The legislative battle between progressives and moderates over the "Build Back Better" spending bill became increasingly personal this week. A West Virginia newspaper published an op-ed by Bernie Sanders in a not so veiled attack on Senator Joe Manchin's refusal to support the plan, declaring that its passage would "finally... Read more »

It happened three times yesterday, and I only watched or half-watched a few hours of TV news. It happens every day, it seems. Somebody wonders out loud (yesterday's most prominent was Alex Witt with Dr. Anthony Fauci) why over 60 million Americans who are eligible to be vaccinated are still... Read more »

Donald Trump has just filed a lawsuit to block the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack from being granted access to a mountain of documents from his four years as president held by the National Archives. !! FLASH: Donald Trump has just filed suit in DC federal court... Read more »

This week Democrats are making a renewed push for passing voting rights legislation. The bill includes reforms to limit partisan gerrymandering and address campaign finance reform. While it is a needed protection for voting rights after the Voting Rights Act was gutted in 2013, there are a number of important... Read more »

There's an interesting debate going on about public knowledge of the president's policy agenda. On the one hand are those who say the Democrats have done a poor job of messaging. They have not conveyed why the infrastructure bills (one traditional, one innovative) would amount to what Magdi Semrau calls... Read more »

This was first published by ProPublica, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.As much as $3 million may have been raised to support the Jan. 6 rally in Washington, D.C., that preceded the attack on the... Read more »

On Monday the Dept. of Justice moved one step further to try to get the U.S. Supreme Court to block Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott's near-total ban on abortion, which legal experts and now the DOJ itself say is unconstitutional."For half a century, this Court has held that 'a State... Read more »

After avoiding the spotlight for a long time, former British spy Christopher Steele has reemerged — and he is still a vehement critic of former President Donald Trump.Discussing the Steele dossier of 2016 during an interview in his London home with ABC News' George Stephanopoulos, the private intelligence professional said,... Read more »

For decades, I kept a poster on my wall that I'd saved from the year I turned 16. In its upper left-hand corner was a black-and-white photo of a white man in a grey suit. Before him spread a cobblestone plaza. All you could see were the man and the... Read more »

Hardline Islamists have taken control in Iran, nuclear negotiations with Tehran have stalled, the Saudis and Israelis are restless, and talk of military action against Iran is rising. Such is the price the world is paying for the Trump administration’s criminal incompetence. Remember the halcyon days when Donald Trump proclaimed... Read more »

North Korea is carrying out one missile test after another lately, at the same time indicating (or is it?) interest in talks with South Korea about reducing tensions. Late last month North Korea launched two short-range ballistic missiles from railways over the Sea of Japan, violating UN prohibitions and raising... Read more »

Two civilians were killed in Iraq attacks. The post <I>Iraq Daily Roundup</I>: Two Killed appeared first on Antiwar.com Original.... Read more »

Seventeen people were killed in the latest violence in Iraq. The post <I>Iraq Daily Roundup</I>: 17 Killed appeared first on Antiwar.com Original.... Read more »

Monday, October 11, marked the official closure of the U.N. Group of Eminent Experts on Yemen (also known as the Group of Experts or GEE). For nearly four years, this investigative group examined alleged abuses suffered by Yemenis whose basic rights to food, shelter, safety, health care and education were... Read more »

I’ve just read through three of the most boring but potentially most important documents around. One is the War Powers Resolution of 1973 which you can print on 6 pages and is what’s referred to as existing law even though it’s violated as routinely as air is breathed. Another is... Read more »

"Three people can keep a secret if two of them are dead." ~ Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) Last week, President George W. Bush’s torture regime reared its head in an unusual argument before the U.S. Supreme Court. In 2002, Abu Zubaydah was captured by a militia in Pakistan and handed over... Read more »

Language is politics and politics is power. This is why the misuse of language is particularly disturbing, especially when the innocent and vulnerable pay the price. The wars in Syria, Libya, Afghanistan and other Middle Eastern, Asian and African countries in recent years have resulted in one of the greatest... Read more »

The United States, the President swore, is "not seeking a new Cold War." But he is, and it didn’t have to be that way. The end of the Cold War could have been the end of the Cold War. Russia really didn’t want a new Cold War and has only... Read more »

On September 10, 2021, during an important diplomatic meeting that occurred by telephone, U.S. President Joseph Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping affirmed the necessity of a better relationship between their two nations.  According to the official Chinese summary, Xi said that “when China and the United States cooperate, the... Read more »

In ancient Greek mythology, Cassandra was a priestess who was able to predict the future but unable to convince others to act upon her prophecies. The fate of Cassandra seems particularly relevant today, for there has been ample warning about three developments that threaten continued human existence—preparations for nuclear war,... Read more »

Is it possible to build social solidarity beyond the state? It’s easy to conclude that it’s not.  In 1915, as national governments produced the shocking carnage of World War I, Ralph Chaplin, an activist in the Industrial Workers of the World, wrote his stirring song, “Solidarity Forever.”  Taken up by... Read more »

The US government will (perhaps within a month) probably succeed in extraditing businessman Alex Saab from Cape Verde. His “crime” was being an official envoy for the Venezuelan government as he attempted to negotiate the sale of medicines from Iran to Venezuela. US sanctions have declared such activity illegal. Saab... Read more »

By Lawrence Wittner and Joseph Mangano In 2020, Harvard University’s T. C. Chan School of Public Health began a five-year study, funded by the National Institutes of Health, that will examine the connection between early life exposure to toxic metals and later-life risk of neurological disease. A collaborator with Harvard,... Read more »

I reviewed Josiah Thompson’s new book in a blog post the other day. The book makes a persuasive case that there was a second shooter who killed JFL, but I don’t think it’s a slam dunk. Neither is Gerald Posner’s conclusion that Oswald acted alone. I consider it a toss-up.... Read more »

I just finished Josiah Thompson’s excellent new book on the JFK assassination: Last Second in Dallas (University Press of Kansas, 2021). Near the end of the book he describes how the scene of the crime, Dealey Plaza, looks to him in 2020. He reflects that “the case itself has been... Read more »

In 1980, Venezuela’s infant mortality rate ranked 58th best in the world, far below Cuba, whose infant mortality rate was 28th that year. Infant mortality is a basic Venezuela’s infant mortality rate in 1980 was more than twice as high as that in Cuba – all according to the 2018... Read more »

Venezuela has been an important oil exporter since the 1920s. See this essay for historical details. As the chart below shows, It was not until the 1970s that big Middle east oil exporters like Saudi Arabia and Iran overtook Venezuela in oil production  ... Read more »