war on drugs

A Helot Society

The notion that only the rich should be allowed to have any enjoyment in life is deeply offensive. It is fine for the Bullingdon Club to get plastered on Krug and cocaine and smash up restaurants. That is all jolly japes and high spirits. For a desperate man to seek solace in four cans of Tennant’s strongest or a bottle of Buckfast is however a dreadful sin and sign of social irresponsibility.
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Managing a Nightmare: The CIA Reveals How It Watched Over the Destruction of Gary Webb

Eighteen years after it was published, “Dark Alliance,” the San Jose Mercury News’s bombshell investigation into links between the cocaine trade, Nicaragua’s Contra rebels, and African American neighborhoods in California, remains one of the most explosive and controversial exposés in American journalism.
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Hollywood’s Gary Webb Movie and the Message that Big Media Couldn’t Kill

Gary Webb’s reports were that powerful that they made careerist journalists tremble and lash out and dutifully show that era’s media bosses that they had done their bidding. And then there were others who tried to be fairer to Webb but still feared the big media lords so much that they colored their defenses of the essential truth of the Dark Alliance series with sprinkled disclaimers that he had made errors or wasn’t a saint. You know, the false dichotomy of "telling both sides" of a story that does not have two sides that is formula for corporate media.

Desperate Drug War Beneficiaries Spread Marijuana Legalization Disinformation

Ron Paul Institute | September 6, 2014 While local and state governments continue moving forward with reducing and eliminating restrictions and penalties regarding marijuana, drug war beneficiaries are desperately responding by spreading disinformation. One such effort is the Rocky Mountain High-Intensity Drug Traffic Area August report “The Legalization of Marijuana in Colorado: The Impact.” The […]

Narcs Tried Busting Me In 1968-- One, Now A Chauffeur, Picked Me Up At The Airport This Week

Not my limo driver-- but he might as well have beenWhen I was in college I was probably best known for 3 things-- all intimately tied together back in the '60s, if not now: progressive politics, drugs and rock'n'roll. The first concert I ever booked, as freshman class president, was the Freshman Dance. The campus squares were eager to put on a suit and tie, ask their gals on a date, give them a corsage and do a slow dance.

Colombia Peace Talks Survive Elections, May Have Lasting Implications for Regional Integration and US-Led “War on Drugs”

By Peter Hayakawa | CEPR Americas Blog | June 19, 2014 Ending a very close race, incumbent Juan Manuel Santos won a decisive five-point victory Sunday in Colombia’s second round of presidential elections, beating challenger Óscar Iván Zuluaga, who had won the first round in an upset. The campaign had centered on two related issues: […]

Colombia Peace Talks Survive Elections, May Have Lasting Implications for Regional Integration and US-Led “War on Drugs”

By Peter Hayakawa | CEPR Americas Blog | June 19, 2014 Ending a very close race, incumbent Juan Manuel Santos won a decisive five-point victory Sunday in Colombia’s second round of presidential elections, beating challenger Óscar Iván Zuluaga, who had won the first round in an upset. The campaign had centered on two related issues: […]

The lessons of Russell Brand’s TV clash

The most interesting thing about these confrontations is watching Brand’s skilful manoeuvring as he refuses to allow himself to be intellectually sidetracked or cornered. It’s like watching an Olympic athlete. He has to use every skill in his considerable emotional and intellectual armoury: humour, matiness, intelligence, quick-wittedness, compassion, muted anger.