The War on Drugs has always been a charade, a flashy story to get the rubes riled up, whose real purpose was to justify increased law enforcement budgets, prison budgets, judiciary budgets, and inflated corporate profits for all the technology this bogus war involves. It has been a disaster at every level of social policy, albeit ever so profitable.
The global ‘war on drugs” has been a catastrophic failure and world leaders must rethink their approach, a group including five Nobel Prize-winning economists, Britain’s deputy prime minister and a former U.S. secretary of state said Tuesday.
An academic report published by the London School of Economics (LSE) called ‘Ending the Drug Wars” pointed to violence in Afghanistan, Latin America and other regions as evidence of the need for a new approach.
The Public Health Emergency Exposes an Economic and Existential Crisis
Margaret Morganroth Gullette
Tikkun, Spring 2014
ver the past decade of devastating recession and feeble recovery, there has been a sharp rise in suicides of men aged fifty and over — almost 50 percent, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. From 1999 to 2010, rates of suicide overall have gone up, but the steepest rise was for midlife men: those who used to be thought of as prime-age workers at the peak of their experience and ability. In that decade, the suicide rates for men aged fifty to fifty-four rose from 20.6 per 100,000 to 30.7 per 100,000.
Much is made of the implications of the arms trade and the spread of weapons, notably manufactured by the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. This has become a fact of life and is accepted as such.
Curiously it is less evident whose weapons are used in the final killing of individuals in combat — especially the weapons used “illegally” by insurgents. The following is a brief exploration of the possibility of identifying who supplied the bullet which finally entered the body of the person maimed or killed.
Does the person so wounded — or the relatives of those killed — have the right to know who produced the bullet? Is this a fundamental human right or a matter of human responsibility?
Whereas not many years ago it would have been considered ridiculous to sell fruit individually identified by marks enabling their precise origin to be determined — even to the person who packed them — such labelling is now commonplace. The argument is that in the event of a threat to health associated with the product, whether fruit or other consumer products, responsibility can be precisely established. Such labelling may be a requirement governing import of foreign products.
If precise labelling can be justified for sources of life-giving human nourishment, because of their potential threat to health, is there not a case for denitrifying those products intended as a means of incapacitating individuals, possibly terminally? Do relatives have a right to the bullet by which a loved one was killed?
More generally is it appropriate to be able to indicate, with as much details as possible, who was responsible for the manufacture of the bullet? Should the bullets used in insurgency operations be a matter of public knowledge?
In an FCC ruling last week, they completely decimated the idea of internet freedom or net neutrality. They basically said that the corporations that can pay more can get faster internet service – this opens the floodgates for corporate rule online.
Supporters of the A-10 “Warthog” close air support aircraft in Washington and US combat Soldiers and Marines who have seen, and are seeing, combat in Afghanistan were stunned Monday to read about a decision of the Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Congressman Buck McKeon (R-CA). He is joining with the Air Force and wants to retire all of these extraordinarily effective combat aircraft, sending them all to the boneyard at Davis-Monthan Air Force base, starting as soon as next year.
Ever since Chief of Staff of the Air Force (CSAF) Mark Welsh decided to get rid of all of 300-plus A-10s in the active and reserve Air Force and the Air National Guard, the media and congressional hearings have been stuffed with information from combat veterans, pilots and defense specialists about how spectacularly the A-10 has been performing in Afghanistan and all other recent US wars in Libya, Iraq and Kosovo–going as far back as Operation Desert Storm in 1991.
McKeon's A-10 sell-out comes in the form of a ruse. His draft legislation, to be moved Wednesday (May 7) at the mark-up of the House Armed Services Committee of its FY 2015 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), creates a distinction without a difference with CSAF Welsh's retirement plan. McKeon's own description of his handiwork says he “would limit funds . to retire A-10 aircraft unless each such retired aircraft is maintained in type-1000 storage [which]. means storage of a retired aircraft in a near-flyaway condition that allows for the aircraft to be recalled into use by the Regular or Reserve Components of the Department of the Air Force.” Falling for the ruse either foolishly or knowingly, some media describe the language as “something of a compromise” or emphasize the “near fly-away” condition of the A-10 fleet after it is sent to the boneyard at Davis-Monthan. However, a simple check of what “type-1000 storage” means reveals that the aircraft will be made un-flyable and sealed in two layers of latex, which can be removed and the aircraft made operable only after considerable effort.
This is extraordinary legislation, and the latest in the Theocratic Right's war on women. If I were a fertile woman I am not sure I would live in Tennessee now that this is the law. This is what the world would look like if the Theocratic Right had its way.
It's Official: Tennessee Becomes First State to Jail Women for Pregnancy Outcomes
KATIE MCDONOUGH, Assistant Editor – AlterNet (U.S.)
Tennessee has become the first state in the nation to pass a law criminalizing women for their pregnancy outcomes. Republican Gov. Bill Haslam took the 10 days allotted to him to consider the advice of doctors, addiction experts and reproductive health groups urging him to veto the punitive and dangerous measure that allows prosecutors to charge a woman with criminal assault if she uses illegal drugs during her pregnancy and her fetus or newborn is considered harmed as a result. Haslam ignored these recommendations – and the recommendations of nearly every major medical association, including the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy – and signed the measure anyway.
Here we have a pretty realistic take on the state of the U.S. nuclear industry. We have been so lucky not to have had a crisis like Chernobyl. Click through to see the supporting graphics.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has had a busy few weeks. Last month, thanks to Freedom of Information Act queries filed by numerous organizations, the Commission was forced to disclose a dossier of emails showing the lengths it had gone to in the immediate aftermath of the Fukushima disaster to downplay the risk of a similar catastrophe happening in the US. The correspondence showed a startling lack of preparedness.
Click on Image to Enlarge
In one example, NRC public affairs officer David McIntyre offered his opinion on what Energy Secretary Steven Chu should have done when asked by CNN whether American nuclear plants could withstand a force 9.0 earthquake: ‘He should just say, ‘Yes, it can.’ Worry about being wrong when it doesn't. Sorry if I sound cynical.”
The documents also show a background briefing for then NRC chairman Gregory Jaczko and other commissioners that split intelligence into ‘public answer” and “additional technical, non-public information.” In some cases the NRC withheld crucial details and misdirected the media.
