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It is now one hundred years since drugs were first banned -- and all through this long century of waging war on drugs, we have been told a story about addiction by our teachers and by our governments. This story is so deeply ingrained in our minds that we take it for granted...
Every year world leaders and business executives meet at Davos to discuss how they want to run our economy - in their own best interests. We're led to believe that without their entrepreneurial talent that we would all be worse off than we are now. The myths of this elite...
Jay Tiernan, a leader in the fight to stop the killing of wild badgers in England, has received a six month suspended jail sentence and up to $83,000 in fines for breaching a court order brought by cattle farmers who support the “badger cull.”  According to The Gu
Most white Americans believe they were born white. Yet their own stories of early racial experiences describe persons who were bred white. Which is it-nature or nurture? Neither. The social process that creates whites produces persons who must think of their whiteness as a...
“The economy inhabited by the vast majority of Americans grows smaller and more cutthroat, with nearly all the new wealth accruing to the rich.” Tuesday night, in his next-to-last State of the Union address, President Obama flashed the suckers a bag of tricks that has no...
The “race problem” between police and black Americans won’t go away because it’s a deadly ruse.
While the glorification of American psycho sniper Chris Kyle on the big screen is atrocious, the movie's rewriting of the US destruction of Iraq and racist portrayal of Arabs is worse and far more dangerous.
I have mixed emotions about Martin Luther King Jr. Day. For me, it’s a time of hopeful celebration — but also of cautionary vigilance. I celebrate an extraordinary man of courage and conviction and his remarkable achievements and hope that I can behave in a manner that honors...
“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.” Democracy is dead. It has always been an afflicted creature - hobbling about - wounded at its very being. An enslaving...
Martin Luther King Jr. had more than “a dream,” but you might not notice that on Monday during observances for his birthday. Somewhere between his assassination and today began an MLK-neutering campaign meant to turn the famed agitator’s holiday into a national Day of...
After the terrorist attack on Charlie Hebdo, which killed 12 people including the editor and four other cartoonists, and the murder of four Jews at a kosher supermarket shortly after, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls declared "a war against terrorism, against jihadism...
In your weekly, admittedly rhetorical WTF-is-wrong-with-this-country turn, it seems cops in South Florida have been using real photos of real black men - bullet-riddled, obviously, when they're done with them - as target practice at their shooting range, an endearing ritual...
“Je suis Charlie. Tout est pardonné.” Muhammad in tears adorns the new cover of Charlie Hebdo: “I am Charlie. All is forgiven.” This is bigger than satire. I take a deep breath, uncertain how to write about last week’s insane shooting spree in Paris. My daughter and her...
"Violence and killing are the consequences of this hateful programming . . . And look who profits." In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attack, Fox News has gone on a hate-spree of invective about all Muslims being to blame for the actions of a handful of criminals. The tirade...
Dear friends, last week, a horrid assault was perpetrated against the French weekly Charlie Hebdo, who had published caricatures of Mohamed, by men who screamed that they had “avenged the prophet”. A wave of compassion followed but apparently died shortly afterward and all...
In tribute to Charlie Hebdo, we select our favourite radical publications which challenge authority with every issue. Charlie Hebdo’s willingness to offend traces its way back to France’s radical post-war activists and intellectuals who helped ignite the student revolts of...
Alan Heeks explores the pathways that can take us from the ‘old story’ of addictive materialism into a new, creative and regenerative post-industrial society.
In Plum Village, where I live in France, we receive many letters from the refugee camps in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines, hundreds each week. It is very painful to read them, but we have to do it, we have to be in contact. We try our best to...
When every cultural force beckons us to hate, to harden our hearts and vilify the other, we must have the courage to look, deeply, with an intention to understand.
The terrorist attack in France that took place at the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo was not about free speech. It was not about radical Islam. It did not illustrate the fictitious clash of civilizations. It was a harbinger of an emerging dystopia where the wretched of the...
After the Paris massacre, European governments should resist narratives of civilizational conflict and push for a ceasefire in the Syrian war. The recent attack on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, which left a dozen editors and cartoonists dead, has renewed...
More than 20 years ago, the psychologist Arthur Aron succeeded in making two strangers fall in love in his laboratory. Last summer, I applied his technique in my own life, which is how I found myself standing on a bridge at midnight, staring into a man’s eyes for exactly four...
Our current democratic models are crumbling and outdated. We need to make something more real and meaningful. Activist and politician Birgitta Jónsdóttir points to how it might be done.
American biotechnology has turned Argentina into the world’s third-largest soybean producer, but the chemicals powering the boom aren’t confined to soy and cotton and corn fields. They routinely contaminate homes and classrooms and drinking water. A growing chorus of doctors...
In this 50th anniversary year of the Selma-to-Montgomery March and the Voting Rights Act it helped inspire, national media will focus on the iconic images of “Bloody Sunday,” the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the interracial marchers, and President Lyndon Johnson...
It’s past time to wake up, America, and look around Americans who live abroad -- more than six million of us worldwide (not counting those who work for the U.S. government) -- often face hard questions about our country from people we live among. Europeans
A comics report by Stephanie McMillan about two movements that converged on Washington DC, Stop the Machine and Occupy DC.
How capitalism functions like a religion
The ship plows on with groaning sails, with a heave and a shove, like a fat man shouldering through a crowd. The motion is surprisingly stop-and-go, without ever really stopping, or quite going. In the open cockpit we’ve just been holding on and talking about flotsa
Love of stuff will make you unhappy: You know this, and in case you forget, there is probably, somewhere, some version of A Christmas Carol playing on television right now to remind you. But in a release from the American Psychological Association, psychology professor Tim...
The recent attack on the headquarters of the satirical French magazine Charlie Hebdo was devastating, underscoring violent times under the treacherous shadow of terrorism. We must take care not to lace our grief with hate, vengeance and more violence by misconstruing our...
There is no “but” about what happened at Charlie Hebdo. Some people published some cartoons, and some other people killed them for it.  Words and pictures can be beautiful or vile, pleasing or enraging, inspiring or offensive; but they exist on a different plane from physical...
The ‘Robin Hood of the Banks’ strikes again. This time the aim is to create a worldwide cooperative to develop and expand a new economy of the commons.
Sharif and Said Kouashi, the two brothers for whom the French police are searching, were born in Paris of Algerian parents, Mokhtar et Freiha Méguireche, according
'If this attack is allowed to feed discrimination and prejudice, it will be playing straight into the hands of extremists whose clear aim is to divide religions and societies.' As people across France and around the world mourn the death of the twelve people killed at the...
Many journalists at the offices of Charlie Hebdo have been murdered by bampots brandishing
For generations, white households have enjoyed far greater access to wealth and security than their black counterparts. As protesters march through our cities to remind us that black lives matter, grievances about our racially fractured society extend far beyond flashpoints...
New research first of its kind to identify specific national reserves that must remain untapped A groundbreaking new study is confirming what green campaigners have long argued: in order to stave off climate disaster, the majority of fossil fuel deposits around the...
Yes, Charlie Hebdo was a magazine that delighted in controversy and provocation. Yes, it skewered religion and took joy in giving offense. Yes, the magazine knowingly antagonized extremists — Charlie Hebdo's web site had been hacked and its offices firebombed before today...
The attack on Charlie Hebdo is the worst case of targeted killings of journalists ever recorded in Europe and is matched only by the massacre five years ago of 32 journalists and other media workers, by 100 armed men who attacked an election convoy in Mindanao in the Philippines.
This morning, many sleepy, grumpy, bloated people across the country returned to their jobs for the first time since before Christmas. Some of those people in London – the country's largest hub of early morning misery – were made to stop and consider the numb feeling inside...
Australia's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders activists hope 2014 will be remembered as the year they said: "Enough is enough."
The identity of the Sony hackers is still unknown. President Obama, in a December 19 press conference, announced: “We can confirm that North Korea engaged in this attack.” He then vowed: “We will respond. . . . We cannot have
In 2012, we spotlighted Andrew Jackson as our top pick for worst U.S. president—because he earned his “Indian Killer” nickname. He was a major proponent of Indian removal, his first effort was waging a war against the Creeks. The Creeks lost 23 million acres of land in...
Have you ever encountered a baby whose gender is unknown to you?
In 2011, TIME Magazine selected “the protester” as its person of the year. Perhaps “person of the decade” would have been a more accurate depiction. We live in tumultuous times. Since 2011, every year seems to have brought more protests, more rebellions, more uprisings — and...
In an alternate universe, the New York Police might have just solved the national community-policing controversy. Brace yourselves for a weird night. There might be a little extra drama when the ball drops in Times Square, thanks to one of the more confusing political...
For brutal wannabe fascists like police union thugs, for liberal authoritarian politicians like President Obama, the Congressional Black Caucus and most big city mayors, for media talking head like CNN's Don Lemon, and for weaseling civil rights spokesleaders eager to throw...
It was the most thrilling bureaucratic document I’ve ever seen for just one reason: it was dated the 21st day of the month of Thermidor in the Year Six. Written in sepia ink on heavy paper, it recorded an ordinary land auction in France in what we would call the late summer...
Wherever I go and ask people what is missing from their lives, the most common answer (if they are not impoverished or seriously ill) is “community.” What happened to community, and why don’t we have it any more? There are many reasons – the layout of suburbia, the...
"President Kennedy never foresaw that the chickens would come home to roost so soon..." - Malcolm X, December 1, 1963 "Americans love to fight, traditionally. All real Americans love the sting and clash of battle… you are here because you are real men and all real men like...
The rise of the Black Panther Party (BPP) in the late 1960s signified a monumental step toward the development of self-determination in the United States. In a nation that has long suffered a schizophrenic existence, characterized by a grand facade of "freedom, liberty and...
I walk a small path, surrounded by an infinite number of trees, plants and the scent of flowers. My lungs fill with pure, fresh air when I take a deep breath. My bare feet touch the ground, damp from yesterday's rain. This is my home. This is where I grew up. This is what I...
Dystopian narratives have long been an alluring and thought-provoking form of entertainment, especially for those who take an interest in studying social and political structures. From classics like Nineteen Eighty-Four and Brave New World to the current hit, The Hunger...
For white folks to claim that race should not matter is to reveal that race has never negatively impacted us. The invented supremacy of whiteness has provided us with privilege and power in politics, social institutions, and our personal and professional lives, making it a...
“The police union chief instructed his members to impose a martial law-type policing regime on the city.” When Police Benevolent Association chief Patrick Lynch said New York Mayor Bill de Blasio has the blood of two dead cops on his hands, he was issuing a physical threat...
While recent protests have focused on the deaths of black men, it's black women who are leading the charge.
It’s kind of fitting that police officers Darren Wilson and Daniel Pantaleo, murderers of Mike Brown in Missouri and Eric Garner in New York, were cleared of criminal wrong-doing in the last several weeks. The eruption of protest, activism and organizing in response to the...
“Nobody in the world, nobody in history, has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of the people who were oppressing them…Prisons are a profitable business. They are a way of legally perpetuating slavery. In every state more and more prisons are being...
Just so you know: Those trinkets of Christmas proclaimed to bring joy to the world - wreaths, lights, stockings, mistletoe, shiny stars and snowflakes and other glittering marvels of tree adornment - are likely made in Yiwu, aka China's Christmas Village, where the elves are...
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