people without a land."

But as the steadfast resistance of the Arab Palestinian generations denied Zionists their victory, technology ushered in real-time reporting from citizens watching their loved ones blown apart by the Israeli military and beset by pogroms conducted by violent settler militias.

https://x.com/NoorAbdelHaq1/status/1428359017873625090

Videos of gangs beating up on lone Palestinians is extremely reminiscent of depictions of Nazi violence against Jews in Europe, at least for this old history major. Sometimes the victims are Orthodox Jews in traditional clothing and ear locks, because they, too, oppose Zionism.

Young Jews aren't buying it. That's why police departments in the U.S. and Europe are beating the crap out of university students protesting the ongoing genocide in Palestine. Often at the invitation of university officials. That's also why universities came back strong this fall with attacks on student freedom of speech and assembly. It's the fascist playbook, is it not?

Other educators are busy "partnering" with war profiteers who now infest colleges and even high schools and middle schools. These are often presented as exciting STEM initiatives that invite youngsters to admire robotic "dog" weapon systems, or thermal imaging gadgets used to locate warm human bodies to murder.

Fascist leader of Italy Mussolini thought this sort of thing ought to be called "corporatism" i.e. the marriage of state and business interests. Neoliberals in the U.S. like to call it "public-private partnership." But fascism is much more to the point and it fits so much better in headlines.

Controlling information is a key element for fascism to continue succeeding. Silicon Valley's social media products exist for this precise reason, with accounts going dark all over Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Even TikTok has now banned RT and Sputnik accounts after the U.S. engineered a takeover if they wanted to be able to operate in the U.S. The EU is on board and apparently so is the UN.

https://x.com/samhusseini/status/1837844183056351647

So I conclude that, though they may have pretended to lose, fascists actually won WWII. And more significantly, they're now poised on the brink of a life ending WWIII with nukes all round. 

In the words of the great WWII film Underground (Podzemlje), f the motherf'ing fascists.

Sifting Through Reports On War In Ukraine And Nuclear Weapons

A U.S. B-52 strategic bomber. Khalil Mazraawi/AFP via Getty Images

Maybe the reason I get called a "mouthpiece for Putin" a lot these days is that I've been writing commentary like this for years:

Nikolai Patrushev, Secretary of Russia Security Council: "The American state is just a shell for a conglomerate of huge corporations that rule the country and try to dominate the world. For transnational corporations, even US presidents are just extras who can be shut up, like Trump. All four assassinations of American leaders are connected to the corporate trail. It is no coincidence that a growing number of Americans are saying that Republicans and Democrats are just two actors in one play that has nothing to do with democracy. The American authorities, merged with big business, serve the interests of transnational corporations, including the military-industrial complex. The assertive foreign policy of the White House, the unbridled aggressiveness of NATO, the emergence of the military bloc AUKUS and others are also a consequence of corporate influence. The draft American budget for 2023 is the best evidence of Washington's plans to unleash new wars to the detriment of the well-being of its own citizens."

The unprecedented information control around what is developing into WW3 with the U.S. and its (sometimes reluctant) NATO partners threatening Russia, China, and Iran makes it hard for people in my country to know what's going on.

Original collage by James Fangboner (left image), modified by me (see "Hating On ____ Is What Gives Life Meaning")

Orange man bad equals Putin bad equals Zelensky good is the analysis they're being fed by a media conglomerate that runs on the fuel of false dichotomy.

It used to be that I wasn't allowed to dissent on the wisdom of dumping $100 billion into arming and propping up Ukraine because I was doing Putin's work for him.

Then I was told I sounded like Tucker Carlson which liberals think is enough to silence anyone with a brain. (Never mind that Carlson has left-leaning intelligentsia like Aaron Mate and Glenn Greenwald on his show regularly.)

Currently the crime of people who oppose the war on Russia in Ukraine is that we sound like some of the most disparaged Republican members of Congress. Knowing that you might share the stated beliefs of someone like Marjorie Taylor Green is supposed to send you scurrying back to the safe haven of the Democrats.

The fact that both parties receive millions in donations from the very corporations who profit from the constant warmongering of the U.S. and NATO is not obscure, but mainstream propaganda never brings it up.

So forgive me if I say I don't give a fuck who I sound like, this war is 1) morally wrong; 2) gobbling up resources better spent making sure children in the U.S. don't sleep on the pavement and go hungry; and 3) uniquely dangerous as it staggers toward the use of nuclear weapons.

Nuclear forces are being moved into place in Europe and the Pacific region as you read this.

Photo : Twitter / @US_EUCOM

From the Instagram account of Russian media outfit Sputnik shared under the ominous headline:

US 'Doomsday Plane' Capable of Ordering World-Ending Nuclear Strikes Spotted in Europe

Is Sputnik biased? Of course. Is their information useful? It might very well be. They seem to share my concern that an all out nuclear war would destroy the cities where children in the U.S. sleep on the pavement.

Here's another ominous piece of news I found this week at the website zerohedge:

Air Force Relieves Six Leaders At Nuclear Base Over "Loss Of Confidence"

BY TYLER DURDEN

TUESDAY, FEB 28, 2023 - 12:45 PM

Six leaders, including two commanders and four of their subordinates, at Minot Air Force Base, North Dakota, were abruptly relieved of their duties "due to a loss of confidence," the US Air Force wrote in a press release Monday.  

Maj. Gen. Andrew J. Gebara, commander of the 8th Air Force, relieved Col. Gregory Mayer of the 5th Mission Support Group and Maj. Jonathan Welch of the 5th Logistics Readiness Squadron from their leadership positions at Minot AFB "due to a loss of confidence in their ability to complete their assigned duties." 

"These personnel actions were necessary to maintain the very high standards we demand of those units entrusted with supporting our Nation's nuclear mission," said Gebara.

Also, four subordinate leaders assigned to Minot AFB were relieved of their duties. 

"Eighth Force continues to safeguard global combat power and conduct around-the-clock strategic deterrence operations in a safe, secure and effective manner.

"Our mission is foundational to our Nation's defense, and we remain committed to the success of that no-fail mission," Gebara said.

Minot AFB is home to the 5th Bomb Wing, which falls under the 8th Air Force. The wing flies nuclear-capable Boeing B-52 Stratofortress bombers. The air base also has a missile wing that operates intercontinental ballistic missiles. 

Gebara did not explain what caused the loss in confidence among Minot AFB commanders entrusted with the nation's nuclear bombers and ICBMs. 

I found this item because it was shared on Twitter via the account of someone I follow on the basis of his bio (“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.” -Anatole French).

ahf (Tony) speculated: they didn't want to shoot balloons? or nuke Russia?

Several times in history nuclear war has been averted because individual military men refused to follow orders.

And don't think the Pentagon doesn't know that, even if they don't want you to know it.

Meanwhile, if you're not a U.S. Air Force nuclear weapons commander -- or even if you are -- all out on March 18 to say NO to war!

Tale Of Two Broken Accords: Oslo And Minsk

"Tens of thousands of Italians marched through Rome on Saturday calling for peace in Ukraine and urging Italy to stop sending weapons" © Stefano Ronchini / ipa-agency.ne/Stefano Ronchini / ipa-agency.net  Source: MSN

Many people understand that war is hell. That's why they clamor for negotiated settlements that move belligerents back from the battlefield and set them on a path to reconciliation.

The Oslo Accords established a two-state solution to Israel's violent occupation of Palestinian homelands and at the time was hailed as a major achievement.

Then came facts on the ground for the last several decades. 

It would by now be virtually impossible to create a State of Palestine that was not hopelessly Balkanized into tiny, unconnected territories. At the time of Oslo, many expressed doubt and believed that only a truly democratic one-state solution could work. (Full disclosure: I'm in that camp.)

The insanely belligerent and corrupt Israeli PM Netanyahu has won the recent elections and stands poised to bring even more violence and suffering to the long-occupied Palestinians.  And Israel is a nuclear weapons nation. With lots of nuclear threats and innuendoes being thrown around these days, it's important to keep that in mind.

So we can expect to see a continuation of Israel's attacks on Palestinians in blockaded Gaza

My grandparent’s and his brother’s land that provide for over 20 families was destroyed by Israeli airstrikes this morning in #Gaza pic.twitter.com/eeIAJxRkGl

— Asmaa AbuMezied (@AAbumezied) November 4, 2022

https://twitter.com/AAbumezied/status/1588449241743384576

in Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank

Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) is responding to emerging critical health needs in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, resulting from escalating violence characterised by repeated Israeli military raids on Palestinian towns and cities, routine use of https://t.co/y13Gp1mqpA

— it is #Palestine, nothing else (@JamalKhanfer) November 4, 2022

 

https://twitter.com/JamalKhanfer/status/1588587107605532679

and Israel bombing Syria and Lebanon, other nations altogether.

The Minsk II agreement established a game plan for resolving civil war in Ukraine.

Tens of thousands of civilians and combatants had been killed by missile strikes and more hands-on violence from militias operating freely in the Donbas border region with Russia following a 2014 CIA-sponsored coup in Kyiv. Years later, Ukraine's President Zelensky was elected on a platform promising to implement Minsk and end the death toll. Then the neo-Nazis enabled by the U.S. and NATO got to him. I suspect he was threatened with assasination unless he signed on to his country serving as the killing grounds for proxy war to weaken Russia. 

One wonders why nations sign on to accords and then immediately show no intention of fulfilling them?

It could be a stalling tactic to temporarily reduce international pressure to de-escalate.

Or it could be a case where those who signed on are ousted either by coup or elections, and succeeded by those with a lust for war.

Or maybe diplomatic efforts like accords are doomed in the face of the profit motive provided by modern industrialized killing?

Workers hold the key to stopping wars no matter what the motives of those waging them. 

An international general strike would make wars literally impossible.

I pray we are seeing signs of this developing, especially in Europe where the economic impact of the war on Russia via Ukraine has been most intense. Certainly we are seeing signs of alarm from rulers enacting laws that actually criminalize gathering.

Giorgia Meloni's government establishes a new crime that includes a 6-year prison sentence if 50 people gather together, putting in danger safety or public health. Disguised as an anti-rave party rule, it aims to repress freedom, protests and dissent in today’s polarized Italy.

— Francesca Bria (@francesca_bria) November 1, 2022

https://twitter.com/francesca_bria/status/1587481003962015746

Okay, so don't gather. Stay inside and refuse to work helping the war machine grind on. Mutual aid could not only make this strategy survivable but also strengthen solidarity among the people. Build it on the foundation of a shared desire to not be burned to a crisp by wars escalated via nuclear weapons.

Open Letter To Rep. Chellie Pingree On Ukraine

My photo of members of Maine's peace lobby meeting with Rep. Chellie Pingree in Portland during her first term of office.

I don't live in her district in Maine but I get Rep. Chellie Pingree's newsletter anyway and today it was truly appalling. She ran as an peace candidate with a background in organic family farming. How far she has drifted from serving the people to serving the wealthy during her 13 years in office! 

Here's my response to her recent messaging in the form of an open letter that might reach her.

Dear Rep. Pingree,

I read your email message today with interest. By spreading the demonstrably false claim -- "As Russia continues its unprovoked attack on the people of Ukraine" -- you appear to be either dangerously naive or a knowing promoter of lies about NATO and U.S. involvement in the region.

Where is your moral compass? Did you have one back in the day but years in Washington DC serving the Democratic Party and its corporate ownership eroded it?

If you actually believe Russia's intervention in Ukraine's civil war was unprovoked, and that roughly 14,000 casualties in the Donbas were mythical or perhaps not important, please find some better sources of information. 

Source: Covert Action Magazine

For starters, you might want to read this expose, U.S. Lied About Funding “Dangerous Pathogen” Research in Secret Ukrainian Biolabs, Newly Leaked Documents Reveal, by Dilyana Gaytandzhieva published March 22.

Or maybe you already know about this from your congressional briefings? 

Russia is the enemy du jour and mostly a pathway to rendering China without a major ally as the world moves away from U.S. domination of its trade and finance. 

Was blocking the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany worth risking a nuclear world war? I suspect your children or grandchildren might have a different opinion. There is no amount of wealth that would compensate them for a WW3 with nukes.

How about supporting diplomacy instead fanning the flames of conflict? 

Or is conflict what your military-industrial campaign donors require? 

Source: OpenSecrets.com Donors to Rep. Pingree's campaign coffers by industry

As the U.S. produces little other than weapons nowadays, endless war is a marketing scheme.

Lisa Savage 

Solon

'War With Russia Would Be Insane'

Check out this interview of someone who has traveled to Ukraine, Crimea, and Russia and knows people there. Bruce Gagnon is the coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space and is interviewed here by Brian Leonard in Portland, Maine.

"War with Russia would be insane."

 

All photos are mine from the NO WAR IN UKRAINE demonstration Friday, January 28 on several street corners in Portland, Maine.

 

If the embedded video doesn't show up for you, here's a link to it on Youtube:

https://youtu.be/XzhAsJnstdo

Neighborhood Bully Plans A Mass Shooting

Source: texassizebullies.blog

Once upon a time there was a neighborhood bully who loved to pick on smaller kids. He would knock them down, steal their lunch money, rub their faces in the snow, and then run away laughing. His gang would laugh loudly with him as they feared that he might turn on them if they did not support his cruelties. As he got older he began using his stolen wealth to buy weapons like knives and guns. 

His weapons of first choice could be used from a distance to inflict pain without the chance of getting hurt himself: slingshots, cherry bombs, and pepper spray.

Sometimes the wind kicked up at the wrong moment and the pepper spray blew back in his face. The intended victim would then be blamed for the pepper spray "attack" and subjected to further punishment. And the bully began buying pepper gel instead. He was best friends with the businesses that sold knives, guns, and pepper gel. And they loved the bully because they made so much money off of him. 

To keep him buying they would call him up with stories about how this person or that was becoming too strong and should be stopped before they became able to challenge the bully and win. This was effective because it was the thing that the bully secretly feared most of all. He would buy and buy and buy believing that he was strengthening his position at the top of the heap.

Source: express.co.uk

On report card day the bully received all D's and F's because instead of doing his homework he was always at the weapons store. He became enraged, because his second biggest fear was that people thought he was stupid. He was convinced that the kids who sat in the back on the school bus, the older kids, were laughing at him behind his back. He had seen sticky notes on his locker that said U R DUMB and YOU SMELL LIKE A FART and YOUR MOMMA HAS COVID. He wasn't sure who was writing the notes but he had two main suspects: one who used to be part of his posse but had since moved on, and one who was the head of the STEM club building a solar powered streetcar system for the town they lived in.

The bully liked to brag to his friends about threatening both of the sticky note suspects. He was always talking about what he was gonna do to them but he never actually did much because they were both strong, tall kids who might be able to defend themselves.

https://www.statista.com/chart/8286/us-will-trail-other-rich-nations-in-life-expectancy-by-2030/

At the end of the semester both those kids had passed all their classes while the bully had failed all of his except P.E. This meant that he would not be promoted to the next grade and would have to stay back. Most of his friends went on to the next grade and weren't around much anymore. The ones who stayed with him were the meanest kids, the ones who had closets full of guns at home. They liked to talk about shooting up places and they would show up at gatherings like basketball games with loaded guns in their backpacks.

The bully started a rumor that his former friend was planning a mass shooting at the next basketball game. He claimed to have overheard the plans being made in the locker room where he was hiding in a stall cutting math class. Some of his friends believed him and they began preparing by stockpiling weapons in various places close to the basketball court. 

They built each other's confidence by reminiscing about the time that they had kicked a smaller kid's ass,  a smaller kid with no weapons but with plenty of lunch money to steal.

But the attack never came.

So the bully got what he thought was a brilliant idea. One of his friends should shoot out the windows of the school in the middle of the night after spray painting his former friend's name on the front by the flagpole. Photos of the damage would go viral and everyone would blame the former friend. "Let's get this party started!" said the bully, his eyes gleeful with anticipation.

To be continued...

The same psychopaths who are withholding healthcare from 30 million Americans in a deadly pandemic are pushing us to the brink of war with another nuclear power. They don’t give a shit about human rights or decency or the future.

— Daniel (@jai_lies) January 22, 2022

Are Russian media telling Russians that a third world war between nuclear-armed nations is "all but certain"? Or is this just something that western propagandists are telling westerners? https://t.co/9EhSL9jxFT

— Caitlin Johnstone ⏳ (@caitoz) January 22, 2022

Patriarchy Will End In Violent Explosions, Possibly Nuclear

Gender reveal party in Arizona that sparked widespread fires in 2017.

Another of those lame-brained gender reveal parties has caused considerable distress and damage, this time in New Hampshire, where an explosion big enough to crack nearby house foundations was set off by the expectant father.

Men have long suffered from womb envy, a disempowered feeling of jealousy at females' superior power to bring life into being. Knowing the science of reproduction, i.e. the role of the male in fertilization, has done little to address this. 

Males raised in our current violent, power-tripping society thrash about killing wantonly and setting off explosions that make other males very wealthy. 

Source: https://iranpress.com/content/37315/has-seen-mass-shootings-the-last-month

The modern proclivity to determine an unborn child's genitalia and then announce it to the world may also be a sort of backlash against the non-binary movement so threatening to traditional order-keepers. (I can remember my Christian fundamentalist grandmother and her peers being horrified when males began growing their hair long in the 60's "because you can't tell the boys from the girls." This always mystified me because I still could.)

This news on damaging property and frightening your neighbors "for fun", while distressing, was much less so than the overnight report from Israeli-occupied Jerusalem. 

Source:https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/4/23/dozens-of-palestinians-wounded-by-israeli-police-in-jerusalem  Israeli police officers stand next to a burning barricade during clashes with Palestinians [Ammar Awad/Reuters]

From a Jewish human rights activist I follow:

Jewish Supremacists carried out a pogram last night in Jerusalem, hundreds marching the streets chanting “death to Arabs” & assaulting Palestinians >100 wounded.The event was not an aberration, but the logical extension of a racist apartheid state

— Ariel Gold אריאל 🕎 ☮️🔥✡️ (@ArielElyseGold) April 23, 2021

History is doomed to repeat itself, apparently, with fresh victims in every generation. 

Should we be worried that the increasingly violent nation of Israel, a best buddy of the increasingly violent nation of the U.S., has nuclear weapons?

Yes. 

And we should also be worried that the U.S. military tweeted about its renewed commitment to nuclear war under a Democratic administration.

#USSTRATCOM Posture Statement Preview: The spectrum of conflict today is neither linear nor predictable. We must account for the possibility of conflict leading to conditions which could very rapidly drive an adversary to consider nuclear use as their least bad option. pic.twitter.com/4Oe7xkl05L

— US Strategic Command (@US_Stratcom) April 20, 2021

Notice how it is "an adversary" that is supposedly threatening the nuclear ceasefire of sorts that has existed since Nagasaki. (I say "of sorts" because of the depleted uranium weapons used to this day by the Pentagon in its never-ending air strikes.)

Our least bad option would be to defund the Pentagon immediately. 

This would lead to a halt to encircling and menacing Russia on its European borders, and a halt to menacing China in the South China Sea. Both would significantly reduce the risk of nuclear war as both those nations have nuclear weapons but have not used them.

Defunding the Pentagon would lead to a jobs crisis as every state in the U.S. has deeply embedded building weapons systems into its economy. This could lead to the very welcome development of a Green New Deal conversion to building things we actually need, thus creating even more jobs with federal funding.

Defunding the Pentagon could also lead quickly to the conditions making universal healthcare possible. 

The primary reason people in the U.S. are suffering in poverty without adequate or even any healthcare is that the resources to fund Medicare for All are always given to the Pentagon and its contractors. 

Defunding the Pentagon would also be the model for defunding the violent police departments who appear determined to spark civil war in the U.S. by slaughtering people of color.

Including children and people on the spectrum and people with mental health issues and people with developmental disabilities. Yup, that's who the violent white supremacist regime of Germany slaughtered, too, while focusing their cruelty on Jewish Europeans.

Mark Twain said history doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes.

You know what else rhymes? Live by the bomb, die by the bomb. And that's where the road we're on right now is headed.