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"The main problem with the drug war is the concept that there are good drugs and bad drugs," when what's actually good or bad "is the relationship between the person and the drug, and the context in which the drug is taken."

In our current hyper-productive, "time-is-money" motivated community, the idea of a "9 to 5″ working hours doesn't really are available any longer. The time spent at work, whether at the office or any other place, often competing the time spent targeted on anything else in our lifestyle. With the convenience of technology, work has crept into the sides of our everyday living and essentially obliterated the stability between the public and private dichotomies that were once clearly separated. From Islamic Point of View As Muslims, the fact that Islam is a way of lifestyle and not just a perception, punches an even greater wrench into the frustrating complexness of keeping personal perception levels and discussing work circumstances. From arranged wishes and guidelines of modesty, to a month of going on a fast and limited sex connections, God-consciousness prevails in all that a exercising Islamic does. So, when work seems to leak over into lifestyle and individuals are frustrated from providing perception into the office, how does a Islamic reunite the requirements of the office without limiting his or her faith?

Islam is a balanced religion. It believes in respecting all sects, all cultures and all civilizations. All laws relate to Islam are meant for Muslim benefits . It is true that in the recent years, Islam has become a victim of extremism. The purpose of Islam has never been to spread Islamophobia. Islamic ideas have been exploited to give them the shape of Islamophobia. Islam does not define a mosque and state as distinctive. A mosque is there, to provide a forum to the Muslim to unite and pray. The gesture is to promote congregational prayers, which is also an aspect of Christianity. Islam does not believe in forcing its concepts upon Non-Muslims. Unethical Jehad has never been an Islamic thought. It is just that some extremist groups are trying to manipulate Islam and use the Ideals to their benefit. Islam believes in respecting all religions. That is what the Holy Prophet (PBUH) taught the Muslims. Islam does not preach unkindness to any. May it be your enemy or slave. These are not the aspects of Jihad. A woman can legally have a physical relationship with her husband only. It is definitely no concept of Jihad. Islam believes in respecting a woman, not exploiting her dignity and respect. Islam does not allow illegal confiscation of property during Jihad. Islam does not promote destruction. Taxes does not mean degrading. Taxes are defined to establish a system and maintain a proper division of wealth. If Christian and jews had to pay Jiziah, Muslims had to pay Zakat .Brutality is not a custom of Islam. A Muslim derives so much contentment from Islamic values, that they do not need to run away from the religion. Anything , which drives a person from sanity is not liked in Islam. The reason being that all wrongs can be committed, when a person is drunk and is not in a normal state of mind. This is human nature, that we cannot drive contentment until we avenge someone for the bad they have done to us. However Islam prefers forgiveness. Sometimes a harsh punishment

Jeffrey Goldberg responded yesterday to my post detailing his long list of journalistic malfeasance by telling me that he and the Prime Minister of Iraqi Kuridstan would like me to travel there to hear how much the Kurds appreciate the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Leaving aside the complete non sequitur that is his response -- how does that remotely pertain to Goldberg's granting of anonymity to his friends to smear people they don't like or the serial fear-mongering fabrications he spread about the Saddam threat prior to the invasion? -- I don't need to travel to Kurdistan to know that many Kurds, probably most, are happy that the U.S. attacked Iraq. For that minority in Northern Iraq, what's not to like? They had foreign countries (the U.S. and its "partners") expend their citizens' lives and treasure to rid the Kurds of their hated enemy; they received semi-autonomy, substantial oil revenues, a thriving relationship with Israel, and real political power; the overwhelming majority of the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis whose lives were snuffed out and the millions of people displaced by the war were not Kurds, and most of the destruction took place in Central and Southern Iraq away from their towns and homes, while they remain largely free of the emergent police state tactics of the current Iraqi government. As Ali Gharib put it to Goldberg: "there are at least 600,000 Iraqis who, I imagine, are not too thrilled about the way it all turned out and with whom Greenwald will never get a meeting."

John Pilger's documentary explores the historic and current relationship of Washington with countries such as Venezuela, Bolivia and Chile. Pilger claims that the film "...tells a universal story... analyzing and revealing, through vivid testimony, the story of great power behind its venerable myths. It allows us to understand the true nature of the so-called "war on terror". According to Pilger, the films message is that the greed and power of empire is not invincible and that people power is always the "seed beneath the snow". Pilger interviews several ex-CIA agents who purportedly took part in secret campaigns against democratic countries and who he claims are profiting from the war in Iraq. He investigates the School of the Americas in the U.S. state of Georgia, where General Pinochets torture squads were reportedly trained along with tyrants and death-squad leaders in Haiti, El Salvador, Brazil and Argentina.

Analysis of the relationship between journalism and politics, and the way the Internet has changed things. Worth reading all the way through

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and U.S. President Barack Obama have become quite the pen pals as of late. Yet, cutting through the niceties contained within letters they had recently exchanged, one can sense an underlining tension between the so-called strategic partners, exposing a vitreous relationship filled with mistrust.

"Is globalisation inevitable and irreversible? This column argues that globalisation is a policy choice. It examines the relationship between military expansion and international trade flows, finding that increased nationalist and militarist sentiments are negatively associated with trade. A 10% increase in military spending between 1985 and 2005 is associated with a reduction in the trade share of GDP of around 2%."

To know what the most important virtue of our age is we need to have at least a basic understanding of our age. Our era is becoming increasingly characterized by uncertainty. Fortunately or unfortunately, more than a cursory elucidation of our situation is beyond the scope of this essay. There are geopolitical, economic, technological and environmental trends worth mentioning. When the more philosophical portion of this  discourse arrives I will argue that the virtue of wisdom underlies the meaningfulness and efficacy of all other virtues, and this in broad strokes is primarily due to (1) the aforementioned instability in our surroundings ; (2) the relationship between the deontological and virtue; and (3) the nature of agency itself.  Whether uncertainty itself can provide an ethical foundation for us to elaborate on will be a separate question, and finally I speculate on where wisdom leads us in the context of a philosophy that is politically active and not doomed to irrelevance to and by the larger population.

(Part 2 of 2 - see first part below) What impact do the incredible salaries of superstars have on the rest of us? What has changed, technologically and socially, to precipitate these inequities? This article also offers a brief look at the relationship between income inequality and economic growth, comparing the US throughout its history and the US vis a vis several European countries.

What impact do the incredible salaries of superstars have on the rest of us? What has changed, technologically and socially, to precipitate these inequities? This article also offers a brief look at the relationship between income inequality and economic growth, comparing the US throughout its history and the US vis a vis several European countries. (Part 1 of 2)

The Occupy Wall Street movement is well into its second week of operation, and is now getting more attention from media as well as from people planning similar actions across the country. This is a promising populist mobilization with a clear message against domination by political and economic elites. Against visions of a bleak and stagnant future, the occupiers assert the optimism that a better world can be made in the streets. They have not resigned themselves to an order where the young are presented with a foreseeable future of some combination of debt, economic dependency, and being paid little to endure constant disrespect, an order that tells the old to accept broken promises and be glad to just keep putting in hours until they can't work anymore. The occupiers have not accepted that living in modern society means shutting up about how it functions. In general, the occupiers see themselves as having more to gain than to lose in creating a new political situation - something that few who run the current system will help deliver. They are not eager for violence, and have shown admirable restraint in the face of attack by police. There may be no single clear agenda, but there is a clear message: that people will have a say in their political and economic lives, regardless of what those in charge want. Occupy Wall Street is a kind of protest that Americans are not accustomed to seeing. There was no permit to protest, and it has been able to keep going on through unofficial understandings between protestors and police. It is not run by professional politicians, astroturfers, or front groups with barely-hidden agendas. Though some organizations and political figures have promoted it, Occupy Wall Street is not driven by any political party or protest organization. It is a kind of protest that shows people have power when they are determined to use it. Occupy Wall Street could be characterized as an example of a new type of mass politics, which has been seen in

Below is full text: For the International Workers Association (IWA) class struggle is not a theoretical abstraction but a fact in the daily lives of workers. Our way of organizing is expressed through democratic federalist structures based on recallable delegates. The IWA rejects class collaboration in all its forms. Works councils and other corporatist bodies based on social partnership are means of undermining class struggle. State funding is designed to undermine independent working class action and organization. For us the only relationship between worker and boss can be class struggle. And class struggle must grow until capitalism and the state is swept away by the solidarity of the international working class - to be replaced by the free federation of workers associations based on libertarian communism! In recent years the IWA has organized countless international campaigns in support of workers worldwide. The attacks come in many fields and in Spain by the various labour reforms, cuts in the pension system, reform of collective bargaining and social cuts. On September 29 , the CNT-AIT with other unions and social organizations will take to the street, in the process of building towards a general strike! It is in this anarchosyndicalist spirit that the IWA-Secretariat sends its greetings and support to the Spanish CNT-AIT and all workers who by self- activity, protests, direct actions and solidarity are engaged in the fight against the capitalist offensive! Oslo, September 27th 2011 IWA-Secretariat

Gilens examines the extent to which different social groups find their policy preferences reflected in actual government policy and the variation in these patterns across time and policy domains. For example, when Americans with low and high incomes disagree on policy, are policy outcomes more likely to reflect the preferences of affluent Americans? If so, does the advantage of more affluent Americans differ over time (e.g., depending on which party controls the congress and presidency) or across policy domains? Similarly, are Republicans or Democrats in the population more likely to get the policies they prefer when their party is in control of national political institutions? Because his database contains policy preferences broken down by income, education, partisanship, sex, race, region, religion, and union/non-union status, Gilens will be able to address a multitude of questions concerning government responsiveness to public preferences. For this study, Gilens uses data on public preferences and policy outcomes based on 754 national survey questions from 1992 through 1998 and restrict his attention to divergent policy preferences of low- and high-income Americans. Each of these survey questions asks respondents whether they support or oppose some proposed change in U.S. national policy, and he has used historical information sources to determine whether each proposed change occurred or not (within a four-year coding window from the date of the survey question). When Gilens looks separately at respondents with different incomes, he finds that the higher an individual's income, the more likely it is that government policy will reflect his or her preferences. This relationship, however, does not increase in a linear fashion: the difference between poor and middle-income Americans is modest compared with the difference between those with middle and high incomes. In other words, it is not that the poor are especially less likely than middle-income Americans to get

When we study Marx in my graduate social theory course, it never fails that at least one student will say (approximately), "Class struggle didn't escalate in the way Marx expected. In modern capitalist societies class struggle has disappeared. So isn't it clear that Marx was wrong and his ideas are of little value today?" I respond by challenging the premise that class struggle has disappeared. On the contrary, I say that class struggle is going on all the time in every major institution of society. One just has to learn how to recognize it. One needn't embrace the labor theory of value to understand that employers try to increase profits by keeping wages down and getting as much work as possible out of their employees. As the saying goes, every successful capitalist knows what a Marxist knows; they just apply the knowledge differently. Workers' desire for better pay and benefits, safe working conditions, and control over their own time puts them at odds with employers. Class struggle in this sense hasn't gone away. In fact, it's inherent in the relationship between capitalist employer and employee. What varies is how aggressively and overtly each side fights for its interests.