Tag: North America

April 5 marked the 32nd anniversary of former Nirvana lead singer Kurt Cobain’s death, supposedly from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. This past year, an unofficial private sector team of forensic scientists that put fresh eyes on Cobain’s autopsy and the crime scene material concluded that Cobain’s death actually resulted from...
No Wonder They Have Betrayed the Legacy of Frank Church  The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) was established in 1977 as a consequence of post-Church Committee reforms intended to prevent the perpetuation of CIA abuses that were exposed in the 1975/76 Church Committee.  The first chairman of the HPSCI (1977-1985), Edward Boland (D-MA),...
In the light of the proliferation of unilateral coercive measures (UCMs, wrongly characterized “sanctions”) and the adverse human rights impacts they generate worldwide, the question arises what measures States should adopt to counter the UCM plague. Diplomatic protection on behalf of individuals and corporations harmed by UCMs is an under-utilized...
In the late 1980s, as a journalism, film and creative writing student at Northwestern University, Ami Chen Mills was a leader in the student movement to remove the CIA from college campuses.  Today, more than 35 years later, Mills remains committed to social justice causes and is running to become...
Leary Helped Destroy the 1960s New Left by Turning the Youth onto Drugs During the mid-1960s, as political activism against the Vietnam War and other social ills skyrocketed, Dr. Timothy Leary, a former University of California at Berkeley and Harvard professor, traveled the U.S. urging young people to “turn...
The late Mario Savio was a leading light of the Free Speech Movement (FSM) at the University of California, Berkeley. His 1964 speech is now legend: There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part! You...
Imagine being forced to prove how old you are—and having it verified by a third party—before unlocking your phone or signing up for a social media site. That’s the goal of legislation introduced or passed in some U.S. states, the UK and Australia...
1. Modern Imperialism and the Structural Logic of War In the history of United States foreign policy, wars have rarely been the product of an immediate and unavoidable threat; rather, they have often been the outcome of a complex process of narrative construction, economic interests, and geopolitical calculations. The recent...
In 1997, Ambassador Robert Houdek was the senior U.S. official in eastern Congo. His job was to assist in the repatriation of Hutu refugees who fled Rwanda after the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) took control following Rwanda’s 1990-1994 civil war. A former senior U.S. official characterized Houdek as “our man...
On November 22, 1963, the same day as the JFK assassination, Mehdi Ben Barka, an anti-colonial politician and head of the left-wing Union of Popular Forces (UNFP) of Morocco, was sentenced to death in absentia for conspiracy to overthrow King Hassan II. The sentence was carried out two years later...