With so many little wars to keep track of, you probably haven’t noticed that the US has quietly been increasing its airstrikes against targets in Somalia.

President Trump ordered complete US withdrawal in December; in February he said 200 would remain; and now...

The US military is now making plans to keep almost 1,000 troops in Syria, officials said, a shift that comes three months after President Donald Trump ordered a complete withdrawal, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday, citing unidentified US officials.

Talks with Turkey, European allies and US-backed Kurdish fighters have so far failed to secure an agreement to create a safe zone in northeastern Syria, part of Trump’s plan for leaving Syria, the Journal said.

The US now plans to keep working with Kurdish fighters in Syria despite Turkish threats to cross the border and attack the Kurds, the US officials said. The proposal may keep as many as 1,000 American forces, spread from the north of Syria to the south, they said.

The head of Army Materiel Command said recently that he is putting a high priority on munitions readiness to make sure Army units are prepared for the next war.

"This means having the right munitions – small-caliber to precision munitions – where we need them at the right time and the right place," Gen. Gus Perna told an audience at a March 14 Association of the United States Army event. "That means we must first ensure that the capability we have here in [the U.S.] can receive, store and issue munitions in a timely, effective manner."

Perna's comments come at a time when the Army continues to replenish its ammunition stocks as it prepares to face an equally formidable foe such as Russia or China on the battlefield.

The U.S. Air Force is hoping to grow its total force by 4,400 airmen, add a new fighter to its inventory, and pump more money into weapon sustainment and ongoing research programs, such as the B-21 Long Range Strike Bomber project, according to the service's fiscal 2020 budget request.

As anticipated, the Air Force will officially ask to fund eight brand-new F-15EX fourth-plus generation fighters at a cost of $1.05 billion to gradually begin replacing its older F-15C/D Eagle fleet, the budget documents reveal. Service officials recently disclosed the Air Force needs to boost its fighter inventory, but it had not expected to do so with an F-15X variant.

More than 10,000 military personnel, 35 warships, 5 submarines and 59 aircraft and helicopters from 13 countries will take part in Exercise Joint Warrior until 11 April.

The aim of Joint Warrior is to allow the UK’s Royal Navy, Army, Royal Air Force and their allies to conduct joint operations involving different forces and units and against a range of current and future threats.

Hollywood star Gary Sinise just opened up about why he has devoted so much of his time to helping veterans, and to lament the fact that many of his peers in the entertainment industry have politicized honoring the military.

Sinise has helped thousands of war veterans through The Gary Sinise Foundation, and he just told TIME that he does not see helping the military as a partisan matter.

“How have our defenders become a political issue? They defend us all. They are us all,” said the Forrest Gump star. “There are Democrats who serve our country, there are Republicans who serve our country.”

I arrived an absolute mess; most of us did. Bloated cheeks, sunken eyes, wearing my PTSD and depression on every inch of my face. I can’t say I really wanted to be there, even if I had volunteered. Ironic, wasn’t it?

This, a civilian treatment facility in nowhere, Arizona, was to be my last official duty as an officer in the U.S. Army – an ignominious end to a once-bright career. Still, the truth is I needed it: After several years of treatment for post-traumatic stress, depression and anxiety, I wasn’t getting any better. The Army saw it and decided to retire me a few years early. Over the last year, my life ran off the rails – self medicating, spiraling, the standard drill for a broken vet.

This is the incredible moment enormous American B-52 bombers land at a RAF base in the largest US bomber deployment to the UK since the Iraq war.

Amazing photos and video footage have captured the impressive US planes landing at RAF Fairford, in Gloucestershire, their new temporary base.

Their arrival on Thursday and Friday came ahead of a NATO exercise in Georgia, which will be a show of force against Vladimir Putin's neighbouring Russia - though it is unclear if the B-52s will be involved.

With its estimated programme cost of $1.5 trillion, the fifth-generation stealth combat jet has faced a spate of costly setbacks over the past few years. In October 2018, the US even temporarily grounded its entire fleet of F-35s following a crash.

During high-level Pentagon meetings, acting US Defence Secretary Patrick Shanahan harshly criticised Lockheed Martin's F-35 fifth-generation fighter jet programme, using an expletive to describe the fighter, an ex-Defence Department official was quoted by Politico as saying.

According to the former official, Shanahan called the warplane "f***ed up", claiming that Lockheed "doesn't know how to run a programme" and that "if it had gone to Boeing, it would be done much better".

Two US strategic bomber B-52H Stratofortress have, earlier today, arrived at Fairford Air Force Base in the UK. Aircraft DRYER91 and DRYER92 took off from Barksdale air base in Louisiana and landed in the morning at a British airfield, according to the data from the following source:

In addition, three more American B-52 bomber with the callsign STRAY81, STRAY82, STRAY83 and one B-52H with the call sign CLIP91 were transferred to the UK in the last two days. Thus, according to the information of the source, the USA transferred six nuclear bombers to Fairford. This should raise some concerns.

With so many little wars to keep track of, you probably haven’t noticed that the US has quietly been increasing its airstrikes against targets in Somalia. It seems few people in Washington have either.

In recent months, dozens of Al-Shabaab terrorist suspects have been killed by American drones and planes in Somalia, reportedly thanks to a surplus becoming available from Syria. However, in a familiar pattern, the US military has denied any civilians were harmed, while locals and aid agencies deny that denial.

A former US ambassador to Somalia told the New York Times: “It could be there is some well-thought-out strategy behind all of this, but I really doubt it.”

The U.S. has sent nuclear-capable Boeing B-52 Stratofortress bombers to the United Kingdom for strategic missions in Europe.

A "Bomber Task Force" arrived at the Royal Air Force (RAF) Fairford on Thursday from the 2nd Bomb Wing at Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana, U.S. Air Forces Europe-Africa (USAFE) said in a press release.

"The deployment also includes joint and allied training in the U.S. European Command theater to improve bomber interoperability. Training with joint partners, allied nations and other U.S. Air Force units contributes to our ready and postured forces and enables us to build enduring and strategic relationships necessary to confront a broad range of global challenges," the statement read.

According to Gloucestershire Live, two B-52s arrived at RAF Fairford on Thursday with more expected Friday.

With the world’s largest, most destructive arsenal of nuclear weapons, the United States poses an enormous risk not just to peace, but to the survival of much of the human race. That’s only a problem, of course, if the US starts using that arsenal.

Which is where formal US nuclear doctrine would come in. There have been debates for decades on whether the US should adopt a “no first use” policy, officially ruling out the idea that the US would launch a nuclear attack without first being attacked with a nuclear weapon.

Morally, this ought to be obvious, but every attempt to adopt such a policy has been opposed, with Joint Chiefs commander Gen. Joe Dunford the latest to come out against the idea, saying promising not to nuke other nations in a first strike would “simplify an adversary’s decision-making.”

Washington’s new nuclear doctrine, which was announced on 2 February, outlines that President Trump, just like predecessor Barack Obama, would consider using nuclear weapons only in “extreme circumstances”. The Nuclear Posture Review also allows the US to strike first in a preemptive move.

General Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has warned against changing the current US military policy which allows the country to be the first to use nuclear weapons during a possible conflict with an adversary.

Speaking at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, Dunford said that he “absolutely” believes that “the current policy is the right policy”.

The U.S. Army recently awarded QinetiQ North America a contract worth up to $152 million for special robots that are light enough to be carried in a backpack into combat.

The Common Robotic System Individual, or CRS (I), is the Army's first "small-sized" robotic program of record, according to a recent press release from the service's Maneuver Capability Development Integration Directorate at Fort Benning, Georgia.

"CRS (I) is a remotely operated, highly mobile, unmanned ground vehicle that is light enough for a dismounted soldier to carry in a backpack," the release states.

Of course, officials are always keen to talk up attacking various nations, and that they are giving that impression now doesn’t mean an invasion is imminent. Rather, the US seems interested in giving that impression.

Still, concern about this is real, enough so that the House Foreign Affairs Committee is looking to prohibit the White House from attacking Venezuela without Congressional approval. The administration clearly hoped to force a regime change in Venezuela just through threats and rhetoric, but with that looking less and less likely to work, the talk of a war is only going to grow.

Australia will launch a seven-nation Indian Ocean military exercise next week. It will start in Sri Lanka where China has invested in strategic ports and loaned huge amounts to build other infrastructure, AFP reports. Some 1,000 Australian security personnel in four naval ships and a military aircraft will participate in the biggest joint exercise yet with their Sri Lankan counterparts, Canberra’s top envoy in Colombo, Jon Philp, said on Friday.

This week the Senate voted to cease and desist US military cooperation with allies Saudi Arabia and UAE in waging the war in Yemen, which according to the United Nations has created one of the worst humanitarian disasters in recent history. The Wednesday vote was was 54 to 46, including seven Republicans voting with the Democrats.

The “war powers” legislation has been widely seen as a direct rebuke of Trump's foreign policy amid broader pushback over his defense of Saudi Arabia in the wake of last year's Jamal Khashoggi killing at the Saudi embassy in Istanbul. The invocation of the War Powers Act of 1973 expressly prohibits US military action not previously approved by Congress.

A House vote is expected soon, which would require President Trump to immediately withdraw American military support from the Saudi-led coalition. Trump said in December he would veto the Senate resolution if it ever reached his desk, which now appears likely.

In order to appease the internet censors, today’s Caitlin Johnstone article has been replaced with a breaking report from the National News Conglomerate. NNC: Obey.

Washington, D.C. (NNC)? - ?Following the publication of the results of a groundbreaking new study this week, experts are now reporting that every single person who questions western military interventionism is both an antisemitic bigot and a Russian national.

Research analyst Les Overton is a senior fellow at the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Democracy (ASPCD), a Washington, D.C.-based think tank whose motives we can only assume are perfectly truthful and unbiased. He told NNC that the ASPCD’s research clearly shows that the rate of correlation between an individual opposing western foreign policy, harboring a virulent hatred of Jewish people, and being a citizen of the Russian Federation is “at least a hundred percent, if not more.”

In the latest bizarre story to come out of the US "endless war" in Afghanistan, American warplanes obliterated an allied Afghan military post in an act of "self defense" on Wednesday.

The incident took place in the tribal Uruzgan province of south-central Afghanistan and reportedly began when a joint convoy of US troops and Afghan Special Forces came under fire by another unit of Afghan ground troops in what appears a major instance of accidental friendly fire resulting in a devastating two dozen total casualties on the Afghan side.

The Trump administration is doubling down on backing the White Helmets, the self-proclaimed civil defense group with often controversial activity in militant-held areas of Syria, pledging a $5 million donation at a conference.
The contribution was announced by ambassador James Jeffrey, US special envoy to the anti-Islamic State (IS, formerly known as ISIS) coalition, at the third Conference on Supporting the Future of Syria and the Region, held in Brussels.

The $5 million will fund both the “vital, life-saving operations” by the White Helmets and the work of the International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism (IIIM), a UN body created in late 2016 to investigate – but not prosecute – alleged atrocities in Syria after 2011.

Media Matters’ mantra:
Democrat drones may break foreign bones, but conservative words forever hurt me.

Failed Clinton operative David Brock and his hate group Media Fecal Matters want Tucker Carlson fired because he’s the only cable news anchor against bombing foreigners. They recently put out a desperate hit piece on Carlson recycling decade plus-old clips of him on Florida shock jock Bubba the Love Sponge’s radio show. The clips contain a smattering of out-of-context satirical points and hot takes on culture topics—standard, vanilla comedy radio banter. However, no crude remark made by Carlson compares to the vulgar, relentless barbarity David Brock’s Media Matters has promoted in media for decades. While Carlson may have made flippant and poor taste comments, Media Matters wants a world where millions of people of color overseas have no news anchor on nightly news making the case against our interventions and sanctions of their homelands.

As it’s been pointed out by a number of prominent statisticians, over the last hundred years Washington has interfered in the internal affairs of at least 50 countries for a total of 130 individual cases. As for the last three decades, there have been more than 40 instances of such interference, including cases of elections meddling and fraud, coup d’etats and attempts to trigger armed conflicts. To be more specific, the American alternative media site AlterNet managed to establish 80 instances of Western interference over the period from 1953 to the present day.

This basically means Washington won’t think twice when it sees an opportunity to bring a government down, imposing its will on other countries through all sorts of non-profit organizations and intelligence agencies with the latter acting with diplomatic immunity. These days, pretty much across the globe it’s a running joke that there will never be a coup d’etat in Washington as there’s no US embassy there.

First deputy chairman of the defense committee of the State Duma, Andrei Krasov, explained to Russian media – and through FRN, to the Anglophoe world – why the US maintains a nuclear first strike policy. According to the Russian senator, the policy of a preemptive nuclear strike by the United States is not beneficial to American society, but to the US military’s defense industry. Krasov made his comments in the aftermath of disturbing comments made from

Yesterday on March 14th, low-functioning psychopath and war-criminal for hire, General Joseph Dunford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee of the US Armed Forces, said that Washington should not abandon the policy of delivering a preemptive nuclear strike, since this option forces the enemy to make informed decisions.

The global 1%, comprised of over 36-million millionaires and 2,400 billionaires, employ their excess capital with investment management firms like BlackRock and J.P Morgan Chase. The top seventeen of these trillion-dollar investment management firms controlled $41.1 trillion dollars in 2017. These firms are all directly invested in each other and managed by only 199 people who decide how and where global capital will be invested. Their biggest problem is they have more capital than there are safe investment opportunities, which leads to risky speculative investments, increased war spending, privatization of the public domain, and pressures to open new capital investment opportunities through political regime changes.

The U.S. Navy plans to buy ten new warships over the next five years that won't carry any sailors.

These drone ships are designed to carry sensors and weapons. Measuring up to 300 feet long and displacing 2,000 tons, the vessels are meant to extend the sensor range of fleets at sea. The ships will also likely carry weapons, giving the fleet greater firepower and an asset commanders won’t hesitate to send on the most dangerous missions, since that won't mean endangering the lives of sailors.

“If my sons did not want wars, there would be none” -- Gutle Schnaper Rothschild

WHEN I LOOKED UP THIS QUOTE I CAME UPON THIS AMAZING LINK WHICH FOR SOME REASON I WAS UNABLE TO COPY & PASTE. I’D JUST LIKE TO SAY EVERYTHING WRITTEN HERE IS TAKEN FROM THIS LINK. THERE’S A WEALTH OF INFORMATION HERE INCLUDING REFERENCES & SOURCES AT THE END. I DECIDED TO TRANSFER IT AS BEST AS I COULD BECAUSE MANY OF THE VIDEOS & LINKS HAVE SADLY BEEN TAKEN DOWN. I OMITTED WHAT DID NOT WORK. THE VIDEO BELOW IS BY ANTHONY J. HILDER. I PRESUME THIS HAS ALL BEEN PUT TOGETHER BY HIM. SHOULD ANYONE KNOW ANY DIFFERENT PLEASE INFORM ME.

A US warship has essentially been quarantined at sea for over two months and has been unable to make a port call due to an outbreak of a viral infection similar to mumps.

Twenty-five sailors and Marines aboard the USS Fort McHenry amphibious warship have been diagnosed with parotitis, which causes symptoms similar to mumps, according to US military officials.

Until CNN asked about the incident, the US military had not disclosed it. The illness first broke out in December, with the most recent case being reported on March 9.

Normally when a Democratic Party-aligned politician appears on such a show, you can expect jokes about how stupid Trump is and how badly they’re going to beat the Republicans, how they’re going to help ordinary Americans, and maybe some friendly back-and-forth about where they grew up or something. Colbert had no time to waste on such things, however, because this was not an interview with a normal Democratic Party-aligned politician: this was a politician who has been loudly and consistently criticizing US foreign policy.

The UK Defense Ministry is actively looking for a contractor for its new psychological research, which is allegedly aimed at boosting troops’ performance and well-being. Some details of the project are quite unnerving, though.

I was 23 when we invaded Iraq, and I wasn’t sure it was based on lies, but something deep down in me told me it was based on lies. Kinda like if your blind date shows up and you notice he has a 2004 flip phone.
It seems vaguely worrisome, and no explanation he can haltingly supply will put you at ease. Plus, anyone else who acts like it’s normal also becomes suspect.

The invasion of Iraq just felt like it was a lie to me. And it turned out that I was right, that it was a lie, and that the entirety of the mainstream media and our government were either wrong or lying and, most of the time, both.

Now our government and our media are trying their damnedest to lie us into another war, this one with Venezuela. They tell us the Venezuelan people are desperate for necessities like toothpaste, while independent journalists show piles of affordable toothpaste in Caracas.

Thom talks with author and filmmaker John Pilger about his new documentary “The Coming War On China” and the military escalation that could lead World War III.

It is pretty evident that Chinese naval power is growing by leaps and bounds, with a lot of qualitative literature about it:

Chinese military procurement ($70 billion) now half the rate of American ($155 billion). Adjust for purchasing power parity, and it should be virtually equal.

If China is ahead deploying Railguns, electromag catapults and hypersonic weapons

Missiles and planes make China’s South China Sea Island bases an effective update of the Maginot Line

Chinese naval expansion hits high gear

There have been fewer articles looking at the quantitative side of things, though NextBigFuture does point out that PLAN is slated to overtake USN in warship numbers by 2030.

At his Monday press conference, Mike Pompeo said “we’ve asked (Congress to appropriate) up to $500 million…to restore the economy of the Venezuelan nation (sic) (and) help Juan Guaido.”

He failed to explain the ongoing Trump regime coup plot, nor that it’s all about replacing Bolivarian social democracy with US-controlled tyranny – DLT and hardliners surrounding him wanting control over Venezuelan oil, gas, gold, and other valued resources.

It’s what the scourge of imperialism is all about, Guaido an illegitimate US designated puppet, usurper in waiting, traitor to Venezuela and its people, belonging in prison longterm for his highest of high political crimes.

Like more than a few neighbors, India and Pakistan have a property dispute. Theirs is over Jammu and Kashmir, a former princely state nestled against the Himalayas. India is in control and Pakistan sponsors militant raids under a fig leaf of deniability. Conflicts like these exist around the world. They are a natural consequence of geography and politics. If contending parties arm themselves with nuclear weapons, these regional quarrels will suddenly have apocalyptic potential.

The US defense budget proposal for FY 2020 boasts a record-breaking research and development request, as the Pentagon seeks to get its hands on all the shiny new things, such as artificial intelligence and hypersonic weaponry.

The US Department of Defense has rolled out the proposal for its budget for the upcoming fiscal year. The Pentagon needs even more funds compared to the massive $716 billion budget in 2019 and now wants it to grow by some five percent – to a whopping $750 billion.

With Venezuela’s government ordering the withdrawal of the last of US embassy personnel, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tried to spin it as a positive for the continued efforts to impose regime change there.

Pompeo said that “time is drawing short” for Venezuela, while saying the presence of a US embassy had been a “constraint on US policy,” and one that no longer exists now that the staff is being recalled.

Exactly what this will mean from a policy standpoint is unclear, though clearly the administration wants to keep reminding everybody that military intervention is possible Elliot Abrams confirmed this in his own comments, saying that the option to attack Venezuela will always remain on the table.

Months of battles in Congress to challenge the US war in Yemen under the War Powers Act is coming to a key moment, a vote in the Senate on Wednesday. The SJ Res 7 resolution is a clean version of the challenge, without any amendments yet attached.

Saudi Arabia attacked Yemen in March of 2015, seeking to reinstall former President Hadi and remove the Shi’ite Houthi movement. The US backed the Saudi invasion, and has participated military, both in refueling Saudi warplanes, and in a naval blockade of Yemen.

Legal challenges in 2018 were repeatedly stalled in the House of Representatives, where the leadership changed rules to prevent a War Powers Act challenge, which would point out that the war was never authorized by Congress. The Senate did ultimately pass such a challenge in late 2018, but without a House version, they both had to start anew with the 2019 Congress.

Very moving, well worth a listen.

He correctly points out that the mainstream media are shameless liars, and that Americans should not believe the lies being told about Venezuela, which is being targeted with a disinformation campaign. We couldn't agree more.

The United States Entity lost the war in Iraq. That fact determines the Entity’s position in the Middle East today. After having destroyed Saddam’s army and dispossessing the Sunnis in favor of the Shi’ites, after Abu Ghraib and it’s indelible pictures, after the total destruction of Fallujah, in short after a victory achieved with the utmost brutality, contempt and humiliation of Iraq and Iraqis, the Entity was in charge. Then the “insurgents” appeared. They put improvised explosive devices along the roads so, with a phone call, they could destroy patrols of the Entity. They made car bombs so that every vehicle approaching a check-point might spell doom. They donned suicide vests to blow themselves and any nearby Entity soldiers up. Entity soldiers couldn’t go into the streets. Every move they made could be their last. The enemy was everywhere and nowhere. These people would rather die then be ruled by these idiotic mechanized barbarians.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo accused Cuba and Russia on Monday of propping up President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela in the Trump administration’s most explicit argument yet that his government is a dictatorial regime kept alive by two American adversaries.

Mr. Pompeo’s comments came amid a devastating power outage that has plunged many of Venezuela’s most populous areas into darkness, spoiling food in a nation where little is available.

He denied Mr. Maduro’s accusation that foreign powers — a clear reference to the United States — had any role in creating the blackout that has brought the country to the brink of social implosion. Instead, Mr. Pompeo said, the blame lies squarely with Havana and Moscow.

“When there is no electricity, thank the marvels of modern Cuban-led engineering,” Mr. Pompeo said in comments laced with sarcasm. “When there’s no water, thank the excellent hydrologists from Cuba. When there’s no food, thank the Cuban communist overlords.”

SOURCE: CHARLES HUGH SMITH
The promises cannot be met, and so society decays into warring elites and competing constituencies.

There is a grand, majestic tragedy in the inevitable collapse of once-thriving states and empires: it all seemed so permanent at its peak, so godlike in its power, and then slowly but surely, too many grandiose, unrealistic promises were made to too many elites and constituencies, and then as growth decays to stagnation, the only way to maintain the status quo is to appear to meet all the promises by creating money out of thin air, i.e. debauching the currency.

This political expediency works most wonderfully for a time: people don't realize the silver content of their coinage is being cut to near-zero, or there's nothing holding up the value of their currency but trickery and vague allusions to past glory.

Trust in the state/empire's currency suddenly collapses in a phase shift: all seems well until the moment the avalanche sweeps it all away.

U.S.S. Zumwalt (DDG-1000), a 16,000-ton next generation guided-missile destroyer, left its San Diego homeport for its first “operational period at sea,” the U.S. Navy said in a March 8 statement.

The Navy said the milestone demonstrates the service's commitment to advancing the lethality of stealth warships through cutting-edge technologies in combat systems, weapons, and engineering plant.

“Zumwalt is designed for stealth,” said Capt. Andrew Carlson, the ship's commanding officer.

“This aids her role as a multi-mission surface combatant and improves the fleet commander’s options for delivery of naval combat power to meet the Navy’s emergent mission requirements.”

As with all US presidents, the incumbent will one day be assigned a “Trump Doctrine” – a grandiose title meant to encapsulate a key feature of foreign policy during his tenure at the White House.

The foreign policy wonks haven’t yet come up with a defining policy feature for a Trump Doctrine. But we may suggest the following: scoring own goals to unwittingly alienate allies and undermine US global power.

Trump’s presidency stands out for the rapidity with which supposed allies have become leery of, if not outright peeved by, American power. That, in turn, has served to erode Washington’s global standing as a presumed leader.

The latest own goal is Trump’s plan to ramp up demands for allies to pay the cost of hosting US troops on their territories. The new accounting arrangement has not yet been officially announced by the White House, but allies have got wind of the changes in store.

US Secretary of the Air Force Heather Wilson, one of the first officials to join the Trump administration in the Pentagon, says she will resign in May and return to academia.

Wilson was considered a top candidate to become the next secretary of defense and now her resignation will leave another vacant post at the top level of the Pentagon.

Wilson submitted a resignation letter and released a statement Friday morning, saying she has informed President Donald Trump of the matter.

"Today I informed the President I will resign as Secretary of the Air Force to be President of the University of Texas at El Paso. It has been a privilege to serve with our #Airmen—I am proud of the progress we have made to restore the readiness & lethality of #USAF."

“The Federal Government’s Use-It-Or-Lose-It Spending Spree” report reveals how US federal agencies took the taxpayer-funded shopping fever to a whole new level last year.

The federal government has been leading a lavish life, spending $4.6 million on luxury food items such as crab and lobster tail in the final month of the fiscal year 2018, OpenTheBooks, a non-profit that seeks to bring transparency and efficiency to the federal budget, revealed.

“We looked at the year, it was $22 million spent by the Pentagon on lobster tail alone, over the course of the past four years on lobster tail alone it was nearly $55 million”, OpenTheBooks CEO Adam Andrzejewski told Fox Business.

As if the United States wasn’t already pursuing enough murky and dubious military missions in such places as Afghanistan, Syria, and Yemen, a push appears to be underway to expand Washington’s involvement in Sub-Saharan Africa.

U.S. troops are more deeply engaged in “anti-terror” in Niger, Somalia, and other countries than most Americans realize. When four American Special Forces personnel died in Niger in 2017, even members of Congress were surprised.

A lobbying effort now seems to be taking place for U.S. intervention to alleviate suffering in the Central African Republic (CAR), because of that country’s ongoing civil war. NBC News took the lead with a story on the March 6 Today show and followed it up with a more detailed segment on the Nightly News that same evening. Cynthia McFadden was the lead journalist for the report that included searing footage of suffering in one UN-run refugee camp.

The Trump administration is trying once more to fund a program for providing its allies with loans to buy US military equipment. The lion’s share would go to three major buyers of US weapons: Egypt, Jordan and Israel.

US President Donald Trump's proposed 2020 budget includes $5.4 billion for the Foreign Military Financing (FMF) grant assistance program; however, a US State Department official told Defense One Tuesday that the Trump administration really wants $8 billion for the fund.

With the Ottoman Empire drawn into the war the Entente powers assumed that its defeat and dismemberment were inevitable. They negotiated between themselves which portions of the Empire they would take.

In 1915 Prime Minister Herbert Asquith appointed the de Bunsen Committee to identify the Ottoman territories that were of interest to Britain. They considered the port of Haifa in Palestine to be a useful transport link to Mesopotamia, but they did not see any value in the rest of Palestine.

A “marathon” round of talks with the Taliban in Qatar has produced an “agreement in draft” on counter-terrorism assurances and American troop withdrawal, said US envoy for peace in Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad.
“The conditions for peace have improved,” Khalilzad tweeted after the talks. “Despite ups and downs, we kept things on track and made real strides.”

It’s clear all sides want to end the war.

Troop withdrawal and counter-terrorism assurances are the first two issues that Khalilzad and the Taliban reached an “agreement on principle” during the talks in January.

When the final deal is reached on those two issues, the Taliban will start negotiations on “a political settlement and comprehensive ceasefire,” with the government in Kabul and other factions in Afghanistan, Khalilzad said.

There is, however, a more practical and less ideological reason for annexing the Golan Heights—oil.

In early 2013, Israel granted the American corporation Genie Oil and Gas a permit to explore for oil and gas on a 153-square mile radius in the southern part of the Golan Heights. Genie Energy is advised by Dick Cheney and its shareholders include Jacob Rothschild and Rupert Murdoch.

Bestselling author and strategic risk consultant F. William Engdahl writes in Golan Heights, Israel, Oil and Trump:

Trump’s budget more than doubles OCO war-fighting slush fund and proposes cutting social safety net by 9% at a time when White House rhetoric against Iran is heating up and Netanyahu, Mohammed bin Salman, and Trump all face corruption charges and challenges at home

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has been invited to address a joint meeting of US Congress in the beginning of April, US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced in a press release.

"It is my honor as Speaker, on behalf of the bipartisan leadership of the House of Representatives and the Senate, to extend to you an invitation to address a Joint Meeting of the two houses of Congress… at 11 a.m. on Wednesday, April 3, 2019", Pelosi wrote in her letter to Stoltenberg on Monday.

Stoltenberg will be visiting Washington, DC to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the founding of the NATO alliance.

The US Department of Defense revealed this week that it will begin manufacturing parts for ground-launched cruise missile systems that were previously banned by the terms of the now-suspended Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty.

Pentagon spokesperson Lt. Col. Michelle Baldanza said Monday that the agency "will commence fabrication activities on components to support developmental testing of these systems — activities that until February 2 would have been inconsistent with our obligations under the treaty."

The move to restart the program came as a result of the Trump administration announcing in February 2019 that it was withdrawing from the 1987 arms control agreement over allegations that Russia violated its end of the bargain. The treaty barred both countries from building ground-launched missiles with ranges between 500 to 5,000 kilometers. Moscow has largely denied that it ever violated the terms of the agreement.

It was the eleventh, and perhaps the most important meeting between President Putin and PM Netanyahu on 27 February, writes the well-informed journalist, Elijah Magnier: “The Israeli visitor heard clearly from his host that Moscow has no leverage to ask Iran to leave – or, to stop the flow of weapons to Damascus … Moscow [also] informed Tel Aviv about Damascus’s determination to respond to any future bombing; and that Russia doesn’t see itself concerned [i.e. a party to such conflict] ”.

Former US Vice President Dick Cheney has attacked the Trump administration’s “isolationist” foreign policy, lecturing Mike Pence on not living up to his example as one of the primary architects of Middle Eastern destabilization.

“We’re getting into a situation where our friends and allies around the world that we depend upon are going to lack confidence in us,” Cheney said, seemingly unaware of the irony dripping from his words.

“I worry that the bottom line of that kind of an approach is we have an administration that looks a lot more like Barack Obama than Ronald Reagan,” he added, perhaps forgetting that Obama’s foreign policy largely consisted of continuing the wars that began under Cheney’s own watch – with a few more thrown in for good measure.

In simulated World War III scenarios, the U.S. continues to lose against Russia and China, two top war planners warned last week. “In our games, when we fight Russia and China, blue gets its ass handed to it" RAND analyst David Ochmanek said Thursday.

RAND's wargames show how US Armed Forces - colored blue on wargame maps - experience the most substantial losses in one scenario after another and still can't thwart Russia or China - which predictably is red - from accomplishing their objectives: annihilating Western forces.

"We lose a lot of people. We lose a lot of equipment. We usually fail to achieve our objective of preventing aggression by the adversary," he warned.

In the next military conflict, which some believe may come as soon as the mid-2020s, all five battlefield domains: land, sea, air, space, and cyberspace, will be heavily contested, suggesting the U.S. could have a difficult time in achieving superiority as it has in prior conflicts.

Despite growing Trump administration tensions with Venezuela and even with North Korea, Iran is the likeliest spot for Washington’s next shooting war, says Bob Dreyfuss for TomDispatch.

The Trump Administration is Reckless Enough to Turn the Cold War With Iran Into a Hot One

Here’s the foreign policy question of questions in 2019: Are President Donald Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, all severely weakened at home and with few allies abroad, reckless enough to set off a war with Iran?

Could military actions designed to be limited — say, a heightening of the Israeli bombing of Iranian forces inside Syria, or possible U.S. cross-border attacks from Iraq, or a clash between American and Iranian naval ships in the Persian Gulf — trigger a wider war?

Police in the US state of Idaho were forced to close down a highway after a semi-truck carrying missiles for the military crashed.

According to state police, the truck veered off the main road at a rest stop along I-90 in northern Idaho on Friday night as the driver attempted to use the interstate on-ramp.

The 50-year-old man at the wheel lost control of the truck and accidentally drove into a hazardous materials containment area and disabled his vehicle by driving over a snowbank at the end of the hazmat area.

On Monday, President Trump will officially propose his new budget plan, which calls for major cuts in domestic spending across the board, but which also seeks a large further increase in military spending, above and beyond the increases already planned.

Exact figures aren’t clear at this point, but what is clear is that the general direction of this budget is going to face major opposition within the House of Representatives, not just from the Democratic leadership, but from some Republicans as well.

It’s not just the heavily military-centric priorities that will fuel the opposition, though clearly that is part of it. The budget proposal also ditches the Republicans’ goal of a 10-year time-frame for a balanced budget.

After causing a meltdown in British tabloids over the “hallucinating effect” it might cause, Russia’s Filin visual optical interference device, fitted to some Navy ships, has been captured in action by the Russian defense channel.

The first-ever public footage of Filin 5P-42 in use was broadcast on the Russian Defense Ministry’s channel Zvezda, which filmed them being tested in St. Petersburg. The undated trial was held at twilight in the Gulf of Finland.

While an all-out battle may be the only way to truly determine which country has the strongest military, hopefully, we’ll never have to find out. Battle aside, how does someone determine who has the most powerful military in the world? Is it the number of soldiers in a country’s militia? Or the types of technology a country has built to defend itself? Or perhaps their military spending budget? Considering the aforementioned factors, resources like Global Fire Power, The Credit Suisse Report, and Nation Master, have allowed us to rank worldwide military powers with a good level of certainty.

Read on to see which countries made the list of the most powerful in the world, leading up to the strongest. A few of them will definitely surprise you.

Besides being a morally depraved undertaking, the US destroyed its own economy during the Vietnam War.

Working people are still paying the price…but it worked out fine for the bankers.

Rather than letting the war sink the dollar, the bankers figure out how to make make the world captive even though it meant sacrificing its own population economically.

“Necessity is the mother of invention” I guess.

“In our games, when we fight Russia and China, ‘blue’ gets its ass handed to it,” David Ochmanek, a RAND warfare analyst, explained at the Center for a New American Security on Thursday, Breaking Defense first reported. U.S. forces are typically color-coded blue in these simulations.

“We lose a lot of people. We lose a lot of equipment. We usually fail to achieve our objective of preventing aggression by the adversary,” he said.

US claims of defending democracy worldwide are nothing but an attempt to control and make profit from natural resources, and – as Venezuela has the largest oil reserves – Trump wants those to be taken over by American companies.

The US has been ramping up its regime-change strategy towards Venezuela, both directly and through its right-wing proxies in the country and region, to coincide with the recent inauguration of Nicolas Maduro as its president. The thrust of the US strategy is to delegitimize the presidency of Nicolas Maduro and secure what it calls an "orderly transition" to a new government.

Maduro won last year's presidential election with 68 percent of the vote, with some opposition parties taking part and others choosing to boycott the poll of their own accord. International observers, including representative from the Council of Electoral Experts from Latin America (CEELA), confirmed the reliability of Venezuela's election system.

Since early history, the maritime forces of the world have patrolled international waters. Through the centuries, these wooden beasts evolved into floating metal cities loaded with cutting-edge technology and lethal abilities unknown to most. Many traditional warships we know well — while many have remained hidden from public view. But don’t be fooled: even common-looking ships have amazing tech and maritime marvels hiding below their decks.

Here are the 30 most secretive, lethal and futuristic warships in use by Navy’s around the world — including the US. And once you get a glimpse of the outlandish tech China and Russia are working on, the US Navy may have met its match. Click below to see these floating fortresses.

Air forces from the United States, Japan and Australia concluded the annual COPE North exercise with an air combat demonstration of an allied response to plane downed by a hostile power, the US Indo-Pacific Command announced in a press release.

"The exercise scenario for the final week of COPE North 2019 evolved from a humanitarian assistance and disaster relief operation to combat air operations after an aggressive nation downed a friendly aircraft," the release said on Friday. "This brought about a combined effort from three nations and an opportunity to integrate and project air superiority to deter further aggression and when necessary, defeat the aggressors."

In a last-ditch effort to keep the US from exiting the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), Democratic Party presidential hopeful Tulsi Gabbard introduced a draft bill to Congress which would prevent the authorization of government funds for the testing, procurement or deployment of any missile prohibited under the treaty.

Congress released the full text of Gabbard's bill, dubbed the INF Treaty Compliance Act of 2019, this week, with the proposed legislation originally introduced by the Hawaii congresswoman in mid-February for deliberation by the House Armed Services Committee.

Gabbard had earlier described Trump's decision to pull out of the 1987 treaty as a "reckless" move which could exacerbate "a new Cold War" with Russia. The bill has now been cosponsored by six Democratic lawmakers, including Ilhan Omar, James McGovern, Mark Pocan, Barbara Lee, Raul M. Grijalva, Eleanor Holmes Norton and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has allegedly stood up to pressure from Washington as she declined a proposal by Vice President Mike Pence to send German Navy ships towards Russia’s Crimea, Bloomberg reports, citing anonymous sources familiar with the matter.

Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar ripped former President Barack Obama in an interview published Friday, belittling his “pretty face” and saying his agenda of hope and change was an illusion.

She cited the “caging of kids” at the Mexican border and the “droning of countries around the world” on Obama’s watch — and argued that he wasn’t much different from President Trump

In February, the Chinese Foreign Ministry expressed dissatisfaction with US vessels entering waters near the Spratly Islands, an archipelago in the South China Sea that Beijing continues to regard as its “indisputable sovereignty”, without authorisation.

Admiral Philip Davidson, the commander of US Indo-Pacific Command, claimed on Thursday that 2018 has seen an increase in Chinese military activity in the South China Sea.

“It’s building, it’s not reducing in any sense of the word. There has been more activity with ships, fighters and bombers over the last year than in previous years, absolutely," Davidson said.

On the weekend of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Baltimore University hosted more than 200 activists in the peace, environment, and social justice movements to launch a new initiative known as the Coalition Against US Foreign Military Bases, the Nation reported.

In a series of panels that lasted over two days, the conference attendees highlighted the horrors of American foreign policy despite the fact Martin Luther King warned against these horrors over 50 years ago, a fitting reminder to heed the warnings of Dr. King.

According to the panel, the U.S. has over 800 formal military bases in 80 countries, “a number that could exceed 1,000 if you count troops stationed at embassies and missions and so-called ‘lily-pond’ bases, with some 138,000 soldiers stationed around the globe,” the Nation notes.

Dramatic geopolitical changes at the end of the 20th century prompted the Pentagon to repeatedly review it doctrine, resulting in a number of abandoned military projects. The National Interest has outlined five flawed initiatives which cost American taxpayers $30 billion.

The US' defence budget still remains the biggest in the world, but that doesn't mean taxpayers' money has always been spent wisely. The National Interest has listed five five hi-tech Pentagon weapons programmes that Washington eventually nixed, thus squandering $30 billion.

Books about maths can be hard work — even for me, and I did a maths degree a thousand years ago.

They’re either too difficult, with too many equations and too many explanations of things that don’t make any sense, or too Janet-and-John, terrified of making any intellectual demands at all, which, if anything, is worse.

So I think Matt Parker has pulled off something wonderful with this, his second book. He is that relative rarity, a professional mathematician and part-time stand-up comic, and I’m sure his routines about complex numbers and non-discrete topological spaces bring the house down.

His idea here is to look at the mathematical mistakes people make, and the sometimes funny, sometimes disastrous, consequences these can have.

These people waving their flags and glorying in America’s military depravities make me sick. They cheer the ruthless murder of innocent people based on the business projections of the oil companies and the paranoiac manipulations of The Chosen People.

Throw in America’s longest war (Afghanistan) to continue distributing heroin to the world in order to fund all these hired terrorists necessitating American bombing and slaughter to please and profit the Jewish billionaires who desire this kind of messed up world.

Americans make a big deal out of pretending to salute their brave veterans but ignore the fact that 7300 veterans committed suicide in 2014. That’s exactly 20 every single day. It would be poetic justice to see the cowards who devise these wars (but never fight them) be the ones who kill themselves. The world would be better off.

Federal agencies splurged on lobster tail and other gratuitous frills in just one month in a convoluted plot to avoid future budget cuts, a new report claims. The spending orgy has received dozens of 1-star reviews on Twitter.

A jaw-dropping study published by a transparency NGO, OpenTheBooks, found that in the last month of fiscal year 2018 (September), the feds forked out an unfathomable $97 billion on essentials such as sirloin steak, snow crab, lobster tail, golf carts, iPads and of course – lest we forget – bombs. The last-minute shopping spree is part of a mind-melting scheme in which federal agencies spend every last penny they have or risk budget cuts in the future.

Speaking to the Senate Armed Services Committee, Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, the NATO Supreme Allied Commander-Europe, argued that the US needs to send even more troops and warships to Europe to “stay ahead of Russia.”

Even though Russia’s military spending is actually scheduled to decrease in the next few years, Gen. Scaparrotti argued that the “growing” Russian threat justified even more US spending on Europe. This has, of course, been a common argument for Pentagon officials, and is why the US such a massive number of troops in Eastern Europe in the first place.

“I’m not comfortable yet with the deterrent posture that we have in Europe in support of the National Defense Strategy,” Scaparrotti told SASC Chair Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., adding:

“Of concern is my intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capacity given that increasing and growing threat of Russia. I need more ISR.”

Since dishonoring the P5+1 nuclear deal, the Trump Administration has made clear their goal is to bring Iranian oil exports to zero through sanctions. That’s wholly impractical, with many nations, including P5+1 deal signatories, saying they intend to keep buying from Iran despite US sanctions.

But Israel does have a navy and a burning desire to pick fights with Iran. In comments Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel’s Navy could soon be ordered to target Iranian oil tankers to prevent them selling oil abroad.

Netanyahu is trying to prevent Iran selling oil to nations like China without American permission as “smuggling,” and potential military attacks on oil tankers in international waters as enforcement of US sanctions. It’s not clear anyone else in the world, the US included, would generally consider that the case.

A new bipartisan effort in the US Senate is the latest attempt to pass a bill that would end Washington's support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen. Kevin Zeese, co-coordinator for Popular Resistance, tells Sputnik that it would be "fantastic" to see such a bill pass ? but also to beware of loopholes.

"We've seen Yemen bills pass in the Senate, we've seen Yemen bills pass in the House [of Representatives], but never together. Maybe we'll finally have one pass together, which would be fantastic to see that occur," Zeese told Radio Sputnik's Loud & Clear on Wednesday.

"The Yemen war needs to end; it's a disaster. The US should have never gotten involved, and Saudi Arabia needs to be held accountable for the crimes it's commiting in Yemen every day," he stressed.

The Pentagon has dusted off a Cold war era concept to deal with large attacking forces, revamping it to fight Russia and China. While all the technologies are in place, the new-look program will come to fruition only in 10 years.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is resurrecting the decades-old Assault Breaker concept, Aviation Week reported Monday. The concept, once intended to prevent hordes of Soviet tanks from steamrolling NATO forces in western Europe, is now refurbished to fight China and Russia (again). Or, at least, to dissuade them from launching any “surprise attacks” on the US and its allies.

The original Assault Breaker project, conceived in late 1970s, focused on creating precision-guided munitions and submunitions, which could identify and destroy the armored targets of the Soviets.

After weeks of seeming relative quiet in the South China Sea, which previously witnessed steadily ratcheting tensions as US naval ships and planes passed near Chinese military assets with increased frequency in the latter part of 2018, the US has once again risked an encounter with Beijing by flying a pair of B-52 strategic bombers in close proximity with China.

The US Pacific Air Forces confirmed in a statement on Monday, “Two B-52H Stratofortress bombers took off from Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, and participated in routine training missions, March 4, 2019.” It was the first such flight through the area of the South China Sea since November.

U.S. Senator Martha McSally, the first female combat pilot in the U.S. Air Force, said on Wednesday she had been raped by a superior officer but did not report it because she blamed herself and did not trust the system.

“The perpetrators abuse their position of power in profound ways, and in one case I was preyed upon and then raped by a superior officer,” McSally, an Arizona Republican, said during a Senate hearing on sexual assault in the military.

This week’s sign America is irredeemable [Goldfein: Embracing Diversity Isn’t About Being Politically Correct, It’s a “Warfighting Imperative”, Air Force Magazine, 3-1-19]:

Improving diversity and acceptance across the Air Force isn’t just about being politically correct, it’s a “warfighting imperative,” USAF Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein said Friday.

Speaking to a room packed full of airmen at AFA’s Air Warfare Symposium, Goldfein said for himself and many leaders across the service, it can be hard to recognize issues other airmen face. These leaders need to accept that “we have blinders on as leaders,” and need to reach out to airmen from all backgrounds, races, genders, etc., to point out ways to improve.

“The only way we can see that is to surround ourselves and build teams in ways that others can point them out for us,” Goldfein said, adding that there needs to be a “big tent” culture of acceptance in the Air Force.