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The War on Drugs Is a War on America |
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Monday, 15 April 2013 07:46 |
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Simmons writes: "It is a despicable disgrace that drug-addicted, diseased members of entire generations of African-Americans and Latinos were massively thrown into horrific prisons."
Russell Simmons is the co-founder of Def Jam Recordings and the founder of GlobalGrind.com. (photo: unknown)
The War on Drugs Is a War on America
By Russell Simmons, Reader Supported News
15 April 13
 or 42 years, we have waged war against our own people that we have disguised as the "War on Drugs." Forty-two years of failure that has cost the American taxpayers $1 trillion dollars, resulted in 45 million drug arrests, and overfilled America's prisons while failing to reduce the availability, sale, or use of drugs in the United States. Instead, it destroyed the fabric of communities of color, where diseased, innocent people in need of drug rehabilitation were trained in violent criminal behavior and became lifetime consumers of the prison industrial complex. All the while, it led America to become the world's leading jailer, with 2.3 million of our citizens behind bars, more than any country on earth. Tomorrow, we will begin a "cyber march" on Washington to stop this five-decade-long misery and devastation of humanity, that has resulted in one in every 15 African-American men in prison.
It is a despicable disgrace that drug-addicted, diseased members of entire generations of African-Americans and Latinos were massively thrown into horrific prisons that mainly exposed them to the vices of violent criminal practices. Then these victims of brutal long periods of unjust incarceration were dumped back into communities without any hope or chance for gainful employment, which only resulted in the downward spiral of self-destruction, youth gun violence, poverty and the rise of a cold-hearted prison culture that rules most of streets today across the nation. But all of this can be challenged and changed. Yet it is with a renewed sense of urgency that we must speak out and build an effective movement. The lives of millions of people are at stake.
Upon reflecting with my friend, Dr. Boyce Watkins, recently, we asked ourselves how we could we engage our collective resources to do something about this injustice. It hit me that there was no greater contribution that I have made in my lifetime than the effort that I helped to wage 10 years ago with Dr. Ben Chavis, Andrew Cuomo, the Drug Policy Alliance, the hip-hop community and a coalition of politicians, activists, artists, celebrities and other concerned people to reform and end the Rockefeller Drug Laws in New York, then the harshest drug laws in the country. When Puffy, Jay-Z, 50 Cent, Alicia Keys, Wyclef, the Beastie Boys, Wu-Tang Clan, Mariah Carey and countless other celebrities jumped on the stage in front of 100,000 people in downtown NYC, it was that collective power of popular culture that made the media and politicians pay attention to the needs of the people. The demand for change resulted in thousands of people in NY being released from prison, after Republican Gov. Pataki and later Democratic Gov. Paterson ultimately reformed these draconian laws.
Since that time, we have seen a dramatic shift in the public's opinion on how we can reduce crime and how we can alleviate the suffering of addiction of millions of Americans. No longer do we believe that the suppression-based model of the past has more effective results than a prevention and rehabilitation model of the future that many states have already implemented. We have been encouraged by action taken by President Obama on federal policy, including the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010, as well as significant investments in re-entry programs, "problem-solving" courts, prevention and treatment programs. As we enter the second term, we know that there is no time to waste and that is why we are doubling down our efforts to work with the president in his desire to end the "War on Drugs" once and for all.
Tomorrow we will release a letter to President Obama, co-authored by myself and Dr. Boyce Watkins, signed by over 175 of the most influential people in America, offering the president our support in creating a new strategy to advance a national effort to raise awareness on this issue and to be a nucleus for a huge campaign to end these draconian laws and prison sentences across America. If those of us who have a public profile have the ability to uplift others, then it is our duty to do so. Furthermore, during a very difficult economic time, we must find ways to reduce our government spending, while maintaining safe and healthy communities. Instead of investing in building more prisons, let's invest in building better schools!
We will be asking all of you to join us on our cyber march on Washington, where we will use every resource from newspapers to television, but especially the internet and popular culture to educate and engage the masses to push for the end of the war. In anticipation of this movement, we urge you all to turn on PBS tonight and watch the critically acclaimed film The House I Live In, which chronicles the entire failure of the "War on Drugs." When you wake up on Tuesday morning, go to www.globalgrind.com/endthewarondrugs and let's go to work!
This is our moment to take back our streets. Our moment to uplift our people. Our moment to force a disarmament of weapons of war that have been used against our communities. Join us. Connect with us. Build with us. The time has finally come to change what has been referred by many as the new "Jim Crow." But we know that the transformative power of the people organized and mobilized for what is right is always stronger than the forces of wrong. Freedom is in our sights. Justice is on the horizon. And soon enough, we will make sure that America no longer holds the title of the world's most populated prison system. #EndTheWarOnDrugs
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
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President Obama, One Corporate Puppet Among Many |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=7118"><span class="small">Carl Gibson, Reader Supported News</span></a>
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Sunday, 14 April 2013 13:07 |
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Gibson writes: "He's not the one running the show, but rather, his strings are being pulled by Wall Street bankers and hedge fund managers."
President Barack Obama in Tucson, Arizona, 01/12/11. (photo: Jewel Samad/Getty Images)
President Obama, One Corporate Puppet Among Many
By Carl Gibson, Reader Supported News
14 April 13
 his year, the New Deal turned 80. And those same New Deal programs championed by FDR, a Democrat, defined the bedrock of the American left political achievements for all others who would seek the presidency. Now, the corporate takeover of our government has proven that those New Deal programs can be slowly dismantled by a Democrat president, as the Obama administration fully digs its heels in on an austerity agenda.
He's not the one running the show, but rather, his strings are being pulled by Wall Street bankers and hedge fund managers like Pete Peterson, who is most of the wallet behind the corporate-funded "Fix the Debt" sham campaign. Even one of Fix the Debt's key spokesmen admitted that their goal was to create an "artificial crisis" that would justify gutting Social Security.
Jack Lew, Obama's Treasury secretary, is leading the administration's doublespeak on austerity. In Europe, he's told political leaders to lighten up on austerity measures. But in America, Lew is telling Congress to endorse President Obama's proposals to cut earned benefits for vulnerable Americans who need them to survive, even though Social Security doesn't contribute to the deficit. Lew is also a pawn of the corporate and financial string-pullers, coming from Citigroup before his years in the Clinton administration's division of budget. He was even guaranteed a bonus by Citigroup if he was able to secure a "high-level" federal job.
The corporations running our government want our public resources, too. The White House is currently mulling a proposal to sell off the Tennessee Valley Authority, which FDR's New Deal established as the nation's largest publicly-owned power company. Privatization of public resources is one of the key austerity measures being forced by the European Union right now, particularly in scorched-earth economies like Greece and Spain. Privatization of public resources, the selling off of a public good for corporate profit, means that the people who depended on that service are usually subject to frequent price gouging, while under the thumb of an unaccountable private corporation.
Privatization is especially high on the agenda, considering the ten oil spills that happened in America over just two weeks' time and the Senate's recent endorsement of the Keystone XL pipeline. A large public drinking water supply was tainted with 5,000 barrels of tar sands oil in Mayflower, Arkansas. Yet Bill Clinton, the only former US president from Arkansas, has been noticeably silent on Exxon's catastrophe even though Little Rock is just 25 miles North of Mayflower.
The silence from both Clinton and Obama on Mayflower is deafening, especially as Exxon has declared the area over the spill a no-fly zone, which has been enforced by Obama's FAA. Arkansas attorney general Dustin McDaniel, a Democrat, has even privatized oil spill cleanup, allowing a company that investigative journalist Steve Horn recently revealed is notorious for oil spill coverups. And since a loophole in federal law says that Exxon's spilled tar sands oil is bitumen and not oil, they won't have to pay for the cleanup. The cleanup and coverup job for Mayflower will be paid for by the taxpayers, while the corporations who created the entire mess draw more record profits. BP did the same thing after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill that ruined an entire region's economy Ð wrote it off on their taxes as a loss, shifting the cost to suckers like us. The corporations who run our state and federal governments don't care which party is in power, as long as they can still control their agenda.
President Obama is also caving to the meat industry's demands to privatize poultry inspection, despite mainstream chicken producers like Tyson just recently paying a multimillion-dollar settlement for ammonia accidents. Obama's quiet signing of the Monsanto Protection Act, which exempts GMO crops from judicial review and was written by a senator who received money from Monsanto, is another indicator of the White House's subservience to big agriculture.
None of these measures are because corporations are struggling and need help from the government to survive. On the contrary, the Dow Jones and S&P 500 have rallied to zoom past pre-recession levels, and corporate profits are at record highs, precisely because workers' wages are so low. Yet the only bone Obama has thrown to the poor was a proposal to raise the minimum wage from $7.25 to $9. This would make an unremarkable difference in the lifestyles of low-wage workers. As Elizabeth Warren rightly pointed out, had the minimum wage kept up with executive pay, or even just the cost of living, it would be roughly $20 an hour today.
The left has made plenty of fuss over the president's latest proposal to gut one of the programs near and dear to Americans of all political stripes. They've even promised to offer primary challengers to all Democrats running for re-election who support Obama's plan to gut Social Security. Obama has been hearing for years from the left about how Social Security has nothing to do with the deficit, and has been quoted saying that he would raise the pay-in cap to ensure the program's solvency when he was campaigning for his first term. But the corporate owners of our government want our Social Security money to become a treasure trove of poker chips for their next gambling spree, and have finally gotten a Democratic president to begin chipping away at his own party's key legislative victory of the 20th century.
Instead of following his own words of the past, or heeding the calls of the people, President Obama is meeting with Wall Street bankers to enlist their help in selling his austerity agenda to the American people. While most Americans voted for the lesser of two evils last November, we still voted for evil. And with the revealing of Obama's latest plans, that evil side is showing its face even more these days. In his "American Dream" monologue, the late George Carlin warned us of our "owners" taking our retirement money, because "they don't give a fuck about you." Turns out, he was right.
The people of the United States should rightly interpret this latest slew of betrayals in government as proof that we live under the thumb of a corporate tyranny, not a legitimate constitutional republic. And we should come together to decide what a functional new government would look like, and reject the assumed legitimacy of our corporate ownership's puppet government.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
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FOCUS | The GOP Gets Shamed Out of Its Guns Filibuster |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=6853"><span class="small">Frank Rich, New York Magazine</span></a>
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Sunday, 14 April 2013 10:44 |
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Excerpt: "Even if this compromise over background checks ultimately becomes law - a very big if - it would be but a small step forward on gun-ownership restrictions."
The U.S. Capitol building. (photo: M. Scott Mahaskey/Politico)
The GOP Gets Shamed Out of Its Guns Filibuster
By Frank Rich, New York Magazine
14 April 13
 very week,New YorkMagazine writer-at-large Frank Rich talks with contributor Eric Benson about the biggest stories in politics and culture. This week: the Senate background checks compromise, the leaked McConnell tapes, and Jana Winter's lonely fight.
This morning, two senators with A ratingsfrom the NRA, the West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin and the Pennsylvania Republican Pat Toomey, announced that they've reached a new compromise on gun legislation. Have the aggrieved Newtown families, who lobbied the Senate in tandem with President Obama this week, finally achieved a breakthrough?
Even if this compromise over background checks ultimately becomes law - a very big if - it would be but a small step forward on gun-ownership restrictions. But the behind-the-scenes politics suggests that this is at the very least another post-election retreat for the GOP. Earlier this week, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, and Mitch McConnell, among others, were all loudly calling for a filibuster to stop any gun bill from reaching the Senate floor. Then some of their Republican colleagues started looking at polls - and at the television news accounts of the Newtown families pleading their case on the Hill - and realized that this filibuster would not be the crowd-pleaser that Paul's anti-drone aria was. So the threat now seems to have been typicalbluster; it looks as if there will be an up-or-down vote on whatever gun measure gets to the floor. That heavily compromised bill, devoid of restrictions on gun magazines or assault weapons, may not muster a majority in the Senate - particularly since some red-state Democrats may also vote no. And God knows what will happen in the House. But if it should get through in some form, it may prove a first step on a decades-long path to bring sane gun laws to America.
Earlier this week,Mother Jones's David Corn, the reporter who obtained the infamous "47 percent" video, got hold of another surreptitious political recording- this one captured Mitch McConnell and his aides mocking his then potential election opponent, actress Ashley Judd. McConnell has accused a liberal group of bugging his headquarters and the FBI is investigating. How damaging, if at all, will the Judd tape be to McConnell?
To McConnell, probably not damaging at all. Only a successful primary challenge from the right could derail his reelection in Kentucky. But it surely doesn't help the GOP national brand that the Senate minority leader and his political cronies have been caught beating up on another woman, this time (according to the recording) because she dared confess in a memoir that she has battled depression. Mocking and deriding a major (and treatable) illness shared by millions of Americans is also not a political plus. As for the claim by McConnell that he was bugged in some kind of leftist "Nixonian" plot, the right hasn't minded bugging and secret recordings when conservative partisans ambush liberal targets - e.g., James O'Keefe and Acorn. But there is no evidence that McConnell's headquarters were bugged.A more likely scenario is that Corn's sourcewas a witness to the proceedings, as was the case withMitt's "47 percent" video. What this suggests is that Republicans are so radioactive right now that it may be hard for them to convene any "private" meeting that some bartender or dissident in their own ranks won't record and turn over to the press. Welcome to the 24/7 GOP "Candid Camera."
In another instance of leaked materials, Fox News reporter Jana Winter may face six months in prison if she fails to reveal the source who told her about a notebook that James Holmes sent to his psychiatrist before the Aurora shootings that detailed some of his murderous intentions. Fox News has alleged that the rest of the media has given short shrift to Winter's case because of an anti-Fox bias. Do you think there's anything to this gripe?
Let's point out that among the complainers has beenthe Fox News contributor Judith Miller,of all journalistic sages. As many will recall, she's the formerTimesreporter who (a) peddled misleading evidence of Saddam Hussein's nonexistent weapons of mass destructionon the paper's front page during the run-up to the Iraq War, and (b) went to jail in the Valerie Plame leak case for reasons that in retrospect had more to do with her own penchant for self-martyrdom than with protecting a source (the felon Scooter Libby), who had already released her from confidentiality. That said, Jana Winter's First Amendment predicament should have received more attention than it has from other journalists, and more support too. That it did not may be partly owed to anti-Fox prejudice. But it also may reflect the fact that she's covering a criminal case having nothing to do with national security, and that the leak itself is no bombshell (and may be irrelevant to Holmes's legal fate).
Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher died on Monday, unleashing a torrent of remembrances, defenses, and takedowns. Has anything about the American reaction to Thatcher's death surprised you?
It has fallen predictably along partisan lines. The right's use of her death for another round of Reagan eulogies was so formulaic the pieces seemed to have been churned out by an algorithm. It's worth scouring the British press for much more interesting assessments. I particularly recommend a brilliant rumination by the actor and comedian Russell Brand inthe Guardian,which starts with reminiscence ("When I was a child she was just a strict woman telling everyone off and selling everything off") and builds into a memorable mix of humor, invective, and shrewd historical analysis of both her lasting and waning legacies. What's most revealing about Thatcher's legacy in America, the veneration by conservative pundits aside, is that she appears to be largely forgotten. The WashingtonPostplayed her death below the fold in its print edition. On theNBC Nightly News,Meryl Streep was invoked twice (once with an actual clip fromThe Iron Lady) to remind viewers of who Thatcher was. In that same broadcast's obituary package on Annette Funicello, the historical significance ofThe Mickey Mouse ClubandBeach Blanket Bingowere givens, in no need of a celebrity booster shot from Streep or anyone else.
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Two Obamas, Two Classes of Children |
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Sunday, 14 April 2013 08:42 |
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Nader writes: "An Associated Press photograph brought the horror of little children lying dead outside of their home to an American Audience."
The lifeless bodies of Afghan children lay on the ground before their funeral ceremony, after an airstrike on their extended family household by order of President Barack Obama killed several Afghan adults and at least ten children in Afghanistan, 04/07/13. (photo: AP)
Two Obamas, Two Classes of Children
By Ralph Nader, Common Dreams
14 April 13
 n Associated Press photograph brought the horror of little children lying dead outside of their home to an American Audience. At least 10 Afghan children and some of their mothers were struck down by an airstrike on their extended family household by order of President Barack Obama. He probably decided on what his aides describe as the routine weekly "Terror Tuesday" at the White House. On that day, Mr. Obama typically receives the advice about which "militants" should live or die thousands of miles away from drones or aircraft. Even if households far from war zones are often destroyed in clear violation of the laws of war, the president is not deterred.
These Obama airstrikes are launched knowing that very often there is "collateral damage," that is a form of "so sorry terrorism." How can the president explain the vaporization of a dozen pre-teen Afghan boys collecting firewood for their families on a hillside? The local spotter-informants must have been disoriented by all those $100 bills in rewards. Imagine a direct strike killing and injuring scores of people in a funeral procession following a previous fatal strike that was the occasion of this processional mourning. Remember the December 2009 Obama strike on an alleged al-Qaida training camp in Yemen, using tomahawk missiles and - get this - cluster bombs, that killed 14 women and 21 children. Again and again "so sorry terrorism" ravages family households far from the battlefields.
If this is a war, why hasn't Congress declared war under Article 1, Sec. 8 of the U.S. Constitution? The 2001 Congressional Authorization to Use Military Force is not an open-ended authorization for the president. It was restricted to targeting only nations, organizations or persons that are determined to have been implicated in the 9/11 massacres, or harbored complicit organizations or persons.
For several years, White House officials, including ret. General James Jones, have declared that there is no real operational al-Qaeda left in Afghanistan to harbor anyone. The Pakistani Taliban is in conflict with the Pakistani government. The Afghan Taliban is in brutal conflict with the Afghanistan government and wants to expel U.S. forces as their members view occupying-invaders, just as their predecessors did when they expelled the Soviet invaders. The Taliban represent no imminent threat to the U.S.
President Obama's ambassador to Pakistan, Cameron P. Munter, used to complain to his colleagues about the CIA's drone attacks saying "he didn't realize his main job was to kill people." He knew how such attacks by whining drones, hovering 24/7 over millions of frightened people and their terrified children produce serious backlashes that fester for years.
Even a loyalist such as William M. Daley, Mr. Obama's chief of staff in 2011, observed that the Obama kill list presents less and less significant pursuits. "One guy gets knocked off, and the guy's driver, who's No. 21, becomes 20?" Daley said, describing the internal discussion. "At what point are you just filling the bucket with numbers?"
Yet this unlawful killing by a seemingly obsessed Obama, continues and includes anyone in the vicinity of a "suspect" whose name isn't even known ( that are called "signature strikes"), or mistakes, like the recent aerial killings of numerous Pakistani soldiers and four Afghan policemen - considered our allies. The drone kill list goes on and on - over 3000 is the official fatality count, not counting injuries.
In a few weeks, The Nation magazine will issue a major report on U.S.-caused civilian casualties in Afghanistan that should add new information.
Now switch the scene. The president, filled with memories of what his secret drone directives as prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner have done to so many children, in so many places, traveled on Monday to Newtown, Connecticut for the second time. He commiserated with the parents and relatives of the 20 children and six adults slain by a lone gunman. Here he became the compassionate president, with words and hugs.
What must be going through his mind as he sees the rows of 10 Afghan little children and their parents blown apart in that day's New York Times? How can the president justify this continued military occupation for what is a civil war? No wonder a majority of the American people want out of Afghanistan, even without a close knowledge of the grisly and ugly things going on there in our name that are feeding the seething hatred of Obama's war.
Sometime after 2016 when Barack Obama starts writing his lucrative autobiographical recollections, there may be a few pages where he explains how he endured this double life ordering so-called precision attacks that kill many innocent children and their mothers and fathers while mourning domestic mass killings in the U.S. and advocating gun controls. As a constitutional law teacher, he may wonder why there have been no "gun controls" on his lawless, out-of-control presidency and his reckless attacks that only expanded the number of al-Qaeda affiliates wreaking havoc in Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Mali, North Africa and elsewhere.
Al-Qaeda of Iraq is now merging with an affiliate called "al-Nusra" in Syria that will give Obama more futile exercises on Terror Tuesdays. The CIA calls the reaction to such operations "blowback" because the unintended consequences undermine our long-term national security.
Obama is not like the official criminal recidivist, ex-Vice President Dick Cheney, who misses no chance to say he has no regrets. Obama worries even as he greatly escalates the aerial attacks started by George W. Bush. In his State of the Union speech he called for a "legal and policy framework" to guide "our counterterrorism operations," so that "no one should just take my word that we're doing things the right way." Granted, this is a good cover for his derelictions, but it probably reflects that he also needs some restraint. Last year he told CNN it was "something you have to struggle with."
Not that our abdicatory Congress would ever take him up on his offer for such legal guidance should he ever submit a proposed framework. Nor would Congress move to put an end to secret laws, secret criteria for targeting, indefinite imprisonment, no due process, even for American citizens, secret cover-ups of illegal outsourcing to contracting corporations and enact other preventive reforms.
Mr. Obama recognized in his CNN interview that "it's very easy to slip into a situation in which you end up bending rules thinking that the ends always justify the means. That's not who we are as a country."
Unfortunately, however, that's what he has done as a president.
Unless the American people come to realize that a president must be subject to the rule of law and our Constitution, our statutes and treaties, every succeeding president will push the deficit-financed lawlessness further until the inevitable blowback day of reckoning. That is the fate of all empires.
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