THE LIBERAL VOICE

Africom - Latest U.S. Bid to Recolonise Continent | AfterDowningStreet.org

Nice Article from allafrica.com on the USA military intentions in Africa.  The USA is rapidly building up its military command in Africa.  Always Imperial ambitions! Read the article at link below

Africom - Latest U.S. Bid to Recolonise Continent | AfterDowningStreet.org.

Africom or Africon? Pt 1

William Engdahl on his book Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order

Bio

F William Engdahl is an economist and author and the writer of the best selling book "A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order." Mr Engdhahl has written on issues of energy, politics and economics for more than 30 years, beginning with the first oil shock in the early 1970s. Mr. Engdahl contributes regularly to a number of publications including Asia Times Online, Asia, Inc, Japan's Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Foresight magazine; Freitag and ZeitFragen newspapers in Germany and Switzerland respectively. He is based in Germany.

Women legislators call for cuts to military budget

US African Command: AFRICOM’s $6 billion fiasco in Djibouti

uganda
Originally uploaded by Army.mil

by Thomas C. Mountain    Global Research,

Online Journal -

The USA African Command (AFRICOM) is building their new African megabase in the tiny Horn of African country of Djibouti. The first phase is costing $2 billion, according to reports, and eventually another $4 billion will be spent. This latest expansion of USA imperial might, this time on African soil, is turning into a fiasco for the Pentagon and US State Department.

To understand why one must review the recent history in the region. Djibouti is and has been little more than a province of Ethiopia. It was a French colony and continues to host a significant French military base. Since 9-11, the USA military has been feverishly trying to find a site for a major military presence in a strategic place in Africa. Unfortunately for the Pentagon, no African country with a suitable site will allow the USA to set up shop there.

So enter Djibouti. With a population of about 500,000, and one of the poorest countries on the planet, Djibouti sits at the entrance to the Red Sea, through which passes much of the world’s shipping, including a sizable portion of the oil used in Europe and Asia. The USA made the Djiboutian president an offer he couldn’t refuse and now the concrete is being poured and the new runways and docks are growing out of the sand and desert of the North African coastline of the Indian Ocean.

Most of Djibouti’s income is a result of almost all of Ethiopia’s imports passing through Djibouti’s port. Ethiopia used to use the port of Assab, part of its colony of Eritrea. In 1991. after a 30-year independence war, Eritrea won its independence from Ethiopia by defeating the Ethiopian army and chasing out of Ethiopia the former Soviet client regime of Haile Mengistu Mariam. With independence, the port of Assab, Ethiopia’s main access to the ocean, became part of the newly independent country of Eritrea.

Now many of Online Journal’s readers may be aware that Ethiopia, with the USA’s instigation and funding, invaded Somalia in Dec 2006 after the Union of Islamic Courts began to defeat the Ethiopian/USA-backed Somali warlords and started to build a new government is Somalia for the first time since 1991.

What almost no one in the West seems to know is that Ethiopia, instigated and funded by the USA and other Western countries, started a war with Eritrea in 1998 and carried out an invasion of Eritrea in 2000 in an attempt to regain their former colony (see Antiwar.com, US Behind Invasion of Eritrea, June 2000, Thomas C Mountain).

The deal the USA made with Ethiopia was that Ethiopia would destroy Eritrea with the West’s help and the USA would get a major port and international airport in Assab, strategically situated very near to the entrance to the Red Sea. Ethiopia would regain use of the Port of Assab, something dear to the heart of Ethiopian chauvinists.

After some desperate fighting in May and June of 2000, the Eritrean army crushed the Ethiopian invasion and was about to launch a counter offensive that could very likely have seen Eritrean tanks once again rolling through the streets of Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, when the USA sent an aircraft carrier task force to the Red Sea and told Eritrea if they did so, the USA would attack them.

Since June of 2000, there has existed a no war no peace situation (something fostered by the USA) between Ethiopia and Eritrea while the West and the USA, in particular, continues to allow the diversion of billions of dollars in supposedly humanitarian aid to the Ethiopian military, the largest and best equipped in Africa.

Coming back to the Africom fiasco in Djibouti, when the Eritreans found out that the USA was building a major military base in Djibouti the Eritreans did what was prudent and made sure their military secured Eritrean high ground overlooking Djibouti.

It must have come as an unpleasant surprise for the USA military to find the entire AFRICOM base within potential range of Eritrean artillery, some 60 miles or so. One can only imagine the red-faced rage experienced by the generals in the Pentagon when they arrived at work one morning and were given the satellite images of Eritrean troops looking down from Eritrean soil on AFRICOM’s spanking new base being built on the Djiboutian coast. The Eritreans could, if they so desire, bring their artillery up onto the mountain tops and shut down the new AFRICOM base on a moment’s notice.

Eritrea, of course, is not stupid, and has no desire to start any war with the USA. Eritrea is not about to wave a red flag in the face of the USA military bull and there is no evidence or even suggestion that Eritrea has stationed any artillery overlooking Djibouti. On the other hand, Eritrea has lost a lot of blood winning its independence, something the USA was bitterly against from the very beginning, and very prudently made sure that its territory bordering Djibouti, very strategic high ground, was secure. Ethiopia has already occupied Eritrean territory on the Eritrean/Ethiopian/Djibouti border and continues to occupy Eritrean territory captured during the 2000 invasion. Eritrea, a fiercely proud and independent country, is not about to sit back and allow any further violation of its national territory.

To put it mildly, the USA is very unhappy having Eritrean troops in such a strategic position vis--vis their new base, which explains why the Djiboutian army attempted to capture the Eritrean military positions overlooking the new AFRICOM base last year. In short order, the battle hardened veterans of the Eritrean Defense Forces destroyed the Djiboutian invasion attempt and Eritrean boys still sit in their trenches overlooking the AFRICOM megabase in Djibouti.

What the generals in the Pentagon plan to do about this is anyone’s guess. The quick manner in which the Eritrean army crushed the Djiboutian incursion and the near mutinies reportedly taking place in the Djiboutian military over having to attack their former colleagues from Eritrea on behalf of the USA has left the USA with little room to maneuver.

The USA has tried bluffing Eritrea by ramming through a resolution in the UN Security Council demanding, in violation of international law and the UN’s own charter, that Eritrea withdraw its troops from its own territory. Eritrea has quite rightly denounced such demands and ,with its bluff called, the USA is left with egg on its face.

One thing for sure is that the USA is not going to find it easy to swallow that fact that their new AFRICOM base in Djibouti has become a 6 billion dollar fiasco and made the USA military look like fools.

For more of the real deal stay tuned to Online Journal, the only place for news about the Horn of Africa that the so-called ‘Free Press’ in the West has failed to cover.

Thomas C. Mountain, the last white man living in Eritrea, was in a former life, educator, activist and alternative medicine practitioner in the USA. Email thomascmountain@yahoo.com. 

                        © Copyright Thomas C. Mountain, Online Journal, 2009

The url address of this article is: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13661

March on the Pentagon's industrial complex

Thousands marched across the country calling for an end to the occupation in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine. They demonstrated to keep the pressure on the Obama administration. In Washington DC demonstrators marched across the memorial bridge carrying mock coffins which they laid at the Lockheed Martin courtyard in Arlington, Va.

The cost of empire: : Why are US bases in Korea?

The cost of empire: US government spending $100B annually to maintain 1000 foreign military bases

Bio

Miriam Pemberton is a Research Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. She heads a group that produces the annual “Unified Security Budget for the United States" and she is a former Director of the National Commission for Economic Conversion and Disarmament. She is co-editor, with William Hartung, of "Lessons from Iraq: Avoiding the Next War".

Italians Occupy Site of Proposed U.S. Military Base in Vicenza

Global Research, January 31, 2009

afterdowningstreet.org

From Stephanie Wesbrook

Editor's note: Opposition to what would be a major new hub for the U.S. military in Europe is not new. Protest marches have filled Vicenza's streets. The Italian Prime Minister has lost his job. But now construction has neared, and protesters have occupied the site to prevent it. See background here.

This morning around 10 a.m. the movement opposing the new U.S. base in Vicenza, Italy, entered and occupied the site. The police were caught completely off guard and the activists were able to cut the fence and gates and occupy the area. Once the police arrived, they were planning to forcibly remove the protesters. However, the protesters are occupying an area that was the airport Dal Molin, which is technically under control of the Italian civilian aviation authority, ENAC, who has said the protest is legitimate. So far the police have backed off. Tonight there will be a public assembly followed by a dinner and concert. Monday, Feb 2, had been announced by the movement as the start of a week of initiativeto protest the demolition work that is being carried out in preparation for the construction of the base, but it looks like the activists got off to an early start!

See below a *rough* translation of an article.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

About two hundred activists of the "No Dal Molin" movement entered the area of the Vicenza airport where a few days ago the construction of the new U.S. military base Camp Ederle 2 began.

The blitz was announced by the members of the movement themselves.
The police are on the site - including the Questore of Vicenza - and are overseeing the peaceful occupation of the area.

To enter the area the protesters cut a piece of the fence. The Questore Sarlo is trying to start negotiations with the demonstrators. There are also members of the Disobbedienti who arrived from Padova and other cities of the Veneto region.

The situation for the moment is calm. The demonstrators displayed banners and posters against the U.S. military, and with the spray paint wrote "Vicenza City of Peace" and "You demolish, we build peace". The protesters have not reached the area from the inside of Dal Molin, protected by a fence, which is being developed by the company in charge of demolishing the existing structures.

Some of the coop workers of CMC of Ravenna that were working on the site were taken away as a precaution. A fact that the 'No Dal Molin' have already declared as a victory.

Twenty demonstrators were on the roofs, while outside began assembling a tent. "This - said the Committee - is the response by those opposed to the project to the announcement of the imminent start of construction. On October 5, through the popular consultation, the participants decided in a vote by a large majority that the land must be devoted to civilian uses, therefore seeking to implement the project means trampling democracy."

For the protesters, the project to double the U.S. base is "illegitimate and illegal, because the proponents have refused to accept that a detailed environmental impact assessment be made of the site, a useful tool in protecting the health and the area." The occupation, the say, will continue indefinitely.

                                      © Copyright , afterdowningstreet.org, 2009

The url address of this article is: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=12105

US Military Bases: Time to Set Okinawa Free

by Sherwood Ross

Global Research, January 31, 2009

 

It’s way past time for the U.S. to get out of Okinawa---and, for that matter, to take its Tokyo good buddies with it. Before Japanese warlords annexed the Ryuku islands in 1879, Okinawans enjoyed more freedom than they do today. Every liberty-loving American ought to be shouting: “Okinawa for the Okinawans!”

Right now, this Los Angeles-sized Pacific gem of 454-sq.-miles is Pentagon Tropical Paradise No. 1. It’s a land of martinis-and-honey where our 25,000 military personnel and their 23,000 dependents can live in high-rise splendor with housing allowances approaching $1,000 or more a month (plus cost-of-living perks), enjoy PX shopping as good as it gets, and tan on the exotic beaches as Kin Red and Kin Blue.

This comes at a price, though---paid for by U.S. taxpayers and 1.3 million long-suffering Okinawans. The Pentagon has studded their island paradise with airfields, barracks, artillery and bombing ranges, ammunition depots, toxic chemical, depleted uranium (and nuclear bomb) storage dumps---everything a demented mind could wish for to threaten modern civilization. These lethal chazzerei take up 20 percent of Okinawa’s acreage, swindled from its hapless owners by Uncle Sam without benefit of cash payment the same way Joe Stalin collectivized Soviet Russia’s farms.

What particularly galls the locals (85% of Okinawans polled want the Yanks o-u-t) is not just the presence of U.S. troops, mostly Marines, occupying their homeland, but the hundreds of ensuing rapes and sexual violations of their daughters, some as young as twelve. These have spurred vast anti-American demonstrations. The incidence of rape on Okinawa is twice that of the States and the Dayton Daily News reported the military has freed hundreds of U.S. sex offenders despite their court-martial convictions.

Last March, Okinawans rallied in a baseball stadium to protest the latest child rape and, according to the Associated Press, “banners demanding the complete withdrawal of U.S. troops ringed the makeshift stage.” The AP noted that “problems with base-related accidents, crowding and crime are endemic.”

Okinawans can do little to stop this lawlessness: “When U.S. servicemen and their families commit crimes, they shall be detained by U.S. authorities until Japanese law enforcement agencies file complaints with the prosecutors’ office,” the Japan-U.S. Status of Forces Agreement(SOFA) states---and by then the perps could be back in Hahira, Georgia.

Although the New York Times editorial page claimed “American military behavior in Japan has generally been good since the occupation in 1945,” between 1972 and 1995 U.S. service personnel were implicated in 4,716 crimes. At one point up to a third of the Third Marine Division was infected with venereal disease, prompting author Chalmers Johnson in “Blowback”(Henry Holt) to crack “one has to ask what the New York Times might consider bad behavior.” What’s more, Newsweek noted that when Okinawa poet Ben Takara surveyed girls at Futenma senior high, one-third to one-half of them said they had “scary experiences with U.S. soldiers on their way to school or back home.”

Approximately 75 percent of all U.S. forces in Japan (why, fellow taxpayers, do we keep any forces in Japan, why?) are concentrated on Okinawa, having less than one percent of Japan’s total land area, which “amounts to a permanent collusion of the United States and Japan against Okinawa,” Chalmers observes. The answer is found in Tim Weiner’s “Legacy of Ashes”(Anchor Books), who recalls Okinawa was “a crucial staging ground for the bombing of Vietnam and a storehouse of American nuclear weapons.” Weiner notes that when opposition politicians in 1968 “threatened to force the United States off the island” the CIA funneled big bucks into Japan to defeat them at the polls.

In short, Japan can conveniently dump the military burden of its U.S. defense pact on the backs of their captive Okinawans, with 14 military bases jammed onto its 70-mile-long expanse. (Japan itself has just eight U.S. bases.) This saddles Okinawa with the constant hullabaloo of jet warplane noise. (The Futenma base alone has 52,000 takeoffs and landings a year.)

Yoshida Kensei, former professor at Obirin University in Japan, and Asian Studies Lecturer Rumi Sakamoto of Auckland University, New Zealand, write that Okinawa is nothing more than a U.S. “military colony.” They want to rid the island of all “war cooperation” and reallocate its land to “agriculture, fisheries, and trade,” high tech, medicine and tourism. And they wouldn’t mind seeing Okinawans make some real cash by converting the U.S. bases into remunerative housing areas, commercial and industrial properties, and educational or research parks.

Author Johnson quotes editor Koji Taira of the Ryukyuanist as writing, “the incomes generated directly or indirectly by the bases are only 5 percent of the gross domestic product of Okinawa. This is far too small a contribution for an establishment sitting on 20 percent of Okinawa’s land…In effect, the U.S. and Japan are forcing on Okinawa’s economy a deadweight loss of 15 percent of its GDP every year.”

As Johnson concludes, “Okinawa is still essentially a military colony of the Pentagon’s, a huge safe house where Green Berets and the Defense Intelligence Agency, not to mention the air force and Marine Corps, can do things they would not dare do in the United States.”

World War Two has been over for 60 years: Okinawans need to be free of the Pentagon and free of Japan.

                                      © Copyright Sherwood Ross , Global Research, 2009

The url address of this article is: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=12104