By Mike Adams | It's fairly obvious to anyone paying attention that the American Empire, as currently configured and operated, is simply not sustainable. Financial collapse is inevitable (and accelerating, it seems), and even mainstream America can no longer deny the obvious signs that things have gone terribly wrong: Skyrocketing fuel prices, unprecedented inflation in food prices, rampant epidemics of preventable degenerative disease, plummeting real estate prices, an increasingly-worthless national ...

By Paul Rockwell | There are two kinds of courage in war - physical courage and moral courage. Physical courage is very common on the battlefield. Men and women on both sides risk their lives, place their own bodies in harm’s way. Moral courage, however, is quite rare. According to Chris Hedges, the brilliant New York Times war correspondent who survived wars in Latin America, Africa, the Middle ...

By Paul Kane | In a 92 to 6 vote, the Senate yesterday approved unrestricted funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that allows continuation of the current military course of action through the end of President Bush's term and beyond. In exchange for that unencumbered freedom to operate in Iraq, Bush agreed to demands by congressional Democrats to create a new higher-education benefit for ...

Independent Working Class Association | ...and we all know who broke it When submerged under a veritable deluge of ideologically-driven ‘reforms’, it takes something especially imbecilic to provoke a double-take. Louise Casey, the mouthy former head of the Government’s ‘Respect task force’, is set to spearhead the latest New Labour gimmick on law ’n order. Among the 20 proposals that fade from the merely banal to the truly asinine here ...

By Michael McCarthy | MI5 and flood risk experts are at odds over whether to publish inundation maps highlighting areas under threat if any of the country's dams were to collapse. The Security Service says that the information could show terrorists where an attack on a dam might have the most impact.   Experts in the Cabinet Office and the Environment Agency feel the time has come to make the ...

By Bruce Schneier | Pervasive security cameras don't substantially reduce crime. There are exceptions, of course, and that's what gets the press. Most famously, CCTV cameras helped catch James Bulger's murderers in 1993. And earlier this year, they helped convict Steve Wright of murdering five women in the Ipswich area. But these are the well-publicised exceptions. Overall, CCTV cameras aren't very effective. This fact has been demonstrated again ...

Socialist Worker | Gordon Brown says we must all take a wage cut – but up to 800,000 local government workers are set to walk out over pay. Gordon Brown, chancellor Alistair Darling, and Bank of England governor Mervyn King lined up last week to deliver pious lectures on why workers must accept wage cuts to help stop inflation. But it is not wages that are pushing up ...

By Bruno Waterfield in Brussels | Future referendums will be ignored whether they are held in Ireland or elsewhere, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, the architect of the European Union Constitution said. The former President of France drafted the old Constitution that was rejected by French and Dutch voters three years ago before being resurrected as the Lisbon EU Treaty, itself shunned by the Irish two weeks ago. Mr Giscard d'Estaing told ...

RALEIGH, North Carolina: Federal agents raided Blackwater Worldwide this week as part of an investigation into whether the private security company sidestepped federal laws prohibiting the private purchase of automatic assault rifles, the company said Thursday. Blackwater spokeswoman Anne Tyrrell said investigators with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives searched Blackwater's armory at its corporate headquarters in Moyock on Tuesday as part of the ...

The majority of police chiefs are against a universal DNA database for the people of Britain. At a meeting during the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) annual conference, 61 per cent of police chiefs voted against the idea of putting all UK residents on the national database. Only 38 per cent of those present at the vote supported a universal database with one per cent unsure. The national DNA database is a ...

WASHINGTON (AP) | The National Security Agency does not need to tell lawyers for Guantanamo Bay detainees whether their phones were tapped as part of the Bush administration's domestic surveillance program, a federal judge in New York ruled Wednesday. The NSA has refused to say whether it listened in on the conversations of the lawyers who are advising detainees being held at the U.S. naval facility ...

By Greg Miller | WASHINGTON -- The United States has paid more than $5 billion to reimburse Pakistan for counter-terrorism expenses that have often been exaggerated, if not fabricated, according to a government audit released Tuesday that blasts the Pentagon for poor management of the program. The report concluded that the Pentagon could not properly account for as much as $2 billion in payments to Pakistan over a three-year ...

By Doug Smith | BAGHDAD -- Nine Iraqi civilians were killed Wednesday in two armed clashes involving U.S. soldiers, local authorities reported. The military said U.S. soldiers were fired upon first in both incidents. In the capital, three people were killed in a fiery crash after gunfire erupted as their vehicle passed U.S. soldiers with a convoy stopped near the Baghdad international airport to recover a stalled vehicle. Officials at ...

By Ron F | According to UN figures, in the 2000 growing season opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan covered 82,000 hectares. (1) Following a ban ruthlessly enforced by the Taliban opium cultivation declined to 8,000 hectares in the following year, according to the same reporting agency. Much of this remaining opium cultivation was carried out in areas not under Taliban control, but by our friends in the ...

Democracy Now! |  Listen to the Interview Audio stream  Download mp3  Criticism of Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe and the actions of his ruling Zanu PF party is growing. The most recent condemnation comes from former South African President Nelson Mandela, who mourned the “tragic failure of leadership” in Zimbabwe on Wednesday. They were the former leader’s first comments on the situation. President Bush also criticized Mugabe Wednesday for defying international ...