“Selling weapons isn’t just something you do for economic reasons,” says Andrew Smith, a spokesman for the UK group Campaign against Arms Trade (CAAT). “When you sell weapons, what you are doing is giving political support to the government you are dealing with."
What few realize is that a movement often described as “‘leaderless,” and largely framed by the bodies of slain black men and boys, is being propelled by the efforts of women of color.
Source: TomDispatch.com
The 1960s — that extraordinary decade — is celebrating its 50th birthday one year at a time. Happy birthday, 1965! How, though, do you commemorate the Vietnam War, the era’s signature catastrophe? After all, our government prosecuted its brutal and indiscriminate war under false pretexts, long after most citizens objected, and failed to achieve any of its stated objectives. More than 58,000 Americans were killed along with more than four million Vietnamese, Laotians, and Cambodians.
Our current democratic models are crumbling and outdated. We need to make something more real and meaningful.
A caravan of buses, security vehicles, indigenous leaders and backpackers with Che T-shirts wove their way down a muddy road through farmers’ fields last Wednesday to the pre-colonial city of Tiwanaku, where Bolivian President Evo Morales was ceremonially inaugurated into his third term in office.
Jazz was the opposite of everything Harry Anslinger, the first commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (established in 1930), believed in. It is improvised, and relaxed, and free-form. It follows its own rhythm. Worst of all, it is a mongrel music made up of European, Caribbean and African echoes, all mating on American shores.
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