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March 2012

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By the time you read this new facts will have emerged, but this is what we know so far. Trayvon Martin, a 17 year old young man, leaves his father’s fiancee’s house, buys a pack of Skittles and an Arizona ice tea then heads home. En route, George Zimmerman – a neighborhood watch cop– notices Trayvon ‘walking around and looking about’. Zimmerman calls the police, reports what he sees, and against advice from the dispatcher continues to follow Trayvon. Between this telephone call and the arrival of the police, Zimmerman kills Trayvon in “self-defense”. Testimony from witnesses, the 911 transcripts and other facts make this claim suspicious, but he has yet to be charged with a crime. George Zimmerman is 28 years old and weighs 250 lbs. Trayvon Martin was 17 and weighed 140 lbs. Zimmerman was armed with a 9mm handgun. Trayvon was unarmed. Mr. Zimmerman has a history…

The goal of a ‘Drug Free Society’ resembles that of a “Workers’ Paradise” or a “Rational Market” in its presumption that human beings are both predictable and perfectible, as long as the state behaves in one way or another and the consequence of inaction will be – not the status quo – but chaos. To stave off this apocalypse, the drug prohibitionist demands ever expanding freedoms and powers, with the dubious end goal of eliminating both the supply and the demand for drugs. His model nations are countries like Singapore or Malaysia, but the popularity of drugs among the middle class and educated  constrains him. Instituting Singapore’s laws would mean militarizing suburban police departments, imprisoning millions and executing thousands of  his core constituency, thus transforming his existential crusade into a protracted war against the weak. Addicts, poor communities, and developing countries pay the highest price for the drug war, and…