That's how I felt in 2012. It's why I voted for Obama. This time, I would
love to believe that Bernie is right, that there really are a lot of people
who will respond to his economic message and organize. I especially would
like to believe that after hearing pieces of Scott Walker's speech on
Democracy Now. Listening to someone like that is truly a shock to my system.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Tuesday, July 14, 2015 10:29 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: What Are Foreign Military Bases For?
Well, I don't see any individual getting us out of the mess we're in.
But as I've said, I'm involving myself in the Two-Headed Monster's Party
because there really isn't any other game in town. I can support Bernie and
still agree that if he won he could do little to change things. But he
might make life some better for the working class. Whether that is
productive toward eventually setting this current government aside, or not.
But we blind folks and especially we older blind folk have no dog in this
fight. We might as well poke around and see what happens.
At least until we can join forces in a real change.
Carl Jarvis
On 7/14/15, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Ah Carl, you have a soft spot in your heart for Bernie. I do understand.rally me.
But
remember what you've said in the past about how the ruling class runs
things and the President, whoever, he or she is, just does their
bidding? Would Bernie be able to deal with the Neo Cons, the
Pentagon, and the Israel Lobby?
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Tuesday, July 14, 2015 8:32 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: What Are Foreign Military Bases For?
Miriam,
I've pretty much stopped listening to political speeches, too. Mostly
it's hype to rally the forces. I don't need rallying by the people I
support, and no matter how hard they try, those people I oppose will never
But I listened to Bernie this morning just to see how he's packaginghis head.
his campaign. I listened and began smiling. Bernie was sounding a
lot like the old Hubert Humphrey harangues, rallying the Working Class
and giving no quarters to the Elite.
Bernie is a long way from perfect, but with support from the "bubbling
up grass roots", he just might make a decent president.
Carl Jarvis
On 7/14/15, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
No presidential candidate talks about disability rights. We're not
an important enough constituency. As for listening to political
speeches, I tend not to. I understand that Bernie is doing political
organizing and I do, occasionally, read summries of what he's said,
jusst to see if there's been a change.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl
Jarvis
Sent: Tuesday, July 14, 2015 10:49 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] What Are Foreign Military Bases For?
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
The U.S.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)2001.
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,
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.
States.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
protest.military to protect nuclear weapons.likely.
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
The drone war on Yemen that was labeled a success by President Obamadisastrous.
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
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
Sicily.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
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
The U.S."Nonetheless, they each pose serious security concerns," it said.one:
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
Smedley Butler's proposed rule that the U.S. military be forbidden2001.
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,
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.
States.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
protest.military to protect nuclear weapons.likely.
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
The drone war on Yemen that was labeled a success by President Obamadisastrous.
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
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
Sicily.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
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
"Nonetheless, they each pose serious security concerns," it said.one:
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
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
