In The Sorrows of Empire, Chalmers Johnson writes that U.S. military bases in Israel "are known simply as Sites 51, 53, and 54. Their specific locations are classified and highly sensitive. There is no mention of American military bases in Israel in any of the Department of Defense's official compilations . . . . [O]ur own nation is filled with military installations--there are 969 separate bases in the fifty states . . . . The modern American empire can only be perceived, and understood, by a close look at our basing policies, the specific way we garrison the earth. To trace the historical patterns of base acquisition and to explore our basing systems worldwide is to reveal the sinews of what has until very recently, for most Americans, been a largely hidden empire [pp. 153, 188]."
So that's 900 military installations in the U.S. and some 800 abroad [Blowback, p. 36].
One had no idea. This is a huge phenomenon. And one reads the NYTimes on a regular basis and watches the corporate media virtually every night.
Totally in the dark.
Thank God one's local community access TV station broadcast an interview with Chalmers Johnson. The extent to which the corporate media fail to deliver crucial information to the American public is astonishing.
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