In South Korea, the US military started moving equipment for the THAAD missile system to its deployment site. The transport of radars and other military gear caused local residents to clash with police forces. [...]

A federal appeals court has ruled that the telephone metadata collection program used by the National Security Agency to spy on Americans was illegal, just as NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden said seven years ago. The metadata “bulk collection” program violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Wednesday. [...]

As competition for the Arctic mineral wealth heats up and NATO continues to build up its military presence near Russia’s western borders, the Northern Fleet is becoming key to ensuring the country’s national security and economic interests. [...]

If Trump’s words about his dislike for war and US troops fighting ‘forever wars’ matched his actions, there would be no American soldiers in the Middle East and Afghanistan. Nor would he still be selling weapons to the region. Nearly two years ago, I asked Russian President Vladimir Putin at his annual press conference whether he thought that American troops would really withdraw from t [...]

Another U.S. military strike inside Syria — this time, shooting down a Syrian bomber — has escalated tensions with Russia, even opening the possibility that Russian anti-aircraft missiles will target U.S. warplanes, reports Gilbert Doctorow. The Pentagon’s announcement that the U.S. military had shot down a Syrian warplane inside Syrian territory merited only inside-the-paper treatment at [...]

It explains a lot about his actions. It’s starting to sink in. Something terrible is about to happen. We certainly could chalk up Donald Trump’s actions over the last week to the severe flaws in his character. He’s a reckless, narcissistic psychopath who has no sense of empathy or compassion for other people. That’s why he won’t wear a mask, and keeps endangering lives. But we already k [...]

According to secret documents obtained by a Russian intelligence service, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, NATO planned to split Russia into several smaller parts, a former secret agent told Russia's Rossiya 1 broadcaster. After the collapse of the USSR, NATO planned to divide Russia into small parts diminishing the state to the size of the medieval Moscow principality, a vetera [...]

While President Donald Trump takes his oath of office today in the White House bunker, the capital remains subdued, quiet except for the shriek of sirens and the black unmarked SUVs rushing to pick up the bodies of the “Antifa rioters,” as Trump called them, shortly before Attorney General Bill Barr’s December invocation of the Insurrection Act. National Guard troops are refusing the Pres [...]

The commander of the United States Pacific Fleet said Thursday that he would launch a nuclear strike on China if President Donald Trump ordered it. "The answer would be: Yes," Adm. Scott Swift said, responding to a hypothetical question at a security conference at the Australian National University, according to ABC News. [...]

A notorious US naval destroyer sparked a diplomatic incident on Tuesday morning after Russia claimed that it had launched an incursion into its territorial waters. The USS John S McCain, a specialist combat ship designed to hunt submarines, was operating in the Sea of Japan (also called the East Sea), off the coast of the Russian Far Eastern capital, Vladivostok. Authorities say it was more than t [...]

Damascus called on the UN Security Council to "stop the US-led coalition's crimes against Syrian citizens," a statement issued by the Syrian Foreign Ministry said. Syria calls again on the UN Security Council to fulfull its obligations for the sake of peace and security, and to stop the crimes of the US-led coalition against Syrian citizens," the document read. [...]

Covid-19 vaccines created using public funds should not be used to fuel obscene private profits, a senior Oxfam official told RT, amid growing concern that poor nations can’t afford to inoculate their populations. An alarming report authored by Oxfam International in collaboration with a group of other human rights organizations warned that only one in 10 people in poor countries are set to rece [...]

The UK government has decided to put out a tender for a US$6 million contract for facial recognition software, despite the fact thousands of pictures on their system may be of innocent people. [...]

The United States has sold more than a million barrels of Iranian fuel seized under its sanctions program last year, Reuters reported on Thursday, citing the US Department of Justice. The seizures were part of Washington’s economic sanctions on Tehran over its nuclear program, and the US’ designation of a number of Iranian groups as terrorists. The US government under President Donald Tru [...]

The day after US President Trump’s barnstorming speech to the UN General Assembly decrying 'the scourge' of rogue states and terrorism, it was reported that his administration is set to greatly loosen American arms exports. The trade in question is in the private sector of so-called “non-military weapons”.   [...]

Turks have taken to the streets in Istanbul, Ankara, Adana, and other cities to protest against Joe Biden recognising the events of 1915 as an Armenian genocide. The demonstrators called upon the Turkish authorities to end the US military's use of the Incirlik Air Base and Kurecik Radar Station in southern Turkey. "I believe that the time has come to return the bases provided by Turkey t [...]

Thirty thousand pages of files have been released on US activities in Indonesia during the archipelago’s gory transition from a socialist dictatorship to a pro-West military dictatorship in the mid-60s. The documents confirm that Washington was aware of, and supported, the military takeover of the government and purge of communist opponents. [...]

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken caught flak after he praised the legacy of Madeleine Albright, who once appeared to justify the deaths of Iraqi children, saying that she made the country “more respected globally.” Blinken took to Twitter on Friday to hail Albright, a former US ambassador to the UN and secretary of state under former President Bill Clinton, as a ‘woman of courage’ [...]

A ROOSEVELT HIGH SCHOOL graduate who enlisted in the Navy in 1969, Ventura earned a spot as an elite SEAL trained in underwater demolition. He shipped out to fight in Vietnam, where he passed the time with cheap beer and easy women. After he got back stateside, he joined a California motorcycle gang called the Mongols. Armed with discharge papers in 1975, he came back to Minnesota for community [...]

Speaking about food systems transformation, colonialism, the CIA, the Republicans, the UN budget, and taxing the rich. What we’ve been hearing from the panelists is how the global food system works right now. The minister bashed the U.S. and its constant "hindrance" in the peace process. Lavrov said that everybody knows Volodymyr Zelensky doesn’t act independently. Recently, western powers hel [...]

Thousands of people supporting Mikhail Saakashvili, the fugitive ex-Georgian president turned Ukrainian opposition figure, have once again taken to the streets of Kiev to take a local cultural center by storm. Some 2,000 people turned up for yet another protest action in support of Saakashvili in the Ukrainian capital on Sunday. The demonstrators marched through the city center to Maidan Square, [...]

The UK government looks set to approve Covid jabs for 12-15-year-olds, against scientific advice. This is bad enough, but suggesting it will benefit their mental health is an insult, given how this was disregarded in lockdown. Boris Johnson is currently finalising the UK’s winter Covid plan. Reports suggest most of the emergency coronavirus restrictions we have been living under for the pas [...]