NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

Always nice when Guam gets a mention in The Nation. ************************ Around the Globe, US Military Bases Generate Resentment, Not Security Katrina vanden Heuvel June 13, 201 The Nation  As we debate an exit from Afghanistan , it’s critical that we focus not only on the costs of deploying the current force of more than 100,000 troops , but also on the costs of maintaining permanent bases long after those troops leave. This is an issue that demands a hard look not only in Afghanistan and Iraq, but around the globe—where the United States has a veritable empire of bases. According to the Pentagon , there are approximately 865 US military bases abroad—over 1,000 if new bases in Iraq and Afghanistan are included. The cost? $102 billion annually—and that doesn’t include the costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan bases. In a must-read article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Sciences , anthropologist Hugh Gusterson points out that these bases “constitute 95 percent of all the militar

Published on Monday, August 11, 2008 by The Capital Times (Wisconsin) Questions Journalists Never Ask by Roberto Rodriguez Having recently returned from a national journalism conference, I was reminded how most national mainstream journalists nowadays fail to ask the most basic of questions of powerful corporate executives or government officials. This is especially true in regard to issues of war and peace, where many journalists and commentators seemingly continue to act as government stenographers at best, and cheerleaders at worst. Since 9/11 of 2001, many journalists have begun to fear that being watchdogs of freedom will brand them as disloyal and anti-American. Here are some questions you will most likely not hear in the next few months from mainstream journalists. Questions for President Bush: If everything you warned about regarding Iraq was demonstrably false, why should you — or anyone who has supported your policies — be believed about anything regarding Iran or anything

I thought I would post this article by by Spencer Ackerman from The American Prospect , primarily because of the excerpt below, which is a concise, insightful and ( na'triste) explanation of why John McCain's and Bush's resistance to timetables and acceding of the control over the war to "the generals on the ground" doesn't make any sense. Here's the section: Imagine you walk into an auto body shop where you left your car for a tune-up. You ask the man at the counter: When can I pick up my car? "Well," he replies, "I think that's a question best left to the discretion of the mechanics in the shop, don't you? After all, they're the ones hard at work fixing your car." Wait, you say. Are you telling me you don't know when my car will be ready? I need to drive to -- "What I've always said," he interrupts, "is that setting an arbitrary deadline from the counter of this auto-body shop is the surest guarant