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Raging Against The War Machine In Maine

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Yesterday’s gatherings to rage against the war machine in Maine were among the most interesting I’ve organized. Not only did we get a bunch of new people to fill in the ranks of those missing because they only oppose wars when a Republican is in the White House, but our participants were from a broad range of political parties and tendencies: Green Independent Party of Maine, Communist Party of Maine, Libertarian Party of Maine, and independents were all represented.

Two people said they were Republicans, while two others told me (separately) that they were registered Democrats but did not feel like the party represented their interests and were planning to unenroll.

One person came from New Hampshire to join us, while two others had come up from NYC as one of them has ties to Waterville, Maine.

Professors from the Maine College of Art in Portland and Colby College in Waterville were with us, plus someone who works at the University of New England.

Our messaging was varied and most signs or banners played on one of the nine demands we were organized around for raging on February 19:

Not One More Penny for War in Ukraine

Negotiate Peace

Stop the War Inflation

Disband NATO

Global Nuclear De-escalation

Slash the Pentagon Budget

Abolish War and Empire

Restore Civil Liberties

Free Julian Assange

In addition we had a sign made the night before at my house calling out the Biden administration on revelations by investigative reporter Sy Hersh that the Nordstream pipelines were bombed by U.S. and NATO nations working together under cover of so-called “war games.”

I saw another good sign on this theme in the coverage of the Rage event in Washington DC.

Estimates of that crowd range from 3,000-5,000 (crowds are notoriously hard to count). We had 20 in Bath and 15 in Westbrook, with some overlap. Many of the groups represented said their members had traveled to DC for the bigger rally. Honestly, as an anti-war organizer in Maine, I’m please when we have attendance in the double digits.

We also received coverage from Maine Public Radio and I just finished a follow-up radio interview this morning with the Ric Tyler/George Perry Show. Those two media outlets in Maine are as far apart ideologically as our group was. However, since the corporate media ignores us in these days of draconian narrative control, I’m willing to spread our message on whichever platforms are available. (Just to be clear, I don’t align politically with either of those media outlets.)

What’s next? March 18 is the date we agreed to meet again in Westbrook, where response was positive from many of the hundreds of cars that drove by in an hour.

Want to join us next time? Leave your email address in the comments and we’ll be in touch. Because we don’t have to agree on everything to stand together against the real possibility of a nuclear World War 3.

Why I Will Be Raging Against The War Machine On Feb 19

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First off I just have to share the exciting news that my blog has an imposter! I consider this a great compliment in the sense that my contributions to a sane narrative on U.S. wars in general and the war in Ukraine in particular is a threat to the mainstream narrative managers. FBI? CIA? NSA? Who really knows. I usually think of my communications efforts as being small scale enough to fly under the radar, but this indicates that, as of September 2022, that’s no longer the case. Yay!

It’s been a great week overall as I had a very nice note from a board member at Bread & Puppet appreciating my letter to the editor defending B&P’s political theater and shining some light into the abyss of liberal support for the U.S./NATO war in Ukraine.

But there has also been a whole lot of pushback this week on my having organized a Feb 19 “Rage Against the War Machine” event in Maine where I live.

So far the cogent objections to the rally in DC that I have seen are:

o Libertarians are too racist to stand with against war. (If I accepted this I would have to cease doing much of anything political in Maine because there are many Libertarians among us.)

o Organizers failed to add anti-racist demands.

o Organizers failed to add bodily autonomy demands. Have seen this in connection with both pro-abortion and anti-vax activists. 

o Some speakers are unacceptable. Probably the most high profile (at least today) is on again, off again, on again, off again Scott Ritter. Arguably the loudest voice against NATO’s war on Russia, Ritter is again being smeared with bogus claims he is a twice convicted pedophile. My response:

Ritter is to “pedophile” as Julian Assange is to “rapist.”

At our Maine event co-sponsored by Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space, Maine Natural Guard, Peaceworks of Greater Brunswick, Communist Party of Maine, Libertarian Party of Maine, Maine Green Independent Party, and People’s Party of Maine, we will share the demands of the national event:

At our event, there will be no speakers. We are instead standing with signs and banners in two different busy intersections. We will be standing with folks who belong to groups that I dislike and strongly disagree with, for example, Democrats. 

With WW3 underway and the distinct threat of it turning nuclear, I am willing to do that. 

My fave blogger Caitlin Johnstone had this to say about the Feb 19 coalition controversy:

This evening I’ll be standing against racism in Portland in response to vicious attacks and threats against some Black leaders in our beloved community. I’ll be standing with a lot of people who are so confused that they support the war in Ukraine. Oh well. May they eventually come to see the light.

Corporate media will try very, very hard to make sure that they don’t. That’s why New Yorker magazine, the New York Times, and the Washington Post wouldn’t publish Seymour Hersch’s historic article about how the U.S. blew up the NordStream pipelines with Norway’s help, and they also won’t report on the article other than to say the White House is denying it. To discredit him, corporate media is dragging out all sorts of deep fakes like, Hersch also denied (correctly) that Syria used chemical weapons on its own people.

Hersch won a Pulitzer Prize for his expose of the My Lai massacre, and also broke the story on torture by U.S. Army personnel at Abu Graib prison in Iraq.

But now I expect we will soon be hearing about some sort of sex crime Hersch is alleged to have committed. Stay tuned.