Di James C. Wilson. Originale pubblicato il 17 aprile 2016 con il titolo The Racist and Politically Motivated Origins of the War on Drugs. Traduzione di Enrico Sanna. In primo piano questo mese su Harper’s Magazine, Dan Baum racconta una sua conversazione con l’ex consigliere per la politica interna di Nixon John Ehrlichman, condannato come…

Every Memorial Day and Veterans’ Day, Americans are subjected to endless reruns of an “inspirational” (cringingly stupid) poem by Charles Province, written in 1970: “The Soldier.” “It is the Soldier, not the minister, who has given us freedom of religion.” The poem restates the same basic principle in regard to a series of other freedoms: …

In the cover story of this month’s Harper’s Magazine, author Dan Baum recounts a conversation he had with former Nixon domestic affairs adviser and convicted Watergate co-conspirator John Ehrlichman. Baum states that in 1994, Ehrlichman told him that the Nixon Administration started the War on Drugs as an attack on black Americans and anti-war protesters….

On July 18th, Donald Trump enraged fellow Republicans by stating that Arizona Senator John McCain is “not a war hero.” Trump referenced McCain’s imprisonment by the North Vietnamese stating, “I like people that weren’t captured.” Americans like to think of all their armed servicemen as heroic, and this is especially true of McCain, a POW who was imprisoned…

Saturday Night Live ’ın Citizen Kane parodisinde Charles Foster Kane yavaş bir haber gününde diyorki, “Haber yoksa, biz yaparız”, ve insanları rastgele gazete ofislerinin camlarından atmaya başlıyor. Okuduğum zaman ilk aklıma gelen California’daki iki sivil polis –yağmacılığı başlatmaya çalışınca! — Oakland ve Berkeley’deki jurinin silahsız siyah erkekleri öldüren polisleri suçsuz bulma kararına karşı gelen yürüyüşteki protestocular tarafından kendilerini ele geçirttiklerinin raporu. Evet, doğru, yağmayı başlatmak için teşebbüs — yanlış okumadınız. Gösteriden…

Nella parodia di Citizen Kane fatta su Saturday Night Live, in un giorno di fiacca giornalistica Charles Foster Kane dice: “Se non ci sono notizie, possiamo inventarle,” e comincia a sparare alla cieca quelli che passano fuori dalla finestra della redazione. Questa è stata la prima cosa a cui ho pensato quando ho letto un…

In Saturday Night Live‘s parody of Citizen Kane, on a slow news day Charles Foster Kane says, “if there’s not any news, we’ll make some,” and begins randomly shooting people out the newspaper office window. That’s the first thing I thought of on reading reports that two plainclothes California Highway Patrol cops found themselves outed —…

Just about every week another story comes to my attention confirming the complete and total government-dependency of fracking — beloved of so many self-proclaimed “free market” advocates on the libertarian right. Something about eminent domain to build the pipelines, or liability caps for spills, or regulatory approval of unsafe pipelines superseding tort liability for negligence, and…