Will California become America’s first failed state?

California has a special place in the American psyche. It is the Golden State: a playground of the rich and famous with perfect weather. It symbolises a lifestyle of sunshine, swimming pools and the Hollywood dream factory. But the state that was once held up as the epitome of the boundless opportunities of America has [...]

Dollar’s Slide Gives Rise to Calls for New Reserve

By Frank Ahrens
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
 
The U.S. dollar continued its six-month slide Tuesday amid a growing international chorus that wants the dollar replaced — or at least supplemented — as the world’s reserve currency, a move that would end the greenback’s six decades of global dominance.
 
 
The dollar has come under attack from [...]

US could shift Afghanistan focus eastwards

Daily Times Monitor | Sept. 15, 2009
 
 
LONDON: The US could shift its focus on Afghanistan towards the eastern provinces, the Guardian has suggested. Senior military officials are said to believe that the Taliban’s ability to find sanctuary across the border with Pakistan may have however, prompted this change of tact. The primary focus of the [...]

Fourteen Centuries of War Against European Civilization

Global Politician 03 September 2009
 
By Fjordman
 
The following essay is an amalgam of my previous online essays, among them Who Are We, Who Are Our Enemies — The Cost of Historical Amnesia, Why We Should Oppose an Independent Kosovo, Refuting God’s Crucible and The Truth About Islam in Europe.
 
 
“The Jihad, the Islamic so-called Holy War, has [...]

Pakistan: Who’s Attacking the Christians?

The intruders wore masks and carried guns. They went door to door, through the narrow and dusty alleyways, asking if there were any Christians inside. When the terrified faces inside replied yes, they poured chemicals on the small, redbrick homes of Episcopalians and Evangelicals, setting them ablaze. In some cases, they didn’t bother with the [...]

Gwynne Dyer: What do Iceland and Blair have in common? No future in EU

By Gwynne Dyer
 
NZ Herald, 21 July 2009
 
Tony Blair (or “the Winston Churchill of our times” as he was known in the Bush White House) is not going to be the first president of the European Union. And Iceland isn’t going to join the EU either.
This sort of story only gets traction in the northern summer [...]

To Mitigate Economic Armageddon: Slash the Defense Budget

By Ivan Eland, July 10, 2009
The U.S. government is deeper in debt than it has been since just after World War II. When Bill Clinton, who actually reduced the federal deficit as a portion of GDP, left office, the Congressional Budget Office projected an $800 billion dollar yearly budget surplus for the [...]

Global defence update

Taiwan’s AIDC confident of securing IDF upgrade contract
Taiwan’s state-owned Aerospace Industrial Development Corporation (AIDC) is expecting to sign a contract with the government shortly to upgrade around 70 F-CK-1 Indigenous Defence Fighters (IDF), the company revealed to Jane’s on 18 June. An AIDC official said the upgrade would be based on two twin-seater IDF-2 prototypes [...]

Global defence update

Moscow and US to consider joint BMD project
 
Moscow has said it will consider co-operating with the US over its European ballistic missile defence (BMD) plans by building anti-missile radars in Russia for use by both countries. Responding to an earlier statement from US Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who said that he would not rule the [...]

Jihad goes intercontinental

By Walid Phares in Asia Times
Since the deadly attacks in Mumbai last November, counter-terrorism experts worldwide, particularly those based in democracies in the crosshairs, have been drawing long-term conclusions as to the forthcoming type of operations which may hit cities and interests on more than one continent.
Today, we are in the post-Mumbai era where the [...]