Money Pipeline Flowing Between U.S. Congress and Big Oil

With battle lines sharpening over the stalled Keystone XL pipeline, a new analysis details the intense industry lobbying of both houses of the U.S. Congress since 2013 – to the tune of 58.8 million dollars by five refinery companies alone.

OPINION: This Is Going to Hurt Me More Than It Hurts You

“Enhanced interrogation”: the George W. Bush administration bureaucrats who coined the term had perfect pitch. The apparatchiks of Kafka’s Castle would have admired the grayness of the euphemism. But while it sounds like some new kind of focus group, it turns out it was just anodyne branding for good old-fashioned torture.

Debating U.S. Foreign Policy: Where are the Women?

Women are running some of the United States’ most prominent foreign policy focused think tanks, leading U.S. diplomatic initiatives, and reporting from the front lines of the world’s most dangerous conflict zones.

Medical Marijuana May Not Benefit New York’s Poor Patients

A bill which will bring medical marijuana to New York State in 2016 will leave the treatment inaccessible to low-income patients, community groups warn.

Obama-Congress Iran Sanctions Battle Goes International

While it’s anyone’s guess whether a final deal will be reached over Iran’s nuclear programme this year, a number of key international actors have forcefully weighed in on calls from within the U.S. congress to impose more sanctions on the Islamic Republic.

U.S. May Soon Stand Alone Opposing Children’s Treaty

When the East African nation of Somalia, once described as a "lawless state", ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) early this week, it left two countries in splendid isolation from the rest of the world: South Sudan and the United States.

OPINION: Cuba and the United States – A New Era?

On Dec. 17, by freeing the five Cuban anti-terrorists who spent over 16 years in U.S. prisons, President Barack Obama repaired a longstanding injustice while changing the course of history.

The Day CIA Failed to Un-beard Castro in His Own Den

The controversial low-brow Hollywood comedy, 'The Interview', portrays the story of two U.S. talk-show journalists on assignment to interview Kim Jong-un - and midway down the road are recruited by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to poison the North Korean leader.

From the American Dream to the Nightmare of Deportation

Julio César Cordero’s American dream didn’t last long. He was trying to reach Houston, Texas as an undocumented immigrant but was detained in Acayucán in southeastern Mexico. And like thousands of other deported Salvadorans, he doesn’t know what the future will hold.

OPINION: Sabotaging U.S.-Cuba Détente in the Kennedy Era

I grew up in Hickory Hill, my family’s home in Virginia which was often filled with veterans of the failed Bay of Pigs invasion. 

OPINION: JFK’s Secret Negotiations with Fidel

On the day of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in November 1963, one of his emissaries was secretly meeting with Fidel Castro at Varadero Beach in Cuba to discuss terms for ending the U.S. embargo against the island and beginning the process of détente between the two countries.

Thaw with U.S. Finds Transformed Civil Society in Cuba

The normalisation of relations between Cuba and the United States opens up a new path of “readjustments not free of risks”, which forms part of the process of “national transformation” ushered in by Raúl Castro, said Lenier González, one of the creators of the citizen initiative Cuba Posible.

OPINION: We Have So Much to Learn From Cuba

Earlier this month, President Barack Obama announced the restoration of diplomatic relations with Cuba after more than five decades of a misguided policy which my uncle, John F. Kennedy, and my father, Robert F. Kennedy, had been responsible for enforcing after the U.S. embargo against the country was first implemented in October 1960 by the Eisenhower administration.

Q&A: “The Economy Needs to Serve Us and Not the Other Way Around”

Since his college days, John Schmitt says, he’s been “very interested in questions of economic justice, economic inequality.”

Cuba and United States Now Foment Moderation in the Americas

With the decision to reestablish diplomatic ties, Cuba and the United States, polar opposites that have long inspired or fomented extremism of different kinds in the Americas, have now become factors of moderation and pragmatism.

What the U.S. Should Learn from Russia’s Collapse

After months of whispered warnings, Russia’s economic troubles made global headlines when its currency collapsed halfway through December. Amid the tumbling price of oil, the ruble has fallen to record lows, bringing the country to its most serious economic crisis since the late 1990s.

Dirty Energy Reliance Undercuts U.S., Canada Rhetoric at Climate Talks

While U.S. and Canadian officials delivered speeches about how the world needs to step up to their responsibilities at the U.N. climate negotiations in Lima, Peru, activists from North America demanded clear answers back home on their governments’ relationships with fossil fuel corporations, as well as the future of several major oil projects across the continent.

Groups Push Obama to Clarify U.S. Abortion Funding for Wartime Rape

Nearly two dozen health, advocacy and faith groups are calling on President Barack Obama to take executive action clarifying that U.S. assistance can be used to fund abortion services for women and girls raped in the context of war and conflict.

Release of Senate Torture Report Insufficient, Say Rights Groups

Tuesday’s release by the Senate Intelligence Committee of its long-awaited report on the torture by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of detainees in the so-called “war on terror” does not go far enough, according to major U.S. human rights groups.

U.S. Missing in Child Rights Convention

On Nov. 20, the whole world will be celebrating the 25th anniversary of the world’s most universally ratified human rights treaty, the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). Sadly, the United States of America won’t be at the party or will simply be watching from the sidelines.

OPINION: Will There be Peace Between Iran and the West?

In just a few days, a meeting is scheduled that will be decisive for the security of the Middle East and of the whole world.