Since Richard Nixon proclaimed the 鈥淲ar on Drugs鈥 four decades ago, drug use around the world has skyrocketed.
From 1998 to 2008 alone, global opiate use rose 34.5%, cocaine 28% and marijuana 8.5%.
People in the US are the world鈥檚 largest users of cocaine, Colombian heroin, Mexican heroin and marijuana. When Nixon launched the 鈥渨ar鈥, his initial budget was US$100 million for the first year. This has ballooned year after year, until it was $15.6 billion for 2011.
Given this, here are many commentators who proclaim that the 鈥渨ar on drugs鈥 has failed.
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It takes more than an individual to upset the international chessboard as dramatically as it has been in the past decade.
Forces unleashed by the logic of capitalism have drawn a new geopolitical map, in which the United States has lost its former place as the world's centre of gravity and the ultimate arbiter of the key issues of the economy, politics and war.
Yet, though changes of such magnitude were obviously not the work of one person, the late Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez鈥檚 hallmark was a profound intuition of this impending change.
At the most highly contaminated US nuclear site, redundancy notices went out on March 18 to nearly 250 workers. More than 2500 others were notified they faced temporary layoffs of several weeks.
About 9000 people work at Washington State's Hanford Nuclear Reservation, which produced plutonium for US nuclear weapons during World War II and the Cold War.
Contractors are cleaning up the highly contaminated site and removing millions of gallons of radioactive waste for treatment at a plant now under construction.
The Managed Heart, Commercialization of Human Feeling
Arlie Russell Hochschild
University of California Press, 2012
339pp, $39.95
Forcing front line staff to engage at a 鈥減ersonal level鈥 with customers has been an increasingly obnoxious part of low paid workers鈥 employment.
To obscure the all-pervasive low quality of the 鈥渇ood鈥 and 鈥渟ervices鈥 that capitalism offers, what is sold now is the 鈥渆xperience鈥 of social interaction. Key to the Happy Meal is the 鈥渉appy sale鈥.
Venezuelan officials announced on Wednesday that they are breaking off talks with US diplomats, accusing the United States government of interfering in Venezuela鈥檚 internal affairs ahead of next month鈥檚 elections.
A landmark ruling in Sydney on February 15 gave the biotechnology industry an unprecedented right to make huge profits from genetic testing.
The case involved the breast cancer genes BRCA 1 and BRCA 2 and the right of US biotechnology company Myriad Genetics to have exclusive licence to a patent over their use in research.
Federal Court Justice John Nicholas had ruled that a private company can continue to hold a patent over an isolated gene, in this case, the BRCA gene. The BRCA gene is responsible for repairing or removing defective DNA cells.
Over the past year, we have seen a huge rise in activity around women鈥檚 rights in Australia and other parts of the world.
Attention has turned to a range of horrific individual tragedies as well as broader issues, including sexual assault and violence against women, the disparity in income between men and women, and a debate about misogyny.
Although the idea that feminism is no longer relevant still dominates, women know through experience that sexism is rife. They are learning to organise together and taking to the streets in large numbers to demand change.
As an Aboriginal woman, from the Kairi and Gubbi Gubbi nations of central Queensland, I identify with oppressed people around the world and I see our liberation as tied closely to that of other indigenous and subjugated peoples.
In September last year, I had the great pleasure of participating in the Australian Venezuelan Solidarity Network Brigade.
Do oil spills make good economic sense? A witness called by Canadian firm Enbridge Inc鈥 which wants approval to build a $6.5 billion pipeline linking Alberta鈥檚 tar sands with the Pacific coast 鈥 in British Columbia that the answer is yes.
More than 200 people attended the "Todos Somos Chavez 鈥 We Are All Chavez" memorial meeting at the Addison Community Centre on March 16.
The event was one of several memorials held around Australia to honour the life and political struggles of Venezuelan socialist leader Hugo Chavez.
Organised by the We Are All Chavez Committee, and supported by the Embassy of Venezuela in Australia, the event featured a night of toasts, music and videos in memory of Chavez.
Several prominent people have signed a letter to the Australian government calling for Jock Palfreeman, a young Australian in prison in Bulgaria, to be brought back to Australia.
Supporters of the call to bring Palfreeman home include author and documentary filmmaker John Pilger, Julian Burnside QC, former NSW Greens MP Sylvia Hale, author Antony Loewenstein, Moreland City Councillor Sue Bolton, Vivienne Porzsolt from Jews against the Occupation, 91自拍论坛 Weekly editors Mel Barnes and Stuart Munckton and Professor Wendy Bacon.
The abortive leadership spill in the Labor party on March 22 was yet another demonstration of its total political bankruptcy.
Kevin Rudd's leadership ambitions may now be in the dustbin of history but Prime Minister Julia Gillard has won a pyrrhic victory.
The public watched this gross display of principle-free power play in disgust. It seemed to make a government led by Liberal leader Tony Abbott a virtual certainty.
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