|
|
|
Drug WarRant
 |
Friday, August 5, 2005 |
New market for Colombian cocaine
Link
In addition to the amnesty program for the big traffickers, Colombia has instituted a cash for coca program in one region of the country. Farmers can take their plants to the police and get cash on the spot for them.
Sort of like a government subsidy to grow coca.
Rebels in the region typically traffic in the coca to finance their armed struggle against the Colombian government. Mr. Uribe said recent military operations have forced the rebels into hiding, leaving the farmers without buyers.
The program has come under harsh criticism from lawmakers such as Colombian Sen. Rafael Pardo, who said it would encourage small farmers to grow more coca just so they could sell it to the government, a guaranteed and steady paying customer.
Mr. Pardo -- who is a likely presidential candidate in next year's elections -- and other critics say farmers will find ways to continue cultivating illegal crops and selling them to the government, the rebels or right-wing paramilitaries that also produce cocaine for income, or all three.
Of course, Uribe sees this as a wonderful way to eradicate some of the crop!
Aren't any of these political leaders required to take an economics course at some time in their lives? I admit that I slept through a lot of the classes myself, but I understand supply and demand (even elasticity), and can see a price support when it hits me in the face.
Of course, Uribe counters by noting that the farmers must "sign a legally binding agreement to halt cultivation." Ah, that solves it. So growing coca is against the law, but if you do break the law, you can take the coca to the police and get paid for it, but then you must agree not to break the law or you'll be in violation of your agreement not to break the law.
Right.
10:02:03 AM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
|
|
|
|
Thursday, August 4, 2005 |
Bush solves drug war failures in Colombia
Link
CRAWFORD, Texas, Aug 4 (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush pledged on Thursday to sustain funding for Colombia's fight against drugs and violence even as a senior State Department official said Washington would like to reduce its anti-narcotics aid.
[...]
"And we'll ask the Congress to sustain our commitment to follow-on programs for Plan Colombia so Colombia can build on its progress and win its war against the narcoterrorists," Bush told reporters before getting behind the wheel of his white pickup truck to give Uribe a tour of his 1,600-acre (650-hectare) ranch.
Words fail me.
Their meeting came in the same week Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice certified Colombia was respecting human rights and distancing itself from paramilitary groups sufficiently to allow U.S. aid to be given to its military.
Uh huh.
9:56:01 PM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
|
|
|
Is Dennis Hastert a stooge for Drug Cartels?
I've got to take a moment to gloat...
Back in September, Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert made some outrageous inferences that George Soros got his money from drug cartels.
Not only was it outrageous, but it made no sense, and I made that clear in this post...
If a "drug group" is going to support anyone with contributions, it would be a drug warrior like Dennis Hastert, not a legalizer like Soros.
... and in this imaginary interview I had on Fox News Sunday ...
Guither: "Well, Chris, it was pretty outrageous. No matter how the Speaker tries to spin it after the fact, he was clearly making it up out of thin air. It made no sense. Drug cartels wouldn't give money to Soros -- he's trying to put them out of business by supporting legalization efforts. And the legalization groups get funds from Soros. They don't give him funding."
Wallace: "Why do you think he said it then? Was it just a political attack?"
Guither: "Certainly that was part of it. But there are some who say that Hastert is really trying to deflect attention from his own shadowy connections to drug groups."
Wallace: "Excuse me?"
Guither: "Yes, this is actually very well established and documented. Speaker Dennis Hastert receives larges amounts of funding from drug groups, who expect him to use his power as speaker on their behalf to continue the excesses of the drug war, and increase their profits."
Could I have been right?
Via TalkLeft we learn that the new Vanity Fair has an investigative report that asks a lot of questions...
Some of the calls reportedly contained what sounded like references to large scale drug shipments and other crimes," writes Rose. "One name, however, apparently stood out -- a man the Turkish callers often referred to by the nickname "Denny boy." It was the Republican congressman from Illinois and Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert. According to some of the wiretaps, the FBI's targets had arranged for thousands of dollars to be paid to Hastert's campaign funds in small checks.
According to Raw Story, the Bush administration is trying to keep the information secret.
Oh, Denny boy!!
6:31:50 PM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
|
|
|
When police believe they own you
Via FlexYourRights.org comes a disturbing article.
Now at this point it's charges and denials in a lawsuit, and I have no way to verify what actually happened, but if the charges in the lawsuit are true...
Jason Burnham, age 34, was distraught after the death of his 9-month-old daughter in 2002, and carried her ashes in a sealed pendant that he wore around his neck (not the thing I'd do, but...) He also had a legal prescription to Xanax for depression due to his daughter's death.
He was stopped by Officer Brad Cline in Florida after Hurricane Charley, who mistook the effects of Xanax for intoxication. After examining his Xanax pills, the officer asked about the pendant.
Thinking it might contain cocaine, he took the pendant, broke the seal, and dumped it on the hood of his car. After seeing that it was ashes and not cocaine, Officer Cline wiped the ashes onto the ground, and sent Burnham on his way.
The seven-count lawsuit accuses the city of false arrest/false imprisonment and detention of Burnham, and violation of his right to privacy. It accuses the city and Cline of invasion of privacy and violation of Burnham's civil rights. Finally, it accuses Cline of intentional infliction of emotional distress on Burnham.
5:45:46 PM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
|
|
|
Wars and Rumours of Wars
It seems like just last week that I reported that the War on Terror was over. However, the Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism was extremely short-lived, and now the War on Terror has returned.
In other news, the War on Drugs remains.... stupid.
9:45:41 AM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
|
|
|
This just pisses me off
It's not enough that the feds go after drug users and dealers. They've got to invent crimes and then go out and destroy people who are trying to do their jobs and be good citizens.
First, they came after the makers of glass pipes in Operation Pipe Dreams.
Then they try to break up good families, business people and parents, because of marijuana offences in the distant past.
Then they go after doctors who are trying to heal people for prescribing pain medicine to people in pain.
Now they've got this thing called Operation Meth Merchant that has bizarrely managed to arrest 32 Indians named Patel for working at convenience stores, following the law, but just not quite understanding the Engliish drug slang used by the undercover cops.
Read the New York Times story (via TalkLeft)
What convenience clerk would ever pay attention to the dregs of humanity that show up to buy stuff in the middle of the night? Now, the court had to be told that "cook" is slang for making meth, and yet these foreign convenience clerks were arrested for "knowing" that these undercover cops (by the sole nature of them using the term "cook" in conversation) were going to make meth.
This is beyond pathetic. We have a criminal federal government.
1:24:56 AM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
|
|
|
Ditch Judge
OK, this is pretty funny. Here's a case where it seems there was sufficient probable cause (and a driver that shouldn't be on the road), despite an attempt by the defense to claim that there wasn't a competent expert to identify the marijuana at the arrest.
But get this statement from Watertown City Court Judge James C. Harberson Jr.:
"This court finds that considering the rampant use of marijuana in all levels of society as a result of an unrelenting effort of the 'Woodstock' generation's proselytizing the legalization of this 'ditch weed' - as it was historically known in the South - through the media, the educational institutions and open public use, the average lay witness can be said to be competent to identify marijuana and its effects," Judge Harberson said in his decision.
Priceless.
Now as far as I'm aware (at least back to my High School days in the 70's), 'ditch weed' has always meant very low grade marijuana -- named for the stuff that grew wild everywhere in the ditches.
Unless there's some part of the South that historically called all marijuana 'ditch weed' (and let me know if that's the case), then it appears that us Woodstock generation proselytizers haven't done a good enough job to make even the judge competent to "identify marijuana and its effects."
[Thanks to Larry]
12:43:02 AM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
|
|
|
|
Wednesday, August 3, 2005 |
Cheap cocaine coming
There were a couple of articles this week about the situation in Colombia -- the more we do there, the messier it gets.
The latest is about this new amnesty offered by Uribe's "Justice and Peace Law." Basically it's a way for traffickers (including mass murderers) to get a light country-club sentence for a few years, and retire on their drug trafficking profits wealthy and free of legal hassles (and, unlike Marc Emery, free of fear of extradition to the U.S.). Special consideration is given to the right-wing AUC.
Apparently, a number of the big guys are looking to cash in and let a new batch of traffickers take over. And in the process, they're having a clearance sale.
From Daniel Kurtz-Phelan at Slate:
In preparation for getting in on the deal, the drug lords seem to be emptying out their warehouses--selling off stockpiles of cocaine so they have enough cash on hand to go legit for a few years without giving up their fabulous wealth and swank lifestyles. These stockpiles, by all accounts, are massive. They have allowed traffickers to insulate their business and maintain a steady flow of imports to the United States and Europe regardless of how many coca plants South American soldiers and American defense contractors are killing with machetes and herbicide at any given time. On a recent visit to Bolivia, the head of South America operations for the U.S. Agency for International Development said that traffickers have so much cocaine on hand they could keep exports constant for a year and a half even if production stopped altogether.
The recent slew of seizures is a good sign of a sell-off: According to a basic law of drug-war economics, every increase in the amount of cocaine seized reflects a more-or-less proportionate increase in the amount of cocaine shipped. An American anthropologist doing fieldwork in southern Colombia reports additional evidence that the cocaine market is glutted: Peasant producers of coca paste (the base material for cocaine) are having trouble finding buyers for their product--an indication that so much cocaine is being shipped from warehouses that traffickers don't need to buy paste to manufacture more. Over the past few months, paste prices in Putumayo, the heart of Colombian coca country, have fallen between 10 percent and 40 percent.
In the past decade, Washington has poured billions of dollars into Colombia with the ostensible purpose of fighting the drug trade. Meanwhile, the street price of cocaine has steadily declined, from around $250 a gram in the late 1980s to well under $100 today. Now Congress is debating whether to help finance Uribe's demobilization effort, despite concerns that it's a lucrative retirement plan for traffickers.
Thank God we've been spending millions of dollars of taxpayers' money over there in order to increase the profit margin to the most ruthless traffickers, so that they can have a luxurious retirement package.
There's an interesting point made in this article, too. The fact that increased seizures are not an indication of drug war success, but rather of drug war failure. Increased seizures means more has been shipped. Every time police nab a truck full of drugs because the license plate was dangling by a wire, that doesn't mean that they were successful -- it means that there is so much being smuggled that the traffickers were even willing to hire an idiot to drive a valuable shipment. So the next time you hear about a record seizure, read between the lines to imagine what they didn't get.
[More on the amnesty from Council on Hemispheric Affairs.]
7:17:40 PM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
|
|
|
Stupid Drug War Tricks
This one's from my area.
Lincoln, Illinois veteran police officer Diana Short is arrested for growing marijuana and bail is set at $2,500, which she's able to raise. Then she's indicted for other counts of drug trafficking and her bail raises to $10,000. Well, she doesn't have that much money, so she convinces her daughter to buy materials to make meth and tries to recruit inmates in the jail to make it so she can raise bail.
Knowing her phone calls will be monitored, she uses code over the phone, such as telling her daughter to gather as many as 2,000 "little white things."
Her bail is now $25,000 and her daughter has bail of $10,000.
This is a story that shows rampant stupidity. Not only of this former police officer and her daughter, but of the drug war in general.
5:46:14 PM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
|
|
|
|
Tuesday, August 2, 2005 |
Hibiscus Raiders Looking for Work
The Harris County Organized Crime and Narcotics Task Force is being disbanded. So sad.
This is the group that raided a landscaper's house because he had hibiscus (with white flowers) in his front yard. They thought it was pot. They also grilled him about his bamboo, watermelons, and cantaloupes.
Now some of these task force members are out of a job. Hmmm... Well, I doubt the florist is going to want to hire them. Same for the grocery store produce department. Maybe... "You want fries with that?"
One interesting part of this article is the speculation of how the crime rate will change. The thing is, since the local police departments are hiring many of them, I'd say they're going to have better success in actually fighting crime. The task force was (as they nostalgically pointed out) more involved in "memorable" busts and seizures that only took a drop out of the ocean of supply. Regular police work (to the extent that it isn't wasted on pot busts) is more useful to the community.
Farewell Harris County Organized Crime and Narcotics Task Force. We won't miss you.
12:52:46 AM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
|
|
|
|
Monday, August 1, 2005 |
John Bolton to the U.N.
In a recess appointment, John "Got Milk?" Bolton has been appointed U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. His job will be to straighten them out, or piss them off, or dismantle them, or something to that effect.
How much do you want to bet that there's one part of the U.N. that Bolton will decide is working just fine?
10:01:54 PM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
|
|
|
Drug War results in Mexico show what awaits us?
We helped train some of these criminals as part of the effort to go after drug lords. We made criminal drug trade profitable. We're not only losing the drug war, we are fueling violence through prohibition.
Link
NUEVO LAREDO - Warring Mexican gangs stepped up the urban battle in Nuevo Laredo late last week, prompting the U.S. ambassador in Mexico City to close the consulate in this border town that terrorized citizens compare to a war zone in Baghdad.
The pitched battle -- with bazookas and grenades -- was so fierce that after the shooting a house at the fighting's center was riddled with holes the size of melons. Part of it had collapsed. A building across the street was pocked with holes, indicating a response with heavy weapons. Hundreds of bullet casings from AK-47 assault rifles and other weapons littered the street. Cars, many with Texas plates, lay like victims, their windows shattered and their bodies scourged by bullet holes.
8:59:46 PM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
|
|
|
DEA finds some drugs in Afghanistan
Link
No need to track down drug traffickers or deal with the hard work of ripping up plants in the fields of Afghanistan. Opium is so plentiful in that country, that the DEA could pick up 20,000 pounds of it in the offices of the provincial governor.
A bit embarrassing, don't you think?
Still nobody willing to state the obvious -- the drug war is a failure there (as well as here), and needs to be scrapped.
8:47:49 PM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
|
|
|
The future for Emery
Kirk Tousaw has a good overview at Cannabis Culture on the future proceedings in the Marc Emery case.
Here's the real interesting part: When it comes time for the Canadian courts to decide on the extradition:
One of the key sections is 44. That lists reasons why the Minister SHALL NOT order surrender:
44. (1) The Minister shall refuse to make a surrender order if the Minister is satisfied that
(a) the surrender would be unjust or oppressive having regard to all the relevant circumstances; or
(b) the request for extradition is made for the purpose of prosecuting or punishing the person by reason of their race, religion, nationality, ethnic origin, language, colour, political opinion, sex, sexual orientation, age, mental or physical disability or status or that the person's position may be prejudiced for any of those reasons.
Obviously we will be arguing that both subparagraphs apply. Marc is a victim of political persecution and the US system is the poster child for unjust and oppressive laws. Another reason the Minister may deny surrender is if it would shock the Canadian conscience.
There's a long way to go on this case, and it's going to cause some waves.
Additional note: Loretta Nall needs help.
8:00:08 PM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
|
|
|
Some early Marc Emery reactions
In the London Free Press: America Targets Emery
The arrest of Canadian pot activist Marc Emery is being used to advance the agenda of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, a London friend charges.
"Someone needed to made an example of (him) to further the agenda of the American drug enforcement agency," said Teresa Tarasewicz, co-owner of the City Lights Book Shop.
OpEd by Connie Fogal, Leader, Canadian Action Party
The arrest of Marc Emery and two others on July 29, 2005 in Canada to serve the questionable USA War On Drugs is a wake up call for Canadians. Marc Emery is a serious activist promoting the legalization of Marijuana use in Canada. The significance for Canadians of his arrest is not about anyone's personal attitude to the legalization of marijuana. The significance speaks to the core of being Canadian, being a sovereign nation, being able to make decisions we choose in our interest, in our own time, on our own terms.
From an article by Dana Gee in the Vancouver Province:
SANTA MONICA -- Tommy Chong thinks the Drug Enforcement Agency's plan to prosecute pot advocate Marc Emery should go up in smoke.
The former Vancouver resident and one-half of the stoner comedic partnership of Cheech and Chong was shocked when told of Emery's trouble with the DEA.
"They're going to extradite him down to the [U.S.] for something that's not really a crime in Canada," Chong said at a party here Friday night. "If Canada goes for that, they really suck."
Last year, Chong ran afoul of the U.S. war against drugs when he was jailed for nine months after being found guilty on one count of conspiring to sell drug paraphernalia across a state line.
"Look what happened to me for a bong," said Chong. "Imagine if I had a seed in it -- I'd still be in jail.
"The DEA, their budget, it depends on pot busts. Pot busts are the simplest, because we are the most harmless.
"What they did to me and what they are doing to a lot of people is violating their civil rights. What they are really looking for is diversion -- these guys are up to their eyeballs in wars and thievery, Haliburton and Enron."
8:48:29 AM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
|
|
|
|
|
|
