"War on Drugs" cost is killing and bankrupting us.Medicaid Benefits Dropping for Millions of Patients - New York Times. June 15, 2011.
45,000 uninsured Americans die each year due to lack of health insurance. Google search: "health insurance, Harvard study, 45,000 deaths". Jimmie Carter: Call Off the Global Drug War, in June 16, 2011 New York Times. Excerpt:
"Former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger pointed out that, in
1980, 10 percent of his state’s budget went to higher education and 3
percent to prisons; in 2010, almost 11 percent went to prisons and only
7.5 percent to higher education. Maybe the increased tax burden on
wealthy citizens necessary to pay for the war on drugs will help to
bring about a reform of America’s drug policies."
See more on the costs of the drug war, including the cost of police and courts. See also: Drug war charts and more.
Wikipedia:
In September 2010 Amnesty International warned in a report titled New Order, Same Abuses; Unlawful Detentions and Torture in Iraq
that up to 30,000 prisoners, including many veterans of the US
detention system, remain detained without rights in Iraq and are
frequently tortured or abused. Furthermore, it describes a detention
system that has not evolved since Saddam Hussein's regime, in which human rights
abuses were endemic with arbitrary arrests and secret detention common
and a lack of accountability throughout the security forces. Amnesty's
Middle East and North Africa director, Malcolm Smart went on to say that
"Iraq's security forces have been responsible for systematically
violating detainees' rights and they have been permitted. US
authorities, whose own record on detainees' rights has been so poor,
have now handed over thousands of people detained by US forces to face
this catalogue of illegality, violence and abuse, abdicating any
responsibility for their human rights."[123]
On October 22, 2010 nearly 400,000 secret US army field reports and war logs, detailing torture, summary executions and war crimes, were passed on to the British paper, the Guardian and several other international media organisations through the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks. Among others, the logs detail how US authorities failed to investigate hundreds of reports of abuse, torture, rape and even murder by Iraqi
police and soldiers, whose conduct appears to be systematic and
normally unpunished and that US troops abused prisoners for years even
after the Abu Ghraib scandal.[124][125]
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib_torture_and_prisoner_abuse#Recent_developments
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Some of the soldiers at Abu Ghraib were ex-U.S. prison guards.
"The Washington Post reports today [July 9, 2009] that the Mexican government has employed numerous torture techniques to extract confessions from suspected drug traffickers.
The techniques included beatings, suffocation with plastic bags,
electric shocks, the insertion of needles under suspects’ finger nails,
water torture, and other abuses."
Drug-suspect rape and torture by police in Indonesia. See the links to the media articles (and quotes) found in the 2010 and 2009 sections of this Cannabis Wiki article: Jakarta, Indonesia.
"Torture Kids Instead"."The US state is a horrible parent; 12% of its 'detained'
kids are sexually abused each year, versus 4% of adult prisoners. 0.3%
of US non-prisoners report rape each year, versus a world median of
~0.05%."
Video below. Deputy Shown Kicking Teen Girl. He hit her in the head while she was standing and while she was on the floor. He slammed her onto a concrete floor. He pulled her up by her hair. There is no audio. YouTube link.
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ACLU Asks U.N. To Intervene On Behalf Of Montana Juvenile Prisoner
"placed in solitary confinement in the Montana State Prison when
he was 17 and has been subjected to abuse so traumatizing that he has
twice attempted to kill himself by biting through his wrist to puncture a
vein. ... has been forbidden phone calls or visits with his family.
Fellow inmates were so concerned for his well-being that they reached
out to the ACLU of Montana for help on his behalf."
"TODAY. Two days ago Leeh Huuh, other son of Ah Nah Burh Chay and
Loh Pah Ah Sauh were called to the Phrao police station. The police
left a notice with Loh Pah's wife which she had to sign. TODAY at 8am
these two men left for the police station. They were ambushed on the
road and shot to death. We saw the bodies which we photographed. Police
at Phrao police station denied knowledge of the details of the case that
we already knew."[35][36]
The first photo below is of Leeh Huuh and his wife in 2002. The next
three photos are of Leeh Huuh's body on June 20, 2003. The last photo is
of two Akha wives whose husbands had been killed earlier that day of
June 20, 2003. Leeh Huuh's wife is on the right side. Matthew McDaniel
took the photos.
Thailand's English-language newspaper The Nation reported on the drug war in November 2007:
Of 2,500 deaths in the government's war on drugs in 2003, a
fact-finding panel has found that more than half were not involved in
drugs at all. At a brainstorming session, a representative from the
Office of Narcotics Control Board (ONCB) Tuesday disclosed that as many
as 1,400 people were killed and labeled as drug suspects despite the
fact that they had no link to drugs.
Prosecutor Kunlapon Ponlawan said "it was not difficult to investigate extra-judicial killings carried out by police officers as the trigger-pullers usually confessed."[31][37]
The January 24, 2008 edition of The Economist
reported that "over half of those killed in 2003 had no links to the
drugs trade. The panel blamed the violence on a government
'shoot-to-kill' policy based on flawed blacklists. But far from leading
to the prosecutions of those involved, its findings have been buried.
The outgoing interim prime minister, Surayud Chulanont,
took office vowing to right Mr Thaksin's wrongs. Yet this week he said
there was insufficient evidence to take legal action over the killings.
It is easy to see why the tide has turned. Sunai Phasuk, a researcher
for Human Rights Watch, a lobbying group, says that the panel's original report named the politicians who egged on the gunmen. But after the PPP won last month's elections, those names were omitted."[38] The New York Times reported on April 8, 2003:
Since the death of 9-year-old Chakraphan, there have been frequent
reports in the Thai press of summary executions and their innocent
victims. There was the 16-month-old girl who was shot dead along with
her mother, Raiwan Khwanthongyen. There was the pregnant woman, Daranee
Tasanawadee, who was killed in front of her two young sons. There was
the 8-year-old boy, Jirasak Unthong, who was the only witness to the
killing of his parents as they headed home from a temple fair. There was
Suwit Baison, 23, a cameraman for a local television station, who fell
to his knees in tears in front of Mr. Thaksin and begged for an
investigation into the killing of his parents. His stepfather had once
been arrested for smoking marijuana, Mr. Suwit said. When the police
offered to drop the charge if he would admit to using methamphetamines,
he opted instead to pay the $100 fine for marijuana use. Both parents
were shot dead as they returned home from the police station on a
motorbike. Mr. Suwit said 10 other people in his neighborhood had also
been killed after surrendering to the police.[25]
The first war on drugs, as it was known, pretty much evolved into a
war on anybody the police decided to shoot. Under former premier Thaksin
Shinawatra, more than 2,800 people were killed over a three-month
period five years ago —about twice the normal murder rate of about 500
per month. Appointed Premier Surayud Chulanont
half-heartedly set up a commission to investigate the drugs war nearly a
year after the coup, but it had the effect of absolving the Thaksin
administration. The committee found that about 1,370 of those deaths
were related to drugs, while 878 were not. Another 571 people were
killed for no apparent reason, according to the panel, and police
investigated just 80 of those cases.[39]
Feb 2, 2011 ... “EGYPT Revolution torture protester killed shot dead egyptian street cairo tahrir square thugs attack and kill” video results 1 - 0 of about ... www.desivideonetwork.com/related/tag/6h2c0598y/ - Cached
Jan 28, 2011 ...Torture and state-sanctioned murder, then, is the spur for Egypt's revolution as much as poverty and oppression, and with this in mind I was ... www.uruknet.info/index.php/2010/06/12759/?p...hd...1... - Cached
Jan 25, 2011 ... "It's a matter of life and death now – what happens over the ..... The "day of revolution" is the largest demonstration Egypt has .... The organisers said the protests were a "day of revolution against torture, poverty, ... www.guardian.co.uk/global/blog/2011/jan/25/middleeast-tunisia - Cached
Human rights organizations have called on Egypt to restrain its police force and its torture of citizens. In fact, some argue that this very revolution may ... abcnews.go.com/Blotter/egypt-face-launched-revolution/story?id...2
Feb 7, 2011 ... The organization also collected video clips of Egyptian police torture and organized protests. Jan 25 Revolution As I understand it, ... www.froginawell.net/korea/.../police-torture-in-egypt-and-1987-korea/ - Cached
Aug 3, 2010 ... Against torture in Egypt and inhuman treatment of Egyptians in .... Fourth Silent Stand will be on 23rd July – The anniversary of the Egyptian Revolution 1952 ... Elsayed Belal was tortured to death by Egyptian police. ... www.elshaheeed.co.uk/page/2/ - Cached
Feb 6, 2011 ... NYT reporters witness routine Egyptian torture... If the revolution fails, this will be the fate of the brave ... Alleges Suleiman personally participated, including ordering death of another prisoner:http://bit.ly/ ... psychoanalystsopposewar.org/blog/ - Cached - Similar
Egyptian Revolution 2011 HD Mass Revolt Against Mass Gov. Abuse, Torture & Corruption! Published on January 30, 2011 by Admin · No Comments ... Elvis faked his death, Hollywood Conspiracies, Is PAUL DEAD? JACKO is ALIVE! ... www.conspiracy.me/?p=28590 - Cached
Feb 2, 2011 ... CBS Evening News: The Deadly Beating that Sparked Egypt Revolution - Khaled Said's Death Outraged Egyptians, Turning Messages from Internet ... www.cbsnews.com/stories/.../main7311469.shtml - Cached - Add to iGoogle
Jan 31, 2011 ... Of all the allies in torture, however, Egypt was the most ... His death was convenient for at least three countries — Libya itself, and the ... www.fff.org/comment/com1101p.asp - Cached
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