MILITARISM'S MORAL CORRUPTION

Gangjeong village artist and activist Gillchun Koh with Noam Chomsky at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) yesterday discussing the current fight on Jeju Island to stop construction of Navy base

• Matt Hoey in Boston yesterday arranged to have Gillchun Koh meet with Noam Chomsky to brief him on the current situation in Gangjeong village. Matt also set up a speaking event for Koh the night before at Boston College. Good work Matt.
• MB and I arrived in Charlottesville, Virginia yesterday after two uneventful flights from Portland, Maine. Things began last night with a dinner and then talks by David Swanson and Ann Wright who courageously had just come from major skin cancer operations three days before. Several old friends from Florida days (Clare Hanrahan and Ruth Zalph) are also at the conference and it was fun to see Lisa Savage and Mark Roman from Maine walk in the door sporting their usual Code Pink attire. This morning the venue changed and we are sitting in a huge auditorium at the Piedmont Virginia Community College. I speak later this afternoon and MB does her talk tomorrow morning.
• Virginia is the #1 recipient of Pentagon funding in the nation. Charlottesville has 161 military contractors in the community bringing in $919,914,918 during the last 10 years. There can be no doubt that the culture of this state, and increasingly the entire nation, has become militarized. When militarism is your #1 industrial export product, as is the case in the U.S., you've got to turn a steady stream of conflicts into hot wars in order to justify these kinds of levels of military spending. We have become a killing culture.....morally and ethically America is bankrupt. It's moral corruption at its highest level. It's an issue that most Americans choose to ignore.
  
• Two of the Jeju Island protest leaders were released from jail yesterday. People in the Gangjeong village worried they both were going to be salted away for some long jail time so this came as a surprise. Is it a sign of the impact of the growing global awareness about the Jeju Navy base issue? Last night when Ann Wright spoke she mentioned the Jeju struggle and I will do so today in my talk as well.