Despite the pending troop withdrawals in Iraq and those in Afghanistan between now and 2014, the United States remains a superpower on a scale not seen since the days of the Caesars. With this in mind, the National Post’s Richard Johnson takes a look at the scale of America’s forces.
Chinese President Hu Jintao on Tuesday urged the navy to prepare for military combat, amid growing regional tensions over maritime disputes and a US campaign to assert itself as a Pacific power.
Global investment in security industries is growing and is worth at least $60 billion, the latest analysis of trends in the sector by PricewaterhouseCoopers reported.
Aliaksei Yafimau shudders at the memory of the burly thug who threatened to kill his relatives. Yafimau, who installs satellite television systems in Babrujsk, Belarus, answered an advertisement in 2010 offering easy money to anyone willing to sell a kidney. He saw it as a step toward getting out of poverty. Instead, Yafimau, 30, was thrust into a dark journey around the globe that had him, at one point, locked in a hotel room for a month in Quito, Ecuador, waiting for surgeons to cut out an organ..
Alabama farmers have proposed using prisoners to work their fields to replace migrants who fled the state after it passed the country’s harshest anti-immigration law, officials said Tuesday.
JP Morgan, Exxon, Boeing, Among State Department's New Advisers.
Outstanding segment from Sunday night for anyone who missed it. This first portion focuses on fraud at Countrywide.
Many Greeks are draining their savings accounts because they are out of work, face rising taxes or are afraid the country will be forced to leave the euro zone. By withdrawing money, they are forcing banks to scale back their lending -- and are inadvertently making the recession even worse.
BP is accusing Halliburton of having "intentionally destroyed evidence" related to the explosion aboard an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico that led to the worst oil spill in U.S. history.
Her speech accused the “heavy-handed” mercenary’s legal team of the “attempted intimidation of a member of Congress.” You can watch it below.
Former German finance minister Peer Steinbrueck, an opposition leader and possible candidate for chancellor in 2013, warned on Tuesday of the perils of a collapse of the euro zone, saying it could revive nationalist sentiment in Europe.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have been put on a war footing amid increasing signs that the West is taking direct action to cripple Iran’s nuclear programme.
Last week the U.S. Senate passed 93-7 a version of the
National Defense Authorization Act that includes provisions giving the military the right to detain you forever and without charge if they think you're some kind of terrorist. Consider it an early holiday present! There is no exchange policy, sorry.
The leaders of France and Germany agreed a master plan on Monday for imposing budget discipline across the euro zone, saying the EU's basic treaty will need to be changed in the search for a sweeping solution to its debt crisis.
The Federal Reserve, along with the 17 euro zone national central banks, may help provide the International Monetary Fund with funds that could be used to aid debt-ridden states, a German newspaper said.
France is the latest nation to voice opposition against genetically modified crops, with GM maize unlikely to hit French fields next year despite the end of a ban Monsanto maize.
France and Germany have agreed on a series of reforms to address the euro zone sovereign debt crisis that will be presented to EU President Herman Van Rompuy on Wednesday, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said after a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Monday.
At Los Alamos National Laboratory, scientists and engineers refer to their planned new $6 billion nuclear lab by its clunky acronym, CMRR, short for Chemistry Metallurgy Research Replacement Facility. But as a work in progress for three decades and with hundreds of millions of dollars already spent, nomenclature is among the minor issues.
Many people have commented on the Congressional vote to codify the authoritarian powers asserted by George W. Bush and Barack Obama, i.e., the arbitrary, unchallengeable power to declare anyone on earth — including American citizens — an “enemy of the state” and incarcerate them, indefinitely, outside of due process, in military custody.
Many former US intelligence officials and Iran experts believe last month’s explosion at a military base near Tehran was part of a covert effort by the US, Israel and other states to disable Iran’s nuclear and missile programs, The Los Angeles Times reported late Sunday.
Putin compares US funded NGOs to Judas the betrayer.
Mexico’s fight against drug cartels, according to current and former federal law enforcement officials.
Iran warned the West on Sunday any move to block its oil exports would more than double crude prices with devastating consequences on a fragile global economy.
With the Russian threat to cut land routes for supply to Nato troops in Afghanistan, the Afghan battleground may turn into a cold deathtrap for Nato, defence analysts believe. They say that Pakistan should utilise the opportunity for a peaceful and prosperous Pakistan by pulling it out of the American war.
The Wisconsin State Capitol building has been the scene of protests since February, when Gov. Scott Walker started the process of passing a law that severely limits collective bargaining for public employees in the state.
Amid conflicting reports that a huge explosion at Iran's uranium conversion facility in Isfahan occurred last week, speculation was rife that Israel and the United States were stepping-up covert attacks against defense and nuclear installations.
Syria has been given a final deadline by the Arab League to accept international observers into the country or face sanctions.
BBC rewrites 10 years of history and declares Pakistan the new enemy.
The head of Pakistan’s military has ordered his country’s forces to respond instantly to any future aggression along the border with Afghanistan without waiting for instructions from high command. Pakistani military sources confirmed to VOA Friday that General Ashfaq Kayani has told his soldiers to fully retaliate “irrespective of the cost and consequences” to any future aggression, following the deadly NATO bombing on two Pakistani border outposts nearly a week ago.
A surveillance drone flying over western Afghanistan had gone out of control late last week and may be the one Iran said it had shot down over its own airspace, the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) has said. “The UAV to which the Iranians are referring may be a US unarmed reconnaissance aircraft that had been flying a mission over western Afghanistan late last week. The operators of the UAV lost control of the aircraft and had been working to determine its status,” an ISAF statement said on Sunday.
Globalists Grind Development to a Halt in Myanmar (Burma).
Top officials willfully concealed the true extent of the 2008-'09 bailouts from Congress and the public.
Preface: This post does not discuss whether or not 9/11 was a “false flag” operation or an “inside job”. Anything other than a discussion of the negligence of the Bush administration is unnecessary for the purposes of this essay, and is thus beyond the scope of this post.
Despite chest-pounding Russian protests, the US is moving ahead with plans to install a missile defense shield to protect NATO European territory, and has committed four of its 60 Arleigh Burke-class destroyers to sit off the coast of Spain.
Target Syria – the strategic prize that outstrips Libya. The stage is set. The stakes couldn’t be higher. Libya 2.0 equals Syria? It’s more like Libya 2.0 remix. With the same R2P (”responsibility to protect”) rationale – starring civilians bombed into ”democracy”. But with no UN Security Council resolution (Russia and China will veto it). Instead, Turkey shines, fanning the flames of civil war.
The U.S. Federal Reserve and other central banks must not succumb to calls for additional help from monetary authorities in the face of high budget deficits, two top Fed officials said on Friday.
Under fire for losing track of weapons that turned up at crime scenes along the Southwest border, the Justice Department has taken the extraordinary step of formally withdrawing an inaccurate letter about the episode that it sent to Congress earlier this year.
As everyone realizes by now, Congress’ push for indefinite detention includes American citizens on American soil.
“The information contained in our shared [genome] is so fundamental, and requires so much further research to understand its utility, that patenting it at the earliest stage is like putting up a whole lot of unnecessary toll booths on the road to discovery”, said National Institutes of Health Director and former head of the Human Genome Project Francis Collins in his 2010 book The Language of Life: DNA and the Revolution in Personalized Medicine.
In a shocking article published in Reuters, Felix Salmon confirmed what the so-called conspiracy theorists have said all along: former Secretary of the U.S. Treasury Hank Paulson was giving insider tips to his cronies at Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street titans which directly benefited them.
With overt traitor ElBaradei outed, Successor Hamza now in imperialists’ lap.
Armed U.S. police officers will for the first time be allowed to operate in Canada along with the RCMP as part of far-reaching changes in Canadian-American border operations to be unveiled next week by Prime Minister Stephen Harper and President Barack Obama.
According to the limited GAO audit of the Federal Reserve that was mandated by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, the grand total of all the secret bailouts conducted by the Federal Reserve during the last financial crisis comes to a whopping $16.1 trillion.
The government lawyers — CIA counsel Stephen Preston and Pentagon counsel Jeh Johnson — did not directly address the al-Alwaki case. But they said U.S. citizens don't have immunity when they're at war with the United States.
The Massachusetts attorney general has filed a lawsuit against five large U.S. banks accusing them of deceptive foreclosure practices, a signal of ebbing confidence that a multi-state agreement can be worked out.
And to think that Attorney General
Eric Holder is getting testy about congressional calls for his resignation. After all, the Justice Department has nothing to hide,
right?
Forecasting a future of robotic warfare in which perverted science is put at the service of its Empire, the U.S. has built 60 bases around the world for its unmanned, remotely controlled killer drone warplanes. And more bases are under construction.
Recently I reported on the highly controversial bill S. 1253, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for the fiscal year of 2012 which was introduced back in June.
WIN
The federal government has not done enough to oversee the treatment of America's foster children with powerful mind-altering drugs, according to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report to be released Thursday.
Stocks Rocket 4%, Dow Closes Above 12,000
LOS ANGELES—Sanitation workers wearing hazmat suits and masks moved in to City Hall park Wednesday to start cleaning up tons of trash, debris and human waste left after police evicted the 2-month-old Occupy LA tent camp in a mostly non-violent pre-dawn raid that resulted in the arrest of almost 300 people.
Update: Armed militia is patrolling in Tskhinvali in South Ossetia, the occupied region of Georgia. As tension is growing, Russia has deployed units of the internal troops in the region.
Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) called for the U.S. Federal Reserve to be reformed after Bloomberg reported the central bank secretly loaned nearly $8 trillion to financial institutions from 2007 to 2009.
The Libyan government apparently wants to share its successful experience of overthrowing the Gaddafi regime with like-minded Syrians. It has sent 600 of its troops to support local militants against the Assad regime, according to media reports.
Defying the Obama administration’s threat of a veto, the Senate on Tuesday voted to increase the role of the military in imprisoning suspected members of Al Qaeda and its allies — including people arrested inside the United States.
A notary public who signed tens of thousands of false documents in a massive foreclosure scam before blowing the whistle on the scandal has been found dead in her Las Vegas home.
“A Middle East Dictatorship Has More Democratic Accountability for Abuse of Power, Including Torture, Than the US Under Obama”
Have you ever been so poor that you had to live in your car? Have you ever been so low on funds that the only place you could afford to live was a rat-infested motel?
The federal government has agreed to pay $2.5 million to the widow and children of the first person killed in the anthrax letter attacks of 2001, settling a lawsuit claiming that the Army did not adequately secure its supply of the deadly pathogen.
Blatant lies told by alleged “human rights activists” led to ignominious NATO-sanctioned brutality and ultimately brought BP, Shell, Total-sponsored Petroleum Institute representative, Abdurrahim el-Keib, into power in Libya. Now, these same corporate-financier interests, through their same networks of propaganda, duplicity and deception, are laying the ground work for a repeat performance in Syria.
The arrival of 7 and half tons of tear gas to Egypt’s Suez port created conflict after the responsible officials at the port refused to sign and accept it for fear it would be used to crackdown on Egyptian protesters.
Italy has had preliminary discussions with the International Monetary Fund about financial support to cope with the euro zone’s debt crisis, possibly co-funded by national European central banks, but no decision has been taken, several sources close to the situation said.
Standard & Poor’s ratings service just cut the ratings of Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and Citigroup from A to A-.
Greenpeace today renewed its demand for the Japanese government to keep its nuclear reactors offline as simulation maps of potential accidents at Japan’s nuclear plants – used in the development of nuclear emergency response efforts – “are completely inadequate, and have not been updated since the Fukushima disaster.”
UN Syria Report Co-Authored by Director of US Corporate Think-Tank
Boise State running back Doug Martin (22) attempts to leap over New Mexico defender Bubba Forrest (28) in the second half of an NCAA college football game, Saturday, Dec. 3, 2011, at Bronco Stadium in Boise, Idaho. (AP Photo/Idaho Press-Tribune, Greg Kreller) 
