A very powerful OpEd in the New York Times by Fernando Henrique Cardoso (former President of Brazil) and Ruth Dreifuss (former President of Switzerland): An Ugly Truth in the War on Drugs
This week, representatives from many nations will gather at the annual meeting of the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs in Vienna to determine the appropriate course of the international response to illicit drugs. Delegates will debate multiple resolutions while ignoring a truth that goes to the core of current drug policy: human rights abuses in the war on drugs are widespread and systematic.
Consider these numbers: Hundreds of thousands of people locked in detention centers and subject to violent punishments. Millions imprisoned. Hundreds hanged, shot or beheaded. Tens of thousands killed by government forces and non-state actors. Thousands beaten and abused to extract information, and abused in government or private “treatment†centers. Millions denied life-saving medicines. These are alarming figures, but campaigns to address them have been slow and drug control has received little attention from the mainstream human rights movement. […]
The U.N.’s International Narcotics Control Board has refused to condemn torture or “any atrocity†carried out in the name of drug control, claiming it was not its mandate to do so. This is both shocking and contradictory: oversight of international drug control treaties is the control board’s very mission.
Late last year, despite the evidence before it, the U.N. Committee against Torture failed to condemn the widespread abuse of people who use drugs in the Russian Federation. […]
You can’t have a drug war without human rights abuses, and the harder you prosecute it, the greater those abuses. This is a painful truth often carefully ignored by those who have chosen the drug war as their path.
Good to see this getting more visibility.
I don’t expect much from the upcoming CND sessions – the same posturing from U.S., Sweden, Russia, etc. – but it’s getting harder for them to pretend that they represent the will of the world (or what’s best for it).
…
Just hours ago, the sessions began with ONDCP’s Yuri Fedotov calling Iran “UN’s number one partner in the war on drugs.”
The UNDCP reminds me of an old Used Car commercial that used to run on late nite TV in Calif. The dealer said “There’s nothing so small that can’t be overlooked my our mechanics.” He said it quickly and for years, we missed it. He must work for the UN now.
*Fernando Henrique Cardoso* is the correct name for Brazil’s former president.
I wonder what the salaries of the UN narcotics board members are and who pays them,,any bets that the US has that money budgeted through the ONDCP,,so naturally they will dance to anything the corporations running our government wants.
You just have to know that they get kick backs from gun manufactures, military gear suppliers and private contract armies like Xe . . . they are not stupid and they know drug money creates more wars and funds more wars globally, so it would behoove them to invest in weapons, especially since they have full access to know when and where the latest conflicts are occurring and they know as long as the dope remains illegal the more the AK-47 shells and mortar/rocket rounds will continue to pour out onto the fields, jungles, deserts and city streets.
fedotov, a real secret policeman from a police state recognises his henchman, iran. the only thing thats different here is that the nyt and cardoza are calling them on it. i hope its readers are paying attention because the US is in real danger of following them down the same totalitarian path
Follow ?
The US is the Leader.
Law Enforcement Against Prohibition will have several members at this meeting in Vienna, as we did last year. We are going to try to change a few minds.
The troubles at the United Nations are starting to resemble the Vatican’s mess. Far from protecting the little children as they claim, the UNODC’s drug war does everything but protect children from the clutches of primitive cultures that stigmatize and marginalize groups of people, individuals whom the societies later exploit in the worst ways possible.
Former Drug Czar Bill Bennett enjoys operating on both sides of the fence. Along with destroying the future lives of children by advocating for unlimited drug arrests, Bennett has been exposed as a defender, and thus a facilitator, of an infamous pedophile priest.
Father Marcial Maciel Degollado (deceased), a Mexican priest, and one of the Church’s most successful fund raisers, began in the 1940s “sexually plundering teenage seminarians in the religious order he founded, the Legion of Christ.†“…A life … out of moral bounds,†is how Pope Benedict XVI described Maciel in 2010â€:
Would Bennett have defended some priest accused of a drug crime? Probably not. Like most prohibitionists and pedophiles, Bill Bennett is inherently incapable of distinguishing good from evil. His is a life out of moral bounds.
I believe drug money creates more sex abuse victims amongst children and adults . . . those with the money have the power. Because violent criminals have more money solely because of drugs, they have more power i.e. the massive amounts of rape in Afghanistan and the Golden Crescent. In America, if you pay someone to murder another, you are considered a murderer as well, which means if you are pro-drug prohibition, you are automatically a pedophile since pedophilia is enhanced by drug money and its power . . . it’s only logical to assume tens of thousands of children would never have been sexually abused had drugs never been illegal in the first place. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if the drug money wielding cartels of Mexico didn’t sexually abuse thousands of children to facilitate their power over them, the parents and the communities . . . many who are willing to hang another human from a bridge or decapitate them is probably willing to rape a child as well.
That’s the way it is in war. Any war. The ‘Drug War’ has never been a metaphor, as many of its victims can attest, assuming they’re still alive.
In days of yore, the situation was unimaginable. Whether we’re talking The Rape of Nanking, in recent times, or some of the other stuff I’ve encountered in my studies of persecution throughout history—I’ll spare you the details—there is the inevitable problem: when you stare into the abyss, it stares back (Nietzsche).
Drugs designated illicit are one of the many tools of tyranny. And in some ways these kinds of tools are like a Rube Goldberg machine: remove one, weirded-out little process or function, such as making drugs illicit, and it all stops.
The good news is that things are getting better, even though at times it may seem that the changes exhibit the torturous pace of a snail whose ass is super-glued to a patio deck.
It’s sad to realize the U.N. doesn’t recognize the right of humans to live in a war free environment. Not only are people being victimized by the laws, but the law abiders –non-drug users are being victimized by those wielding the power of drug money: i.e. Russian Opera House Massacre; Russian School Massacre. Some of these U.N. drug war fanatics must have stock in weapons and military gear, an immoral, though wise investment for anybody who knows wars will exist even more and more rampant as long as someone has drug money to finance them (like Al Qaeda). These people make a killing off killing . . . just because you’ve never hacked someone’s head with a machete or blown some brains out in person, doesn’t make you any less a murderer if you are in the position of carrying on with the drug war. If we cannot demand legal execution for these henchmen working in the ONDCP and U.N.’s INCB etc, then we’ve just shamed those who’ve executed Nazi War Criminals. Walking around old Babylon and seeing the War on Drugs in Iraq makes me think that drugs are only illegal to procure the necessary means of incorporating war and war merchandise . . . drugs are not illegal because the ‘ones with the power’ disapprove of them or it’s use . . . risking the lives of little children just so someone can be denied legal dope is the mark of Cain.
According to even Federal Law, it’s illegal for the United States to be a part of the U.N. since the U.N. gets paid to promote and enhance America’s enemies: the Terrorists via the War on Drugs’ ability to finance our enemy during a time of war, thus it’s illegal for the U.N. to reside in the U.S. and it’s illegal for any Americans to be members of the U.N. . . . Would America still be a part of the League of Nations if the LN actively helped expand the powers of Nazi Germany and Japan after war was declared? I don’t think so. It’s the age old question: Does Federal Law trump Federal Law, i.e. the Marijuana Tax Stamp Act would have been nullified by the 1890 Sherman Anti Trust Act law unless a ‘Strawberry, Pumpkin, Hay, Molasses, Corn etc etc Tax Stamp Acts were likewise created. Does Federal Law trump Federal Law?
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Looks like the spam filters need adjusting, again.
but this is at least literate Spam®. it even gives the appearance of participating and sharing in our discussion. Literate or not, it’s still Spam®! FaBoS
From Michael Krawitz:
Tuesday at the United Nations Commission on Narcotics Drugs Meetings: IDPC/TNI side event on cannabis and the 1961 Convention
We have gotten people’s attention. There’s more at the link
more (from Michael again) from the UN (make sure heads are firmly attached to necks):
and more shtuff:
Navy Might Lose Its Technological Testing Ground — The Drug War
Downtown Houston Pachyderms hear about failed drug war
UN Report Slams Cruel Drug Treatment as “Torture”
well, yeah…
And look, it’s our first international purchase order:
Danish city wants to import marijuana from Washington, Colorado
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Yuri Federov is in denial, and responds with a typical bald-faced, prohibitionist lie:
The UNODC’s brand of drug control is pure tyranny. Drug freedom is the only option remaining that doesn’t include human rights abuses.