The Superpower Conundrum: The Rise and Fall of Just About Everything By Tom Engelhardt

The rise and fall of great powers and their imperial domains has been a central fact of history for centuries.  It’s been a sensible, repeatedly validated framework for thinking about the fate of the planet.  So it’s hardly surprising, when faced with a country once regularly labeled the “sole superpower,” “the last superpower,” or even the global “hyperpower” and now, …

Failing to Meet Global Police Standards, US Forsakes ‘the Right to Life’ – Nadia Prupis

Each of the 50 United States has failed to comply with international standards on police use of lethal force, a reality that threatens lives, poses grave human rights concerns, perpetuates institutional racism, and requires immediate reform, a new report by Amnesty International published Thursday has found. Moreover, the limited available statistics on police killings of civilians, as well as recent …

Record Number of Americans Renounced Their U.S. Citizenship in 2015 By Gabrielle Cintorino

Between January and March of 2015, a record 1,336 Americans renounced their U.S. citizenship, according to a quarterly report by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) that was published in The Federal Register. The list includes long-term permanent residents who are considered American citizens under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPPA), the IRS noted. The previous record was 1,130 in the second quarter …

Towards a Militarized Police State in America? Explosive New Revelations over “Jade Helm 15 Exercise” and Potential False Flags – Joachim Hagopian

A growing segment of the American population is waking up to the implications of the Jade Helm 15 military operation to be conducted by Special Forces in conjunction with local law enforcement, the FBI, DHS, the DEA and Border Patrol across the entire Southwest. This massive unprecedented exercise will also commence in June sooner than first announced and last for 10 weeks through the …

Obama on the TPP: Beckoning Us to the Graveyard – JOHN V. WALSH

“We have to make sure America writes the rules of the global economy and we should do it today while our economy is in a position of global strength. If we don’t write the rules for trade around the world, guess what, China will. And they’ll write those rules in a way that gives Chinese workers and Chinese businesses the …

America’s Control Over the World Is Rapidly Eroding – Michael Payne

It’s no secret that the U.S. is most certainly not the most loved country in the world because of its government’s long history of highly aggressive military actions, as well as its interference in the internal affairs of countless nations. But what we are seeing today is that an increasing number of nations are turning against the U.S. and taking …

Challenging American Exceptionalism – Marjorie Cohn

President Barack Obama stood behind the podium and apologized for inadvertently killing two Western hostages – including one American – during a drone strike in Pakistan. Obama said, “one of the things that sets America apart from many other nations, one of the things that makes us exceptional, is our willingness to confront squarely our imperfections and to learn from …

U.S. Elections: Worst among established democracies

Over fourteen hundred international election experts gathered data last year and pronounced the United States last in election integrity among long-standing democracies. On a 100-point scale, the U.S. received an integrity rating of 69.3 percent — one notch ahead of the narco-drug state Colombia at 69.1 percent and just behind the nearly-narco-drug state of Mexico at 69.8 percent, neither country …

Distorting Putin’s Favorite Philosophers

What started the new Cold War? According to the State Department, it was Russia’s illegal violation of Ukraine’s sovereign borders. The Kremlin, for its part, insists it was a U.S.-facilitated coup in Ukraine which destroyed the constitutional order there, causing chaos and dangers to Russian security to which Russia had no choice but to respond. According to academic foreign policy …

The TPP could spell bad news for global food systems.

Food is more than just what we eat. It connects us to each other and our environment. And how we treat it is of tremendous importance to our democracy. Right now, the future of our food is being decided behind closed doors. The Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), a massive trade and investment deal being negotiated by the United States and 11 Pacific …