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Hillary Clinton’s Dark Drug War Legacy in Mexico

Jesse Franzblau March 2, 2016 Jesse Franzblau

Source: Foreign Policy in Focus

Clinton’s State Department overlooked human rights abuses and corruption while keeping a lucrative flow of contracts moving to U.S. security firms working in Mexico.

Mexico, John M. Ackerman wrote recently for Foreign Policy, “is not a functional democracy.” Instead, it’s a “repressive and corrupt” oligarchy propped up by a “blank check” from Washington.

Since 2008, that blank check has come to over $2.5 billion appropriated in security aid through the Mérida Initiative, a drug war security assistance program funded by Washington. Negotiated behind closed doors in the last years of the Bush administration, the plan was originally proposed as a three-year program. Yet Hillary Clinton’s State Department pushed aggressively to extend it, overseeing a drastic increase of the initiative that continues today. read more

Report-Back from the Revolution in Rojava: Burlington, VT Event

Various Authors February 25, 2016 Various Authors

Amidst the Syrian civil war and on the front lines of the fight against ISIS, the Kurdish people in northern Syria are building a face-to-face democratic, gender-equal, and ecological revolution from the ground up. Burlington resident Janet Biehl has visited Rojava twice on solidarity delegations, most recently in October, and will be discussing the promises and challenges the revolution is facing.

Should Henry Kissinger Mentor a Presidential Candidate?

Medea Benjamin February 12, 2016 Medea Benjamin

At the February 11 Democratic Debate, Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton had a spirited exchange about an unlikely topic: the 92-year old former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Sanders berated Clinton for saying that she appreciated the foreign policy mentoring she got from Henry Kissinger. “I happen to believe,” said Sanders, “that Henry Kissinger was one of the most destructive secretaries of state in the modern history of this country.”

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Noam Chomsky: Notion of Elite Guardian Class Dates Back to Founding of US

Noam Chomsky February 12, 2016 Noam Chomsky

Source: Truthout

In this excerpt from What Kind of Creatures Are We?, Noam Chomsky discusses the historical embedding of an elite “guardian class” in US society going back to the framers of the Constitution.

I mentioned that [John] Dewey and American workers held one version of democracy, with strong libertarian elements. But the dominant version has been a very different one. Its most instructive expression is at the progressive end of the mainstream intellectual spectrum, among good Wilson-FDR-Kennedy liberal intellectuals. Here are a few representative quotes. read more

Big Oil Uses Toxic Chemicals to Clean Up Spills. Will the Feds Finally Make Them Stop?

Lisa Katzman February 9, 2016 Lisa Katzman

In 2010, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded, killing 11 workers and setting off the worst oil spill in US history. The images are unforgettable: The Gulf of Mexico on fire. Pelicans emerging from the water entirely covered in thick, black oil. Planes flying overhead, spraying more than a million gallons of an oil-dispersing chemical called Corexit in an attempt to control the spill.