Uruguay's President José Mujica is standing up to United Nations bureaucrats at the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) who are chastising Uruguay for advancing legislation that will allow the legal growth, sale, and purchase of marijuana for medical and...

In 2001, the Patriot Act opened the door to US government monitoring of Americans without a warrant. It was unconstitutional, but most in Congress over my strong objection were so determined to do something after the attacks of 9/11 that they did not seem to give it...

Fresh off of his flip-flop on aid to Egypt and his threats to vote for the left (neocon) interventionists in the Democratic Party should anyone remotely non-interventionist succeed in gaining the Republican nomination to be the next president, Senator John McCain is...

As Hassan Rouhani approaches his inauguration this weekend, there is self-referential optimism in Western policy circles about what his accession might portend.  A substantial quorum in these circles sees Rouhani as perhaps someone with whom the West—to recall...

photo: Steve RhodesTo the glee of her critics, Janet Napolitano, the longest-serving secretary at the Department of Homeland Security in its decade-long existence, has announced her resignation. No longer will Republicans have old Janet to kick around. As for the...

photo: TheeErin “If, as it seems, we are in the process of becoming a totalitarian society in which the state apparatus is all-powerful, the ethics most important for the survival of the true, free, human individual would be: cheat, lie, evade, fake it, be elsewhere,...

photo: guccio@文房具社World War II has never really ended for Japan. Sixty-eight years after the battleship US “Missouri” sailed into Tokyo Bay to receive the surrender of the Japanese Empire, Japan still behaves like a meek, defeated nation rather than one of the world’s...

photo: Tom Hilton “Logic may indeed be unshakeable, but it cannot withstand a man who is determined to live. Where was the judge he had never seen? Where was the High Court he had never reached? He raised his hands and spread out all his fingers. But the hands of one...

photo: Orange County ArchivesA conflict may be emerging between the National Rifle Association (NRA) and several large national medical and mental health associations regarding the expansion of US and state government mental health databases. Medical Daily reported...

photo: World Economic ForumHere we go again, another round of Mideast peace talk kabuki. A process in which Washington, Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization hold intense talks over holding talks, a ritual as stylized as the traditional Japanese dance. In...

photo: DaveybotPodcast host Adam Kokesh appears to have joined the long list of victims of the US government's drugs and guns prosecution trap. After a US Park Police raid on his Virginia residence last week, media reported Monday that Kokesh was charged with...

photo:Foreign and Commonwealth OfficeBritish Foreign Secretary William Hague announced yesterday that his government would be spending nearly one million dollars providing the Syrian rebels with special hoods and other equipment to protect them from chemical weapons....

photo: Truthout.orgWhy so many whistleblowers? Why the Tom Drakes? Why the Edward Snowdens and others? And why the persecution, unprecedented persecution by the administration? The answer to those questions is a huge answer. And the answer is the national security...

Although the main spot in the world news is still occupied by Egypt, which has come to the brink of civil war, the tensions in Turkey are constantly making themselves felt. While Egypt, according to the popular blog Haberturk, is already “going the way of Libya,” the...

photo: -lucky cat-It’s very revealing and symbolic that President Morales’ plane should have been forced to land in a European Union country after the withdrawal of overflight rights by other EU countries, because this, of course, shows how the European poodle jumps...

The July 3 move by the Egyptian military to stabilize the country signals the collapse of Obama’s Middle East policy. Washington’s present interventionist regional policy began during the George W. Bush administration and was fatally flawed from the start. The Obama...

It is now clear that the preliminary meeting at Geneva this week of Russia, the United States and the United Nations for setting a date for the Geneva-2 conference on Syria ended inconclusively. The meeting couldn’t agree when the Geneva-2 should be held or who would...

photo: See-ming Lee 李思明 SMLThe US government is in panic mode over the apparently successful escape of NSA leaker Ed Snowden from Hong Kong. US government officials are swinging wildly at any target in sight while howling at the disintegrating illusion of US...

Last week, Hillary Mann Leverett told Al Jazeera’s Inside Story, see here, that the Obama administration’s recent decision to begin providing direct military aid to Syrian rebels is “a signal to the rest of the world, particularly to…those who are looking to deal with...

photo: FreedomHouseThe Guardian newspaper featured on Friday an infinitely sad picture of a Syrian young boy, hardly nine or ten years old, crossing a street holding an old rifle with bayonet. He apparently belongs to the ‘Martyrs of Maaret al-Nuan’ battalion holding...