Lyndon LaRouche went to prison for his strange airport cult of anti-liberalism (Unlike the Hare Krishna people who used all their money to feed runaways, Larouche's people used their money with bad intent enough to land LaRouche in prison.) ¨Conservatives funded the fraud, unwittingly as they will often do.
These panhandling goons prowled from an airport booth to get in your face saying "You hate Ted Kennedy just as much as I do, right?" And solicit money from those who do! ¨¨
This cult was the War on Drugs campaign, conceived to frame a long shot right-wing coup based on taking civil rights from huge numbers of people and taking power in some mystic scenarios unrealer than any most liberals could imagine. ¨Has it worked?
¨The radicals who opposed Nixon and those who followed engaged his full wrath, but people of color and poor whites without Republican connections are the victims not at all collateral of this war. The clear, ugly class and racial prejudice seen in this video illustrates that ELITES like Clinton are unlikely to own up to enough to champion drug war moritoria or even reparations.
They could have had Leonard Peltier released, but they pardoned big shots instead. Let"s have a real compassionate liberal who might redress the class war of our futile drug laws.
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People seem to want to forget that the much used and abused' 3 strikes your out' law was Bill Clinton's creation used to save his ass and get him re-elected.
Who suffered the most? Young African American and Latino people addicted to drugs.
The War on Drugs was first waged by Richard Nixon. That was 40 years ago. We lost. We continue to spend money needlessly to incarcerate non-violent users. This is a stupid waste of money and resources that could be better used on prevention and education. Many studies over the last 40 years show that locking up drug users does nothing to stem usage.
Hillary, BOW OUT NOW.
this ad is misleading. parent(s) caught selling or using drugs are better away from kids, they took the risk even they have kid(s). there's more chance their kid(s) would be sent to closest relatives if any, if not their kids are often sent to foster home(s). it was ronald reagan's policy that enforce it against drug dealers or users. if you think this people don't deserve to be in jail (most of them probably have been to jail more than once, yet they haven't learned), then you support druggies. i know it's a waste of our money to put people like them, but think again, who can enforce it. for whatever's worth, how hard to stay clean or sober when you can. you already should know Drugs are Bad for you or anyone else.
Jeez, you need an education of the topic...or perhaps you just need an education, in general.
Gulfstream jet that the CIA used to take kidnapped suspected Arab terrorist to a third world country for serious interrogation crashed in Mexico on it"s way back from Columbia, South America. It had an estimated 3 tons of cocaine on board.
The CIA and the DEA are the biggest drug dealers in America, yet we are putting people in prison for possession of pot.
Does the current prison system work? Yeah, like a bad joke! How can the prison system work when the justice system is broken?
Here are two former presidents and the CIA at work. Reagan and Ollie North were also in on smuggling in tons of coke.
paciere get yourself informed, please!
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8681225708920427234
paciere:
your logic and your knowledge of the subjuect is at best pathetic...the court system is so racist and so rigged that there are thousands of people who are innocent in prison and there are hundreds of thousands who have committed a very small infraction that are in prison. police dont have the desire nor the intelligence nor the talent to root out big drug dealers. cops have become basically border ruffians a la missouri after the kansas nebraska act..
by the way, this has nothing to do with stopping the drug trade...its about the money stupid!
I've have long since learned to see through our federal governments polispeak. The way they use words and phrases to sway people in their thinking. For example to have a war on drugs is ludicrous. There are good drugs and their are abused drugs. Drugs are an inanimate object. You can no more have a war on drugs than you can have a war on bubblegum!
It is a war on the American people. An excuse to go after any class or race of people deemed unacceptable by certain elitist minded people in our country.
Drug use is as ancient as the human race. It crosses over all cultural, class and economic lines. If we want to perceive illegal drug use as a problem we need to recognise it's abuse aspect as a clinical problem not a criminal act.
Prohibition is a crime and has been more destructive to citizens than all drugs put together
Over the years since the founding of the DEA by Nixon in '71 they have killed thousands of innocent people enforcing marijuana laws broken up thousands of homes. Marijuana, in ten thousand years has never killed anyone. BTW, the DEA was modeled after the Gestapo-fact!
the comeback kid knows what he is talking about...i have been working against the drug laws for 10 years...i have been to many prisons...i will see a young man on thursday who is in his 18th year of a 25 to life sentence for two dime bags of cocaine. it is true. naturally he is black. his mother is dying and his wife and kid are long gone. this story is not anectdotal. indeed it is a familiar tale of woe in the empire state and across this land. in the big apple young racist cops become detectives after spending a year roaming poor neighborhoods undercover and rounding up young men and women of coor and foisting them into the criminal justice system where they face racist old men , usually former asst. DAs, in robes who cast the wretched souls into new york's 71 concentration camps. the system sucks. we have a crisis so deep and profound and not unlike pre civil war days. something has to give. if john brown or nat turner were around...i am sure they would take the matter into their hands. i would support such action.
denise smith and rosie smith are two former inmates at that prison in the AD. they both received 10 to 20 year prison sentences for selling dime bags to undercover agents, one of the women in the ad is a dominican who doesnt speek english who was tried in absentia for possession of 4 ounces of cocaine and 10 years later , while attempting to get her bail money back, was arrested and sent to bedford hills. she later had her sentence reduced to 9 years and will be getting out soon . her daughter was 10 years old at the time of the arrest and spent a year on the streets looking for her mom when she was finally taken in by some nuns in queens.. another woman in that ad was sentenced to 40 years to ife for possession. her sentenced was reduced recently and she is out. . i have been to that prison and others in new york a hundred times and the video is in no way heavyhanded..if anything, it gives the system "lenient' treatment.
Liberals should not make propaganda videos. They suck at it.
It's a libertarian video and it makes it's point nicely, so what's your point?
It's a liberal, not a libertarian video. It's too heavy handed. Look at that picture of the inmates in 19th century prison garb. It looks ridiculous. The narrator says that mostly women of color are in prison for drug charges, yet there are no black women in that photo. Also the narrator doesn't say exactly why she is in prison. It could be for a small amount of drugs or she could have been busted for bringing in 200 kilos of pure coke. Our drug laws suck and they need to be changed but this video isn't going to help bring about that change.
It's not just a war on drugs or a drug policy that needs changing but our entire justice system. Study after study has proven that there is a significant difference in both arrest and sentencing of minorities and whites. Especially between blacks and whites. The three strike law is an example of one of the most unfair laws on the books, the way we prosecute juveniles is another judicial and social travisty. Our police, our judicial system, our jail system all need a serious overhaul and we need to ensure that justice for all means justice for all.
As a one-time activist and a long-time observer and critic of the War on (Some) Drugs, I can tell you there is nothing that sets back drug policy reform like a presidential election. No serious presidential candidate will pick up the flag and march us toward a sensible drug policy. Not yet.
It is to be hoped that this year's "change" election will be the last in which there is a perception that the public isn't ready to hear the message that the war is lost, that it was lost some decades ago. I happen to believe the public actually is way, way ahead of the politicians on this point.
That said, it's interesting to note that in his final few weeks as POTUS, Bill Clinton gave an interview to Rolling Stone in which he admitted that arresting people for cannabis was "probably wrong".
Part 1 - This issue hits me hard. Last summer my 18 year old black son and his 18 year old white girlfriend were passengers in a car with four other kids. The police pulled them over for no reason other than a slight rip in the new temporary license tag. The driver had just purchased this used car, had his license and receipt but could not find the registration. Without probable cause other than this, they called out the K-9 dogs to search the car. They found a little over 2 ounces of marijuana. The police searched the driver's home and found more, but this guy wouldn't admit to the weed in the car to avoid getting more time. As a result, all six teens were charged with possession.
At court, my son's white girlfriend was sentenced to 2 months probation, urine testing and to go to a educational program. At a different court hearing on another day, my black son was sentenced to a year for the exact same charges. Neither of these 18 year olds had adult criminal records.
To be continued...
i cant think of anything so stupid as our drug policy. it may only be second to the teenage sex laws, also yielding the same racist and intolerant practices of inane imprisonment. to think that we, as taxpayers, pay for this is astonishing. and it looks to never change. the right wingers are intent on another stupid crusade every time progressive people step forward.
I'm so sorry. What's really sick is how common place this is. You're in my thoughts, OC. I hope your son comes home soon.
Part 2 - He was so angry he refused to report to probation although I asked him many times. He was just too immature to deal with it. Well, last night he and a friend went to visit a girl they knew and waited outside of her house until she got home. Some neighbor, seeing two young guys in the yard, one black and the other Hispanic, assumed it was a burglary. The cops quickly found out it wasn't, but saw my son had a warrant for VOB (violation of probation). He called me an hour ago trying to hold back the tears. He's being transferred to jail as I write this - for six months to a year for a crime he didn't commit, and for protesting the only way his stubborn 18 year old brain could - to say F racism and F the system.
Had the police not stopped this car in what amounted to racial profiling, or had the judge given him the same sentence as his white girlfriend, he would have complied with the probation, but he couldn't see past the injustice. He won't be around to enjoy this summer, fall, and Christmas like other teenagers. Instead he will be providing free labor at a privatized prison. Our family is really going to miss him and the laughter he brings. I worry that he won't be the same when he's released.
Thank you for sharing your story. That is sad and sickening. The publicly traded prison construction corporations and their lobbyists profit from a growing jail population and the slave labor provided. They prey on people that don't deserve to be put with murderers and rapists; and cannot adequately defend themselves in our justice for hire system. I am so angry and embarrassed that my tax dollars support this.
And people have the temerity to say that nobody goes to jail for pot.
The governments own stats show that 1/2 of all prisoner are doing time for some kind of pot violation.
BTW, The Federal Bureau of Agriculture reports that marijuana is the biggest cash crop in America. This does not count what is imported.
Question: how many people are we willing to lock up over a plant?
Nobody white goes to jail for pot.
What has Obama done about the war on drugs?? Why would Hillary visit a womans prison?? Or any prison, for that matter.
We can thank Reagan, for the war on drugs. Not Hillary, or Bill.
Thats right. But this is what we CAN thank Bill Clinton for:
-100,000 more black men went to prison under Bill Clinton than under Ronald Regan.
-He passed that 1997 crime bill that expanded the death penalty.
-When he ran for president in "92, he did his Sister Souljah bit when he"of course, he executed Ricky Ray Rector, a brain-damaged black kid.
-Bill Clinton didn"t have a civil rights bill in his state.
our friend from across the manhattan bridge is right on ....if you need a more graphic reminder of the ckinton reign of terror then check this out
www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wThLbQ6cAk
Oh, that is so right on. Screw Hillary.
That was a good ad. Sadly, the biggest drug dealers are at the very highest levels of all the governments of the world, who profit endlessly by the high prices, and lack of taxation. The poor consumers at the other end of the supply chain are the ones that get busted for simple possession.
While the economies of the world are shaking, the vast multi billion dollar a year illegal drug trade continues, carried by fleets of private ships and planes. The corruption to our government that the prohibition against recreational drugs has caused is undeniable, probably irreversible at this point, as the drug dealers now own their own banks and investment banks. The military, the intelligence agencies, the local cops, all corrupted by access to all that cash.
The drug laws, and the way they are enforced, are not a mistake. This is exactly what was intended. These laws were written by our legislatures, thru negotiations between those who like to see people punished for using drugs without a prescription, and those who are afraid to stand up to them. Anyone who objects to people being punished for crimes without victims, is treated as though they are 'one of them'. This is a class war disguised as a drug war. Many of the people who want to control what drugs their neighbor uses also want to punish people who have certain sexual interests. It's a control issue !
Certain drugs are simply too dangerous to legalize. I'm all for the legalization of pot, and certain, natural psychotropic drugs, like mushrooms. But heroin, crack and crystal meth are dangerous drugs, that do nothing but ruin lives.
We do have methadone treatment centers for heroin addicts, which is a good thing.
This statement will fly in the face of what is accepted as common knowledge, but I do believe it to be true:
Cocaine gets a unnecessary bad rap. There is no denying that for some people this drug represents a short, fast trip on a downward spiral, but that is NOT universally true, and in reality applies to a much smaller percentage than most people think. I have seen first hand the people who succumb to life-controlling addiction, but have also seen far more that could use cocaine--or not--and never even broach the issue of addiction. The majority of those I've observed were never afflicted with either a physiological or mental dependence on cocaine. These are observations made over decades, and I trust what my personal observations indicate.
It's my personal belief that some of us have a predisposition to addiction--and some of us do not. And while I do not see cocaine as a drug that will ever be legalized [the government makes far too much money in the current situation for that to happen], it should at least be decriminalized, so that those with that predisposition can get treatment and counseling rather than be tossed in jail.
Huffington Post | April 17, 2008 03:29 PM