Stephen Lendman

Nothing reveals Washington's imperial agenda better than its global empire of bases. Sixty-six years post-WW II, America maintains dozens in Germany, Japan, Italy, and South Korea alone.

In total, known Pentagon bases way exceed 1,000, as well as perhaps hundreds of other shared and secret ones in about 150 countries on every continent despite no enemies anywhere justifying them.

In his 2006 book, "Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic," Chalmers Johnson discussed the known numbers at the time by size and branch of service. He also highlighted the fallout, including oppressive noise, pollution, environmental destruction, expropriation of valuable public and private land, and drunken, disorderly, abusive soldiers committing rape, murder, and other crimes, often unpunished under provisions of US-imposed Status of Forces Agreements (SOFAs).

Currently, Pentagon bases infest Middle East/North African/Central Asian countries. In fact, at least 88 dot Iraq alone, including:

■ permanent, city-sized Main Operating Bases (MOBs); for example, Balad Air Base in northern Iraq covers 16 square miles plus another 12-mile security perimeter; these are large and permanent, have extensive infrastructure, command and control headquarters, accommodations for families in combat-free areas, hospitals, schools, recreational facilities, and nearly everything found in US cities; similar MOBs include Camp Adder in southern Iraq, Al-Asad Air Base in the west, and Victory Base Complex, compromising nine bases, including Camp Victory around Baghdad's International Airport;
■ Forward Operating Sites (FOSs), also major but smaller than MOBs; and
■ Cooperative Security Locations (CLSs) - smaller facilities to preposition weapons, munitions, and modest troop numbers.

These type bases span Afghanistan, besides ongoing expansion and construction of major facilities for permanent occupation.

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John Pilger
New Statesman

In Britain as in America, the object of training professionals in everything from banking to the media is to produce a class of “managers” who instinctively muffle dissent — even if no one tells them to do so.

One of the most original and provocative books of the past decade is Disciplined Minds by Jeff Schmidt (Rowman & Littlefield). "A critical look at salaried professionals," says the cover, "and the soul-battering system that shapes their lives." Its theme is postmodern America but also applies to Britain, where the corporate state has bred a new class of Americanised manager to run the private and public sectors: the banks, the main parties, corporations, the BBC.

Professionals are said to be meritorious and non-ideological. Yet, in spite of their education, writes Schmidt, they think less independently than non-professionals. They use corporate jargon - "model", "performance", "targets", "strategic oversight". In Disciplined Minds, Schmidt argues that what makes the modern professional is not technical knowledge but "ideological discipline". Those in higher education and the media do "political work" but in a way that is not seen as political. Listen to a senior BBC person sincerely describe the nirvana of neutrality to which he or she has risen. "Taking sides" is anathema; and yet the modern professional knows never to challenge the "built-in ideology of the status quo".

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Philip Giraldi

Americans have to make a hard decision on what kind of country they want to have.

The issue of Israel is of critical importance to the antiwar movement, as frequenters of this website are surely aware. This is because Israel and its lobby in the United States have succeeded in so intertwining their interests with those of the United States that whenever Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sneezes four hundred congressmen say “Gesundheit!” What Israel does has consequences for every American citizen, and not only because Tel Aviv is the largest recipient of US economic and military assistance. It is indisputable that Israel and its friends in the White House and Defense Department played a major role in creating the lies and generating the momentum in the drive to war against Iraq in 2002, a conflict that continues to claim American casualties and which has left Iraq in ruins. Now the push is on to “do something” about Iran. There have been a number of bills in Congress that stop just short of declaring war on the Mullahs and there are signs that the Israeli government might be planning a military action before the end of the summer. Does anyone doubt that the United States would immediately be drawn into such a conflict, with disastrous consequences in terms of a terrorist response and energy prices that would skyrocket? It would be a particular misfortune in that there is no actual evidence of the alleged casus belli that Iran has a nuclear weapons program, the US is not threatened by anything Tehran does or could possibly do, and John Citizen has absolutely nothing to gain and everything to lose by Washington going to war.

There were two stories last week that illustrate just how bad the situation has become in the wake of the virtual capitulation by President Barack Obama during Netanyahu’s triumphal May visit to Washington, the first time in recorded history that a small nation with less than eight million citizens has subjugated a much larger country with a population of more than 310 million.

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