…We should have caught on by now. When our political leaders want to scare hell out of us about something, real or imagined (you can bet it’s the latter), they declare war on it. It gets the juices flowing and the flags waving. We had the phony “cold war”, and now, with “the evil empire” gone and desperate to find new imagined and contrived enemies, we have a “war on terrorism” and a “war on drugs.” We also have an unmentioned “war on the climate” as witnessed by the alarming rate of melting of the polar and Greenland ice caps. Maybe one day they’ll declare dandruff public enemy number one and declare war on it. Might as well. It would make as much sense as all the others, except for the one real one they never mention caused by global warming…
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Note: This is the second of a six-part series
Since the 1970s the prison-industrial complex has exploded in size and continues to grow exponentially. It now exceeds $40 billion annually and rising. On average states now spend 60 cents on prisons for every dollar spent on higher education, up from 28 cents in 1980. And several large states are so hell-bent to lock people up their annual budget for prisons exceed that for education. Also, the overall rate of prison spending growth has greatly exceeded that for education for the past 25 years. It’s shocking that the annual per prisoner cost today almost equals a year’s tuition at Harvard. And what’s all this spending buying us. Not a damn thing except a nation growing more repressive, more racist and more likely to target anyone if they ever run short of their current favorites. But since 9/11 they’ve tapped a new vein of 1.5 million Muslims. And if they throw in Hindus, Buddhists and a few other easy to demonize miscellaneous sects out of the mainstream they can easily triple that number. Now that’s a “strike” that may be too “rich” to ignore. Think of all the new prisons they’ll need to lock up a load of them, get them off the streets and help keep a new growth industry growing and prosperous.
Contrary to the “law and order” baloney from our politicians, there’s no evidence of a rising trend of criminality, including the violent kinds. Since 1980, the data on the national crime rate has trended slightly up, then down, without any significant change. Still the incarceration rate has skyrocketed reflecting a crime wave that doesn’t exist. In the 1990s, thanks to a good economy, crime rates actually fell, but incarceration rates rose dramatically nonetheless. Smell fishy? It sure does to me. And my own view, shared by others, is that this is all part of a sinister effort to control dissent by a combination of a state-induced climate of fear and hard line national security police state tactics to keep a restive population in line. Those most likely to be restive are the ones most deprived, the ones left out over the last 25 years when the wealth gap widened exponentially between rich and poor and continues to unabated. At the same time the social safety net has been and continues to be shredded making conditions intolerable for the poor and also impacting lower and middle income earners and families. Of course, the ones always hurt most are people of color and that means mostly black people. But Hispanics are gaining ground in this race to the bottom as that segment of our population (including undocumented immigrants) is growing the fastest along with those from Asia.
THE SO-CALLED “WAR ON DRUGS” – IT’S A HOAX AND A NATIONAL DISGRACE
We should have caught on by now. When our political leaders want to scare hell out of us about something, real or imagined (you can bet it’s the latter), they declare war on it. It gets the juices flowing and the flags waving. We had the phony “cold war”, and now, with “the evil empire” gone and desperate to find new imagined and contrived enemies, we have a “war on terrorism” and a “war on drugs.” We also have an unmentioned “war on the climate” as witnessed by the alarming rate of melting of the polar and Greenland ice caps. Maybe one day they’ll declare dandruff public enemy number one and declare war on it. Might as well. It would make as much sense as all the others, except for the one real one they never mention caused by global warming.
And, oh yes, there’s one other war never mentioned, and it’s the most important and dangerous one of all – it’s the ongoing and growing war on the Constitution and our sacred Bill of Rights. They’re being taken from us right before our eyes, and in our blindness and mental fog we don’t even see it happening. Most of us know the Ben Franklin quote about those who would sacrifice their freedom for security deserve neither and will lose both. He also said that “distrust and caution are the parents of security” and reportedly said at the signing of the Declaration of Independence “we must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.” Franklin’s contemporary, the great German philosopher and writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, just as wisely said that “None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.” Franklin, Goethe and many others aren’t considered iconic and venerable historic figures for nothing. And if we take the trouble to read them, we have the benefit of their great wisdom. They’ve warned us with it, and we damn well better be listening and heeding them. If not, we’ll awaken one day, find our precious freedoms gone, finally understand what happened, and it’ll be too late.
Except for the 2 unmentioned real wars, the others are surreal ones. They’re contrived and concocted by devious politicians for their own interests like trying to get reelected or needing a reason to raise defense or homeland security spending. They’re also to benefit their corporate allies who profit from them. The more they can scare us the greater the amount of our tax dollars they can divert from vital societal needs to put in the pockets of their corporate friends and fight wars of imperial conquest for their benefit. And the more repressive laws they can pass to destroy our civil liberties, and as discussed above, lock up in cages those most in need and most likely to be restive about it.
The current catchy phrase in the “drug war” was first used during the supposed crack epidemic in the 80s, but we can pin one more rap on Richard Nixon who first declared a “war on drugs” over 30 years ago. But the idea of making some “drugs” illegal goes back much further than that, to the 1930s (and earlier) when prohibition ended and alcohol producing companies may have decided to eliminate the threat of a competing “drug.” You’d think we might have learned something from 13 years of violence and corruption under Prohibition that made criminals out of otherwise law-abiding people who may have just wanted a cold beer and also created a new revenue source for organized crime.
But all that was chicken feed compared to today as the UN now estimates the annual take from trafficking elicit drugs is around $400-500 billion. That’s double the sales revenue from US legal prescription drugs Big Pharma reported in 2005. Those profiting big time from the illegal ones include more than the “kingpins” and organized crime. The market is so big everyone wants in on it. For many banks, including the major international money center ones, “laundering” drug money is one of their important profit centers. And it’s well-known that the CIA was been involved in drug-trafficking (directly or indirectly) throughout its half century existence and then began to profit from it in earnest during the Contra wars of the 1980s to fund their operations. Today the CIA is part of the elicit drug trade in places like Afghanistan working with major criminal syndicates in the huge business of trafficking heroin. The take from this one operation alone is so lucrative it’s hard to imagine they’d ever give it up or not want in on all other major parts of the drug trade worldwide. Who’ll stop or prosecute them? And what criminal enterprise wouldn’t want them as a partner to guarantee them ease of access to the US and other major markets. That’s a marriage joined together none of the parties would ever want to put asunder.
And now in this modern Age of (contrived) Anxiety, we have 2 new “super-spook” agencies established to take full surveillance advantage of the Bush administration’s unjustifiable “wartime” powers and fear-induced concocted “war on terror” to last for “generations” – The Office of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Wanna bet they’re also in the elicit drug biz big time. How could they resist it. They both need every buck they can get to watch all of us, everywhere, all the time – which is what they’re now doing. And it’s an indisputable fact that all the spy agencies are above the law and can do whatever they please – spy legally and illegally, traffic elicit drugs, torture detainees they control and murder anyone they target including heads of state.
But it’s the purpose of this essay to focus on how the so-called drug war has led to a burgeoning prison-industrial complex that adversely affects the lives of millions of society’s most disadvantaged who happen to be mostly people of color and most of them black. Just like during Prohibition, otherwise law-abiding people have become criminals and are being locked away for long sentences. The repressive “mandatory minimum” sentences are especially harsh and outrageous. Supposedly established to target “kingpins” and big time dealers, it hasn’t turned out that way and likely was never intended to. The US Sentencing Commission reports that only 5.5% of all federal crack cocaine defendants and 11% of all federal drug defendants are “high-level” dealers. The rest are low-level operatives and those caught “possessing.” In most cases they’re from society’s least advantaged and poor, and most of them are black. These convenient targets create a ready supply of bodies to fill prison cells as part of the plan to remove the unwanted from the streets and create a new growth industry at the same time.
SOME QUICK FACTS ABOUT COCAINE AND ITS DERIVATIVE “CRACK” AND HOW ITS USE TARGETS BLACKS
First off, coca leaf cultivation in South America has been the cornerstone of the Andean region for 4 thousand years, and its consumption has been part of the culture since before the Incas. It’s commonly used by millions of people there including the cocaleros, or coca farmers, as we in this country use coffee, tea, a glass of wine or just a cold beer. Besides drinking coca tea, the leaf is chewed to relieve fatigue, suppress appetite, as a communal activity and to offset altitude sickness. The US Embassy in Peru even recommends it for the latter purpose.
Use of cocaine in the US didn’t first begin in the 60s. It’s been around recreationally for nearly 150 years for “whatever ailed you” tonics, in cigarettes, ointments and nasal sprays. Its use was perfectly legal until the federal government classified it as a narcotic (which it is not) in 1914. After that it could only be gotten legally by prescription or illegally from a “street dealer.”
Cocaine is a powder which in “cooked” form is called “crack.” The law treats each very differently. The racist “mandatory minimum” sentencing laws established by Congress in 1986 penalize crack users especially harshly. Defendants convicted of selling 500 grams of powder cocaine vs. 5 grams of crack each receive 5 year sentences. For 5 kilos of powder and 50 grams of crack it’s a 10 year sentence. That’s a 100:1 ratio. Why? Hold on, there’s more.
Simple possession of any amount of powder by a first-time offender is a misdemeanor punishable by a max 1 year sentence. For crack, simple possession is a felony carrying a 5 year sentence. Now to the why. Blacks accounted for 84% of convicted crack offenders in 2000, Hispanics 9% and whites 6%. For powder it was Hispanics – 50%, blacks – 30% and whites – 18%. Now you know. The federal crack laws established 20 years ago were part of the “Reagan revolution” and its racist war against the poor, mainly blacks. It was also intended as a defense against those least advantaged poor and mainly blacks as the “Reagan revolution” began dismantling the social safety net and transferring wealth to the rich and well-off. That transfer has now been ongoing for 25 years with no end in sight. The “war on drugs” and its harsh laws, mainly targeting blacks, were intended to defuse the inevitable pressure that would build among the poor and black community and likely explode again in the streets as it did in the 60s. 2.1+ million people locked in cages is how this nation’s leaders address the gross social inequity problem it deliberately created. It’s their solution, and it’s a national disgrace and outrage.
Coming in Part 3: It’s Not Just Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib
Written by Stephen Lendman, (email – lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net) who lives in Chicago. Stephen maintains a blog at http://sjlendman.blogspot.com, and writes a regular column at www.populistamerica.com