Welcome to CAAB
You will find the latest information and some data from our previous website on all matters concerning US bases and in particular the issue of the US Missile Defense system. We are still working on some of the pages so we ask for your patience please. Click on the SITE MAP for a listing of all the pages. We suggest this is checked regularly as the site is updated frequently.
CAAB is now on Facebook! Please Join us
Toxic legacy of US assault on Fallujah
‘worse than Hiroshima’
The shocking rates of infant mortality and cancer in Iraqi city
raise new questions about battle
From The Independent, By Patrick Cockburn, July 24 2010
Dramatic increases in infant mortality, cancer and leukaemia in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, which was bombarded by US Marines in 2004, exceed those reported by survivors of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, according to a new study.
Read more here: www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/toxic-legacy-of-us-assault-on-fallujah-worse-than-hiroshima-2034065.html
On Friday 23 July 2010 and in response to news of this shocking report Lindis Percy (Coordinator with Laila Packer) went to the American base at Menwith Hill and scattered notices around the carpark of the base which said ‘THE DISGRACE OF FALLUGA’ and stuck them on the invalid military land byelaw notices around the base.
US Military Bases on Guam in Global Perspective
By Catherine Lutz, Japan Focus
Guam’s military bases are part of the expansive US military basing system around the world and on the US mainland. That system is vast in scale and impact and has a particular if contentious rationale. It is important to examine what it means to live next to military facilities for several reasons:
- To study them with the tools of anthropology and the perspective of social science allows us to question the common sense about them and to see invisible processes.
- Like most social phenomena, bases are often hidden in plain sight. They are normalized from day to day, but are partially denormalized when they grow or shrink. Even then, much remains invisible and accepted as the natural order of things.
- Like social phenomena in which power is involved, their effects can be systematically hidden by advertising, fear, and public relations work.
Military base communities are in many ways as distinctive sociologically and anthropologically as the military bases they sit next to, because they respond in almost every way to the presence of those bases. They are not simply independent neighbors, but over time become conjoined, although one is always much more powerful than the other.
Read the article here:
www.japanfocus.org/-Catherine-Lutz/3389
Naval laser test blasts drones from the sky
USA Today, 19 July 2010
Death rays are making some interesting strides. In a series of tests in the last week of May. Lasers took on unmanned aircraft in a test off San Nicolas Island, the naval weapons proving ground off the coast of California.
In a few seconds, six fiber-optic lasers with a combined 32 kilowatts of power fried up the drones in the tests.
Read more here & watch a video of the test:
www.usatoday.com/tech/science/columnist/vergano/2010-07-18-laser-drones_N.htm
| Independence FROM America |
|
Photos of the annual Independence FROM America demonstration on 4 July 2010 Photos by Roy St Pierre What went on (A report of the day’s activities) Letter to North Yorkshire Police sent after the demonstration |
Finally the 1946 UKUSA Agreement is public.
It created a world-wide network of listening posts run by the US National Security Agency (NSA) and the UK’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), which endures today.
In 1948 Canada joined and in 1956 Australia and New Zealand too – though they have always been junior partners. The latter, being Commonwealth countries, provide an important geographical spread as does GCHQ in Cyprus (which monitors the Middle East).
Read more here: www.caab.org.uk/the-american-bases/statewatch-org
Arrogance of power
By Paul Balles, July 24, 2010, Gulf Daily News
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, ending the Cold War, America breathed a sigh of relief.
A problem that should have been addressed at that point was neglected. The question that should have dominated American thinking: Do we really need to maintain the many US military bases abroad?
Twelve years after the Soviet collapse, America reportedly had 702 military bases in about 130 countries and another 6,000 in the US and its territories.
That report failed to include a number of so-called secret bases and those in the Middle East.
As military historian Chalmers Johnston observed: “…the US 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….”
“By last year, the number of American bases outside of the US had increased to more than 1,000. …”
Read on … :
http://www.gulf-daily-news.com/NewsDetails.aspx?storyid=282979
A tale of three wars: Afghanistan, Iraq…Iran
Paul Rogers, 22 July 2010
The United States and its allies are rethinking their commitment to Afghanistan by the week. But an attack on Iran would return all calculations to ground zero.
The dominant political assessment in the United States of the future of the Afghanistan war is undergoing a significant shift. The nature of the change is suggested by the contrast with the atmospherics of the presidential election campaign of 2008. At that time, a clear division emerged between the two candidates, John McCain and Barack Obama, over attitudes to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The view of John McCain, the Republican Party candidate, was that the Iraq war was being won (the continuing violence there notwithstanding), in great part thanks to the military “surge” in American troop-numbers from 2007; and that in Afghanistan a similar strategy would lead to a comprehensive defeat of the Taliban. The political implication was that a McCain victory in the election would complete the triumph of the two wars begun by George W Bush, and regain the momentum needed to build the “new American century”.
The view of Barack Obama, the Democratic Party candidate, involved making a distinction between the two campaigns. Iraq was, in effect, the “bad war” – wrong in conception, disastrous in execution – which left the only honourable option a progressive US withdrawal within the first term of a new administration. Afghanistan was the “good war”, justified in its origin by the Taliban’s supporting role in the 9/11 attacks and demanding a continued commitment to see it through.
In the event, it was Barack Obama who had to carry the military responsibility of political victory. A few months into office, his administration was facing a deteriorating situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and – after a lengthy process of internal consultation – took the decision to expand the war, in two ways …
Read the rest of this article here:
www.opendemocracy.net/paul-rogers/tale-of-three-wars-afghanistan-iraqiran
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”Margaret Mead
