Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei says the policies of the Cold War era and the subsequent unilateralism have failed, stressing that a new order is taking shape throughout the world.

"In the recent past, we have been witness to the failure of the policies of the Cold War era and the unilateralism that followed it. Having learnt lessons from this historical experience, the world is in transition towards a new international order and the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) can and should play a new role," the Leader said in an inaugural speech to the 16th NAM summit in Tehran on Thursday.

The Leader added that the new world order should be based on the "participation of all nations and equal rights for all of them."

Ayatollah Khamenei underlined solidarity among all NAM member states as an "obvious necessity" in the current era for establishing this new order.

Australia on Thursday mourned the deaths of five of its soldiers in Afghanistan, three killed by an Afghan army colleague, in the nation's deadliest hours of combat since the Vietnam War.

The Australians were killed in two separate incidents just hours apart late Wednesday and early Thursday.

The first incident took place at a base in Uruzgan province, when a man in an Afghan army uniform opened fire on Australian soldiers, killing three and wounding two, according to Air Marshal Mark Binskin, vice chief of the Australian Defense Force. Hours later, two Australian soldiers died and a crew member was wounded when their helicopter rolled over while landing in Helmand province.

"In a war of so many losses, this is our single worst day in Afghanistan," Prime Minister Julia Gillard said. "Indeed, I believe this is the most losses in combat since the days of the Vietnam War and the Battle of Long Tan. This is news so truly shocking that it's going to feel for many Australians like a physical blow."

Eighteen Australian soldiers were killed in the Battle of Long Tan in 1966. Tom Vasey, a spokesman for the Australian War Memorial, said five Australian soldiers were killed in a 14-hour period in 1971 during the Battle of Nui Le, making that the last time so many died so quickly in a combat zone.

In a telling story highlighting the true face of political corruption, corrupt Indian politicians have successfully stolen more than $14.5 billion worth of food from starving poverty-stricken citizens. Looting over 57,000 tons of food intended for the starving poor, the unpunished corrupt lawmakers and politicians are warehousing the mass amount of food supplies in a government-owned storage facility that spans more than five football fields in length.

The blatant corruption has been confirmed in a recent report by mainstream media outlet Bloomberg, which reports that many of the starving 350 million families whose food has been stripped away by the government are currently 'surviving' on less than 50 cents per day. The nefarious government hooligans robbed away the region's five-decade-old public food distribution system which served as virtually the only way in which the struggling families could survive.

Law still requires that the 57,000 tons of staple foods are to be distributed among the families, yet nothing has been done by fearful politicians and police. Due to rampant corruption and a serious lack of action, countless members of the nation's government bodies are quiet on this matter and many others. Some, however, have decided to speak out. Naresh Saxena is one such Supreme Court commissioner who has decided that she will not live in fear of corruption. Speaking out against the recent ransacking, she stated:

"This is the most mean-spirited, ruthlessly executed corruption because it hits the poorest and most vulnerable in society... What I find even more shocking is the lack of willingness in trying to stop it."

The way that the U.S. government treats military veterans is absolutely disgraceful. Men and women that have given everything for this nation are literally being treated like human garbage by their own government. After watching how vets are treated, it is absolutely amazing that anyone is still volunteering to be a part of the military.

We pay those in the military like crap, we keep sending our best soldiers back to Afghanistan and Iraq again and again, we don't equip them properly, military suicides are at a record pace, hundreds of thousands of applications for veteran benefits are hopelessly backlogged, homelessness and unemployment among vets is much higher than for the general population, the condition of most VA hospitals is an absolute disgrace, and to top everything off now the Obama administration has started labeling military veterans as "potential terrorists".

What you are about to read should make you very angry. The abuse, neglect and outright disrespect that military vets receive from their own government is absolutely shocking. We owe these men and women a great debt for the service that they have performed for our nation, but instead the federal government kicks them to the curb and treats them with no honor whatsoever. The way a nation treats military vets says a lot about the character of that nation, and right now the way that America treats veterans says that we have the character of a steaming pile of manure.

Multiple Tours Of Duty

The U.S. military just keeps sending young men and women back to Iraq and Afghanistan over and over again without any regard for what the consequences might be.

If you can believe it, an astounding 20 percent of all active duty soldiers in the U.S. Army are on at least their third tour of duty.

Many others have done four tours of duty or more.

The following is from a recent Christian Science Monitor article....

Some 107,000 Army soldiers have been deployed to war three or more times since 2001, or some 20 percent of the active-duty force. More than 50,000 of those currently in uniform have completed four or more combat tours, Army figures indicate.

The physical, mental and emotional toll of these multiple tours of duty should not be underestimated. It is absolutely unprecedented in U.S. history for so many men to be sent back into frequent combat situations so repeatedly. The price of this foolishness could potentially be felt throughout our society for decades to come.

Record Number Of Suicides

The fact that many of our soldiers are spending way too much time in active war zones is a big reason why military suicides are at a record pace so far in 2012.

The stress of combat duty builds up over time. The physical, mental and emotional fatigue that comes with serving in combat is immense. Many soldiers see their marriages end, and others are left with severe physical and mental disabilities.

At some point many serving in the military cannot take it anymore and they commit suicide.

During the month of July, there were 56 suicides in the U.S. military in just 31 days.

That is absolutely disgraceful, but very little is being done about the underlying causes of these suicides.

The use of private contractors allows the US to evade responsibility for violations of international humanitarian legislation, a top Russian diplomat for human rights and democracy said.

The comment came from Foreign Ministry Commissioner Konstantin Dolgov as the US Justice Department halted an investigation into the attempted bribing of Iraqi police officials by employees of the Blackwater security company (re-branded as 'Academi' in late 2011).

Blackwater attempted to pay $1 million in bribes for new contracts in Iraq, and also to block an investigation into the 2007 murder of 17 Iraqi civilians, including several children, by Blackwater operatives, a statement published on the Russian Foreign Ministry's website said.

Israel's high court ruled on Wednesday that the largest unauthorized Jewish settler outpost on occupied West Bank territory must be evacuated by next Tuesday.
The court rejected an appeal by the settlers to delay the evacuation of Migron, a hilltop settlement of about 50 families, which a separate ruling a year ago decided was built on privately-owned Palestinian land.

The Migron settlement was one of dozens built more than a decade ago without Israeli government authorization on land captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East War but which Palestinians claim for a hoped-for independent state.

The court had delayed several deadlines set for evacuating the settlement in the past year, after last-minute appeals, and has now dismissed the latest request.

In their latest appeal, settlers had sought a delay in moving out, saying temporary homes for them elsewhere in the West Bank were not ready. Others maintained they had purchased the land in question.

The Air Force Life Cycle Management Center (AFLCMC) posted a broad agency announcement [PDF] recently, calling on contractors to submit concept papers detailing technological demonstrations of 'cyberspace warfare operations' (CWO) capabilities.

The Air Force is looking to obtain CWO capabilities falling into a number of categories including: 'cyberspace warfare attack' and 'cyberspace warfare support.'

The broad agency announcement defines 'cyberspace warfare attack' capabilities as those which would give them the ability to "destroy, deny, degrade, disrupt, deceive, corrupt, or usurp the adversaries [sic] ability to use the cyberspace domain for his advantage."

Cyberspace warfare support capabilities, the document claims, would include actions deployed by operational commanders in order to, intercept, identify, and locate sources of access and vulnerability for threat recognition, targeting, and planning, both immediately and for future operations. This also includes the providing of information required for the immediate decisions involving CWOs and data used to produce intelligence or provide targeting for an electronic attack.

In addition to those listed above, the Air Force is seeking 'situational awareness capabilities that give an operator near real-time effectiveness feedback in a form that is readily observed by the operator.' This would address the 'mapping of networks (both data and voice),' 'access to cyberspace domain, information, networks, systems, or devices,' 'denial of service on cyberspace resources, current/future operating systems, and network devices,' and 'Data manipulation.'

The draft of the final statement of the Palestine Committee of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) ministerial meeting in Tehran underlined the necessity for finding a fair and sustainable solution to the crisis in the Palestinian territories, an Iranian NAM official said Wednesday.

"The draft document of the statement of the Palestine Committee underscores the Palestinians' critical situation and asks for finding a fair, comprehensive and sustainable solution" to the Palestinian issue, member of the NAM's Secretariat Mahmoud Abdollahi told FNA on Wednesday.

"NAM has always put the Palestinian issue on its agenda on the sidelines of its high-level meetings within the framework of the Palestine Committee," he added.

His remarks came after Palestinian Authority (PA) Envoy to the UN Riyadh Mansour called on the participants at the NAM summit to pay special attention to the issue of Palestine, especially after the recent uprisings in the Middle-East.

Four US soldiers plotted to assassinate Barack Obama and overthrow the government, a court has heard.

One, private Michael Burnett, has pleaded guilty to manslaughter and gang charges in the killings last December of former soldier Michael Roark and his girlfriend, 17-year-old Tiffany York.

Burnett said that Roark, who had just left the army, knew of the militia group's plans and was killed because he was "a loose end."

Prosecutor Isabel Pauley said the group bought $87,000 (£55,000) of guns and bomb-making materials and plotted to take over Fort Stewart, bomb targets in Savannah and Washington state, as well as assassinate the president.

Source: The Associated Press

The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), formed in 1961 during the Cold War, is a group of 120 states and 17 observer states not formally aligned with or against any major power bloc. The NAM held its opening 2012 session yesterday under the new chairmanship of Iran, which succeeded Egypt as the Chair.

Significantly, an Associated Press story in the Washington Post headlined, "Iran opens nonaligned summit with calls for nuclear arms ban", reported that "Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi opened the gathering by noting commitment to a previous goal from the nonaligned group, known as NAM, to remove the world's nuclear arsenals within 13 years. 'We believe that the timetable for ultimate removal of nuclear weapons by 2025, which was proposed by NAM, will only be realized if we follow it up decisively,' he told delegates."

Yet the New York Times, which has been beating the drums for war with Iran, just as it played a disgraceful role in the deceptive reporting during the lead-up to the Iraq War, never mentioned Iran's proposal for nuclear abolition. The Times carried the bland headline on its front page, "At Summit Meeting, Iran Has a Message for the World", and then went on to state, "the message is clear. As Iran plays host to the biggest international conference ...it wants to tell its side of the long standoff with the Western powers which are increasingly convinced that Tehran is pursuing nuclear weapons", without ever reporting Iran's offer to support the NAM proposal for the abolition of nuclear weapons by 2025.