U.S. House approves funding to maintain the empire

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 -- an empire of bases with its own geography not likely to be taught in any high school geography class. Without grasping the dimensions of this globe-girdling Baseworld, one can't begin to understand the size and nature of our imperial aspirations or the degree to which a new kind of militarism is undermining our constitutional order. ---Chalmers Johnson
It is with the context provided by that quotation from historian Chalmers Johnson that one must understand today's news that the House of Representatives has approved funding today for defense maintaining the empire. The level of spending has been approved at $636.3 billion dollars-- nearly two-thirds of a trillion dollars(see related post on how much a trillion really is) to maintain our network of more than 800 military facilities in more than 140 countries around the world. That spending includes $128.3 billion for fighting our current wars, although Afghanistan is expected to require an additional $30 billion to fund the most recent troop increase.

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“Going Muslim” as the new “going postal”

The shootings at Fort Hood last week have provoked a media feeding frenzy. Questions abound, and there is no dearth of speculation as to the shooter's motives. Most articles I have seen waste no time pointing out that the shooter was a Muslim, that he exclaimed "Allahu akbar" before shooting, and that he is linked with radical imams and possibly Al Qaeda. That's from the ostensibly "impartial" media, but there are also a few extremely distasteful editorial perspectives that are unfortunately quite mainstream that I wanted to comment on today. I'm afraid my ability to edit sarcasm out of my posts declines in direct proportion to the insanity and hypocrisy with which I'm confronted, so bear with me. First, Forbes featured an article by Tunku Varadarajan entitled "Going Muslim", a play on the old phrase "going postal". He describes it thusly:

As the enormity of the actions of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan sinks in, we must ask whether we are confronting a new phenomenon of violent rage, one we might dub--disconcertingly--"Going Muslim." This phrase would describe the turn of events where a seemingly integrated Muslim-American--a friendly donut vendor in New York, say, or an officer in the U.S. Army at Fort Hood--discards his apparent integration into American society and elects to vindicate his religion in an act of messianic violence against his fellow Americans. This would appear to be what happened in the case of Maj. Hasan.

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Drugs, the CIA and Afghanistan

Covert government by defense contractor means corrupt wars of conquest, government by dope dealer. When the world's traditional inebriative herbs become illegal commodities, they become worth as much as precious metal, precious metal that can be farmed. ... Illegal drugs, solely because of the artificial value given them by Prohibition, have become the basis of military power anywhere they can be grown and delivered in quantity. ... To this day American defense contractors are the biggest drug-money launderers in the world.— Drug War: Covert Money, Power and Policy, p.318.
Revelations from today's New York Times that Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of president of Afghanistan, has been on the payroll of the CIA for years should be utterly unsurprising to anyone that has followed the history of either the CIA or drugs in Afghanistan. In a considerable understatement, the Times story says "The C.I.A.’s practices also suggest that the United States is not doing everything in its power to stamp out the lucrative Afghan drug trade, a major source of revenue for the Taliban." Far from "doing everything in its power" to end the drug trade, Afghan poppies are also a major source of revenue for the CIA. As Noam Chomsky said: The close correlation between the drug racket and international terrorism (sometimes called "counterinsurgency," "low intensity conflict" or some other euphemism) is not surprising. Clandestine operations need plenty of money, which should be undetectable. And they need criminal operatives as well. The rest follows."

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Remote control war – a look at the daily grind of Predator pilots

What's it like to kill human beings by dropping bombs with the push of buttons on your computer keyboard 7,000 miles away? Imaging doing this every work day, then driving home to hug your wife and kids every night. This video from FrontLine will give you a good idea of what it's like. Whatever your emotional reaction to this form of "warfare," you will find someone agreeing with you (and disagreeing with you) in the comments following the video. If our enemies were using robotic planes to drop bombs on American soil, I suspect that we'd be outraged, much more than by conventional warfare. This is certainly a sterile way of war, no matter how much the supervisors remind the pilots that they are killing human beings. If I understood why we are at "war" in Afghanistan and Iraq, maybe then I could understand whether these drones are furthering our "war objectives."

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