Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks with Colombian Vice President Angelino Garzon in January, 2011. In her remarks, Clinton praised Colombia’s efforts in “reaching out to civil society to add their voices to a national conversation about human rights and labor rights.” (Photo: US State Department/flickr/cc) A new investigative look at the ties between big business interests in Colombia, former …
More farmers looking at organic crop production
The Organic Trade Association reports that the most recent available numbers on retail sales of organic food totaled $32.3 billion in 2013. And a colleague that I worked with in the past noted that this is more than the farm gate sales of all the corn and soybeans produced in Iowa in 2014. Even if we use high-water mark prices …
How Science Helps Us Find the Good
I’ve been covering the science of human goodness, off and on, for almost ten years. In that time, I’ve seen a dramatic transformation in the way scientists understand how and why we love, thank, empathize, cooperate, and care for each other. Of course, “goodness” doesn’t seem like a very scientific concept. It sounds downright squishy to many people, and thus …
Killer Cops Boost Body Count in War on Black America – Glen Ford
“Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the Old World, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, …
Can Self-Compassion Improve Well-Being in Teens?
Teenagers today face many challenges, often including intense expectations and pressures from their parents, teachers, and friends. Sometimes, however, their harshest critics are not any of these other people, but themselves. Could self-compassion help? In the first study, published this year in The Journal of Positive Psychology, Karen Bluth and Priscilla Blanton surveyed students in middle and high school about their levels of positive …
BLOWBACK AS NATIONAL POLICY
“Empires are lost when inadequate men become leaders and wage war for base reasons or no reason at all.” – Sun Tzu The chorus of hawks and neocons, for whom Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham serve as poster children, have rarely met an international issue that doesn’t require some American muscle. From Iraq to Syria, to Ukraine and the …
BREAKING: In Chicago, Reports of Voters Receiving Ballots Already Marked for Emanuel
Around 10:30 this morning, Sam Dreessen, a 26-year-old unemployed DePaul University graduate (and former In These Times intern) who’s been voting in Chicago since 2006, walked into his polling place at Kozminski Community Academy on 54th and Drexel, a mostly black neighborhood in the city’s 5th Ward. He approached the election judge at the table and, like thousands of Chicagoans on this …
Russia’s Central Bank Governor Is Way Smarter Than Ours
It wouldn’t be a first, but it would certainly be a – bigger – shock. That is to say, the Bank of England hijacked the head of Canada’s central bank some time ago, but, while unexpected enough, that would pale in comparison to the US hiring the present Governor of the Russian central bank, Elvira Sakhipzadovna Nabiullina. It would still …
Visiting the Torture Museum: Barbarism Then and Now
As part of his defense of the techniques used by the Bush administration to gain information, Bradbury went out of his way to play the historian, claiming that the water torture of yore differed from today’s American-style version in crucial ways. The waterboarding employed by interrogators during the infamous Spanish Inquisition, he insisted, “involved the forced consumption of a mass amount …
Researchers probing potential power of meditation as therapy
When Rebecca Erwin was a varsity rower at the University of North Carolina, the coach had the team’s members take a yoga and meditation class. It had an impact. “My teammates and I noticed that yoga and meditation improved our flexibility and focus, but also made us feel better, not just when we were rowing but in our everyday …










