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Putin has ordered a Soviet-era military base reopened in the Arctic as part of a drive to make the northern coast a global shipping route and secure the region's vast energy resources.

"It only takes 15-16 minutes for U.S. missiles to reach Moscow from the Barents Sea. So should we give away the Arctic? We should on the contrary explore it."

Hundreds of thousands will take part in massive parades by civilians and the military, who have been drilled so thoroughly that soldiers are only permitted to blink once every 40 seconds. A dazzling half-hour firework display, using 300,000 shells, will surpass even the pyrotechnic splendour of last year's Olympics, organisers promise.As tanks roll through the heart of the city, and fighter planes zoom overhead, the People's Liberation Army will reveal 52 new types of weapon, including its latest nuclear missiles – all made in China.

Put simply, the most important choice is between nuclear weapons and troops — specifically, whether to build four new nuclear missile-launching submarines or to preserve an army large enough to contribute to allied missions overseas. Even with painful cuts in other areas, there will not be money enough for both.

It is also hard to see why — in today’s world — Britain needs four new subs, each of which can carry up to 160 nuclear warheads. Only a fraction of that capacity is currently used, roughly 48 warheads per submarine, for a total of 192. There are, of course, still nuclear dangers out there, most notably North Korea and Iran. But the United States nuclear umbrella plus a smaller Trident force should provide Britain with full deterrence.

Britain has been America’s most reliable military ally and a backbone of NATO. That is good for Britons — for their security and for their continuing influence. Britain will not be able to deliver if this government decides to sacrifice troop numbers for nuclear symbolism.

Those who demand that the U.S. Government take people's lives with no oversight or due process as though they're advocating changes in tax policy or mid-level personnel moves -- eradicate him!, they bellow from their seats in the Colosseum -- are just morally deranged barbarians.  There's just no other accurate way to put it.  These are usually the same people, of course, who brand themselves "pro-life" and Crusaders for the Sanctity of Human Life and/or who deride Islamic extremists for their disregard for human life.  And the fact that this mindset is so widespread and mainstream is quite a reflection of how degraded America's political culture is.

Most political journalists rely on their relationships with government officials and come to like them and both identify and empathize with them.  By contrast, WikiLeaks is truly adversarial to those powerful factions in exactly the way that these media figures are not:  hence, the widespread media hatred and contempt for what WikiLeaks does.  Just look at how important it was for Bill Keller to emphasize that the Government is criticizing WikiLeaks but not The New York Times; having the Government pleased with his behavior is his metric for assessing how good his "journalism" is.  If the Government is patting him on the head, then it's proof that he acted "responsibly."  That servile-to-power mentality is what gets exposed by the contrast Wikileaks provides.

our government and political culture is so far toward the extreme pole of excessive, improper secrecy that that is clearly the far more significant threat.  And few organizations besides WikiLeaks are doing anything to subvert that regime of secrecy, and none is close to its efficacy.  It's staggering to watch anyone walk around acting as though the real threat is from excessive disclosures when the impenetrable, always-growing Wall of Secrecy is what has enabled virtually every abuse and transgression of the U.S. government over the last two decades at least. 

The Heavenly Palace, the first module in China’s permanent space station, will be launched next year, a senior aerospace official confirmed Wednesday.

a crew of three taikonauts

Aerospace experts and military officials say the Chinese military space program has made major advancements in recent years, notably when it tested an antisatellite system in 2007, using a ballistic missile to shoot down one of its own weather satellites 540 miles up

Several new trends stand out as the SCO steps out of its infancy and adolescence. From a regional organization limited to Central Asia and its environs, SCO may well become the leading integration process over the entire Eurasian landmass, of which 40% still stands outside the ambit of the organization. Prior to his arrival in Astana to attend the summit, Chinese President Hu Jintao visited Ukraine. Equally, Belarus has been admitted as a "dialogue partner". Most certainly, SCO realizes that Central Asian and South Asian security are indivisible. Integration of two major South Asian countries - India and Pakistan - is in the cards - the summit finalized their membership norms and negotiations. Indian officials exude optimism.

for India and Pakistan, too, which have traditionally had strong strategic ties with the United States, this process becomes a leap of faith. They are quite aware that they are joining an organization that implicitly aims at keeping the US and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) from establishing a permanent military presence in the region

the SCO continues to insist that it does not aspire to be a "NATO of the East" or a military alliance. On the other hand, it is set on making NATO (and Pax Americana) simply irrelevant to an entire landmass, which with the induction of India and Pakistan will account for more than half of mankind

China and Russia signed a framework agreement Tuesday that could see a steady flow of natural gas to energy-hungry China from its resource-rich neighbor. It was one of numerous trade and military agreements signed during a state visit by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as the countries overcome traditional mistrust to push ahead mutual economic interests.

Other deals included Chinese companies making investments in construction industry facilities in Russia, Zhukov said. "Naturally, the Chinese are interested in getting (ownership) stakes," he said without giving any details.

an agreement on advance notification for planned ballistic missile launches by either country.

“The W76-2 will allow for tailored deterrence in the face of evolving threats.”

a low-yield, sea-launched ballistic missile warhead capability

China unveiled its largest rise in defense spending in three years on Monday, setting an 8.1 percent growth target compared to 2017, fuelling the country’s ambitious military modernization program amid rising Chinese security concerns

The defense spending figure is closely watched around the world for clues to China’s strategic intentions as it develops new military capabilities, including stealth fighters, aircraft carriers and anti-satellite missiles

Last year, defense spending was set to increase by just 7 percent, to 1.044 trillion yuan ($164.60 billion) about one-quarter of the proposed U.S. defense spending for the year. In 2016, it grew by 7.6 percent.

Denmark has for the first time put mineral-rich Greenland top of its national security agenda, ahead of terrorism and cybercrime.The Defence Intelligence Service (FE) linked its change in priorities to US interest in Greenland, expressed in President Donald Trump's desire to buy the vast Arctic territory.

The FE's head Lars Findsen said Greenland was now a top security issue for Denmark because a "power game is unfolding" between the US and other global powers in the Arctic.

Greenland's strategic importance has grown amid increased Arctic shipping and international competition for rare minerals. Arctic waters are becoming more navigable because of melting ice, linked to global warming.

geographic advantage has helped make Killybegs the largest fishing port in Ireland. Last year, its trawlermen landed almost 200,000 tonnes of fish, helping to feed a burgeoning national export market for seafood. A large part of this catch is found around 420 kilometers north in the Rockall Trough, a remote stretch of the Atlantic between Ireland, Scotland, and Iceland. Here, the fish gather in vast schools, especially near the region’s namesake pinnacle: Rockall, a tiny, uninhabited, jet-black outcrop of granite crowned by a pointillist splattering of guano.

This unassuming speck on the map was thrust into the spotlight this past summer when the Scottish government accused Irish trawlermen of overfishing in its territorial waters, before announcing that its coast guard would board any Irish fishing boat venturing into a 19-kilometer zone around the islet of Rockall. Trawlermen from the town of Killybegs, who have been casting their nets in those waters since the late 1980s, were dumbfounded.

As Edinburgh and Dublin clash in distant boardrooms, Irish trawlermen continue to drop nets around Rockall, now under the watchful eye of Scottish enforcement vessels. For the moment, the outcrop’s status remains uncertain. But with Brexit threatening to cut off access to these waters to European Union trawlermen, Killybegs’s fishing community is set to be the first casualty in a maritime legal dispute decades in the making.

Vladimir Putin’s willingness to threaten to use nuclear weapons is in one respect a good sign: it means Russia is probably losing in Ukraine. It is also a potentially catastrophic one. If Putin’s aim is to scare the west, he is failing

Putin has broken a post-Cuba taboo on threatening to go nuclear. That, in itself, puts us in new territory. Without most people being aware of it, the world is entering its most dangerous period since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis

the prospect of a nuclear exchange has become the most live threat to this century’s peace

In this context of accelerating ecological breakdown and economic crises, the degrowth movement has steadily been gaining ground. Based on a robust body of scientific literature, degrowth proponents suggest that capitalism’s demand for unlimited growth is destroying the planet. Only degrowth policies can repair this by rapidly scaling back our material and energy use, slowing down production and transitioning to an economy focused around needs, care and the sharing of wealth.

In the 1990s, it was reintroduced as a “missile word” against the then-dominant ideology of sustainable development and green growth: an ideology that was being used by governments and international organisations to greenwash ineffective climate politics, attacks on public services and predatory lending.

Capitalism in the Anthropocene by Kohei Saito, a Japanese Marxist scholar, sold more than half a million copies and became a bestseller in Japan.

The Ukraine conflict may be a matter of global concern, but states’ responses to it continue to be conditioned by internal political debates and foreign policy priorities.

China has hewed to a non-position on Russian aggression – neither condemning nor supporting the act, and declining to label it as an invasion – while lamenting the current situation as “something we do not want to see”. With an eye to the West, Beijing abstained on rather than vetoing a Security Council resolution calling on Russia to withdraw from Ukraine, and reports indicate that two major Chinese state banks are restricting financing for Russian commodities. Beijing now emphasises the principles of territorial integrity and sovereignty in its statements, a point that had either been absent from earlier statements or more ambiguously discussed as “principles of the UN Charter”.

the worldview that major powers can and do occasionally break the rules

Saudi Arabia and Iran announced an agreement in China on Friday to resume relations more than seven years after severing ties, a major breakthrough in a bitter rivalry that has long divided the Middle East.

part of an initiative by Chinese President Xi Jinping aimed at “developing good neighborly relations” between Iran and Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia cut diplomatic ties with Iran in 2016 after the Saudi Embassy in Tehran was attacked and burned by Iranian protesters, angered by the kingdom’s execution of prominent Shiite cleric Sheikh Nimr Baqr al-Nimr. The cleric had emerged as a leading figure in protests in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province, a Shiite-majority region in the Sunni-majority nation.