Global

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.

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Chinese security forces wrapped black bags over
the heads of handcuffed "jihad" Uighur passengers onboard their forced
flight from Bangkok, and frogmarched them onto the tarmac in China
toward detention after Thailand's coup leader said he expelled the 109
refugees because they would breed like animals if allowed to stay.

"A total of 109 illegal immigrants, who were repatriated from Thailand
to China on Thursday (July 9), had been on their way to Turkey, Syria
or Iraq to join jihad, the Ministry of Public Security confirmed,"
China's official Xinhua news agency reported.

"Several recruitment gangs were uncovered in Turkey by a Chinese
police investigation, which also discovered that Turkish diplomats in
some Southeast Asian countries had facilitated the illegal movement of
people," it said.

"Of the 109 individuals returned to China this week, 13 had fled China
after being implicated in terrorist activities, and another two had
escaped detention," Xinhua said, quoting the Public Security Ministry.

More importantly, Read Mumia. His new book is called Writing on the Wall: Selected Prison Writings of Mumia Abu-Jamal, and it includes commentaries by Mumia from 1982 through 2014. Mumia went ahead and made his prison a school -- a school in history, in politics, and in morality. And his own moral teaching is primarily by example. He teaches the liberating lesson that, if you so choose, you can know right now that never ever will anyone be able to beat you down. You can be cheerful for the rest of your life and rest completely assured that nothing can ever take that away.

“Officials in France and in Brussels said on Monday that they were unhappy and dumbfounded with the no vote, but let it be known that they would hold the door open to the possibility of a compromise between Greece and its creditors.”

Dumbfounded? Why? Because the godlike power of the creditors was insulted?

Mainstream coverage of economic matters — the above quote is from the New York Times — seldom cuts very deep into the world of money, seldom questions who’s in charge, and seldom dares to suggest that an economic system ought to serve humankind rather than vice versa.

I just read what may be the best introduction to peace studies I’ve ever seen. It’s called Peace Lessons, and is a new book by Timothy Braatz. It’s not too fast or too slow, neither obscure nor boring. It does not drive the reader away from activism toward meditation and “inner peace,” but begins with and maintains a focus on activism and effective strategy for revolutionary change in the world on the scale that is needed. As you may be gathering, I’ve read some similar books about which I had major complaints.

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Bangkok's coup-installed regime is considering
the purchase of three attack submarines from China for $1 billion,
after Thailand received exclusive anti-submarine warfare training from
the U.S. Navy's Seventh Fleet.

"We won't keep them to fight or shoot at any one. We will keep them so
that other people will be considerate of us," coup leader Gen. Prayuth
Chan-ocha said on July 7.

"You can see that other countries have problems in their seas. We have
to think, are we going to have problems in the future? It's all about
capability," Gen. Prayuth said at a news conference in Government
House, his political office after also grabbing the prime ministry.

"Do we only have the Gulf of Thailand as our sea? We also have the
Andaman Sea, do we not?"

Asked by a journalist if the submarine deal was an attempt to
strengthen ties with China, Gen. Prayuth replied:

"There is no need for that. We have a good relationship with China
already. Every country is good to us, except those who are still stuck

Obamacare is the name given a law that says you must buy overpriced private health insurance from companies that fund election campaigns. Yes, it's got some lipstick on it, but compared to a civilized healthcare system like other wealthy nations use it's awful. But how awful? Surely not as awful as . . .

Obamatrade, which is the name not given to a potential treaty, a.k.a. the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) which says that . . .

You must let foreign corporations overturn national laws.

You must throw millions of people out of work.

You must pay more for medicine.

You must allow banks to gamble on and crash the economy.

You must not know what's in your food.

You must be censored online.

You must destroy family farming.

You must wreck the environment.

You must get paid less.

ALL OF THIS doesn't bother anybody?

The Supreme Court of the United States recently ruled in favor of Obamacare, and a considerable number of people apparently lost their minds and their bowels.

The images people bring to mind with the term "war," universally outdated, are grotesquely outdated in a case like this one. There is no pair of armies on a battlefield. There is no battlefield. There is no aim to conquer, dispossess, or rob. The people of Gaza are already pre-defeated, conquered, imprisoned, and under siege -- permanently overseen by military drones and remote-control machine-guns atop prison-camp walls. In dropping bombs on houses, the Israeli government is not trying to defeat another army on a battlefield, is not trying to gain possession of territory, is not trying to steal resources from a foreign power, and is not trying to hold off a foreign army's attempt to conquer Israel.

It would be fair to assume that Gershon Baskin’s recent article in the Jerusalem Post - Encountering Peace: Obviously no peace now, so what then? (June 24) – is not a mere intellectual exercise aimed at finding ‘creative’ solutions to the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

Baskin is a regular contributor to the Jerusalem Post, a rightwing newspaper. He is more or less embodied in the Israeli political establishment, otherwise, he would have never been allowed to initiate the “secret back channel for the release (of captured Israeli soldier) Gilad Schalit” as he proudly states in his bio.