Blackwater Security Guards Indicted

By GINGER THOMPSON and JAMES RISEN
The New York Times
Published: December 8, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/09/washington/09blackwater.html?_r=2&scp=2&sq=Blackwater&st=cse
 
WASHINGTON — In the first public airing of an investigation that remains the source of fierce international outrage, the Justice Department on Monday unsealed its case against five private security guards, built largely around the chilling testimony of a sixth guard about the 2007 shootings that left [...]

Cuba: a change in sight?

By Patricia Gogg
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=44356
 
HAVANA, Oct 20 (IPS) – If elected, Democratic candidate Barack Obama could become the first United States president to engage in talks with Cuba after almost five decades of severed relations, but it will all depend on his refraining from trying to “control” a process that involves two sides, say academics from this [...]

Venezuela orders McDonalds to close

source: BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7663951.stm

Venezuela’s government has shut all branches of restaurant chain McDonald’s for 48 hours, citing tax irregularities, officials have said.
 
The head of the country’s tax agency, Jose David Cabello, said the chain had inconsistencies in its accounts. The 115 branches in Venezuela were closed from Thursday to Saturday.
Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez is a [...]

The Bail-Out of Wall Street: Signal of the End of the “Pax Americana”

Huge numbers are flying around these days. Billions and billions of dollars for this firm, for that firm, for the bail-out of Wall Street and the financial services industry. Then there is the “War on Terror” and its two fronts and the billions needed for it. The underlying connection is this: we do not have [...]

The Decline of the American Empire via Iraq: an interview with Howard Zinn

As published in Al-Jazeera
Q: Where is the United States heading in terms of world power and influence?
 
HZ: America has been heading - for some time, and is heading right now – toward less and less world power, less and less influence.
 
Obviously, since the war in Iraq, the rest of the world has fallen away from the United States, and [...]

Evidence of American Empire: 761 US military installations abroad

Tom Engelhardt, Tomdispatch.com
Here it is, as simply as I can put it: In the course of any year, there must be relatively few countries on this planet on which U.S. soldiers do not set foot, whether with guns blazing, humanitarian aid in hand, or just for a friendly visit. In startling numbers of countries, our [...]