tagged w/ Drug War
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A drug-mule pigeon has been captured outside a Colombian prison after being overloaded with marijuana.The pigeon was trying to fly into a prison in Bucaramanga, in the country's north-east, with 1.6 ounces of the weed attached to its body.However the bird's flight plan was thwarted because of the illegal excess baggage.Two police officers were able to catch the bird as it flapped helplessly near a house."This is a new case of criminal ingenuity," General Jose Angel Mendoza, Commander of Bucaramanga Metropolitan Police, said.They were trying to smuggle drugs into Bucaramanga prison by using messenger pigeons," he said.Colombian drug gangs have used ingenious techniques beforeIn the latest incident, police found the bird with a white paper package strapped to its back.
A drug-mule pigeon has been captured outside a Colombian prison after being... more
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The drug czar has gone to great rhetorical lengths to convince the American people that our drug policy isn’t a war any longer, but you don't have to look very hard to see the violence that still erupts daily, not only in Mexico, but right here in our own communities. If you can handle it, I'd like you to take a look at just one example of the incredible violence police use when enforcing our drug laws.
That is how quickly lives are lost in the war on drugs. When police invade private homes in search of drugs, anything and everything can go wrong, and even the slightest misunderstanding becomes a matter of life and death. The victim in this case, Todd Blair, brandished a golf club in terror as armed men stormed his home in the night. We'll never know for sure if he realized they were police. But we do know that only a small amount of drugs were found in the raid that took his life.
That drugs and violence often go hand in hand isn't a mystery to many among us – the bloodshed gripping Mexico is old news by now – but this is a very different kind of drug war violence than the infamous turf wars of the cartels. This is a rare glimpse into the unbelievable level of force our own public servants unleash routinely in order to protect us from ourselves. This man was just a drug user. Whether he ever sold drugs is in dispute, but there's no question that he lived and died in poverty, and not from drugs, but from police who gunned him down in his own home.
So long as we rely on police to lead the fight against drug abuse, the consequences will unfold brutally all around us and people who could have been helped – not to mention innocent bystanders – will be lost to us forever. Mistakes and misunderstandings will continue to occur with deadly frequency, but to a very large extent, the tragic events that take place daily in the war on drugs are not mistakes at all; they are the real and inevitable results of the laws our police enforce and the orders they receive. If heavily-armed pre-dawn drug raids are standard protocol, then people getting shot dead in the dark obviously can't be considered a crime, and it shouldn't be called an accident either.
The movement to end the war on drugs isn't just about making drugs legal. It's also about making it illegal for police to kill our friends and family over small bags of contraband.
Blair had been under investigation for several months by the strike force on suspicion of dealing meth and heroin. Only a small amount of marijuana, and paraphernalia, was found in the home, Smith said, and a small vial of what appeared to be meth was in the dead man's pants pocket.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/speakeasy/2011/jan/18/brutal_drug_raid_killing_caughtThe drug czar has gone to great rhetorical lengths to convince the American people... more
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Can Police Can Kick Down Your Door If They Smell Pot? Some Justices Think So
Police smelling marijuana coming from behind an apartment door can enter the home without a warrant if they believe the evidence is being destroyed, some U.S. Supreme Court Justices said on Wednesday.
More than 60 years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that police couldn't enter a residence without a warrant just because they smelled burning opium, reports Adam Liptak at The New York Times.
On Wednesday, during the argument of a case about what police were entitled to do upon smelling marijuana outside the door of a Kentucky apartment, two justices were concerned that the Court may be ready to eviscerate the 1948 ruling which stemmed from a Seattle case.
"Aren't we just simply saying they can just walk in whenever they smell marijuana, whenever they think there's drugs on the other side?" asked Justice Sonia Sotomayor, considering what a decision against the defendant would tell the police. "Why do even bother giving them a search warrant?"
The old ruling, Johnson v. United States, involved the search of a Seattle hotel room. The smell of drugs could provide probably cause for a warrant, Justice Robert H. Jackson wrote for the majority, but it did not entitle police to enter without one.
"No suspect was fleeing or likely to take flight," Justice Jackson wrote. "The search was of permanent premises, not of a movable vehicle. No evidence or contraband was threatened with removal or destruction."
Since the War On Drugs was re-started by President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, the Supreme Court has steadily given police more leeway to search cars, travelers and baggage, reports David Savage at the Los Angeles Times. But the justices have been reluctant to allow searches of homes without a warrant.
In the new case, Kentucky v. King, police in Kentucky were looking for a suspect who had sold cocaine to an informant. They smelled burning marijuana coming from another apartment -- where Hollis King and his friends were smoking marijuana -- knocked loudly, and announced themselves.
When they heard sounds coming from inside that made them think evidence was being destroyed, they kicked the door in and found marijuana, cocaine, King, two friends, and some cash, but not the original suspect, who was in another apartment.
King was sentenced to 11 years(!) in prison, but the Kentucky Supreme Court overturned his conviction and threw out the evidence, ruling that any risk of drugs' being destroyed was the result of the decision by police to knock and announce themselves rather than to obtain a warrant. The Kentucky court ruled that officers had entered the apartment illegally and that the evidence they found should not have been considered in court, reports Robert Barnes at The Washington Post.
The key issue is whether an "exigent" or emergency circumstance allows the police to enter a residence without a warrant. Sadly but no longer shockingly, Obama Administration lawyers joined the case on the side of Kentucky's prosecutors.
The police who broke into the apartment "reasonably believed that there was destruction of evidence occurring inside," said Ann O'Connell, an assistant to Obama's Solicitor General.
Prosecutors for Kentucky and the federal government told the justices Wednesday that the Kentucky court had erred. They claimed there had been no violation of the Fourth Amendment, which bars unreasonable searches, because they claimed police had "acted lawfully."
But Justice Elena Kagan had doubts about that approach.
If the court looks only at the lawfulness of police behavior, Justice Kagan said, that "is going to enable the police to penetrate the home, to search the home, without a warrant, without going to see a magistrate, in a very wide variety of cases."
All the police would need to say, Justice Kagan said, is that they smelled marijuana and then heard a noise. "Or," she added, "we think there was some criminal activity going on for whatever reason and we heard noise."
"How do you prevent your test from essentially eviscerating the warrant requirement in the context of the one place that the Fourth Amendment was most concerned about?" Kagan asked Kentucky Assistant Attorney General Joshua D. Farley, who claimed the police had done nothing that violated the Fourth Amendment.
Justice Sotomayor was even more direct, asking "Aren't we just doing away with 'Johnson'?"
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg asked why the police could not simply roam the hallways of apartment buildings, sniffing for pot, knocking whenever they smelled marijuana, then breaking in if they "hear something suspicious."
"That would be perfectly fine," Kentucky Assistant Atttorney General Farley replied.
Justice Antonin Scalia revealed some unflattering things about his worldview -- which, God help us, seems to be that of a judgmental 10-year-old -- as he said he was not troubled by the standard the government lawyers proposed. He said that police can't go wrong by knocking loudly on the door.
"There are a lot of constraints on law enforcement," Justice Scalia said, "and the one thing that it has going for it is that criminals are stupid."
Scalia said that "criminals" often cooperate with police when not legally required to do so. They might open the door and let officers inside -- and if not, the police can break in, he said.
"Everything done was perfectly lawful," Scalia said. "It's unfair to the criminal? Is that the problem? I really don't understand the problem."
http://www.tokeofthetown.com/2011/01/supreme_court_looks_at_smell-based_home_searches_f.php#moreCan Police Can Kick Down Your Door If They Smell Pot? Some Justices Think So
Police... more
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It’s a messed-up message.
By refusing last week to legalize medical marijuana, the Illinois House said this: Drug dealers and gangs win. Taxpayers lose.
The response to a recent column about the legalization of pot has me more convinced than ever the time has come to end a costly, dangerous and ineffective prohibition.
But don’t take my word for it.
Maybe you can imagine my surprise when Iowa 7th District Senior Associate Judge Douglas McDonald, of Bettendorf, wrote to say he also hopes to see cases of pot possession “de-emphasized or legalized.”
McDonald is 75. He served on the bench from 1988 until his retirement in 2007. He continues to serve on a part-time basis. He has never tried marijuana.
“In Scott County, we do about 5,000 indictable misdemeanors a year, and 25 percent of those are marijuana possessions,” he began in an interview Friday. “(Most) cases have an arraignment, pretrial, motion hearings, judges, prosecutors, public defenders and police officers who have to take time off to come to court.
“Public defenders are paid $400 to $500 per case, and they may have 1,000 of them. And that’s just Scott County. This is my primary concern: It’s all needless.”
McDonald acknowledges he is neither a doctor nor a chemist, but his 19-plus years on the bench have opened his eyes to the realities of all kinds of drugs. Marijuana, in his estimation, “is no big deal.”
“I guess that’s not what a judge is supposed to say,” he added. “But, from what I’ve seen, it doesn’t cause people to do bad things. It doesn’t make them angry. Unless you work with it like I do, you wouldn’t know that.”
To be clear, the judge does not advocate pot smoking. He is, in fact, opposed to any form of smoking, because it is harmful.
“But I also know what alcohol does to people, and it’s pretty severe,” he said. “I don’t see marijuana itself hurting people. Cocaine does that. Methamphetamine does that. In my opinion and my experience, marijuana is not like that.”
The experiences and opinions of another courtroom regular are strikingly similar to that of the judge.
James Gierach is a former Cook County, Ill., prosecutor who serves on the board for a group called LEAP — Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.
He testified before the Iowa Board of Pharmacy last year, which voted unanimously to recommend the Iowa legislature legalize medical marijuana. He said the war on drugs was lost a long time ago and is only creating more crime.
“Pick a crisis: guns, gangs, prisons we can’t afford, health-care bills we can’t pay … yet
60 percent of the money made by Mexican drug cartels is coming from marijuana,” he said. “All you have to do is join a gang, get a gun, (because) we’ve put a pot of gold next to the thing we said people can’t have: drugs.”
The criminalization of pot has been especially good for gangs, he said, because that is where they make their money.
“All you need to go into the drug business is a pair of tennis shoes and a gun,” he said. “We corrupt the police just like we do the kids because of temptation.”
Illegal drugs not only put police in danger via enforcement attempts, Gierach said, but put officers in a position to make criminal decisions, too. Drug money that is confiscated in busts often cannot be precisely accounted for, he said, and thousands of dollars in drug money often are left in the hands of a cop’s conscience.
And then there are the jails.
“We have 2.3 million people in prison — the highest rate of incarceration in the world,” he said Friday. “In Cook County, more than half the inmates are nonviolent (no gun was used in the crime) drug offenders.
“The most unproductive thing you can do with a dollar is build a jail. We are hiring people to watch people who are doing nothing. Besides, you build a prison, and you don’t have the money to build a school.”
LEAP’s mantra is: Legalize, regulate, tax. Its members point out the end of alcohol prohibition put Al Capone and his thugs out of business. They no longer were killing cops and hiding millions.
Maybe all of that is too far from our backyard?
So consider the viewpoint of Jeff Terronez, Rock Island County state’s attorney.
He predicted the “feel-good” medical marijuana law would have created a slew of legal challenges. But that doesn’t mean minor pot possession should remain a crime.
“My suspicion is this: If the law passes, everyone who smokes marijuana is going to come up with a reason to use it,” he said of the medical marijuana measure that failed. “If they want to legalize marijuana, they should legalize it. My personal opinion: If the State of Illinois legalizes marijuana, I’m not going to lose any sleep over it.”
The ones losing sleep, say Gierach and McDonald, are politicians who are too afraid to enter the fray.
“The most important thing to a legislator is his or her seat,” Gierach said.
McDonald told of a conversation he had with a former police officer-turned-Iowa-legislator, a Republican.
“He was sympathetic to what I was saying, and he agreed with the inefficiencies and needlessness of criminalization,” the judge recalled. “But his answer was, ‘Maybe you know of some Democrat you could talk to?’
“No one wants to appear soft on crime.”
Some people will read this column and, for a moment or two, agree the arguments for decriminalization make sense. But the myths, hysteria and propaganda are hard to shake.
In fact, they’re almost addicting.
http://qctimes.com/news/opinion/editorial/columnists/barb-ickes/article_99f843a6-1b9f-11e0-aaa5-001cc4c03286.htmlIt’s a messed-up message.
By refusing last week to legalize medical marijuana,... more
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CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico – The embattled border city of Ciudad Juarez had its bloodiest year ever with 3,111 people killed in drug violence, an official said Saturday.
The city across from El Paso, Texas, has seen its homicide rate soar to one of the highest in the world since vicious turf battles broke out between gangs representing the Juarez and Sinaloa cartels in 2008.
That year, 1,587 people were killed in drug violence, and the toll increased to 2,643 in 2009.
Ciudad Juarez's bloodiest month last year was October, when 359 people were killed, said Arturo Sandoval, a spokesman for prosecutors in Chihuahua state, where the city is located.
Sandoval did not give statistics on murders unrelated to the drug war.
More than 30,000 people have been killed in drug violence nationwide since President Felipe Calderon launched an offensive against the cartels after taking office in December 2006.
In the southern state of Guerrero, four members of a family were killed Saturday when gunmen opened fire at a New Year's celebration in the town of Piedra Iman.
State investigators said the four men, ages 80, 60, 32 and 17, were slain at a party on a basketball court.CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico – The embattled border city of Ciudad Juarez had its... more
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LAS VEGAS – Nevada is known for letting just about anything slide, whether it's booze, bets or brothels. But even here there are limits.
It has been OK to smoke pot to treat illness for ten years. But don't think about selling it. Lately, federal agents and local police have taken notice, raiding several pot shops in and around Sin City.
All of it has pot activists scratching their heads: How is a state that has long lured visitors with promises of unconstrained debauchery stricter with pot than its more wholesome neighbors of Colorado, Arizona and California?
"I really thought they would leave us alone," said Pierre Werner, whose family's pot shop was raided and who now faces federal charges. "No one should go to prison for a plant."
Political leaders and historians say these activists don't know Nevada.
Sure, they say, the state has libertarian leanings and is generally willing to prosper from activities that most states have declared repugnant.
For many, however, pot is for hippies.
And Nevada, borne in the rugged days of the Wild West, is no place for hippies.
"The attitude was real men drank, whored and gambled — these are the vices of frontier men and women," said Guy Rocha, Nevada's former archivist.
"When it comes to drugs, Nevada has looked at it as, 'that's what those wild people in California do, or New York or Oregon,'" he said.
Nevada passed its medical marijuana law in 2000, four years after California passed its first-in-the-nation program. In all, 15 states and the District of Columbia allow it.
Advocates say the strict Nevada law makes it nearly impossible to legally smoke pot. Patients cannot buy or sell marijuana and can only grow seven plants for personal use.
Nevada's health department, which regulates medical marijuana, tells patients it cannot provide information about how to grow cannabis.
During the past year, at least 27 marijuana shops have opened in Las Vegas, according to weedmaps.com, an online dispensary and physician locator service.
The discreet outposts feature lengthy menus with whimsical names such as the Incredible Hulk, Purple Monster, Green Cheese and Pineapple Crack.
Transactions are called donations, not purchases. Customers are patients. Marijuana is medicine. Police, however, still means trouble.
The stores, many saying they are referral services for doctors willing to recommend marijuana, were largely left alone at first.
Then came reports that undercover police officers were making buys at the dispensaries.
In September, it was official. Local and federal investigators served search warrants at several marijuana shops in and around Las Vegas.
Law enforcement officials refuse to discuss the raids, saying the investigations remained open. They would not say what prompted the crackdown.
Federal law continues to classify marijuana as a controlled substance, prohibited from being prescribed by doctors.
Attorney General Eric Holder has said federal prosecutors will not pursue people who sell marijuana in compliance with a state law, but has warned that people who violate both federal and state laws will be targeted.
Nevada has long lured revelers from across the world with promises of leggy temptresses, modern gladiators and fertile slot machines.
Nearly a third of the state's revenue comes from taxes on casino winnings.
More than a decage ago, marijuana proponents enticed by Nevada's hedonistic reputation began targeting the Silver State.
Until 2000, Nevada had one of the nation's strictest marijuana laws, when possession of a single joint was a felony punishable by a year or more in prison.
The earliest campaigns to loosen such punishments were easy sells.
The medical marijuana law then removed criminal penalties on the use, possession and cultivation of marijuana by patients with written documentation from their physician.
Since 2000, activists have spent $12 million trying to make Nevada the first state to legalize pot and bring Amsterdam-style pot-smoking bars into casinos on the Las Vegas Strip.
The Washington, D.C.-based Marijuana Policy Project lead five failed efforts to pass pro-marijuana laws in Nevada.
"Obviously there is legalized gambling and to a certain extent prostitution as well. It just seems like the idea of taxing and regulating marijuana could have worked," said Steve Fox, the group's director of state campaigns.
California, Arizona and Colorado, meanwhile, have become the darlings of the pro-pot movement, with voters and lawmakers in those states embracing dispensaries.
In Nevada, law enforcement agencies, anti-drug activists and politicians in rural northern Nevada have led the opposition against the ballot measures.
The state's mighty casino industry, long eager to portray a balance of propriety and rebellion, has remained silent.
Activists are expected to try again to legalize pot in Nevada in 2012, but politicians and marijuana lobbyists alike predict another loss.
Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman, a martini-drinking advocate of sex tourism, said he is open to legalizing marijuana, but doesn't think voters are going to anytime soon.
"The people are not ready," he said, "no matter how we are characterized."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101229/ap_on_re_us/us_nevada_pot_shopsLAS VEGAS – Nevada is known for letting just about anything slide, whether... more
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These days, Casal Ventoso is an ordinary blue-collar community – mothers push baby strollers, men smoke outside cafes, buses chug up and down the cobbled main street.These days, Casal Ventoso is an ordinary blue-collar community – mothers push... more
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A top Afghan drug lord jailed in the United States since 2008 has been a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) informant for years, The New York Times reports.
Juma Khan was paid large sums of money to provide information about the Taliban, Afghan government corruption and other drug traffickers, the report added.
In 2008, Khan, described as the most dangerous drug lord and the Taliban supporter, was arrested and transported to New York to face charges under a new American narco-terrorism law.
The newspaper quotes unnamed American officials as saying that he was also a longtime American informer, who provided information to CIA officers and Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents.
Khan has been a valued source of information for years, even as he was growing strength to be one of Afghanistan's biggest drug traffickers after the US-led invasion of the country in 2001.
Informed American officials say Khan had been paid large amounts of cash by the United States.
According to the report, he was even secretly transported to the United States in 2006 for a series of meetings with CIA and DEA officials.
Even then, Washington knew that he was becoming Afghanistan's most important narcotics trafficker by taking over the drug operations of his rivals and paying off Taliban leaders and corrupt politicians in President Hamid Karzai's government.
Videotapes from his meetings in Washington indicate that Khan offered tantalizing information to US officials in return for what he hoped would be protected status as an 'American asset.'
He is now in the United States negotiating a plea bargain with American authorities, a deal that may keep secret many of the details about his relationship to the United States.
The CIA and DEA have refused to comment on Khan's case.
more at link...
The CIA is making billions running heroin and opium out of Afghanistan, just like the British East India Company did a few centuries ago. It's the tie that binds the Committee of 300, Skull & Bones, CIA, RIIA, the Crown and the military industrial complex in general.A top Afghan drug lord jailed in the United States since 2008 has been a Central... more
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In 1992, Jim Gray, a conservative judge in conservative Orange County, California, held a press conference during which he recommended that we rethink our drug laws. Back then, it took a great deal of courage to suggest that the war on drugs was a failed policy.
Today, more and more Americans are coming to the realization that prohibition's costs—whether measured in lives and liberties lost or dollars wasted—far exceed any possible or claimed benefits.
Reason.tv's Paul Feine interviewed Gray about drug policy and the prospects for reform. The interview was shot by Alex Manning and edited by Hawk Jensen.
Judge Jim Gray is the author of Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed and What We Can Do About It: A Judicial Indictment of the War on Drugs.
Approximately 8.30 minutes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6t1EM4OnaoIn 1992, Jim Gray, a conservative judge in conservative Orange County, California,... more
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Seattle Police officers brandishing submachine guns broke down the door of a 50-year-old medical marijuana patient Monday night and pushed him face down to the floor. His offense? He was legally growing two tiny cannabis plants.
Will Laudanski, a military veteran who was an Airborne Ranger in Desert Shield, wasn't even breaking the law. As an authorized medical marijuana patient in the state of Washington, he's allowed to grow up to 15 plants and possess 24 ounces of cannabis.
But Seattle Police have shown they are willing to treat the smallest of pot cases -- even in cases where the marijuana is legal -- as if they were raiding the biggest crack house or meth lab in town.
Just before 9 p.m. Monday officers at SPD's East Precinct held a briefing about a complaint of marijuana at a four-unit apartment building in the Leschi neighborhood, reports Dominic Holden at The Stranger.
A week earlier, officers had applied for a search warrant from King County Superior Court, sent an officer with a drug dog to sniff at the door, "confirmed the scent of marijuana," and started planning their big SWAT style drug raid.
A gung-ho SWAT team of officers decked out in all their Rambo-esque raid equipment -- between six and nine officers -- ran up the stairs, some carrying MP5 submachine guns, and one guy with a battering ram. They pounded on Laudanski's door and said it was the police.
"I was tying my robe," said Laudanski, who had just stepped out of the bathroom. "I said 'I am opening the door,' but before I could get my hand to the door, they busted it open and then rushed me."
Laudanski told The Stranger his door now "has cracks running right down the middle. I can't really bolt it."
"During the entry to this apartment, the locking mechanism to the front door was possibly damaged," the official incident report drily notes.
"I was trying to comply," Laudanski said. "Then they pushed me down to the ground and just basically got me positioned in a corner of the kitchen with my face on the floor."
As officers began to tear up the place while he was face down on the floor, Laudanski told them he was an authorized medical marijuana patient and directed them to his paperwork in the other room. "Do you want to see it?" he asked the officers.
Laudanski "had paperwork in the room declaring his marijuana grow was for medical purposes," the police report acknowledged.
As officers ransacked the apartment, they discovered two small marijuana plants in the bedroom, each growing in pots.
"They were able to see the full extent of my pathetic grow," Laudanski said. "There were four little nuggets of bud the size of your pinkie on one and five on the other. They're about 12 inches high."
Police didn't take the plants.
"Clearly, in this case, there was no law violation that was discovered," admitted Seattle Police spokesman Sean Whitcomb.
But Whitcomb adds, "Our mission is to enforce the law. We do that by gathering information of any evidence of any criminal violation. And I'd go on to say that had the officers known that, they would have spent their time doing something else. However, unfortunately, we don't always have that luxury."
But officers do have the luxury of speaking the English language, don't they? Couldn't they have, like, knocked on the goddamned door and asked about the marijuana, especially given the fact that Washington is a medical marijuana state?
Well, it turns out that "knock-and-talks" aren't the protocol for "drug cases" -- even small pot cases, Whitcomb said.
Well, heaven forbid you should go against your fucked-up protocol just because medical marijuana is legal, officer! By all means, feel free to break down doors, rough up sick people, and trash their homes! No need to make sure they're breaking the law first; that would violate protocol!
Laudanski said he hasn't done anything to attract the cops' attention. And he doesn't know why so much force was necessary.
"I came from a perspective that was pro-police," said Laudanski, who worked in New York as a paramedic. "But I still think this was very, very wrong what they did. I feel that higher-up people who ordered this, they are wasting our time and our money and they are putting innocent people in danger."
Every day in the United States, we have 100 to 150 paramilitary style SWAT raids on American homes, mostly in the name of the War On Drugs, according to NORML. Shouldn't we at least get the sick and dying off the battlefield?
http://www.tokeofthetown.com/2010/10/machine-gun_toting_cops_raid_legal_pot_patient_for.phpSeattle Police officers brandishing submachine guns broke down the door of a... more
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In the war against drug cartels, Mexican police and military often work at cross-purposes to each other. One cable describes a Mexican government pursuing losing tactics in the name of an unfocused strategy that leaves everyone worse off, with the exception of the country’s increasingly drug cartels. Michael Busch at the Foreign Policy in Focus blog Focal Points.
http://www.fpif.org/blog/wikileaks_xiv_mexican_governments_drug_policy_benefits_drug_cartelsIn the war against drug cartels, Mexican police and military often work at... more
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What were they smoking?
Federal, state and local officials carrying out a counter-terrorism drill in Northern California Wednesday played out a scenario in which local marijuana growers set off bombs and took over the Shasta Dam, the nation’s second largest, to free an imprisoned comrade.
According to an account in the Redding (Calif.) Record Searchlight, the 12-hour drill was part of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation's Critical Infrastructure Crisis Response Exercise Program, begun in 2003.
“More than 250 people from more than 20 agencies took part,” said Sheri Harral, a spokeswoman for the Bureau of Reclamation, according to the paper.
Harral said the drill took 18 months to plan and cost the bureau alone $500,000. The other agencies covered their own costs.
The paper made only passing reference to the scenario's designation of pot growers as terrorist villians.
In the otherwise realistic mock-terror scenario, the marijuana growers’ “red cell” set off bus and car bombs as distractions, took over the dam with three hostages, and then “threatened to flood the Sacramento River by rolling open the drum gates atop the dam,” according to the paper.
No matter how worthwhile a drill, said marijuana legalization advocates, envisioning pot growers as a terrorist threat in laid-back Northern California was ridiculous.
"That was so stupid," said Dale Gieringer, head of the California chapter of NORML, the decades-old National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.
more at link...
This is what these idiots do with our money.
Meanwhile, the CIA is the #1 drug runner in the world.What were they smoking?
Federal, state and local officials carrying out a... more
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A small war took place last week in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, between Brazilian forces and hundreds of drug traffickers holed up in the shantytown complex dubbed Complexo do Alemão.A small war took place last week in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, between Brazilian forces... more
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In "Marijuana Wars, Part 2," Vanguard executive producer and correspondent Adam Yamaguchi joins an elite task force as they survey and eradicate multi-million dollar marijuana fields run by Mexican drug trafficking organizations.
In this clip, Adam learns how undercover operatives prepare to go inside a Mexican drug trafficking organization, posing as land owners whose property could become a marijuana grow site.
"Vanguard," airing weekly on Current TV Mondays at 9/8c, is a no-limits documentary series whose award-winning correspondents put themselves in extraordinary situations to immerse viewers in global issues that have a large social significance. Unlike sound-bite driven reporting, the show's correspondents, Adam Yamaguchi, Kaj Larsen, Christof Putzel and Mariana van Zeller, serve as trusted guides who take viewers on in-depth real life adventures in pursuit of some of the world's most important stories.
For more, go to http://current.com/vanguard.In "Marijuana Wars, Part 2," Vanguard executive producer and correspondent... more
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In "Marijuana Wars, Part 2," Vanguard executive producer and correspondent Adam Yamaguchi joins an elite task force as they survey and eradicate multi-million dollar marijuana fields run by Mexican drug trafficking organizations.
In this clip, undercover operatives conclude a dramatic four-month investigation by luring growers and financiers -- who may be heavily armed -- into a trap.
"Vanguard," airing weekly on Current TV Mondays at 9/8c, is a no-limits documentary series whose award-winning correspondents put themselves in extraordinary situations to immerse viewers in global issues that have a large social significance. Unlike sound-bite driven reporting, the show's correspondents, Adam Yamaguchi, Kaj Larsen, Christof Putzel and Mariana van Zeller, serve as trusted guides who take viewers on in-depth real life adventures in pursuit of some of the world's most important stories.
For more, go to http://current.com/vanguard.In "Marijuana Wars, Part 2," Vanguard executive producer and correspondent... more
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In "Marijuana Wars, Part 2," Vanguard executive producer and correspondent Adam Yamaguchi joins an elite task force as they survey and eradicate multi-million dollar marijuana fields run by Mexican drug trafficking organizations.
In this clip, we see how the reach of drug trafficking isn't contained to California. In Gwinnett County, outside Atlanta, 71 people have been indicted as part of a trafficking take-down.
"Vanguard," airing weekly on Current TV Mondays at 9/8c, is a no-limits documentary series whose award-winning correspondents put themselves in extraordinary situations to immerse viewers in global issues that have a large social significance. Unlike sound-bite driven reporting, the show's correspondents, Adam Yamaguchi, Kaj Larsen, Christof Putzel and Mariana van Zeller, serve as trusted guides who take viewers on in-depth real life adventures in pursuit of some of the world's most important stories.
For more, go to http://current.com/vanguard.In "Marijuana Wars, Part 2," Vanguard executive producer and correspondent... more
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When Brazilian commandos raided the Rio De Janeiro slum yesterday they found something truly shocking at the city's most notorious drug gang hangouts - a Justin Bieber mural.It's not the music you would instantly connect with a bunch of South American drug barons but in the home of Pezao, one of the area's top traffickers, the police found a giant mural of the Canadian. Seems drugs do affect the mind after all. In the raid 2,600 police and army operatives swept through a Brazilian slum seizing 11 tons of marijuana and "a small arsenal" of weapons—including a missile—from a notorious drug gang. The clashes lead to at least 50 deaths. The hope was to weaken the Red Command drug gang and capture some of its notorious members—like Zeu, the drug lord behind the samurai-sword murder of Brazilian journalist Tim Lopes.
When Brazilian commandos raided the Rio De Janeiro slum yesterday they found... more
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Igor Sutyagin, one of four Russians, who was exchanged within the scope of the US-Russian spy swap in early July, claimed that he was given psychotropic drugs dissolved in cognac during interrogation in Moscow's Lefortovo detention center.
According to Sutyagin, a former disarmament researcher, who currently lives in Britain, said that the drugs, which he had been given during interrogation in Lefortovo, made him pliable. He also said that he started suffering from memory lapses after the interrogation.
Do Russian special services really possess and use the psychotropic drugs? There were many stories during the Soviet times about the KGB, which supposedly started using the drugs during interrogations. Is the situation still the same?
Alexander Kolpakidi, a historian of special services, said in an interview with Pravda.Ru that he did not exclude such a possibility.
"Technically, such drugs could be used against Sutyagin. During the Soviet times, there was the so-called Laboratory X chaired by Dr. Mairanovsky, where they used to make and test the "truth serum." The tests were conducted on military criminals, the Germans, who were especially atrocious during the Great Patriotic War. However, the laboratory was unexpectedly closed at the end of the 1940s, whereas Dr. Mairanovsky was fired. The activities of the laboratory were subsequently used against Comrades Beria, Abakumov and legendary Soviet intelligence officer Sudoplatov.
"Modern science refers to the method of obtaining truthful testimony with the help of chemical drugs as "narcotic analysis". The testimony obtained under narcosis is not considered evidence of confession, though. Such actions are not prohibited either, because their results give investigators an opportunity to find other ways for obtaining confession.
"The idea to use narcotic substances for special services appeared in medicine. When using narcosis as anesthetic drugs in child labor, medics noticed that women would often reveal the secrets which they would never even think to unveil in other circumstances.
"The USA pioneered in the use of psychotropic drugs. In 1922, Texan doctor Robert E. Haus, the father of the serum of truth, wrote an extensive article about the use of scopolamine in criminology. The scientist concluded that the use of the substance was a sure-fire way in obtaining necessary testimony. An injection of scopolamine makes a person speak the truth like a baby - straightforwardly, without making any attempts to conceal anything.
"In the States, they also used local unique drugs such as mescaline, a narcotic derived from peyote, a Mexican cactus. The legendary Carlos Castaneda made a name for himself on mescaline. Mexican Indians used peyote to publicly declare their misdeeds. Nazi scientists subsequently established as a result of experiments in concentration camps that mescaline makes a human being lose their will and loosen their tongue.
"The Americans use marijuana during interrogations too, as it happened in the case of Augusto del Garcio who narced out New York crime lord Lucky Luciano under the influence of marijuana. In 1970s, the CIA conducted experiments with psilocybin mushrooms and even curare poison.
"The most important evidence to prove the use of psychotropic substances in "the land of the free" is the "KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation" manual, which was declassified in 1997. The manual was used by CIA counterintelligence from 1963 to 1985. According to the document, US special services used such methods as disrupting human biorhythms, threats, physical violence, hypnosis and narcotics.
"The USA used such methods in all armed conflicts in which the country was involved. Now look at what they do to Guantanamo prisoners. To crown it all, The Washington Times wrote in 2001 that US federal courts could approve the use of the serum of truth in the search for Bin Laden.
"Therefore, it does not seem appropriate for Americans or British to stir hysteria about "brutal Russians using inhuman methods for obtaining confessionary statements," the historian said.
Sergey Balmasov...more at link
Pravda.Ru
Pravda is on fire today...Actually had trouble linking to it through Drudge.Igor Sutyagin, one of four Russians, who was exchanged within the scope of the... more
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20 tons of pot seized, eight arrested in San Diego and Tijuana.
Reporting from San Diego —
Federal authorities have unearthed another cross-border tunnel in a San Diego warehouse district, the second major tunnel discovery and multi-ton seizure of marijuana believed to be from Mexico's most powerful drug cartel in a month.
The tunnel, which started in a residence in Tijuana, stretched nearly half a mile and split into two passageways, with the branches emerging at separate warehouses nearly 800 feet apart.
The tunnel was within a block of a subterranean passage found three weeks ago, where authorities seized more than 25 tons of marijuana, the second-largest marijuana seizure in U.S. history.
With Thursday's haul of 20 more tons, authorities said they had dealt a significant double blow to Mexican organized crime groups. The amount seized was the equivalent of about 17 million marijuana joints, said Ralph Partridge, the special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration office in San Diego.
"This has a huge impact," Partridge said.
Authorities believe the drugs found in the tunnels this month belonged to separate cells of the Sinaloa drug cartel, which has long used northern Baja California as staging ground for smuggling drugs into California. The discovery on Thursday morning came after U.S. agents stopped a tractor-trailer loaded with marijuana bales that had just left a warehouse on Marconi Drive.
Inside the empty warehouse space where a "For Rent" sign hung out front, agents found an opening cut into the concrete floor. They traversed the tunnel to the second opening in a warehouse a few blocks away on Via de la Amistad.
To find the opening on the Tijuana side, Mexican Army soldiers traversed the entire 2,200-foot passage, which featured lighting and ventilation systems. They surfaced in the kitchen of the residence where a family lived. Authorities said six people were arrested in Mexico.
"They were very surprised," said Tim Durst, an assistant special agent from Immigration and Customs Enforcement who heads the multi-agency San Diego Tunnel Task Force. The bust culminated an eight-month investigation, built largely on tips from informants.
Authorities seized four tons of marijuana in the Tijuana residence and another location in Mexico; three tons in the tunnel; and about 13 tons in the tractor trailer. Two men were arrested in California, including the driver of the tractor-trailer.
The tunnel was one of the longest ever discovered and had several unique features that highlighted traffickers' evolving approach to ferrying drugs under the border. The floor of the passageway was lined with tongue-and-groove wooden boards that served as a level surface for the cart and rail system. There was an underground room, roughly 10 by 20 feet, where smugglers off-loaded the marijuana bales from the cart before hoisting them to the surface.
The most unusual feature was the construction of two tunnel branches, which authorities speculate allowed smugglers alternate exit points in case of surveillance.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-tunnel-20101127,0,416000.story20 tons of pot seized, eight arrested in San Diego and Tijuana.
Reporting from San... more
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The increase of drugs in the U.S. and the EU, and the global drug trade, go hand in hand with imperial military expansion around the world. The "fight against drugs is a farce ... "
The Mercury News of San Jose, California, revealed that CIA agents sold hundreds of tons of cocaine in the U.S. during the years of the conflict in Nicaragua, in order to obtain funds for the Contras (US-created paramilitaries to prevent the Sandinista revolution). The report explains that Contra leaders met with a CIA agent to plan the operation. The drugs were transported in military aircraft to airports in Texas.
The drugs were first distributed in the black ghettos of Los Angeles, California, from there it spread throughout the country. In the early 80's, crack and cocaine ravaged neighborhoods in the U.S., destroying the brains and the will to fight and protest. The CIA then was called the cocaine import agency. The chemical precursors are indispensable ingredients for the manufacture of cocaine, and not produced in Colombia, but without an embrago there is no plan "Germany" or "Swiss plan" by bombing the multinationals that manufacture the chemicals ... Why is that?
more at link...
Don't forget Opium and Heroin!
The San Jose Mercury News journalist was Gary Webb.
He "committed suicide" and was found with 2 bullets in his head.
First time for everything.
Watch 'American Drug War' for more info. I pasted the full-length version above.
http://current.com/entertainment/movies/92324863_american-drug-war.htmThe increase of drugs in the U.S. and the EU, and the global drug trade, go hand in... more
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