Police used teargas to drive back protesters following an attempt by the Occupy supporters to shut down the city of Oakland. Photograph: Noah Berger/AP

New documents prove what was once dismissed as paranoid fantasy: totally integrated corporate-state repression of dissent

Naomi Wolf
guardian.co.uk, Saturday 29 December 2012

It was more sophisticated than we had imagined: new documents show that the violent crackdown on Occupy last fall – so mystifying at the time – was not just coordinated at the level of the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and local police. The crackdown, which involved, as you may recall, violent arrests, group disruption, canister missiles to the skulls of protesters, people held in handcuffs so tight they were injured, people held in bondage till they were forced to wet or soil themselves –was coordinated with the big banks themselves.

The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, in a groundbreaking scoop that should once more shame major US media outlets (why are nonprofits now some of the only entities in America left breaking major civil liberties news?), filed this request. The document – reproduced here in an easily searchable format – shows a terrifying network of coordinated DHS, FBI, police, regional fusion center, and private-sector activity so completely merged into one another that the monstrous whole is, in fact, one entity: in some cases, bearing a single name, the Domestic Security Alliance Council. And it reveals this merged entity to have one centrally planned, locally executed mission. The documents, in short, show the cops and DHS working for and with banks to target, arrest, and politically disable peaceful American citizens.

The documents, released after long delay in the week between Christmas and New Year, show a nationwide meta-plot unfolding in city after city in an Orwellian world: six American universities are sites where campus police funneled information about students involved with OWS to the FBI, with the administrations’ knowledge (p51); banks sat down with FBI officials to pool information about OWS protesters harvested by private security; plans to crush Occupy events, planned for a month down the road, were made by the FBI – and offered to the representatives of the same organizations that the protests would target; and even threats of the assassination of OWS leaders by sniper fire – by whom? Where? – now remain redacted and undisclosed to those American citizens in danger, contrary to standard FBI practice to inform the person concerned when there is a threat against a political leader (p61).

As Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, executive director of the PCJF, put it, the documents show that from the start, the FBI – though it acknowledges Occupy movement as being, in fact, a peaceful organization – nonetheless designated OWS repeatedly as a “terrorist threat”:

“FBI documents just obtained by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) … reveal that from its inception, the FBI treated the Occupy movement as a potential criminal and terrorist threat … The PCJF has obtained heavily redacted documents showing that FBI offices and agents around the country were in high gear conducting surveillance against the movement even as early as August 2011, a month prior to the establishment of the OWS encampment in Zuccotti Park and other Occupy actions around the country.”

Verheyden-Hilliard points out the close partnering of banks, the New York Stock Exchange and at least one local Federal Reserve with the FBI and DHS, and calls it “police-statism”:

“This production [of documents], which we believe is just the tip of the iceberg, is a window into the nationwide scope of the FBI’s surveillance, monitoring, and reporting on peaceful protestors organizing with the Occupy movement … These documents also show these federal agencies functioning as a de facto intelligence arm of Wall Street and Corporate America.”

The documents show stunning range: in Denver, Colorado, that branch of the FBI and a “Bank Fraud Working Group” met in November 2011 – during the Occupy protests – to surveil the group. The Federal Reserve of Richmond, Virginia had its own private security surveilling Occupy Tampa and Tampa Veterans for Peace and passing privately-collected information on activists back to the Richmond FBI, which, in turn, categorized OWS activities under its “domestic terrorism” unit. The Anchorage, Alaska “terrorism task force” was watching Occupy Anchorage. The Jackson, Michigan “joint terrorism task force” was issuing a “counterterrorism preparedness alert” about the ill-organized grandmas and college sophomores in Occupy there. Also in Jackson, Michigan, the FBI and the “Bank Security Group” – multiple private banks – met to discuss the reaction to “National Bad Bank Sit-in Day” (the response was violent, as you may recall). The Virginia FBI sent that state’s Occupy members’ details to the Virginia terrorism fusion center. The Memphis FBI tracked OWS under its “joint terrorism task force” aegis, too. And so on, for over 100 pages.

Jason Leopold, at Truthout.org, who has sought similar documents for more than a year, reported that the FBI falsely asserted in response to his own FOIA requests that no documents related to its infiltration of Occupy Wall Street existed at all. But the release may be strategic: if you are an Occupy activist and see how your information is being sent to terrorism task forces and fusion centers, not to mention the “longterm plans” of some redacted group to shoot you, this document is quite the deterrent.

There is a new twist: the merger of the private sector, DHS and the FBI means that any of us can become WikiLeaks, a point that Julian Assange was trying to make in explaining the argument behind his recent book. The fusion of the tracking of money and the suppression of dissent means that a huge area of vulnerability in civil society – people’s income streams and financial records – is now firmly in the hands of the banks, which are, in turn, now in the business of tracking your dissent.

Remember that only 10% of the money donated to WikiLeaks can be processed – because of financial sector and DHS-sponsored targeting of PayPal data. With this merger, that crushing of one’s personal or business financial freedom can happen to any of us. How messy, criminalizing and prosecuting dissent. How simple, by contrast, just to label an entity a “terrorist organization” and choke off, disrupt or indict its sources of financing.

Why the huge push for counterterrorism “fusion centers”, the DHS militarizing of police departments, and so on? It was never really about “the terrorists”. It was not even about civil unrest. It was always about this moment, when vast crimes might be uncovered by citizens – it was always, that is to say, meant to be about you.

Naomi R. Wolf (born November 12, 1962)[1][2][3] is an American author and former political consultant. With the publication of the 1991 bestselling book The Beauty Myth she became a leading spokesperson of what was later described as the third wave of the feminist movement.[4]

ATHENS | Thu Sep 6, 2012 7:23am EDT

The brave Greeks show the way, once again.

(Reuters) – Greek police protesting against austerity cuts blocked the entrance to the riot police headquarters on Thursday, preventing buses carrying riot police from leaving for the site of major demonstrations this weekend.

Scuffles broke out as riot police tried to clear the entrance of several dozen police union members – many in uniform – chanting anti-austerity slogans and holding banners.  “They would not let riot police buses depart for Thessaloniki,” a police official said, referring to the northern city hosting a weekend trade fair where anti-austerity demonstrations are planned.

Some riot police appeared reluctant to tackle uniformed officers. “They make us fight against our own brothers,” said one riot policeman who declined to be named.

The government plans to slash police pay in a new round of spending cuts worth nearly 12 billion euros over the next two years. The savings plan is expected to provoke new street protests in the coming weeks by austerity-weary Greeks fed up with repeated wage and pension cuts.

Police, firefighters and coast guard officers plan to hold a separate protest later on Thursday in central Athens.

(Reporting by Yannis Behrakis and Tatiana Fragou, writing by Deepa Babington, editing by Tim Pearce)

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  Special for TGP 

By Ritt Goldstein Originally published Jul 27, 2004 “Work Makes One Free” On July 8, Asia Times Online broke the story (Patriotic pride and fear) of how noted Canadian psychologist Daniel Burston (two PhDs from Canada’s York University and a widely acclaimed author) perceived a broad retreat into “social fantasy systems” and “socially patterned defects” as explaining much of the Bush administration’s decision-making. He observed for ATol that such flaws bring those involved to “act in ways which – from an outsiders perspective – look insane”. On the following day, July 9, the US Senate Intelligence Committee released its report on the United States’ justification for the Iraq war, claiming an erroneous “groupthink” was to blame, and coincidentally highlighting the validity of Burston’s observations. Groupthink is defined as “a mode of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive group, when the members’ strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action”. In other words, retreat into a “social fantasy system” allowed “socially patterned defects” to flourish within the group’s members. The Senate Intelligence Committee chairman, Republican Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas, stated that “it is clear this groupthink also extended to our allies and to the United Nations and several other nations as well”. The July 8 ATol piece provides parallel commentary on this, noting that “in most cases, destructive impulses are rationalized, ensuring ‘at least a few other people or a whole social group share in the rationalization and thus make it appear to be realistic to the members of such a group’. In effect, an emotional-support network is formed, providing its individual members with a mistaken sense of legitimacy.” In an October 2003 article titled “Cheney’s hawks hijacking policy”, this journalist revealed that former senior Pentagon staffer Lieutenant-Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski (retired) described “a subversion of constitutional limits on executive power and a co-optation through deceit of a large segment of the Congress”, adding that “in order to take that first step – Iraq – lies had to be told to Congress to bring them on board”. Planned and deliberate lies were told in order to manipulate Congress and the American people purposefully, effectively, and criminally, undercutting the very foundations of US democracy. Not to be misunderstood, the “groupthink” in question is far from innocent error, and administration critics charge that the Senate Intelligence Committee reports’ attempts to couch blame as mere “fuzzy thinking” highlight the propaganda efforts ongoing, the groupthink still dominating policy. But this psychological phenomenon perhaps best translates to a broad failure to appreciate the reality of circumstance, the nature or implications of actions, the very difference between right and wrong. And while a hard core of believers/leaders is typically central to such a phenomenon’s workings, their influence radiates broadly outward through their immediate group(s) and those they interface with. Coincident with the Intelligence Committee’s report, Senator Roberts defended the Iraq war as justified for humanitarian reasons, though numerous human-rights organizations have condemned the US record in Iraq, the war crimes that US forces are alleged to have committed there. Notably, before the Iraq war began, numerous figures had publicly challenged the Bush administration’s prewar assertions. On September 9, 2002, CNN had headlined “Former weapons inspector: Iraq not a threat”, noting, “Former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter says US military action against Iraq would be a mistake.” And oil-war questions were abundant. But highlighting the dynamics of what was ongoing, Kwiatkowski had charged that “there was an extra-governmental network operating outside normal structures and practices, ‘a network of political appointees in key positions who felt they needed to take some action, to make things happen in a foreign affairs, national security way’. She said Pentagon personnel and the DIA [Defense Intelligence Agency] were pressured to favorably alter assessments and reports”, a hard core of misguided individuals within the administration of US President George W Bush enjoying “a mistaken sense of legitimacy” in their efforts, spreading this false and wrongful mindset to many of those they encountered. While groupthink is undoubtedly to blame for the Iraq war’s false premises, the full implications of the “groupthink” that occurred, as well as that which is ongoing, appear to have yet to emerge. Highlighting a disturbing reality, Burston had noted parallels between the social psychology of the present and that of the 1930s. In a further parallel to the 1930s, on July 9 the conservative Chicago Sun-Times (one of the United States’ top 50 papers) ran a commentary on US fascism, stating that “fascism’ is not an exaggeration”, and adding that anyone who doubted this “doesn’t know what fascism is”. It went on to note: “Some liberals suggest that the administration is capable of canceling the November election on the grounds of national security if it looks like Bush would lose. I doubt this.” But on July 11 and 12, news of the administration seeking legal authority for just such an election postponement – a delay in the November election for national-security reasons – widely broke. Burston had said he believed the US could be poised “on the verge” of a corporate fascism, and eminent political scientist Dr Michael Parenti (Yale PhD in political science and author of 18 books) spoke similarly. And indeed, the slippery slope of “groupthink” in effect provided the basis for the psycho-dynamics dominating the rise of 1930s fascism, its proponents of a “new order” perceiving endless lies, propaganda, repression, mass violence, and even mass murder as legitimate means to what they perceived as their “noble” ends, versus tragic and criminal delusions. Students of history will note the “groupthink” evidenced in Germany’s 1930s mass rallies at Nuremberg, though the realization of what was then occurring didn’t fully emerge until the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunals of the 1940s. As discussed in ATol’s July 8 article, the process of groupthink then in effect spawns “‘socially patterned defects’ that enabled large groups of people to adjust themselves comfortably to a system that, humanly speaking, is ‘fundamentally at odds with our basic existential and human needs'”. Burston then noted that this resulted in “deficiencies, or traits, or attitudes which don’t generate internal conflict when, in fact, they should”. He then cited “Nazi mass-murderer Adolf Eichmann as representing the ‘prototypical example’ of what the phenomenon of ‘socially patterned defects’ can engender”, emphasizing that “with one very questionable exception, Eichmann tested normal on all psychological tests that were administered to him by mental-health experts before his trial”. In discussing questions of contemporary fascism with Asia Times Online, Dr Parenti said, “When fascism came to power [in the 1930s], what it did was cut back on the public sector, privatize a lot of state-owned industries, abolish inheritance taxes and other taxes on the rich, abolish corporate taxes, cut wages, destroy labor unions, and destroy or undermine opposition parties.” He described fascism as simply a tool employed by ruthless power-elites in achieving their ambitions. He added: “There’s a concern that we’re [the US] heading towards fascism, or that we’re replicating fascism today.” Parenti saw citizenry being mobilized by “waving the flag in their face, and wrapping the flag around the leader, and telling them that they’re being threatened by one menace or another, from abroad or within.” In a parallel, Bush critics have long charged his administration with precisely this. Parenti cited Nazi Field Marshal Hermann Goering’s similar explanation of popular motivation, which emerged from the period of the Nuremberg Tribunal. In a purely American vein, Parenti recalled that former US secretary of state John Foster Dulles had said: “To get the people to support large military budgets and intervention, you’ve got to conjure up a threat, and you’ve got to make this scenario of ‘one nation is a hero, another nation is a villain’. It’s got to be hero versus villain.” And the Senate Intelligence report does aid parallels between Dulles’ vision and the Iraq war. “You fool the people into thinking that you’re protecting them, you’re watching out for their interests, and you get them to vote against their own interests,” Parenti charged. Comparing today’s United States to the 1930s, Parenti addressed the recent US Supreme Court decision allowing Vice President Dick Cheney and the Bush administration to refuse public access to the documents of Cheney’s so-called Energy Task Force. Indications exist that oil-war questions were discussed within this group, a September 2003 Inter Press Service article, “Oil war questions surround Cheney energy group”, addressing such concerns. Parenti strongly emphasized the implications of the court decision. “The Supreme Court decision does, in effect, lift the executive power to an unaccountable and undemocratic status. So you really have no way for Congress or the public to hold these people accountable for what they’re doing. You’re, in effect, setting up a cloak of impunity on their actions under the guise of ‘executive privilege’ … so what we’re getting here is many of the same things that the fascists accomplish, while maintaining a democratic veneer,” Parenti claimed, adding: “You’re getting enormous tax cuts for the rich – there are now corporations that are making billions of dollars in profits that are paying no taxes – you’re getting the rollback of trade unions through outsourcing, closing down unionized factories … you’re getting depressed wages, wages aren’t keeping up with inflation; increasing spending in the military sector – this is just exactly what the fascists did. So you’re accomplishing a lot of these same things without having to ‘go all the way’ and destroy every little shred of democracy.” Parenti then proceeded to draw a firm parallel with the Italian 1930s “corporative state”. “In practice, the big decisions regarding the political economy were made by the industrialists,” Parenti noted, but prefacing that by saying all groups within the Italian corporative state were “supposed to” share the decision power. He likened the large Italian industrialists’ group to America’s National Association of Manufacturers, saying, “in effect, those were the guys who were really thoroughly incorporated, and most of the ordinary people were left out in the cold, as subjects of the state”. After a moment, Parenti quickly observed that “the people always get a share of this action, though. The American people get a share of it, the Italians did … their share is the taxes and the blood. They pay the taxes, and they send their sons off.” Notably, with the Nuremberg Tribunals, society long ago determined that those who may commit criminal acts while influenced by groupthink are nevertheless criminals, and should be judged accordingly. Ritt Goldstein is a courageous American investigative political journalist living in Sweden. His work has appeared fairly widely, including in America’s Christian Science Monitor, Australia’s Sydney Morning Herald, Spain’s El Mundo, Sweden’s Aftonbladet, Austria’s Wiener Zeitung, Hong Kong’s Asia Times, and a number of other global media outlets. He has lived in Sweden since July 1997, officially acquiring permanent residency there in 2006.  At present he is about to begin work on a book, one titled “Brave New Sweden”.

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The Quebec student strike:
Police begin to apply draconian Bill 78
By Keith Jones, WSWS.ORG, a socialist publication
Thank you, WSWS.ORG.
24 May 2012

Well over 100,000 people marched through the streets of Montreal on Tuesday to mark the 100th day of the student strike

Well over 100,000 people marched through the streets of Montreal on Tuesday to mark the 100th day of the student strike
Quebec authorities have begun to make use of the sweeping repressive powers contained in Bill 78—the emergency legislation the provincial Liberal government rushed through the National Assembly late last week to suppress the province-wide student strike.

On Tuesday evening, just hours after 150,000 people had demonstrated in Montreal to mark the 100th day of the strike and denounce Bill 78, police invoked the new law to declare a nighttime student protest illegal.

In addition to criminalizing the student strike, Bill 78 makes all demonstrations in Canada’s second most populous province—irrespective of their cause—illegal, unless organizers have submitted to police more than eight hours in advance the protest route and duration and undertaken to abide by any changes demanded by the police.

The organizers of Tuesday’s nocturnal protest, the 29th successive evening demonstration held in downtown Montreal in support of the student strike, had defied the legal requirement that they seek police permission for their demonstration. Citing this failure, the police declared the protest an “illegal assembly,” then used tear-gas and baton charges to disperse the crowd of more than 2,000.
In the melee that followed, 113 people were arrested. According to police none of these arrests were for violating Bill 78 itself.

Rather they were for alleged acts of violence committed while resisting the police’s violent dispersal of the protest or for wearing a mask. The same day that Quebec’s provincial government adopted Bill 78, Montreal City Council, also meeting in special session, passed a bylaw that makes it illegal to wear any face covering—including face-paint, a niqab or a scarf—while demonstrating.

Although Montreal police chose on Tuesday night to use Bill 78 only as a pretext for their declaring the protest illegal, they told a press conference yesterday that they may, at a future date, charge the protest organizers with violating the new law.

In Sherbrooke, the city that Quebec Premier Jean Charest represents in the Quebec legislature, police have gone further. On Monday evening they arrested 36 people and charged them under Bill 78’s Article 16 with participating in an unauthorized demonstration. If convicted, the 36 face a minimum fine of $1,000 and could be ordered to pay as much as $5,000.

Tuesday’s massive march in Montreal attests to the widespread support for the students’ struggle against the government’s plans to raise university tuitions by more 80 percent over the next seven years and a groundswell of popular opposition to Bill 78.
Even the corporate media, which has strongly supported the tuition hikes and defended Bill 78 as a necessary measure to quell violence and disorder, was forced to concede Wednesday that far from ending the “social crisis,” the government’s draconian law has exacerbated it.

The placard reads: “Ontario student(s) against Bill 78.”

An opinion poll conducted by one of Quebec’s most respected pollsters found that 78 percent of Quebecers believe the government has “gone too far” and, despite the massive media campaign aimed at depicting the students as violent and selfish, found respondents equally split between those for and against the government’s attempt to legislate against the students. The poll found opposition to Bill 78 concentrated among the young, those with “low revenues,” and residents of Montreal.

Emerging from a cabinet meeting Wednesday, Education Minister Michelle Courchesne said she was ready to meet with leaders of the three province-wide student associations, including representatives of CLASSE (The Broader Coalition of the Association for Student-Union Solidarity), which the government has repeatedly denounced as “extremist,” most recently because it has said it will not submit to Bill 78.

However, even as she proclaimed that the government’s “door is open,” Courchesne made clear that the government remains as determined as ever to force through the tuition fee hikes, which are only an element in its sweeping austerity program. Courchesne explicitly ruled out any discussion of a moratorium or delay in implementing the tuition fee hikes, let alone reducing or rescinding them, and said the government is not prepared to discuss any changes to Bill 78.

The leaders of the student associations have nonetheless indicated a willingness to resume talks with the government. Earlier this month, under pressure from the leaders of Quebec’s principal trade unions, they signed on to a sellout agreement that not only called for the implementation of the tuition hikes in full, but also for the establishment of a government/business-dominated tripartite committee under which student leaders would have worked with the government to cut university spending. This agreement subsequently collapsed because of massive student opposition.

While denouncing Bill 78 as an unprecedented attack on democratic rights, the trade unions have announced that they will comply with all its provisions, including those that conscript teachers into the government’s drive to break the student strike. The unions are seeking to use their political and financial influence over the student associations and the student movement to promote their longtime ally the Parti Quebecois (PQ)—a big business party which when it last held power implemented the greatest social spending cuts in Quebec history.

The leaders of Quebec Solidaire (QS), a Quebec nationalist party that presents itself as a leftwing alternative to the PQ, meanwhile, have backed away from statements from their lone member of the Quebec legislature that suggested they were counseling defiance of Bill 78. The comments of Amir Khadir had been vehemently denounced both by the QS’s establishment opponents and by editorialists, who said that those not prepared to uphold the laws adopted by the National Assembly have no right to serve in it. “We cannot encourage defiance of Bill 78,” announced Francoise David, QS’s co-leader Wednesday.

The Quebec students and their supporters must draw far-ranging conclusions from the all-out campaign being mounted against them not only by the Charest Liberal government, but by the Canadian ruling class as a whole. The capitalist elite fear and hate the student strike because it represents an implicit challenge to their class strategy—their drive to make the working class pay for the breakdown of capitalism through austerity measures that aim to destroy all the social benefits working people won through the great social struggles of the last century.

To prevail, the students must make their strike the catalyst for the mobilization of the working class in Quebec and across Canada in an industrial and political offensive against all social spending, job and wage cuts and for a workers’ government.
The World Socialist Web Site spoke with some of those who participated in Tuesday’s mammoth march in Montreal.

Grade 11 student, Alexis Chartrand

Alexis Chartrand is one of the many high school students who have become politically activated by the student strike. He told the WSWS: “The emergency legislation is totally abusive on the government’s part. They cannot pass a law that restricts the fundamental freedoms in the [Canadian and Quebec] Charters [of rights]—it is unthinkable. It’s very dangerous to push through laws in the name of public security. There are lots of fascist, dictatorial regimes that came to power like that. We must be watchful and ensure that public safety not become an excuse to reduce peoples’ freedoms.

“I don’t think that a democratic government can afford to break a popular protest movement with such overt repression. It will eventually have to listen.

“I am fighting for university education to be a right. I think that education, health care and essential public services should be totally free for everyone. This is an elementary egalitarian measure which should be assured in contemporary society. But certainly in a context of crisis, negotiations are necessary and a little give-and-take is required to arrive at some agreement.”
Alexis was aware of the parallels between what is happening in Quebec and Europe. “The more you push people to the limit, the more they will push back and seek to regain what was lost. We see what is happening in Greece and Italy: There are big economic problems and the population is paying heavily for the current economic system. In Quebec, even if we are much less worse off than in Greece, there are still unjust measures—measures that we are beginning to stand up against, so that they do not pass.”

Estelle, Sandrine, and Asma

Estelle, Sandrine and Asma attend Sophie-Barat Secondary School.
Both Estelle and Sandrine spoke out forcefully against Bill 78. “It’s almost becoming a dictatorship where you don’t have the right to say or do anything,” said Estelle.

Added Sandrine, “I really feel that I’m living under a dictatorship with this law. I do not find it normal that we should feel unsafe in wearing the red squares [the symbol of the student strike] in front of police officers. It is not normal for Quebec to sink to the point where political opinions can be so derided.”

Asked why they thought the government is so intransigent, Sandrine said, “I think that there was pressure from richer people, so that they can avoiding paying their share of what they should pay.”

Asma complained about an opinion poll that had claimed Quebecers massively supported Bill 78. “I believe that polls are biased. La presse’s Thursday poll on the legislation was conducted before details of the Bill were even given. Then we see after the Bill’s passage that people do not agree with it. Whenever I talk to people in the street, most are for the student movement, and not against it. In recent demonstrations, people cheered us on the street.

“The majority of the population is from the middle class and the poor, and if we were to unite to protest against inequality, it would be a much larger movement than the current one protesting the tuition fee increases.”

Emil Grigorov a lecturer at the Université Laval in Quebec City, explained that Bill 78 had caused him to come out in the street in support of the students. “This law is a fundamental attack on democratic principles. It is an undemocratic law and recognized to be unconstitutional legislation. It must be stopped.

“I think [the government] is under pressure from big business and that it has reached sort of an impasse. I do not think that it will succeed in breaking the student movement since this is more than a student movement. It’s much broader, a social movement, a political movement … a movement for democracy.

“Myself I lived under dictatorship. I spent half of my life under a totalitarian regime, and it always starts with little changes here, small attacks against democracy there, and finishes with the abolition of democracy.”

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//

The war on drugs is the price the American nation pays to priggishness and conservatism. 

The ferocity of the drug war in Mexico makes the US mafia violence look like kindergarten play.  

STEVEN JONAS, MD, MPH
Crosspost with: http://blog.buzzflash.com/node/13445 

On April 8, 2012, our esteemed Editor/Publisher at BuzzFlash@Truthout, my good friend Mark Karlin, published a column entitled “The US War on Drug Cartels in Mexico Is a Deadly Failure” (1). In his column he noted that: “Approximately 50,000 or more Mexicans have been killed since Mexican President Felipe Calderon launched a so-called war on drug cartels. (In a recent appearance in Toronto, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta claimed 150,000 people have died in the drug war in Mexico, but the timeline Panetta was referring to was unclear, as was the origin of the figure he cited.).” Mark went on to say: “Here is the US policy in a nutshell: we pay Mexicans to kill Mexicans, and this slaughter has no effect on drug shipments or prices.” Nor on the use of those drugs in the United States, which has generally not significantly changed over the 40-plus years of the “War” (2).

Over the years I have written at length on this subject in the academic literature (2). The “War on Drugs” has never been such a thing. From its inauguration by Pres. Richard Nixon it has always been a “War on Certain Users of Certain Drugs”, for the most part minority drug users at that, although some non-minorities do get caught up in its tentacles. The so-called War on Drugs was begun shortly after the invention of the race-based “Southern Strategy” that has controlled the fortunes of the GOP and unfortunately the country for most of the time since Nixon installed it.

The correctly labeled “War on Drug Users” has primarily been a racist enterprise too. It has been aimed at the users of one minor class of the Recreational Mood Altering Drugs (RMADs), those that are currently “illicit” (as alcohol was nationally between 1920 and 1933. But Prohibition was for the most part actually aimed at the drug, ethyl alcohol, not at the users.) Although the ratios have declined a bit in the last few years, for most of its duration under the War on Drug Users, while approximately 75% of those in prison for drug-related offenses are non-white approximately 75% of illicit-drug users are white. Further, the War on Drug Users has been race-based in terms of the neighborhoods in which it has been waged.

The commonly used RMADs are alcohol, nicotine in tobacco, the non-prescription use of prescription drugs, and the illicits, primarily marijuana, heroin, cocaine, and fairly recently, methamphetamine. In terms of negative outcomes of RMAD use, for example, tobacco-use still kills about 430,000 people per year and alcohol between 60,000 and 100,000, depending upon how one counts. As of the turn of the century, in this country the illicits killed about 20,000, half that number as a result of drug-trade violence that would not exist absent the War on Drug Users and some of the other half due to forced unsterile use of the drugs. Tobacco and alcohol are not only the major drug killers but they are the “starter drugs,” most often in childhood, for almost every problem-user of them in adult life and almost every user of the illicits, regardless of age.

Logic has not ended the War on Drug Users. Neither has the mainstream drug policy reform movement which views RMAD use as the same false duality the Drug Warriors do. Logic did not end Prohibition either. Over-riding policy concerns did: rampant crime on the one hand and a major need for new tax revenues to deal with the Depression on the other. Major funding for the final Repeal campaign of the early 1930s came from a John D. Rockefeller-lead group of financiers who wanted to prevent any increases in income tax levels that an incoming Democratic Administration might enact.

There is a major series of problems that could be addressed by ending the War on Drug Users and legalizing the illicits. First, all of the ever-rising toll of death, both in the U.S. and abroad would be brought to an end. Second, a major new source of tax revenues would be created. The prison population would be significantly reduced, resulting in significant reductions in Federal, state and local spending on incarceration. Doing so would significantly unclog the courts, especially at the Federal level where they are so over-burdened with drug cases that the waits for trials on much more important matters, especially in the civil realm, can become interminable.

Third, there would be a significant reduction in the demands on the law enforcement sector of government, which could either save money or enable the diversion of resources to other important areas, such as financial fraud, that do not always receive the attention they deserve. The Taliban would be largely defunded. Finally, the recognition of the unitary nature of RMAD use would enable for the first time a comprehensive public health program to deal with all of the negative aspects of that use, especially among children for whom it is the major licit drugs which are the stepping stones both to later habitual, damaging use of them, and, currently, to the use of the illicits.

But this is all logic, which increasingly has less place in politics. There are major stakeholders in maintaining the current War on Drug Users who would have to be dealt with, and that would not be so easy. Many politicians of both parties, if given the chance would just love to run on the “soft-on-drugs” issue. Although the tobacco industry has reportedly for many years has registered a variety of names to use in the case of the legalization of marijuana, the alcohol industry would not welcome the competition from RMADs that produce results similar to those achieved by its products. Both the private prison industry and the workers in major prison systems would be negatively affected by legalization. (In California, for example, the prison guards union contributed to the campaign against a Proposition that would have legalized marijuana.) The powerful drug cartels, politically well-connected in certain countries, also have an interest in maintaining their very profitable enterprise. As for the non-prescription use of the prescription drugs (the latter of which has been a much more serious problem than the use of heroin and cocaine combined), a variety of approaches could be explored. The non-prescription use of illegally-produced methamphetamine (a prescription drug) presents a particularly serious problem.

This all would have be combined with a major public-health based anti- and safe-RMAD use program, combining tax policy, controls on advertising, packaging, and marketing, and effective education programs for both adults and children. The result would be a much healthier nation, in many senses. Since finding sources of new government revenues in the face of ever-increasing deficits has become such a major concern and since certain major foreign policy aims could be achieved so easily, now is the time to begin developing strategies and tactics for ending the War on Drug Users, once and for all. To deal with the Real Drug Problem, that caused by the use of alcohol and tobacco products, reform policy would have to go way beyond the current narrow “legalize marijuana” focus of the current drug policy reform movement. But if it were couched in the terms of saving money as well as saving lives, success just might be possible to achieve.

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1. (http://truth- out.org/news/item/8371-the-us-war-on-drug-cartels-in-mexico-is-a- deadly-failure).
2.  Jonas, S., “The Public Health Approach to the Prevention of Substance Abuse,” chapter 70 in Lowinson, J., et al, Eds., Substance Abuse: A Comprehensive Textbook, 2nd ed., Baltimore, MD: Williams and Wilkins, 1992; chapter 77 in the 3^rd ed., Baltimore, MD: Williams and Wilkins, 1997; chap. 79 in the 4th ed., Baltimore, MD: Lippincott Williams and Wilkins, 2004.

Addendum: One commentator on the column as published on the BuzzFlash@Truthout website had this to say: “We need the drug laws to use against individuals who are otherwise a threat to society.”  Indeed.  A common argument from the Drug Warriors and an excellent rationale for prohibition of tobacco and alcohol, each far more destructive to society than all of the illicits put together.

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Steven Jonas, MD, MPH is a Professor of Preventive Medicine at Stony Brook University (NY) and author/co-author/editor/co-editor of over 30 books. In addition to being a columnist for BuzzFlash/Truthout (http://www.buzzflash.com, http://www.truth-out.org/), he is the Managing Editor of and a Contributing Author to TPJmagazine.net.

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