Authored by Finian Cunningham via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
«Centrist» candidate Emmanuel Macron was no sooner announced winner in the first round of the French presidential election at the weekend, and with unseemly haste the political establishment rushed to close ranks against rival Marine Le Pen of the Front National.
It would appear that British defense minister Michael Fallon's comments that The UK could launch a preemptive nuclear strike "in the most extreme circumstances," was not an implicit threat that the deputy head of the Russian Federation Council’s Committee for Defense and Security took lightly.
In a terse Facebook posted response, Frants Klintsevich raged:
According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), worldwide defense spending is on the rise once again. As Statista's Dyfed Loesche notes, in total, spending stood at $1.69 trillion in 2016.
The ten countries who invest most into their military had a share of 73 percent in this, or $1.23 trillion.
You will find more statistics at Statista
Authored by Gaius Publius via Down With Tyranny blog,
"We don't want a unified Korean peninsula ... We [also] don't want the North Koreans to cause more trouble than the system can absorb."
—Hillary Clinton, 2013, speech to Goldman Sachs
Iran news agency FARS reports that according to Syrian military sources, Moscow has informed Damascus of its preparedness to dispatch ground troops to Syria.
FARS - which like most US media should always be taken with a gran of salt - quotes the Al-Hadath news, according to whose sources Russia has announced that in case of the Syrian army's request it is ready to send ground forces to Syria. The sources said that special Russian forces are prepared to be deployed in regions which are experiencing the most pressures by the terrorist groups.