Welcome to Dispatch #36! This week let’s connect the dots and talk about how the recent US interventions around the world are all part of the same project to maintain global control - from Greenland to Iran to Venezuela, we’ll break it all down in this week’s Deep Dive. Plus - how Iraq War veterans used guerilla street theater to protest the Iraq War, a brief history of False Flags, the art of clowning being used as a tool for healing, and more!
PS - this will be our last full-length Dispatch before moving to our new format. Next issue will be a shorter “Action & Resources” Dispatch, and we’ll be back with another original full length Dispatch at the end of next month. We’re making these changes to give us more bandwidth to provide quality education to you all!
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Easy Actions to Take
⏱~3min | (Worldwide) Help defend Puerto Rico and fight back against Project Esencia
Why: Project Esencia is a multi-million dollar development project in Puerto Rico that push out local families, deplete water supplies, threaten native wildlife, and destroy critical ecosystems in order to build mansions, gated communities, and private schools for the elite while increasing cost of living for local communities. More info here! Organized by: Organizaciones Contra Esencia
⏱~3min | (US Only) Get ICE Out Of Our Airports. Fund TSA!
Why: Following the murders of Keith Porter, Renée Good, Alex Pretti, and many others, Color Of Change supporters mobilized to call elected officials in Congress by the thousands. Now we must join together to tell them that ICE must leave, and TSA must be funded. The Senate actually passed a bill to fund the TSA, but Trump refused to sign it. We must keep the pressure on. Organized by: Color of Change
⏱~3min | (UK Only) Demand NHS cut ties with Palantir in London
Why: West and North London ICB is the largest ICB in England serving 4.5 million people, and NHS has just agreed to a contract with Palantir to support their Federated Data Platform. Palantir is instrumental in the construction of mass surveillance across the world and is actively facilitating military operations in the Global South. Organized by: Healthworkers 4 A Free Palestine
Little (Movement) Wins
How Veterans Brought the Iraq War Home
Activist History
By the spring of 2007, the United States had been at war in Iraq for four years. The public had been told the invasion would be quick, but by that point more than 3,500 American troops and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians had been killed, and the occupation had devolved into a grinding counterinsurgency defined by house raids, checkpoints, indefinite detention, and torture. Back home, most Americans went about their normal daily lives — shopping, commuting, watching TV — safely shielded from the visceral reality of what was happening in their name on the other side of the world.
A group of Iraq War veterans decided to change that.
Read more to learn about the origins of “Operation First Casualty” and what made it an effective form of protest.
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False Flag
The Conscious Citizens Dictionary
A false flag operation is an act committed with the intent of disguising the actual source of responsibility and pinning blame on another party, typically with the purpose of provoking war, changing public opinion, or other violent responses. The term originates from naval warfare, and was initially used by pirates, where a ship would fly the flag of a of neutral or enemy country to hide its true identity. It’s been well-established in the laws of war that using the false markings or uniforms is forbidden but that has not stopped the use of false flag operations as a tactic. Throughout history, false flags have been used as a tactic repeatedly as a pretext for war or to undermine political opponents.
Notable False Flags from history include:
- Russo-Swedish War - Swedish military, dressed in Russian uniforms, attacked their own outpost at Puumala in 1788 which caused outrage in Stockholm and persuaded the Riksdag of the Estates to allow King Gustav III to launch the Russo-Swedish War
- The Gleiwitz Incident - Reinhard Heydrich, a high ranking SS officer from Nazi Germany, fabricated evidence of a Polish attack against Germany to mobilize German public opinion for war and to justify the war against Poland. They dressed Nazi concentration camp victims in German uniforms, then shot them, and blamed it on Poland which mobilized German public opinion to start World War 2.
- The Mukden Incident - the Imperial Japanese army blew up a small part of Japan’s South Manchuria railway, and despite barely doing damage, the Japanese army blamed Chinese dissidents and used it as an excuse to invade and occupy Manchuria.
- Operation Northwoods - a failed false flag incident in 1962 where the US government planned to fabricate shooting down US military planes, a US ship, and sinking a boat of Cuban refugees and blame it on Fidel Castro’s communist government in Cuba to justify his overthrow.
- Operation TPAJAX - In 1953, the CIA was attempting to undermine the government of democratically elected Iranian president Mohammad Mosaddegh. They planned to bomb mosques and key public figures and blame it one Communists loyal to the government.
- The Lavon Affair - In 1954, a group of Egyptian Jews (recruited by Israel’s Mossad) planned Egyptian, American, and British owned targets and blame it on the Muslim Brotherhood in order to prevent the British government from removing their troops who were occupying the Suez Canal.
The Project for the Next American Century
Deep Dive
What’s the thread that connects the war with Iran, the kidnapping of Venezuelan President Maduro, threats against Greenland, and the oil blockade of Cuba? Like most things American, if you want the answer you have to follow the money. Once we do, it becomes clear that the US’s recent aggressions aren’t the random actions of a power-drunk madman. It’s a fight for survival.
This essay is about the system the United States uses to maintain its financial and cultural dominance around the globe, and the new challenger, China, that is threatening to rewrite the world order entirely.
To understand how we got here, we have to go back in time a bit.
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Conscious Creatives: Patch Adams
Patch Adams is a world-famous American clown, physician, activist, and author who has spent over 50 years revolutionizing the medical field by combining healthcare with humor. Widely considered the first “clown doctor,” he has spent 50+ years helping hospitalized children (and also adults) with the positive power of humor and hope. As a young man, he struggled with depression and suicidal thoughts. After the third hospitalization in a year, he decided "you don't kill yourself, stupid; you make revolution.” In medical school he put on a red clown nose and colorful outfits to incorporate laughter and joy into the healing process, convinced of the intimate connection between wellness and the environment. In 1971 he founded the Gesundheit! Institute, a holistic medical community where visits were free, appointments lasted hours, and laughter was considered as essential as any prescription.
For decades, he’s organized international volunteer trips where people from all over the world — from Colombia to Morocco to Japan — dress as clowns and travel to hospitals, orphanages, refugee camps, and war zones to offer suffering people something no insurance policy covers: presence, play, and the dignity of being seen. His work continuously insists that joy isn’t a privilege for the comfortable — it’s a human right worth fighting for. Through his life, Patch boldly reminds us that compassion is an integral tool for building a brighter collective future, and the most subversive form of resistance we can do in a world designed to make us numb is to continue to choose, again and again, to lead with our hearts.
Resources & Tools
Here are some recent adds to the directory. Please share these links with anyone that might find them helpful:
- 📓 Digital Security While Traveling Guide | A guide on how to protect your data when you are traveling internationally and crossing borders.
- 📓 Digital Security for Protesters & Organizers Guide | A comprehensive guide for protestors, organizers, and other activists to protect our data from prying eyes before, during, and after an action.
- 📓 How to Use Your Federal Taxes to Resist War | A 5-step guide written by the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee to help Americans decide if tax resistance is right for them and how to proceed if so.
- 📓 Critical Media Literacy Tips for the Digital Age | A collection of media literacy tips and frameworks to help you determine what is true, different types of truth, and what is mis/disinformation in the modern media landscape.
➡️ Explore More on our Directory!
Know any resources that you think would be a great add to our directory? Share it with us! (We only see so much from our corner of the world)
If you're new here, don't forget to sign up to get full access to our directory and free newsletters sent to your inbox every other Sunday. Till next time, do your best and take it one day at a time. Care for yourself and the people around you. Believe that the world can be better than it is now. Never give up. And remember, you're not alone. We always have each other.
With Love & Light,
Elisa & Ray
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