Tuesday, July 8, 2014

US WESTWARD IMPERIALISM NEWSLETTER #13

OMNI
US WESTWARD IMPERIALISM, PACIFIC OCEAN, EAST ASIA, NEWSLETTER #13.   June 26, 2014.

Compiled by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace, Justice, and Ecology.
  (#1 May 8, 2012; #2 August 22, 2012; #3 Nov. 25, 2012; #4 Jan. 12, 2013; #5 March 27, 2013; #6 July 5, 2013; #7 August 12, 2013; #8 Nov. 8, 2013; #9 Jan. 2, 2014; #10 Feb. 3, 2014; #11 Feb. 26, 2014; #12 April 21, 2014).

      Why aren’t Pentagon/White House/Congressional/ Corporate/Mainstream Media arguments represented here?   Isn’t balance what we should seek?   Emphatically yes to balance.  Balance is the essence of these newsletters.  They make a tiny effort to balance the enormous propaganda machine that is the Corporate-Pentagon-White House-Congressional-Mainstream Media Security-Surveillance Complex  President Eisenhower would warn us about today.   The Pentagon has asked for $600 billion this coming year.   Two more giant Internet providers—Comcast and Time Warner—are planning to merge.   The FCC is abandoning the principle of Net Neutrality.  This complex controls the narrative of US “exceptionalism” history that enforces its interests of military domination.for corporate profits.   And this narrative is not healthy for humans and other animals or for the planet.   
      In contrast, the editor of the OMNI newsletters has no salary or staff, and his subject is the protection of humans and other animals from US invasions and threats of invasions, bombings, special ops, a thousand bases, ten carrier battle groups.  So let’s not complain of imbalance in these newsletters, but rather let’s raise a clamor at how pathetically little access is given to the counter-exceptionalism perspective in education and the culture at large.  And  let’s all of us get to work at telling a story of the USA different from that of the Complex, to frustrate, expose, resist, impede, and redirect it in order to stop the arrogance of domination, stop the invasions and interventions, stop the bombings and torture.  And to convert all that destructive and wasted money to the needs of human beings and other sentient animals.
      My newsletters are intended to help.   I compile these Westward Imperialism newsletters to give us information by which to counteract the Complex’s Propaganda Machine..   While we in our homes and towns organized to increase reason, cooperation, kindness, and peace, our leaders threatened, prepared for, and engaged in war after war.  At home we conserved and built, cared and nurured; abroad we blew up buildings and killed people.
     All the while the US was conquering and occupying the Middle East, the same leaders were expanding bases throughout the Pacific and E. Asia, until one day they decided to “pivot” troops from Iraq to China, as though it were a new idea.  Already China was encircled by US bases (and Russia and Iran).  And that belligerent threatening continues.  But I think you would not be reading this if you were intimidated by such aggression by your own country.   You and I know that if we avert our eyes and energy away from our leaders’ compulsion to dominate the planet, we will lose our nation and our ourselves.  Listen to Justice Jackson:  "To initiate a war of aggression…is not only an international crime, it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."  (Robert H. Jackson, U.S. Prosecutor, Nuremberg Military Tribunal ).  And read the UN Charter:  “All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.”  (Article 2, Principle 4, United Nations Charter). 
      But if you believe the myth repeated for two centuries--that the US is a good nation and even when it stumbles (in reality bombs women and children in Afghanistan and Iraq or blockades food and medicine from Iraq during the 1990s and from Cuba for four decades) the outcome is eventually good because the US is good—then Jackson’s and the Charter’s admonitions don’t seem to apply, and you need to read these newsletters for balance.

if way to the Better there be,
it exacts a full look at the Worst."

—Thomas Hardy





Here is the link to all OMNI newsletters:

http://www.omnicenter.org/newsletter-archive/   For a knowledge-based peace, justice, and ecology movement and an informed citizenry as the foundation for opposition to empire, militarism, and wars.   Here is the link to the Index:  http://www.omnicenter.org/omni-newsletter-general-index/   See: Continental US Westward Expansion, Genocide, Indigenous People of Americas, Pentagon, TPP, US Imperialism, WWII Colonial Pacific, and more.
See.doc,  Nuclear Free Independent Pacific Day.doc, No Bases Network, Nuclear Weapons.
My blog:
It's the War Department

Nos. 7 - 12 at end


Contents of Westward Imperialism Newsletter #13
Contexts
Dick, RIMPAC STARTED JUNE 26
Dick, the Moral and Intellectual Implosion of Secretary of War Hagel
Engelhardt, China
Engelhardt, Escobar, Washington’s global military-first strategy and Beijing’s civilian-
     First
Herbert Bix, Japan and US
Bruce Gagnon, Westward  Bases Humanitarian?

Conflict Over Arctic Resources as Ice Melts
Goldenberg, Westward Becomes Northward
Gagnon, War Planning for Arctic Resources?

Individual Bases and Countries as Bases
Philippines:  Report from Karapatan
And Continents
Nick Turse, In Africa Westward Becomes Eastard
Pilger, In Eastern Europe, Focus Ukraine, Westward Has Become Eastward


rimpac pacific  RIM OF THE PACIFIC NAVAL EXERCISE OF 23 NATIONS, the world's largest international maritime warfare exercise, GOOGLE SEARCH, June 26, 2014

[Because this exercise includes even one of the ten to a dozen US Navy carrier groups (more than all other nations combined), this is a massive US show of naval force.  This lake belongs to the USA!   The exercises began in 1971 for mutual safety and security, declares the US Navy, and this year includes 22 (23?) nations.  Considering the history of US expansion in the Pacific and E. Asia (the subject of this newsletter on US Westward Imperialism), we might expect the People’s Republic of China to be excluded, the exercise part of the US “defensive” enclosure of that nation.    But the interesting aspect of this exercise is the apparent inclusion of the PRC, which hasn’t happened since 1998.  This looks promising for world peace and  cooperation.   So I wondered what is the nature of China’s participation, made a google search for Rimpac and China, and found the entry from Reuters back in March printed below.   China is included in a highly restricted role, but still enough to inspire the old extremist, anti-communist Heritage Foundation to protest: Chinese intelligence agents will be on board whatever humanitarian/natural disaster ship China sends   Still, let’s tell our representatives that China’s inclusion is a good move for peace, and praise the Pentagon for acting like the Department of State should.    Dick]

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Headlines

·                                 Multinational Task Force Arrives for RIMPAC 2014
·                                 USS Ronald Reagan, Carrier Air Wing Two to Participate in World's Largest Maritime Exercise
·                                 USNS Mercy Departs San Diego for RIMPAC
·                                 23 Nations to Participate in World’s Largest Maritime Exercise
·                                 3rd Fleet and TTGP Host RIMPAC Staff Exercise

Connect with RIMPAC

   
DVIDS distributes video, audio, imagery, and print products from the U.S. Department of Defense.
Rim of the Pacific - Capable, Adaptive, Partners
Held every two years by Commander, U.S. Pacific Fleet (PACFLT), RIMPAC 2014 is a multinational maritime exercise that takes place in and around the Hawaiian Islands.
This year’s RIMPAC exercise, the 24th in the series that began in 1971, is scheduled from June 26 to August 1, with an opening reception scheduled for June 26 and closing reception August 1. Twenty-two nations, 49 surface ships, 6 submarines, more than 200 aircraft and 25,000 personnel will participate. Units from Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Colombia, France, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, the People’s Republic of China, Peru, the Republic of Korea, the Republic of the Philippines, Singapore, Tonga, the United Kingdom and the United States will participate.
RIMPAC is a unique training opportunity that helps participants foster and sustain the cooperative relationships that are critical to ensuring the safety of sea lanes and security on the world’s oceans.

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1.                                                      RIMPAC exercise could cause havoc for Hawaii garage doors
Pacific Business News (Honolulu) ‎- 1 day ago
During the Rim of the Pacific military exercise — or RIMPAC, the world's largest international maritime warfare exercise — some remotely ...
2.                                                      Indo-Pacific security links: RIMPAC, China's influence ...
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3.                                                      Military coup gets Thailand booted from RIMPAC lineup
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2.                             RIMPAC 2014 | Commander, U.S. Pacific Fleet

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Held every two years by Commander, U.S. Pacific Fleet (PACFLT), RIMPAC 2014 is a multinational maritime exercise that takes place in and around the ...

3.                             Exercise RIMPAC - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exercise_RIMPAC
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RIMPAC, the Rim of the Pacific Exercise, is the world's largest international maritime warfare exercise. RIMPAC is held biennially during June and July of ...

4.                             Rim of the Pacific RIMPAC - Facebook

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RIMPAC. 11360 likes · 1492 talking about this. Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) is the world's largest multi-national maritime exercise and is scheduled to.
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5.                             DVIDS - Video - RIMPAC Launches in Pacific

www.dvidshub.net/.../rim...Defense Video & Imagery Distribution System
1 hour ago - Video: RIMPAC Launches in Pacific ... 2014 - Ships and personnel from 23 nations arrive in Hawaii for RIMPAC 2014. Web Views. 65.

6.                             Indo-Pacific security links: RIMPAC, China's influence ...

www.lowyinterpreter.org/.../Indo-Pacific-security-links-RIMPAC-Chinas...
17 hours ago - RIMPAC (the Rim of the Pacific Exercise) 2014 starts today and for the first time China will participate. The Chinese Navy hopes to 'advertise ...

7.                             China to attend major U.S.-hosted naval exercises, but role ...

www.reuters.com/.../us-usa-china-drill-idUSBRE92L18A201303...
Reuters
Mar 22, 2013 - The Rim of the Pacific exercise, known as RIMPAC, is billed as the world's largest international maritime exercise, with 22 nations and more ...

8.                             Chinese Navy Will Participate in RIMPAC Exercise for First ...

thediplomat.com/.../chinese-navy-will-participate-i...
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May 8, 2014 - For the first time ever, China's PLA Navy will take part in the international RIMPAC naval exercise hosted by the U.S. Pacific Fleet. This year ...

9.                             RIMPAC 2014: International maritime exercise kicks off in ...

www.janes.com/.../rimpac-2014-international-...
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2 days ago - Ships, aircraft, and military personnel from 23 nations are convening in Hawaii to participate in the Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) naval exercise ...

10.                         Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC)

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May 8, 2014
Exercise Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) is the world's largest international maritime exercise comprised of ...


RIMPAC AND CHINA


China to attend major U.S.-hosted naval exercises, but role limited BY  PHIL STEWARTWASHINGTON Fri Mar 22, 2013 6:02pm EDT  
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Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) navy sailors stand in a line and wait to attend a ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, July 19, 2012. REUTERS/Jason Lee
Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) navy sailors stand in a line and wait to attend a ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, July 19, 2012.
CREDIT: REUTERS/JASON LEE

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(Reuters) - China's People's Liberation Army has accepted an invitation to participate for the first time in a major U.S.-hosted naval drill, but legal restrictions will limit its role to less sensitive exercises, like disaster relief, U.S. officials say.
Beijing's agreement to join the drills being held next year comes at a moment of heightened tensions between China and U.S. ally Japan over disputed East China Sea islets, and unease in the United States about China's rapid military buildup and its cyber capabilities.
The Rim of the Pacific exercise, known as RIMPAC, is billed as the world's largest international maritime exercise, with 22 nations and more than 40 ships and submarines participating the last time it was held off Hawaii in 2012.
Not all the participants are treaty allies with the United States. Last year's participants included Russia and India.
But China has never participated in the event, although it did send observers to RIMPAC in 1998, the Pentagon said.
Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter acknowledged China had agreed to participate in RIMPAC during a little-noticed speech on Wednesday in Jakarta. Carter said he was "delighted that they have accepted" the American invitation, extended last year by then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.
At the time, Panetta said he asked China to send a ship to the exercises. Beijing said later it would give the offer "positive consideration.
"We seek to strengthen and grow our military-to-military relationship with China, which matches and follows our growing political and economic relationship," Carter said, according to prepared remarks on the Defense Department's website.
U.S. law prohibits the Pentagon from any military contacts with the PLA if it could "create a national security risk due to an inappropriate exposure" to activities including joint combat operations.
There is an exemption for operations or exercises related to search and rescue and humanitarian relief, and China participated with the United States last year in a counter-piracy drill.
'SECURITY SAFEGUARDS'
Lieutenant Colonel Catherine Wilkinson, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said China's participation in RIMPAC would adhere to U.S. law and noted precautions taken by the Navy in drills to avoid revealing sensitive information.
"The U.S. Navy has operational security safeguards to protect U.S. technology and tactics, techniques and procedures from disclosure," Wilkinson said.
Dean Cheng, an analyst at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington think tank, questioned whether Chinese intelligence operatives would not benefit from their participation in RIMPAC, which also includes live-fire exercises by key U.S. allies.
"If they have a frigate, or even a hospital ship, in the middle of that exercise, the hospital ship is going to be staffed by intelligence officers," Cheng said.
He noted that if the drills were designed in a way that was unhelpful to the Chinese, they would also be unhelpful to allies.
Wilkinson declined to speculate about which drills China might participate in, noting the agenda had not yet been set for next year's event.
"U.S.-China military-to-military engagements can include a range of activities in areas of mutual interest including maritime security, military medicine and humanitarian assistance/disaster relief," she said.
Commander Charles Brown, a spokesman for the Navy's Third Fleet, said the initial planning conference for RIMPAC 2014 would take place in May.
"We're proud of our ability to design an exercise that everyone feels meets their objectives and is comfortable with," Brown said.
(Editing by Warren Strobel and Peter Cooney)



  


TPP
Roots Action, Secret Meetings
Progressive Letter Plus Several References




CONTEXTS

HAGEL: CHINA TERRITORIAL CLAIMS DESTABILIZE REGION, by  LOLITA C. BALDOR, Associated Press,  May. 30, 2014, 11:32 PM EDT.


http://bigstory.ap.org/article/hagel-china-territorial-claims-destabilize-region.  [A similar version appeared in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (June 1, 2014, 6A), under the title: “Hagel: China Destabillizing Region”).]

Review by Dick Bennett

The apparently original version of the Associate Press article opens with these words:

     Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel warned an international security conference Saturday that the U.S. "will not look the other way" when nations such as China try to restrict navigation or ignore international rules and standards.  China's territorial claims in the South China Sea are destabilizing the region, and its failure to resolve disputes with other nations threatens East Asia's long-term progress, Hagel said.
     For those of you who have kept up with my twelve newsletters tracing US expansion across the Pacific and into E. Asia, Hagel’s statement will seem astonishing, as though he had just emerged from a windowless Pentagon where no news from the outside disturbed the peaceful myths and dogmas of the inside.   The version in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette opens even more amazingly:  “China’s aggressive moves to claim jurisdiction in the Asia-Pacific region risk underming peace and security in the region and beyond, U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Saturday.”
     For it is the US that has moved aggressively.  While China’s “aggression” was to assert jurisdiction over some uninhabitable islands and to argue with Vietnam ( and sunk a fishing boat) over drilling rights in one area, the US had constructed military bases three and four deep all across the Pacific (Hawaii to Guam) and a scimitar blade of bases from Aleutians all around the coasts of E. Asia to the north western tip of Australia! 
     But that’s not all our see/hear/say no evil about the USA apparently said about China and the world.   The consequences of Hagel’s apparently lifetime breakfast, lunch, and dinner of self-serving US nationalism and exceptionalist double-standards were exposed “In a string of remarks aimed directly at China,” that  “the U.S. opposes any nation's use of intimidation or threat of force to assert territorial claims.”   Now Hagel’s cagey speech-writer might have been technically right regarding territorial claims, but surely no other country in recent history has used intimidation and threat of force more than the US.  Perhaps our leaders and many of the public don’t know it is because it is obscured by the extraordinary, incomparable use of armed forced.     Fortunately we are spared the full string of anti-China remarks, preserving our larynxes from damage.  Still there is more double-talk.
     All nations of the region, including China, have a choice: to unite, and recommit to a
     stable regional order, , , , 
     Again there might be some quibble over regional, but such talk evokes our memory (cannot Hagel see that?) of Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Chile, Venezuela and other Latin American countries.  
     The U.S. has declined to take sides on the sovereignty issue [Japan and China and the
      rock piles] but has made clear it has a  treaty obligation to support Japan. 
     China’s General Yao pierced that statement immediately:  How can you not have a position if you have a treaty obligation? 
     But let me move on to the end. 
     Chinese leaders. . . have blamed the Obama administration's new focus on Asia for
     emboldening some of the disputes.
    That’s a no-brainer, as the US rewards countries finanacially for permitting US bases, and Secretary of State not war Kerry flies from country to country (Vietnam, Philippines) making military deals.  And new focus?  The Chinese seem blinded (or is that the AP writer?) to the reality of the long US build-up in the Pacific and E. Asia.   If we remember the Korean and Vietnam War, The “Pivot” is at least 50 years old; rather let’s call it The Asian Imperial Rivet.
     The final irony, is the pseudo-anxiousness expressed by some Asian leaders, according to the AP writer,
     that the U.S. is doing little more than paying lip service to the complaints, fueling doubts
     about America's commitment to the region.  
     How can anyone say or think with a straight face that the trillions of dollars the US has spent on two land wars in East Asia and the seventy-year, unceasing military riveting in the Pacific and E. Asia lacks commitment?!
     But in order to reassure Asia-Pacific nations (does Hagel really not see what enthralls them?), Hagel does finally tell the truth about US imperial domination of that region:
       "The rebalance is not a goal, not a promise or a vision - it is a reality," Hagel said, laying
      out a long list of moves the U.S. has made to increase troops, ships and military assets in
       the region, provide missile defense systems to Japan, sell sophisticated drones and
      other aircraft to Korea, and expand defense cooperation with Australia, New Zealand
      and India.
PS:  The  militarized version in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette ends as just quoted.  The earlier, original version ends in a more conciliatory tone:  The “U.S. is also continuing to reach out to China. Despite persistent differences, Washington and Beijing have been trying to improve their military relations, expand communications between their forces and conduct joint exercises.”   Not congruent with the threatening facts of US armed encirclement, but entirely consistent with saying you don’t have a position with a treaty ally.

 

Mapping the Chinese Conquest of the Planet

Tom Engelhardt, Op-Ed, NationofChange, May 7, 2014: To fight a global war of conquest, the Chinese of my imaginary universe, who then had no nuclear weapons, would have had to face a massive American nuclear arsenal. Hence, in an otherwise blank mid-Pacific, I drew a crude mushroom cloud captioned, “Atom blast destroys Pacific Isles & U.S. missile supply” (i.e. the ability to get nuclear weapons aloft). I evidently wasn’t thinking about the Strategic Air Command or the already existing Russian arsenal, but, hey, give me a break: I was fifteen years old and my teacher was droning on.
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US MILITARY BUILDUP AND WAR-PLANNING AND THREATENING  CONTINUE WHILE CHINA BUILDS FOR CIVILIANS

Consider this: our advanced robotic creatures, those drone aircraft grimly named Predators and Reapers, are still blowing away human beings from Yemen to Pakistan.  Meanwhile, the Pentagon is now testing out a 14,000-pound drone advanced enough to take off and land on its own on the deck of an aircraft carrier -- no human pilot involved.  (As it happens, it’s only a "demonstrator"and, at a cost of $1.4 billion, can’t do much else.)  While we’re talking about the skies, who could forget that the U.S. military is committed to buying 2,400 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters, already dubbed, amid cost overruns of every sort, "the most expensiveweapons system in history."  The bill for them: nearly $400 billion or twice what it cost to put a man on the moon. 

In similar fashion, the U.S. Navy, with 10 aircraft carriers afloat on a planet on which no other nation has
 more than two, is now building a new class of “supercarriers.”  The first of them, the USS Gerald R. Ford, is due for delivery in 2016 at an estimated cost of more than $12 billion.  It, too, is experiencing the sort of cost overruns and performance problems that now seem to accompany all new U.S. weapons systems.  In the meantime, Washington has dispatched one of its littoral combat ships (a troubled $34 billion weapons system) to Singapore; is flying manned aircraft anddrones over the Nigerian bush; and as for building national security state infrastructure of just about any sort, seldom has a problem getting Congress to pony up -- as in the $69 million now in the 2015 defense budget for the latest prison being constructed at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, meant to house just 15 “high-value” prisoners.  Similarly, when it comes to the infrastructure needed to listen in on the world, the sky’s the limit, including an almost $2 billion data center built for the National Security Agency in Bluffdale, Utah. In such "infrastructural" realms, the U.S. is today without serious competition. 

On the other hand, if we’re talking about purely civilian infrastructure, just consider that, at this very moment, Congress is dilly-dallying while the crucial Highway Trust Fund that keeps American roads and interstates in shape is “heading for a cliff” and projected to
 go bankrupt in August.  This from the country that once turned the car into a poetic symbol of freedom.  Meanwhile, the nation's overall infrastructure, from levees and dams to wastewater and aviation, now regularly gets a grade of D+ from the American Society of Civil Engineers. 

If you want a measure of rise and decline, look no further than this comparison between U.S. and Chinese infrastructural build-ups, between, that is, Washington’s global military-first strategy and Beijing’s civilian-first one meant to create a transport and communications system that could economically tie significant parts of the world to that country for decades to come.  Rising... falling... Perhaps as
 TomDispatch regular Escobar, that peripatetic traveler across the realms he likes to call Pipelineistan, suggests, we really are heading for a new Eurasian Century. Tom
The Birth of a Eurasian Century 
Russia and China Do Pipelineistan 
By
 Pepe Escobar
HONG KONG -- A specter is haunting Washington, an unnerving vision of a Sino-Russian alliance wedded to an expansive symbiosis of trade and commerce across much of the Eurasian land mass -- at the expense of the United States.
And no wonder Washington is anxious.  That alliance is already a done deal in a variety of ways: through the BRICS group of emerging powers (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa); at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Asian counterweight to NATO; inside the G20; and via the 120-member-nation Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). Trade and commerce are just part of the future bargain. Synergies in the development of new military technologies beckon as well. After Russia’s Star Wars-style, ultra-sophisticated S-500 air defense anti-missile system comes online in 2018, Beijing is sure to want a version of it. Meanwhile, Russia is about tosell dozens of state-of-the-art Sukhoi Su-35 jet fighters to the Chinese as Beijing and Moscow move to seal an aviation-industrial partnership.
This week should provide the first real fireworks in the celebration of a new Eurasian century-in-the-making when Russian President Vladimir Putin drops in on Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing.  You remember “Pipelineistan,” all those crucial oil and gas pipelines crisscrossing Eurasia that make up the true circulatory system for the life of the region. Now, it looks like the ultimate Pipelineistan deal, worth $1 trillion and 10 years in the making, will be inked as well. In it, the giant, state-controlled Russian energy giant Gazprom will agree to supply the giant state-controlled China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) with 3.75 billion cubic feet of liquefied natural gas a day for no less than 30 years, starting in 2018. That’s the equivalent of a quarter of Russia’s massive gas exports to all of Europe. China’s current daily gas demand is around 16 billion cubic feet a day, and imports account for 31.6% of total consumption.
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As a rising power in the nineteenth century, the U.S. moved toward global status on the basis of an ambitious program of canal building and then of government-sponsored transcontinental railroads.  Jump a century and a half and the country that, until recently, was being called the planet’s “sole superpower” has yet to build a single mile of high-speed rail.  Not one.  Even a prospective line between Los Angeles and San Francisco, which looked like it might be constructed, is now blocked coming and going. 

If, however, you happen to be looking for a twenty-first century rising power that has put its money on the American (rail)road to success, check out China.  When Chinese state expenditures are discussed in the U.S., the American concern is always military spending (definitely
 on the rise), but China’s domestic spending on high-speed rail is staggering.  As of 2012, the country already had a10,000-kilometer network, including the longest line in the world, and it’s expected to hit 15,000 kilometers by the end of 2015, not to speak of -- as Pepe Escobar notes today -- high-speed “silk roads” that could, in the end, reach across Eurasia.  Someday, if Chinese engineering dreamers are to be believed, there might even be a two-day 8,000-mile line from Beijing via the longest underwater tunnel ever built through Canada to the United States. 

If you want a measure of rise and decline, look no further than this comparison between U.S. and Chinese infrastructural build-ups, between, that is, Washington’s global military-first strategy and Beijing’s civilian-first one meant to create a transport and communications system that could economically tie significant parts of the world to that country for decades to come.  Rising... falling... Perhaps as
 TomDispatch regular Escobar, that peripatetic traveler across the realms he likes to call Pipelineistan, suggests, we really are heading for a new Eurasian Century. Tom
The Birth of a Eurasian Century 
Russia and China Do Pipelineistan 
By
 Pepe Escobar
HONG KONG -- A specter is haunting Washington, an unnerving vision of a Sino-Russian alliance wedded to an expansive symbiosis of trade and commerce across much of the Eurasian land mass -- at the expense of the United States.
And no wonder Washington is anxious.  That alliance is already a done deal in a variety of ways: through the BRICS group of emerging powers (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa); at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Asian counterweight to NATO; inside the G20; and via the 120-member-nation Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). Trade and commerce are just part of the future bargain. Synergies in the development of new military technologies beckon as well. After Russia’s Star Wars-style, ultra-sophisticated S-500 air defense anti-missile system comes online in 2018, Beijing is sure to want a version of it. Meanwhile, Russia is about tosell dozens of state-of-the-art Sukhoi Su-35 jet fighters to the Chinese as Beijing and Moscow move to seal an aviation-industrial partnership.
This week should provide the first real fireworks in the celebration of a new Eurasian century-in-the-making when Russian President Vladimir Putin drops in on Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing.  You remember “Pipelineistan,” all those crucial oil and gas pipelines crisscrossing Eurasia that make up the true circulatory system for the life of the region. Now, it looks like the ultimate Pipelineistan deal, worth $1 trillion and 10 years in the making, will be inked as well. In it, the giant, state-controlled Russian energy giant Gazprom will agree to supply the giant state-controlled China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) with 3.75 billion cubic feet of liquefied natural gas a day for no less than 30 years, starting in 2018. That’s the equivalent of a quarter of Russia’s massive gas exports to all of Europe. China’s current daily gas demand is around 16 billion cubic feet a day, and imports account for 31.6% of total consumption.
By Herbert P. Bix, Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, posted April 28 [via HAW May 7, 2914].  The author is a professor of history emeritus at Binghamton University.


By Bruce Gagnon 



I received a package in the mail two days ago from a friend in Hawaii.  She sent me the front-page story from the Honolulu Star Advertiser  newspaper that screamed with the headline "War machines touted as agents of mercy".  A large photo carried the caption that began with "US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Association of Southeast Asian Nations defense ministers toured the USS Anchorage at Pearl Harbor".

Hagel is on a mind-washing trip throughout the Pacific in order to sell the notion that Obama's 'pivot' of 60% of Pentagon forces into the region is a "sign of the humanitarian assistance and disaster relief the US military can provide."

As evidence of this kind and gentle spirit Hagel's public relations team suggested that the amphibious assault landing craft they toured "works well for humanitarian assistance" because it has two medical operating rooms and a six-bed intensive care unit.  So next time there is a tsunami or any other kind of natural disaster where hundreds of thousands are impacted - have no worries because here comes the assault landing craft.

But the true intentions of the Hagel trip emerged when the Secretary of Endless War was asked about
the pivot.... is it real and is the US giving up on the Middle East?

"The US is not retreating from any part of the world.  There is no indication that, especially in the Middle East," Hagel said, adding America has a "tremendous resource asset base" there.

Hagel noted that America has 300,000 men and women stationed or deployed abroad in almost 100 countries.

It was interesting that even the craven Honolulu Star Advertiser (the name of the paper reeks of corporate control) could not entirely buy the elixir that Hagel was peddling. Their screaming headline reeked of skepticism and cynicism.  But in the end the paper fell into line and ran a four-picture spread that helped promote the Pentagon's message.

When I was in the Philippines last year I heard the same story about expanding US military operations there - except those using the "humanitarian and disaster relief" lingo was the Filipino government.  Already the US war machine has its regional puppets repeating the mantra.  

So the Navy's new Zumwalt destroyer, set to receive the "blessings of christ" on Saturday here in Bath, will be a $4 billion "humanitarian and disaster relief" warship?  How many hospital beds does it have?

Why not end the pretense and just build hospital ships with hundreds and hundreds of beds and send them into the Pacific to deal with the coming ravages of climate change?  Why not change the name of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines to the 'Natural Guard' and just be done with it?

We are told the Zumwalt will be home ported in San Diego, which confirms that the mission of the destroyer will be to sneak up on China and prepare to blast them.  Maybe after the war with China ships like the Zumwalt can stitch up those maimed by the battle so they can be sent back to work in the sweatshops run by the mega-corporations who make our stuff these days.  
No doubt about it, the oil-i-garchy is hard at work.  We should be as well.

Bruce K. Gagnon
Coordinator
Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space
PO Box 652
Brunswick, ME 04011
(207) 443-9502
globalnet@mindspring.com
www.space4peace.org 
http://space4peace.blogspot.com/  (blog)



TWO ESSAYS ON THE ARCTIC

Climate Change Poses Growing Threat of Conflict in the Arctic, Report Finds 
Suzanne Goldenberg, Guardian UK, Reader Supported News, May 14, 2014 
Goldenberg reports: "Climate change poses a growing security threat and could cause conflict in the Arctic, a group of retired American generals and admirals said on Tuesday." 
READ MORE

 By Bruce Gagnon, Global Exchange

I was recently sent an email alerting me to a conference at the University of Maine that appears to be about dragging us into another one of the oil-i-garchy's latest chaos zones.  I inquired about attending but was told it was "sold out".  Here is a bit from the invite:

The University of Maine School of Policy and International Affairs and the Maine Army National Guard will co-host a conference May 20 to 21 to explore challenges and emerging opportunities in the Arctic. The free conference, "Leadership in the High North: A Political, Military, Economic and Environmental Symposium of the Arctic Opening," will be held at the Maine Army National Guard Regional Training Institute in Bangor. Speakers will address global, national and state issues and implications related to diminished sea ice in the Arctic, including the changing environment, trade, geopolitics and policy.

Scheduled speakers include: Gen. Charles Jacoby, commander of North American Aerospace Defense Command and United States Northern Command; Rear Admiral Jonathan White, oceanographer and navigator of the Navy, director of Task Force Climate Change; Paul A. Mayewski, director of the UMaine Climate Change Institute; Major-General Christopher Coates, deputy commander, Canadian Joint Operations Command, National Defence and Canadian Armed Forces; Philippe Hebert, director of Policy Development for Canadian Department of National Defence; and John Henshaw, executive director of Maine Port Authority. And officials from the U.S. Army Mountain Warfare School will share experiences and display cold-weather operations equipment.

The words "emerging opportunities" jumped right out at me.  The Arctic region is loaded with oil and natural gas and with extreme melting of the ice the oil corporations are itching to get at it.  But look at a map to see which country has the largest land border with the Arctic... it is Russia.  Thus we see this intense US-NATO move toward militarization.  In order to build public support for this new "strategic plan" they are throwing out some financial incentives - the only job creator in town anymore, the military industrial complexAmerica is being hollowed out and turned into a garrison state for global capital.

The Pentagon has created the "US Navy Arctic Roadmap: 2014-2030".  The plan includes such gems as the Navy needing ways to distribute fuel in the [Arctic] region to air and surface platforms.  Fuel allocation needs to be staffed and protected which means bases will be built.  How close would they be to Russia and how would that go over?  The current US-NATO movement of major offensive forces along the Russian border, having used the Ukraine crisis as a pretext, helps the military more “effectively control" the Russian bear in the event of future conflict over Arctic resource extraction.

Late last March the Navy took New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, Sen. Angus King (I-ME), and others for a submarine ride below the Arctic ice.  
Friedman wrote:

“In our lifetime, what was [in effect] land and prohibitive to navigate or explore, is becoming an ocean, and we’d better understand it,” noted Admiral Jonathan Greenert, chief of naval operations. “We need to be sure that our sensors, weapons and people are proficient in this part of the world,” so that we can “own the undersea domain and get anywhere there.” Because if the Arctic does open up for shipping, it offers a much shorter route from the Atlantic to the Pacific than through the Panama Canal, saving huge amounts of time and fuel.

Our Sen. King here in Maine sent around an email called 
Impressions from the Arctic.  He told his constituents that there has been "a 40% reduction in ice as a result of global warming"  He reported that "previously inaccessible" gas and oil reserves were now going to create "new opportunities".  King concluded, "I am convinced we need to increase our capacity in the region, something I intend to press upon my colleagues on the Armed Services Committee as we work on our military priorities for the coming years."

King's state of Maine builds destroyers, armed with so-called "missile defense" (MD) systems that are key elements in Pentagon Prompt Global Strike planning.  After a US first-strike attack is launched at China or Russia, the MD "shield" helps take out any retaliatory capability.  It's a gun to the head which sometimes does not need to be fired to be effective - the threat in and of itself is bad enough.

I’m sad that I couldn't get a ticket to get into the Arctic event in Bangor.  Funny that a public institution like the University of Maine would limit participation.  But then again I'm not surprised at all.


Bruce K. Gagnon
Coordinator
Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space
PO Box 652
Brunswick, ME 04011
(207) 443-9502
http://www.space4peace.org   
http://space4peace.blogspot.com   (blog)



INDIVIDUAL BASES AND COUNTRIES AS BASES
PHILIPPINES:  REPORT FROM KARAPATAN
- Forwarded Message -----  [via Prof. San Juan]
From: KARAPATAN Public Information <publicinfo@karapatan.org>
To: karapatan <karapatan@karapatan.org> 
Sent: Sunday, April 27, 2014 10:22 PM
Subject: Obama-Aquino war agenda hides behind peace and human rights issues—Karapatan
Press Release:
April 28, 2014
Reference:    Cristina “Tinay” Palabay, Secretary General, 0917-3162831
                        Angge Santos, Media Liaison, 0918-9790580

Obama-Aquino war agenda hides behind peace and human rights issues—Karapatan


“With the aim to dissipate people’s anger around the world, the master war-monger US President Barack Obama and his puppet Philippine President Benigno Aquino desperately attempt to place out of sight its war agenda by using the all-too-familiar shroud of anti-corruption, pro-peace and human rights” slogans. The catch phrases, the two expect, would lend a veneer of acceptability to their treachery to the Filipino people,” said Karapatan secretary general Cristina Palabay.

“The US government cannot veer away from its record of intervention and invasion of countries, which is actually what its Asian pivot is all about,” said Palabay. “Obama and Aquino cannot camouflage the treachery involved in the signing of the Enhanced Defence Cooperation Agreement (EDCA), which does not only violate the Philippine Constitution but is also a sell-out of the nation’s sovereignty," Palabay added. 

Karapatan said the US’s so-called concern on human rights abuses in the Philippines is “duplicitous” as the “US is equally responsible as the BS Aquino government for the said abuses through its military aid, deployment of troops and a US-directed counterinsurgency program Oplan Bayanihan. The US is the main funder of the AFP’s war chest.”

This year, the US Congress lifted restrictions in granting military aid to the Philippines and approved U$50 million, on top of the $40 million pledge made by US State Secretary John Kerry’s in December 2013.   In 2011, US military aid was reduced to U$11 million from U$507 million in 2001-2010. The cut was due to international pressure to stop the rampant killings in the Philippines.  In 2012, the US military aid rose to $30 million and has since then increased steadily.

Human rights and peace

The increase in aid has emboldened the BS Aquino government and the Armed Forces of the Philippines to go on a killing spree which resulted in 21 victims of extrajudicial killings and 23 victims of frustrated killings for the first quarter of 2014 alone.

“This is actually the kind of peace the US-Aquino regime wants, nothing more. The US-Aquino regime uses the surrender-or-get-arrested/killed approach to peace negotiation with the National Democratic Front.The inclusion of the CPP-NPA in the US list of terrorists is among the major obstacles in the peace negotiation between the GPH and the NDFP. You cannot talk peace with the NDFP if its peace consultants are killed, abducted and missing or detained. You cannot talk about peace whenthe US and PH governments use the militarist approach to derail the negotiations on the substantive agenda on socio-economic and political reforms,” said Palabay.

“Both Obama and Aquino are so adept at dangling human rights and peace issues to prop up its image as it prepares for an increased and permanent presence in the Philippines for its vaunted Asian pivot,” she said. ###  
PUBLIC INFORMATION DESK
publicinfo@karapatan.org
Alliance for the Advancement of People's Rights
2nd Flr. Erythrina Bldg., #1 Maaralin corner Matatag Sts., Central District
Diliman, Quezon City, PHILIPPINES 1101
Telefax: (+63 2) 4354146
KARAPATAN is an alliance of human rights organizations and programs, human rights desks and committees of people’s organizations, and individual advocates committed to the defense and promotion of people’s rights and civil liberties.  It monitors and documents cases of human rights violations, assists and defends victims and conducts education, training and campaign. 

NEW MILITARY TREATY WITH PHILIPPINES
“The United States and the Philippines recently signed an agreement that will give U.S. troops access to military bases in the Philippines for the next decade.”   In These Times (June 2014).  No Bases/Obama Out protests erupted, in Manila near the Embassy April 29, 2014.  One demonstrator dressed as the Statue of Liberty with a death mask stood before a large US flag with the words scrawled across it:  “No. 1 Terrorist.”    “Demonstrators say that the pact reverses democratic gains made during the past decade in the former U.S. colony.”  (p. 10).


WESTWARD BECOMES? MEETS? EASTWARD?

The US Military’s New Normal in Africa

Nick Turse, Op-Ed, NationofChange, May 16, 2014: The Benghazi killings, unrest in South Sudan and now the Boko Haram kidnappings have provided the U.S. with ways to bring a long-running “light footprint in Africa” narrative into line with a far heavier reality. Each crisis has provided the U.S. with further justification for publicizing a steady expansion on that continent that’s been underway, but under wraps for years. New forces, new battlefields and a new openness about a new “war,” to quote one of the men waging it. That’s the real new normal for the U.S. military in Africa.
READ  |  DISCUSS  |  SHARE


 Break the Silence
A World War is Beckoning
by JOHN PILGER
Why do we ­tolerate the threat of ­another world war in our name? Why do we allow lies that justify this risk? The scale of our ­indoctrination, wrote Harold Pinter, is a “brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of ­hypnosis”, as if the truth “never happened even while it was happening”.
Every year the American historian William Blum publishes his “updated summary of the record of US foreign policy” which shows that, since 1945, the US has tried to ­overthrow more than 50 governments, many democratically elected; grossly interfered in elections in 30 countries; bombed the civilian populations of 30 countries; used chemical and biological weapons; and attempted to assassinate foreign leaders.
In many cases Britain has been a collaborator. The degree of human ­suffering, let alone criminality, is little acknowledged in the west, despite the presence of the world’s most advanced communications and nominally freest journalism. That the most numerous victims of terrorism – “our” terrorism – are Muslims, is unsayable. That extreme jihadism, which led to 9/11, was ­nurtured as a weapon of Anglo-American policy (Operation Cyclone in Afghanistan) is suppressed. In April the US state department noted that, following Nato’s campaign in 2011, “Libya has become a terrorist safe haven”.
The name of “our” enemy has changed over the years, from communism to Islamism, but generally it is any society independent of western power and occupying strategically useful or resource-rich territory. The leaders of these obstructive nations are usually violently shoved aside, such as the democrats Muhammad Mossedeq in Iran and Salvador Allende in Chile, or they are murdered like Patrice Lumumba in the Congo. All are subjected to a western media campaign of caricature and vilification – think Fidel Castro, Hugo Chávez, now Vladimir Putin.
Washington’s role in Ukraine is ­different only in its implications for the rest of us. For the first time since the Reagan years, the US is ­threatening to take the world to war. With eastern Europe and the Balkans now military outposts of Nato, the last “buffer state” bordering Russia is being torn apart. We in the west are backing neo-Nazis in a country where Ukrainian Nazis backed Hitler.
Having masterminded the coup in February against the democratically elected government in Kiev, Washington’s planned seizure of Russia’s ­historic, legitimate warm-water naval base in Crimea failed. The Russians defended themselves, as they have done against every threat and invasion from the west for almost a century.
But Nato’s military encirclement has accelerated, along with US-orchestrated attacks on ethnic Russians in Ukraine. If Putin can be provoked into coming to their aid, his pre-ordained “pariah” role will justify a Nato-run guerrilla war that is likely to spill into Russia itself.
Instead, Putin has confounded the war party by seeking an accommodation with Washington and the EU, by withdrawing troops from the Ukrainian border and urging ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine to abandon the weekend’s provocative referendum. These Russian-speaking and bilingual people – a third of Ukraine’s population – have long sought a democratic federation that reflects the country’s ethnic diversity and is both autonomous and independent of Moscow. Most are neither “separatists” nor “rebels” but citizens who want to live securely in their homeland.
Like the ruins of Iraq and Afghanistan, Ukraine has been turned into a CIA theme park – run by CIA director John Brennan in Kiev, with “special units” from the CIA and FBI setting up a “security structure” that oversees savage attacks on those who opposed the February coup. Watch the videos, read the eye-witness reports from the massacre in Odessa this month. Bussed fascist thugs burned the trade union headquarters, killing 41 people trapped inside. Watch the police standing by. A doctor described trying to rescue people, “but I was stopped by pro-Ukrainian Nazi radicals. One of them pushed me away rudely, promising that soon me and other Jews of Odessa are going to meet the same fate … I wonder, why the whole world is keeping silent.”
Russian-speaking Ukrainians are fighting for survival. When Putin announced the withdrawal of Russian troops from the border, the Kiev junta’s defence secretary – a founding member of the fascist Svoboda party – boasted that the attacks on “insurgents” would continue. In Orwellian style, propaganda in the west has inverted this to Moscow “trying to orchestrate conflict and provocation”, according to William Hague. His cynicism is matched by Obama’s grotesque congratulations to the coup junta on its “remarkable restraint” following the Odessa massacre. Illegal and fascist-dominated, the junta is described by Obama as “duly elected”. What matters is not truth, Henry Kissinger once said, but but what is perceived to be true.”
In the US media the Odessa atrocity has been played down as “murky” and a “tragedy” in which “nationalists” (neo-Nazis) attacked “separatists” (people collecting signatures for a referendum on a federal Ukraine). Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal damned the victims – “Deadly Ukraine Fire Likely Sparked by Rebels, Government Says”. ­Propaganda in Germany has been pure cold war, with the Frankfurter Allgemeine ­Zeitung warning its readers of Russia’s “undeclared war”. For Germans, it is an invidious irony that Putin is the only leader to condemn the rise of fascism in 21st-century Europe.
     A popular truism is that “the world changed” following 9/11. But what has changed? According to the great whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, a silent coup has taken place in Washington and rampant militarism now rules. The Pentagon ­currently runs “special operations” – secret wars – in 124 countries. At home, rising poverty and hemorrhaging liberty are the historic corollary of a perpetual war state. Add the risk of nuclear war, and the question begs: why do we tolerate this?
John Pilger is the author of Freedom Next Time. He can be reached through his website: www.johnpilger.com


Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space
PO Box 652
Brunswick, ME 04011
(207) 443-9502
globalnet@mindspring.com
www.space4peace.org 
http://space4peace.blogspot.com/  (blog)





TPP

Secret TPP Meetings Advance Internet Censorship

RootsAction Team info@rootsaction.org via uark.edu 




to James



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This is urgent. An Internet censorship plan is being finalized in secret meetings right now. We need all hands on deck at this crucial moment. 

Click HERE to learn more and  to join with RootsAction, OpenMedia, and other allies in speaking up.

Here's the situation: President Obama himself is in secretive meetings with key political figures and lobbyists in Asia to lock the Trans-Pacific Partnership's Internet censorship plan into place.  

We know from leaked documents that this secretive plan will censor your use of the Internet and strip away your rights.[1] If finalized, this plan would force ISPs to act as "Internet Police" monitoring our Internet use, censoring content, and removing whole websites.[2]  

It will give media conglomerates centralized control over what you can watch and share online.

We urgently need your help to fight back. Add your voice right now and we'll project a Stop the Secrecy message on key buildings in Washington D.C. to ensure Obama, the media, and everyone else knows this censorship plan must be stopped.

This is huge: covering 40% of the global economy, the TPP is being called a legal "blueprint" for the rest of the world.[3] Once key leaders finalize TPP Internet censorship plans, those plans will be used to globalize censorship. You will be affected and this may be our only chance to stop it.

Our attention-grabbing message will shine a light on their secret plan and will make clear to Washington lobbyists that the Internet community will never accept the TPP's secrecy or censorship. The more who speak out, the larger our projection will become, and the more people we can reach.

This is a decisive moment: we need to act right now. Join with hundreds of thousands of people all over the world to shine a light on the TPP's job-killing Internet censorship plan. Let's send decision-makers and the lobbyists pulling the strings a message they can't ignore: "Stop the secrecy now."

Thank you for being a part of history,

After signing the petition, please forward this message to your friends.

-- The RootsAction.org team

P.S. RootsAction is an independent online force endorsed by Jim Hightower, Barbara Ehrenreich, Cornel West, Daniel Ellsberg, Glenn Greenwald, Naomi Klein, Bill Fletcher Jr., Laura Flanders, former U.S. Senator James Abourezk, Coleen Rowley, Frances Fox Piven, and many others.

P.P.S. This work is only possible with your financial support. Please donate.

Footnotes:
[1] WikiLeaks: Secret Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement
[2] Electronic Frontier Foundation: TPP Creates Legal Incentives For ISPs To Police The Internet
[3] U.S. “Bullying” TPP Negotiators Amid Failure to Agree. Source: Inter Press Service News Agency.

 

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Earlier Newsletters
Earlier Newsletters, US Westward Imperialism, Pacific, E.-Asia (and North
    and South)
Contents #7  8-12-13
Occupied Pacific
Vitchek, Missile Test Site, Kwajalein
Dibblin, Marshall Islands and Nuclear Testing,  NYT  Rev. by Mitgang
Occupying E. Asia Surrounding China
Reed, Ring Around China
NYT Editorial,  Vandenberg AFB Missile Intercept Failure
Dick, Commentary on NYT Editorial
Vandenberg Protest Case Goes to US Supreme Court
Flowers and Zeese, TPP: Trans-Pacific Partnership (see earlier newsletters)
Jones, T-PP and TAFTA
Hightower, T-PP

Contents #8  11-8-13
TPP, Trans-Pacific Partnership, US Economic Empire (also see reports in #7 and before)
Dick, US Tests Missiles Vandenburg to Kwajalein
US Control of Micronesia, Over a Million Square Miles
Dick, Sixteen Reports on “The Pivot” from One Number of Space Alert!
Roots Action, Pagan Island in the Northern Marianas:  Stop Another Vieques
San Juan, US/Philippines Security Ties Increasing
Founding Fathers’ Principles

Contents #9   1-2-14
Several on Philippines
Hemmer, Philippines Typhoon, US Compassion?  Fox News:  Send in the Marines
Google Search, US Aid Options:  UNICEF, etc.
Crilly, US Altruism toward the Philippines?  Can Manila Say Pivot?
Bradsher, US Aid to Philippines:  What Kind?
Reuters, A US Motive?  Generosity Competition with China
Dick: Fulbright’s Reduced Tensions, Natural and Human Typhoons, China, Japan, Lashes, Bashes,
Dick, Rising Seas:  Aiding Threatened Islands?; US Instead  of Empire Help the Drowning Nations
Assange/Wikipedia Reveals TPP Agreement Text
Jolly and Buckley, China and US Emissions Common Ground?  Leading to?
Dick:  Fulbright’s Key Words and Principles
Dick:  Reduced Tensions: China, Japan, US
Dick:  Kerry Attacks China Defends Asia: Who IS John Kerry?

US Westward Imperialism, Pacific/E. Asia Contents #10 
Tensions
South KoreaJeju Island History: From the April 3, 1948, Massacre to the   Repression Today

The US “Pivot” Euphemism:  Gagnon, Global Network’s Space Alert!   See Newsletter #8

China
China:  From Immensely Dangerous to the Comic
Dorling, Asian and Australian Allies of US, “5 Eyes” Plus Singapore
Dick:  Wong, China Reacts to Japan
Robson, US Deploys Hawk Surveillance Drones to Japan
Global Network, Stop New Base on Okinawa
Dick, China Responds to US Encirclement
China Extinguishes Arsonist Fire at San Francisco Consulate!

Australia
Dick, Australia
Al Jazeera, Australia’s Coal Consumption

Tensions: TPP
BG (thinkcivic) Stop TPP Fast Track, Protest
Aroneanu, 350.org, TPP: Tell Your Congressional Representatives
Waren, Friends of the Earth: Stop  TPP

TENSIONS FROM THE PAST:  US Nuclear Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Marshall Islands
Hiroshima/Nagasaki
Dick:  OMNI Hiroshima-Nagasaki Newsletters 2010-2013
US H-Bomb Testing, Marshal Islands   (See #7, Dibblin) 
   Marshallese Residents Gather
   Chomsky:  Letter from Anjain to Dr. Conard
   Wollerton, Film Nuclear Savage About Marshallese Guinea Pigs Suppressed
Two Articles by Giff Johnson
   Kwajalein Marshallese
   Legacy of US Nuclear Testing
Film, Radio Bikini by Shain Bergen
Niedenthall and Chutero Film, The Sounds of Crickets at Night


Contents #11
TRANSPACIFIC US GET TOUGH MISSILES, AMBASSADOR, AND CONGRESSMEN
Gagnon, New US First Strike Threats by Military-Corporate-Congressional Complex
Dick, New US Ambassador to China Ready for Battle
Frank Olliveri/Dick, Militarist Rationale Analyzed
TRANSPACIFIC PARTNERSHIP:  SOUNDS LIKE A GOOD IDEA
Congresswoman Louise Slaughter: Petition, Protest TPP
Lee Fang, Corporate Control of TPP
TRANSPACIFIC CONTAINMENT ALLIANCES
China Breaks Through Double and Triple Containment, Sails Toward Seattle
 US Military Alliances Pacific, S. E. Asia, and Beyond, a Reference Library Under

        Construction, a Call for 100 Humorous Scholars.
  S-E Asia Google Search
  Indonesia Google Search
TRANSPACIFIC 19TH CENTURY: MELVILLE’S BENITO
Tomgram, Greg Grandin:  19th Century Slave Trade, Melville’s Benito Cereno, US Extractive Industries, US Empire

RESPONSE
From Ann Wright



Thanks so much Dick!
Great newsletter-wow you covered a lot if issues!
Ann
Ann Wright
808-741-1141


Contents US Westward imperialism #12
CONTINUE EXPLORING US ALLIANCES IN PACIFIC AND ASIA, Including TPP

CONTEXTS
Jimmy Carter, US Leading War-Monger
Dower, WWII Asian Treaty

US MILITARY BASES
Gagnon, International Rally at Vandenberg, Lobbing Missiles from Vandenberg
    to Kwajalein, US Satellites Near N. and S. Poles, Peace Movement Up Against
Weisgerber, Pentagon Prepares for War in Pacific/ E. Asia, Strengthening and
     Dispersing Bases
Answer Coaltion, Stop New Base on Okinawa

US MILITARY BASES:  SPECIAL OPS
Stockman, Nick Turse:  Obama’s Escalation of Secret Wars to 134 Countries

“CHINESE THREAT”
O’Reilly, US Media Hype “Chinese Threat” in E. China Sea

TPP
  Stiglitz,  Will Benefit Wealthiest Few, and Illustrates US Mismanagement of
      Globalization
   Rendall, NAFTA on Steroids Corporate Power Grab

ARCTIC
Thomas Friedman, US vs. Russia Over Arctic Zone


END US WESTWARD IMPERIALISM NEWSLETTER #13






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Dick's Wars and Warming KPSQ Radio Editorials (#1-48)

Dick's Wars and Warming KPSQ Radio Editorials (#1-48)