A war and occupation thousands of miles away that lasted seven years and involved more than 1.5 million Americans, military and civilian, has passed into the history books and yet we still know remarkably little about so much of it. Take American military bases in Iraq. There were, of course, none in March 2003 when the Bush administration launched its regime-change invasion with dreams of garrisoning that particular stretch of the planet's oil heartlands for generations to come.

... the Pentagon built 505 bases there, ranging from micro-outposts to mega-bases the size of small American towns -- in one case, with an airport that was at least as busy as Chicago's O'Hare International. As it happened, during all but the last days of those long, disastrous years of war, Americans could have had no idea how many bases had been built, using taxpayer dollars, in Iraq. Estimates in the press ranged, on rare occasions, up to about 300. Only as U.S. troops prepared to leave was that 505 figure released by the military, without any fanfare whatsoever. Startlingly large, it was simply accepted by reporters who evidently found it too unimpressive to highlight.

And here's an allied figure that we still don't have: to this day, no one outside the Pentagon has the faintest idea what it cost to build those bases, no less maintain them, or in the end abandon them to the Iraqi military, to the fate of ghost towns, or simply to be looted and stripped. We have no figures, not even ballpark ones, about what the Pentagon paid crony corporations like KBR to construct and maintain them. The only vague approximation I ever saw was offered in an engineering magazine in October 2003 by Lt. Col. David Holt, the Army officer "tasked with facilities development" in Iraq. At a moment when U.S. base building was barely underway, he was already speaking of the program being in the "several billion dollar range," adding proudly that "the numbers are staggering." So for the full seven-year figure, let your imagination run wild.

At least six people have been killed in a fresh US assassination drone strike in Pakistan's northwestern tribal region near Afghanistan border.

According to Pakistani security officials, the attack took place on Saturday after a US drone fired two missiles on a compound in Shuwedar village of Shawal district in North Waziristan tribal region, AFP reported.

Washington claims its drone strikes target militants, although casualty figures clearly indicate that Pakistani civilians are the main victims of the assaults.

Organisation of American States to hold meeting next week following Ecuador's decision to grant asylum to Assange.

The diplomatic row between Britain and Ecuador over the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, is to be discussed by foreign ministers from across the Americas next week.

The Organisation of American States (OAS) has voted to hold a meeting next Friday following Ecuador's decision to grant political asylum to Assange, who is currently taking refuge in the South American country's embassy in London.

Assange has described the move as a "historic victory" but the British foreign secretary, William Hague, made it clear that the Australian would not be allowed safe passage out of the country.

The permanent council of the OAS decided that a meeting would be held in Washington DC after members voted on the issue. The US, Canada and Trinidad and Tobago opposed the resolution, but 23 members voted in favour of the meeting. There were five abstentions and three members were absent.

The United States is abandoning its role as the global champion of human rights.

Revelations that top officials are targeting people to be assassinated abroad, including American citizens, are only the most recent, disturbing proof of how far our nation's violation of human rights has extended. This development began after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and has been sanctioned and escalated by bipartisan executive and legislative actions, without dissent from the general public. As a result, our country can no longer speak with moral authority on these critical issues.

While the country has made mistakes in the past, the widespread abuse of human rights over the last decade has been a dramatic change from the past. With leadership from the United States, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted in 1948 as "the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world." This was a bold and clear commitment that power would no longer serve as a cover to oppress or injure people, and it established equal rights of all people to life, liberty, security of person, equal protection of the law and freedom from torture, arbitrary detention or forced exile.

State-sponsored terrorism used to be a rather simple affair, where a state would order its military (or other covert armed group) to carry out terrorist acts against a civilian population, domestic or foreign. Over the course of the last 20 years or so however, state sponsored terrorism as practiced by Western 'democracies' has evolved into a much more convoluted and complex operation.

Take 'al-qaeda' for example. The best way to understand the true role of 'al-qaeda', is to first understand the role played by the Soviet Union and 'Communism' as popularised by Western governments, because 'Islamic terrorism' has clearly replaced the 'Communist threat'.

The main problem with Communism is that it never actually existed in the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union was a basic dictatorship. But Communism and the Soviets were promoted by Western governments as an ideology and an enemy against which the West 'had to fight' to 'protect' the capitalist freedom loving people of the World. This was the rationale, the casus belli, that was used to justify American interventionist policy (land and resource grabs) around the world. But behind it all, was, as the saying goes, naked bloody imperialism.

Serial sex offender Raymond Henry Garland, considered one of Australia's most dangerous sexual predators, was officially diagnosed a psychopath last week. Psychiatrist Joan Lawrence told the Brisbane District Court that Garland had an "almost 100 per cent chance of violent reoffending." Garland has been dealt four indefinite sentences - but research out today suggests that biological evidence of psychopathy could alter the length of such sentences.

Brain scans and genetic tests are becoming a common feature of courtroom battles, as biological evidence is increasingly used to explain a person's criminal behaviour. For example, last year an Italian woman convicted of murdering her sister had her lifetime sentence reduced to 20 years on the basis of brain and genetic tests, which provided biological explanations for her aggressive behaviour.

But does the inclusion of such evidence affect the sentencing of psychopaths - people with a disorder currently thought to be untreatable? Any evidence could act as a double-edged sword, says James Tabery at the University of Utah. A so-called biomechanism to explain psychopathic behaviour could be used to argue that a person is less culpable for their actions, reducing their sentence. On the other hand, the defendant could be seen as more likely to reoffend and receive a longer sentence.

Five years since the start of the financial crisis, taxpayers would still be forced to foot the bill should more banks fail because countries are delaying alternative solutions. Finding a way to shut down big banks quickly without triggering market mayhem - the threat of which prompted governments around the world to resort to publicly-funded bailouts between 2007 and 2009 - remains a mammoth task.

Britain, Switzerland and the United States, frustrated by the slow pace of reform, have drawn up plans giving their local regulators power to step in should a major lender go bust. But they still need a global deal to give those same powers to regulators worldwide if the laws are to be effective. The U.K. published its plans this month, hoping to get other countries moving and draw lessons from the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008, the impact of which is still being felt in the markets.

"The U.K. may have set the pace but progress will be made based on the speed of the peloton and not all countries seem to be following the same schedule," said Steven Hall, a partner at KPMG which advises banks on resolution. "First past the finishing line won't mean a gold medal unfortunately unless we can get everyone working to similar timetables and agendas."

The United States and its allies are discussing a worst-case scenario that could require tens of thousands of ground troops to go into Syria to secure chemical and biological weapons sites following the fall of President Bashar al-Assad's government, according to U.S. and diplomatic officials.

These secret discussions assume that all of Assad's security forces disintegrate, leaving chemical and biological weapons sites in Syria vulnerable to pillaging. The scenario also assumes these sites could not be secured or destroyed solely through aerial bombings, given health and environmental risks.

A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity to explain the sensitive discussions, said the United States still had no plans to put boots on the ground in Syria. President Barack Obama's administration has, in fact, so far refused to provide lethal support to the rebels fighting to oust Assad's regime and the Pentagon has played down the possibility of implementing a no-fly zone anytime soon.

"There is not a imminent plan to deploy ground forces. This is, in fact, a worst-case scenario," the official said, adding U.S. forces would likely play a role in such a mission.

Facebook came under fresh pressure in Germany Thursday after authorities reopened a probe into the website's facial recognition software which they say violates the privacy of its users.

The head of the data protection office in the northern city of Hamburg, Johannes Caspar, said he would resume an investigation launched against Facebook more than a year ago but suspended in June.

Caspar agreed at the time to let negotiations between Facebook and Irish authorities about the software run their course, in the hope that the US-based company would accept stricter terms for the use of such data in Europe.

Facebook's European operations are based in Ireland.

"This hope has only been partially fulfilled," he said in a statement. "The potential for abuse with a biometric database is immense."

He accuses the online social network of contravening European privacy laws with its system for registering the faces of users in photographs posted on the site.

The nation's police chiefs have adopted a code of conduct for their use of drones, including letting any images captured by unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, be open to inspection by the public, and that the images not be stored unless they are evidence of a crime or part of an ongoing investigation.

The chiefs also said that if they plan to fly drones over an area where they are likely to spot criminal activity and where they would be intruding on someone's "reasonable expectations of privacy," they should seek to get a search warrant first.

In their three-page document, the chiefs said they are aware of privacy issues that have arisen with the prospect of an explosion in both governmental and private use of drone technology.

"Privacy concerns are an issue that must be dealt with effectively if a law enforcement agency expects the public to support the use of UAV by their police," the chiefs said.

The Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, the industry trade group, applauded the new rules, saying they struck a good balance.