Annie Machon

Just Say No - the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs

Just back from the annual United Nations happy-clappy session about drug prohibition in Vienna, the Commission on Narcotic Drugs.  I was there as part of the delegation from Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), a global campaign of serving and former police officers, lawyers, judges, intelligence officers, customs officers and prison governors, all with years of experience on the front line of the drug war, and all of whom campaign against prohibition.

Why do they do this? Precisely because they have, during their professional lives, witnessed the terrible failure of the drug prohibition laws.

LEAP's message is simple, logical and powerful, and its membership credible and experienced - have a look at the website.  

The UN delegation consisted of former US drug prosecutor Jim Gierach, retired Brazilian judge Maria Lucia Pereira Karam, award-winning US prison superintendent Rick Van Wickler, and myself.  

Needless to say, LEAP and all this breadth of relevant expertise was marginalised at the UN.  

The UN is the sine qua non of bureaucracies, an organisation of such Byzantine complexity it makes your eyes bleed to look at it.  

Each country around the world funds the UN via voluntary donations. Once they have coughed up, they are allowed to send national delegates to represent "their" interests at shindigs such as the CND. Those delegates are pre-briefed by their bureaucrats about the line they must take, and no dissent is allowed.  

NGOs are notionally able to feed in their views to their delegates, although access is limited, and over the last few years the language of the CND has indeed moved towards harm reduction and children's rights.  But this merely propagates the basic, flawed premise that "drugs" are bad, not that the "war on drugs" has comprehensively failed, is ill-thought out, and actively damages society.

UN decisions on drug policy are made by consensus, which means that there is no real democratic debate and that the resolutions are so bland as to be meaningless.  At no point whatsoever are evidence-based alternative solutions, such as regulated legalisation, even whispered in the corridors of power.

The CND's key achievement this year was to get all the nations to reaffirm their commitment to the 100-year old International Hague Convention, the first drug prohibition law in a long and escalating legal litany of failure and harm.  And this in the teeth of all evidence provided by the successful decriminalisation experiments in Portugal, Switzerland and the Netherlands.

So here's where the fun kicks in, but I stress that this is my highly personal take on what it was like to attend the CND last week:

.........

WARNING: CND appears to be a potent psychotropic drug which has unknown and potentially damaging effects on the human brain.  Exposure to CND for even so short a period as a week can lead to disorientation, numbness, depression and a dislocation from reality.  No data exists about the long-term psychological effects of prolonged exposure, but some subjects can display uncharacteristic aggression after only a couple of days' experience of CND.

CND appears to be highly addictive leading to rapid dependency, and delegates return year after year for another hit. For a week, it's party time, but then comes the crashing low, as they have to push CND on their own countries for another long year, against all common notions of decency, humanity and community.

CND is continually presented to vulnerable delegates as the only lifestyle choice.  Those who question its efficacy are outcast from the gang.  But what of the delegates' rights to live a CND-free life, away from the peer pressure, bullying and violence?  What about reducing the harm that CND increasingly causes to communities across the world?

As the godfathers of CND push the line of harm reduction programmes, developing countries are increasingly drawn into a life of sordid "money dependency", even prostituting themselves politically to enable their continued reliance on CND. 

The organisations controlling CND garner huge profits, and there is little political will to change the current set-up.

.........

So, a win-win for the drug cartels, terrorists, enforcement agencies, governments, bureaucrats and the wider global "drug war" infrastructure.

Not so good for the rest of us.

Cops Take Pro-Legalization Message to UN War on Drugs Meeting

Law Enforcers Say Ending Prohibition Will Improve Global Security & Human Rights

VIENNA, AUSTRIA – Judges, prosecutors and jailers who support legalizing drugs are bringing their message to the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs meeting next week in Vienna. At the U.N. session, which comes just days after the Obama administration stepped-up its attempts to counteract the emerging anti-prohibition sentiment among sitting presidents in Latin America, the pro-legalization law enforcement officials will work to embolden national delegations from around the world to push back against the U.S.-led failed “war on drugs.”

Richard Van Wickler, a currently-serving jail superintendent who will be representing Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) in Vienna, says, “World leaders who believe we could better handle drug problems by replacing criminalization with legal control are becoming less and less afraid of U.S. reprisal for speaking out or reforming their nations’ policies. And for good reason.”

Van Wickler, who has was named 2011’s Corrections Superintendent of the Year by the New Hampshire Association of Counties, explains, “Voters in at least two U.S. states will be deciding on measures to legalize marijuana this November. It would be pure hypocrisy for the American federal government to continue forcefully pushing a radical prohibitionist agenda on the rest of the world.”

In recent weeks, Presidents Otto Perez Molina of Guatemala, Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia, Laura Chinchilla of Costa Rica and Felipe Calderon of Mexico have added their voices to the call for a serious conversation on alternatives to drug prohibition, causing U.S. Vice President Joe Biden to travel to Latin America this week in an unsuccessful attempt to quash the debate.

Former Chicago drug prosecutor James Gierach, recently a featured speaker at a conference in Mexico City last month attended by the first lady of Mexico and the former presidents of Colombia and Brazil, says, “The unending cycle of cartel violence caused by the prohibition market has turned a steady trickle of former elected officials criticizing prohibition into a flood of sitting presidents, business leaders and law enforcement officials calling for an outright discussion about legalization. It’s time for the U.S. and the U.N. to acknowledge that legal control, rather than criminalization, is a much better way to manage our drug problems. The world can have either drug prohibition, violence and corruption or it can have controlled drug legalization with safe streets and moral fabric, but it can't have both.”

The UN meeting in Vienna is an annual opportunity for nations around the world to re-evaluate drug control strategies and treaties. More information about the meeting is here. 

In recent years, countries like Portugal and Mexico have made moves to significantly transform criminalization-focused drug policies into health approaches by fully decriminalizing possession of small amounts of all drugs. Still, no country has yet to legalize and regulate the sale of any of these drugs. Doing so, the pro-legalization law enforcers point out, would be the only way to prevent violent transnational criminal organizations from profiting in the drug trade.

Also attending the conference on behalf of LEAP will be former Brazilian judge Maria Lucia Karam and former UK MI5 intelligence officer Annie Machon.

Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) represents police, prosecutors, judges, FBI/DEA agents and others who support legalization after fighting on the front lines of the "war on drugs" and learning firsthand that prohibition only serves to worsen addiction and violence. More info can be found here.

CONTACT:

Tom Angell: 001 202 557-4979 or media@leap.cc

Shaleen Title: 001 617 955-9638 or speakers@leap.cc

A new threat to media freedoms

Writers of the world, beware.  A new threat to our freedom of speech is looming and, for once, I am not inveighing against the Official Secrets Act.  

Over recent years the UK has rightly earned a pungent reputation as the libel capital of the world. And now it appears that this wonderful practice is going "offshore".

How did this whole mess begin?  It turned out that someone in the Middle East could take exception to a book written and published about them in the USA.   US law, somewhat surprisingly considering its current parlous state, provided no route to sue.   However, some bright legal spark decided that the UK courts could be used for redress, provided the offending book had been sold in the UK - even if only a handful of second-hand books had been sold over Amazon.co.uk - and Mr Justice Eady helped the process along magnificently.  

And so was born the concept of "libel tourism".  Satirical current affairs magazine Private Eye has long been campaigning against this, other UK news outlets gradually followed suit, and the UK government is finally taking steps to rein in these egregious, if lucrative, legal practices.  

But, hey, that's precisely when your offshore crown dependencies, otherwise known as British tax havens, come into their own.  The UK has for years turned a blind eye to the dubious financial practices of these islands, the most geographically convenient being the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man, where the attitude to self-regulation makes the dealings of the Square Mile look positively Vestal.

Now it appears that Guernsey is looking to become a hub of another lucrative offshore practice: libel tourism.  

Guernsey has its own parliament - the States -  and can make its own laws.  So as the libel door closes on the UK mainland, a firm of offshore tax lawyers has identified a wonderful business opportunity. 

Jason Romer is the managing partner and intellectual property specialist at the large "wealth management" legal firm Collas Crill.  According to his firm's website, he also, coincidentally, sits on the island's Commercial IP Steering Group and the Drafting Sub-Committee, and is thus conveniently on hand to ease the new legislation through the States.

Also coincidentally, he appears to be an enthusiastic advocate of Eady's infamous "super-injunction" regime which has had such a chillingly expensive effect on the British media in the last decade.

So, if this law is passed, anyone, anywhere around the world will be able (if they can afford it) to register their "image rights" in Guernsey. These rights can even last indefinitely after the original owner's death.

This means that anyone, anywhere, who feels that their "image" has been inappropriately reproduced/copied/traduced/pirated - the correct legal terminology is hazy -  can then sue through the Guernsey courts for redress.  This could potentially be a powerful new global tool for the suppression of free speech.  As public outcry swells internationally against the US IP laws, SOPA and PIPA, and across Europe against the utterly undemocratic ACTA, this new law is a giant leap precisely in the wrong direction.  

Guernsey, my island of birth, has changed out of all recognition over the last thirty years.  Ever since the 1980s infestation of offshore bankers and trust fund lawyers, it has been tarmac-ed over by greed and social division. Before then it was proud of its egalitarianism, Norman-French heritage, beautifully anachronistic pace of life, and an economy based on tomatoes and tourism.

Now, if this law is passed, it will be known for its economy based on rotten financial apples and offshore libel tourism.

I just wanted to get that out of my system now - while I can still freely express my thoughts and before the island can sue me for damaging its "image rights".... 

DoubleThink Disorder - a new pathology

An update is apparently due of the 1994 edition of the "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders", the psychiatrists' bible that allows them to tick-box their patients into a disorder, and then, no doubt, prescribe Big Pharma industry drugs or an expensive form of therapy.  Anyone who has ever watched Adam Curtis's excellent "Century of Self" will be aware of the pathologising of society to the benefit of the psychiatric professions and far beyond.

I am not making light of serious mental illnesses requiring specialised and long term treatment such as bipolar, schizophrenia or chronic depression.  These are crippling and soul-destroying conditions and many families, including my own, have been touched by them.

But I am concerned by the appalling Pharma-creep that has been going on over the last few decades where, for example, increasing numbers of children are labeled with ADHD and ladled full of Ritalin (which can also lead to a thriving black market in the onward sale of said drug). And we are apparently about to see ever more divaricating disorders added to the shrinks' bible.  

As this recent article in The Independent states, stroppy teens will now have "oppositional defiance disorder", and adults who think of sex more than every 20 minutes are suffering from "hypersexual disorder". (How on earth will this be diagnosed - will potential sufferers have to keep a thought crime diary as they go about their daily lives? Management meetings could be so much more diverting as people break off to write an update every so often - although they might have to pretend they're playing buzzword bingo.)   And those suffering from shyness or loneliness will suffer from "dysthymia".  Well, as a classicist, I'm glad to see that ancient Greek still has a role to play in today's lexicon.

I know that such behavioural traits can be debilitating, but to pathologise them seems rather extreme - enough to give a person a complex.....

On another somewhat facetious note I was intrigued to see this doing the internet rounds recently.  It appeared to suggest that having a robust distrust of your government was also about to be pathologised as Anti-Government Phobia, which I presume would mean that vast swathes of the world's population were mentally ill.  However, I think the clue to the legitimacy of the piece was in the name of the supposed author: Ivor E. Tower MD.....

However, back to the point of this article. This was the paragraph in the Indie report that really got my goat:

"More worrying, according to some experts, are attempts to redefine crimes as illnesses, such as "paraphilic coercive disorder", applied to men engaged in sexual relationships involving the use of force. They are more commonly known as rapists."

So it appears that crime will now be explained away as a disorder.  

But, but, but.... the key point LEAPing out at me, if you'll forgive the clumsy link, is that this seems to be in direct, sharp contrast to how we deal with an immense and ongoing problem in the world today: namely the 50 year old failed "war on drugs".  In this phoney war millions of people across the world have been, and against all expert advice, continue to be treated as criminals rather than as patients.

Rather than rehash (sorry) all the well-known articles about why this war is such a failure on every conceivable front, let me just make three key points: prohibition will always fail (as this classic "Yes Minister" scene depicts), and the regulation and taxation of recreational drugs (in the same way as alcohol and tobacco) would be good for society and for the economy; it would decapitate organised crime and, in some cases, the funding of terrorism; and, most pertinently for the purposes of this article, it would make the use and possible abuse of recreational drugs a health issue rather than a criminal matter.

Many people at some point in their lives experiment with drugs such as dope, E, coke, or whatever and have fun doing so, just as many like to have a drink to unwind after work.  A small percentage will go on to develop medical problems.  

That is the crux of the argument here. Excessive abuse of drugs, both licit and illicit, is manifestly a health issue and yet some people are criminalised.  Compare and contrast the proposed new shrinks' bible, where what were formerly deemed to be crimes will now be seen as medical disorders.

I would call this rank hypocrisy, but perhaps the shrinks can come up with a more high-brow name?  I propose Societal DoubleThink Disorder.  

The Bankers' Bonus being that it would conveniently (psycho)pathologise all our "peace-speaking" war-mongering politicians, "free market" monopolistic big businesses, and "publicly owned but private profit" banks.

Praise the Government and pass the Ritalin....

Libyans caught between a rock and a hard place

This article in today's New York Times, particularly these following two paragraphs, sent a shiver down my spine for the fate of the Libyan people:

"The most powerful military leader is now Abdel Hakim Belhaj, the former leader of a hard-line group once believed to be aligned with Al Qaeda.The growing influence of Islamists in Libya raises hard questions about the ultimate character of the government and society that will rise in place of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s autocracy.....

....Mr. Belhaj has become so much an insider lately that he is seeking to unseat Mahmoud Jibril, the American-trained economist who is the nominal prime minister of the interim government, after Mr. Jibril obliquely criticized the Islamists."

The Libyans, finally free of Gaddafi's 42-year dictatorship, now seem faced with a choice between an Islamist faction that has stated publicly that it wants to base the new constitution on Sharia - a statement that must have caused a few ripples amongst Libya's educated and relatively  emancipated women - or a new government headed up by an American-trained economist. 

And we all know what happens to countries when such economists move in: asset stripping, the syphoning off of the national wealth to transnational mega-corps, and a plunge in the people's living standards.  If you think this sounds extreme, then do get your hands on a copy of Naomi Klein's excellent "Shock Doctrine" - required reading for anyone who wants to truly understand the growing global financial crisis.

Of course, this would be an ideal outcome for the US, UK and other western forces who intervened in Libya. 

Mr Belhaj is, of course, another matter.  Not only would an Islamist Libya be a potentially dangerous result for the West, but should Belhaj come to power he is likely to be somewhat hostile to US and particularly British interests.  

Why?  Well, Abdul Hakim Belhaj has form.  He was a leading light in the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, a terrorist organisation which bought into the ideology of "Al Qaeda" and which had made many attempts to depose or assassinate Gaddafi, sometimes with the financial backing of the British spies, most notably in the failed assassination plot of 1996.

Of course, after 9/11 and Gaddafi's rapprochement with the West, this collaboration was all air-brushed out of history - to such an extent that in 2004 MI6 was instrumental in  kidnapping Belhaj, with the say-so of the CIA, and "extraordinarily rendering" him to Tripoli in 2004, where he suffered 6 years' torture at the hands of Libya's brutal intelligences services.  After this, I doubt if he would be minded to work too closely with UK companies.

So I'm willing to bet that there is more behind-the-scenes meddling from our spooks, to ensure the ascendency of Jibril in the new government.  Which will be great for Western business, but not so great for the poor Libyans.....