For the first time, more than half the members of the US Congress are millionaires, an analysis released by the Center for Responsive Politics revealed this week. ...

A new treaty being negotiated in secret between the US and the EU has been specifically engineered to give companies what they want — the dismantling of all social, consumer and environmental protection, and compensation for any infringement of their assumed rights. ...

lan Collinge, author of “The Student Loan Scam: The Most Oppressive Debt in U.S. History and How We Can Fight Back,” recently spoke to students at the University of Illinois Urbana campus. His argument is detailed, persuasive, and heartbreaking; it is also a call to action for students and progressives. I was privileged to speak briefly at this event about the economic and political context of student debt, ...

I have long argued that U.S. decline as a hegemonic power began circa 1970 and that a slow decline became a precipitate one during the presidency of George W. Bush. I first started writing about this in 1980 or so. At that time the reaction to this argument, from all political camps, was to reject it as absurd. In the 1990s, quite to the contrary, it was widely believed, again on all sides of the political ...

Germany, US and UK among the biggest tax heavens in the world. UK: New index reveals UK runs biggest part of global secrecy network This new edition of the Financial Secrecy Index shows that the United Kingdom is the most important global player in the financial secrecy world. While the UK itself ranks only in 21st place, it supports and partly controls a web of secrecy jurisdictions around the world, from ...

September 11 is a date forever associated with mass murder of civilians — and this was the case nearly three decades before the 2001 terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers in New York. This year, September 11 marks the 40th anniversary of the US-organised military coup that overthrew the elected left-wing government of Salvador Allende and installed a brutal dictatorship headed by General Augusto Pinochet. ...

The threat of a major war and deep US-Russian tensions over Syria have overshadowed the St. Petersburg G20 summit of leaders of the world’s 20 largest economies. The summit’s ostensible main agenda item—crises in “emerging market” economies such as India and Turkey—has been subsumed into discussion of the devastating global economic impact of a new war in the Middle East. ...

Secretary of State John Kerry opened his speech Friday by describing the horrors victims of the chemical weapon attack suffered, including twitching, spasms and difficulty breathing. ...

Ten years after the US government went to war in Iraq on the basis of lies about nonexistent weapons of mass destruction (WMD), a no less grotesque provocation is being concocted by Paris, London, and Washington to justify a new war of aggression against Syria. ...

Those who want forceful action against Assad cannot rely on international treaties as justification. In the wake of the Syrian regime's likely use of chemical weapons last week, the media is focused on UN access to the location of the attack. ...