Consider $2 billion lost on a bad bet, plus billions more as investors dumped the stock, a providential warning. When Jamie Dimon, the imperious head of JPMorgan Chase, revealed that the bank had lost so muchon a derivatives trade gone bad, it was clear warning that, four years after blowing up the economy, the big banks are still playing with bombs.

Senate Republicans and Democrats alike are poised to use budget votes as election-year ammunition.

In a world turned upside down, when governments forbid companies from dumping toxic waste or warn their citizens of the dangers of tobacco, large multinational corporations sue them in secret courts, where unelected judges, acting without juries, usually force the governments to cease their efforts and pay large fines to the corporations. It sounds like the voiceover for the trailer of a dystopian science fiction movie. But this is not fiction, science or otherwise; this is the reality of International Law in the early 21st century.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone, but support for the longest U.S. war is dropping further and faster than ever. The latest national U.S. poll, released on May 9, shows 66 percent of Americans are against the war in Afghanistan - with 40 percent “strongly opposed”.

If you thought Wall Street had learned its lesson four years after the global financial crisis, JPMorgan Chase's $2 billion trading debacle suggests you should think again, investment bankers and industry experts say.

Members of Congress are much richer than you and me.

As the FBI seeks full access to all forms of Internet communication, it is not voters who need to be convinced.

The United States has for several years been secretly releasing high-level detainees from a military prison in Afghanistan as part of negotiations with insurgent groups, a bold effort to quell violence but one that U.S. officials acknowledge poses substantial risks.

Since taking office as president of the United States, Barack Obama made the war in Afghanistan his own war. He called the occupation of Iraq "a dumb war", but in Afghanistan, he approved a surge of 30,000 troops in December 2009. He then promised that American troops would be out of the country within eighteen months.

As president of the Pennsylvania State Education Association, a teachers union, Mr Crossey saw the loss of 14,000 jobs from the state’s education sector as a result of more than $800m in budget cuts last year.

Grassroots activism takes time to grow. Broad-based participation is vital. Issues must be clearly defined. Leadership is needed. Major obstacles must be overcome.

Driving west from Madison, through the small towns and dairy farm country of western Wisconsin, it quickly becomes clear that the Wisconsin recall election is a statewide phenomenon.

United States is making a gigantic investment in the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, billed by its advocates as the next -- by their count the fifth -- generation of air-to-air and air-to-ground combat aircraft. Claimed to be near invisible to radar and able to dominate any future battlefield, the F-35 will replace most of the air-combat aircraft in the inventories of the U.S. Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, and at least nine foreign allies, and it will be in those inventories for the next 55 years. It's no secret, however, that the program -- the most expensive in American history -- is a calamity.

Matt Pizzo has a law degree, can-do attitude, proven leadership skills, and expertise in communications and satellite technology from his four years in the Air Force.

Corporations, 1 percenters and Republicans want to take America back. And by that, they mean all the way to the 1780s when wealthy white men controlled the nation.

The question is an absurd one except to those of us who have spent part of our lives exploring contradictions and mysteries posed by official narratives regarding events of that world-changing day. Increasingly, the question is becoming, “How many real persons died as a result of alleged events that occurred in connection with the destruction of buildings in New York City’s World Trade Center Complex on September 11, 2001?”