PRESS ROOM

The Associated Press, for instance, attributed the outbreak of protests [in Cuba] directly to “food shortages and high prices amid the coronavirus crisis”. These are exactly the kind of problems that are attributable directly to the blockade. The Center for International Policy, a Washington-based NGO, has pointed out that the blockade has “created a situation of scarcity and uncertainty that has affected all aspects of Cuban society”.

The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated just how wide the gaps are between the haves and the have nots. Countries that could mobilize resources designed effective responses, while others that were not equipped continue to struggle. As of June 2021, fewer than 1 in 500 people in the 29 lowest income countries have received vaccinations, as compared to 1 in 2 in the United States. But the vaccine gap isn’t the only inequity we should be paying attention to: There’s also a lobbying gap.

Developments of the past year and a half — an ongoing pandemic, an intensifying mega-drought, white supremacy activities, and racial and economic injustice among them — should have underscored that the greatest threats to American lives are anything but military in nature. But no matter, the Biden administration has decided to double down on military spending as the primary pillar of what still passes for American security policy.

On Independence Day, many Americans celebrate throwing off the yoke of oppression by a distant power. They recall the unfairness and indignity of life under colonial rule. What too many Americans haven’t done is reckon with the fact that the founders of our nation were colonizers, not colonized, and that in the 245 years since declaring its independence, the United States has only expanded the scope of its imperial domination.

This Noria Research panel explores the relationship between the United States and the United Arab Emirates, analyzing its profound consequence for the world.

Theoretically, that nearly $1.3 trillion to be spent on national security writ large is supposed to be devoted to activities that make America and the world a safer place. That's visibly not the case when it comes to so many of the funds that will be expended in the name of national security—from taxpayer dollars thrown away on weapons systems that don't work to those spent on an unnecessary and dangerous new generation of nuclear weapons, to continuing to reinforce and extend the historically unprecedented U.S. military presence on this planet by maintaining more than 800 overseas military bases around the world.

There is a Russian folk saying: “don’t try to skin the Russian bear before it is dead.” This is exactly what Britain did when it sent the destroyer H.M.S. Defender into the Black Sea to challenge the Russian incorporation of Crimea. Instead of military confrontation, the West should simply fail to recognize the incorporation, which is what NATO did throughout the Cold War vis-a-vis the incorporation of the Baltics into the Soviet Union.

As the world continues to grapple with the effects of COVID-19, Canadian security services have flagged a pandemic of a different kind: that of hostile states conducting malign influence and interference campaigns targeting individuals and institutions on Canadian soil.

Our Ben Freeman sits down with the Crashing the War podcast to discuss "how Washington think tanks — particularly foreign policy and national security institutions — are taking hundreds of millions of dollars from the government, foreign countries, and the defense industry."

"We write to demand an end to the unlawful program of lethal strikes outside any recognized battlefield, including through the use of drones," the 113 organizations wrote in a letter to Biden obtained by The Hill ahead of its release Wednesday.

On June 30, 2021, 113 organizations from the United States and around the world sent a letter to President Biden calling for an end to the U.S. program of lethal strikes outside recognized battlefields, including through the use of drones.

Many governments who spent the most on lobbying for Covid-19-related aid couldn’t afford lobbying contracts, according to Ben Freeman, who leads the Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative at the Center for International Policy. The think tank recently compiled a study examining how coronavirus affected foreign lobbying, including several agents that halted lobbying altogether amid the pandemic.