THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING FOR PEACE: PENTAGON ON ALERT!
Chapter Eighteen
United States of America Military Empire

[January 07, 2019]

Subjects:
U.S. Wars & Military Interventions
Overthrowing Governments (bombings, assassinations, suppress movements, pervert elections)
Military Budgets
Armaments
Global Weapons Industry
Military Bases
Military Pollution
CIA Torture/Drugs
…………………..

Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war,
With the cross of Jesus going on before.
Christ, the royal Master, leads against the foe;
Forward into battle see His banners go!
Refrain:
Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war,
With the cross of Jesus going on before.
At the sign of triumph Satan’s host doth flee;
On then, Christian soldiers, on to victory!
Hell’s foundations quiver at the shout of praise;
Brothers, lift your voices, loud your anthems raise.
Like a mighty army moves the church of God;
Brothers, we are treading where the saints have trod.
We are not divided, all one body we,
One in hope and doctrine, one in charity…
Onward then, ye people, join our happy throng,
Blend with ours your voices in the triumph song.
Glory, laud, and honor unto Christ the King,
This through countless ages men and angels sing.

I was brought up in a split family, back and forth—mother submissive to religion, father agnostic loyalist soldier for America the Great, grandmother “ignorance is bliss” advocate. Onward Christian Soldiers fit in with their understanding of the American Dream. My father had been in Asia during the Second World War and decided to make the Army and then the Air Force his career.

We were stationed in Recife, Brazil when President Getúlio Vargas shot himself, on August 24, 1954. In a suicide note, the “father of the poor”, as many called Vargas, wrote that he sought to “protect the national interests” against U.S. wishes. He had been elected president twice (1930s and 1950s), and seized power as dictator (1937-45). His politics were anti-communist and nationalist.

When my father came home the day Vargas killed himself he was livid. I recall him cussing the president for being ungrateful to the United States which had helped Brazil so much. Apparently President Vargas thought that the U.S. dictated too much. A decade later, on April 1, 1964, the U.S. fully backed a military coup—which President Kennedy had approved in 1962 as a possibility—with warships against the democratically elected Joao Goulart, who had infuriated national generals and capitalists, and their United States counterparts for initiating FDR-type reforms. The military ruled repressively until 1985.

Our family returned from Brazil in 1955 and the next year I joined the Air Force to fight “commies.” I was a senior in High School when my father and I listened to radio news about Russia invading Hungary. My father had to sign permission for me to join as I was just 17. Soon, I was off to Lackland Texas Air Force base for training to fight the Communists: Onward Christian soldier was I marching as to war with the cross of Jesus going on before.
Unfortunately for my father, I began to wake up when I was stationed in Japan, about which I referred to in chapter four. Upon discharge, in 1960, I attended college in Los Angeles and soon joined the new free speech student movement followed by anti-war and anti-racism activism.

The second to last time I saw my father we attended a baseball game. At the beginning, the national anthem Star Spangled Banner was played. I refused to stand up to spite its jingoism and racism—“the land of the free”, which when written, in 1814, meant only whites. My father never forgave me for that, and in 1968 after a short last visit he sent me a two-line letter “divorcing” me. My name was banned from his house and there was no communication for the next 27 years when he died.

 

Star Spangled Banner
O say can you see, by the dawn's early light, What so proudly we hail'd at the twilight's last gleaming, Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight O'er the ramparts we watch'd were so gallantly streaming? And the rocket's red glare, the bomb bursting in air, Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there, O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

On the shore dimly seen through the mists of the deep Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes, What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep, As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses? Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam, In full glory reflected now shines in the stream, 'Tis the star-spangled banner - O long may it wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
And where is that band who so vauntingly swore, That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion A home and a Country should leave us no more? Their blood has wash'd out their foul footstep's pollution. No refuge could save the hireling and slave From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave, And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
O thus be it ever when freemen shall stand Between their lov'd home and the war's desolation! Blest with vict'ry and peace may the heav'n rescued land Praise the power that hath made and preserv'd us a nation! Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just, And this be our motto - "In God is our trust," And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

What follows is a long summary of U.S. aggression which could easily be an encyclopedia, and explains why father-son parted ways.

U.S. Wars and Military Interventions

Two centuries+ of existence. Two centuries+ of nearly constant wars with sporadic periods of not invading others. For a generation now the United States has forced upon the world the Permanent War Age. The goal is simple: world domination! The American Dream fulfilled.

Most U.S. white Americans believe they are the best, the strongest, the bravest, owners of the Land of Opportunity. If war is necessary (profitable) to maintain that predominance, so be it—although since the 2008 capital-created economic crisis, there are some cracks in that wall.

Granted, there have been wars ever since the idea of private property took root. Wars stem from the first sedentary “civilizations” about 14,000 years ago in Eastern Mediterranean and Mesopotamia. Wars really got going, though, when empires were forged, the first being Akkadia 4400 years ago.
While emperors sought territorial expansion and control over socio-political entities, modern imperialism concentrates on economic domination without a permanent military presence, until a military intervention is deemed necessary to put down domestic unrest or other foreign influence.

For the last generation since the fall of state socialism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, the U.S. has stood as the world’s sole superpower. The so-called Cold War ended then but wars continue. The militarization of the world marches hand in hand with globalization extending even into outer space. The United States gets away with its aggressive wars by simply declaring them necessary to stop terrorism, especially in oil rich Middle East excepting its terrorist friends in Israel and Saudi Arabia/Gulf States.

This self-righteous excuse for warring is rationalized by the propitious attacks on September 11, 2001. No matter that almost all of those allegedly identified terrorists were Saudi Arabians—none were from Afghanistan or Iraq—the Pentagon and Langley warriors unleashed patriotic murder and torture in Afghanistan and Iraq, soon extending to other Middle Eastern and African countries where challengers lurk, and the use of Cuban territory at Guantánamo naval base for torture.

“The War-On-Terror” script was written just a year before. It is aimed at grabbing all oil and gas fuel and other raw materials anywhere it can. The business warlord promoters, who wrote the script “to promote American global leadership”, had founded the right-wing think tank, Project for a New American Century (PNAC), in 1997. In September 2000, the PNAC published its imperial report, “Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategies, Forces, and Resources for a New Century”. They knew it would be unpopular so they predicted that, in order for it to be accepted by sufficient numbers, a tragedy on the scale of Pearl Harbor would have to occur.

Lo and behold! September 11, 2001 was the best of days for the militarists, the weapons, oil, finance, and construction industries. And it fortified the new “service” branch of professional paramilitary mercenaries into a large international killing industry. Now that the stage was set, the Permanent War Age had to be sold. We good humans must be fearful of the terrorists, and thus we passively or actively support the wars the various U.S. governments render us, which also means we must accept their terror laws, the demise of civil and labor rights we fought for and won.

Mossad's Motto:By way of
deception, thou shall do war

“When a state is committed to such policies, it must somehow find a way to divert the population, to keep them from seeing what’s happening around them. There are not many ways to do this. The standard ones are to inspire fear of terrible enemies about to overwhelm us, and awe for our grand leaders who rescue us from disaster in the nick of time,” so asserted Noam Chomsky even before 9/11, in his book, What Uncle Sam Really Wants (Odonian Press, 1992).

The September 13, 2001 edition of the “Philadelphia Inquirer” spoke to those fears aroused on 9/11 with the headline: “Give War a Chance,” a vile mockery of our “give peace a chance” vision.

George Bush declared “War On Terror”, on October 7. He granted military forces unlimited money, weapons and resources. The CIA got ten times the previous amount of money for bribes and payments to mercenaries and torturers. “Preventative” war was approved with new weapons of mass destruction weapons including nuclear and bacteriological weapons.
PNAC spokesmen took up many important posts in the Bush regime—Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, William Kristol, Elliott Abrams, John Bolton, Richard Perle, John Ashcroft. Richard Cheney, Halliburton’s former CEO, took the decisive reins as vice-president. They succeeded in ramming through the Patriotic Act. People can now be arrested and detained indefinitely without a judge’s approval or even a trial. A police state is in place.

Ten days after the terror attacks in New York and Pentagon, former NATO Commander, U.S. General Wesley Clark, said that the Bush regime had plans to invade several of 40 countries it listed as “rogue states”. Top of the list were: Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Lebanon, Somalia, Sudan and Iran. What they had in common was oil—or as in the case of Afghanistan, access to oil—and banks not under the multinational corporation control of the Banking International Settlement (BIS) rules that benefit private capital interests. One of the empire’s fears, for example, was that Saddam Hussein had agreed with France President Jacques Chirac to switch from dollars to Euros in oil trading. Six months later oil dollar-rich Bush invaded Iraq.
Despite initial hesitancy from several European governments, the Bush regime succeeded in drawing nearly all of Europe, including most Social Democrats and Socialists, into its wars. NATO’s constitution had been limited to defense but was remade to allow for aggressive warring in any area of the world.

The big lie of 9/11 worked. It was the answer to Secretary of State Collin Powell’s worry that the U.S. had no more enemies. With the terror attack, the United States Military Empire concocted its next enemy: Muslim terrorists. The fact that the destroyed buildings in New York could not have collapsed the way the government told us, the fact that a huge passenger aircraft could not have made only such a small hole in the Pentagon was simply to be denied as “conspiracy buff stuff”. But how is it that the entire defense system fell asleep that day? There is hard and soft evidence that proves the United States government lied to us about that day, and there is ample material to point a finger at the same government, and its comrade-in-arms Zionist Israel, as at least complicit in the whole bloody nightmare.

While the Bush government was held down to two wars at a time, the Barak Obama regime stepped up the ante with seven: adding Pakistan, Yemen, Uganda, Somalia and Libya. Syrian terrorist fundamentalists also received (receive) U.S. and allied political and material support.

I excerpt parts of just one article to spark reader interest to search further into the true meaning of 9/11 to “legitimize” U.S. government’s permanent war euphoria. I could choose Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, “9/11 After 13 Years”.
His credentials within the Establishment make his judgments about what happened and why on September 11 all the more worthy of taking seriously. See his website here: https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/. The article is here: http://dissidentvoice.org/2014/09/911-after-13-years/#more-55657.

“The tragedy of September 11, 2001, goes far beyond the deaths of those who died in the towers and the deaths of fire fighters and first responders who succumbed to illnesses caused by inhalation of toxic dust. For thirteen years a new generation of Americans has been born into the 9/11 myth that has been used to create the American warfare/police state.

“The corrupt Bush and Obama regimes used 9/11 to kill, maim, dispossess and displace millions of Muslims in seven countries, none of whom had anything whatsoever to do with 9/11.

“A generation of Americans has been born into distain and distrust of Muslims.

“A generation of Americans has been born into a police state in which privacy and constitutional protections no longer exist.

“A generation of Americans has been born into continuous warfare while needs of citizens go unmet.

“A generation of Americans has been born into a society in which truth is replaced with the endless repetition of falsehoods.

“According to the official story, on September 11, 2001, the vaunted National Security State of the World’s Only Superpower was defeated by a few young Saudi Arabians armed only with box cutters. The American National Security State proved to be totally helpless and was dealt the greatest humiliation ever inflicted on any country claiming to be a power.

“That day no aspect of the National Security State worked. Everything failed.
“The US Air Force for the first time in its history could not get interceptor jet fighters into the air.

“The National Security Council failed.

“All sixteen US intelligence agencies failed as did those of America’s NATO and Israeli allies.

“Air Traffic Control failed.

“Airport Security failed four times at the same moment on the same day. The probability of such a failure is zero.”

“Watching the twin towers and WTC 7 come down, it was obvious to me that the buildings were not falling down as a result of structural damage. When it became clear that the White House had blocked an independent investigation of the only three steel skyscrapers in world history to collapse as a result of low temperature office fires, it was apparent that there was a cover up.”

“Osama bin Laden, a CIA asset dying of renal failure, was blamed despite his explicit denial. For the next ten years Osama bin Laden was the bogyman that provided the excuse for Washington to kill countless numbers of Muslims. Then suddenly on May 2, 2011, Obama claimed that US Navy SEALs had killed bin Laden in Pakistan. Eyewitnesses on the scene contradicted the White House’s story. Osama bin Laden became the only human in history to survive renal failure for ten years. There was no dialysis machine in what was said to be bin Laden’s hideaway. The numerous obituaries of bin Laden’s death in December 2001 went down the memory hole. And the SEAL team died a few weeks later in a mysterious helicopter crash in Afghanistan. The thousands of sailors on the aircraft carrier from which bin Laden was said to have been dumped into the Indian Ocean wrote home that no such burial took place.”

“The 9/11 lie has persisted for 13 years. Millions of Muslims have paid for this lie with their lives, the destruction of their families, and with their dislocation. Most Americans remain comfortable with the fact that their government has destroyed in whole or part seven countries based on a lie Washington told to cover up an inside job that launched the crazed neoconservatives’ drive for Washington’s World Empire.”

The Bush regime invaded the nearly defenceless Afghanistan government and beat it to surrender within two months. Taleban went underground but did not pick up their weapons again for a long time. CIA assets within the U.S. military backed Northern Alliance of several war lords and fundamentalist Islamists started the insurgency. CIA sponsored murders of top leaders of the Noorzai and Ishaqzai tribes forced surviving leaders to Pakistan where they prepared for counter-attacks. It was a war the CIA/Pentagon/ Bush government begged for.

Douglas Valentine is perhaps the only writer who was lucky enough to interview many of the CIA murderers from the Phoenix project and live to write about it. He has continued to trace CIA crimes. He cites from Anand Gopal’s book (No Good Men Among the Living), who also is unique in that he lived with Taleban groups who allowed him to interview them perhaps because he could speak their language and they felt he would report their point of view objectively.

“The American public is largely unaware that the Taliban laid down its arms after the American invasion in 2001, and that the Afghan people took up arms only after CIA installed [Gul Agha] Sherzai in Kabul. In league with the Karzai brothers, Sherzai supplied the CIA with a network of informants that targeted their business rivals, not the Taliban [who had smashed the opium trade when in power]...As a result of Sherzai’s friendly tips, the CIA methodically tortured and killed Afghanistan’s most revered leaders in a series of Phoenix-style [Vietnam War murder strategy] raids that radicalized the Afghan people.” (1)

Gopal’s book won the 2015 Ridenhour Prize for demonstrating “why the United States’ emphasis on counterterrorism at the expense of nation-building and reconciliation inadvertently led to the Taliban’s resurgence after 2001.” His 2010 article, “America’s Secret Afghan Prisons” run by the Joint Special Operations Command (a body of all the military branches) is also a must read. http://www.webcitation.org/query?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.thenation.com%2Fdoc%2F20100215%2Fgopal_audio&date=2010-02-17

These two books written by on-the-scene US American citizens seeking the truth should be enough information and evidence to put all U.S. military careerists and CIA professional murderers behind bars or, better yet, picking cotton. Some of the torture committed by these patriots has been exposed, such as the torture chambers at Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib, Iraq, and their Rendition, Detention and Interrogation (RDI) program. This proxy torturing “program” takes captured persons the CIA wants tortured by others than themselves and “renders” them to allies in the Middle East and Eastern Europe where their friends do the dirty deed. Ironically, Syria and Iraq were such rendition places before the U.S. decided to get rid of Saddam and try to do the same with Assad.

Despite the fact that some of these crimes have been exposed, it hasn’t stopped them from continuing to use the most painful and “inhumane” methods to torture and kill people. Valentine tells us here one of the reasons why they can get away with it:

“American’s militant leaders used 9/11 to recruit and motivate a new generation of special operations forces…to invade private homes at midnight on snatch and snuff missions. Nowhere, in any Establishment media outlet, is it ever mentioned that our political and military leaders did this because they wanted to seize Afghanistan and use it to establish a colony in a strategic location near Russia and China” [and Iran]. (The CIA as Organized Crime, p. 97)

“In Afghanistan, CIA officers manage the drug trade from their hammocks in the shade. Opium production has soared since they purchased the government in 2001.They watch in amusement as addiction rates soar among young people whose parents have been killed and whose minds have been damaged by 15 years of US aggression. They don’t care that the drugs reach America’s inner cities. CIA officers have an accommodation with the protected Afghan warlords who convert opium into heroin and sell it to the Russian mob. It’s no different than cops working with the Mafia in America; it’s accommodation with an enemy that ensures the political security of the ruling class.”

“Afghanistan is a means to get at Russia, similar to how Nixon played the China Card in Vietnam.”

“The Afghan people hate the Americans more and more, year after year. And that makes the CIA happy, in so far as it spells protracted war and increased profits for its sponsors in the arms industry. Afghan anger means more resistance…a neat pretext for the eternal military occupation of a disposable nation strategically located near Russia and China.

“The Taleban will never surrender and, for the CIA, that means victory in Afghanistan. But it also means spiritual defeat for America, as it descends ever further into the black hole of self-deception, militarism, and covert operations.” (pages 125-8)

Valentine’s chapter, “How the CIA Commandeered the Drug Enforcement Administration” is a must read to see how the CIA—from the early days of the Vietnam War, Iran-Contragate, and into the current wars in the Middle East—has dealt big time with drugs. Drugs bring in unaccountable income while it keeps a lot of people from rebelling, and it makes lots of problems for the leaders and states that the CIA wants to destroy. They use drugs in U.S. ghettos to keep black people from organizing rebellions, too.

“In 1976, Congresswoman Bella Abzug submitted questions to [President] Ford’s CIA director, George H.W. Bush, about the CIA’s role in international drug trafficking. Bush’s response was to cite a 1954 agreement with the Justice Department that gave the CIA the right to block prosecution and keep its crimes secret in the name of national security. In its final report, the Abzug Committee wryly noted: ‘It was ironic that the CIA should be given responsibility of narcotic intelligence, particularly since they are supporting the prime movers.’” (page 197). https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sociopolitica/sociopol_cia33.htm https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2017/may/25/abzugs-distrust/

Besides Russia, we see the same mechanism working with the other two bordering nations to Afghanistan, China and Iran. It is in CIA interests to spread drug addiction, AIDs disease through dirty needles, and chaos—geopolitics for American World Domination. Bush regime promoters called it, Project for the New American Century (PNAC).

Caleb Maupin’s article, “Why is the USA in Afghanistan? An Answer to the Big Question”, is helpful to understand the policy.

“US operations in Afghanistan have almost always been related to Russia. At the time of the Russian Revolution, Central Asia was dominated by the British Empire. The British had largely de-forested Afghanistan, and had already introduced the scourge of heroin. The Bolsheviks happily embraced the government of Habbibula Khan, the Emir of Afghanistan who had stood up to the British, and kept the country neutral in the First World War. In 1919 the Afghan ambassador told Lenin, ‘I proffer you a friendly hand and hope that you will help the whole of the East to free itself from the yoke of European imperialism’”. http://www.greanvillepost.com/2017/09/25/why-is-the-usa-in-afghanistan-an-answer-to-the-big-question/

Keeping Afghanistan unstable is certainly causing lots of problems for Russia, and its ally governments in Central Asia face a growing problem of Wahabbi extremism. The internal conflict in Chechnya had to do with “CIA strategy of Islamic terrorism and heroin in Afghanistan” where the “USA and Saudi Arabia had already been supporting Islamic Extremists,” sell heroin and commit acts of terrorism intended to harm the Soviet government, wrote Maupin.

Statistics on how much heroin and HIV infection there was in the Soviet Union before 1990 is hard to nail down. Reading through several sources, my conclusion is that there was very little until the latter years of the Soviet Union engagement in the war in Afghanistan. While the Communist-led government did what it could to wipe out the poppy plant, some remained and got turned into heroin and some Soviet troops used it. I found a figure of 100 known cases of AIDS in Russia in 1989, but it is not definitive.

With the CIA now in control of much of the heroin traffic—Afghanistan now produces over 90% of the world’s heroin—more comes directly in to Russia, and former Republics of Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan, plus Chechnya.

Ninety thousand Russians died of overdoses of the 1.5 million known heroin addicts as of 2015. There are another five to six million users of other drugs. Perhaps as many as one million people have AIDS due to intravenous drug use with dirty needles and unsafe sex.

The U.S.’s president in Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, has learned that his former master is not interested in shaping a better society for his people. On April 19, 2017, he told the U.S. military-connected Voice of America, of all places:

“’After it [the U.S.] dropped the bomb on Afghanistan, it did not eliminate Daesh,’ Karzai said, referring to last week’s ‘mother of all bombs [MOAB]’ attack against Islamic State.”

“’I consider Daesh their tool,’ Karzai told VOA’s Afghan service in an exclusive interview in Kabul, using the Arabic acronym for IS. ‘I do not differentiate at all between Daesh and America.’” https://www.voanews.com/a/former-afghan-president-hamid-karzai-callms-islamic-state-tool-us/3817463.html

Karzai said that the U.S. is not sincere in bringing peace in the country. “’A conference was recently convened in Moscow. Why didn’t America participate in it?’ Karzai asked. ‘Why did it ask the Afghan government to send a low-level delegation to the conference?’”

In this VOA interview, Karzai dismissed criticism of Moscow’s ties with the Taliban. Karzai has become closer to Russia since leaving office. He a 2015 visit to Moscow to meet President Putin, he said that he supported the “annexation of Crimea”.

Karzai speaks of having cordial relations with President Putin whom, he said is trying to negotiate for peace in Afghanistan, and that he talks with Taliban leaders about moving towards peace. But the U.S. doesn’t wish to hear any of that.

Heroin politics works in Iran too, so well that a 2006 estimate contended that eight percent of Iranians are addicted, and every year another 130,000 or more become so.

“Iran’s revolutionary guards are constantly working to stop narcotics from flowing over the Afghan border. The poppy fields of Afghanistan…have destroyed the lives of literally millions of Iranians,” wrote Maupin.

The British Empire invaded China twice in the 19th century (Opium Wars) to force governments to allow the poppy seed for commercial profit purposes. The UK with the Yankees, Japan, Russia and four other allies intervened during the 1899-1901 Boxer Rebellion. The Boxers, whom Mark Twain called “patriots” and wished them “success”, rose up against foreign imperialism, with its Christian chauvinist missionaries and heroin. Boxers lynched drug dealers, and sought to promote traditional Chinese culture. When the Qing imperial court, led by Empress Dowager Cixi, joined them, 60,000 troops and 54 ships from eight invading countries warred against them. They were able to topple the rebels and the government and occupied much of China for a year or more—murdering, raping and plundering wantonly.

“The 20th century in China has largely been a story of struggling to break free from foreign domination, drug addiction, and poverty, and restore itself as global power,” wrote Maupin.”

“The Chinese government works relentlessly to make sure that heroin is never imported into the country. The majority of those who receive the death penalty in China are somehow related to drug smuggling.”
Mao is credited with having eradicated heroin and most opium. Today there is little of either but some opium poppy grows in a few northwest provinces but is not exported.

China’s historically Islamic region, Xianjing, has been the site of anti-government terrorism in recent decades. Not surprisingly, this region also borders Afghanistan. Some of China’s Islamic Uiygir minority have sworn allegiance to IS and gone to Syria to fight the Baathist government.
“These three Eurasian countries serve as bastions of stability, and more than that, they are competitors with Wall Street. Russia sells oil and natural gas on the international markets. Every barrel of oil sold by Russia, is a barrel of oil that could have been sold by a US or British oil company. Iran is also an oil exporter, and it has recently joined the natural gas trade.

“While China does not have very much domestic oil, it is starting to innovate natural gas extraction, and it produces steel, copper, and aluminum more than any other country on earth. Cell phones produced by Huwai, the state controlled telecommunications manufacturer, are sold across the world. A stable China is also a competitor,” Maupin explains.

The permanent war in Afghanistan has other advantages as well. There is the incentive of a gas pipeline that perks U.S. interest in controlling Afghanistan. Craig Murray, former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, said it succinctly:

“Almost everything you see about Afghanistan is a cover for the fact that the actual motive is the pipeline they wish to build over Afghanistan to bring out Uzbek and Turkmen natural gas which together is valued at up to $10 trillion.” For telling this truth he was denied a U.S. visa. (2)

Furthermore, in 2010, it was discovered that Afghanistan has several rare earth minerals, but they have not yet been tapped. All the more evidence that the key reason for the U.S. war and occupation of the country is mainly to subvert and, hopefully, overthrow the stable governments of its neighbors: Russia, Iran China. The oil pipeline and minerals are there for future exploitation once the three countries fall under U.S. military-political domination, so they hope.

How long can the U.S. hang onto Afghanistan and harass its neighbors who are not submissive to the Military Empire? If the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Fatou Bensouda, gets her way the aggressor would be put on trial, at least, for war crimes it commits there.

“The chief prosecutor of the international criminal court is seeking approval to investigate allegations of war crimes in Afghanistan, including possible torture by US forces and the CIA.

“If authorized, the investigation would also look at crimes allegedly committed by armed opposition groups, such as the Taliban, and Afghan government forces.” https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/nov/03/war-crimes-prosecutor-seeks-investigation-into-afghan-conflict-icc-us-force-cia-taliban

This is unprecedented for the ICC. Since its founding, in 2002, it has tried or sought to try 39 individuals, all Africans, and never a state. The chances are, however, it won’t succeed, in part because the goliath will not present itself before any court nor honor their decisions.

Bill Clinton signed the Rome treaty that established the ICC, but his successor George W Bush renounced the signature, arguing that Americans would be unfairly prosecuted for political reasons.
Although the US is not a member of the court, “Americans could still potentially face prosecution if they commit crimes within its jurisdiction in a country that is a member, such as Afghanistan, and are not prosecuted at home,” The Guardian reporters concluded.

President George Bush, and seven of his leading cohorts, were, in fact, symbolically tried for war crimes and convicted in a Malaysian War Crimes Commission trial in May 2012. Retired Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad took this initiative.

The prosecutor was international law professor Frances Boyle, a lawyer who represents many indigenous and oppressed peoples both in courts of law and International People’s Tribunals, such as this one. He is also an activist against wars and for human rights and self-determination.

This was the first conviction of its kind in the world. Transcripts were sent to the United Nations and Security Council.

To be able to understand how the U.S. got the way it is today—the world’s
dominating war power—we must look at its two hundred year history.

Military Imperial History

We have earlier been introduced to “high class muscle-man for Big Business”, General Smedley Butler. My research discovered many more sources about the Military Empire: U.S. government and military departments, the Congress, historians, journalists, and former empire warriors. Many researchers have written formidable books on the subject, some of them are in my bibliography. Listing names and figures is boring reading but bear with me because these facts are startling.

The first war began even before the United States gained nationhood. While still a British colony, white European colonists warred against indigenous “Indians”, in order to take over the lands that they simply used. Formal warring began in 1775 with the declared Chickamauga War. The “Indian wars” lasted for a century. Estimates are that before Europeans came there were between two and seven million natives. The 1900 census reported 250,000 survivors incarcerated on “reservations”.

This war, and those to come against Latin Americans, was part of “Manifest Destiny”, ordained to “expand territory”, “to extend and enhance political, social and economic influences”.

The “Monroe Doctrine” legalized: Hands off America’s backyard, Latin America. After World War II, and especially after September 11, 2001, Manifest Destiny extended to the entire globe.

War was waged in 1798-1800 against France over its colonies in the Caribbean. Then it was Britain’s turn in 1812, in which both sides contested territory. The United States stole half of Mexico in 1846-8—Texas, California, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Nevada and Wyoming.

Of the thousands of times that U.S. military force has been deployed, many countries have been subjected several times. Cuba has been attacked 12 times since 1814; Nicaragua 12 times since 1853; Panama on 13 occasions since 1856. Although Latin America has been the most targeted, China has been attacked 30 times from 1843 “gunboat diplomacy” to 1999 when the U.S. bombed its embassy in Yugoslavia.

Between 1869 and 1897, the U.S. sent war ships with orders to intervene in Latin American harbors 5,980 times—one ship every two days over three decades. Hundreds of these landings resulted in the murders of local workers on strike and insurgents against repressive local governments. (3)

In a 2008 report to Congress, 330 military interventions were detailed: 167 interventions from 1798 to 1941, plus 163 interventions from 1945 to 2008. Since then wars against or within Pakistan, Libya, Somalia, Yemen and Uganda must be added, totaling 335. All these wars were/are aggressive. Both world wars in the 20th century are not included since they were defensive wars. (4)

After World War Two, the United States economy was booming and its territory unscathed unlike all of Europe, China, Korea and Japan. Its tycoons and politicians seized the perfect opportunity to strive for world domination. State Department chief for national security planning, George Kennan, expressed this succinctly in the secret Policy Planning Study of 1948:

"…We have about 50% of the world's wealth but only 6.3% of its population. This disparity is particularly great between ourselves and the peoples of Asia. In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world-benefaction."

"In the face of this situation [Asiatic problems among the peoples themselves, overpopulation, lack of food, and Moscow’s luring influence. Ed. note] we would be better off to dispense now with a number of the concepts which have underlined our thinking with regard to the Far East. We should dispense with the aspiration to ‘be liked’ or to be regarded as the repository of a high-minded international altruism. We should stop putting ourselves in the position of being our brothers’ keeper and refrain from offering moral and ideological advice. We should cease to talk about vague and - for the Far East - unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better." (5)

Kennan was considered to be “liberal” just as were John Kennedy, Bill Clinton and Barak Obama. Later in life, he considered the expansion of NATo into Eastern Europe a mistake.

U.S. military bases on foreign soil were used 200 times between 1945 and 1991 to intervene in third world countries. Millions were killed during the alleged Cold War period. (6)

Several analysts add to the above aggressions the use of military power as successful threats to force governments to do what the U.S. demands without the use of bullets. This has happened at least 218 times just between January 1946 and January 1976. (7)

The U.S. has conducted violent military interventions/wars 535 times—combining direct military attacks and lesser military interventions—between 1798 and the present; 368 of these attacks occurred since World War 11 (8) in 60 countries. (9)

Before the state of permanent war, there were “only” 19.8 million. Most refugees and stateless persons flee wars, and most of the wars are either started by or inflamed by the U.S.

The Chairman of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey (2011-15), knew first-hand when he said, “I will personally attest to the fact that [the world is] more dangerous than it has ever been.” The next day, he warned: “There is no foreseeable peace dividend. The security environment is more dangerous and more uncertain.” http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/02/26/most-dangerous-world-ever/

A major direct cause of human flights is bombing them. In 2016, the U.S. bombed seven countries with 26,171 bombs, and that is just the figure the military releases. Moreover, the United States is not officially at war with anyone. Read John Rachel’s “A Nation of Relentless Savagery”. https://dissidentvoice.org/2017/11/a-nation-of-relentless-savagery/#more-73563


Libya

Let us see what was really at stake in one of these “rogue state” countries that required excising.

Libya was Africa’s largest exporter of oil, 1.7 million tons a day, which quickly was reduced to 300-400,000 tons due to US-NATO bombing in 2011.

Libya had exported 80% of its oil: Italy (32%), Germany (14%), France and China (10% each), and U.S. (5%). While Gaddafi had turned much of oil sales towards the West, inviting in many of the major oil companies for great profits (BP, EXXON Mobil, Shell, Total), he did not join U.S. wars against Afghanistan and Iraq as did the oil rich Gulf States. Nor did he sign on with AFRICOM, a pact oriented towards U.S. economic and military benefit in Africa, which is also aimed at prohibiting China from Africa’s natural resources.

Libyans had the highest standard of living on the entire African continent, and no poverty. With just 20% of the extracted oil used nationally there was plenty of money to afford education and health care for the entire population without individual payment. There were schools, libraries, hospitals enough for all. Youths studying abroad had their education paid for by the state. Each newlywed couple received $50,000 from state coffers to start a family. And there was plenty left over for wealth to the Muammar Gaddafi clan. (13)

However, Gaddafi was preparing to launch a gold dinar for oil trade with all of Africa and other interested countries. France President Nickola Sarkozi called this, “a threat for financial security of mankind”. Much of France’s wealth—more than any other colonial-imperialist power—comes from exploiting Africa. There is evidence from Gaddafi defectors (especially Nouri Mesmari, who was under French protection) that France started preparing a Benghazi-based rebellion against Gaddafi in November 2010, in order to stop his plans to switch from the dollar to a new gold currency. U.S. politician, Rep. Dennis Kucinich confirmed this. (14)

Central Bank of Libya was 100% owned by the state and was outside BIS banking control. The state could finance its own projects and do so without interest rates, thereby reducing the costs of dealing with private banks by half. Libya’s central bank had 144 tons of gold in its vaults, which it could use to start the gold dinar. BRIC countries China, Russia, India, and Iran are also stocking great sums of gold rather than relying only on dollars.

The Central Bank used $33 billion, without interest rates, to build the Great Man-Made River of 4,000 kilometers with three parallel pipelines running oil, gas and water. This supplies 70% of the people (4.5 of its 6 million) with clean drinking and irrigation water, and provides adequate crops for the people. This allowed Libya to be a competitive exporter of vegetables with Israel and Egypt.

The Central Bank also financed Africa’s first communication satellite with $300 million of the $377 million cost. It started up for all Africa, on December 26, 2007, thus saving African nations an annual fee of $500 million previously pocketed by Europe (mostly France) for use of its satellites. This means much less cost for telephones and other communication systems for all Africans.

But there had always been internal opposition to Gaddafi, and on February 15, 2011 protestors demonstrated in Benghazi, an area of many Islamists and clan lords. At first, they were peaceful but already on February 18, two policemen were killed by protestors, and 50 black African workers, mostly from Chad, were executed; 15 of them lynched at the courthouse in Bayda. From then on, the opposition became guerrilla fighters and the government responded with firepower.

The opposition included former Gaddafi ministers. They set up a central bank in Benghazi to replace Libya’s central bank there even before they had set up a government. It was immediately recognized by Paris’ stock exchange and other Westerners. This is the first time in history that rebels had set up a bank before having a government.

Key western powers decided that Gaddafi was no longer reliable and France, along with the UK, took the lead to overthrow him. In early March 2011, Gaddafi threatened to throw western oil companies out of Libya. On March 17, UN Resolution 1973 called for a no-fly zone strategy but not a regime shift. Ten states voted for, but it was not backed by key powers: China, Russia, Brazil, India and Germany, although they cowardly abstained from voting.

Of the 28 NATO countries then, only 14 were involved in the Libyan war campaign and only six of those (including Denmark) took part in the air war, which soon escalated far beyond a “no-fly” strategy to bomb and strafe any target. The Gaddafi forces did not use any aircraft once the Triumvirate—U.S., NATO and the European Union—invaded.
China had 50 major economic projects going in Libya with $18 billion investment. Before the invasion, there were 30,000 Chinese working on these projects. They had to leave and much of China’s investment was destroyed.

Human Rights Watch (which some call an imperialist-oriented NGO) reported that there had not been a civilian bloodbath by Gaddafi as claimed. In Misurata, for example, with 400,000 people (second largest city) after two months of war only 257 people including combatants were killed. Of 949 wounded, only 22 (3%) were women. (“Boston Globe”, April 14, 2011)
Nevertheless, the West accused Gaddafi of murdering “innocent civilians”. What he did was to threaten those with arms if they did not surrender them. They were not “innocent civilians” but armed insurrectionists. Every government fights armed insurrections.

After seven months of Western bombing and material support to fundamentalist Islamists, including al Qaeda, the Gaddafi forces fell apart. He was captured and painfully murdered on October 20, which inspired the sadist Hillary Clinton to laughingly quip: “We came. We saw. He died.”
What the U.S.-NATO-EU hoped to achieve was to replace the half-reliable partner Gaddafi with a neo-liberal government that would do their bidding: sign in on AFRICOM, kick China out, reverse the central bank to a BIS private enterprise, continue using dollars, and have the new leaders join in their permanent war age throughout the Middle East and Africa.

What the Triumvirate achieved is: 20-40,000 dead people; a destroyed country in which human smuggling is normal; armed struggles in which the Islamic State and al Qaeda are a part; and three Islamist fundamentalist factions vying for power—one Western recognized “government” and two rival self-declared governments.

The Democrats/liberals/progressivesa choice for president, war lady Hilliary Clinton. "We came. We saw. He died". Her response to the agonizingly brutal murder of the President Gaddafi, the leader of the richest land in Africa and with no poverty.

U.S. Greatest Threat to World Peace

“The United States is the greatest threat to world peace. That’s the finding of an end-of-the- year, WIN/Gallup International survey of people in 65 countries,” wrote the “New York Post,” January 5, 2014. http://nypost.com/2014/01/05/us-is-the-greatest-threat-to-world-peace-poll/

“Of the 66,000 people polled, just under a quarter named Uncle Sam as the greatest threat to world peace. Other menaces didn’t even come close: 8 percent named Pakistan, putting that country in second place, while 6 percent named China. A mere 4 percent found Iran threatening — which tied it with Israel.”

What the NYP did not tell was that only 2% of the 67,806 polls believed that Russia was the greatest threat. Also most relevant is that of the 4,556 Americans asked, Russia was still down the list at 3% while the USA tied with North Korea for third place at 13%. Iran was first with 20% and Afghanistan second at 14%. China was seen by 5% as the greatest threat.
WIN/Gallup has not dared redo this poll, but a February-May 2017 PEW Research Center poll of 41,953 people in 38 countries came to essentially the same conclusion about attitudes towards the U.S. but with a different approach. The question was not put forth as “greatest threat” but “a major threat”. This resulted in 35% viewing the U.S. as a major threat, with Russia and China close.

Overthrowing Governments

The US American writer who has written most about his country’s violent aggression is beyond a doubt William Blum, another former governmental civil servant. I pass on Blum’s Anti-Empire Report #149, March 7, 2017, his February 2013 list of “Overthrowing other people’s governments”; the “Bombing List”; “Assassination list” of foreign leaders; “U.S. attempts to suppress populist or nationalist movements”; plus his book Rogue State “Perverting election” list. https://williamblum.org/aer/read/149

Unless otherwise indicated the text below is Blum’s words. His research is impeccable.
Just since the end of World War 2, the United States has:

• Attempted to overthrow more than 50 foreign governments, most of which were democratically-elected.
• Dropped bombs on the people of more than 30 countries.
• Attempted to assassinate more than 50 foreign leaders.
• Attempted to suppress a populist or nationalist movement in 20 countries.
• Grossly interfered in democratic elections in at least 30 countries.
• Though not as easy to quantify, has also led the world in torture; not only the torture performed directly by Americans upon foreigners, but providing torture equipment, torture manuals, lists of people to be tortured, and in-person guidance by American instructors.

Where does the United States get the nerve to moralize about Russia? (15)

Here is the list of United States overthrowing, or attempting to overthrow a foreign government since the Second World War: (* indicates successful ouster of a government)

• China 1949 to early 1960s
• Albania 1949-53
• East Germany 1950s
• Iran 1953 *
• Guatemala 1954 *
• Costa Rica mid-1950s
• Syria 1956-7
• Egypt 1957
• Indonesia 1957-8
• British Guiana 1953-64 *
• Iraq 1963 *
• North Vietnam 1945-73
• Cambodia 1955-70 *
• Laos 1958 *, 1959 *, 1960 *
• Ecuador 1960-63 *
• Congo 1960 *
• France 1965
• Brazil 1962-64 *
• Dominican Republic 1963 *
• Cuba 1959 to present
• Bolivia 1964 *
• Indonesia 1965 *
• Ghana 1966 *
• Chile 1964-73 *
• Greece 1967 *
• Costa Rica 1970-71
• Bolivia 1971 *
• Australia 1973-75 *
• Angola 1975, 1980s
• Zaire 1975
• Portugal 1974-76 *
• Jamaica 1976-80 *
• Seychelles 1979-81
• Chad 1981-82 *
• Grenada 1983 *
• South Yemen 1982-84
• Suriname 1982-84
• Fiji 1987 *
• Libya 1980s
• Nicaragua 1981-90 *
• Panama 1989 *
• Bulgaria 1990 *
• Albania 1991 *
• Iraq 1991
• Afghanistan 1980s *
• Somalia 1993
• Yugoslavia 1999-2000 *
• Ecuador 2000 *
• Afghanistan 2001 *
• Venezuela 2002 *
• Iraq 2003 *
• Haiti 2004 *
• Somalia 2007 to present
• Honduras 2009
• Libya 2011 *
• Syria 2012
• Ukraine 2014 *

Q: Why will there never be a coup d’état in Washington?
A: Because there’s no American embassy there.

I insert a couple comments to add to Blum’s list. The Honduras coup occurred without U.S. direct military intervention. But in a May 13-18 2009 speech, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton mentioned Bush’s insufficiency in dealing with the new “rogue states” in Latin America. And she warned about Russian, Chinese and Iranian growing influence. Clinton also blamed Bush, in effect, for Hugo Chavez ascendancy in Venezuela, Evo Morales in Bolivia, and Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua. Honduran General Romeo Vasquez was among Clinton’s devout listeners. Less than two months after Clinton’s speech, he led a coup d’état against the popularly elected president Manuel Zelaya. The coup government was immediately declared legal and supported by Clinton and her president, Obama, which all of Latin America, except the rich and their militarists, opposed.

Three years afterward, June 2012, another progressive president—former Catholic Bishop Fernando Lugo—was ousted from office by a “congressional coup d’état”. Practically all of Latin America, including conservative Colombia and Chile, denounced the coup. Paraguay’s new government was expelled from cooperative unions such as Mercosur. As in the case with Honduras, no matter how much denunciation there may be as long as the world’s policeman backs totalitarianism so be it.
The bombing list

• Korea and China 1950-53 (Korean War)
• Guatemala 1954
• Indonesia 1958
• Cuba 1959-1961
• Guatemala 1960
• Congo 1964
• Laos 1964-73
• Vietnam 1961-73
• Cambodia 1969-70
• Guatemala 1967-69
• Grenada 1983
• Lebanon 1983, 1984 (both Lebanese and Syrian targets)
• Libya 1986
• El Salvador 1980s
• Nicaragua 1980s
• Iran 1987
• Panama 1989
• Iraq 1991 (Persian Gulf War)
• Kuwait 1991
• Somalia 1993
• Bosnia 1994, 1995
• Sudan 1998
• Afghanistan 1998
• Yugoslavia 1999
• Yemen 2002
• Iraq 1991-2003 (US/UK on regular basis)
• Iraq 2003-2015
• Afghanistan 2001-2015
• Pakistan 2007-2015
• Somalia 2007-8, 2011
• Yemen 2009, 2011
• Libya 2011, 2015
• Syria 2014-2017

List of prominent foreign individuals whose assassination (or planning for same) the United States has been involved in since the end of the Second World War.

The list does not include several assassinations in various parts of the world carried out by anti-Castro Cubans employed by the CIA and headquartered in the United States. [Cuba’s security asserts that the CIA and its civilian terrorists have had over 636 murder plots against Fidel.]

• 1949 - Kim Koo, Korean opposition leader
• 1950s - CIA/Neo-Nazi hit list of more than 200 political figures in West Germany to be “put out of the way” in the event of a Soviet invasion
• 1950s - Chou En-lai, Prime minister of China, several attempts on his life
• 1950s, 1962 - Sukarno, President of Indonesia
• 1951 - Kim Il Sung, Premier of North Korea
• 1953 - Mohammed Mossadegh, Prime Minister of Iran
• 1950s (mid) - Claro M. Recto, Philippines opposition leader
• 1955 - Jawaharlal Nehru, Prime Minister of India
• 1957 - Gamal Abdul Nasser, President of Egypt
• 1959, 1963, 1969 - Norodom Sihanouk, leader of Cambodia
• 1960 - Brig. Gen. Abdul Karim Kassem, leader of Iraq
• 1950s-70s - José Figueres, President of Costa Rica, two attempts on his life
• 1961 - Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier, leader of Haiti
• 1961 - Patrice Lumumba, Prime Minister of the Congo (Zaire)
• 1961 - Gen. Rafael Trujillo, leader of Dominican Republic
• 1963 - Ngo Dinh Diem, President of South Vietnam
• 1960s-70s - Fidel Castro, Cuba
• 1960s - Raúl Castro, Cuba
• 1965 - Francisco Caamaño, Dominican Republic opposition leader
• 1965-6 - Charles de Gaulle, President of France
• 1967 - Che Guevara, Cuban leader
• 1970 - Salvador Allende, President of Chile
• 1970 - Gen. Rene Schneider, Commander-in-Chief of Army, Chile
• 1970s, 1981 - General Omar Torrijos, leader of Panama
• 1972 - General Manuel Noriega, Chief of Panama Intelligence
• 1975 - Mobutu Sese Seko, President of Zaire
• 1976 - Michael Manley, Prime Minister of Jamaica
• 1980-1986 - Muammar Qaddafi, leader of Libya, several plots and attempts upon his life
• 1982 - Ayatollah Khomeini, leader of Iran
• 1983 - Gen. Ahmed Dlimi, Moroccan Army commander
• 1983 - Miguel d’Escoto, Foreign Minister of Nicaragua
• 1984 - The nine comandantes of the Sandinista National Directorate
• 1985 - Sheikh Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, Lebanese Shiite leader (80 people killed in the attempt)
• 1991 - Saddam Hussein, leader of Iraq
• 1993 - Mohamed Farah Aideed, prominent clan leader of Somalia
• 1998, 2001-12 - Osama bin Laden, leading Islamic militant
• 1999 - Slobodan Milosevic, President of Yugoslavia
• 2002 - Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Afghan Islamic leader and warlord
• 2003 - Saddam Hussein and his two sons
• 2011 - Muammar Qaddafi, leader of Libya

In addition to Blum’s list above, Ewen MacAskill reported in “The Guardian”, on May 5, 2017, that the North Korean government believes the CIA tried to kill its leader, Kim Jong-nu with “the use of biochemical substances including radioactive substance and nano poisonous substance”. Lethal results from these poisons do not take place for six to twelve months.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/may/05/cia-long-history-kill-leaders-around-the-world-north-korea

“The US has developed much more sophisticated methods than polonium in a tea pot, especially in the fields of electronic and cyber warfare [referring to the charge that Russian intelligence poisoned dissident Alexander Litvinenko with polonium hidden in a teapot]. A leaked document obtained by WikiLeaks and released earlier this year showed the CIA in October 2014 looking at hacking into car control systems. That ability could potentially allow an agent to stage a car crash,” MacAskill wrote.

Blum lists President Charles de Gaulle as a CIA target. Despite being a Western ally, he had dared to pull France’s military out of NATO, in order to “regain full sovereignty over French territory.” De Gaulle also sought to release Algeria as a colony, all of which angered France’s right-wing generals as well as Langley and Pentagon. There were two coup attempts, and murder attempts on his life. In one 1962 attempt, two of his motorcycle body guards were murdered.

See the October 20, 2015 article by David Talbot, founder of “Salon”, and a CIA biographer. https://whowhatwhy.org/2015/10/20/jfk-assassination-plot-mirrored-in-1961-france-part-1/

”JFK was suddenly besieged with howls of outrage from a major ally, accusing his own security services of seditious activity.”

“It was a stinging embarrassment for the new American president, who was scheduled to fly to Paris for a state visit the following month. To add to the insult, the coup had been triggered by de Gaulle’s efforts to bring French colonial rule in Algeria to an end — a goal that JFK himself had ardently championed.

“The CIA’s support for the coup was one more defiant display of contempt — a back of the hand aimed not only at de Gaulle but at Kennedy.
“JFK took pains to assure Paris that he strongly supported de Gaulle’s presidency, phoning Hervé Alphand, the French ambassador in Washington, to directly communicate these assurances. But, according to Alphand, Kennedy’s disavowal of official US involvement in the coup came with a disturbing addendum — the American president could not vouch for his own intelligence agency. Kennedy told Alphand that ‘the CIA is such a vast and poorly controlled machine that the most unlikely maneuvers might be true.’”

The June 15, 2015 edition of “The Guardian” also reported that, at least, the CIA “was asked to help kill the French president in 1965.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/16/general-de-gaulle-cia-assassination-plot-1975

In 1975 and 1976, Senator Frank Church’s Committee United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities published fourteen reports on the formation of U.S. intelligence agencies, their operations, and the abuses of law and power that they had committed, together with recommendations for reform, some of which were allegedly put in place. Among the matters investigated were attempts to assassinate foreign leaders, including Patrice Lumumba of the Congo, Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, the Diem brothers of Vietnam, Gen. René Schneider of Chile, and the CIA and President John F. Kennedy’s plan to use the Mafia to kill Fidel Castro of Cuba.

Back to William Blum!

United States attempts to suppress a populist or national movement since WWII. *Successful

• China – 1945-49
• France – 1947 *
• Italy – 1947-1970s *
• Greece – 1947-49 *
• Philippines – 1945-53 *
• Korea – 1945-53 *
• Haiti – 1959 *
• Laos – 1957-73
• Vietnam – 1961-73
• Thailand – 1965-73 *
• Peru – 1965 *
• Dominican Republic – 1965 *
• Uruguay – 1969-72 *
• South Africa – 1960s-1980s
• East Timor – 1975-1999 *
• Philippines – 1970s-1990s *
• El Salvador – 1980-92 *
• Colombia – 1990s to early 2000s *
• Peru – 1997 *
• Iraq – 2003 to present *

Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower. Chapter 18: Perverting Elections. 29 countries; many of them with several attempts and successes

Italy 1948-1970s
Philippines 1950s
Lebanon 1950s
British Guiana/Guyana 1953-64
Indonesia 1955
Vietnam 1955
Japan 1958-70s
Nepal 1959
Laos 1960
Brazil 1962-4
Dominican Republic 1962
Guatemala 1963
Chile 1964, 1970
Bolivia 1966, 2002
Portugal 1974-5
Australia 1974-5
Jamaica 1976
Panama 1984, 1989
Nicaragua 1984, 1990, 2001
Haiti 1987-8
Bulgaria 1990-1
Albania 1991-2
Russia 1996 (See also my chapter 13)
Mongolia 1996
Bosnia 1998
Slovakia 2002
El Salvador 2004
Afghanistan 2004
Palestine 2005-6

Military Budgets

Inspired by President Donald Trumps’ “make America great again”, the United States Senate overwhelmingly approved a new spending plan, allocating another $80 billion to the military for 2018. Bernie Sanders pledged to make public universities free in his 2016 campaign. This plan would have cost the federal government $47 billion annually, $33 billion left over for more wars.

The official U.S. military budget is $700 billion. That’s really only part of the budget for Fiscal Year 2018, which is more than the next nine countries combined. China is second at $216 billion. China is nearly as large as the United States and has nearly four times the population. Russia comes in third in military expenditures at $70 billion, but it plans to cut back by at least 5% or more.

At the official figure, 5% of the world’s population is spending 37% of the world’s military expenditures, according to SIPRI (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute) figures. The world’s total military spending is listed at $1.69 trillion.

However, the real military/war costs to US American taxpayers is at least $1.1 trillion, which would be 66% of the world’s total IF all the other countries statistics are reported correctly, which could be dubious. $1.1 trillion is one-fourth the U.S. federal budget.

Hundreds of billions of dollars in “defense” spending aren’t counted in the Pentagon/defense budget. One has to find these “extra” costs in other parts of the national budget. Current wars, for example, are not included in the defense budget. Here is how William Hartung of the Center for International Policy figures the true costs.
https://warisboring.com/the-trillion-dollar-military-budget/

Starting with Pentagon’s base defense budget=$575 billion, add “other defense”=$8 billion; current wars=$64.6 billion; modernize 6,800 nuclear warheads=$20 billion; military aid to 140 countries=$7 billion; supporting war veterans=$186 billion (three times what it was before the U.S. invaded Afghanistan, in 2001); military retirement=$80; DoD share of the annual national debt interest payment $100 billion (total is $500 billion). Then add 16 intelligence agencies plus the Office of Director of National Intelligence=$70 billion. The final blow to our pocket books is the mega-agency of 22 entities called “Homeland” Security=$50 billion, which would not have been “necessary” had the U.S. not invaded Afghanistan, then Iraq, then…

Besides the waste of waging wars against people, there is departmental-bureaucratic waste. There are no transparent audits so we don’t know how much of the money was spent, where it was spent, or whose pockets went home bulging. Moreover, the government knows this and protects the thieves and waste mongers.

“The department’s budget is awash in waste, as you might expect from the only major federal agency that has never passed an audit. For example, last year a report by the Defense Business Board, a Pentagon advisory panel, found that the Department of Defense could save $125 billion over five years just by trimming excess bureaucracy. And a new study by the Pentagon’s Inspector General indicates that the department has ignored hundreds of recommendations that could have saved it more than $33.6 billion,” wrote Hartung.

The Inspector General also disclosed that “Army and Defense Finance and Accounting Service Indianapolis personnel did not adequately support $2.8 trillion in third quarter adjustments and $6.5 trillion in yearend adjustments made to Army General Fund data during FY 2015 financial statement compilation.” These “adjustments” had been made prior to unacceptable reports, but were still failing to explain where the money had gone. https://solari.com/blog/dod-and-hud-missing-money-supporting-documentation/

“We are concerned with the accuracy and reliability of the Department’s estimation process. Without a reliable process to review all expenditures and identify the full extent of improper payments, the Department will not be able to improve internal controls aimed at reducing improper payments.” http://www.dodig.mil/pubs/documents/DODIG-2016-113.pdf

Interestingly when one clicks on the above cited dod document the page can no longer be found but read solari’s reports and interviews for the figures and quotations. https://solari.com/00archive/web/solarireports/2017/unsupported_adjustments/Unsupported_Adjustments_Report_Final_3.pdf
We must add to the U.S. military funds those of its allies and NATO. The 29-member
military alliance uses $275 million for its civil budget and $1.5 billion for military expenses.
Add to that the military budgets of allies such as Saudi Arabia, $65 billion; France, $58 billion;
UK, $53 billion; Japan, $48, South Korea $38 billion, plus a score more states.
Compare South Korea and its U.S. warlord expenditures to North Korea at $10 billion.

All 29-NATO states are vowed to come to each others’ defense if Russia, China or North Korea were to invade, as the mass media scenario shrills to us. Such a scenario is ludicrous.

“The U.S., bounded by two oceans and two weak neighbors, has never been really invaded. Strategically, it is practically an island. In fact not since the war of 1812—more than 200 years ago— the country has not seen an actual foreign army on its soil,” wrote Ted Rall, “Military Spending is the Biggest Scam in American Politics,” May 31, 2017. https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/05/31/military-spending-is-the-biggest-scam-in-american-politics/

Pearl Harbor was a raid not an invasion as was the September 11, 2001 terror attack.

In contrast to the United States, Russia is surrounded with problematic conflicts, which the U.S. loves to create and exacerbate.

“Russia has twice as much territory to defend against: NATO/U.S. missiles to their west in Europe, a southern border full of radical Islamists in unstable countries like Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, Afghanistan a stone’s throw away,” Rall added.

Armaments

So much financing for military/war has to produce something, besides dead bodies that have to be buried or rot, and wounded bodies that have to be treated. It produces military jobs for men, and now with gender equality in many countries jobs for women murderers and torturers as well. It also produces civilian jobs in the weapons industry, perhaps two million in the U.S.

CURRENT TROOP (2016) figures International Institute for Strategic Studies Active Military Reserve Paramilitary Total Per 1000 capita total:
China 2.183.000 510.000 660.000 3.530.000 2.4
Russia 831.000 2.000.000 659.000 3.490.000 24.5
USA 1.347.000 865.000 14.850 2.227.200 6.9

Russian Army (2016)
• 15,398 main battle tanks
• 31,298 armored fighting vehicles
• 5,972 self-propelled guns
• 4,625 towed artillery
• 3,793 multiple-launch rocket systems
• 334 tactical ballistic missile systems US Army (2016)
• 8,848 main battle tanks
• 41,062 armored fighting vehicles
• 1,934 self-propelled guns
• 1,299 towed artillery
• 1,331 multiple-launch rocket systems
• 340 tactical ballistic missile systems

Russian Navy (2016)
Total naval strength: 352 ships
• 1 aircraft carriers
• 1 battlecruisers
• 3 cruisers
• 15 destroyers
• 4 frigates
• 81 corvettes
• 60 submarines US Navy (2016)
Total naval strength: 415 ships
• 19 aircraft carriers
• 22 cruisers
• 62 destroyers
• 6 frigates
• 0 corvettes
• 75 submarines

Russian Air Force (2016)
• 173 bombers
• 873 fighters/interceptors
• 476 attack aircraft
• 1,124 transports
• 1,237 helicopters
• 478 attack helicopters US Air Force (2016)
• 159 bombers
• 2,308 fighters/interceptors
• 319 attack aircraft
• 5,739 transports
• 6,084 helicopters
• 957 attack helicopters

Nuclear warheads
(Wikipedia+ sources)

2500 ready / 8000 (2015)
1900 ready / 4760 (2015)

Add to the U.S. side, 300 French, 215 UK, and 80 Israeli nuclear warheads. One can also consider that Russia could be aided by the 260 Chinese nuclear warheads.

The U.S. Federation of Science (FAS) 2017 figure for NATO’s three nuclear countries is 7,315 of which 2,200 are ready to launch. Russia has 7,000 of which 1,950 are ready. China with 270, Israel 80, Pakistan 120-130, India 110-120. FAS estimates are that North Korea might have enough “fissile material to potentially produce 10 to 20 nuclear warheads”.

The Treaty of Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NTP) is a 1970 UN voluntary resolution, which Israel, Pakistan and India ignored.

On July 7, 2017, the UN General Assembly voted for a legally binding accord—122 for, 1 against (Netherlands) and 69 abstentions. If ratified it would comprehensively prohibit nuclear weapons, with the goal of leading towards their total elimination.

In order to come into effect, ratification by at least 50 countries is required. For those nations that are party to it, the treaty prohibits the development, testing, production, stockpiling, stationing, transfer, use and threat of use of nuclear weapons, as well as assistance and encouragement to the prohibited activities.

Guess who abstained—all the nuclear weapons states and all NATO states (except Netherlands). After the vote, NATO banned member states from ratifying the treaty.

Global Weapons Industry

Sales of arms and military services by the largest arms-producing and military services companies, totaled $370.7 billion, in 2015, according to data on the international arms industry released by SIPRI. The overall 2017 total is perhaps $500 billion.

Companies based in the United States continue to dominate the Top 100 with total arms sales amounting to $209.7 billion for 2015. https://www.sipri.org/media/press-release/2016/global-arms-industry-usa-remains-dominant

Of the top ten weapons manufacturers, seven are U.S. owned. Their take in 2015 was a combined $145 billion, and they employed 750,000 workers: Lockheed Martin ($36.5 billion); Boeing ($28); Raytheon ($23); Northrop Grumman ($20); General Dynamics ($19); United Technologies ($9.5); L3 Technologies ($8.8). Their combined profits are over $20 billion, the lion share of all U.S. weapons companies at around $35 billion.

The closest countries in weapons sales are: South Korea at $35 billion; Russia at $30 billion; France at $21.4 billion. Britain sold $12 billion and two-thirds of those sales went to Middle Eastern countries including the largest terrorist states Saudi Arabia and Israel. $10.4 billion of UK weapons sales come from countries judged by its own Foreign Office to be “human rights priority countries”, and have “the worst or greatest number of human rights violations,” as reported by Britain’s Foreign & Commonwealth Office.
China is a new kid on the block. Beginning just two to three years ago, it has made deals to sell aircraft, armored vehicles, guns and boats to Myanmar, and last year some radar, anti-ship missiles and other weapons to Indonesia. This year, China made a $277 million deal with Malaysia for patrol vessels, and 28 tanks to Thailand for $147 million. China also gave 3000 assault rifles to the Philippines at a value of $3.3 million. http://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy-defence/article/2114172/weapons-sales-making-china-big-gun-southeast-asia

Military Bases

“The Coalition Against Foreign Military Bases” is a new campaign focused on closing all U.S. military bases abroad. “This campaign strikes at the foundation of US empire, confronting its militarism, corporatism and imperialism,” wrote Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, “New Campaign: Close all US Military Bases on Foreign Soil,” July 29, 2017. https://popularresistance.org/new-campaign-close-all-us-military-bases-on-foreign-soil/

The new coalition held its first conference on January 12-14, 2018 at the University of Baltimore. Three dozen organizations participated, including veteran anti-war activists and young ones, former Deep State people in VIPS, and victims from foreign countries. http://noforeignbases.org/ http://thepeacereport.com/learned-conference-u-s-foreign-military-bases/
http://noforeignbases.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Conference-Program.pdf

Among its reports and actions was a call for demonstrating to return the Guantánamo naval base and surrounding territory stolen by the U.S. to its rightful owners, the Cuban people.

Zeese and Flowers article cites Chalmers Johnson’s, “America Empire of Bases”.

“As distinct from other peoples, most Americans do not recognize -- or do not want to recognize -- that the United States dominates the world through its military power. Due to government secrecy, our citizens are often ignorant of the fact that our garrisons encircle the planet. This vast network of American bases on every continent except Antarctica actually constitutes a new form of empire…

Our military deploys well over half a million soldiers, spies, technicians, teachers, dependents, and civilian contractors in other nations.”
“The Pentagon currently owns or rents 702 overseas bases in about 130 countries and has another 6,000 bases in the United States and its territories…[It] employs an additional 44,446 locally hired foreigners. The Pentagon claims that these bases contain 44,870 barracks, hangars, hospitals, and other buildings, which it owns, and that it leases 4,844 more.”

That was 14 years ago. Today, the estimated number of bases is at least 800 and up to 1000, or 95% of all foreign military bases in the world. In addition, it now has 19 naval air carriers (another 15 planned), “each as part of a Carrier Strike Group, composed of roughly 7,500 personnel, and a carrier air wing of 65 to 70 aircraft — each of which can be considered a floating military base,” according to DoD base structure report. It reports on 4,800 worldwide sites (not all are bases) with 562,000 facilities, valued at $585 billion. https://www.acq.osd.mil/eie/Downloads/BSI/Base%20Structure%20Report%20FY15.pdf

The Department of Defense states there are still 40,000 U.S. troops at 179 military bases in Germany; over 50,000 at 109 bases in Japan; 28-40,000 troops at 85 bases in South Korea. In July, 2017, it was reported that the U.S. had created ten new military bases in Syria, which Turkey angrily opposed, and the Syria government and Russia protested.

Several governments besides Syria oppose having U.S. military bases and personnel on their soil, but the U.S. ignores their wishes and legal rights and just moves in. Cuba is an example regarding the U.S. torture-center military base at Guantanamo. Okinawa and Diego Garcia are others.

In addition to U.S. worldwide military bases and warehouse facilities, NATO has 30 military bases of its own, primarily in Western Europe.

The Department of Defense admits to 4,154 military bases in all 50 U.S. states, plus 114 on its territories, and 587 overseas bases (2015). See page 28. https://www.acq.osd.mil/eie/Downloads/BSI/Base%20Structure%20Report%20FY15.pdf

Some sources, such as Canadian geographer and Professor Jules Dufour, report 6000 bases and military warehouses in 63 countries. https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-worldwide-network-of-us-military-bases/5564

“These facilities include a total of 845,441 different buildings and equipments...According to J. Gelman, who examined 2005 official Pentagon data, the US is thought to own a total of 737 bases in foreign lands. Adding to the bases inside U.S. territory, the total land area occupied by US military bases domestically within the US and internationally is of the order of 2,202,735 hectares, which makes the Pentagon one of the largest landowners worldwide.”

Today, the U.S. has military bases where it never had before the fall of European socialist states, including in several sovereign states earlier under the Soviet Union, but also in Iraq and Afghanistan, even in Australia. It has doubled its number of bases in Colombia to eight. It operates military war games with previous enemies in Viet Nam and Cambodia.

The Establishment even realizes that it has too many bases.

“By its own estimates, the DoD is operating with 21 percent excess capacity in all its facilities. If nothing is done, that will increase to 22 percent by 2019. “Trump Wants to Rebuild the Military, But Budget Would Close Bases”, CNN Politics, May 30, 2017.

“Unfortunately, Congress won’t allow DoD to close bases. The Bi-Partisan Budget Act of 2013 blocked future military base closings. Few elected officials are willing to risk losing local jobs caused by base closures in their states. Instead, the Pentagon will need to reduce the number of soldiers so it can afford the benefits of bases,” wrote “The Wall Street Journal,” August 1, 2013, “Pentagon Lays Out Way to Slash Spending.”

One base that they especially don’t want to close is the School of the Americas (SOS).

Torture School of the Americas

“U.S. Army intelligence manuals used to train Latin American military officers at an Army school from 1982 to 1991 advocated executions, torture, blackmail and other forms of coercion against insurgents, Pentagon documents released yesterday show,” reported Diana Priest, “The Washington Post”, on September 21, 1996. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1996/09/21/us-instructed-latins-on-executions-torture/f7d86816-5ab3-4ef0-9df6-f430c209392f/?utm_term=.46d638a7ecf3

“Used in courses at the U.S. Army’s School of the Americas, the manual says that to recruit and control informants, counterintelligence agents could use ‘fear, payment of bounties for enemy dead, beatings, false imprisonment, executions and the use of truth serum,’ according to a secret Defense Department summary of the manuals compiled during a 1992 investigation of the instructional material and also released yesterday. A summary of the investigation and four pages of brief, translated excerpts from the seven Spanish-language manuals were released.”

The Army School of the Americas was first located in Panama just after WWII but was moved in 1984 to Fort Benning, Georgia. Panama President Jorge Illueca shut it down, declaring it to be “the biggest base for destabilization in Latin America.” By 2017, it had trained 80,000 military and police officers from Latin America and the U.S.

The “Washington Post” article continued: “Its graduates have included some of the region’s most notorious human rights abusers, among them Roberto D’Aubuisson [who ordered the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero, in 1980], the leader of El Salvador’s right-wing death squads; 19 Salvadoran soldiers linked to the 1989 assassination of six Jesuit priests; Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega, the deposed Panamanian strongman; six Peruvian officers linked to killings of students and a professor; and Col. Julio Roberto Alpirez, a Guatemalan officer implicated in the death of an American innkeeper living in Guatemala and to the death of a leftist guerrilla married to an American lawyer.

“The material was based, in part, on training instructions used in the 1960s by the Army’s Foreign Intelligence Assistance Program, entitled ‘Project X’. The 1992 investigation also found the manual was distributed to thousands of military officers from 11 South and Central American countries, including Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Panama, where the U.S. military was heavily involved in counterinsurgency.

“On several occasions it uses the words ‘neutralization’ or ‘neutralizing,’ which were commonly used at the time as euphemisms for execution or destruction, a Pentagon official said.

“The manual on ‘Terrorism and the Urban Guerrilla’ says that ‘another function of the CI [counter-intelligence] agents is recommending CI targets for neutralizing. The CI targets can include personalities, installations, organizations, documents and materials . . . the personality targets prove to be valuable sources of intelligence. Some examples of these targets are governmental officials, political leaders, and members of the infrastructure,’” Diana Priest reported.

On August 9, 1983, theology of liberation priest Father Roy Bourgeois and two other human rights activists, Father Larry Rosebaugh and Linda Ventimiglia, entered the Georgia torture base disguised as officers. Once inside, they climbed a tree close to where El Salvadoran soldiers were quartered and played a tape of Archbishop Romero’s last sermon. His March 23, 1980 speech prompted El Salvador military intelligence officer D’Aubuisson and SOS 1972 student to order his murder. A sniper bullet to the heart ended the life of the Father of Peace the next day as he held mass.

“I would like to make a special appeal to the members of the army and specifically to the ranks of the National Guard, the police and the military. Brothers, each one of you is one of us. We are the same people. The peasants you kill are your own brothers and sisters. When you hear the voice of a man commanding you to kill, remember instead the voice of God: THOU SHALL NOT KILL!”

“It was a sacred moment,” Bourgeois later recalled. “Those soldiers coming out of the barracks, looking into the sky, not being able to see us, hearing the words of this prophet.” (16)

Military Police threatened to shoot the three up the tree and trained their weapons on them. Finally, MPs climbed 20 meters up the tree and dragged them down. They were hit on the head and body, stripped of their clothes, dogs barking and snapping. In jail, Father Roy went on a two-month long hunger strike. They spent 18 months in prison.

Bourgeois and associates founded the School of the Americas Watch: http://www.soaw.org/border/

“SOA Watch is a nonviolent grassroots movement working to close the SOA / WHINSEC and similar centers that train state actors such as military, law enforcement and border patrol. We strive to expose, denounce, and end US militarization, oppressive US policies and other forms of state violence in the Americas. We act in solidarity with organizations and movements working for justice and peace throughout the Americas.

We Demand:

An end to US economic, military and political intervention in Latin America! Demilitarization and divestment of the borders

An end to the racist systems of oppression that criminalize and kill migrants, refugees and communities of color

Respect, dignity, justice and the right to self-determination of communities

An end to Plan Mérida and the Alliance for Prosperity”

These brave and determined humans have protested in creative ways in front of the torturer military base. Hundreds of people passed some of their lives in prison—weeks, months, even years, often in solitary confinement—for civilly disobeying the authorities abusing their power to murder and torture, to incarcerate and silence the voices of ordinary decent human beings who take the perilous step to exercise the very basic democratic right and duty to say NO to injustice, to say NO to aggressive murder, torture, racial/ethnic “cleansing”.

They have held hundreds of protests and an annual picket before the base since the November 1989 murders of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter at the Central American University in El Salvador in which graduates of the School of the Americas were involved.

In 2001, long and hard besieged by activist determination and adverse attention, the School of the Americas changed its name to the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC). It claimed that it no longer teaches how to torture. How are we to believe that? The name, School of the Assassins (aka School of the Americas) stuck in the tongues and hearts of millions of victims and good people, empathizing with their pain, demanding an end to it all.

I am proud to have participated with these people after flying to the fort from Denmark, on November 13, 2013. http://ronridenour.com/articles/2013/1126--rr.htm

One of many marches protesting the torturing ciriculum at the School of the Americas is led by Roy Bourgeoise, leader of the School of the Americans Watch.

“Diego Lopez, Guatemala. Presente!
Francisca Chavez, El Salvador. Presente!

We tearfully placed the man and the baby’s little wooden crosses into the cyclone fence, one of three barbed-wired steal barriers separating thousands of peace-makers from the war-makers at Fort Benning, Georgia.

School of the Americas (SOA) Watch Vigil, the 24th since1990, drew me from Denmark, my friend James Smith from Ensenada, Mexico, and upwards to 3000 others from across the United States, Canada, and Latin American countries to protest in front of this key US Army combat-counter-insurgency training base.”

“SOA victims include: 200,000 Guatemalans, mostly Mayans, murdered during three US-backed dictator regimes (15of 27 military cabinet members were trained at SOA); nearly 100,000 Colombians killed and six million displaced by 10,000 troops (and others) trained in Georgia; 18 high-ranking Mexican army graduates have played key roles in civilian-targeted warfare against indigenous communities, and drug gangs have obtained training and military weaponry from SOA because many deserted from Mexico’s military; 400 resistance movement Hondurans have been murdered by troops under the leadership of SOA graduates also responsible for the coup against President Manuel Zelaya, in 2009; and hundreds of thousands other Latin Americans have been murdered by graduates of SOA.”

“Our batteries recharged and our hearts morally revitalized, we left the scene of the crime ready to oppose other crimes against humanity. Roy Bourgeois says: ‘It has always been about solidarity…to accompany, and to make another’s struggle for justice and equality your struggle’.”

As we drove our legs before the wired torture base, each of us carried a cross with the name of one of the murdered person. My spiritually connected brother was Felix Rolando Murillo López, murdered on September 17, 2001 in Honduras. Presente camarada!

Demonstrators before SOS showing names of people on crosses who SOS graduates have murdered!

Russia, China military bases

Russia, in contrast, has no School of the Americas and only 16 military bases abroad in 10 countries, most in former Soviet republics. There are about 50,000 military personnel in six countries. I could not find the numbers in the other four countries.

1. Armenia, 102nd military base and 3624th airbase with between 3,214-5,000 personnel
2. Belarus radar and communication center, and 61st fighter airbase, 1,500 personnel
3. Georgia 2 bases in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, 8,000 personnel
4. Kazakhstan radar station, anti-ballistic missile testing range and a space launch facility, unknown number of personnel
5. Kyrgyzstan Kant air base & 338th naval communication center with torpedo testing range, unknown number of personnel
6. Moldova facility in Transnistria separatist region with 1,500 peacekeepers
7. Syria naval facility in Tartus and Khmeimin air base, unknown number of personnel
8. Tajikistan 201st military base with 7,500 personnel
9. Ukraine Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol Crimea with 26,000 military personnel
10. Vietnam naval resupply facility at Cam Ranh Base, unknown personnel

China has only ONE military base beyond its borders. It is called a “logistical support” facility in the small African country of Djibouti, not far from where the U.S. has a base. Besides the U.S., France and Japan also have military bases on this east African nation of 942,000 people.

“’You would have to characterize it as a military base,’ Marine Gen. Thomas Waldhauser, chief of US Africa Command, told reporters in Washington this week. ‘It's a first for them. They've never had an overseas base.’” http://nordic.businessinsider.com/chinese-base-in-djibouti-near-camp-lemmonnier-africa-us-concern-2017-3?r=US&IR=T [author emphasis]

China only has one other overseas port base and that is a commercial one at Hambontota in Sri Lanka. Two others are in construction in Myanmar and Pakistan. None of them have military missions per se. Djibouti, for instance, is at the Horn of Africa where there have been a lot of pirate raids, because much of the world’s shipping passes by.

By contrast again, the U.S. has 4000 military personnel at Lemonnier, in Djibouti, its largest permanent base on the continent where it plans bases and military personnel in each nation.

China is developing military installations on a few islands close to its land. They are to be mainly unsinkable aircraft carriers, an answer to the “pivot to Asia” challenge introduced by Barak Obama. China has one of four underway, a 10,000-tonne destroyer. U.S. has several ships encircling China.

Military Pollution

According to the 2005 CIA World Factbook, if it were a country the DoD would rank 34th in the world in average daily oil use, coming in just behind Iraq and just ahead of Sweden.

“’The US Department of Defense is one of the world’s worst polluters. Its footprint dwarfs that of any corporation: 4,127 installations spread across 19 million acres [7.69 million hectares] of American soil’. Maureen Sullivan, who heads the Pentagon’s environmental programs, says her office contends with 39,000 contaminated sites.”

“’Almost every military site in this country is seriously contaminated,’ said John D Dingell, a soon-to-retire Michigan congressman, who served in the Second World War,” wrote Newsweek. http://www.newsweek.com/2014/07/25/us-department-defence-one-worlds-biggest-polluters-259456.html

Yet nearly all environmentalists groups, NGOs and grass roots, ignore the military and their wars when condemning and protesting environment pollution and climate change. When I worked as a volunteer activist for Greenpeace in Copenhagen for two years not long ago, I tried to bring this to their attention. I was waved aside. A few admitted, though, that if they took up this major cause of crimes against Mother Earth, they’d lose most of their donations. And the media follows suit.

“Last week, mainstream media outlets gave minimal attention to the news that the U.S. Naval station in Virginia Beach had spilled an estimated 94,000 gallons [355,828 liters] of jet fuel into a nearby waterway, less than a mile from the Atlantic Ocean. While the incident was by no means as catastrophic as some other pipeline spills, it underscores an important yet little-known fact – that the U.S. Department of Defense is both the nation’s and the world’s largest polluter,” wrote Whitney Webb, on May 15, 2017.
http://www.mintpressnews.com/u-s-military-is-worlds-largest-polluter-hundreds-of-bases-gravely-contaminated/227776/

“Producing more hazardous waste than the five largest U.S. chemical companies combined, the U.S. Department of Defense has left its toxic legacy throughout the world in the form of depleted uranium, oil, jet fuel, pesticides, defoliants like Agent Orange and lead, among others.”

Whitney Webb continued, “In addition, the U.S., which has conducted more nuclear weapons tests than all other nations combined, is also responsible for the massive amount of radiation that continues to contaminate many islands in the Pacific Ocean. The Marshall Islands, where the U.S. dropped more than sixty nuclear weapons between 1946 and 1958, are a particularly notable example. Inhabitants of Marshall Islands and nearby Guam continue to experience an exceedingly high rate of cancer.”

“The American Southwest was also the site of numerous nuclear weapons tests that contaminated large swaths of land. Navajo Indian reservations have been polluted by long-abandoned uranium mines where nuclear material was obtained by U.S. military contractors.”

Dr. Sohbet Karbuz, an energy expert formerly with the International Energy Agency in Paris, wrote twelve years ago that: “The US Department of Defense is the largest oil consuming government body in the US and in the world,” and “the biggest purchaser of oil in the world,” using “93% of all government oil consumption…[and is] the single largest consumer of petroleum in the US.” http://www.resilience.org/stories/2006-02-26/us-military-oil-consumption/

“According to the US Defense Energy Support Center Fact Book in Fiscal Year 2004, the US military fuel consumption increased to 144 million barrels [395,000 barrels per day]. This is about 40 million barrels more than the average peacetime military usage.”

Those figures do not include what pollution comes from warring.

“The Army calculated that it would burn 40 million gallons [151.4 million liters] of fuel in three weeks of combat in Iraq, an amount equivalent to the gasoline consumed by all Allied armies combined during the four years of World War I,” told American Petroleum Institute President and CEO Red Cavaney to a USAF banquet in Arlington, Virginia, July 15, 2004.

In a March 2008 study conducted by Oil Change International, authors Nikki Reisch and Steve Kretzmann maintained that in the first five years of the war against Iraq: “The war is responsible for at least 141 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MMTCO2e)…To put this in perspective: CO2 released by the war to date equals the emissions from putting 25 million more cars on the road in the US this year. If the war was ranked as a country in terms of emissions, it would emit more CO2 each year than 139 of the world’s nations do annually…the war each year emits more than 60% of all countries.” http://priceofoil.org/2008/03/01/a-climate-of-war/

U.S. military action has resulted in the desertification of 90 percent of Iraqi territory, crippling the country’s agricultural industry and forcing it to import more than 80 percent of its food. “The U.S. use of depleted uranium in Iraq during the Gulf War also caused a massive environmental burden for Iraqis. In addition, the U.S. military’s policy of using open-air burn pits to dispose of waste from the 2003 invasion has caused a surge in cancer among U.S. servicemen and Iraqi civilians alike.” http://www.mintpressnews.com/u-s-military-is-worlds-largest-polluter-hundreds-of-bases-gravely-contaminated/227776/

CIA Torture/Drugs

Project MK Ultra, also called the CIA mind control program is the code name given to a drug program of experiments on human subjects. These experiments were/are intended to identify and develop drugs and procedures for use in interrogations and torture, in order to weaken the individual to force confessions through mind control. Organized through the CIA’s Scientific Intelligence Division, the project coordinated with the Special Operations Division of the U.S. Army's Chemical Corps. They used LSD, chemicals, hypnosis, sensory deprivation, isolation, and other forms of torture on U.S. and Canadian citizens. Some were captives, but others were not and were given drugs without their knowledge. (17)

The CIA worked out of Fort Detrick, a U.S. Army Medical Command installation located in Frederick, Maryland. Fort Detrick was the center for biological weapons program from 1943 to 1969. MK Ultra continued elsewhere until 1973, officially. In addition to its own center, the CIA had research conducted at 80 institutions, including 44 colleges and universities, as well as 185 private front operations in hospitals, prisons, and pharmaceutical companies.

Project MK Ultra was first brought to public attention in 1975 by the Church Committee of the U.S. Congress, and a Gerald Ford commission to cursorily investigate CIA activities within the United States. Investigative efforts were hampered by the fact that CIA Director Richard Helms ordered all MK Ultra files destroyed in 1973, oft-repeated CIA tactic to thwart oversight and democracy. The Church Committee and Rockefeller Commission investigations had to rely principally on sworn testimony of direct participants and on the relatively small number of documents that survived Helms’ destruction order.

The extent of damage to human guinea pigs is not known but at least one was murdered, or simply died of the drugs he was given without his knowledge. Frank Olson was an army biochemist and biological weapons researcher, who was given LSD without his knowledge in November 1953. He allegedly jumped out of a hotel room to his death, which was conveniently ruled a suicide.

The CIA’s own internal investigation concluded that the head of MK Ultra, CIA chemist Sidney Gottlieb, had conducted the LSD experiment with Olson’s prior knowledge, although it admitted Olson and other experimenters were told after ingestion. Gottlieb, incidentally, later provided the CIA with drugs to murder Patrice Lumumba and Fidel Castro.

The Olson family disputes the official version of events. They maintain that Frank Olson was murdered because he was viewed as a security risk. Olson had expressed moral disapproval over biological warfare research, assassination materials used by the CIA, and collaboration with former Nazi scientists (Operation Paperclip). He quit his position as acting chief of the Special Operations Division at Detrick, and tried to resign from the CIA.
Forensic evidence later found conflicted with the official version of events.

When Olson’s body was exhumed cranial injuries indicated that he had been knocked unconscious before he exited the window. The medical examiner termed Olson's death a “homicide”. In 1975, Olson’s family received a $750,000 settlement from the U.S. government and formal apologies from President Gerald Ford and CIA Director William Colby.

Their apologies were limited to “informed consent issues” concerning Olson’s ingestion of LSD. No one went to prison for murder. On November 28, 2012, the Olson family filed suit against the U.S. federal government for the wrongful death of Frank Olson. (18)

“The sons of a Cold War scientist who plunged to his death in 1953 several days after unwittingly taking LSD in a CIA mind-control experiment sued the government Wednesday. They claimed the CIA murdered their father…pushing him from a 13th-story window of a hotel - not, as the CIA says, that he jumped to his death,” Associated Press wrote, November 28, 2012.

On July 23, 2013, federal judge James Boasberg dismissed the case for being too old and because the family had already accepted a financial settlement. Incidentally, the judge also sits on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

Another side effect of the MK Ultra project was the dying admission of its chief scientist. Gottlieb said the program was useless.

Nevertheless, MK Ultra-type experiments may not have been abandoned, according to some former CIA officials and CIA expert observers. There is little reason to believe it does not continue today under a different set of acronyms, stated Victor Marchetti who spent fourteen years in the CIA. He has told various interviewers that the CIA routinely conducts disinformation campaigns and that CIA mind control research continues. In a 1977 interview, Marchetti specifically called the CIA claim that MKUltra was abandoned a “cover story”. http://www.skepticfiles.org/socialis/marcheti.htm
Marchetti wrote one of the early ex-CIA whistle-blower books, The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence, Knopf, 1974.

In the skeptic files interview, Marchetti explained that the CIA is a systematic liar and censor.

“The basic reason for secrecy is not to keep the enemy from knowing what you’re doing. He knows what you’re doing because he’s the target of it, and he’s not stupid. The reason for the CIA to hide behind secrecy is to keep the public, and in particular the American public, from knowing what they’re doing. This is done so that the President can deny that we were responsible for sabotaging some place over in Lebanon where a lot of people were killed.

“So that the President can deny period! Here is a good example: President Eisenhower denied we were involved in attempts to overthrow the Indonesian government in 1958 until the CIA guys got caught and the Indonesians produced them. He looked like a fool. So did the N.Y. Times and everybody else who believed him. That is the real reason for secrecy.

“There is a second reason for secrecy. That is that if the public doesn’t know what you are doing you can lie to them because they don’t know what the truth is. This is a very bad part of the CIA because this is where you get not only propaganda on the American people but actually disinformation, which is to say lies and falsehoods, peddled to the American public as the truth and which they accept as gospel. That’s wrong. It’s not only wrong, it’s a lie and it allows the government and those certain elements of the government that can hide behind secrecy to get away with things that nobody knows about. If you carefully analyze all of these issues…this is always what is at the heart of it: That the CIA lied about it, or that the CIA misrepresented something, or the White House did it, because the CIA and the White House work hand in glove. The CIA is not a power unto itself… [rather] the inner circle of government, the inner circle of the establishment in general. The CIA is doing what these people want done so these people are appreciative and protective of them, and they in turn make suggestions or even go off on their own sometimes and operate deep cover for the CIA. So it develops into a self-feeding circle.”

Another former member of the Establishment, Peter Dale Scott, once a diplomat for the Canadian government, is also a poet, professor, and political scientist who came over to the people’s side. He has written many important books and articles about the military states (US/NATO). One of them, Drugs, Oil and War: The United States in Afghanistan, Colombia and Indochina (Rowman & Littlefields, 2003) shows how, “Drug networks are important factors in the politics of every continent. The United States returns repeatedly to the posture of fighting wars in areas of petroleum reserves with the aid of drug-trafficking allies – drug proxies – with which it has a penchant to become involved.”

It looks like this amoral mentality—the CIA omnipotence mentality—dominates United States politics and culture. They kill and or torture whomever they want; buy or steal any nation they want; and make entertainment out of it, warping the minds of most of its own citizens and Europeans to believe that the U.S. actually protects them against some greater evil. But there are those who see an end to this apparently endless power.

Alfred W. McCoy wrote that opium production the last year of Taliban power had fallen to 180 tons. Within six years of US dominance (2007) it had risen to 8000 tons and it is far higher today. This is the US's longest war in history (17 years). It has spent (offiically) $1.1 trillion and lost 2,300 soldiers. "The Guaridan" writer did not see the need to state how many Afghans have lost their lives but it is in the tens of thousands.

A critical voice opposed to this cynical policy of US Army-CIA using opium for its wars is Dr. Chandra Muzaffar, president of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST). Muzaffar explains that besides being immoral, this policy backfires as well, "China and Russia: The Bilateral Relationship That Matters,” July 24, 2017. https://www.globalresearch.ca/china-and-russia-the-bilateral-relationship-that-matters/5600737

“The US’s pursuit of its hegemonic agenda in the vicinity of China and Russia has undoubtedly brought the two states closer together. Chinese and Russian leaders are only too aware that there are concerted moves by the intelligence apparatus in the US and elsewhere to drive a wedge between China and Russia. If anything it has increased their determination to remain united.”

One cannot conclude that by China and Russia becoming more potent than the United States that our problems of war and violence will end. But it might just curb the insatiable US American desire for constant warring. When key sectors of the populations of the U.S. and Europe finally get tired of it all, maybe, just maybe they will rise up and crush the war machine!

A global empire has emerged.
An empire which encourages greed to grow and
selfishness to spread is a threat to humanity. It
undermines the spiritual and moral basis of
civilization. It would be a tragedy if such an empire becomes the
inheritance of our children.

This is why, all of us, wherever we are, and whoever we
are, must do all we can to help create a just world. This
is the duty and responsibility of every human being.

See JUST here: http://www.just-international.org

Notes:

1. See pages 92, 97-9, 125-6 of Douglas Valentine’s book, The CIA as Organized Crime: How illegal operations corrupt American and the world. Clarity Press, 2017. See also: No Good Men Among the Living by Anand Gopal, Metropolitan Books, 2013.
2. See “How a Torture Protest Killed a Career,” Consortium News, October 26, 2009; “U.S. Denies Entry to former British Ambassador Craig Murray,” Global Research, September 12, 2016.
3. William Appleman Williams, Empire as a Way of Life. Oxford University Press, 1980.
4. History US Military Overt and Covert Global Interventions
http://www.brianwilson.com/history-us-military-overt-and-covert-global-interventions/
Congressional Research Service (CRS). (February 2, 2009). Instances of Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad, 1798-2008. Washington D.C.: CRS Report to Congress.
5. Secret memorandum written on February 24, 1948 for Secretary of State George Marshall. It is called PPS/23 (Policy Planning Staff): ‘Review of Current Trends: U.S. Foreign Policy’. My excerpts are taken from part VII: Far East. This memo was printed by the magazine, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1948, Volume 1, 509-529.
6. J. Gerson, and B. Birchard, eds., The Sun Never Sets. South End Press, Boston, 1991.
7. B. M. Blechman, and S.S. Kaplan, Force Without War: U.S. Armed Forces as a Political Instrument, Appendix B. Wash., D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1978.
8. See: Congressional Research Service, Gerson’s and Barnaby’s essays, Blechman and Collins, J.M. (1991). America’s Small Wars: Lessons for the Future.
9. Fred Barnaby, The Gaia peace Atlas. New York; Doubleday, 1988. Plus later interventions cited elsewhere.
10. William Blum Rogue State. Common Courage Press, 2000, pp. 92-95, and his anti-imperialist report #149.
11. J. Prados (1996). President’s secret wars: CIA and pentagon covert operations from World War 11 through the Persian Gulf. Chicago, 1996. See also, John Stockwell, The Praetorian Guard: The U.S. role in the new world order. South End Press, Cambridge, Ma., 1991. “The CIA and the Gulf War” – a speech by John Stockwell; February 20, 1991, Santa Cruz, Ca.
One can see 345 of these wars and military interventions on the website: http://www.endusmilitariasm.org/forceandinterventions.htm. See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of¬_United_States_military_operations
12. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Committee
13. Peter Dale Scott, “The Libyan War, American Power and the Decline of the Petrodollar System” ; “Bombing of Libya – punishment for Gaddafi for his attempt to refuse US dollar” as cited by Ellen Brown in “Libya: All About Oil, or All About Banking.” For this and other points made here see also: Petras, James,“Euro-US War on Libya: Official Lies and Misconceptions of Critics”.
14. Franco Bechis, “French plans to topple Gaddafi on track since last November. http://www.voltairenet.org/article169069.html

15. Russia has intervened in other countries a handful of times but they have either been part of the old Soviet Union (Hungary and Czechoslovakia) or the new Russian Federation (Chechnya and Dagestan) or, in the case of Georgia, separatist movements in South Ossetia and Abkhazia seeking independence. Georgia is also right up at Russia’s border and had the U.S. achieved a NATO base there it would have clearly been a security risk.
16. Read the marvelous story of Father Roy Bourgeois and the Movement to Close the School of Americas, “Disturbing the Peace” by James Hodge and Linda Cooper , Orbis Books, Maryknoll, 2004.
17. 16. See Advisory on Human Radiation Experiments, July 5, 1994, National Security Archives.
http://www.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/national/13inmate_ProjectMKULTRA.pdf , congressional hearings. “New York Times”, August 4, 1977, “80 Institutions Used in C.I.A. Mind Studies: Admiral Turner Tells Senators of Behavior Control Research Bars Drug Testing Now”.
18. 17. H. P. Albarelli A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments. Trine Day, 2009