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HOW MITT ROMNEY DODGED THE DRAFT — H. Bruce Franklin remembers Romney from his Stanford days and lays out exactly how he and his father ensured he would evade service in the war which, at Stanford, he was demonstrating for. Andrew Cockburn gives CounterPunchers a compelling investigation of the rise of automated warfare and of the Drones, their vast costs and constant failures. Wei Zhang assesses the social and health costs of China’s incredible GDP growth.
Archives by Tag 'drug war'
An amicus brief was filed by the Drug Policy Alliance o...
A piece of news released by AP, the most important US news agency, dated today in Monterrey, Mexico, explains it with irrefutable clarity. This is not the first, and certainly it won’t be the last, about a reality that puts paid to the mountain of lies with which the ...
Dilma Rousseff interrupted the speech of Barack Obama. The President of the United States was speaking about the advances of various countries in Latin America, commenting that now there exists “a prosperous middle class” that represents a business opportunity for com...
The Summits of the Americas began in 1994 as forums to promote free trade. In 2009 the Summit’s focus shifted to demands for the inclusion of Cuba in regional political bodies and the end of the U.S. economic embargo, a debate which continued in this month’s Sixth S...
“I watched Obama closely at the famous ‘summit gathering.’ Fatigue sometimes overcame him, he involuntarily closed his eyes and occasionally slept with his eyes open.”
- Fidel Castro [1]
The Sixth Summit of ...
Whore: (verb) To debase oneself by doing something for unworthy motives, typically to make money.
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There are good lawyers and there are bad lawyers. As an advocate and freedom fighter, I have run into plenty of cases where legal representation was questionable. But once in a while I run into a story that is just downright disgraceful and makes the legal profession look...
The headline of a recent USA Today article reads, “In wake of Trayvon Martin’s death, America is soul-searching” (1). And so it should be. He was a 17-year-old African-American walking back from a convenience store when he was gunned down by an overzealous and s...
Last week, you would have been lucky to find even a small blurb in a few newspapers about but another journalist killed in post-coup Honduras — the 19th in the last two years, making Honduras by far the most dangerous country in the world to be a journalist. Ind...
The so-called War on Drugs has been going on for over 40 years, but despite the colossal resources that have been thrown at this failed social experiment, the world’s appetite for illicit substances keeps heading stubbornly upwards and drug–trafficking is as flourishi...
Vice President Joe Biden landed in Mexico City last night and he’s left little doubt about his mission—to lock in the regional drug war. His visit comes at a time ...
Mexican President Felipe Calderon’s much-publicized visit to Ciudad Juarez on the US border last week – the proverbial “scene of the crime” – was as well-timed as it was cynical. With his National Action Party (PAN) facing a tough re-election campaign ahead of J...
Tod Mikuriya, MD, once paid a printer to make up stickers that said “Drug Police: Armed Clergy.” The message came to mind Jan. 24 when the New York Times ran ...
Amsterdam.
New Year’s Eve in Amsterdam was even more festive than usual this season as thousands of European visitors flocked to the city to enjoy what they believed would be the last night they’d be welcome in the coffee shops of the Netherla...
There are many kinds of war. The classic image of a uniformed soldier kissing mom good-bye to risk his life on the battlefield has changed dramatically. In today’s wars, it’s more likely that mom will be the one killed.
UNIFEM states that by the mid-1990s, 90% ...
Mexico City
While Mexico grabs the headlines of soaring murder rates and rampaging drug gangs, the really heavy bloodshed is taking place to the south. The much smaller nations of Guatemala and El Salvador are seeing their worst violence since the civil wa...
Amsterdam.
The excellent reporting in the Metro Times by my colleagues Larry Gabriel and Curt Guyette has kept me up to date o...
As the racist rhetoric oozes from Republican presidential candidates, why are comments contained in Ron Paul newsletters from the 1980s and 1990s being widely considered more offensive than current bigoted banter uttered by Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum?
One answ...
Detroit.
I’d like to offer my most profound thanks to Amy Cantu and her people at the Ann Arbor District Library for their heroic efforts in dredging up the past and making...
“This is a terrorist insurgency,” says Connie Mack, the Republican who chairs the Western Hemisphere Subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Mack, who introduced the Enhanced Border Security Act in mid-December, believes that the Merida Initiative ...
Every year about this time I write to the governor of New York and ask him to go on a rescue mission and to people convicted under the notorious Rockefeller Drug Laws. These are individuals who have already served enormous amounts of time but are stuck in prison and hav...
The cold, hard numbers of the poor and the dead are familiar.
Instead we are told that we should care—or rather, worry—about Mexico for a very different reason. The State Department, the Pentagon, the press and members of Congress tell us, with increasing shril...
Mexico City
The same week that a coalition of Mexican activists appealed to the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate President Felipe Calderon for war crimes, a leading member of the country’s peace movement was gunned down in the northern s...
Amsterdam.
Highest greetings from the Cannabis Cup in Amsterdam, where I’m enjoying the heady ambience of this society where they just don’t care if you want to get high and where a couple thousand American youths are staggering around this we...
Occasionally the iron heel comes down on people who are widely respected and/or have the resources and will to fight back effectively. “The feds have overreached,” says Steve DeAngelo, who runs Harborside Health Center in Oakland and has been presented by the IRS wi...