Free Talk Live

Congress is considering monumental new legislation that would grant the president–and all presidents after him–sweeping new power to make war almost anywhere and everywhere. The proposed legislation would allow a president to use military force wherever terrorism suspects are present in the world, regardless of whether there has been any harm to U.S. citizens, or any attack on the United States, or any imminent threat of an attack. The legislation is broad enough to permit a president to use military force within the United States and against American citizens.

In the span of just three years, we have seen drone surveillance become openly operational on American soil.

In 2007, Texas reporters first filmed a predator drone test being conducted by the local police department in tandem with Homeland Security. And in 2009, it was revealed that an operation was underway to use predator drones inland over major cities, far from “border control” functions. This year it has been announced that not only will drone operations fly over the Mexican border, but the United States and Canada are partnering to cover 900 miles of the northern border as well.

Israel admitted Sunday that it uses cyberspace to attack its enemies. The confession came in a statement on the Israeli military's website. The website said it was "for the first time" revealing a document recently written by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) Operations Department, detailing the goals and methods of its cyberwarfare. "The IDF has been engaged in cyberactivity consistently and relentlessly," said the statement.

List of countries by military expenditures

Compare the United States of 2012 to the United States of 1962. In 1962, the government regulated the price and route of every airplane, every freight train, every truck and every merchant ship in the United States, the price of natural gas, the interest on every checking account, and the commission on every purchase or sale of stock. Owning a gold bar was a serious crime. The top rate of income tax was 91%. It was illegal to own a telephone. All young men were subject to the military draft, etc.

The Senate is gearing up for a vote on Monday or Tuesday that goes to the very heart of who we are as Americans. The Senate will be voting on a bill that will direct American military resources not at an enemy shooting at our military in a war zone, but at American citizens and other civilians far from any battlefield — even people in the United States itself.

The Senate is going to vote on whether Congress will give this president—and every future president — the power to order the military to pick up and imprison without charge or trial civilians anywhere in the world.

Bradley Manning, the soldier accused of the biggest unauthorised disclosure of state secrets in US history, has pleaded guilty to being the source of the leak, telling a military court that he passed the information to a whistleblowing website because he believed the American people had a right to know the "true costs of war".

A report from the International Council on Security and Development (ICOS) shows that 92 percent of those surveyed had never heard of the coordinated multiple attacks on US soil on September 11, 2001. It also shows that four in 10 Afghans believe the US is on their soil in order to "destroy Islam or occupy Afghanistan."

A government-school in Australia practically forces children to soil and wet themselves as part of a social engineering experiment.