Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Monday, June 6, 2011
Nuclear Age Peace Foundation Declaration
ANNOUNCEMENTS Friday, June 3, 2011
Rep. Lois Capps Submits Peace Foundation’s Declaration into Congressional Record
Source: Nuclear Age Peace Foundation
On May 31, Rep. Lois Capps of California’s 23rd Congressional District submitted the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s Santa Barbara Declaration to the Congressional Record.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On May 31, Rep. Lois Capps of California’s 23rd Congressional District submitted the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s Santa Barbara Declaration to the Congressional Record. As the official record of the proceedings and debates of the United States Congress, the Congressional Record is a permanent public archive, published since 1873.
Congresswoman Capps introduced the Declaration as follows:
“Mr. Speaker, I rise to enter into the Congressional Record the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s Santa Barbara Declaration, drafted February 17, 2011.
“The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, a non-profit and non-partisan organization based in Santa Barbara that has worked for peace and the abolition of nuclear weapons since 1982, hosted a conference in February 2011 on the dangers of nuclear deterrence. The statement, drafted by experts from around the world, outlines many reasons to work toward the eradication of nuclear weapons.
“I urge my colleagues to read the Santa Barbara Declaration and strive to build a more peaceful world.”
Participants in the drafting of the Declaration included experts in nuclear proliferation, international law, the environment, former military personnel, and peace activists who came from across the United States and as far away as New Zealand. The Declaration, available online at www.wagingpeace.org/goto/declaration, calls upon the public to reject the doctrine of nuclear deterrence and highlights its major problems, including:
•Its power to protect is a dangerous fabrication;
•It assumes all leaders will be rational at all times;
•Threatening or using nuclear weapons is illegal and criminal;
•It is deeply immoral to threaten indiscriminate death and destruction;
•It diverts resources desperately needed to meet human needs;
•It has no effect against non-state extremists;
•It is vulnerable to sabotage, cyber attack and human or technical error;
•It encourages nuclear proliferation in other countries.
For additional information on The Dangers of Nuclear Deterrence conference and the Santa
Barbara declaration, contact Debra Roets at (805) 965-3443 or droets@napf.org.
SANTA BARBARA DECLARATION
REJECT NUCLEAR DETERRENCE: AN URGENT CALL TO ACTION
Nuclear deterrence is a doctrine that is used as a justification by nuclear weapon states and their allies for the continued possession and threatened use of nuclear weapons.
Nuclear deterrence is the threat of a nuclear strike in response to a hostile action. However, the nature of the hostile action is often not clearly defined, making possible the use of nuclear weapons in a wide range of circumstances.
Nuclear deterrence threatens the murder of many millions of innocent people, along with severe economic, climate, environmental, agricultural and health consequences beyond the area of attack.
Nuclear deterrence requires massive commitments of resources to the industrial infrastructures and organizations that make up the world’s nuclear weapons establishments, its only beneficiaries.
Despite its catastrophic potential, nuclear deterrence is widely, though wrongly, perceived to provide protection to nuclear weapon states, their allies and their citizens.
Nuclear deterrence has numerous major problems:
1.Its power to protect is a dangerous fabrication. The threat or use of nuclear weapons provides no protection against an attack.
2.It assumes rational leaders, but there can be irrational or paranoid leaders on any side of a conflict.
3.Threatening or committing mass murder with nuclear weapons is illegal and criminal. It violates fundamental legal precepts of domestic and international law, threatening the indiscriminate slaughter of innocent people.
4.It is deeply immoral for the same reasons it is illegal: it threatens indiscriminate and grossly disproportionate death and destruction.
5.It diverts human and economic resources desperately needed to meet basic human needs around the world. Globally, approximately $100 billion is spent annually on nuclear forces.
6.It has no effect against non-state extremists, who govern no territory or population.
7.It is vulnerable to cyber attack, sabotage, and human or technical error, which could result in a nuclear strike.
8.It sets an example for additional countries to pursue nuclear weapons for their own nuclear deterrent force.
Its benefits are illusory. Any use of nuclear weapons would be catastrophic.
Nuclear deterrence is discriminatory, anti-democratic and unsustainable. This doctrine must be discredited and replaced with an urgent commitment to achieve global nuclear disarmament. We must change the discourse by speaking truth to power and speaking truth to each other.
Before another nuclear weapon is used, nuclear deterrence must be replaced by humane, legal and moral security strategies. We call upon people everywhere to join us in demanding that the nuclear weapon states and their allies reject nuclear deterrence and negotiate without delay a Nuclear Weapons Convention for the phased, verifiable, irreversible and transparent elimination of all nuclear weapons.
_____________
Blase Bonpane, Ph.D.*, Director, Office of the Americas
Theresa Bonpane*, Founding Director, Office of the Americas
John Burroughs, Ph.D.*, Executive Director, Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy
Jacqueline Cabasso*, Executive Director, Western States Legal Foundation
Ben Cohen, Co-Founder, Ben & Jerry’s
Kate Dewes, Ph.D.*, Co-Director, Disarmament and Security Centre, New Zealand
Bob Dodge, M.D.*, Coordinator, Beyond War Nuclear Weapons Abolition Team
Dick Duda, Ph.D.*, founding member, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation – Silicon Valley
Denise Duffield*, Associate Director, Physicians for Social Responsibility – Los Angeles
Richard Falk, J.S.D.*, Chair, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation
Commander Robert Green (Royal Navy, ret.)*, Co-Director, Disarmament and Security Centre, New Zealand
David Krieger, Ph.D.*, President, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation
Robert Laney, J.D.*, Secretary, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation
Kayo Maeta, Chair, Women’s Peace Committee, Soka Gakkai
Kenji Shiratsuchi, Chair, Youth Peace Conference, Soka Gakkai
Diane Meyer Simon, Founder and President Emeritus, Global Green USA
Dr. Jennifer Allen Simons, C.M., Founder and President of The Simons Foundation
Steven Starr*, Senior Scientist, Physicians for Social Responsibility
Hirotsugu Terasaki, Executive Director, Peace Affairs, Soka Gakkai International
Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town, South Africa
Rick Wayman*, Director of Programs, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation
Bill Wickersham, Ph.D.*, Adjunct Professor of Peace Studies, University of Missouri
*Initial signer from The Dangers of Nuclear Deterrence Conference, hosted by the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, Santa Barbara, February 16-17, 2011
Rep. Lois Capps Submits Peace Foundation’s Declaration into Congressional Record
Source: Nuclear Age Peace Foundation
On May 31, Rep. Lois Capps of California’s 23rd Congressional District submitted the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s Santa Barbara Declaration to the Congressional Record.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On May 31, Rep. Lois Capps of California’s 23rd Congressional District submitted the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s Santa Barbara Declaration to the Congressional Record. As the official record of the proceedings and debates of the United States Congress, the Congressional Record is a permanent public archive, published since 1873.
Congresswoman Capps introduced the Declaration as follows:
“Mr. Speaker, I rise to enter into the Congressional Record the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s Santa Barbara Declaration, drafted February 17, 2011.
“The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, a non-profit and non-partisan organization based in Santa Barbara that has worked for peace and the abolition of nuclear weapons since 1982, hosted a conference in February 2011 on the dangers of nuclear deterrence. The statement, drafted by experts from around the world, outlines many reasons to work toward the eradication of nuclear weapons.
“I urge my colleagues to read the Santa Barbara Declaration and strive to build a more peaceful world.”
Participants in the drafting of the Declaration included experts in nuclear proliferation, international law, the environment, former military personnel, and peace activists who came from across the United States and as far away as New Zealand. The Declaration, available online at www.wagingpeace.org/goto/declaration, calls upon the public to reject the doctrine of nuclear deterrence and highlights its major problems, including:
•Its power to protect is a dangerous fabrication;
•It assumes all leaders will be rational at all times;
•Threatening or using nuclear weapons is illegal and criminal;
•It is deeply immoral to threaten indiscriminate death and destruction;
•It diverts resources desperately needed to meet human needs;
•It has no effect against non-state extremists;
•It is vulnerable to sabotage, cyber attack and human or technical error;
•It encourages nuclear proliferation in other countries.
For additional information on The Dangers of Nuclear Deterrence conference and the Santa
Barbara declaration, contact Debra Roets at (805) 965-3443 or droets@napf.org.
SANTA BARBARA DECLARATION
REJECT NUCLEAR DETERRENCE: AN URGENT CALL TO ACTION
Nuclear deterrence is a doctrine that is used as a justification by nuclear weapon states and their allies for the continued possession and threatened use of nuclear weapons.
Nuclear deterrence is the threat of a nuclear strike in response to a hostile action. However, the nature of the hostile action is often not clearly defined, making possible the use of nuclear weapons in a wide range of circumstances.
Nuclear deterrence threatens the murder of many millions of innocent people, along with severe economic, climate, environmental, agricultural and health consequences beyond the area of attack.
Nuclear deterrence requires massive commitments of resources to the industrial infrastructures and organizations that make up the world’s nuclear weapons establishments, its only beneficiaries.
Despite its catastrophic potential, nuclear deterrence is widely, though wrongly, perceived to provide protection to nuclear weapon states, their allies and their citizens.
Nuclear deterrence has numerous major problems:
1.Its power to protect is a dangerous fabrication. The threat or use of nuclear weapons provides no protection against an attack.
2.It assumes rational leaders, but there can be irrational or paranoid leaders on any side of a conflict.
3.Threatening or committing mass murder with nuclear weapons is illegal and criminal. It violates fundamental legal precepts of domestic and international law, threatening the indiscriminate slaughter of innocent people.
4.It is deeply immoral for the same reasons it is illegal: it threatens indiscriminate and grossly disproportionate death and destruction.
5.It diverts human and economic resources desperately needed to meet basic human needs around the world. Globally, approximately $100 billion is spent annually on nuclear forces.
6.It has no effect against non-state extremists, who govern no territory or population.
7.It is vulnerable to cyber attack, sabotage, and human or technical error, which could result in a nuclear strike.
8.It sets an example for additional countries to pursue nuclear weapons for their own nuclear deterrent force.
Its benefits are illusory. Any use of nuclear weapons would be catastrophic.
Nuclear deterrence is discriminatory, anti-democratic and unsustainable. This doctrine must be discredited and replaced with an urgent commitment to achieve global nuclear disarmament. We must change the discourse by speaking truth to power and speaking truth to each other.
Before another nuclear weapon is used, nuclear deterrence must be replaced by humane, legal and moral security strategies. We call upon people everywhere to join us in demanding that the nuclear weapon states and their allies reject nuclear deterrence and negotiate without delay a Nuclear Weapons Convention for the phased, verifiable, irreversible and transparent elimination of all nuclear weapons.
_____________
Blase Bonpane, Ph.D.*, Director, Office of the Americas
Theresa Bonpane*, Founding Director, Office of the Americas
John Burroughs, Ph.D.*, Executive Director, Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy
Jacqueline Cabasso*, Executive Director, Western States Legal Foundation
Ben Cohen, Co-Founder, Ben & Jerry’s
Kate Dewes, Ph.D.*, Co-Director, Disarmament and Security Centre, New Zealand
Bob Dodge, M.D.*, Coordinator, Beyond War Nuclear Weapons Abolition Team
Dick Duda, Ph.D.*, founding member, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation – Silicon Valley
Denise Duffield*, Associate Director, Physicians for Social Responsibility – Los Angeles
Richard Falk, J.S.D.*, Chair, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation
Commander Robert Green (Royal Navy, ret.)*, Co-Director, Disarmament and Security Centre, New Zealand
David Krieger, Ph.D.*, President, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation
Robert Laney, J.D.*, Secretary, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation
Kayo Maeta, Chair, Women’s Peace Committee, Soka Gakkai
Kenji Shiratsuchi, Chair, Youth Peace Conference, Soka Gakkai
Diane Meyer Simon, Founder and President Emeritus, Global Green USA
Dr. Jennifer Allen Simons, C.M., Founder and President of The Simons Foundation
Steven Starr*, Senior Scientist, Physicians for Social Responsibility
Hirotsugu Terasaki, Executive Director, Peace Affairs, Soka Gakkai International
Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town, South Africa
Rick Wayman*, Director of Programs, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation
Bill Wickersham, Ph.D.*, Adjunct Professor of Peace Studies, University of Missouri
*Initial signer from The Dangers of Nuclear Deterrence Conference, hosted by the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, Santa Barbara, February 16-17, 2011
Sunday, June 5, 2011
"STOP THE WAR ON DRUGS"
INTERNATIONAL LEADERS PLEAD: "Stop the War on Drugs"
By Molly O'Toole
AlterNet.org
The Waldorf Astoria may be worlds away from the blood-spotted streets of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, where the "drug war" has taken over 35,000 lives; the fiefdom-like favelas of Rio, Brazil, where even the police don't go; or Pakistan, one of the lowest-ranking on human development in the world, and neighbor to its largest opium producer. But members of the Global Commission on Drug Policy came to the famed New York hotel Friday to bring together leading thinkers and call for an end to the global "war on drugs," whose failed policies have claimed thousands of victims around the world over the last five decades.
The Commission on Drug Policy released a report Thursday outlining these failures and recommending reforms, among them a shift from criminalization to public health and from incarceration to consideration of a full range of alternatives, from decriminalization to legalization and regulation.
Despite the evidence, the political will and public support to transform drug policy remains anemic, as voiced by Ricken Patel, executive director at Avaaz, a global advocacy organization. He described his initial reaction to the drug policy commission at the New York press conference: "What have these people been smoking?"
But the commission's mandate is perhaps unprecedentedly deep and broad; the commissioners hail from 15 countries around the world, from North and Latin America, to Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. They are four former presidents, United Nations dignitaries, authors and intellectuals, health and security officials, NGO directors and entrepreneurs.
Fernando Henrique Cardoso, former president of Brazil, chairs the commission that also boasts a Nobel laureate; Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa won the Nobel prize for literature this year. Kofi Annan is a personally impassioned member, due to regrets that he did not do more on drug policy in his former capacity as Secretary General of the UN, according to fellow member Richard Branson, entrepreneur, public advocate and the man who also said that within one year he'll be sending civilians into space. Asma Jahangir, former UN Special Rapporteur on Arbitrary, Extrajudicial and Summary Executions, is from Pakistan, and George Papandreou, one of the commission's only acting heads of state, is prime minister of the beleaguered country of Greece.
Public support for an end to the war on drugs shows signs of shifting as well. Patel presented Cardoso with a golf-check-like board, citing over 550,000 signatures of support from every country in the world for their campaign to overhaul global drug policy -- with an additional 1,500 added during the meeting itself, according to Patel. The commission delivered its report and the petition to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon today.
But the diversity of the panel at the Waldorf and the strong representation of two regions that have long led a continuing shift away from the "prohibitionist" policies of the world-wide war on drugs -- Latin America and Western Europe -- made the absence of the primary architect of these policies all the more glaring.
Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, who hosted the event, noted several of the commission's absent members, describing honorary chair George Schultz as former secretary of "everything," to much laughter. John Whitehead, a banker and chair of the World Trade Center Memorial, is also a member, as is Paul Volcker, former Chairman of the U.S. Economic Recovery Board and the U.S. Federal Reserve.
Yet, thus far the country that created many of the drug policies that have since been exported and enforced around the globe has been resistant to the calls of the Commission. Fifty years ago, in 1961, the United Nations initiated the UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs. Ten years later, President Ronald Reagan launched the U.S. government's "war on drugs" that continues to this day. The goal was a drug-free world, and the means to achieve it was fierce enforcement, a harsh crackdown on those involved in the production, distribution and consumption of drugs like heroin, cocaine and cannabis.
Instead, according to UN estimates, in the decade from 1998 to 2008, annual rates of consumption of drugs have rocketed up by 34.5 percent for opiates, 27 percent for cocaine and 8.5 percent for cannabis. As of 2008 estimates, there were more than 17 million opiates and cocaine users, and 160 million consumers of cannabis.
The global drug trade is valued at trillions of dollars (and not just from cocaine; the Mexican officials approximate that almost half of the cartels' billions of dollars of annual revenue come from marijuana). But attempts to eradicate it have cost the United States alone $1 trillion, not to mention thousands of lives. Within our borders, rates of incarceration, often for lesser offenses related to drugs, are the highest in the world, over Russia, China or Iran.
Additionally, the current size of the prison population -- more than 2.3 million -- is directly related to the war on drugs and overwhelmingly made up of people of color. These rates of incarceration have also led to levels of overcrowding that recently prompted the U.S. Supreme Court to order the state of California to release some 30,000 prisoners, after ruling that crowded conditions violated inmates' constitutional protections, and according to Justice Anthony Kennedy, also their "human dignity."
"I think the business community can try to educate governments into realizing that filling up prisons with millions of drug users costing the countries billions of dollars is not the best use of their money," said Branson, who uniquely represents business interests on the commission.
But Branson also describes the U.S. obligation to combat consumption as "enormous" because it is the biggest market for drugs. Internationally, the U.S. has given billions in aid to countries for the adoption of similar policies to the war on drugs within its own borders, with a majority going to its southern neighbor. "Every time somebody in the U.S. snorts cocaine, they're effectively contributing to the death of a Mexican," Branson said.
Colombia is often cited as a successful example of U.S. strategy. Ravaged by cartels and violence from the drug trade, the Colombian government adopted the U.S.-recommended Plan Colombia, and has been able to regain control; however, as former president César Gaviria pointed out in a sunny back room at the Waldorf, the broader drug war has not ended, but intensified.
According to the Economist, nearly all the world's cocaine is produced in Colombia, Peru and Bolivia, and consumed in the U.S., where a kilo will start at $12,500, wholesale, though prices have also been pushed higher by pressure on Mexican drug trade routes. The main market route shifted from Colombia-Florida, across the Caribbean, to the Pacific Coast of Mexico, but pressure there is pushing the trade into other Central American countries. As commission members noted, payment in drugs rather than cash is also contributing to the first significant use inside these countries as well, and the disturbing development of a local trade. Gaviria added, "Mexico is making an extraordinary effort, and they should be helped on that, but at the same time I think they have the right to ask the U.S. to look at the policy and see if it's effective."
Many feel we are further from the ultimate objective of the 1961 UN Convention -- the improvement of the "health and welfare of mankind" -- than ever before. Frustration with these failures is feeding a growing movement for drug policy reform. Mexico is the latest Latin American country to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of cannabis, cocaine, heroin and other drugs in 2009 -- much to the chagrin of the United Nations international drug enforcement body, the International Narcotics Control Board. Argentina's Supreme Court has ruled that punishing the personal use of cannabis is unconstitutional.
Three former presidents and commission members -- Gaviria, Cardoso and Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico -- have all argued that legalization would undermine the major source of income for cartels that still ravage the region, and that the prohibition of drugs fuels violence while not stopping consumption.
According to the commission's report, the starting point for effective policy must be "the recognition of the global drug problem as a set of interlinked health and social challenges to be managed, rather than a war to be won."
The report highlights several examples of countries that have successfully adopted this approach.
Countries that have enacted "harm reduction" strategies, which can include syringe access and medication, and public health initiatives -- like the UK, Switzerland, Germany and Australia -- have had lower rates of HIV transmission among people who inject drugs than in countries that have resisted such strategies, like Thailand and Russia. Switzerland, the UK and the Netherlands, which in the heyday of Reagan's war on drugs in the '80s had severe drug issues, chose instead to adopt a policy based on public health rather than criminalization -- and have seen results in decreased number of addicts, charges brought against drug users and crime.
In 2001, Portugal became the first European country to decriminalize the use and possession of all illicit drugs, and met much criticism by those who believed it would lead to even greater drug use and the problems associated with it. But subsequent studies have shown that removing criminality, but combining this strategy with therapy, has reduced the burden on law enforcement and overall levels of problematic drug use.
Similar criticisms continue to be voiced in the U.S., though interest in alternative policies has grown, as seen in a California ballot initiative last November. Studies have projected that both taxation and the money saved from ineffective enforcement would bring billions to state and federal governments.
But the California initiative did fail, and despite evidence of the failure of the war on drugs, the Obama administration has continued its policies, increasing spending on interdiction and enforcement to record levels in dollars and percentage, according to the Associated Press. In 2010, they accounted for $10 billion of Obama's $15.5 billion budget for drug control. Although the administration has emphasized a "public health" approach, a White House spokesman immediately dismissed the report and the recommendations of the commission. "Making drugs more available -- as this report suggests -- will make it harder to keep our communities healthy and safe," said Rafael Lemaitre, spokesman for the Office of National Drug Control Policy, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Marion Caspers-Merk, former State Secretary at the German Federal Ministry of Health, believes this disparity is a primary obstacle to mobilizing support for drug policy reform. "There is a lot of political pressure that a policy mix is something that will not be accepted by a society that figures of addicted people as criminals," she said. Yet even members of the commission recognized that the chances of a true transformation of international drug policy are slim without the support of one of the world's strongest policy players.
"These are busy people," said Thorvald Stoltenberg of the lack of US representation at the meeting and relatively speaking on the commission. Stoltenberg sat on the panel as a former minister of Foreign Affairs for Norway and UN High Commissioner for Refugees. "The success of this to a large extent depends on US policy."
Gaviria was pessimistic at the prospect of US support. "It is difficult to have a sense that the US will move in a change of language and change of policy if they don't have debate," Gaviria said. "It makes it very difficult to look for alternatives."
Gaviria, like several members of the commission, made the US present in his arguments for the need to end the war on drugs.
"The only approach to this problem of narcotrafficking is not prohibitionism ... there are a lot of things to do that can be more effective and at least less harmful for societies than what we have now," Gaviria said, but added, "We are trying to promote debate; we don't pretend we are going to change the world."
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Tags: stop the war on drugs
By Molly O'Toole
AlterNet.org
The Waldorf Astoria may be worlds away from the blood-spotted streets of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, where the "drug war" has taken over 35,000 lives; the fiefdom-like favelas of Rio, Brazil, where even the police don't go; or Pakistan, one of the lowest-ranking on human development in the world, and neighbor to its largest opium producer. But members of the Global Commission on Drug Policy came to the famed New York hotel Friday to bring together leading thinkers and call for an end to the global "war on drugs," whose failed policies have claimed thousands of victims around the world over the last five decades.
The Commission on Drug Policy released a report Thursday outlining these failures and recommending reforms, among them a shift from criminalization to public health and from incarceration to consideration of a full range of alternatives, from decriminalization to legalization and regulation.
Despite the evidence, the political will and public support to transform drug policy remains anemic, as voiced by Ricken Patel, executive director at Avaaz, a global advocacy organization. He described his initial reaction to the drug policy commission at the New York press conference: "What have these people been smoking?"
But the commission's mandate is perhaps unprecedentedly deep and broad; the commissioners hail from 15 countries around the world, from North and Latin America, to Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. They are four former presidents, United Nations dignitaries, authors and intellectuals, health and security officials, NGO directors and entrepreneurs.
Fernando Henrique Cardoso, former president of Brazil, chairs the commission that also boasts a Nobel laureate; Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa won the Nobel prize for literature this year. Kofi Annan is a personally impassioned member, due to regrets that he did not do more on drug policy in his former capacity as Secretary General of the UN, according to fellow member Richard Branson, entrepreneur, public advocate and the man who also said that within one year he'll be sending civilians into space. Asma Jahangir, former UN Special Rapporteur on Arbitrary, Extrajudicial and Summary Executions, is from Pakistan, and George Papandreou, one of the commission's only acting heads of state, is prime minister of the beleaguered country of Greece.
Public support for an end to the war on drugs shows signs of shifting as well. Patel presented Cardoso with a golf-check-like board, citing over 550,000 signatures of support from every country in the world for their campaign to overhaul global drug policy -- with an additional 1,500 added during the meeting itself, according to Patel. The commission delivered its report and the petition to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon today.
But the diversity of the panel at the Waldorf and the strong representation of two regions that have long led a continuing shift away from the "prohibitionist" policies of the world-wide war on drugs -- Latin America and Western Europe -- made the absence of the primary architect of these policies all the more glaring.
Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, who hosted the event, noted several of the commission's absent members, describing honorary chair George Schultz as former secretary of "everything," to much laughter. John Whitehead, a banker and chair of the World Trade Center Memorial, is also a member, as is Paul Volcker, former Chairman of the U.S. Economic Recovery Board and the U.S. Federal Reserve.
Yet, thus far the country that created many of the drug policies that have since been exported and enforced around the globe has been resistant to the calls of the Commission. Fifty years ago, in 1961, the United Nations initiated the UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs. Ten years later, President Ronald Reagan launched the U.S. government's "war on drugs" that continues to this day. The goal was a drug-free world, and the means to achieve it was fierce enforcement, a harsh crackdown on those involved in the production, distribution and consumption of drugs like heroin, cocaine and cannabis.
Instead, according to UN estimates, in the decade from 1998 to 2008, annual rates of consumption of drugs have rocketed up by 34.5 percent for opiates, 27 percent for cocaine and 8.5 percent for cannabis. As of 2008 estimates, there were more than 17 million opiates and cocaine users, and 160 million consumers of cannabis.
The global drug trade is valued at trillions of dollars (and not just from cocaine; the Mexican officials approximate that almost half of the cartels' billions of dollars of annual revenue come from marijuana). But attempts to eradicate it have cost the United States alone $1 trillion, not to mention thousands of lives. Within our borders, rates of incarceration, often for lesser offenses related to drugs, are the highest in the world, over Russia, China or Iran.
Additionally, the current size of the prison population -- more than 2.3 million -- is directly related to the war on drugs and overwhelmingly made up of people of color. These rates of incarceration have also led to levels of overcrowding that recently prompted the U.S. Supreme Court to order the state of California to release some 30,000 prisoners, after ruling that crowded conditions violated inmates' constitutional protections, and according to Justice Anthony Kennedy, also their "human dignity."
"I think the business community can try to educate governments into realizing that filling up prisons with millions of drug users costing the countries billions of dollars is not the best use of their money," said Branson, who uniquely represents business interests on the commission.
But Branson also describes the U.S. obligation to combat consumption as "enormous" because it is the biggest market for drugs. Internationally, the U.S. has given billions in aid to countries for the adoption of similar policies to the war on drugs within its own borders, with a majority going to its southern neighbor. "Every time somebody in the U.S. snorts cocaine, they're effectively contributing to the death of a Mexican," Branson said.
Colombia is often cited as a successful example of U.S. strategy. Ravaged by cartels and violence from the drug trade, the Colombian government adopted the U.S.-recommended Plan Colombia, and has been able to regain control; however, as former president César Gaviria pointed out in a sunny back room at the Waldorf, the broader drug war has not ended, but intensified.
According to the Economist, nearly all the world's cocaine is produced in Colombia, Peru and Bolivia, and consumed in the U.S., where a kilo will start at $12,500, wholesale, though prices have also been pushed higher by pressure on Mexican drug trade routes. The main market route shifted from Colombia-Florida, across the Caribbean, to the Pacific Coast of Mexico, but pressure there is pushing the trade into other Central American countries. As commission members noted, payment in drugs rather than cash is also contributing to the first significant use inside these countries as well, and the disturbing development of a local trade. Gaviria added, "Mexico is making an extraordinary effort, and they should be helped on that, but at the same time I think they have the right to ask the U.S. to look at the policy and see if it's effective."
Many feel we are further from the ultimate objective of the 1961 UN Convention -- the improvement of the "health and welfare of mankind" -- than ever before. Frustration with these failures is feeding a growing movement for drug policy reform. Mexico is the latest Latin American country to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of cannabis, cocaine, heroin and other drugs in 2009 -- much to the chagrin of the United Nations international drug enforcement body, the International Narcotics Control Board. Argentina's Supreme Court has ruled that punishing the personal use of cannabis is unconstitutional.
Three former presidents and commission members -- Gaviria, Cardoso and Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico -- have all argued that legalization would undermine the major source of income for cartels that still ravage the region, and that the prohibition of drugs fuels violence while not stopping consumption.
According to the commission's report, the starting point for effective policy must be "the recognition of the global drug problem as a set of interlinked health and social challenges to be managed, rather than a war to be won."
The report highlights several examples of countries that have successfully adopted this approach.
Countries that have enacted "harm reduction" strategies, which can include syringe access and medication, and public health initiatives -- like the UK, Switzerland, Germany and Australia -- have had lower rates of HIV transmission among people who inject drugs than in countries that have resisted such strategies, like Thailand and Russia. Switzerland, the UK and the Netherlands, which in the heyday of Reagan's war on drugs in the '80s had severe drug issues, chose instead to adopt a policy based on public health rather than criminalization -- and have seen results in decreased number of addicts, charges brought against drug users and crime.
In 2001, Portugal became the first European country to decriminalize the use and possession of all illicit drugs, and met much criticism by those who believed it would lead to even greater drug use and the problems associated with it. But subsequent studies have shown that removing criminality, but combining this strategy with therapy, has reduced the burden on law enforcement and overall levels of problematic drug use.
Similar criticisms continue to be voiced in the U.S., though interest in alternative policies has grown, as seen in a California ballot initiative last November. Studies have projected that both taxation and the money saved from ineffective enforcement would bring billions to state and federal governments.
But the California initiative did fail, and despite evidence of the failure of the war on drugs, the Obama administration has continued its policies, increasing spending on interdiction and enforcement to record levels in dollars and percentage, according to the Associated Press. In 2010, they accounted for $10 billion of Obama's $15.5 billion budget for drug control. Although the administration has emphasized a "public health" approach, a White House spokesman immediately dismissed the report and the recommendations of the commission. "Making drugs more available -- as this report suggests -- will make it harder to keep our communities healthy and safe," said Rafael Lemaitre, spokesman for the Office of National Drug Control Policy, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Marion Caspers-Merk, former State Secretary at the German Federal Ministry of Health, believes this disparity is a primary obstacle to mobilizing support for drug policy reform. "There is a lot of political pressure that a policy mix is something that will not be accepted by a society that figures of addicted people as criminals," she said. Yet even members of the commission recognized that the chances of a true transformation of international drug policy are slim without the support of one of the world's strongest policy players.
"These are busy people," said Thorvald Stoltenberg of the lack of US representation at the meeting and relatively speaking on the commission. Stoltenberg sat on the panel as a former minister of Foreign Affairs for Norway and UN High Commissioner for Refugees. "The success of this to a large extent depends on US policy."
Gaviria was pessimistic at the prospect of US support. "It is difficult to have a sense that the US will move in a change of language and change of policy if they don't have debate," Gaviria said. "It makes it very difficult to look for alternatives."
Gaviria, like several members of the commission, made the US present in his arguments for the need to end the war on drugs.
"The only approach to this problem of narcotrafficking is not prohibitionism ... there are a lot of things to do that can be more effective and at least less harmful for societies than what we have now," Gaviria said, but added, "We are trying to promote debate; we don't pretend we are going to change the world."
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Saturday, June 4, 2011
America's Creeping Police State
AlterNet / By Rania Khalek
America's Creeping Police State
Imperialism abroad is destroying what is left of our democracy at home. From warrantless wiretapping to warrantless door-busting, this is what a police state looks like.
May 31, 2011 |
� The late Chalmers Johnson often reminded us that “A nation can be one or the other, a democracy or an imperialist, but it can’t be both. If it sticks to imperialism, it will, like the old Roman Republic, on which so much of our system was modeled, lose its democracy to a domestic dictatorship.” His warning rings more true by the day, as Americans watch the erosion of their civil liberties accelerate in conjunction with the expansion of the US Empire.
When viewed through the lens of Johnson’s profound insights, the Supreme Court’s recent ruling in Kentucky v. King makes perfect sense. On May 13, in a lopsided 8-1 ruling, the Court upheld the warrantless search of a Kentucky man’s apartment after police smelled marijuana and feared those inside were destroying evidence, essentially granting police officers increased power to enter the homes of citizens without a warrant.
Under the Fourth Amendment, police are barred from entering a home without first obtaining a warrant, which can only be issued by a judge upon probable cause. The only exception is when the circumstances qualify as “exigent,” meaning there is imminent risk of death or serious injury, danger that evidence will be immediately destroyed, or that a suspect will escape. However, exigent circumstances cannot be created by the police.
In this case, the police followed a suspected drug dealer into an apartment complex and after losing track of him, smelled marijuana coming from one of the apartments. After banging on the door and announcing themselves, the police heard noises that they interpreted as the destruction of evidence. Rather than first obtaining a warrant, they kicked down the door and arrested the man inside, who was caught flushing marijuana down the toilet.
The Kentucky Supreme Court had overturned the man’s conviction and ruled that exigent circumstances did not apply because the behavior of the police is what prompted the destruction of evidence. Tragically, an overwhelming majority of the Supreme Court upheld the Conviction. Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito wrote that citizens are not required to grant police officers permission to enter their homes after hearing a knock, but if there is no response and the officers hear noise that suggests evidence is being destroyed, they are justified in breaking in.
In her lone and scathing dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg agreed with the Kentucky Supreme Court, arguing that the Supreme Court’s ruling “arms the police with a way routinely to dishonor the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement in drug cases. In lieu of presenting their evidence to a neutral magistrate, police officers may now knock, listen, then break the door down, nevermind that they had ample time to obtain a warrant.” She went on to stress that “there was little risk that drug-related evidence would have been destroyed had the police delayed the search pending a magistrate’s authorization.”
Not only did the police instigate the destruction of evidence by banging at the door and shouting “Police, police,” but they could have easily obtained a warrant since they likely had probable cause. There is no reason to believe that delaying the search to obtain a warrant, as legally required, would have led to the destruction of evidence. This was pure laziness and contempt for the constitution on part of the officers.
An argument could be made that entering without a warrant saves money, time, and resources, especially if it’s obvious that a crime is being committed. However, the protection of our rights is worth the money, time, and resources. Living in a free society requires that we make these sacrifices, even at the peril of our safety if need be. In fact, I would argue that the wasting of money, time, and resources is the fault of a deeply flawed drug policy, not the protection of those pesky civil liberties always getting in the way of law enforcement.
As for the implications of such a ruling, arming the police with more power will have serious consequences for an already institutionally biased criminal justice system in regards to the “war on drugs.” Jordan C. Budd notes the existence of a “poverty exception” to the Constitution, particularly the Fourth Amendment, a bias that renders much of the Constitution irrelevant at best, and hostile at worst, to the American poor. While attacks on the Fourth Amendment negatively affect all members of society, minorities and the poor, generally the targets of the drug war, are more vulnerable to the abuse of power that follows.
Chief Judge Kozinski of the Ninth Circuit recently decried this “unselfconscious cultural elitism” in a case upholding the ability of police to clandestinely attach a GPS tracking device to the underside of a car parked in the driveway of a modest home:
Poor people are entitled to privacy, even if they can’t afford all the gadgets of the wealthy for ensuring it. . . . When you glide your BMW into your underground garage or behind an electric gate, you don’t need to worry that somebody might attach a tracking device to it while you sleep. But the Constitution doesn’t prefer the rich over the poor; the man who parks his car next to his trailer is entitled to the same privacy and peace of mind as the man whose urban fortress is guarded by the Bel Air Patrol. . . .We are taking a giant leap into the unknown, and the consequences for ourselves and our children may be dire and irreversible. Some day, soon, we may wake up and find we’re living in Oceania.
The same holds true in the context of warrantless door-busting. In the Kentucky case the police smelled marijuana in the hall of the apartment complex that the initial suspect they were tracking had taken refuge in. An apartment hall is a common space shared by many people, who could be emitting various odors from inside their homes, such as cooked onions or fresh paint. Had this been a single-family home in the suburbs, there is no way the smell of pot would have been detected from the doorway of the house across the street.
Scott Lemieux made this point well when he wrote:
As with the broader drug war, civil-liberties violations have a disparate impact in terms of race and class. It is generally not wealthy white suburbanites who have to worry about being stopped and frisked on the streets or having their doors broken down. Like the grotesquely harsh sentencing disparity between powder and crack cocaine possession, this erosion of Fourth Amendment rights has persisted because wealthy people are largely insulated from its effects.
The failure of society at large to secure the rights of all segments of the population, has resulted in what can only be described as a nail in the coffin of our right to privacy, at least for those who can afford it.
In her dissent, Ginsburg went on to ask, “How ‘secure’ do our homes remain if police, armed with no warrant, can pound on doors at will and, on hearing sounds indicative of things moving, forcibly enter and search for evidence of unlawful activity?” While I agree with Ginsberg’s premise, I would go further in arguing that the war on drugs has created a dangerous precedent where even when a search warrant is obtained, we are far from secure in our homes.
For example, about a week prior to the Kentucky ruling, police authorities in Pima County, Arizona, fired 71 shots in seven seconds at 26 year old Jose Guerena, a former Marine who served two tours in Iraq. Guerena was murdered while his terrified wife and 4-year old son hid in the closet. The SWAT team that killed him was there to serve a narcotics search warrant as part of a multi-house drug crackdown. As Guerena lay dying with his wife pleading for help, the SWAT team barred paramedics from entering the home.
Guerena’s wife asserts that her husband grabbed his gun because he thought his family was the victim of a home invasion, not a police raid. This is understandable given the family’s location in Arizona, a state where anti-immigrant militants are notorious for the cold-blooded murder of hispanic families. Deputies initially justified their actions by claiming that Guerena fired at officers but later said he kept the gun safety on and never pulled the trigger.
As it turns out, Guerena’s murder is just the most recent in a long line of botched paramilitary operations. According to an investigation carried out by the CATO Institute, America has seen a disturbing militarization of its civilian law enforcement over the last 25 years, along with a dramatic and unsettling rise in the use of paramilitary police units for routine police work. In fact, the most common use of SWAT teams today is to serve narcotics warrants, usually with forced, unannounced entry into the home.
The CATO study found that some 40,000 of these raids take place every year, and are needlessly subjecting nonviolent drug offenders, bystanders, and wrongly targeted civilians to the terror of having their homes invaded while they’re sleeping, usually by teams of heavily armed paramilitary units dressed not as police officers but as soldiers.
These raids bring unnecessary violence and provocation to nonviolent drug offenders, many of whom were guilty of only misdemeanors. The raids terrorize innocents when police mistakenly target the wrong residence. And they have resulted in dozens of needless deaths and injuries, not only of drug offenders, but also of police officers, children, bystanders, and innocent suspects.
Those who suggest that the Supreme Court’s decision in King v. Kentucky is ‘no big deal’ or that it’s ‘alarmist’ to think otherwise, must not understand the extent to which the boundaries are pushed when the Court makes exceptions to our rights. Nor do they comprehend that once lost, civil liberties are impossible to reclaim. With SWAT teams already injuring and at times killing the wrong people to serve warrants, just imagine the abuse to come given the increased power the Court has bestowed upon the state.
Considering the level of brutality we have been dishing out around the world, from the “war on drugs” to the “war on terror,” the erosion of our civil liberties is sadly inevitable. Did we really think that we could wage war and occupy other nations with checkpoints, invasive surveillance, and brutal violence without these same policing tactics spreading to our country?
After sending hundreds of thousands of soldiers abroad to terrorize people in their homes around the world, we shouldn’t be surprised that our government would eventually employ the same actions against its own citizens. Just as Chalmers Johnson predicted, our imperialism abroad is destroying what is left of our democracy at home. From warrantless wiretapping to warrantless door-busting, this is what a police state looks like.
Rania Khalek is a young, progressive activist with a passionate dedication to social justice. Check out her blog Missing Pieces or follow her on twitter @Rania_ak. You can contact her at raniakhalek@gmail.com.
America's Creeping Police State
Imperialism abroad is destroying what is left of our democracy at home. From warrantless wiretapping to warrantless door-busting, this is what a police state looks like.
May 31, 2011 |
� The late Chalmers Johnson often reminded us that “A nation can be one or the other, a democracy or an imperialist, but it can’t be both. If it sticks to imperialism, it will, like the old Roman Republic, on which so much of our system was modeled, lose its democracy to a domestic dictatorship.” His warning rings more true by the day, as Americans watch the erosion of their civil liberties accelerate in conjunction with the expansion of the US Empire.
When viewed through the lens of Johnson’s profound insights, the Supreme Court’s recent ruling in Kentucky v. King makes perfect sense. On May 13, in a lopsided 8-1 ruling, the Court upheld the warrantless search of a Kentucky man’s apartment after police smelled marijuana and feared those inside were destroying evidence, essentially granting police officers increased power to enter the homes of citizens without a warrant.
Under the Fourth Amendment, police are barred from entering a home without first obtaining a warrant, which can only be issued by a judge upon probable cause. The only exception is when the circumstances qualify as “exigent,” meaning there is imminent risk of death or serious injury, danger that evidence will be immediately destroyed, or that a suspect will escape. However, exigent circumstances cannot be created by the police.
In this case, the police followed a suspected drug dealer into an apartment complex and after losing track of him, smelled marijuana coming from one of the apartments. After banging on the door and announcing themselves, the police heard noises that they interpreted as the destruction of evidence. Rather than first obtaining a warrant, they kicked down the door and arrested the man inside, who was caught flushing marijuana down the toilet.
The Kentucky Supreme Court had overturned the man’s conviction and ruled that exigent circumstances did not apply because the behavior of the police is what prompted the destruction of evidence. Tragically, an overwhelming majority of the Supreme Court upheld the Conviction. Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito wrote that citizens are not required to grant police officers permission to enter their homes after hearing a knock, but if there is no response and the officers hear noise that suggests evidence is being destroyed, they are justified in breaking in.
In her lone and scathing dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg agreed with the Kentucky Supreme Court, arguing that the Supreme Court’s ruling “arms the police with a way routinely to dishonor the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement in drug cases. In lieu of presenting their evidence to a neutral magistrate, police officers may now knock, listen, then break the door down, nevermind that they had ample time to obtain a warrant.” She went on to stress that “there was little risk that drug-related evidence would have been destroyed had the police delayed the search pending a magistrate’s authorization.”
Not only did the police instigate the destruction of evidence by banging at the door and shouting “Police, police,” but they could have easily obtained a warrant since they likely had probable cause. There is no reason to believe that delaying the search to obtain a warrant, as legally required, would have led to the destruction of evidence. This was pure laziness and contempt for the constitution on part of the officers.
An argument could be made that entering without a warrant saves money, time, and resources, especially if it’s obvious that a crime is being committed. However, the protection of our rights is worth the money, time, and resources. Living in a free society requires that we make these sacrifices, even at the peril of our safety if need be. In fact, I would argue that the wasting of money, time, and resources is the fault of a deeply flawed drug policy, not the protection of those pesky civil liberties always getting in the way of law enforcement.
As for the implications of such a ruling, arming the police with more power will have serious consequences for an already institutionally biased criminal justice system in regards to the “war on drugs.” Jordan C. Budd notes the existence of a “poverty exception” to the Constitution, particularly the Fourth Amendment, a bias that renders much of the Constitution irrelevant at best, and hostile at worst, to the American poor. While attacks on the Fourth Amendment negatively affect all members of society, minorities and the poor, generally the targets of the drug war, are more vulnerable to the abuse of power that follows.
Chief Judge Kozinski of the Ninth Circuit recently decried this “unselfconscious cultural elitism” in a case upholding the ability of police to clandestinely attach a GPS tracking device to the underside of a car parked in the driveway of a modest home:
Poor people are entitled to privacy, even if they can’t afford all the gadgets of the wealthy for ensuring it. . . . When you glide your BMW into your underground garage or behind an electric gate, you don’t need to worry that somebody might attach a tracking device to it while you sleep. But the Constitution doesn’t prefer the rich over the poor; the man who parks his car next to his trailer is entitled to the same privacy and peace of mind as the man whose urban fortress is guarded by the Bel Air Patrol. . . .We are taking a giant leap into the unknown, and the consequences for ourselves and our children may be dire and irreversible. Some day, soon, we may wake up and find we’re living in Oceania.
The same holds true in the context of warrantless door-busting. In the Kentucky case the police smelled marijuana in the hall of the apartment complex that the initial suspect they were tracking had taken refuge in. An apartment hall is a common space shared by many people, who could be emitting various odors from inside their homes, such as cooked onions or fresh paint. Had this been a single-family home in the suburbs, there is no way the smell of pot would have been detected from the doorway of the house across the street.
Scott Lemieux made this point well when he wrote:
As with the broader drug war, civil-liberties violations have a disparate impact in terms of race and class. It is generally not wealthy white suburbanites who have to worry about being stopped and frisked on the streets or having their doors broken down. Like the grotesquely harsh sentencing disparity between powder and crack cocaine possession, this erosion of Fourth Amendment rights has persisted because wealthy people are largely insulated from its effects.
The failure of society at large to secure the rights of all segments of the population, has resulted in what can only be described as a nail in the coffin of our right to privacy, at least for those who can afford it.
In her dissent, Ginsburg went on to ask, “How ‘secure’ do our homes remain if police, armed with no warrant, can pound on doors at will and, on hearing sounds indicative of things moving, forcibly enter and search for evidence of unlawful activity?” While I agree with Ginsberg’s premise, I would go further in arguing that the war on drugs has created a dangerous precedent where even when a search warrant is obtained, we are far from secure in our homes.
For example, about a week prior to the Kentucky ruling, police authorities in Pima County, Arizona, fired 71 shots in seven seconds at 26 year old Jose Guerena, a former Marine who served two tours in Iraq. Guerena was murdered while his terrified wife and 4-year old son hid in the closet. The SWAT team that killed him was there to serve a narcotics search warrant as part of a multi-house drug crackdown. As Guerena lay dying with his wife pleading for help, the SWAT team barred paramedics from entering the home.
Guerena’s wife asserts that her husband grabbed his gun because he thought his family was the victim of a home invasion, not a police raid. This is understandable given the family’s location in Arizona, a state where anti-immigrant militants are notorious for the cold-blooded murder of hispanic families. Deputies initially justified their actions by claiming that Guerena fired at officers but later said he kept the gun safety on and never pulled the trigger.
As it turns out, Guerena’s murder is just the most recent in a long line of botched paramilitary operations. According to an investigation carried out by the CATO Institute, America has seen a disturbing militarization of its civilian law enforcement over the last 25 years, along with a dramatic and unsettling rise in the use of paramilitary police units for routine police work. In fact, the most common use of SWAT teams today is to serve narcotics warrants, usually with forced, unannounced entry into the home.
The CATO study found that some 40,000 of these raids take place every year, and are needlessly subjecting nonviolent drug offenders, bystanders, and wrongly targeted civilians to the terror of having their homes invaded while they’re sleeping, usually by teams of heavily armed paramilitary units dressed not as police officers but as soldiers.
These raids bring unnecessary violence and provocation to nonviolent drug offenders, many of whom were guilty of only misdemeanors. The raids terrorize innocents when police mistakenly target the wrong residence. And they have resulted in dozens of needless deaths and injuries, not only of drug offenders, but also of police officers, children, bystanders, and innocent suspects.
Those who suggest that the Supreme Court’s decision in King v. Kentucky is ‘no big deal’ or that it’s ‘alarmist’ to think otherwise, must not understand the extent to which the boundaries are pushed when the Court makes exceptions to our rights. Nor do they comprehend that once lost, civil liberties are impossible to reclaim. With SWAT teams already injuring and at times killing the wrong people to serve warrants, just imagine the abuse to come given the increased power the Court has bestowed upon the state.
Considering the level of brutality we have been dishing out around the world, from the “war on drugs” to the “war on terror,” the erosion of our civil liberties is sadly inevitable. Did we really think that we could wage war and occupy other nations with checkpoints, invasive surveillance, and brutal violence without these same policing tactics spreading to our country?
After sending hundreds of thousands of soldiers abroad to terrorize people in their homes around the world, we shouldn’t be surprised that our government would eventually employ the same actions against its own citizens. Just as Chalmers Johnson predicted, our imperialism abroad is destroying what is left of our democracy at home. From warrantless wiretapping to warrantless door-busting, this is what a police state looks like.
Rania Khalek is a young, progressive activist with a passionate dedication to social justice. Check out her blog Missing Pieces or follow her on twitter @Rania_ak. You can contact her at raniakhalek@gmail.com.
Friday, June 3, 2011
For One Whistle-Blower, No Good Deed Goes Unpunished
June 2, 2011, 10:30AM
by Jesse Eisinger, ProPublica
It has been noted repeatedly that almost no top bankers have faced serious consequences for their actions in the financial crisis. But there is a Wall Street corollary that might be even more pernicious: good guys are punished.
Whistle-blowers, truth-tellers and fraud-spotters pay a miserable price on Wall Street. They are vilified. They are fired. Sometimes they are even sued. Instead of being sought after, they become persona non grata.
Recently, I caught up with David Maris, a one-time star pharmaceutical analyst for Bank of America who became embroiled in one of the most notorious bull/bear battles of the last decade. His story encapsulates just how broken Wall Street culture is.
In 2003, Mr. Maris put out a sell report on Biovail, a Canadian drug company. He fixed on the company's bizarre explanation of why it had missed its earnings estimates: a truck carrying a supposedly huge amount of medicine crashed at the very end of the quarter. Mr. Maris detailed why this was wildly implausible.
Desperate to deflect the attention, Biovail took the offensive. It sued Mr. Maris and Bank of America in early 2006. It also sued SAC Capital Advisors, the hedge fund, and Gradient Analytics, an independent research firm, claiming a giant conspiracy to drive down its stock price with false reports.
For a time, Bank of America stood by Mr. Maris. But it eventually caved and fired him -- two weeks before the end of 2006, enabling it to not pay his bonus. Mr. Maris is now in arbitration, seeking $21 million in back pay.
"For the first few days, there were high-fives and a lot of media attention," Mr. Maris said. "People said this is what research should be. But then reality strikes the bank." Lawsuits and media coverage are unpleasant and unwanted.
Bank of America said: "Mr. Maris's departure was not connected to Biovail issues or to his research regarding that company. Bank of America values the independence of its research and has a longstanding practice of protecting that independence."
It turns out there was a fraud and a stock-manipulation scheme all along. But regulators said that it had been perpetrated by Biovail, not the analysts and hedge funds.
In March, Biovail settled with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which had accused the company and four current and former officers, including its former chief executive, Eugene Melnyk, of accounting fraud. Mr. Melnyk, who at one time was reported to be a billionaire, left in 2007.
Only this year, he settled with the S.E.C. and the Canadian securities regulators, paying paltry fines. Biovail didn't admit or deny wrongdoing. (Biovail settled with the regulators over other, unrelated charges in 2008. The company merged last year with Valeant Pharmaceuticals International, losing the Biovail name.)
In recent years, Biovail retreated from virtually every allegation it made in its lawsuit. It dropped its claims against Mr. Maris and Bank of America in 2007. As part of a settlement, Mr. Maris agreed not to countersue.
The company also paid $10 million to SAC and forked over $138 million to settle a shareholder lawsuit.
So here's the final Biovail vs. Maris scorecard: Mr. Maris was right on the facts. He was right on the stock. He was right with the law.
For his success, he was sued, fired and stripped of compensation. He also lost access to the world of bulge-bracket Wall Street, was shunned by some institutional investors, and because of the settlement for which he said he felt he had no choice than to enter, he couldn't sue Biovail to seek vindication.
It's well known that analysts rarely put sell ratings on the stocks they cover. Typically, the explanation for this is that banks don't want to jeopardize their investment banking business.
The reality is much more complicated. Skeptics and whistle-blowers risk huge career costs that go beyond conflicts of interest. Investors think they want unvarnished advice, but many don't truly appreciate it. Most banks don't want employees to play detective. Regulators abandon whistle-blowers, acting tardily and ineffectually.
After he was fired, Mr. Maris found that other big banks didn't want to hire him for research jobs. Even some institutional investors and hedge funds, which one might imagine would appreciate a skeptical voice, wanted no part of him. Many investors think an analyst who is picking fights with companies is a glory hound, and the last thing they want is publicity. No matter how frivolous, a lawsuit tars both sides. This is the "Tonya and Nancy" problem, after Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan. One was linked to the perpetrators and one was the victim. But now they are forever linked, and the difference between the two almost becomes blurred.
I don't want to create the impression that Mr. Maris is suffering. He isn't. He works at CLSA, a relatively unknown but important research shop, owned by a French bank that encourages its analysts to pursue independent lines of inquiry. Another analyst who has long been a truth-teller on banks, Mike Mayo, has also landed there.
But because Mr. Maris is willing to be publicly negative on stocks, he continues to face obstacles. He is prevented from asking questions on conference calls. Companies don't allow him to bring clients on visits. Some clients seem concerned about the lawsuits in his past.
"If you asked me what's my advice for a young analyst who wants to be in business for a long time, I wouldn't tell them to follow the path I went," he says. On Wall Street, "everyone knows you play ball or live with the consequences."
Follow on Twitter: @eisingerj
June 2, 2011, 10:30AM
by Jesse Eisinger, ProPublica
It has been noted repeatedly that almost no top bankers have faced serious consequences for their actions in the financial crisis. But there is a Wall Street corollary that might be even more pernicious: good guys are punished.
Whistle-blowers, truth-tellers and fraud-spotters pay a miserable price on Wall Street. They are vilified. They are fired. Sometimes they are even sued. Instead of being sought after, they become persona non grata.
Recently, I caught up with David Maris, a one-time star pharmaceutical analyst for Bank of America who became embroiled in one of the most notorious bull/bear battles of the last decade. His story encapsulates just how broken Wall Street culture is.
In 2003, Mr. Maris put out a sell report on Biovail, a Canadian drug company. He fixed on the company's bizarre explanation of why it had missed its earnings estimates: a truck carrying a supposedly huge amount of medicine crashed at the very end of the quarter. Mr. Maris detailed why this was wildly implausible.
Desperate to deflect the attention, Biovail took the offensive. It sued Mr. Maris and Bank of America in early 2006. It also sued SAC Capital Advisors, the hedge fund, and Gradient Analytics, an independent research firm, claiming a giant conspiracy to drive down its stock price with false reports.
For a time, Bank of America stood by Mr. Maris. But it eventually caved and fired him -- two weeks before the end of 2006, enabling it to not pay his bonus. Mr. Maris is now in arbitration, seeking $21 million in back pay.
"For the first few days, there were high-fives and a lot of media attention," Mr. Maris said. "People said this is what research should be. But then reality strikes the bank." Lawsuits and media coverage are unpleasant and unwanted.
Bank of America said: "Mr. Maris's departure was not connected to Biovail issues or to his research regarding that company. Bank of America values the independence of its research and has a longstanding practice of protecting that independence."
It turns out there was a fraud and a stock-manipulation scheme all along. But regulators said that it had been perpetrated by Biovail, not the analysts and hedge funds.
In March, Biovail settled with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which had accused the company and four current and former officers, including its former chief executive, Eugene Melnyk, of accounting fraud. Mr. Melnyk, who at one time was reported to be a billionaire, left in 2007.
Only this year, he settled with the S.E.C. and the Canadian securities regulators, paying paltry fines. Biovail didn't admit or deny wrongdoing. (Biovail settled with the regulators over other, unrelated charges in 2008. The company merged last year with Valeant Pharmaceuticals International, losing the Biovail name.)
In recent years, Biovail retreated from virtually every allegation it made in its lawsuit. It dropped its claims against Mr. Maris and Bank of America in 2007. As part of a settlement, Mr. Maris agreed not to countersue.
The company also paid $10 million to SAC and forked over $138 million to settle a shareholder lawsuit.
So here's the final Biovail vs. Maris scorecard: Mr. Maris was right on the facts. He was right on the stock. He was right with the law.
For his success, he was sued, fired and stripped of compensation. He also lost access to the world of bulge-bracket Wall Street, was shunned by some institutional investors, and because of the settlement for which he said he felt he had no choice than to enter, he couldn't sue Biovail to seek vindication.
It's well known that analysts rarely put sell ratings on the stocks they cover. Typically, the explanation for this is that banks don't want to jeopardize their investment banking business.
The reality is much more complicated. Skeptics and whistle-blowers risk huge career costs that go beyond conflicts of interest. Investors think they want unvarnished advice, but many don't truly appreciate it. Most banks don't want employees to play detective. Regulators abandon whistle-blowers, acting tardily and ineffectually.
After he was fired, Mr. Maris found that other big banks didn't want to hire him for research jobs. Even some institutional investors and hedge funds, which one might imagine would appreciate a skeptical voice, wanted no part of him. Many investors think an analyst who is picking fights with companies is a glory hound, and the last thing they want is publicity. No matter how frivolous, a lawsuit tars both sides. This is the "Tonya and Nancy" problem, after Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan. One was linked to the perpetrators and one was the victim. But now they are forever linked, and the difference between the two almost becomes blurred.
I don't want to create the impression that Mr. Maris is suffering. He isn't. He works at CLSA, a relatively unknown but important research shop, owned by a French bank that encourages its analysts to pursue independent lines of inquiry. Another analyst who has long been a truth-teller on banks, Mike Mayo, has also landed there.
But because Mr. Maris is willing to be publicly negative on stocks, he continues to face obstacles. He is prevented from asking questions on conference calls. Companies don't allow him to bring clients on visits. Some clients seem concerned about the lawsuits in his past.
"If you asked me what's my advice for a young analyst who wants to be in business for a long time, I wouldn't tell them to follow the path I went," he says. On Wall Street, "everyone knows you play ball or live with the consequences."
Follow on Twitter: @eisingerj
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Miller-McCune: Whistleblowers Unite!
The Idea Lobby
May 30, 2011
Rewarding Whistle-blowers For Greater Compliance
In the wake of some spectacular instances of corporate evildoing, the SEC is wondering about offering serious cash to entice people who want to come forward.
By Emily Badger
Recent corporate debacles have the SEC wondering if offering serious cash rewards to entice whistle-blowers will be the panacea they're looking for. Business groups disagree.
When Bad Things Happen to Good Rogues
The Practical Effect of Cultivating Selflessness
Loans Based on Merit, Not Clout
I Gave It a Nudge But It Won’t Budge
Federal Budget Cuts May Cloud Government Transparency Websites
The financial reform bill passed by Congress last year contained a provocative idea: Perhaps the government could entice more corporate whistle-blowers to speak up about the type of abuse that’s become synonymous with Enron, or WorldCom, or Fannie Mae, if it offered a serious bounty. Specifically, Congress had in mind as much as 30 percent of any settlement money the Securities and Exchange Commission recovers from companies in a fraud case.
Business groups and whistle-blower advocates have been sparring over exactly how the SEC should implement the program for the last year. This week, the SEC voted to finalize the rules in a contentious 3-2 decision praised by whistle-blower groups but derided by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
At the heart of the dispute was whether whistle-blowers should first have to alert their companies of allegations before taking them to the feds. Business groups argued that, without such a rule, the government’s initiative would undermine corporate compliance programs. Opponents countered that such a requirement would discourage whistle-blowers from speaking out by forcing them to, in essence, alert corporate criminals before going to the authorities.
The SEC sided with the latter logic, and the new program will now reward whistle-blowers who voluntarily provide “original information” that leads to a penalty of at least $1 million with 10 to 30 percent of the settlement.
If the agency properly administers its whistle-blower office, responded Stephen Kohn, executive director of the National Whistleblowers Center, the program could detect fraud and “create the enforcement hammer needed to make real change in the culture of corruption that fostered fraudsters like Bernie Madoff and led to countless Wall Street debacles, costing innocent investors trillions of dollars.”
In its statement, the Chamber of Commerce offered a different analogy.
“Not informing the company of a potential fraud and waiting for the SEC to act is the equivalent of not calling the firefighters down the street to put out a raging fire and instead calling the lawyers from the next town to sue over the fire instead,” Chamber officials said in a statement.
“The company is in the best position to immediately investigate and mitigate any violations, not the SEC, who will be inundated with thousands of tips it won’t be able to handle.”
The National Whistle-blowers Center last year produced a study suggesting cash rewards would make whistle-blowers no more likely to turn to the government than their own corporate compliance offices and would do little to harm internal compliance. In assessing cases filed under the False Claims Act since 2007, the study found that nearly 90 percent of employees still reported their concerns internally before going to the government (although sometimes the government benefits by setting a rogue to catch a rogue).
A New England Journal of Medicine study published last year reached similar conclusions in analyzing the experiences of whistle-blowers against pharmaceutical companies. Not one of the 26 whistle-blowers involved in litigation who were interviewed for the study said he or she was motivated by a financial bounty. In fact, “The prevailing sentiment was that the payoff had not been worth the personal cost,” the researchers concluded. Generally, the whistle-blowers interviewed also tried to address their concerns internally and only became litigants either accidentally or “as a last resort.”
Such results suggest businesses may be overreacting to the fear that a flood of employees will run to the government in secret to profit off tattling bonuses. But they also suggest something else: If money hasn’t been shown to dramatically motivate whistle-blowers, will the SEC’s program even have its intended effect?
“Almost certainly the quantity of whistleblowing disclosures will increase thanks to this program,” said Tom Devine, the legal director with the Government Accountability Project. But that’s not because whistleblowers are motivated by financial personal gain. “First, the government is putting its money where its mouth is, and that’s a good antidote for the primary reason why whistleblowers remain silent, which is cynicism. With good cause, they think the government’s not really interested in going beyond public relation invitations to provide evidence.”
And the second reason? Devine said the money helps to neutralize the chilling effect from the fear of bankruptcy that can come with lost employment and mounting legal fees.
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May 30, 2011
Rewarding Whistle-blowers For Greater Compliance
In the wake of some spectacular instances of corporate evildoing, the SEC is wondering about offering serious cash to entice people who want to come forward.
By Emily Badger
Recent corporate debacles have the SEC wondering if offering serious cash rewards to entice whistle-blowers will be the panacea they're looking for. Business groups disagree.
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The financial reform bill passed by Congress last year contained a provocative idea: Perhaps the government could entice more corporate whistle-blowers to speak up about the type of abuse that’s become synonymous with Enron, or WorldCom, or Fannie Mae, if it offered a serious bounty. Specifically, Congress had in mind as much as 30 percent of any settlement money the Securities and Exchange Commission recovers from companies in a fraud case.
Business groups and whistle-blower advocates have been sparring over exactly how the SEC should implement the program for the last year. This week, the SEC voted to finalize the rules in a contentious 3-2 decision praised by whistle-blower groups but derided by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
At the heart of the dispute was whether whistle-blowers should first have to alert their companies of allegations before taking them to the feds. Business groups argued that, without such a rule, the government’s initiative would undermine corporate compliance programs. Opponents countered that such a requirement would discourage whistle-blowers from speaking out by forcing them to, in essence, alert corporate criminals before going to the authorities.
The SEC sided with the latter logic, and the new program will now reward whistle-blowers who voluntarily provide “original information” that leads to a penalty of at least $1 million with 10 to 30 percent of the settlement.
If the agency properly administers its whistle-blower office, responded Stephen Kohn, executive director of the National Whistleblowers Center, the program could detect fraud and “create the enforcement hammer needed to make real change in the culture of corruption that fostered fraudsters like Bernie Madoff and led to countless Wall Street debacles, costing innocent investors trillions of dollars.”
In its statement, the Chamber of Commerce offered a different analogy.
“Not informing the company of a potential fraud and waiting for the SEC to act is the equivalent of not calling the firefighters down the street to put out a raging fire and instead calling the lawyers from the next town to sue over the fire instead,” Chamber officials said in a statement.
“The company is in the best position to immediately investigate and mitigate any violations, not the SEC, who will be inundated with thousands of tips it won’t be able to handle.”
The National Whistle-blowers Center last year produced a study suggesting cash rewards would make whistle-blowers no more likely to turn to the government than their own corporate compliance offices and would do little to harm internal compliance. In assessing cases filed under the False Claims Act since 2007, the study found that nearly 90 percent of employees still reported their concerns internally before going to the government (although sometimes the government benefits by setting a rogue to catch a rogue).
A New England Journal of Medicine study published last year reached similar conclusions in analyzing the experiences of whistle-blowers against pharmaceutical companies. Not one of the 26 whistle-blowers involved in litigation who were interviewed for the study said he or she was motivated by a financial bounty. In fact, “The prevailing sentiment was that the payoff had not been worth the personal cost,” the researchers concluded. Generally, the whistle-blowers interviewed also tried to address their concerns internally and only became litigants either accidentally or “as a last resort.”
Such results suggest businesses may be overreacting to the fear that a flood of employees will run to the government in secret to profit off tattling bonuses. But they also suggest something else: If money hasn’t been shown to dramatically motivate whistle-blowers, will the SEC’s program even have its intended effect?
“Almost certainly the quantity of whistleblowing disclosures will increase thanks to this program,” said Tom Devine, the legal director with the Government Accountability Project. But that’s not because whistleblowers are motivated by financial personal gain. “First, the government is putting its money where its mouth is, and that’s a good antidote for the primary reason why whistleblowers remain silent, which is cynicism. With good cause, they think the government’s not really interested in going beyond public relation invitations to provide evidence.”
And the second reason? Devine said the money helps to neutralize the chilling effect from the fear of bankruptcy that can come with lost employment and mounting legal fees.
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“Like” Miller-McCune on Facebook.
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EducationNews.org
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June 1, 2011
Daily EducationNews
Report: CA Schools Don't Meet Physical Education Standards
Although obesity has been identified as a major health issue for California's children, too few teens participate in physical activities in school.
Hall County, Georgia Students Moved to Game NCLB Numbers
Students are coerced into transferring so schools can preserve high graduation rates and better test scores.
Nevada Passes Important Education Reforms Before Budget
Some of Governor Brian Sandoval's proposed reforms will be enacted, but Democrats have reclaimed some funds set to be cut.
NJ District May Ban Homework on Weekends, Holidays
The homework debate has been renewed after interest in the film "Race to Nowhere" and conversations about homework's burden on students and families.
Teacher Who Recorded Disruptive Student Fights Firing
A teacher who recorded awful student behavior was dismissed and is now suing for wrongful termination.
Researchers to Study Effects of Teacher Stress on Classrooms
A pilot study has shown that as many as 3 in 10 middle school teachers experience symptoms of stress that negatively affect their job performance.
Principal Can't Spell or Write, Begs for Tenure Support
Having been denied tenure in the past, principal busted for terrible writing and grammar - and voted 'least trusted' by union - asks for support.
In Illinois, Some Teachers Earn Six-Figure Salaries
Though some schools' teachers make over $100k, the average compensation in Illinois is about $69,000.
Commentaries
DESTRUCTION OF EDUCATION IN AMERICA: Number Of Uneducated U.S. Children Increases
Peter Stern - Is anyone willingly to initiate the long-needed changes to our public education system, which includes providing adequate financing, correcting mismanagement, financial misappropriations, modifying and developing REAL learning outcomes and trimming the "fat" in each district to give every American child a quality education?
EdNews Reports
EDUCATION WILL IMPROVE WHEN WE GET SERIOUS ABOUT TAKING BETTER CARE OF KIDS
Julia Steiny - Jesse James explained that he robbed banks because "that's where the money is." I obsess about schools because that's where the kids are.
The Global Search for Education: More Focus on Finland
C. M. Rubin - "The Finns had a crisis," life-long educator, best-selling author, and Harvard professor Tony Wagner explains as we discuss his new film, The Finnish Phenomenon....
Entrepreneurship along with Career Development Is An Answer Everyday at EducationNews.org dozens of articles, regarding what authors deem important are sent my desk. Many are published for the avid readers who reside in the world of education. I [...]
Higher Education
Over a Third of College Students Need Remedial Help
A report shows that far too many students are graduating high school unready for the academic rigors of college.
Blogs
Public Education Funding Must Focus on Classroom, Instructional Materials
Ken Mercer - ...this year the SBOE provided budget writers with $3 billion of non-tax revenues form the Permanent School Fund. The price tag for the new instructional materials is under $500 million, one sixth of the amount we transferred to legislative budget writers.
Making Memorial Day time to serve *today's* heroes
Joe Nathan - What's the Memorial Day weekend going to mean for your family? Perhaps you'll consider not just the traditional tv, picnics, parades and so on.
International
UK's Fox: Field Trips 'Too Fancy,' Too Frequent
Student trips to Argentina and South Africa are expensive and, to some, unnecessary.
7 Year Olds Play Soldiers, Face Discipline for Pretending
One MP calls the ban on finger-play guns "political correctness gone mad."
A Global Leading News Source
Home Page
June 1, 2011
Daily EducationNews
Report: CA Schools Don't Meet Physical Education Standards
Although obesity has been identified as a major health issue for California's children, too few teens participate in physical activities in school.
Hall County, Georgia Students Moved to Game NCLB Numbers
Students are coerced into transferring so schools can preserve high graduation rates and better test scores.
Nevada Passes Important Education Reforms Before Budget
Some of Governor Brian Sandoval's proposed reforms will be enacted, but Democrats have reclaimed some funds set to be cut.
NJ District May Ban Homework on Weekends, Holidays
The homework debate has been renewed after interest in the film "Race to Nowhere" and conversations about homework's burden on students and families.
Teacher Who Recorded Disruptive Student Fights Firing
A teacher who recorded awful student behavior was dismissed and is now suing for wrongful termination.
Researchers to Study Effects of Teacher Stress on Classrooms
A pilot study has shown that as many as 3 in 10 middle school teachers experience symptoms of stress that negatively affect their job performance.
Principal Can't Spell or Write, Begs for Tenure Support
Having been denied tenure in the past, principal busted for terrible writing and grammar - and voted 'least trusted' by union - asks for support.
In Illinois, Some Teachers Earn Six-Figure Salaries
Though some schools' teachers make over $100k, the average compensation in Illinois is about $69,000.
Commentaries
DESTRUCTION OF EDUCATION IN AMERICA: Number Of Uneducated U.S. Children Increases
Peter Stern - Is anyone willingly to initiate the long-needed changes to our public education system, which includes providing adequate financing, correcting mismanagement, financial misappropriations, modifying and developing REAL learning outcomes and trimming the "fat" in each district to give every American child a quality education?
EdNews Reports
EDUCATION WILL IMPROVE WHEN WE GET SERIOUS ABOUT TAKING BETTER CARE OF KIDS
Julia Steiny - Jesse James explained that he robbed banks because "that's where the money is." I obsess about schools because that's where the kids are.
The Global Search for Education: More Focus on Finland
C. M. Rubin - "The Finns had a crisis," life-long educator, best-selling author, and Harvard professor Tony Wagner explains as we discuss his new film, The Finnish Phenomenon....
Entrepreneurship along with Career Development Is An Answer Everyday at EducationNews.org dozens of articles, regarding what authors deem important are sent my desk. Many are published for the avid readers who reside in the world of education. I [...]
Higher Education
Over a Third of College Students Need Remedial Help
A report shows that far too many students are graduating high school unready for the academic rigors of college.
Blogs
Public Education Funding Must Focus on Classroom, Instructional Materials
Ken Mercer - ...this year the SBOE provided budget writers with $3 billion of non-tax revenues form the Permanent School Fund. The price tag for the new instructional materials is under $500 million, one sixth of the amount we transferred to legislative budget writers.
Making Memorial Day time to serve *today's* heroes
Joe Nathan - What's the Memorial Day weekend going to mean for your family? Perhaps you'll consider not just the traditional tv, picnics, parades and so on.
International
UK's Fox: Field Trips 'Too Fancy,' Too Frequent
Student trips to Argentina and South Africa are expensive and, to some, unnecessary.
7 Year Olds Play Soldiers, Face Discipline for Pretending
One MP calls the ban on finger-play guns "political correctness gone mad."
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