World Beyond War

The Earth is coated in military bases, spreading like a pandemic: foreign ones, domestic ones, famous ones, secret ones — part of a growing and disastrous global increase in spending on wars and preparations for wars that makes wars more, not less, likely. And prime targets in wars are bases and anything near them.

Bases are many of the worst environmental disaster sites, polluting air, soil, and water, and generating horrific noise pollution. Bases are used for weather warfare and to stage ‘climate disasters” like earthquakes, tsunamis, flash floods, Bomb hurricanes, super storms, landslides. By promoting the Climate Change narrative and the monetization and financialization of Mother Nature with Debt for Nature Swaps and Green and Blue Bonds and Scams military bases are used to deepen debt traps in the Global South and extend Eurobond US dollar Debt traps and Neocolonialism.

The Foreign Base nearest to Sri Lanka is the Chagos Islands occupied by the United Kingdom or Britain which houses the US Diego Garcia Military base and CIA BlackSite. To set up this base the Chagossian people were driven off their island home in the 1960s and they have fought for the right to return home in many Courts seeking justice, including the International Court of Justice in the Hague.

Foreign bases are often mini-apartheid states with second-class status for locals and criminal immunity for militaries — a situation that can often be traced back to Colonial Occupation, stolen land and other injustices.

Check out and share the new video at DayToCloseBases.org.

Through public pressure, bases have been closed, plans for bases have been blocked, and bases have been converted to other purposes, superior environmentally, economically, and in terms of achieving peace.

On February 23 people will be protesting bases with nonviolent actions around the world: rallies, vigils, peace festivals, protests, lobby visits, demonstrations, flyering at gates, teach-ins, and celebrations where bases have been prevented or closed and converted into something useful.

Find an event near you or see how easy it is to create one at DayToCloseBases.org.

Some of the many organizations involved are:

• International Peace Bureau (Global)
• No to War – No to NATO Network (Global)
• Pace e Bene (U.S.)
• RootsAction (U.S.)
• Veterans For Peace (U.S.)
• War Industry Resisters Network (U.S.)
• War Resisters’ International (Global)
• World BEYOND War (Global)

We held two planning Zoom calls last week and you can watch the videos.

Peace!

— World BEYOND War