US politicians, policymakers and commentators insist that the United States military’s involvement in Syria and Iraq is solely aimed at defeating militants from the self-titled Islamic State (IS). However, it is abundantly clear that before the Russian intervention in Syria in 2015, the United States was engaged in a proxy war against Damascus, not IS …
Continue reading Lebanon Next in US War on Middle East
US Defence Secretary James Mattis has again warned North Korea that the United States military is ready and able to obliterate the country of 25 million people unless it abandons its nuclear arsenal. The threat, backed by an unprecedented US military build-up in North East Asia, places the region and the world on the brink …
Continue reading US Masses Ships and Aircraft Outside North Korea
There is a growing mood of self-confidence in Baghdad which I have not seen here since I first visited Iraq in 1977. The country seemed then to be heading for a peaceful and prosperous future thanks to rising oil revenues. It only became clear several years later that Saddam Hussein was a monster of cruelty with a …
Continue reading Is Iraq Coming to the End of Forty Years of War?
“They are very concerned about their adversary next door,” said General Raymond Thomas, the head of U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM), at a national security conference in Aspen, Colorado, in July. “They make no bones about it.” The “they” in question were various Eastern European and Baltic nations. “Their adversary”? Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Thomas, the …
Things are in unchartered waters, crisis conditions a long way from resolved. Both sides have polar opposite values. Pro-independence Catalans want their democratic rights upheld. Madrid wants them denied, forcefully if separatists resist. UK-based lecturer in politics and Spanish Caroline Gray accused pro-independence activists of living in a “parallel universe of the new republic…(t)he situation…unpredictable …
Since the inauguration of US President D. J. Trump in January 2017, along with his contingent of generals, Washington has rattled its nuclear and other military sabers in most every direction, threatening to totally destroy North Korea, ramping up weapons deliveries to Syrian opposition groups, scaling up AFRICOM military actions, sending its naval fleets in …
Continue reading USA Military Force Projection: Semper Paratus?
![Arthur James Balfour is pictured visiting Jewish colonies in Palestine in 1925 [Getty Images]](https://astutenews.files.wordpress.com/2017/10/jamesbalfour.jpg?w=900)
This week, Palestinians around the world are marking 100 years since the Balfour Declaration was issued on November 2, 1917. The declaration turned the Zionist aim of establishing a Jewish state in Palestine into a reality when Britain publicly pledged to establish "a national home for the Jewish people" there. The pledge is generally viewed as one …
Continue reading 100 Years On: The Balfour Declaration Explained
When the British Zionist zealots figured out that their smear campaign against me had gone nowhere and Reading Festivalwas not going to surrender to their relentless pressure, they decided to mobilise. They triggered their exclusive weapon: the sleazy orthodox Rabbi Zvi Solomons, who was available since he was sacked by (and then sued) his congregation in 2016. …
Pans with a non-stick coating are convenient but new research suggests that the chemical used for the coating is extremely toxic and exposure on any level could prove dangerous to brain health, the reproductive system, and immune system. The Dangers of Non-Stick Coating DuPont, the chemical engineering giant, is responsible for the perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) …
Continue reading Cooking with Non-Stick Pans? You May Want to Read This
