Law Enforcement Against Prohibition continues the fight against insane drug laws.

I just received an email from LEAP (Law Enforcement Against Prohibition). LEAP is an organization consisting of thousands of law enforcement officers and other concerned citizens, all of them dedicated to taking the violence out of the illicit drug trade. Based on the following facts and links, I continue to agree with LEAP that the drug laws of the United States amount to prohibition and that they are insanely destructive.

As we celebrate Valentine's Day and the bonds that bring people together, let us not forget the policies that tear them apart. The drug warriors have taken millions of nonviolent drug offender parents from their families for crimes no more morally offensive than those of the rum runners who managed to make ends meet during the last prohibition.

Between 1986 and 1999, the incarceration rate for women grew by 888%! From 1986 to 1996, the number of women in federal prison for drug “crimes” increased tenfold, from 2,400 to 24,000, and the number continues to increase. Many leave children behind. Today, more than 2.7 million American children have lost a parent to a prison sentence, and two thirds of those parents are nonviolent offenders.

In the name of the children, in the name of the family, the prohibitionists destroy both.

LEAP recently addressed the issue of legalization in YouTube’s annual online town hall meeting with President Obama. Although our question to the president received the highest number of votes among the video entries, it was not aired during the forum, leaving many wondering why the number one question would be passed over in favor of less pressing issues like favorite late night snacks or tennis. While the president may not be comfortable following up on last year’s YouTube question from LEAP, we will keep pushing decision makers to address this issue no matter how many times they avoid it or talk around it, because children of nonviolent drug offenders are getting left behind.

In 1980, one out of every 125 children had a parent behind bars. By 2008, that number had grown to 1 in every 28. Think of the average kindergarten class. Think of the child whose parent is missing. Connect the dots to the rest of that child’s life.

LEAP maintains an excellent website filled with resources for anyone who wants to take the violence out of the use of drugs. From the "About" page of LEAP we learn more of facts and figures demonstrating that the "war on drugs" is a failure:
For four decades the US has fueled its policy of a “war on drugs” with over a trillion tax dollars and increasingly punitive policies. More than 39 million arrests for nonviolent drug offenses have been made. The incarcerated population quadrupled over a 20-year period, making building prisons the nation’s fastest growing industry. More than 2.3 million US citizens are currently in prison or jail, far more per capita than any country in the world. The US has 4.6 percent of the population of the world but 22.5 percent of the world’s prisoners. Each year this war costs the US another 70 billion dollars. Despite all the lives destroyed and all the money so ill spent, today illicit drugs are cheaper, more potent, and much easier to access than they were at the beginning of the war on drugs, 40 years ago. Meanwhile, people continue dying on the streets while drug barons and terrorists continue to grow richer, more powerful, better armed.

Continue ReadingLaw Enforcement Against Prohibition continues the fight against insane drug laws.

American news media beating the drums to start war against Iran

It is shocking and dismaying that American "news media" is currently leading the charge for America's next war, against Iran. "News outlets are focusing on how the war would progress rather than challenging the propaganda of the American government and Israel. Please read this article by Glenn Greenwald and speak out. Here's an excerpt:

The propaganda at play here is intense indeed. For several years, the U.S. and Israel threaten on an almost daily basis to aggressively attack a country, all while engaging in multiple acts of war against them, and then when their leaders suggest they may not acquiesce to such an attack with passivity and gratitude, those vows of defensive retaliation are used to depict them as the threat-issuing aggressors. And the American media, as always, eagerly implants the propaganda. Thus, if such a war breaks out, NBC News‘ Mik announces, “the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet would be the world’s first line of defense,” though those crazed Persian leaders have threatened to use “Iran’s massive stockpile of ballistic missiles” and to “launch those missiles at U.S. targets.” . . . time and again, Americans support whatever new war of aggression their government proposes, then come to regret that support and decide the war was a “mistake,” only to demonstrate that they learned no lessons from their “mistake” by eagerly supporting whatever the next proposed war is.
This recurring felt-need to go to war repeats pursuant to a tried and true formula described by Normal Soloman in his documentary, "War Made Easy." When you hear out-of-touch commentators (even "liberal" commentators) advocating the "need" for war with Iran, take the time to respond by questioning the claims and offering real world facts. Take a look at what happened at Huffpo when Alan Dershowitz showed that he has drunk the Kool-aid--notice the many hostile comments to his article. The case of Iran is an intense and coordinated propaganda battle that is turning into yet another terrible and destructive war to feed the pockets of the military industrial complex and to satisfy America's need for a scapegoat for its many self-inflicted problems. We are truly living in days of bread and circuses.

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The many lies about Afghanistan

Who would you trust more to report what is really going on in Afghanistan? High ranking generals spellbound by the sunk costs and warped to incoherence by their increasingly outrageous promises of success in this ten-year old war? Or would you trust a 17-year army veteran who has put his career in jeopardy by reporting his frank observations outside of his chain of command? Here is the detailed unclassified report of Lt. Colonel Daniel Davis. He has also provided a classified version to various members of Congress, as reported by Michael Hastings of Rolling Stone, in an article he has titled, "The Afghanistan Report the Pentagon Doesn't Want You to Read." Here is an excerpt from the unclassified report by Daniel Davis:

[A]s was repeated with frequency during the first quarter of 2011 senior ISAF leaders have explained that we killed a significant number of insurgent (INS) leaders and foot soldiers, we took away his former sanctuaries, cut off his supply routes, took away his freedom of movement, discovered a huge number of weapons and ammo caches, and captured hundreds of insurgent fighters. But if these things are so, the expectation of yet another all-time record of violence warned by the leaders was illogical. If I have tens of thousands of additional ISAF boots, and I kill hundreds of INS leaders thousands of his fighters, capture huge numbers of caches, take away his sanctuaries, and deny him freedom of movement, how could he then significantly increase his level of attacks as the Taliban did in the first half of 2011? By any rational calculation, our vastly increasing numbers combined with the enemy's dwindling pool of fighters and loss of equipment ought to have had precisely the opposite effect: they should have been capable of conducting considerably fewer attacks, emplacing a smaller number of IEDs, and their influence on the population should have been notably diminished. Yet none of those things came to pass. ISAF leaders, nevertheless continue to make bold and confident statement after statement that we are succeeding, that the insurgency is weakening, and that the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (GoIRA) is gaining the confidence of its people though they offer almost no tangible evidence to that effect, while explaining away the considerable volume of evidence which logically should cause one to reach a very different conclusion.
What is the truth about Afghanistan? Davis cites with approval from a 2011 report by Anthony Cordesman, on behalf of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (see pages 10 and 11): • US and ISAF won every major tactical clash, but lost much of the country; • ISAF denied the scale of the insurgency and the seriousness of its rise. Issued intelligence and other reports claiming success that did not exist; • The US and ISAF remained kinetic through 2009; the insurgent fought a battle of influence over the population and political attrition to drive out the US and ISAF from the start; • In June 2010, the Acting Minister of Interior told the press that only 9 of Afghanistan's 364 districts were considered safe; • No ISAF nation provides meaningful transparency and reporting to its legislature and people. But what about all of those optimistic reports from high ranking U.S. military brass? Davis cites with approval from a report written by Afghanistan NGO Safety Office (ANSO) and signed by ANSO Director, Nic Lee, examining "the security situation in Afghanistan in order to inform the greater NGO community about the risks they face when operating there."
More so than in previous years, information of this nature is sharply divergent from (International Military Forces) 'strategic communication’ messages suggesting improvements. We encourage (NGO personnel) to recognize that no matter how authoritative the source of any such claim, messages of the nature are solely intended to influence American and European public opinion ahead of the withdrawal, and are not intended to offer an accurate portrayal of the situation for those who live and work here.
The report by Davis is compelling, detailed and damning of the propaganda issued by the U.S. regarding Afghanistan. His report is a must read in these times while we continue to spend $2 Billion per week on this fiasco. Now it's time for American journalists to step up and report the truth, though Davis is not optimistic that they will carry out their mission (see p. 28):
So long as our country’s top TV and print media continue to avoid challenging power for fear of losing access, there is every reason to expect many senior Defense Department leaders will continue to play this game of denial of access in order to effect compliant reports. As I’ve shown throughout this report, there is ample open source information and reports all over the internet that would allow any individual – or reporter – to find the truth and report it. But heretofore few have. As I note later in this report that there are a number of high ranking generals in the military today who are brilliant leaders and have the highest standards and integrity (giving me hope that there is a chance of reform in the future), so too there are some really fine journalists in both print and on-air media organizations. We need more experienced and honorable journos – and their parent organizations – to summon the courage to report wherever the truth leads and not simply regurgitate the bullet points handed out by some action officer. America needs you.
Feb 15, 2012 - Michael Hastings of Rolling Stone discusses the report of Lt. Col. Daniel Davis with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now:

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Living on immense amounts of borrowed money

According to this article in Yahoo News, President Obama unveiled a $3.8 trillion budget request Monday that hikes taxes on the rich, spends new money on infrastructure and education, but does little to reform the entitlement programs that pose the biggest long-term threat to the federal budget. According to the article, this proposed budget "forecasts a deficit for fiscal year 2012 that will top $1.3 trillion, before falling in 2013 to $901 billion, or 5.5% of gross domestic product." If I'm understanding this correctly, this means that 34% of what the United States spends is borrowed or created out of thin air. I'm not an economist, but this sounds incredibly reckless and unsustainable. My "solution" to this perceived problem is to not think about this issue much, and hope that not too many are hurt too badly. I wish I could understand how a huge country like the United States could, year after year, for decades, run massive deficits. I'm assuming that running these deficits causes damage to our economy and our national interests, but what do I know?

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U.S. courts invoke secrecy and immunity to avoid review of detainee abuse cases

Glenn Greenwald writes:

Virtually without exception, the American judiciary has refused to allow any victims of America’s War on Terror abuses — whether foreign national or American citizen — to even have their claims heard in court. Federal courts have repeatedly shielded government officials from any accountability for these abuses, not by ruling in their favor on the merits, but by ruling that they need not answer for their actions at all. Courts have accomplished this whitewashing by accepting the Bush and Obama DOJ’s arguments that government actions undertaken as part of the War on Terror are completely shielded from judicial review — i.e., from the rule of law — by both secrecy doctrines (it’s too secret to risk having a court examine) and immunity prerogatives (government officials cannot be sued even for egregious wrongdoing committed while in office).
Greenwald then lists five examples of U.S. Courts preventing meaningful inquiry based on "secrecy" and "immunity." In comparison, he describes a recent ruling by the Pakistan's highest court holding its ultra-secret ISI agency accountable for prisoner abuse. It appears that the "backwards" country of Pakistan offers more civil rights protection to victims of "the war on terror" than the United States.

Continue ReadingU.S. courts invoke secrecy and immunity to avoid review of detainee abuse cases