This morning on Flash Point, Bernie Sanders spoke for an hour. The
speech was recorded in Wisconsin, before a large crowd. The two items
missing on his otherwise Stirling speech was any discussion regarding
Disability Rights, and our Foreign Policy. We need to take Bernie at
his word and get some major grass roots push going on turning his
head.
You might be able to hear the entire speech by going to:
90.7 KSER | Independent Public Radio
www.kser.org/
The program is called, Flash Point. It would be on Tuesday, July 14.
Result details
KSER
Mornings and Afternoons on KSER ... Democracy Now! is a daily
progressive, nonprofit, independently syndicated news hour that airs
on more than 1,250 radio,
television, satellite channels. >
*************
US Marines in Kuwait. (photo: US Navy)
What Are Foreign Military Bases For?
By David Swanson, David Swanson's Blog
13 July 15
If you're like most people in the United States, you have a vague awareness
that the U.S. military keeps lots of troops permanently stationed on
foreign
bases around the world. But have you ever wondered and really investigated
to find out how many, and where exactly, and at what cost, and to what
purpose, and in terms of what relationship with the host nations?
A wonderfully researched new book, six years in the works, answers these
questions in a manner you'll find engaging whether you've ever asked them
or
not. It's called Base Nation: How U.S. Military Bases Harm America and the
World, by David Vine.
Some 800 bases with hundreds of thousands of troops in some 70 nations,
plus
all kinds of other "trainers" and "non-permanent" exercises that last
indefinitely, maintain an ongoing U.S. military presence around the world
for a price tag of at least $100 billion a year.
Why they do this is a harder question to answer.
Even if you think there is some reason to be able to quickly deploy
thousands of U.S. troops to any spot on earth, airplanes now make that as
easily done from the United States as from Korea or Japan or Germany or
Italy.
It costs dramatically more to keep troops in those other countries, and
while some base defenders make a case for economic philanthropy, the
evidence is that local economies actually benefit little -- and suffer
little when a base leaves. Neither does the U.S. economy benefit, of
course.
Rather, certain privileged contractors benefit, along with those
politicians
whose campaigns they fund. And if you think military spending is
unaccountable at home, you should check out bases abroad where it's none
too
rare to have security guards employed purely to guard cooks whose sole job
is to feed the security guards. The military has a term for any common
SNAFU, and the term for this one is "self-licking ice cream."
The bases, in many cases, generate an enormous amount of popular resentment
and hatred, serving as motivations for attacks on the bases themselves or
elsewhere -- famously including the attacks of September 11, 2001.
Bases around the borders of Russia and China are generating new hostility
and arms races, and even proposals by Russia and China to open foreign
bases
of their own. Currently all non-U.S. foreign bases in the world total no
more than 30, with most of those belonging to close U.S. allies, and not a
single one of them being in or anywhere near the United States, which would
of course be considered an outrage.
Many U.S. bases are hosted by brutal dictatorships. An academic study has
identified a strong U.S. tendency to defend dictatorships where the United
States has bases. A glance at a newspaper will tell you the same. Crimes in
Bahrain are not equal to crimes in Iran. In fact, when brutal and
undemocratic governments currently hosting U.S. bases (in, for example,
Honduras, Aruba, Curaçao, Mauritania, Liberia, Niger, Burkina Faso, Central
African Republic, Chad, Egypt, Mozambique, Burundi, Kenya, Uganda,
Ethiopia,
Djibouti, Yemen, Qatar, Oman, UAE, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan,
Israel, Turkey, Georgia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Thailand, Cambodia, or
Singapore) are protested, there is a pattern of increased U.S. support for
the government, which makes eviction of the U.S. bases all the more likely
should the government fall, which fuels a vicious cycle that increases
popular resentment of the U.S. government. The U.S. began building new
bases
in Honduras shortly after the 2009 coup.
Vine also tells a troubling story of the U.S. military's alliance with the
Camorra (the mafia) in Naples, Italy, a relationship that has lasted from
World War II to the present, and which fueled the rise of the Camorra -- a
group reportedly deemed reliable enough by the U.S. military to protect
nuclear weapons.
The smaller bases that don't house tens of thousands of troops, but
secretive death squads or drones, have a tendency to make wars more likely.
The drone war on Yemen that was labeled a success by President Obama last
year has helped fuel a larger war.
In fact, I want to quibble with Vine's account of the birth of Base Nation,
because I think the facilitation of the worst war ever was involved. Vine
gives the history of the U.S. bases in Native American lands, starting in
1785 and very much alive today in the language of U.S. troops abroad in
"Indian territory." But then Vine dates the birth of the modern base empire
to September 2, 1940, when President Franklin Roosevelt traded Britain old
ships in exchange for various Caribbean, Bermudan, and Canadian bases to be
used in or after the war he was supposedly not planning on. But I'd like to
back the clock up a little.
When FDR visited Pearl Harbor (not actually part of the United States) on
July 28, 1934, the Japanese military expressed apprehension. General
Kunishiga Tanaka wrote in the Japan Advertiser, objecting to the build-up
of
the American fleet and the creation of additional bases in Alaska and the
Aleutian Islands (also not part of the United States): "Such insolent
behavior makes us most suspicious. It makes us think a major disturbance is
purposely being encouraged in the Pacific. This is greatly regretted."
Then, in March 1935, Roosevelt bestowed Wake Island on the U.S. Navy and
gave Pan Am Airways a permit to build runways on Wake Island, Midway
Island,
and Guam. Japanese military commanders announced that they were disturbed
and viewed these runways as a threat. So did peace activists in the United
States. By the next month, Roosevelt had planned war games and maneuvers
near the Aleutian Islands and Midway Island. By the following month, peace
activists were marching in New York advocating friendship with Japan.
Norman
Thomas wrote in 1935: "The Man from Mars who saw how men suffered in the
last war and how frantically they are preparing for the next war, which
they
know will be worse, would come to the conclusion that he was looking at the
denizens of a lunatic asylum." The Japanese attacked Wake Island four days
after attacking Pearl Harbor.
In any case, Vine points to the uniqueness of World War II as a war that
has
never been ended, even after the Cold War was said to have ended. Why have
the troops never come home? Why have they continued to spread their forts
into "Indian Territory," until the U.S. has more foreign bases than any
other empire in history, even as the era of conquering territory has ended,
even as a significant segment of the population has ceased thinking of
"Indians" and other foreigners as subhuman beasts without rights worthy of
respecting?
One reason, well-documented by Vine, is the same reason that the huge U.S.
base at Guantanamo, Cuba, is used to imprison people without trials. By
preparing for wars in foreign locations, the U.S. is often able to evade
all
kinds of legal restrictions -- including on labor and the environment, not
to mention prostitution. GIs occupying Germany referred to rape as
"liberating a blonde," and the sexual disaster area surrounding U.S. bases
has continued to this day, despite the decision in 1945 to start sending
families to live with soldiers -- a policy that now includes shipping each
soldier's entire worldly possessions including automobiles around the world
with them, not to mention providing single-payer healthcare and twice the
spending on schooling as the national average back home. Prostitutes
serving
U.S. bases in South Korea and elsewhere are often virtually slaves. The
Philippines, which has had U.S. "help" as long as anyone, provides the most
contractor staff for U.S. bases, cooking , cleaning, and everything else --
as well as likely the most prostitutes imported to other countries, like
South Korea.
The most isolated and lawless base sites include locations from which the
U.S. military evicted the local population. These include bases in Diego
Garcia, Greenland, Alaska, Hawaii, Panama, Puerto Rico, the Marshall
Islands, Guam, the Philippines, Okinawa, and South Korea -- with people
evicted as recently as 2006 in South Korea.
In hundreds of other sites where the population was not evicted, it might
wish it had been. Foreign bases have been environmentally disastrous.
Open-air burns, unexploded weaponry, poisons leaked into the ground water
--
these are all commonplace. A jet fuel leak at Kirkland Air Force Base in
Albuquerque, N.M., started in 1953 and was discovered in 1999, and was more
than twice the size of the Exxon Valdez spill. U.S. bases within the United
States have been environmentally devastating, but not on the scale of those
in some foreign lands. A plane taking off from Diego Garcia to bomb
Afghanistan in 2001 crashed and sank to the bottom of the ocean with some
85
hundred-pound munitions. Even ordinary base life takes a toll; U.S. troops
produce over three times the garbage each as local residents in, for
example, Okinawa.
Disregard for people and the land and the sea is built into the very idea
of
foreign bases. The United States would never tolerate another nation's base
within its borders, yet imposes them on Okinawans, South Koreans, Italians,
Filipinos, Iraqis, and others despite huge protest. Vine took some of his
students to meet with an official at the U.S. State Department, Kevin
Maher,
who explained to them that U.S. bases in Japan were concentrated in Okinawa
because it was "the Puerto Rico of Japan" where people have "darker skin,"
are "shorter," and have an "accent."
Base Nation is a book that should be read -- and its maps seen -- by
everyone. I wish Vine did not write "Russia's seizure of Crimea" when
referring to a free and open and legal vote, especially in the context of a
book about military bases. And I wish he did not only use selfish points of
reference in terms of financial tradeoffs. Of course the United States
could
be transformed for the better with the redirection of military spending,
but
the United States and the world both could be. It's that much money.
But this book will be an invaluable resource for years to come. It also
includes, I should note, an excellent account of some of the resistance
struggles that have in some cases shut bases down or scaled them back. It's
worth noting that just this week, in the first of two necessary rulings, an
Italian court has ruled for the people, against the U.S. Navy's
construction
of communications equipment in Sicily.
Just this month, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff published "The National
Military Strategy of the United States of America -- 2015." It gave as
justification for militarism lies about four countries, beginning with
Russia, which it accused of "using force to achieve its goals," something
the Pentagon would never do! Next it lied that Iran was "pursuing" nuclear
weapons, a claim for which there is no evidence. Next it claimed that North
Korea's nukes would someday "threaten the U.S. homeland." Finally, it
asserted that China was "adding tension to the Asia-Pacific region." This
"Strategy" admitted that none of the four nations wanted war with the
United
States. "Nonetheless, they each pose serious security concerns," it said.
So, one might add, does each of the U.S. foreign bases. Vine's book ends
with some excellent proposals for change, to which I would add only one:
Smedley Butler's proposed rule that the U.S. military be forbidden to
travel
more than 200 miles from the United States.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not
valid.
US Marines in Kuwait. (photo: US Navy)
http://davidswanson.org/node/4825http://davidswanson.org/node/4825
What Are Foreign Military Bases For?
By David Swanson, David Swanson's Blog
13 July 15
f you're like most people in the United States, you have a vague awareness
that the U.S. military keeps lots of troops permanently stationed on
foreign
bases around the world. But have you ever wondered and really investigated
to find out how many, and where exactly, and at what cost, and to what
purpose, and in terms of what relationship with the host nations?
A wonderfully researched new book, six years in the works, answers these
questions in a manner you'll find engaging whether you've ever asked them
or
not. It's called Base Nation: How U.S. Military Bases Harm America and the
World, by David Vine.
Some 800 bases with hundreds of thousands of troops in some 70 nations,
plus
all kinds of other "trainers" and "non-permanent" exercises that last
indefinitely, maintain an ongoing U.S. military presence around the world
for a price tag of at least $100 billion a year.
Why they do this is a harder question to answer.
Even if you think there is some reason to be able to quickly deploy
thousands of U.S. troops to any spot on earth, airplanes now make that as
easily done from the United States as from Korea or Japan or Germany or
Italy.
It costs dramatically more to keep troops in those other countries, and
while some base defenders make a case for economic philanthropy, the
evidence is that local economies actually benefit little -- and suffer
little when a base leaves. Neither does the U.S. economy benefit, of
course.
Rather, certain privileged contractors benefit, along with those
politicians
whose campaigns they fund. And if you think military spending is
unaccountable at home, you should check out bases abroad where it's none
too
rare to have security guards employed purely to guard cooks whose sole job
is to feed the security guards. The military has a term for any common
SNAFU, and the term for this one is "self-licking ice cream."
The bases, in many cases, generate an enormous amount of popular resentment
and hatred, serving as motivations for attacks on the bases themselves or
elsewhere -- famously including the attacks of September 11, 2001.
Bases around the borders of Russia and China are generating new hostility
and arms races, and even proposals by Russia and China to open foreign
bases
of their own. Currently all non-U.S. foreign bases in the world total no
more than 30, with most of those belonging to close U.S. allies, and not a
single one of them being in or anywhere near the United States, which would
of course be considered an outrage.
Many U.S. bases are hosted by brutal dictatorships. An academic study has
identified a strong U.S. tendency to defend dictatorships where the United
States has bases. A glance at a newspaper will tell you the same. Crimes in
Bahrain are not equal to crimes in Iran. In fact, when brutal and
undemocratic governments currently hosting U.S. bases (in, for example,
Honduras, Aruba, Curaçao, Mauritania, Liberia, Niger, Burkina Faso, Central
African Republic, Chad, Egypt, Mozambique, Burundi, Kenya, Uganda,
Ethiopia,
Djibouti, Yemen, Qatar, Oman, UAE, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan,
Israel, Turkey, Georgia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Thailand, Cambodia, or
Singapore) are protested, there is a pattern of increased U.S. support for
the government, which makes eviction of the U.S. bases all the more likely
should the government fall, which fuels a vicious cycle that increases
popular resentment of the U.S. government. The U.S. began building new
bases
in Honduras shortly after the 2009 coup.
Vine also tells a troubling story of the U.S. military's alliance with the
Camorra (the mafia) in Naples, Italy, a relationship that has lasted from
World War II to the present, and which fueled the rise of the Camorra -- a
group reportedly deemed reliable enough by the U.S. military to protect
nuclear weapons.
The smaller bases that don't house tens of thousands of troops, but
secretive death squads or drones, have a tendency to make wars more likely.
The drone war on Yemen that was labeled a success by President Obama last
year has helped fuel a larger war.
In fact, I want to quibble with Vine's account of the birth of Base Nation,
because I think the facilitation of the worst war ever was involved. Vine
gives the history of the U.S. bases in Native American lands, starting in
1785 and very much alive today in the language of U.S. troops abroad in
"Indian territory." But then Vine dates the birth of the modern base empire
to September 2, 1940, when President Franklin Roosevelt traded Britain old
ships in exchange for various Caribbean, Bermudan, and Canadian bases to be
used in or after the war he was supposedly not planning on. But I'd like to
back the clock up a little.
When FDR visited Pearl Harbor (not actually part of the United States) on
July 28, 1934, the Japanese military expressed apprehension. General
Kunishiga Tanaka wrote in the Japan Advertiser, objecting to the build-up
of
the American fleet and the creation of additional bases in Alaska and the
Aleutian Islands (also not part of the United States): "Such insolent
behavior makes us most suspicious. It makes us think a major disturbance is
purposely being encouraged in the Pacific. This is greatly regretted."
Then, in March 1935, Roosevelt bestowed Wake Island on the U.S. Navy and
gave Pan Am Airways a permit to build runways on Wake Island, Midway
Island,
and Guam. Japanese military commanders announced that they were disturbed
and viewed these runways as a threat. So did peace activists in the United
States. By the next month, Roosevelt had planned war games and maneuvers
near the Aleutian Islands and Midway Island. By the following month, peace
activists were marching in New York advocating friendship with Japan.
Norman
Thomas wrote in 1935: "The Man from Mars who saw how men suffered in the
last war and how frantically they are preparing for the next war, which
they
know will be worse, would come to the conclusion that he was looking at the
denizens of a lunatic asylum." The Japanese attacked Wake Island four days
after attacking Pearl Harbor.
In any case, Vine points to the uniqueness of World War II as a war that
has
never been ended, even after the Cold War was said to have ended. Why have
the troops never come home? Why have they continued to spread their forts
into "Indian Territory," until the U.S. has more foreign bases than any
other empire in history, even as the era of conquering territory has ended,
even as a significant segment of the population has ceased thinking of
"Indians" and other foreigners as subhuman beasts without rights worthy of
respecting?
One reason, well-documented by Vine, is the same reason that the huge U.S.
base at Guantanamo, Cuba, is used to imprison people without trials. By
preparing for wars in foreign locations, the U.S. is often able to evade
all
kinds of legal restrictions -- including on labor and the environment, not
to mention prostitution. GIs occupying Germany referred to rape as
"liberating a blonde," and the sexual disaster area surrounding U.S. bases
has continued to this day, despite the decision in 1945 to start sending
families to live with soldiers -- a policy that now includes shipping each
soldier's entire worldly possessions including automobiles around the world
with them, not to mention providing single-payer healthcare and twice the
spending on schooling as the national average back home. Prostitutes
serving
U.S. bases in South Korea and elsewhere are often virtually slaves. The
Philippines, which has had U.S. "help" as long as anyone, provides the most
contractor staff for U.S. bases, cooking , cleaning, and everything else --
as well as likely the most prostitutes imported to other countries, like
South Korea.
The most isolated and lawless base sites include locations from which the
U.S. military evicted the local population. These include bases in Diego
Garcia, Greenland, Alaska, Hawaii, Panama, Puerto Rico, the Marshall
Islands, Guam, the Philippines, Okinawa, and South Korea -- with people
evicted as recently as 2006 in South Korea.
In hundreds of other sites where the population was not evicted, it might
wish it had been. Foreign bases have been environmentally disastrous.
Open-air burns, unexploded weaponry, poisons leaked into the ground water
--
these are all commonplace. A jet fuel leak at Kirkland Air Force Base in
Albuquerque, N.M., started in 1953 and was discovered in 1999, and was more
than twice the size of the Exxon Valdez spill. U.S. bases within the United
States have been environmentally devastating, but not on the scale of those
in some foreign lands. A plane taking off from Diego Garcia to bomb
Afghanistan in 2001 crashed and sank to the bottom of the ocean with some
85
hundred-pound munitions. Even ordinary base life takes a toll; U.S. troops
produce over three times the garbage each as local residents in, for
example, Okinawa.
Disregard for people and the land and the sea is built into the very idea
of
foreign bases. The United States would never tolerate another nation's base
within its borders, yet imposes them on Okinawans, South Koreans, Italians,
Filipinos, Iraqis, and others despite huge protest. Vine took some of his
students to meet with an official at the U.S. State Department, Kevin
Maher,
who explained to them that U.S. bases in Japan were concentrated in Okinawa
because it was "the Puerto Rico of Japan" where people have "darker skin,"
are "shorter," and have an "accent."
Base Nation is a book that should be read -- and its maps seen -- by
everyone. I wish Vine did not write "Russia's seizure of Crimea" when
referring to a free and open and legal vote, especially in the context of a
book about military bases. And I wish he did not only use selfish points of
reference in terms of financial tradeoffs. Of course the United States
could
be transformed for the better with the redirection of military spending,
but
the United States and the world both could be. It's that much money.
But this book will be an invaluable resource for years to come. It also
includes, I should note, an excellent account of some of the resistance
struggles that have in some cases shut bases down or scaled them back. It's
worth noting that just this week, in the first of two necessary rulings, an
Italian court has ruled for the people, against the U.S. Navy's
construction
of communications equipment in Sicily.
Just this month, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff published "The National
Military Strategy of the United States of America -- 2015." It gave as
justification for militarism lies about four countries, beginning with
Russia, which it accused of "using force to achieve its goals," something
the Pentagon would never do! Next it lied that Iran was "pursuing" nuclear
weapons, a claim for which there is no evidence. Next it claimed that North
Korea's nukes would someday "threaten the U.S. homeland." Finally, it
asserted that China was "adding tension to the Asia-Pacific region." This
"Strategy" admitted that none of the four nations wanted war with the
United
States. "Nonetheless, they each pose serious security concerns," it said.
So, one might add, does each of the U.S. foreign bases. Vine's book ends
with some excellent proposals for change, to which I would add only one:
Smedley Butler's proposed rule that the U.S. military be forbidden to
travel
more than 200 miles from the United States.
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
