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For over seven weeks the world has watched the Occupy movement with varying degrees of interest. The movement has appeared on every continent and one of its most visible protests is happening in Oakland, CA. In order to predict what will be happening here and to understand the global implications of the movement we need to take a look at other hot spots around the globe. Of particular importance is the recent union between Occupy and Anonymous, a hacking group promoting internet freedom.  The t

Zócalo Public Square, a project of the Center for Social Cohesion from Arizona State University, in partnership with the New America Foundation, recently hosted a discussion about Arizona politics. Chief among the topics was: is Arizona politics unique to the state or an early indicator of what's coming for the country in general? Only 35% of Arizona voters are registered Republicans, even as the Right controls the legislature.  SB 1070, the stringent anti-illegal immigration law, got nationwid

The Arizona Meth Project is trying hard, and succeeding at, reducing first-time meth usage by young people "through public service messaging, public policy, and community outreach."  It does so primarily by using modern advertising techniques to create extremely hard-hitting 30 second TV ads with a core message of "Not Even Once." In an ad titled Just Once, three teenage girls are giggling, snorting meth for the first time in a bedroom. The voiceover from one girl says "I'll going to try meth j

Sylvia Longmire's new book Cartel: The Coming Invasion of Mexico's Drug Wars has just been released and is available in bookstores today. She is a retired Air Force captain and Special Agent with extensive experience investigating Mexico Drug Trafficking Organizations (DTO). She now consults and writes about southwest border violence issues and blogs at Mexico's Drug War. I interviewed her last month. Your book implies the violence and corruption of the drug wars will be spilling across the bor

Gary Johnson, the two-term Republican governor of New Mexico, will be included in Thursday night's Fox News presidential debate in Orlando, Florida.  This is the first time he will share the stage with the entire field of contenders for the Republican nomination after being excluded from every debate since after the first one in South Carolina. Howard Kurtz reported Tuesday at The Daily Beast: "The former New Mexico governor won the right to participate, according  to Fox sources, by cracking

A new FBI report released Monday is brimming with startling figures about the four-decades-old War on Drugs. Shockingly, in the United States, there is a drug arrest every 19 seconds, making for a total of 1.6 million drug arrests in 2010 alone. The FBI report also includes data which show that 81.9% of all drug-related arrests in 2010 were for simple possession, not drug dealing, and 45.8% of all drug-related arrests were for possession of marijuana. This indicates that the vast majority of po

Two factors are converging to create a farming crisis in Arizona: one has its origins in domestic policy – hard-line immigration laws which have been harped on endlessly by the press – while the other factor has its roots planted in foreign soil, growing in step with an economy that is outpacing our own. It's odd to hear the phrase “labor shortage” tossed around during a time of double-digit jobless rates, but a lack of a reliable work force is exactly what farmers across the Southwest are expe

Five Arizona counties have been designated by federal agriculture officials as primary natural disaster areas due to damage caused by ongoing drought and related disasters that began in January. Contiguous counties in Colorado, New Mexico and Utah are also part of the declaration which went into effect last week. Apache, Cochise, Graham, Greenlee, and Santa Cruz counties were recognized by the USDA as natural disaster areas on August 16, making all qualified farm operators within those areas el

The ink was barely dry on maps released by the California Citizens Redistricting Commission showing the new Congressional, State Assembly, State Senate, and Board of Equalization districts before the challenges started.  The Commission, which is composed of citizens and not politicians, was mandated by the Voters FIRST Act to redraw the districts in a fair and transparent manner. The Commission held numerous open meetings, asked for and received enormous amounts of public input, then labored mig

The fate of the California Democratic Party's Progressive Caucus remains uncertain following its passage of a resolution calling for a primary challenge to President Obama late last month.  Could the growing rift within the Democratic Party signal the emergence of an Independent progressive movement in California and nationwide? On July 30th, as the White House and Congressional leaders were engaged in last minute negotiations that ended the first round of the debt ceiling debacle, the Executiv