Despite the crumbling facade of its interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan, America is preparing for a new century of 'light footprint' warfare, using Africa as its laboratory.
Though the US may be finally addressing some of the fictions propping up its security policies, the question remains: who rules Washington?
No industry, especially one as powerful as the fossil fuel industry, is going to allow governments or international bodies to tax or trade it out of existence.
Corporate think tanks hope their bravely unthinkable suggestions to "fix" (or kill) the NHS are on politicians' summer reading lists. But why are far more popular and evidenced solutions - like reversing privatisation - so unthinkable to the political class?
Environmental management consistently projects an image that the risks of climate change can be managed and the extraction of dirty energy resources should continue.
Mental health services are amongst the hardest hit by cuts and privatisation. A new Charter suggests how people can build alliances and fight back.
Americans may increasingly wonder whether NSA agents are scouring their meta-data, reading their personal emails, and the like. On the US-Mexican border no imagination is necessary.
David Cameron claimed last week that the Welsh border was "the dividing line between life and death". A new Nuffield Trust report shows such rhetoric is dishonest.
As has become clear, the universities are colluding with police and even the unions to clamp down on student protest and workers' demands. There is a common strand that links these elements, and the overall picture is deeply alarming.
Cameron this week labelled the Welsh NHS 'a scandal', and some Blairites have echoed him. But Wales is 'doing more with less' more effectively than the English NHS - and without privatisation.
The planned sell-off of George Elliott hospital has been cancelled, hailed as a "victory for common sense" by unions and campaigners.
Whilst understaffed wards and surgeries turn to well-connected private sector agencies to fill the gaps created by Cameron's health 'reforms', the NHS's own in-house recruitment agency is to be sold off, it has emerged.
