A blog about a criminal enterprise
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It’s been a long time since I crossed a national boundary. Yes, once upon a time, as a young man, I hitchhiked into and across Canada, as well as around significant parts of Europe. And once upon a time, as a grown-up and an editor at a publishing house that put out a
Peering out from the United States, it’s hard to see much of China. One learns general facts and gathers views from a small number of people. But I can’t make a lot of sense out of this 4% of humanity over here (or myself for that matter), and don’t have much hope at all for deeply understanding that 17% of humanity over there. It seems worth some effort, however, to build better relationships and understanding, since the U.S. government is overwhelmingly obsessed with competing with China,
This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.
Give Donald Trump credit. He’s added new meaning to that ancient phrase “gunboat diplomacy.” In fact, by the time I wrote this introduction, his administration had already
Trump’s approach to Greenland has something in common with his (Cutting-)Board of Peace approach to Palestine: not even the slightest pretense of involving the people impacted. The residents of Kalaallit Nunaat were never asked about the existing permissions for the U.S. military to build bases in their land and are not being asked now about a “deal” made between Trump and, not even Denmark but, Trump’s servant, the Secretary General of NATO.
“Oh, what a relief to have a deal,” shout
I discussed Iran and global madness in this interview with Mark Dunlea.
Dear European governments, look at the map of U.S. military bases above and tell us again about your self-respect, about how you’re going to fight Trump in Greenland (where he also has a military base), about all the military violence metaphors in your newspapers’ columns about trade policies, but understand that we know about the thing you’ve never mentioned: the empire of bases. You don’t even issue self-respecting threats to evict foreign bases like the president of Honduras has done.
Pieces
This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.
After reading today’s piece by TomDispatch regular Alfred McCoy, I searched the bookshelf in my hallway where I knew I had some old cartoon and comic books from my distant past and found Ariel Dorfman’s classic
Associated Press reports: “‘Shockingly, our “brilliant” NATO Ally, the United Kingdom, is currently planning to give away the Island of Diego Garcia, the site of a vital U.S. Military Base, to Mauritius, and to do so FOR NO REASON WHATSOEVER,’ [Trump] said in a post on his social media platform Truth Social. ‘There is no doubt that China and Russia have noticed this act of total weakness.’
“‘The UK giving away extremely important land is an act of GREAT STUPIDITY, and is another
This was a headline in the New York Times on Tuesday: “With Threats to Greenland, Trump Sets America on the Road to Conquest: After a century of defending other countries against foreign aggression, the United States is now positioned as an imperial power trying to seize another nation’s land.” Here is a sentence from the article that followed: “Never in the past century has America gone forth to seize other countries’ land and subjugate its citizens against their will.”
Setting aside
Of course it would take millions of images to convey the full story of the harm done by military bases, foreign and domestic, but a key point is, I think, conveyed by the map above. The countries colored blue or purple have U.S. military bases in them. The countries colored red or purple have been threatened with war by the United States or actually attacked or invaded by the U.S. military within the past year.
The blue countries tell a story of global empire, of a nation seeking to dominate the