While people are still debating the real reason for the Iraq war the casualty numbers for soldiers and civilians keep climbing. According to Just Foreign Policy, more than 1.3 million Iraqis have died since the military invasion of Iraq was launched in March 2003. According to AntiWar, the Iraq war has caused an estimated 100 [...]

The very first bomb that the Allies dropped on Berlin in World War II killed the only elephant in the Berlin Zoo, it is said. The NATO attack on Serbia in 1999 (the Kosovo war) killed more animals than people. “Smart” weapons, such the Tomahawk missile is supposed to hit a postage stamp at 300km [...]

The famous French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-78) wrote in his book on the origins of government, The Social Contract (1762), that no laws are binding unless agreed upon by the people. The idea became one of the chief influences that brought about the French Revolution in 1789. During the revolution some small groups of radical [...]

Chemical and biological warfare has been used long before World War One. During the Peloponnesian War in the 5th century BC, Spartans used bombs made of sulphur and pitch to overcome the enemy. During ancient and medieval times, soldiers sometimes threw bodies of plague victims over the walls of besieged cities, or into water wells. [...]

According to David McClintick (“Swordfish: A True Story of Ambition, Savagery, and Betrayal”), in the late 1980′s, the FBI and DEA set up dummy corporations to deal in drugs. They funneled into these corporate fronts money from drug-related asset seizures. The idea was to infiltrate global crime networks but a lot of the money in [...]

Modern Afghanistan dates from 1747, when Ahmad Shah Durrani freed the country from Persian domination. Afghanistan gained independence from Britain in 1919 after the Third Afghan War. In 1973 the government of Zahir Shah was overthrown in a military coup led by Daoud Khan and the PDPA (Afghan Communist Party). Khan abolishes the monarchy, declares [...]

LIBYA | NIGER | ALGERIA | TUNISIA LIBYA claims about 19,400 sq km in northern NIGER and part of south-eastern ALGERIA, and also has a maritime boundary dispute with TUNISIA. BAHRAIN | QATAR | KUWAIT | SAUDI ARABIA | IRAN | UNITED ARAB EMIRATES | IRAQ BAHRAIN and QATAR: Territorial dispute over the Hawar Islands [...]

Allied bomber pilots in World War I had little to fear from German rifle fire but that changed with the development of the Fliegerabwehrkanone, an anti-bomber canon. The pilots couldn’t pronounce the German word and referred to it by the abbreviation F.L.A.K. Flak also became a metaphor for criticism fired at prominent people, becoming especially [...]