During the 1950s I grew up in a family who rooted for the success of African Americans in their just struggle for civil rights and full legal equality. Then in 1962 it was the terror of my own personal imminent nuclear annihilation during the Cuban Missile Crisis that first sparked my interest in studying international relations and U.S. foreign policy as a young boy of 12: "I can do a better job than this!"

With the escalation of the Vietnam War in 1964 and the military draft staring me right in the face, I undertook a detailed examination of it. Eventually I concluded that unlike World War II when my Father had fought and defeated the Japanese Imperial Army as a young Marine in the Pacific, this new war was illegal, immoral, unethical, and the United States was bound to lose it. America was just picking up where France had left off at Dien Bien Phu. So I resolved to do what little I could to oppose the Vietnam War.

In 1965 President Lyndon Johnson gratuitously invaded the Dominican Republic, which prompted me to commence a detailed examination of U.S. military interventions into Latin America from the Spanish-American War of 1898 up to President Franklin Roosevelt's so-called "good neighbor" policy. At the end of this study, I concluded that the Vietnam War was not episodic, but rather systemic: Aggression, warfare, bloodshed, and violence were just the way the United States Financial Power Elite had historically conducted their business around the world and in America. Hence, as I saw it as a young man of 17, there would be more Vietnams in the future and perhaps someday I could do something about it as well as about promoting civil rights for African Americans. These twins concerns of my youth would gradually ripen into a career devoted to international law and human rights.

A back-in-the-day soda fountain in St. Paul has been busted for selling cigarettes -- made of candy.

Lynden's, on Hamline Avenue near Cretin-Derham Hall High School, said a city inspections official came in last week and gave the shop a warning and added that a misdemeanor citation -- with a $500 fine -- would be next if the cancer-free confectionery continues to be sold.

"We got busted [Dec. 19] by the City of St. Paul. Oops," the shop Tweeted.

Candy cigarettes, bubble gum cigars and bubblegum made to look like chewing tobacco have been among a host of vintage sugary treats that Lynden's has kept in stock since it opened in April.

"We had no idea," Tobi Lynden said Wednesday, lamenting that she can no longer sell the white candy sticks with the red tips, her best-selling candy item. "We don't want to get on the bad side of St. Paul."

Lynden said nearly all of the candy cigarette purchases were made by adults.

" 'Oh, I had these when I was little,' " she said she would often hear. "We weren't trying to promote smoking or tobacco use of any kind."

A rickety truck packed with 14 people rumbled down a desert road from the town of Radda, which al-Qaeda militants once controlled. Suddenly a missile struck flipping the vehicle over. Then a second missile hit the truck. Within seconds, 11 of the passengers were dead, including a woman and her seven-year-old daughter. A 12-year-old boy also died that day, and another man later died from his wounds.

The Yemeni government initially said that those killed were al-Qaeda militants and that its own Soviet-era jets carried out the September 2 attack. But last week US officials acknowledged for the first time that it was an American strike and that the victims were civilians.

Twelve days ago, America experienced one of the worst school shootings in history. Twenty children and six adults were killed when Adam Lanza burst into Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut and opened fire with guns and rifles. The massacre shocked the world and caused the country to ask how and why it happened.

The children of Sandy Hook are the highest-profile murder victims, but they are not the only ones. According to figures released by UNICEF, over the past decade more than 20,000 American children have been killed in their own homes by family members.

America has the worst record of child abuse in the industrialized world, and more children die each week in America than died in the school shooting on that day: Twenty children died on Dec. 14, and it, quite rightly, outraged the world. Twenty-seven children died the week before and the week after and nobody noticed. Americans and the news media pay little attention to children murdered every day across the country.

A small sample of children killed (or nearly killed) by parents making news in the weeks before and after the Sandy Hook killings: Camilia Terry of Cleveland was arrested for killing her three-year-old son Emilliano; she claimed he'd been kidnapped but after his body was found in a trash bag at a landfill, her story changed. Nicole Fitzgerald of Baltimore stabbed her two-year-old son to death. Jennifer Lynn Emerick of Huron, Michigan, suffocated her 23-month-old son. Jessica Elizabeth Rhodes of Pennsylvania beat and shook her 14-month-old son so badly it nearly killed him; he suffered brain bleeding and swelling, and eye hemorrhaging.

Kristine Davis of New Hampshire poisoned her seven-month-old son. Veronica Herrera of Boise, Idaho, killed her 2-year-old daughter and burned her body in a barrel in the back yard of her home. Lashay Patterson and her live-in boyfriend, both of Philadelphia, beat and burned her five-year-old son to death.

It's a national tragedy when one man with a gun kills 20 children at once, but when parents do it one at a time every single day in this country it barely makes the local news or raises an eyebrow. Why?

Part of the reason is that the Connecticut shooting perfectly fits the typical "Stranger Danger" social narrative: an evil male preying on other people's innocent children. It's the stereotypical murder, something we can all recognize and fear. But when it's a mother (or, less often, a father) killing her own child, it's often ignored because, after all, as horrific and tragic as the crime is, at least it's her own child, not someone else's.

A ripoff involving hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of cocaine from Mexico was the motive behind the brazen execution of Los Angeles law student Brandon Woodard in the heart of Midtown earlier this month, DNAinfo.com New York has learned.

Law enforcement sources said that the killers - believed to be part of a Queens drug crew - paid "a substantial amount of cash," but never received their shipment of cocaine from the West Coast and were fed up waiting for it.

Woodard was lured to his death on West 58th Street near Seventh Avenue where he was shot in the back of the head in broad daylight.

Sources said the federal Drug Enforcement Administration has joined the probe, considering the bicoastal aspects of the slaying, and its ties to other violence and murders.

"It is really not a homicide investigation," one source said. "It has become a major narcotics case involving a big operation and substantial money, perhaps millions of dollars."

Angry residents beat a man to death and threw rocks at firefighters after a shantytown fire left thousands of people homeless, and another Christmas Day blaze in the Philippine capital left seven people dead, officials said Wednesday.

A resident was beaten to death by his neighbors after shouting that he started Tuesday's shantytown fire in suburban San Juan city, Senior Fire Officer Domingo Cabog said.

The man was reportedly drunk and was not responsible for the fire. Cabog said the fire started in a house where children were playing with lighted candles.

Some 5,000 people were left homeless and 13 people were hurt in the shantytown. The injured included two firefighters and a volunteer hit by rocks that were thrown by residents who were impatient and tried to grab fire hoses to save their own shanties, Cabog said.

A loony part-time chef - who once robbed a bank dressed in his mom's clothes - strangled his Long Island neighbor and then nearly decapitated the corpse before stuffing it in his bedroom closet, cops said yesterday.

Crazy ex-con Aston Barth, 33, of Central Islip, continued to live with his victim's body for nearly a week before his mother and brother discovered it Christmas Eve, cops said.Sean Epps said he had repeatedly gone to Barth's home last week to ask if he had seen their mutual pal, victim Jason Campbell. "The whole time, my friend was in the closet right there," a stunned Epps said yesterday as he set up a makeshift memorial near Campbell's home.

"I don't know how you can just stay in there with a body in your bedroom for a week - I didn't think Aston could do something like this,'' said another Campbell pal, who only gave her first name, Marquise.

Barth - who drew national ridicule in 2007 after robbing a Central Islip bank dressed like a lady despite his thick black mustache - admitted to fatally choking Jason Campbell, a longtime pal, during an argument, authorities said.

Will this be the last normal holiday season that Americans ever experience? To many Americans, such a notion would be absolutely inconceivable. After all, in the affluent areas of the country restaurants and malls are absolutely packed.

Beautiful holiday decorations are seemingly everywhere this time of the year and children all over the United States are breathlessly awaiting the arrival of Santa Claus. Even though poverty is exploding to unprecedented levels, most families will still have mountains of presents under their Christmas trees.

Of course a whole lot of those presents were purchased with credit cards, but people don't like to talk about that. It kind of spoils the illusion. Sadly, the truth is that our entire economy is a giant illusion.

The extreme prosperity that we have been enjoying has been fueled by debt, and any future prosperity that we will experience is completely dependent on our ability to go into even more debt. The total amount of debt in our economy is almost 10 times larger than it was just 30 years ago, but we don't like to think about that too much.

Most Americans are way too busy living the good life to be bothered with "doom and gloom". Well, get ready to say goodbye to normal. As history has shown us, no financial bubble lasts forever, and time is rapidly running out for us.

You know that the hour is late when even mainstream news sources start publishing articles with titles such as this: "Will 2013 Mark the Beginning of American Decline?"

A controversial amendment that would ban US citizens from adopting Russian children passed in a second reading in the State Duma on Wednesday.The draft law retaliates for enactment of the Magnitsky Act in the US, which imposes visa bans and asset freezes on Russian officials deemed guilty of human rights abuses.

The amendment approved on Wednesday would also bar Russian organizations from facilitating adoptions by US citizens.

The original bill, without the ban, passed a first reading last week.

It will come up for a third and final reading on Friday and could come into effect in January once approved by the Federation Council and signed by the president.

An interactive map showing the names and addresses of all handgun permit-holders in New York's Westchester and Rockland counties has drawn a response from mostly disgruntled readers since it was posted Saturday on a newspaper's website.

The interactive map published by the Journal News, prompting more than 1,300 comments as of Tuesday, allows readers to zoom in on red dots that indicate which residents are licensed to own pistols or revolvers.

"So should we start wearing yellow Stars of David so the general public can be aware of who we are??" wrote one commenter.