The “apocalypse” never happened, as some predicted, when Portugal decriminalized ALL illegal drugs eight years ago. The country did not become a haven for drug use, instead drug abuse and drug crime both fell. hmmm…

walls r definitely in. In Toronto this week, contract workers are putting final touches on the three-metre high and six-kilometre long $5.5 million dollar concrete and metal security fence encompassing the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. Total security bill for the … Continue reading →

let’s join mrs hill! Mrs. Hill’s crusade began a few years ago when her grandson, then 10, told her about the so-called Pacific garbage patch, a vortex of plastic and other debris floating between California and Hawaii, thought to be … Continue reading →

After the brilliant Rolling Stone article by Michael Hastings, President Barack Obama has no valid option other than to fire Gen. Stanley McChrystal. Not because of the dozen outrageous anti-administration verbal gaffes which have been reported, but rather because this … Continue reading →

A federal judge struck down the Obama administration’s six-month ban on deepwater oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico as rash and heavy-handed, saying the government simply assumed that because one rig exploded, the others pose an imminent danger, too. … Continue reading →

Evo Morales, the Bolivian president, talks exclusively to Al Jazeera’s Latin America editor Lucia Newman about his country’s relations with the US.

ok, this interview with oliver stone and tariq ali about what’s going on in south america totally rocks! THIS gives me hope for the world. time to work together – not just south america as a unified continent, but all … Continue reading →

Somewhere between 700 and 1,000 demonstrators from all over the San Francisco Bay Area made their way at 5:30 on a Sunday morning deep into the Port of Oakland to stage a spirited community-labor picket line in front of a … Continue reading →

speechless.

i chanced upon this interview on the real news. it’s an 8-part discussion with peace activist michel warschawski. i found it enlightening. not only are warschawski’s own biography and work extremely compelling, but over the course of this in-depth interview, … Continue reading →

Police are investigating the beating of a Muslim man in Sunnyvale last week as a hate crime and are seeking two suspects in the case. At about 1 p.m. on Friday, the victim was on El Camino Real near Sycamore … Continue reading →

the “developed” world is an aberration: The richest 1% of adults in the world own 40% of the planet’s wealth, according to the largest study yet of wealth distribution. The report also finds that those in financial services and the … Continue reading →

The methodical and planned use of killing and violence in Indian-administered Kashmir constitutes crimes against humanity in the context of an ongoing conflict. The Indian state’s governance of Indian-administered Kashmir requires the use of discipline and death as techniques of … Continue reading →

The arrest of Bradley Manning and the hunt for Assange has put the spotlight on the Obama administration’s campaign against whistleblowers and leakers of classified information. The Government Accountability Project, a leading whistleblower advocacy organization, has accused President Obama of … Continue reading →

“whenever men or women are persecuted because of their race, religion or political views, that place must at that moment become the center of the universe.” (elie wiesel, nobel peace prize speech, dec 10, 1986)

rather than focus on the war on terror, maybe pakistan should try to fight poverty first. this is a heartbreaking story. Four people, including three girls, died when a family of five consumed toxic pills in an attempt to commit … Continue reading →

In its gloomy report in April, the International Crisis Group warned that the collapse of the Bakiyev regime was a case study of the risks facing authoritarianism in central Asia, where Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan have been governed … Continue reading →

Bakiyev, whose rule descended into autocracy, repression and nepotism, denies fomenting the anti-Uzbek riots. But he and his family have a dark history in the south of his country, which is harder to shrug off. Undoing his predecessor’s policies of … Continue reading →

time to rethink the american war on drugs. The presence of federal troops has failed to calm the drug war in Juárez, Mexico, and violence has reached an all time high. Watch story here.

Women on the Frontline is a video documentary series, presented by Annie Lennox, that shines a light on violence against women and girls. The series takes the front to homes, villages and cities around the world where a largely unreported … Continue reading →

Federal officials have arrested an Army intelligence analyst who boasted of giving classified U.S. combat video and hundreds of thousands of classified State Department records to whistleblower site Wikileaks, Wired.com has learned. SPC Bradley Manning, 22, of Potomac, Maryland, was … Continue reading →

This video is from B’Tselem – an Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Pls watch.

As citizens of Pakistan and people of conscience, we demand that the state of Pakistan take responsibility for extending the rights and protections of citizenship equally to all Pakistanis – REGARDLESS OF RELIGIOUS AFFILIATION. The state has no right to … Continue reading →

There is the double standard. One off-hand “ill-conceived remark,” as NPR Ombudsman Alicia Shepard stated, in praising Ms. Thomas, ended a groundbreaking career. While enhanced careers and fat lecture fees are the reward for ultra-right wing radio and cable ranters, … Continue reading →

The human rights defenders, journalists, student leaders, women’s rights activists and labor activists suffering in Iran’s prisons desperately need the help of concerned citizens around the world to put pressure on the Iranian government. Full article.

In a cell approximately 20 feet long and 15 feet wide, in a maximum security prison at the Plymouth Correctional facility, Muslim Egyptian-American pharmacist Tarek Mehanna, from Sudbury, Mass., has been in solitary confinement for more than five months for … Continue reading →

One Bitch-Slap After Another: Barack Obama has five major problems as president. The first is that he doesn’t understand priorities. The second is that he seems to have little strong conviction on any given issue. The third is that to … Continue reading →

down with brutal egyptian dictatorship, funded by the u.s. to the tune of $50 billion since 1979. Khaled Said, a 28-year-old man from Alexandria was beaten up to death by two policemen when he refused to give them money, a … Continue reading →