Campaign for the Accountability of American Bases

All Headline News
October 31, 2009
By Windsor Genova

Bogota, Colombia (AHN) – The Colombian and U.S. government signed a pact Friday that will allow American soldiers to station in the Latin American country’s seven military bases.

Colombian officials led by Foreign Minister Jaime Bermudez, Defense Minister Gabriel Silva and Interior and Justice Minister Fabio Valencia Cossio as well as U.S. Ambassador William Brownfield signed the pact in Bogota, Colombia’s capital.

Under the deal, the troops will fight terrorists, drug traffickers and Colombian rebels to secure both countries.

The U.S. have the same arrangement with El Salvador and Aruba-Curacao. Other troops were stationed in a U.S. base in Ecuador but the facility was shut down a few months ago.

Read more: http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7016858082#ixzz0VhAhhVIx

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tothecenter.com
October 24 2009

Following a report by Japan’s Asahi newspaper, it seems that the odds are improving for Japan’s newly christened left-leaning government to approve the movement of a US military base, Reuters reported.

The movement would combine the facility, currently located in the southernmost part of Okinawa, with other military facilities in the area, allowing for realignment and reaffirming US-Japanese relations. Ideally, the plan is to close the helicopter airfield and minimize or eliminate troop deployments entirely.

Futenma, the base in question, is actually located in the certain of a major urban area of the region. A series of incidents, including plane and helicopter crashes as well as violent crime stemming from US personnel, have prompted much civil unrest in the area.

Some of the farther left-leaning factions in the Japanese government, including the ruling Democratic Party’s primary coalition partner, have instead called for the base to be moved off the island entirely, suggesting that the base is one of the primary reason that Okinawa is so far behind, economically speaking, from the rest of the country.

http://tothecenter.com/news.php?readmore=11589

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By yahyasheikho786

AFRICOM…..Establishments in Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria and other African nations, the US will gradually establish a network of military bases to cover the entire continent« Niqnaq

Oct 1 marked the one-year anniversary of the activation of the first US overseas military command in a quarter of a century, Africa Command. AFRICOM was established as a temporary command under the wing of US European Command a year earlier and launched as an independent entity on Oct 1 2008. Its creation signalled several important milestones in plans by the US and its NATO allies to expand into all corners of the earth and to achieve military, political and economic hegemony in the Southern as well as the Northern Hemisphere. AFRICOM is the first US regional military command established outside of North America in the post-Cold War era. The Pentagon set up Northern Command in 2002 after the 9/11 attacks to take in the US, Canada and Mexico. Its area of responsibility includes more nations than any other US military command: 53.

http://yahyasheikho786.wordpress.com/2009/10/23/africom-establishments-in-tunisia-morocco-algeria-and-other-african-nations-the-us-will-gradually-establish-a-network-of-military-bases-to-cover-the-entire-continent%C2%AB-niqnaq/

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PRESS TV
October 18, 2009

While Washington is weighing its options on sending more troops to Afghanistan, the US army is spending billions of dollars on upgrading its bases in the war-torn country.

The Washington Post said on Sunday that the US military has wanted to spend 1.3 billion dollars on more than one-hundred military projects across Afghanistan.

Based on the report, 30 million dollars of the money will be spent on the main US base located near the northern Afghan city of Bagram.

The move is aimed at ensuring that Afghanistan’s infrastructure can support US and NATO forces for years to come.

The US military has already spent roughly 2.7 billion dollars on construction in the last three years.

This comes as Washington says it closed its 2009 fiscal year with a record 1.4 trillion dollar budget deficit.

The report comes as US President Barack Obama is weighing a request for the deployment of an additional 40,000 troops in Afghanistan.

www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=109029&sectionid=351020403

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Digital Journal
by Andrew Moran
October 19, 2009

The United States government is forking over $100 million to build new military bases in Bulgaria and Romania. Last month, the Obama administration ended plans to construct missile-defense shields in other parts of eastern Europe.
In September, the Obama administration stated they would cease any construction of a missile-defense shield and troops in Czech Republic and Poland, however, the Pentagon is planning to spend more than $100 million to build new military bases in Bulgaria and Romania …

More than 2,000 soldiers are taking part in exercises near the two eastern European nations.
This latest commitment by the Pentagon consists of a $50 million military base in Romania, which will house 1,600 US troops and a $60 million base in Bulgaria to house 2,500 soldiers. …

www.digitaljournal.com/article/280671

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Korea Times
September 27, 2009
By Jung Sung-ki

A broader joint air operations command of South Korean and U.S. Air Forces is being set up here in tandem with the planned transition of wartime operational control (OPCON) in 2012, a military source said Sunday.

The Hardened Theater of Air Control Center (HTACC), the Korea-U.S. combined air operations command led by a three-star American general at Osan Air Base, has been working to expand its roles and missions after being renamed the Korea Air and Space Operations Center (KAOC), the source said on condition of anonymity.

The Master Control and Reporting Center (MCRC), a computer system to monitor and track aircraft on a real-time basis, at the KAOC is also receiving upgrades, he said.

“KAOC will be developed further to serve as an integrated joint air force command of the two allies on the peninsula by 2012, effectively orchestrating all operations of the two air forces in the case of an emergency,” the source said.

The U.S.-led Combined Forces Command (CFC) is to hand over almost all operations authority on the peninsula to South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) in 2012 before being deactivated.

But the U.S. military will still lead air operations after the transformation to take advantage of its dominant aerial assets against North Korea in time of war. …

www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2009/09/205_52552.html

We (Lindis Percy represented CAAB) joined a demonstration at Osan US Air base during the Global Network Against Weapons and Power in Space internattional conference in Seoul (May 2009).

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September 22, 2009
Wall Street Journal – Asia
By Yuka Hayashi

As Japan’s new ruling party begins to question its military alliance with the U.S., one freshman lawmaker whose personal history reflects the longstanding ties between the two nations is already pressing the issue.

Denny Tamaki, a newly elected member of the Democratic Party of Japan, is the son of a local woman and a U.S. serviceman. His main goal is to sharply shrink the U.S. military presence in Okinawa, a remote southern island that hosts roughly half of some 45,000 U.S. troops stationed in Japan.

“It’s about time the Japanese government let Okinawa go back to its original self,” says the former radio talk-show host, 49 years old. Despite his fondness for American music and movies, Mr. Tamaki argues it is time the two grew more distant. “I am an embodiment of Okinawa’s postwar history,” he says. “No one is more qualified to tackle the base issues.” …

The U.S. has used Japan as a primary host for its military presence in East Asia. The Japanese government spends roughly $2 billion a year to help cover the costs. The presence of U.S. forces let Japan keep its own military small and focused on self-defense, freeing up resources to help fuel its postwar boom. …

Mr. Tamaki was raised by his mother in Okinawa and knows little about his father. …

As he grew more involved in politics, he became increasingly aware of the hard feelings caused by the bases. Okinawa’s main island hosts 34 U.S. facilities that together take up about 20% of its land, leading to occasional clashes. A military helicopter crashed on a college campus near Futenma in 2004, and a series of attacks on local women by American soldiers caused an uproar. …

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125348661429226233.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

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Chavez: Venezuela ready to sever ties to Colombia
August 26th, 2009

President Hugo Chavez said Tuesday that Venezuela is getting ready to break off diplomatic relations with Colombia over the neighboring country’s plan to give American troops greater access to its military bases.

Chavez said that “there’s no possibility” of repairing relations with the government of President Alvaro Uribe and that he instructed his foreign minister to “begin preparing for the rupture with Colombia.”

“It’s going to happen. Let’s get ready,” he said.

Venezuela and Colombia have been feuding for weeks over the negotiations between Bogota and Washington that would allow the U.S. military to increase its presence at seven Colombian bases through a 10-year lease agreement.

Colombian and U.S. officials say the agreement is necessary to more effectively help Colombia’s security forces fight drug traffickers and leftist rebels.

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Seattle Post Intelligencer

Boeing, industry teammates and the U.S. Missile Defense Agency have completed construction of a second interceptor test silo for the Ground-based Midcourse Defense system at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California …

Because a silo needs to be refurbished after its hot-burning interceptor is fired, having two underground test silos will allow one to support testing while the other is being refurbished, Boeing said. It said the new silo can be configured for testing or tactical operations. Vandenberg’s first test silo has been used in tests since 2006.

The Huntsville, Ala.-based Ground-based Midcourse Defense program has deployed more than 20 operational interceptors at Vandenberg and Fort Greely, Alaska, to defend against long-range ballistic missile threats.

http://blog.seattlepi.com/aerospace/archives/176792.asp?from=blog_last3

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Xinhua
August 8, 2009

The Bolivian government will never allow the establishment of a U.S. military base on its territory, President Evo Morales said Friday.

“Bolivia has its own dignity even though it is a small country, and we will never allow any foreign military base on our territory,” Morales said during the celebration of the country’s Army Day in Oruro, a city in southwest Bolivia.

Morales said most of the South American leaders rejected President Alvaro Uribe’s plan to expand U.S. military presence in Colombia, which violates national sovereignty and poses a possible threat to regional security.

In recent years, with more and more Latin American left-wing parties coming into power, U.S. military bases in Latin America have shrank continuously.

Washington started to seek the establishment of U.S. military bases in other countries such as Colombia since Ecuador refused last year to renew its contract with the United States on the use of Manta military base.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-08/08/content_11846896.htm

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