U.S. military

The Pentagon has confirmed that the U.S. military used depleted uranium anti-tank rounds on Syrian civilians, during air strikes against ISIS.  On two occasions in 2015, the military used depleted uranium munitions in air strikes against Islamic State tanker trucks, despite warnings by the United Nations Environment Program that they posed a health risk to civilians due to their “chemically and radiologically toxic heavy metal.” Thelastamericanvagabond.com reports: In 2015 the military claimed that they would not be using DU rounds in Syria, and for good reason.

Submitted by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

“Our current and past strategies can no longer hold. We are facing environments that the masters of war never foresaw. We are facing a threat that requires us to redefine doctrine and the force in radically new and different ways. The future army will confront a highly sophisticated urban-centric threat that will require that urban operations become the core requirement for the future land-force. The threat is clear. Our direction remains to be defined. The future is urban.”

 

During the Oregon standoff, where a group of US citizens calling themselves the Citizens for Constitutional Freedom, seized control of a federal wildlife refuge in protest of harsh sentences being given to members of a ranching family for allegedly allowing fires set on their property to spread on to federal land, Ron Paul posed a question: Is the event isolated, or a sign of things to come?

It is becoming increasingly apparent that the Oregon standoff was the latter.

Submitted by Tom Engelhardt via TomDispatch.com,

There are the news stories that genuinely surprise you, and then there are the ones that you could write in your sleep before they happen. Let me concoct an example for you:

“Top American and European military leaders are weighing options to step up the fight against the Islamic State in the Mideast, including possibly sending more U.S. forces into Iraq, Syria, and Libya, just as Washington confirmed the second American combat casualty in Iraq in as many months.”

The United States are to re-open a Cold-War era military base in Iceland amid deteriorating relations with Russia, the U.S. military have announced.  The plans have been kept secret from the public and the Prime Minister of Iceland himself, until now. Sputniknews.com reports: “A lot of Icelanders are worried,” Paul Fontaine, news editor with the Reykjavik Grapevine, told Radio Sputnik.