When Barack Obama took office, he was the civil liberties communities’ great hope. Obama, a former constitutional law professor, pledged to shutter the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and run a transparent and open government. But he has become a civil libertarian’s nightmare: a supposedly liberal president who instead has expanded and fortified many of the Bush administration’s worst policies, lending bipartisan support for a more intrusive and authoritarian federal government.
It started with the 9/11 attacks. Within a week, Congress, including many liberals, gave the White House blanket authority to wage a war on the terrorists. A month after that, Congress passed the USA Patriot Act, authorizing many anti-terrorism measure including expanded surveillance. By mid-November, the White House ordered creation of military tribunals to try terrorists who were not U.S. citizens.
Bush quickly expanded covert operations, creating a shadow arrest, interrogation and detention system based at Guantanamo that violated international law and evaded domestic oversight. While the Supreme Court eventually ruled that detainees have some rights, the precedent that the Constitution does not restrict how a president conducts an endless war against a stateless enemy was firmly planted. In response, groups like the American Civil Liberties Union proposed reforms the […]
In preparatory talks, the countries of the Western Hemisphere that gathered at the Sixth Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia, this past weekend had agreed on a range of initiatives on mutual interests, from improving access to electricity for the rural poor and fighting criminal syndicates to better preparing for natural disasters. In the run-up, there was wide support, if not full consensus, for public policies that promote international commerce, technological innovation, quality education, and public-private partnerships. Hopes were high that with a competent and engaged Colombian government as host, the summit would be among the most productive.
But that was before some Latin American countries diverted the attention of leaders and the media from the agenda by inserting spoiler issues on which they knew the U.S. delegation would not budge: the failure of the long-standing ‘war on drugs’ and the dislodging of the United Kingdom from the Falkland Islands. It was the demand to admit Cuba to inter-American summitry that ultimately stymied agreement on a final political declaration. More alarming still, key Latin American countries, including Brazil, are now on the public record as refusing to attend another inter-American summit that omits Cuba.
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Monsanto, the massive biotechnology company being blamed for contributing to the dwindling bee population, has bought up one of the leading bee collapse research organizations. Recently banned from Poland with one of the primary reasons being that the company’s genetically modified corn may be devastating the dying bee population, it is evident that Monsanto is under serious fire for their role in the downfall of the vital insects. It is therefore quite apparent why Monsanto bought one of the largest bee research firms on the planet.
It can be found in public company reports hosted on mainstream media that Monsanto scooped up the Beeologics firm back in September 2011. During this time the correlation between Monsanto’s GM crops and the bee decline was not explored in the mainstream, and in fact it was hardly touched upon until Polish officials addressed the serious concern amid the monumental ban. Owning a major organization that focuses heavily on the bee collapse and is recognized by the USDA for their mission statement of ‘restoring bee health and protecting the future of insect pollination
On July 1, 2001, a nationwide law in Portugal took effect that decriminalized all drugs, including cocaine and heroin. Under the new legal framework, all drugs were ‘decriminalized,’ not ‘legalized.’ Thus, drug possession for personal use and drug usage itself are still legally prohibited, but violations of those prohibitions are deemed to be exclusively administrative violations and are removed completely from the criminal realm. Drug trafficking continues to be prosecuted as a criminal offense.
While other states in the European Union have developed various forms of de facto decriminalization - whereby substances perceived to be less serious (such as cannabis) rarely lead to criminal prosecution - Portugal remains the only EU member state with a law explicitly declaring drugs to be ‘decriminalized.’ Because more than seven years have now elapsed since enactment of Portugal’s decriminalization system, there are ample data enabling its effects to be assessed.
Notably, decriminalization has become increasingly popular in Portugal since 2001. Except for some far-right politicians, very few domestic political factions are agitating for a repeal of the 2001 law. And while there is a widespread perception that bureaucratic changes need to be made to Portugal’s decriminalization framework to make it more efficient and effective, there is […]
