How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States

by Daniel Immerwahr

In industry after industry, the world tuned itself to the United States.

“domination without annexation.”

A world almost designed for the convenience of the United States.

Languages shape thought, making some ideas more readily thinkable and others less

Inculcating English was the “cardinal point” of the whole Philippine school system,

But ultimately the language wasn’t imposed from the top down. It emerged from the bottom up.

You pick the language others have chosen, the language you think will get you the furthest.

The most powerful force for anglicization has been the internet.

English is that it’s the language with the most nonnative speakers.

French fashion designer Louis Réard debuted a two-piece bathing suit. He dubbed it the “bikini,” on the grounds that the sight of a woman’s mostly unclothed body was as sensational as the bomb.

The Japanese Gojira was a protest film, hammering away at the dangers of the U.S. testing in the Pacific.

The bases and their environs, in other words, were bustling borderlands where people from the United States came into frequent contact with foreigners.

An artist named Gerald Holtom designed a symbol for the Aldermaston march. “I was in despair,” he remembered. He sketched himself “with hands palm out stretched outwards and downwards in the manner of Goya’s peasant before the firing squad. I formalized the drawing into a line and put a circle around it.” The lone individual standing helpless in the face of world-annihilating military might—it was “such a puny thing,” thought Holtom. But his creation, the peace symbol, resonated and quickly traveled around the world.

things i said holy shit about creation of peace sign y large population of nurses r phillipino and y call centers are in the phillipines global standardization guy who made synthetic fertilizer and pouson gas douglas macarthurs falter in the phillipines us control over japan, constituion written witg macarthur in charge still used bin laden and the bases, us bases creating bin ladens economic base interesting herbert hoover and bureaucracy

The Beatles and the peace symbol, in other words, debuted within four months and a day’s train ride of each other. And both were side effects of the U.S. basing system.

Those who lived in the shadow of the bases both resented them and built their lives around them, vacillating between protest and participation.

in using Japan to launch its military campaigns in Asia, the United States was sowing the seeds of its own deindustrialization.

Sony wasn’t just selling a radio, it was selling a new way to consume media.

Sony’s story was similar to that of the Beatles. Enterprising young men living cheek by jowl with the U.S. military get their start by imitating what they see around them.

It is telling that the countries hosting the most U.S. peacetime bases—such as Britain, Japan, West Germany, and South Korea—numbered among the United States’ most formidable competitors.

vincent chen?

The Dhahran complex brought Christians and Jews to the Holy Land, making the House of Saud complicit in the kingdom’s desecration.

Bin Laden was, in other words, an infrastructure guy.

Slipchenko predicted, “there will be no need to occupy enemy territory.” Controlling territory wouldn’t matter, because war was no longer about area. It was about points.

israel doesnt need to occupy gaza to control it

For Osama bin Laden, the bases weren’t only an affront to religion, they were maddening hypocrisy.

That the U.S. troops stayed in Saudi Arabia after the Gulf War, in breach of Cheney’s promise, only added fuel to Bin Laden’s fire.

September 11 was, in large part, retaliation against the United States for its empire of bases.

Al-Qaeda’s planes operation seems to have been guided by a larger strategy: provoke the United States, draw it into a war in the Middle East, force infidel governments there into crisis (they would have to either accommodate the unpopular occupiers or fight them), and then defeat the United States on the ground,

Bush could have treated the 9/11 attacks as a crime, arrested the perpetrators, and brought them to justice. Instead, he declared a “war on terror” of global expanse and promised to “rid the world of evil-doers.”

Guam may be a small island, but it matters tremendously that there is this one spot, far into the Pacific, that the U.S. military can use without asking anyone’s permission.

in all, there are probably thirty overseas bases owned by non-U.S. countries. The United States, by contrast, has roughly eight hundred, plus agreements granting it access to still other foreign sites.