Laura Carlsen

What's 50 percent of 99 percent?

Hint: This isn't a math quiz. To put the question in non-numerical terms: Where are women in the global economic crisis?

The movement of the 99 percent that began in the United States made visible the human beings who suffer the brutal inequality and...

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden traveled to Honduras on March 6 with a double mission: to quell talk of drug legalization and reinforce the U.S.-sponsored drug war in Central America, and to bolster the presidency of Porfirio Lobo.

The Honduran government issued a statement that during the one-hour closed-door conversation...

Vice President Joe Biden landed in Mexico City Sunday night for a two-day trip to that country and Honduras. He's left little doubt about his mission: to lock in the regional drug war. Biden's visit comes amid mounting calls to end prohibitionist laws and move away from the...

There are many kinds of war. The classic image of a uniformed soldier kissing mom good-bye to risk his life on the battlefield has changed dramatically. In today's wars, it's more likely that mom will be the one killed.

The UN Development Program states that by...

The image of Nero fiddling as Rome burned -- albeit apocryphal -- has stuck as the metaphor for willfully irresponsible government. Government representatives, gathered at climate change talks in Durban, South Africa, have been fiddling for the past week. Of the hundreds of closed-door sessions, official meetings and informational seminars,...

Since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) became the law of the land, millions of Mexicans have joined the ranks of the hungry. Malnutrition is highest among the country's farm families, who used to produce enough food to feed the nation.

As the blood-spattered violence of the drug war...

After curving through miles of Quebec's countryside, the road to Montebello arrives at an enormous log cabin along the Ottawa River. Busloads of women pull up, from Rwanda, Colombia, the Congo, Mexico, Bosnia, Burma -- women who think they can change the world.

The plan isn't to change the whole...

A secret operation to run guns across the border to Mexican drug cartels -- overseen by U.S. government agents -- threatens to become a major scandal for the Obama administration.

The operation, called "Fast and Furious," was run out of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives...

Mexico's Felipe Calderon and Barack Obama met this week to do damage control following a series of blows to the binational relationship. But while most analysts emphasized the tensions between the neighboring countries going into the meeting, the real crisis behind the visit was the failure of what the two...

The UN Climate Conference (COP16) in Cancun is turning out to be both anti-climactic and anti-climatic.

There will be no major agreement to stop global warming this week, despite the timed release of a number of reports that show that the phenomenon is advancing more rapidly than expected, with...

Following the failure of world leaders to arrive at any binding agreements during the last climate talks at Copenhagen, there appears to be little hope for meaningful action at the November/December climate change talks in Cancun, Mexico. In place of climate change skepticism, debunked by overwhelming scientific evidence, leaders are...

In the months leading up to today's vote on California's Proposition 19 to legalize recreational use of marijuana, opponents of legalization have issued a barrage of confused and contradictory arguments. Their aim is to somehow debunk the common-sense fact that legal sourcing erodes the black-market profits of organized...

In response to a recent question about the American government’s actions (or lack thereof) regarding drug-related violence in Mexico, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton offered the administration’s boldest statement yet on the question of military intervention. Mexico, she said, “is looking more and more like Colombia looked 20 years...

The rupture of diplomatic relations between Venezuela and Colombia after a special session of the Organization of American States (OAS) on July 22 marks increased animosity between the outgoing Colombian President Alvaro Uribe and Venezuela's president Hugo Chavez.

The dispute between the two bombastic leaders from opposite political poles is...

Sergio Hernandez Guereca's short life revolved around the U.S.-Mexico border that ultimately led to his death. On June 7, at approximately 6:30 p.m., a U.S. Border Patrol agent shot the 15-year-old Hernandez in the face in Mexican territory between Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, and El Paso, Texas.

Most of the...

When international human rights observers rounded a curve on a remote road in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, they found the way blocked by boulders. They decided going forward would be dangerous. But they didn't know that going back would be deadly.

As...

When the top brass of U.S. and Mexican security met in Mexico City March 24, they took historic steps to ratchet up U.S. involvement in Mexico's failed drug war. At the same time, Mexicans are demanding an end to the disastrous strategy.

The "High-Level Consultative Group" met amid an...

Colombia’s congressional elections on March 14 were hailed by the United Nations as the most peaceful in years. The victory of the coalition led by President Alvaro Uribe suggests an easy win for his party in the presidential elections scheduled for May 30.

But celebrating the absence of bombings...

On January 31, an armed commando unit pulled up to a house in a working-class neighborhood in Ciudad Juarez on the Mexican side of the border with the United States. Inside the house, 60 teenagers were celebrating a friend's birthday. Wielding high-caliber weapons, the commandos opened fire on the kids,...

On Nov. 2 representatives from Honduran women's organizations presented a grim panorama of violations of women's human rights by the de facto regime led by Roberto Micheletti before the Inter-American Human Rights Commission.

Their testimonies provided documented proof that the coup regime and its security forces have been responsible for...