Has the American Air Force Really Shot Down UFOs? And If They Have, Are They Alien Spaceships?

I’m reposting this because some of the great contributors on this blog have reported that it’s vanishing from their computers. I honestly can’t think why this should be the case, but here it is again.

‘Trev, one of the many great commenters on this blog, alerted me yesterday to the news that the Americans have claimed to have shot down several UFOs, including one over Alaska. He linked this to a news report that said they were probably balloons. Since then I’ve come across various accounts that contradict this. CNN reported on the incident, stating that the air force pilots said they did not know what they were looking at. One also said that he was unable to work out how it flew. Other details have also emerged. The pilots said it was not like the Chinese spy balloon. One was the size of a car, and another, or perhaps the same one, was cylindrical.

I was reading the comments on one of the YouTubers, who covered this and most of them were sceptical. The obvious question was raised of how an alien spaceship, which was so far ahead of us technologically that it could cross the vast gulfs of interstellar space, could be shot down by us using our limited technology. The majority of commenters smelled a rat. They considered that it was a hoax intended to prepare the way for some kind of totalitarian takeover. One religious individual went further and suggested that it was a disguise for the appearance of the fallen angels and the reign of Lucifer. There was a similar conspiracy theory put forward in the ’90s by Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince in their book The Stargate Conspiracy. They claimed that the US government was plotting a totalitarian coup by staging the descent of alien space gods, and connected this with the Nine, a group of discarnate entities contacted by American scientists and psychical researchers, including Andrija Puharich and Uri Geller, in the 1970s. I can’t remember all the details, but the book somehow took in the Egyptian pyramids and Robert K.G. Temple’s The Sirius Mystery, which argued that the Dogon of Mali had been contacted in prehistory by extraterrestrials from the star Sirius. The last thing I heard about their book, it was being claimed that they had intended it as a joke, but that this had been so convincing it went over most people’s heads. I read it, and I have to say that there was nothing in it which suggested it was a spoof.

I do think, however, we have to be very careful with this one. UFO stands for a ‘Unidentified Flying Object’. Although it has entered popular culture as meaning a visiting alien spacecraft, I wonder if, in this case, it means precisely that: a flying object that cannot be identified, but which may not be extraterrestrial. I’ve noticed that recently UFOs have been renamed UAPs – Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, and wondered why that new term wasn’t used instead. Of course it could just be that phenomena can include a purely natural explanation for UFOs. One possible explanation is that they are poorly understood meteorological phenomena like ball lightning. But what the Americans claim to have shot down was structured craft. On the other hand, it could well be some kind of unidentified terrestrial aircraft, and the Americans have described it as UFO in order to play on the ambiguity of the term and suggest it was an alien vehicle when it may well not have been.

Way back in the 90s a book was published claiming that UFO sightings and reports were actually those of drones. The author was a nasty individual with a background in various Fascist groups. It obviously can’t be applied to all UFO sightings, but it’s quite possible that it may explain some. Mark Pilkington in his book Mirage Men describes his interviews with a number of American air force personnel and experts on military aviation, who tell him that top secret aircraft developed by the American military do have the ability to fake a UFO encounter. This includes interfering with airplane’s radar, which can be done using two separate radar beams and has been known about since the 1950s. If the Americans have such technology, then it’s very likely indeed that Russia and China also has it, or something similar. It’s also been clear from Bill Rose’s Flying Saucer Technology (Hersham: Ian Allan Publishing 2011) that countries around the world, including Britain, Germany, America and Russia, have been experimenting with disc-shaped aircraft almost since the invention of powered flight, and some of them look very exotic.

Artist’s rendition of a high-altitude VTOL ramjet developed by Lockheed for the US military for nuclear bombing and reconnaissance missions. from Rose, p. 104.

It’s possible that what was shot down was an terrestrial aircraft of this type, rather than anything from space.

On the other hand, perhaps it really is an alien spacecraft, and the American authorities have decided to hide it in plain sight by calling it as UFO on the understanding that this will cause the sceptics to discount it immediately.

It’ll be very interesting to see what else emerges about these encounters, though it won’t surprise me at all if the story is left to vanish so that we’ll be none the wiser.

Has the American Air Force Really Shot Down UFOs? And If They Have, Are They Alien Spaceships?

Trev, one of the many great commenters on this blog, alerted me yesterday to the news that the Americans have claimed to have shot down several UFOs, including one over Alaska. He linked this to a news report that said they were probably balloons. Since then I’ve come across various accounts that contradict this. CNN reported on the incident, stating that the air force pilots said they did not know what they were looking at. One also said that he was unable to work out how it flew. Other details have also emerged. The pilots said it was not like the Chinese spy balloon. One was the size of a car, and another, or perhaps the same one, was cylindrical.

I was reading the comments on one of the YouTubers, who covered this and most of them were sceptical. The obvious question was raised of how an alien spaceship, which was so far ahead of us technologically that it could cross the vast gulfs of interstellar space, could be shot down by us using our limited technology. The majority of commenters smelled a rat. They considered that it was a hoax intended to prepare the way for some kind of totalitarian takeover. One religious individual went further and suggested that it was a disguise for the appearance of the fallen angels and the reign of Lucifer. There was a similar conspiracy theory put forward in the ’90s by Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince in their book The Stargate Conspiracy. They claimed that the US government was plotting a totalitarian coup by staging the descent of alien space gods, and connected this with the Nine, a group of discarnate entities contacted by American scientists and psychical researchers, including Andrija Puharich and Uri Geller, in the 1970s. I can’t remember all the details, but the book somehow took in the Egyptian pyramids and Robert K.G. Temple’s The Sirius Mystery, which argued that the Dogon of Mali had been contacted in prehistory by extraterrestrials from the star Sirius. The last thing I heard about their book, it was being claimed that they had intended it as a joke, but that this had been so convincing it went over most people’s heads. I read it, and I have to say that there was nothing in it which suggested it was a spoof.

I do think, however, we have to be very careful with this one. UFO stands for a ‘Unidentified Flying Object’. Although it has entered popular culture as meaning a visiting alien spacecraft, I wonder if, in this case, it means precisely that: a flying object that cannot be identified, but which may not be extraterrestrial. I’ve noticed that recently UFOs have been renamed UAPs – Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, and wondered why that new term wasn’t used instead. Of course it could just be that phenomena can include a purely natural explanation for UFOs. One possible explanation is that they are poorly understood meteorological phenomena like ball lightning. But what the Americans claim to have shot down was structured craft. On the other hand, it could well be some kind of unidentified terrestrial aircraft, and the Americans have described it as UFO in order to play on the ambiguity of the term and suggest it was an alien vehicle when it may well not have been.

Way back in the 90s a book was published claiming that UFO sightings and reports were actually those of drones. The author was a nasty individual with a background in various Fascist groups. It obviously can’t be applied to all UFO sightings, but it’s quite possible that it may explain some. Mark Pilkington in his book Mirage Men describes his interviews with a number of American air force personnel and experts on military aviation, who tell him that top secret aircraft developed by the American military do have the ability to fake a UFO encounter. This includes interfering with airplane’s radar, which can be done using two separate radar beams and has been known about since the 1950s. If the Americans have such technology, then it’s very likely indeed that Russia and China also has it, or something similar. It’s also been clear from Bill Rose’s Flying Saucer Technology (Hersham: Ian Allan Publishing 2011) that countries around the world, including Britain, Germany, America and Russia, have been experimenting with disc-shaped aircraft almost since the invention of powered flight, and some of them look very exotic.

Artist’s rendition of a high-altitude VTOL ramjet developed by Lockheed for the US military for nuclear bombing and reconnaissance missions. from Rose, p. 104.

It’s possible that what was shot down was an terrestrial aircraft of this type, rather than anything from space.

On the other hand, perhaps it really is an alien spacecraft, and the American authorities have decided to hide it in plain sight by calling it as UFO on the understanding that this will cause the sceptics to discount it immediately.

It’ll be very interesting to see what else emerges about these encounters, though it won’t surprise me at all if the story is left to vanish so that we’ll be none the wiser.

Video on Orion, the US Navy’s Nuclear Space Battleship

I found this very interesting video on the Found and Explained channel on YouTube. It’s about Orion, a massive space battleship designed, but fortunately never built, by the US navy. The vehicle would have been propelled by nuclear bombs thrown out from the rear of the spacecraft. The force of the explosion would have been caught by a buffer plate on four retracting struts. This would have absorbed the shock, while allowing the spacecraft to move at immense speeds. The ship would have had a complement of 120 men, who would have rested and worked, at least at times, in a centrifuge that would have generated artificial gravity. It would also have carried four shuttle craft, and an arsenal of 140 nuclear bombs. It would also have carried another type of nuclear bomb, the details of which are still classified. This would have been thrown out of the spacecraft and when it exploded would have released a deadly beam of charged particles at its target. It would also have been equipped with a number of conventional naval cannons. I think the intention was to dominate the Earth militarily from space. The navy also planned a number of peaceful missions, including expeditions to Saturn by the 1970s. They didn’t work out any detailed plans but created a detailed model which they showed to Kennedy to persuade him to back the project. It had the opposite effect. Kennedy realised that it would have made the Cold War much worse, and wisely cancelled it.

The video’s sponsored by a Star Trek computer game, and so there’s much comparison between the USS Enterprise and other ships in that series with the Orion battleship. It also goes into the methods by which the spacecraft could be used to become a real starship enabling humanity to reach Alpha Centauri. With its conventional nuclear fuel, it could attain 3.3 per cent of the speed of light, which would enable humanity to reach Alpha Centauri in 144 years. But other techniques could be used, including matter-antimatter annihilation. This could propel the ship to 80 per cent of the speed of light, cutting the journey time to a decade or so. Unfortunately, anti-matter is immensely expensive and so unless or until a cheap method of mass producing it is found, that means of propulsion is impossible.

Sagan mentions the Orion spacecraft in Cosmos, and how it could have taken humanity to the stars. He doesn’t mention, however, the fact that it was intended as a warship. Either he didn’t know, which is unlikely, or that aspect of the ship’s design was classified at the time, and he wasn’t at liberty to divulge it. However, the use of bombs to push a spacecraft forward is actually a sound one. It was tested experimentally on a scale model, and there are clips of this about. The idea goes back to before the Russian Revolution, when an imprisoned revolutionary sketched a platform taking off from the ground propelled by exploding gunpowder bombs beneath it.

Nuclear explosions in space are currently banned under international law, which has helped to prevent atomic war but means that so far only chemical rockets can be used for space exploration. The Beeb a while ago made a science fiction programme about humans exploring the solar system in a nuclear rocket and confidently predicted that, although now fiction, this would actually happen sometime in this century. I’m also struck about how closely the spacecraft resembles the Discovery, the spacecraft that travels to meet the alien monolith around Jupiter in Kubrick’s 2001. That was also nuclear propelled, and its crew also lived in a giant centrifuge to simulate gravity.

I also wonder if JFK cancelled the project for financial as well as geopolitical reasons. Such as spacecraft would have been massively expensive. As it was, the Moon programme absorbed 5 per cent of America’s GDP, and that was for conventional, chemical rockets carrying no more than three men. I can see the construction of a spacecraft like Orion practically bankrupting the entire country, just as trying to keep up with Reagan’s wretched Star Wars programme did the Soviet Union. Scientists have estimated that the technology isn’t necessarily the problem with building spacecraft to other stars. We can almost do it now. It’s just the expense. It’ll be about 200 years before the world can afford to build such spacecraft.

One day a ship like Orion may be built to take us to Alpha Centauri and beyond. But hopefully, not as a warship.

Teaser Trailer for New Movie ‘Oppenheimer’

Christopher Nolan has directed a film about Robert Oppenheimer and the creation of atom bomb, which is due to appear in cinema’s shortly, and there’s a trailer for it on YouTube. It’s only about a minute long and shows Oppenheimer walking down various official corridors and in various class rooms while a countdown clock ticks away. The voiceover states that the world is changing, reforming, and that he has given humanity the power to destroy itself, accompanied with images of the nuclear explosion.

Also worth looking at is the ‘trailer’ for it on Ridwan’s channel on YouTube, which has a voiceover and appearance by Michael Caine reciting the quote from the Bhagavad Gita made by Oppenheimer and now infamous: ‘I am become death, the destroyer of worlds’, as well as quotes from Milton.

Oppenhaimer’s creation has indeed irrevocably changed the world, and brought it perilously close to destruction on more than one occasion, the best known being the Cuban Missile Crisis. This looks like an interesting drama-documentary/biopic, though I wonder how factually accurate it”ll be.

Is Shinzo Abe’s Assassin a Conspiracy Nutter?

I was shocked by the assassination of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Nara today. As they pointed out on the news, Japan has very strict gun laws, and a very low level of gun crime. This explains why his wretched assassin made his own. But I do wonder about the assassin’s motives for the murder. It was reported earlier today that the gunman, a former sailor in the Japanese navy, didn’t have a political grudge against Abe. But they said on the news this evening that he thought Abe was a member of a particular organisation, and it wasn’t known if this organisation actually existed.

Hmmm.

This sounds like the gunman was a conspiracy theorist in the pejorative sense, like the western nutters who believe that the Illuminati are behind everything evil in the world. Or the globalists. Or the Freemasons and/or the Jews. In the 1990s there were reports that there was a nasty wave of anti-Semitism sweeping Japan, and that the country had more anti-Semites than many other countries, even though it had no Jews. One the country’s big industrialists apparently said that the reason America dropped the two nuclear bombs that destroyed Nagasaki and Hiroshima, but didn’t use them against Germany, was all because of the Jews. It’s pure nonsense. There are two competing explanations for the bombings. One is that after Germany’s surrender, the American high command wished to end the war as quickly as possible. Simply fighting their way island by island across the Pacific until they reached the Japanese mainland would have taken weeks and cost the lives of even more American servicemen. Another theory is that the Americans wanted to send out a message, not to the Japanese, but to Stalin. The Russians hold the Kuril Islands north of Japan, and it seems to me that if this theory is right, then they were afraid the Russians were going to move south and occupy Japan, just as they had liberated and then occupied eastern Europe. As for the origins of the anti-Jewish hatred in the 90s, Lobster wondered if it was a result of American foreign financial policy. I think the Americans had tried to force some financial deal on the Japanese at the behest of their own bankers, and this had disrupted the Japanese economy or its financial sector. It’s possible the gunman believed that Abe was somehow involved in some kind of secret Jewish conspiracy. On the other hand, Abe himself was clearly Japanese, not Jewish, so the assassin may have believed that he was a member of the Illuminati or globalists without the anti-Semitic elements in the theory. Perhaps more information about the killer and his motives will come out later.

Whatever the killer’s motive, a leading Japanese politician has been killed and the country’s people are shock. I deeply sympathise with them in this hour, and wish them all the best following this act of terror.

Stop the War Coalition’s Day of Action Tomorrow

I got this email just this afternoon from Stop the War Coalition giving the details of the protests and demonstrations they’re holding against the war in Ukraine tomorrow. They’re almost entirely in England, but there is one in Glasgow for any Scots, who may wish to join in and another in Cardiff for the people of Wales. The email states

‘Tomorrow: International Day of Action for Peace in Ukraine

Towns and cities across the UK will be alive with anti-war activity tomorrow as part of the International Day of Action for Peace in Ukraine.

We are calling for the withdrawal of Russian troops in Ukraine, an end to the military escalation by NATO countries and for all efforts to be focused on finding a negotiated solution to the horrific war in the country.

A Scotland-wide demonstration is set to march through Glasgow and protests will also be taking place in Bournemouth, Brighton, Manchester and Newcastle.

Stalls and speak-outs have also been organised in over 30 locations. Find yours below…

Bath: Bath Abbey, 11:30am – 12:30pm

Bournemouth: Protest – Bournemouth Square, 2pm

Brighton: Protest – Brighton Clock Tower, 2pm

Cardiff: Queen St (near M&S), 2pm

Essex – Colchester: Stop the War Stall @ Climate Jobs Trades Council Event, Headgate Theatre, Chapel Street North, 11:30am-4pm

Essex – Harlow: Obelisk, Harlow Town Centre, 1-2pm

Hastings: Hastings Town Centre, 12-1pm

Huddersfield: Street stall and protest. Market Cross, Huddersfield Town Centre, HD1 2AA, 12.30 pm

Glasgow: Stop the War in Ukraine – Scotland National Demonstration, Assemble: 11:30am @ Blythswood Square

Leeds: Outside body shop, Briggate, 1:30-3:30pm

Lewes: Top of Cliff High Street, 12pm

London – Ealing: Ealing Broadway, Lloyds Bank, 12:30 – 2pm

London – Enfield: Enfield Town, Barclays Bank, 12pm

London – Hackney: Narrow Way, 2pm

London – Islington: Highbury & Islington Station, 12 – 2pm

London – Kentish Town: Kentish Town Station, 12 – 1:30pm

London – Lewisham: Lewisham Clock Tower, 11- 1pm

London – Newham: Opposite St John’s Church, 12-1:30pm

London – Walthamstow: Walthamstow Town Square, 1pm

Liverpool – Top of Church Street, 2-4pm

Milton Keynes- Outside M&S/opposite Civic Offices, 12pm

Manchester – Piccadilly Gardens, M1 1RN, 11am-1pm

Newcastle – Protest: Assemble, Grey’s Monument, 12 noon

Norwich: Speak Out: Haymarket, 2pm

Oxford: Bonn Square – Stall/Vigil/Mass Leafletting, 12-4:30pm

Portsmouth: Palmerston Rd Precinct, Southsea, 12pm

Plymouth: Sundial, Armada Way, 12pm

Sheffield: Sheffield Town Hall, 1pm

Shrewsbury: Pride Hill, 10:30am, 12pm

Southampton: The Bargate, High Street, 1-2pm

Swansea: Swansea Centre, 11:30-12:30pm

York: Shambles, York Town Centre, 12pm

Share the List of Events

We are asking all activists involved to upload pictures to social media and tag us @STWUK or use the hashtag #PeaceForUkraine

Please can you also email pictures to us at office@stopwar.org.uk if you would like your event included in the end of day report.

Do write to us and let us know how you get on!’

The email also includes notice of forthcoming protests in support of the Palestinians on the 14th May, and against the siting of nuclear weapons at Lakenheath on the 21st.

‘Protest for Palestine – Saturday 14 May

Join us on Sat 14th May to call for an end to Israel’s oppression and to assert the right of the Palestinian people to live in freedom with justice and equality.

The Palestinian people need our solidarity now more than ever.

Click Here for Full Details

Stop Nukes Coming to Lakenheath – 21st May

It has been revealed that Britain is to become the sixth country in Europe to host US nuclear weapons. The expected location: RAF Lakenheath, a US Air Force base in Suffolk – 70 miles from London.

Creating the conditions for siting American nuclear weapons in Britain puts us on the front line of a nuclear war. It is tantamount to painting a target on the back of everyone in this country.

We’re joining the CND protest at RAF Lakenheath on Sat 21 May. Transport is being organised from across the country. If you’d like to join us click the button below. 

Find Your Nearest Transport‘

Petition from Avaaz against War and Nuclear Weapons

I got the internet petition below from Avaaz last Tuesday. It’s on behalf of a number of world figures, including the Dalai Lama, various winners of the Nobel Peace Prize and an organisation of medical doctors against nuclear weapons, and it’s against the war in Ukraine and the threat of nuclear war. I’ve had absolutely no hesitation in signing it, and if you feel the same way I do, perhaps you will too. The petition runs

‘Dear friends,

His Holiness the Dalai Lama, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, and other Nobel Peace Prize Laureates have launched a historic call to reject war and nuclear weapons. Now they are asking Avaaz and citizens around the world to join them in protecting our planet.

Let’s all sign with one click and share now — when it’s huge, they will deliver our voices for peace to key leaders from the Russian Federation, NATO, and the media:

ADD YOUR NAME

Open Letter From Nobel Peace Prize Laureates and Citizens of the World Against War and Nuclear Weapons

We reject war and nuclear weapons . We call on all our fellow citizens of the world to join us in protecting our planet, home for all of us, from those who threaten to destroy it.

The invasion of Ukraine has created a humanitarian disaster for its people. The entire world is facing the greatest threat in history: a large-scale nuclear war, capable of destroying our civilization and causing vast ecological damage across the Earth.

We call for an immediate ceasefire and the withdrawal of all Russian military forces from Ukraine, and for all possible efforts at dialogue to prevent this ultimate disaster.

We call on Russia and NATO to explicitly renounce any use of nuclear weapons in this conflict, and we call on all countries to support the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons to ensure that we never again face a similar moment of nuclear danger.

The time to ban and eliminate nuclear weapons is now. It is the only way to guarantee that the inhabitants of the planet will be safe from this existential threat. 

It is either the end of nuclear weapons, or the end of us. 

We reject governance through imposition and threats, and we advocate for dialogue, coexistence and justice. 

A world without nuclear weapons is necessary and possible, and together we will build it. It is urgent that we give peace a chance.

ADD YOUR NAME

Signatories list of Nobel Peace Prize Laureates:

His Holiness The Dalai Lama (1989)
International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (1985)
International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (2017)
Juan Manuel Santos (2016)
Kailash Satyarthi (2014)
Leymah Gbowee (2011)
Tawakkul Karman (2011)
Muhammad Yunus (2006)
David Trimble (1998)
Jody Williams (1997)
Jose Ramos-Horta (1996)
Pugwash Conference on Science and World Affairs (1995)
Óscar Arias Sánchez (1987)
Lech Walesa (1983)
American Friends Service Committee (1947)
International Peace Bureau (1910)

This campaign is launched in collaboration with  IPPNW. Avaaz members have joined forces with many movements and activists to fight for difficult challenges in our time. IPPNW is a non-partisan federation of national medical groups in 55 countries, representing tens of thousands of doctors, medical students, other health workers, and has dedicated decades of time and energy to creating a more peaceful and secure world freed from the threat of nuclear annihilation and armed violence. Please join us today!

With hope and determination,

Michael, Chuck, Molly, Carlos, Huiting, Nax, Luis and the rest of the IPPNW and Avaaz team

More information:

Ukraine and the Threat of Nuclear War (The Nation) As Russia struggles in Ukraine, will Putin break the nuclear taboo? (The Guardian) Russian Forces Take Control of Europe’s Biggest Nuclear Plant After Shelling It (TIME) Why the world should not underestimate Vladimir Putin ‘going nuclear’ (Herald Sun) What the Cuban Missile Crisis can teach us about today’s Ukraine crisis (IPPNW)

Arise Festival Announce Line-Up and Agenda for Zoom Rally Today

I got an email yesterday from Arise, the festival of Labour left ideas, announcing their agenda and the speakers for their Zoom meeting this afternoon, ‘Making Another World Possible’. The email runs

Making Another World Possible – Agenda announced.

Register here // Share & invite here // Retweet here to spread the word.
Online event. Saturday March 5, 13.00-16.30.

Hello David

We are writing to announce the agenda for the major Making Another World Possible: An Internationalist Agenda for the Left & Labour event taking place this Saturday, which can be found below, with sessions on The Global Struggle for Climate & Vaccine Justice; Build voices for peace : No to war – no to nuclear weapons – refugees welcome here + a Women for peace, global justice & socialist change closing rally.

In the context of the increasingly dangerous times we live in, the whole event on March 5 (full details below) will be a key point to organise for an international agenda for justice and equality. Be there!

Yours in solidarity,
The Arise Festival volunteers.

EVENT AGENDA:

1pm-2.05pm
The Global Struggle for Climate & Vaccine Justice 

Diane Abbott MP
Jon Trickett MP
Gyekye Tanoh, Third World Solidarity Network, Ghana 
Nick Dearden, Global Justice Now
Asad Rehman, War on Want 
Chair: Mish Rahman, NEC & Momentum

2.15pm-3.20pm
Build voices for peace : No to war – no to nuclear weapons – refugees welcome here

Jeremy Corbyn MP
Richard Burgon MP
Jess Barnard, Young Labour Chair
Sophie Bolt, CND
Murad Qureshi, Stop the War Coalition
Sabby Dhalu, Stand Up to Racism
Chair: Matt Willgress, Labour Outlook

3.30-4.15pm
Closing Rally – Women for peace, global justice & socialist change #IWD2022

Jeremy Corbyn MP
Richard Burgon MP
Jess Barnard, Young Labour Chair
Sophie Bolt, CND
Murad Qureshi, Stop the War Coalition
Sabby Dhalu, Stand Up to Racism
Chair: Matt Willgress, Labour Outlook

Arise Festival Adding ‘No To War and Nuclear War’ to Online Event on Saturday

I got this email from the organisers of the Arise Festival of left wing ideas announcing that they are adding a session on peace and protesting against war to their online event, Making Another World Possible, on Saturday. The email says

‘No to war – no to nuclear weapons – build voices for peace ☮️

Register here // Share & invite here // Retweet here to spread the word.

Hello David

We are writing to announce further details for Saturday’s Making Another World Possible event, and in particular there will be a No to war – no to nuclear weapons – build voices for peace session featuring Jeremy Corbyn MP; Sophie Bolt, CND; Murad Qureshi, Stop the War Coalition & Jess Barnard, Young Labour Chair at 2.15pm.

In the context of the increasingly dangerous times we live in, the whole event on March 5 (full details below) will be a key point to organise for an international agenda for justice and equality. Be there!

Yours in solidarity,
The Arise Festival volunteers.‘

As far as I’m concerned, the only people in politics talking sense at the moment are the Labour left and people like Corbyn.

Starmer Attacks Corbyn and Stop the War Coalition; The Coalition Hits Back

With the threat of a confrontation between NATO and the Russians in Ukraine rising daily, I felt I had to put up this video. It’s from an interesting left-wing YouTube channel, Not The Andrew Marr Show, whose host wears the spangled jackets sported by game show entertainers of a certain vintage and who interviews some very interesting people. In this video he talks to Chris Nineham of Stop the War Coalition about an article Starmer has penned in the Guardian accusing Jeremy Corbyn and the Coalition of siding with NATO’s enemies. Nineham states that this resulted in an article in the New York Times, the most right-wing of Murdoch’s newspapers, praising the Labour leader. He also states that the coalition has received masses of support over the past few days, with new members flooding in and messages backing them piling up. He feels that the majority of British people don’t want war. As for NATO, he dismisses Starmer’s statement that NATO stands for freedom and democracy as illiterate. That isn’t what the invasion of Afghanistan was about, and it wasn’t what the Iraq invasion was all about. He also makes the point that Starmer has scored a point against himself, as Starmer claims that he marched against the Iraq War. Well, I realise that was nearly 20 years ago now, and that people can and do change their opinions. I’ve certainly changed mine, as I initially supported the invasion. But now, having read more about it, I’m convinced that the Coalition were absolutely right to oppose it. Just as they are right to oppose war in Ukraine. But Starmer’s opinions seem particularly flexible. I really wonder if he has any principles at all.

Nineham also makes the point that at the end of the Cold War NATO assured Gorbachev that they wouldn’t expand up to Russia’s borders. Which was immediately broken as a the former vassal states of the Soviet empire joined. Mike’s mentioned this in his blog post about this whole affair. Russia has for a long time had a fear of encirclement, dating back at least to the Communist era. When Communism collapsed in eastern Europe, Russia wanted an agreement whereby the former Communist countries remained neutral, respected by both parties, who would guarantee their independence and security.

And there’s much more that could be said. The Maidan Revolution of ten years ago wasn’t spontaneous, but run by Killary under Barack Obama and the National Endowment for Democracy, the non-governmental organisation the US government has outsourced regime change to after taking such murky affairs out of the hands of the CIA. They wanted the previous, pro-Russian president out, and a pro-western one in. Unfortunately, such covert schemes are only covered by radical YouTube channels like The Jimmy Dore Show and online conspiracy magazines like Lobster, so they’re easy to dismiss as conspiracy theories.

Mike in his blog post has said that there is much about the western arms build up that we haven’t been told. Like the stationing of nuclear-capable weapons. I’m sure he’s absolutely right. And I think some of our generals have been planning a confrontation like this for years. Way back c. 2015/16 a senior British general wrote a book predicting war between the west and Russia in Lithuania in 2017. Mercifully that didn’t happen, but it seems the threat and the theatre of war has simply moved south, away from the Baltic.

Nineham has also said that the Coalition has been inundated by people asking for news of local demonstrations. Well, we need them, even if our leaders look like they’re going to turn a deaf ear. Because all the talk about the use of nuclear weapons in Europe absolutely terrifies me. Putin’s a thug, and I don’t want the Russians to invade Ukraine. But I don’t want to see the world turned into a radioactive cinder just because of stupid geopolitics and the monstrous egotistical desire of Johnson and Biden to be seen as strong men countering the Russian threat.

Macron has got the right idea seeking a diplomatic solution.

At the moment it looks like Johnson and Biden’s sabre-rattling brings nothing but the threat of death and carnage.