Social movements ought to place private military contractors at the center of a broader critique of authoritarian neoliberalism and America’s permanent war economy.
After decades of atrocities, the warlords were finally being held to account. Then the Americans stepped in.
The attempted military coup in Turkey and the possibility of a President Trump may have more Americans considering the military option. It's tempting to conclude that the same folks who approve of a military intervention into politics support Donald Trump's intervention into politics. Trump is, in a way, a one-man coup. He is an outsider. He has contempt for the normal workings of democracy.
In June the Japanese island of Okinawa saw one of the biggest demonstrations in two decades, involving at least 50,000 people who protest against heavy US military presence after a local woman was murdered by an ex-Marine and a string of other incidents.
Located in the center of Okinawa Island, Kadena Air Base is the largest United States Air Force installation in Asia. Documents obtained under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act reveal how years of accidents and neglect have polluted local land and water with hazardous chemicals including arsenic, lead, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), asbestos and dioxin.
How many US military bases are there in Africa? For years, US Africa Command gave a stock response: one. Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti was America's only acknowledged "base" on the continent. Research by TomDispatch indicates that in recent years the US military has, in fact, developed a remarkably extensive network of more than 60 outposts and access points in Africa. These bases, camps, compounds, port facilities, fuel bunkers, and other sites are in at least 34 countries
The recent U.S. deployment of special operations forces to Syria expands a global U.S. battlefield that is at a historic size. This year, special ops have been sent to a record 147 countries—75 percent of the nations on the planet. It’s a 145 percent increase from the days of George W. Bush. And it means that on any given day elite U.S. forces are on the ground in 70 to 90 countries.
April 20 was Hitler's birthday, a day when in the past few years neo-Nazis around the world have engaged in terror attacks; and on April 20, 2015 the U.S. Army is officially beginning the training and integration of the Ukraine's neo-Nazi stormtroopers.
Second guided-missile destroyer to join the USS John McCain; annual joint US-South Korean maneuvers that have so far included, fly-overs by B-52 bombers and mock bombing runs close to the North's border by two B-2 Stealth bombers that flew directly from the US. The exercises, appear to have provoked the latest escalation in tensions, already at near-record highs after the UN Security Council imposed new economic and diplomatic sanctions against Pyongyang last month.
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