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WASHINGTON - The pro-legalization group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition fretted that President Barack Obama and Mexican President Felipe Calderon were embarking on a counterproductive mission after the two pledged "renewed cooperation" on the drug war Thursday. "Legalization is the only way to end the cartel violence, just like ending alcohol prohibition was the only way to make gangsters stop shooting each other over beer and liquor distribution," Tom Angell, a spokesman for Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, told Raw Story in an e-mail. "How many more police officers and innocent civilians will these leaders allow to die before they finally tackle the one true solution to this violence?" "Both presidents have said recently that legalizing and regulating drugs is a legitimate topic for discussion, so it would truly be a shame if they didn't take the time to talk about this issue when they met behind closed doors," he said.

Countless fruit groves across the Gaza Strip are now gone, entire farms bulldozed. The remains of thousands of destroyed homes emit toxic asbestos, while dilapidated infrastructure dumps raw sewage into the Mediterranean Sea. An already deepening environmental crisis in the besieged Gaza Strip has been further compounded by the recent war.

Gaza is a Kafkaesque situation that makes a joke out of rational geopolitical discussion.

Recently, a controversy raged in the blogosphere about whether neo-liberalism has been a bane or a boon for the world economy. The argument is rather coarse, in that it fails to distinguish between the various elements of neo-liberalism, or moderate deregulation vs. extreme deregulation. But if we take the argument at face value, one of the major claims of neoliberals is that countries in the world which are more neoliberal are more successful (because they are more neoliberal). I disagree. My disagreement is not with the raw correlation between the Heritage Index and Per Capita GDP. A number is a number. My disagreement is with the composition of the index itself, and interpreting this correlation as causation between neo-liberalism and 'good things.' My primary contention below is that many of these measures used in the composite Heritage Index have nothing to do with less government, and a lot more to do with good government. It is these measures of good government that correlate to economic growth and drive the overall correlation between the "Freedom Index" and positive outcomes. Secondarily, I will argue that many of the other items in the index (like investment freedom) are not causes of growth, but rather outcomes of growth.

During a brief radio interview on Monday, conservative political commentator and frequent Fox News guest Dick Morris said he strongly opposed Texas Republican Rep. Ron Paul due to the congressman's stance against the drug war and war on terrorism.

Some sixty percent of the world's economies will be so in debt by 2060 that their debt will be downgraded to "junk" status, effectively bankrupting the countries, says a report from Standard & Poor's ratings agency, which also warns that attempts to deal with the problem could cause social instability.

GENEVA - The number of very poor countries has doubled in the last 30 to 40 years, while the number of people living in extreme poverty has also grown two-fold, a UN think-tank warned Thursday. In its annual report on the 49 least developed countries (LDCs) in the world, the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) said that the model of development that has prevailed to date for these countries has failed and should be re-assessed.

OTTAWA - The first burst of controversy from the next crop of MPs came not from a raw NDP rookie but from the party's experienced deputy leader who said he doesn't believe the United States has photos of Osama bin Laden's body.

In a disturbing scene from today's "Occupy Wall Street" protests, a group of peaceful female protesters were rounded up in an orange-colored mesh pen by police and subsequently sprayed with mace without any provocation. In spite of multiple reported incidents of possible police violence, major media outlets seem to be content to let the protests go by completely unreported, following the same "who-cares" attitude they have taken toward recent revelations that the NYPD has violated the Constitutional rights of American citizens by spying on them as possible terrorists and enemies of the state despite a complete absence of evidence of any crimes.

Prison inmates have replaced union workers in Racine County, Wisconsin, thanks to the changes to the states collective bargaining laws that went into effect at the end of June. The Journal Times reported prison inmates will now be able to do tasks such as landscaping, painting, and shoveling sidewalks in the winter that were previously performed by unionized employees. Inmates are not required to do any work for the county, but can receive time off their sentence if they do. Racine County Executive Jim Ladwig said the use of prison labor would not result in any public works staff reductions. "We're gonna have them do landscaping at county buildings, have them pick up trash on the roads," he told local Fox News 6. "So we can use some of the county personnel to do difficult tasks, such as putting in a parking lot at the park." Republican Gov. Scott Walker signed a non-fiscal version of his budget plan into law in March that stripped nearly all collective bargaining rights from Wisconsin public workers, giving officials the power to make many changes affecting workers without formal negotiations. (H/T: Alex Seitz-Wald)

By now, you probably think your opinion of Goldman Sachs and its swarm of Wall Street allies has rock-bottomed at raw loathing. You're wrong. There's more. It turns out that the most destructive of all their recent acts has barely been discussed at all. Here's the rest. This is the story of how some of the richest people in the world - Goldman, Deutsche Bank, the traders at Merrill Lynch, and more - have caused the starvation of some of the poorest people in the world. It starts with an apparent mystery. At the end of 2006, food prices across the world started to rise, suddenly and stratospherically. Within a year, the price of wheat had shot up by 80 per cent, maize by 90 per cent, rice by 320 per cent. In a global jolt of hunger, 200 million people - mostly children - couldn't afford to get food any more, and sank into malnutrition or starvation. There were riots in more than 30 countries, and at least one government was violently overthrown. Then, in spring 2008, prices just as mysteriously fell back to their previous level. Jean Ziegler, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, calls it "a silent mass murder", entirely due to "man-made actions."

The free-spending role of corporations in California's electoral system has come under fire as the state prepares to vote on two referendum which opponents have condemned as a "hijacking" of democracy.

Incredible foreign policy perspective of our future president, I confidently predict (without lending a comment to my personal preferences), will be the next president of the United States of America

A bunch of right wing congressmen, supported by "pro-family organizations," are trying to close a loophole that allows active duty soldiers to buy pornography on base. "Here's a radical idea: how about we let the men and women that put on the uniform and put their lives on the line every day read whatever they want."