Category Archives: War On Drugs

Senator Alan Peter Cayetano. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO / GRIG C. MONTEGRANDE

Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano, a staunch ally of President Rodrigo Duterte, has called on the public to support the possible resumption of the governments war on drugs after it was ordered suspended last month.

It should now be our peoples war against drugs, not just President Dutertes drug war, because it is our fight for our families safety, rights and values. We thank the President for reiterating his commitment to ending our countrys perennial problem on illegal drugs, Cayetano said in a statement.

A successful anti-drug campaign will mean fewer crimes and more peaceful communities, with our families as the biggest gainers in the process. This is our peoples war on drugs, our fight for the right of every family to a peaceful and safe community, to uphold the right of every peace-loving Filipino to be protected, he added.

Cayetano also called on professional and decent law enforcers to continue to be vigilant to prevent rogue cops from pursuing their criminal activities in the guise of the war on drugs.

Duterteon Tuesdaysaid he would have to call some of the police back to his war on drugs. He said he would leave it to the PNP whether to resume its Oplan Tokhang.

PNP chief Dir. Gen. Ronald Bato Dela Rosa earlier said the police force was ready to resume its antidrug operations following reports that drug perpetrators were supposedly back on the streets during the campaigns suspension.

Duterte suspended the war on drugs in January at the height of controversy surrounding the murder of South Korean businessman Jee Ick-joo inside police headquarters in Camp Crame. JE

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Cayetano urges public to back resumption of war on drugs - Inquirer.net

MANILA, Philippines Detained Sen. Leila De Lima criticized the governments decision to restart its renewed war on drugs, saying the problems that led to its suspension have not been addressed.

De Lima described as the height of arrogance the governments plan to lift the suspension of police operations against drug peddlers and traffickers without addressing the defects in in its anti-narcotics campaign.

The senator, detained at the custodial center in Camp Crameon drug charges, said that the government should heed the advice of local and global experts against problems in its war on drugs program such as police corruption and lack of an accountability system meant to check police abuses.

Itd be the height of arrogance if our government would resume its most murderous war on drugs without correcting its defects, without getting rid of corrupt policemen, and without making them accountable for their crimes, De Lima said.

Like many of you know, the illegal drug abuse and trafficking present a persistent problem not only for the Philippines but also for other countries. We are against drug trade, but we should not allow innocent people summarily killed, she added.

President Rodrigo Duterte announced on Tuesday that he was tapping the police again in his drug war because of lack of manpower.

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The president bared that he had ordered PNP Director General Ronald Dela Rosa to recruit young men imbued with the fervor of patriotism to be members of police groups that would run after drug syndicates.

Every station should have one (task force) pero piling pili, yung walang kaso at walang history ng corruption (they will be selected thoroughly, they should have no cases and no history of corruption), he said.

I have to do it because kulang ako ng tao (I lack manpower), the chief executive admitted.

This rebooted war on drugs by the government however will be different from its previous version because of the involvement of another element: the military.

The Armed Forces of the Philippinessigned a memorandum of agreement with the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency making it the campaigns force provider.

The military will aid PDEA in going after high-value targets and help the agency in activities such as counterintelligence, investigation and neutralization of persons involved in the drugs trade.

This move from the AFP came despite warnings from the Center for Strategic and International Studies that the United States would be forced to suspend its military aid should the military become part of the drug campaign.

De Lima said that allowing the PNP to resume its anti-drugs operations would be a reckless move on the part of authorities.

It is reckless, to say the least, to allow the resumption of the anti-drug operations of the Philippine National Police which is more interested in the incentives given them than in investigating and preventing death-squad- style killings, De Lima said.

She said that the government should discard its Double Barrel Project and come up with a better program that respects and protects human rights of individuals, including suspected drug offenders.

The present war on drugs is a dismal failure because there were innocent individuals who were summarily killed, those who were apprehended were not accorded due process of the law, and only the poor were targeted, she said.

De Lima also called on the government to have a look at the Alternate Report the Ateneo Human Rights Center submitted to the United Nations Human Rights Council.

According to De Lima, the report underscored the defects in the governments anti-drugs program which claimed thousands of lives including those of innocent individuals and children who are treated as mere collateral damage in its campaign.

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De Lima: Putting police back in war on drugs reckless, arrogant - Philippine Star

Activists protest at the headquarters of the Philippine National Police, condemning the government's war on drugs and holding placards showing murdered South Korean businessman Jee Ick-joo. The South Korean businessman was allegedly kidnapped by Philippine policemen under the guise of a raid on illegal drugs and murdered at the national police headquarters in Manila, authorities said. Noel Celis/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

Activists protest at the headquarters of the Philippine National Police, condemning the government's war on drugs and holding placards showing murdered South Korean businessman Jee Ick-joo. The South Korean businessman was allegedly kidnapped by Philippine policemen under the guise of a raid on illegal drugs and murdered at the national police headquarters in Manila, authorities said.

A month ago, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte hit the pause button on his controversial war on drugs. That war has left more than 7,500 people dead since Duterte took office last June, promising a "dirty" and "bloody" fight against drugs.

"Do your duty, and if in the process, you kill 1,000 persons, I will protect you," Duterte, nicknamed "The Punisher," told police days after his election.

And he did standing by them fiercely in the months that followed, despite allegations of of extrajudicial killings that prompted international outrage.

But then came the case of South Korean businessman Jee Ick-joo, kidnapped and murdered in October by members of a police anti-drug unit. They'd seized him at his home outside Manila in an alleged anti-drug operation. He was strangled to death at police headquarters in Manila.

Some reports say Jee's wife paid a ransom to win his release, not knowing he was already dead.

When Duterte learned of Jee's murder in January, he wasn't pleased. He immediately ordered the Philippine National Police to stand down from its leading role in his anti-drug campaign. The force, he said, was filled with "scallywags" and was "rotten to the core."

Edcel Lagman, a Philippine congressman and one of the few Duterte critics in the House of Representatives, says he doesn't think the police "is entirely corrupt to the core. But the corruption in the police agency is substantial."

He wonders why it took a foreigner's death to make Duterte act.

"More than a single foreigner, 7,000 Filipinos had already been sacrificed in extrajudicial killings in this deadly campaign against the drug menace," he says.

Last month, Duterte vowed to "cleanse" the national police for before allowing it to return to the war on drugs, and tasked the much smaller Philippines Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) to take the lead in his anti-drug campaign.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte berates police officers at the presidential palace in Manila on Feb. 7, after learning of the murder of a South Korean businessman. In expletive-laden remarks, Duterte told police he'd send them to a southern island to fight extremists from the Abu Sayyaf terrorist group. Robinson Ninal/AP hide caption

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte berates police officers at the presidential palace in Manila on Feb. 7, after learning of the murder of a South Korean businessman. In expletive-laden remarks, Duterte told police he'd send them to a southern island to fight extremists from the Abu Sayyaf terrorist group.

The mercurial, short-fused president also made his anger known in a live television address on Feb. 7 at Malacanang Palace, where he unleashed a foul-mouthed tirade at several hundred cops standing sheepishly before him. He ordered them transferred to the island of Basilan in the violence-plagued south of the country, the home turf of the al-Qaida linked terrorist group Abu Sayyaf the same group that beheaded a German hostage earlier this week.

"I will send you to Basilan, live there for two years. If you get out alive, you can return here," Duterte fumed. "If you die there, I will tell the police not to spend anything to bring you back here but to bury you there." Those who did not wish to go, he said, could quit.

Several dozen cops failed to show up for their trip south. Others, local reports say, had their deployment delayed to appear in court to answer charges against them. Duterte has indirectly threatened those who failed to show.

But on Monday, a month after pulling the plug on the national police, the Philippine online news site Rappler reported that Duterte would soon allow limited participation of the police in his controversial anti-drug campaign under the supervision of the PDEA.

"I lack personnel," he said. "I have ordered [national police chief Ronald dela Rosa] to recruit young men in the [national police] imbued with the fervor of patriotism to be the members only of the task forces, but only a select few, those without cases and without a history of corruption."

When this will happen and how many will be involved is unclear.

"We hope and pray that the authorities will clean up their act," says Chito Gascon, who heads the Commission on Human Rights of the Philippines. "But I won't hold my breath after what I've seen the last seven months."

Of the 7,500 alleged drug related killings in the last seven months, Gascon says, more than 2,000 suspects have been killed in encounters with police. Police claim the suspects fired first. But there's a problem with that argument, Gascon says.

"The self-defense argument must be brought to the court," he says. "And of the 2,000 cases, not one single police officer has been brought to court. That's the problem. So it's not enough they do something about the case of the Korean national. It's just as important we begin the process of holding police officers to account."

Gascon says he hopes Duterte was sincere when he said that's what he wanted to do with the police after the murder of the South Korean businessman. But he has his doubts.

"Perhaps the pace will be slowed down, put the brakes on a little bit because people have crossed lines or violated rules or been found out," he says. "But in due course, I think eventually the killings will continue."

In the Arellano slum in Manila, a place where NPR has returned frequently since the war on drugs began, residents think so, too.

Cindy Medrano, who helps run her family's food stall in the neighborhood, says she supports the war on drugs and there's been far less crime in the neighborhood since it began. But she's not a fan of the extrajudicial killings and complains it's the poor who bear the brunt of the war on drugs not the drug kingpins or corrupt cops deeply involved in the drug trade. She's confident the killings will resume again soon.

"I think this is just temporary," she says. Because President Duterte, she says, is the kind of person who finishes what he starts, even if due process is ignored.

Lilibeth Diego, a former methamphetamine addict who surrendered to police back in September out of fear that she'd be killed if she didn't, agrees. Since the war on drugs was suspended, some say dealers have moved back to their corners to do business. But not in Arellano, she says.

"Even if I want to use again here, you can't buy anymore, nobody's selling," Diego says.

And the cops are still around, she says, in plainclothes, wearing black shirts and shorts. Just watching, she says. And waiting.

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A Foreign Businessman's Murder Pauses Philippine Drug War, But For How Long? - NPR

Even five weeks after the inauguration, the president is still, as he demonstrated at CPAC, speaking in absolute terms of reducing crime and shutting down the sale and use of narcotics. Electorates make allowance for the exaggerated claims of politicians seeking election, and the media tend to overlook all but the greatest whoppers of inflated promises. But this president cant, as he as forcefully remarked, expect much fairness from the national media, and if he keeps promising draconian reductions in crime and especially drug abuse, and doesnt act accordingly, it will haunt him. The War on Drugs has largely been a fraud and a complete failure. After the imprisonment of nearly 7 million people and the spending of at least $1.5 trillion, narcotics are as readily available and as or more widely used and absorb more of the GDP than ever. And the United States is not blameless in the inflammation of virtual civil wars in Mexico, Colombia and elsewhere, though there were many other contributing causes in those countries.

Every informed person in America knows that if the entire enforcement apparatus of the United States were employed to prevent drug imports, all aircraft entering American air space illegally and delivering drugs would be shot down or seized on arrival with their air crews and cargoes. Though it would require a serious increase in personnel at border crossings, all entering vehicles and persons could be swiftly checked for the transportation of any sizeable quantities of drugs, and the Mexican frontier could have been sealed to smugglers and unauthorized migrants at any point since General Pershings (unsuccessful) punitive raid against Pancho Villa and others in 1916, by allocating a larger number of adequately equipped people to patrol it. Practically every university campus in America is awash with drugs and every upper-income neighborhood in every city has home delivery of illegal drugs, as reliably as the morning newspaper, and on a more flexible timetable, i.e., at any hour of the day or night requested by a paying customer.

Instead of conducting a serious war, which would entail a massive sweep of campuses and a severe interdiction of delivery, as well as a tight control of border points and the air approaches to the country, it has been easier, these 40 years, just to troll through African-American and Latino areas, round up users, give first offenders a soft ride for denunciations of their suppliers, and send 7 million of such easily replaceable people to prison on absurdly extreme sentences, and masquerade as warriors against drugs. If the anti-drug war were conducted against white middle- and upper-income-area users, and the university students of America, with the same zeal it is waged against the non-white poor, the demand for and supply of drugs would decline sharply, the obscenely inflated number of incarcerated people would skyrocket, the ranks of students in institutions of higher learning would be thinned out sharply; and practically every elected official in the country would be impeached, recalled, or hammered at the polls.

Hypocrisy, selective permissiveness, and in-built failure are not the only problems with the War on Drugs. For the prevention campaign to be so porous, it is almost certain that there is a great deal of official corruption involved also. The legal system is such that anyone guilty of possession is effectively able to inculpate the alleged supplier, whether there is any truth in the denunciation or not. Grandstanding politicians have ensured heavy sentences, often by legislating themselves into the equation ahead of judges and requiring drastic mandatory minimum sentences, regardless of special circumstances, reducing judges who are (for the most part mistakenly) perceived to be a gang of indulgent, addled softies, to the role of rubber stamps.

The consequences of this phony war are not just to ensure that drugs are as pervasive as always, but to give the United States six to twelve times as many incarcerated people per capita as other prosperous democracies facing the same drug problems but applying less blunderbuss methods to them (Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, and the United Kingdom). In 50 years, the United States has gone from the mid-point of those countries in terms of incarceration levels and only a somewhat high ratio of prosecutions that produce convictions to the appalling point where, with less than 5 percent of the worlds population, it has 25 percent of its incarcerated people, and 99 percent of prosecutions are successful, 97 percent without trial. A high proportion of the majority of incarcerated people are in state prisons and fester in barbarous conditions for unconscionably long sentences and no real effort is made to prepare them for a successful return to civil society. The prison system is infested with incompetent and maladjusted correctional officers, and the cost of housing this unseen host, even in miserable conditions, is about $150 billion a year.

I have written here and elsewhere before of my concern about the vagaries of the U.S. justice system, but am here concerned only with the new presidents promise to deal with the drug problem. There are, broadly speaking, two ways to do this. The president can use the armed forces and vastly increased border personnel to stop imports and go after users and suppliers in the middle class, including universities. Or he can legalize all drugs, require treatment for addicts to hard drugs, and tax the sale of marijuana and other less offensive drugs and transform them into a large source of revenue. This could assist the strapped states and municipalities, many of which are on the verge of insolvency, because they lack the federal governments ability to keep going with overt or disguised expansions of the money supply (as the Obama administration did, increasing 233 years worth of accumulated federal debt by 150 percentin eight years).

Marijuana may indeed be a gateway drug to worse substances, but Colorado and Oregon have already discovered the fiscal joys of the revenue it can produce, now that legalized pot is following the well-trodden path of liquor and gambling. All were long prohibited as incompatible with sober and virtuous behavior, diabolical temptations that public policy and Christian ethics required the state to defend the people against, until filthy lucre jostled out righteousness as the flavor of the sugar plums dancing in the heads of those who governed. The grace of conversion swiftly ensued: Liquor was wrested back from the gangsters and casinos sprang up all over. If President Trump really wants to reduce drug use, as he has often pledged as far back as New Hampshire, where he was apparently genuinely appalled to learn of the proportions of the problem in that state nothing short of a massive escalation of the forces applied to that end will achieve anything useful. Conditions are complicated by the fact that some of the strongest drugs can be created by children buying a variety of legal medicines and blending them in the correct proportions and conditions. This can be and is being done in every community in the country, and cannot be blamed on conditions in Mexico and has nothing to do with the borders.

The president will soon have to put up or shut up on this issue. He appears to have in mind a substantial increase in the countrys police forces, and the possible use of the Army or National Guard in Chicago and other cities with chronic problems of violence in some (minority) neighborhoods. Some such program as that, plus sealing the Mexican border, and tightening the screws partially on middle-class drug use would probably generate enough progress to represent to the country as delivering on his promises, if he didnt want to become radically more, or less, permissive. (And the country, though it wants radical results, may not, as has been mentioned, be ready for the methods that would produce them.) He could legalize marijuana and concentrate on more dangerous drugs, and pay for increased constabulary costs by releasing most of the countrys non-violent prison inmates and transferring them to a system of contributed work, Spartan living, and careful monitoring. The vacated prisons and jails could be cleaned up and repurposed as assisted housing for slum-dwellers. These problems are so profound and complicated, and have been the subject of sleazy political posturing for so long, that it is a disservice to toss off policy suggestions flippantly, but there are a number of plausible alternatives to the failed status quo.

It need hardly be said that both black and blue lives matter (and many police qualify on both counts), and that all lives are important. Americans can easily be persuaded that their urban ecosystems are degenerating into shooting galleries by and of the police. Those who wish the country and the administration well can only hope that serious planning is afoot. The sociological need is urgent and the political consequences of doing nothing about rising crime rates and the rampant illicit-drug industry would be so catastrophic they would obscure achievements in other areas. It will not take the presidents enemies in the media long to pounce on failure, and for once they would not be faking it.

Conrad Black is the author of Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom, Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full, and Flight of the Eagle: The Grand Strategies That Brought America from Colonial Dependence to World Leadership.

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Donald Trump Drug War Strategy | National Review - National Review

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Trump Vows to Win War on Drugs, But Doesn't Mention Marijuana ... AlterNet It kind of feels like 1972 again. In his inaugural address to Congress Tuesday night, President Trump echoed the ghosts of Richard Nixon and Ronald ... Chronicle AM: Trump Vows to Win War on Drugs, Sessions Rejects ...Drug War Chronicle Don't reignite war on weedRichmond County Daily Journal all 26 news articles »

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Trump Vows to Win War on Drugs, But Doesn't Mention Marijuana ... - AlterNet

MANILA, Philippines Citing lack of manpower in the anti-narcotics operations, President Rodrigo Duterte has decided to tap policemen again in the war against illegal drugs as he stressed that only the qualified ones would be allowed to join the campaign.

Duterte said he has ordered Philippine National Police (PNP) chief Ronald dela Rosa to recruit young men who are imbued with the fervor of patriotism to be members of task forces that would run after drug syndicates.

Every station should have one (task force) pero piling pili, yung walang kaso at walang history ng corruption (they will be selected thoroughly, they should have no cases and no history of corruption), the president told reporters Tuesday in Malacaang.

I have to do it because kulang ako ng tao (I lack manpower), he added.

Duterte noted that security forces are also addressing the threats posed by the New Peoples Army and terrorist groups in Mindanao.

So kailangan ko ng tao (I need manpower). I have to call back the police again to do the job most of the time in the fight against drugs, the president said.

Asked if the anti-drug campaign Oplan Tokhang would be revived, Duterte replied: I will leave it to the police to decide. If thats the best way to do it, fine.

Duterte said the anti-drug operations involving policemen and military would be supervised by the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA).

There should always be a PDEA (representative), he said.

Duterte has ordered the Philippine National Police (PNP) to suspend the Oplan Tokhang following the kidnapping and murder of South Korean businessman Jee Ick-joo in the hands of some policemen

Witnesses said Jee was kidnapped by members of the PNP Anti-Illegal Drugs Group in Angeles, Pampanga on Oct. 18, 2016. The businessman was said to have been strangled to death inside Camp Crame. Jees body was cremated in a funeral parlor, his ashes flushed down a toilet, witnesses claimed.

After killing the businessman, the kidnappers demanded P5 million ransom from his wife.

Duterte has abolished the anti-drug units of PNP and has vowed to cleanse the police force of scalawags. The president admitted though that it might take time before the rogue policemen are replaced by decent ones.

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Duterte brings back police into war on drugs - Banat

Editors note: Drug policy is race policy. To honor drug-policy reformers on the front lines, for Black History Month, the Drug Policy Alliance, in partnership with The Root, is bringing you the stories of four phenomenal people who have been instrumental in shaping conversations around drug policy and its lethal effects on black communities around the country. To launch the series, we spoke with Wanda James, CEO of the Denver-based cannabis dispensary SimplyPure. Next, we spoke with Columbia University professor Samuel K. Roberts Jr. about the history of the drug war and how it violently pierces black history in the United States. Here, we bring you the story of Susan Burton, founder and executive director of A New Way of Life Reentry Project.

In 1981, Susan Burtons 5-year-old son, her baby, ran into the street outside their home in South Los Angeles and was killed when a Los Angeles police officer struck him with his car.

And he kept going.

The policeman never even stayed around, Burton, 64, told The Root. It was almost like it was a hit-and-run. And all I knew is when I was sitting in the hospital, a whole army of police officers descended into the hospital.

They never ever ever even said, Ms. Burton, Im sorry, Burton said, hurt and anger still evident in her voice. And that just added, you know, another layer of pain and feeling like ... like, worthless that these people didnt even acknowledge me.

Burton could not escape her grief, so she sought refuge in crack cocaine, the only relief she could find from an all-encompassing, debilitating pain that no mother should ever have to bear. And for nearly 20 years, she spiraled in addiction as she cycled in and out of prison on nonviolent drug charges.

In 1997, as Burton exited prison for the sixth time, a prison guard said, Ill see you back in a little while.

She would not return, but her road would not be easy.

Burton could not find a job because of her criminal record. She could not access food stamps or housing assistance. Determined to stay drug-free despite the immense hardships she faced, she entered into a rehabilitation facility, and upon her release, a friend helped her find a job caring for an elderly woman.

And a vision was born.

Burton knew there were other women like her in need of assistance, love and support to navigate a world slowly killing them from the inside. So she began inviting women she knew who had been recently released from prison to stay at her home in South Los Angeles.

She transformed her home into a refuge, a warm place to heal and start over. In 2000 she incorporated her growing efforts into A New Way of Life Reentry Project, which currently assists 32 women and about four children re-enter society with the support system they need. Since 1998, the organization has helped more than 1,000 women discover a new way of life, serving about 60 women per year.

Black women, in particular, have to fight to be mothers in a white supremacist society we were not meant to survive free. We have to fight to raise our children in relative safety, to provide for them, to feed them and clothe them, to educate them, to love them in a society that threatens to snatch their lives away from us while we reach for them with desperate hands.

So, what happens when you compound these conditions with the carceral state and the drug war in which black women are primary targets, not simply adjacent to the criminalization of black men? What happens when we are pathologized as bad mothers, unstable mothers, unworthy mothers?

What happens when our lives become fathomless pits of institutionalized cruelty, grief and despair, and drugs offer the only fleeting relief available?

Every time I was released, I swore I wasnt going back, said Burton in a 2010 CNN interview. But I know now that without the resources and support, its next to impossible. ... If you dont have a new door to walk through, the only thing is the old door.

In the conversation below, Burton talks about the stigma placed on black mothers, the institutional barriers black women face trying to access freedom for themselves and, if they have them, for their children, and how whiteness functions with deliberate cruelty.

The Root: Addiction and poverty are symptoms of the malignancy of white supremacy, but society, especially when it comes to black women, never wants to treat the disease, it wants to criminalize the people suffering from it. Speak to those issues that black women face on an intimate level.

Susan Burton: What I see overall is poverty in this country treated as a weakness and people who are impoverished are used by other people to enhance their wealth. For instance, in my community, there are places with payday loans on every corner. There is over-policing and excessive use of force and just excessive police presence and lack of services, trauma services, services to address violence. So everything is always met with a gun or handcuffs by law enforcement.

And I mean, theres just better ways to address the poverty, which is a symptom of everything else. Poverty produces symptoms of other things like drug use and violence. People want to escape through drug use. And instead of treating and supporting people to divert them from drug use or understanding that this is their bodyand what they put in their body you should not be able to control it or demonize it or criminalize itthey are punished. Punishment on top of suffering.

TR: I completely respect and understand that this may be difficult for you to discuss, and I dont want to place an emotional burden on you at all. So, if we can, Id like to talk about your son. You began to self-medicate, and that path led you into the criminal-justice system?

SB: When I was suffering the grief and loss of my son, you know, I medicated that. It felt like there was a, just a ball of nothing, nothingness, painful nothingness, in my center, and see, it was a policeman that killed my son. It was an LAPD detective that killed my son. I felt so angry and hurt that they never even acknowledged it, never even acknowledged me and what they took from me. My son.

TR: Im thinking right now about reproductive justice. You had an LAPD officer take your son from you, steal your sons life from you, from him, and then you have them killing us, gunning down our children in the streets, and then you have them criminalizing parents in these conditions that this white supremacist societythat hates women, hates blackness, hates povertycreates in the first place. And then you have police officers with a license to kill.

SB: Yes, and then, speaking on reproductive justice, they are locking us up in our reproductive years. So many men and women are locked up through their reproductive years. Its genocidal, what theyre doing. And out here in California, 6 percent of the overall population is black women, but black women make up 29 percent of the prison population. It is genocidal.

(Editors note: From fiscal years 2005-06 to 2012-13, the state of California sterilized women without proper consent, a state audit found. At least 35 black women were sterilized during this time period, but the number is potentially much higher. Most of the women who were coerced into undergoing tubal ligation had low education levels and had been pregnant multiple times. California banned forced sterilization in 1979.)

TR: Also, the system is so quick to label black women as bad mothers.

SB: Exactly. I have a woman here, Ingrid, who just got out of prison. She ran into the store to grab milk and Pampers for her baby, and came back out and got arrested for child endangerment. She was sent to prison for three years. Still in the midst, I believe that what she was suffering from was postpartum depression. The way black women with mental-health issues are treated in this country is just horrible.

TR: Some years ago, I reported on a black mother, Frankea Dabbs, who was clearly suffering from mental illness after experiencing immense trauma in her life. She left her 10-month-old daughter on a subway platform and was instantly vilified. But we have white women who kill their children and empathy is widespread. And, according to a 2009 study conducted by the U.S. National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health study:

The rates of mental-health problems are higher than average for black women because of psychological factors that result directly from their experience as black Americans. These experiences include racism, cultural alienation, and violence and sexual exploitation. ... African Americans in low-income, urban communities are at high risk for exposure to traumatic events, including having relatives murdered and their own experience with physical and sexual assaults, all of which are associated with the onset of post-traumatic stress syndrome and depression.

SB: And that depression, that grief, often leads to drug abuse, right? And you know, those drugs just didnt pop up in our community. They were sent to our community. Im really clear that, that the amount of drugs that came into our community didnt come in there by our community members. You know, this was a deliberate tearing apart of our black community. And everything theyve done to us has been deliberate.

And Im watching now, the opiate use by other folks and, all of a sudden, its, Oh, we have a health problem here. But with the cocaine use, we had a criminal problem. So Im watching that and saying, you know, this is what they do. This is what white folks do, you know, they criminalize black people, they offer support to other people. Ive watched the breaking down of our family structures through incarceration and separation and criminalization of our communities.

I remember in a movie I saw, it may have been Roots, and I remember the woman saying, Master, master please dont sell my baby. Master, master please, Ill do anything, dont take my baby. And I watch black women go through the court system and they say, Judge, judge, please let me have my baby back, Ill do anything. Judge, judge please let me have my baby back.

And because a woman is criminalized doesnt mean she is unfit or shes not a good mom. But I watch that judge, regardless of what that woman tries to do in dire, dire circumstances, not give that woman back custody of her child. And its heart-wrenching and its heartbreaking.

TR: And thats another way the criminal injustice system robs black women of motherhood.

SB: So, what do you do? Where do you run to? That woman is pretty much powerless to do anything but curl up in a ball or self-medicate, right? So, you know, I know what it feels like to lose a child. But sometimes, its that that child gets put in the foster care system and, many times, they end up feeling abandoned, no love, and they self-medicate that pain, too. I see the breaking, the criminalization, the hurt and the pain through these systems that is just, oh, its unconscionable.

TR: And that leverage is also used to assault black women, right? Sexual assault is the second-highest reported form of police brutality after excessive force, and women of color are more likely to be attacked. So, you look at someone like [former Oklahoma City Police Officer] Daniel Holtzclaw, who targeted women like you, with prior charges. He targeted black women that he knew were vulnerable, black women (and one black girl) who were fearful of the criminal-justice system, and he raped them.

SB: This goes on, and I know that you know that to law enforcement, black women are criminal. At every level, they abuse women, whether its rape, you know, whether its strip searches, whether its dehumanizing them. I walk into a jail now to visit women, and the women are trained to turn from me and look at the wall. And I just want to cry for them. So all of these are forms of violence and dehumanization. All of them.

TR: You said something earlier about how society should not police what people put into their bodies, and thats such an important point. We talk about the shame and the stigma attached to what is put into our bodies. They will criminalize the body; they will shackle the body, and they will do all these things to control us, as opposed to looking at this system that really needs to be broken, because its functioning exactly as its supposed to. They wont address poverty, but theyll police those living in poverty. They wont address public schools that are intentionally allowed to fail in the service of privatization, but they will keep the school-to-prison pipeline running smoothly.

SB: Thats exactly it. It is a system that needs to be interrupted. When I, when my son died, the grief, the pain that I was in, you know, I needed something to help me cope with that. Ive seen people in physical pain, and Ive seen people in dire mental distress. The level of grief I was in, I needed something to deal with that pain, that rage. I dont know what Id have done to get through that. So I used drugs; I used until I found another solution.

I was never offered help when I stood in front of the judge and told them what had happened in my life. They hit the gavel and sent me to prison, had me stripped down and inspected like a slave. Handcuffed and sent me to work for 8 cents an hour.

I know that given my circumstances, there could have been services and trauma centers available to help me through such a difficult time, but there was not. So what I do now is free women up from that same system. If I can, I help them get their baby back; I do that. I take them to court. I write letters. I stand in front of that judge. I help them meet that court requirement.

Because what I know is, I cant get my baby back, but I can help another woman get hers. I cant take back the years, the time stolen from me, but I can stop another woman from giving all of her years. And thats what I do.

There once lived a woman with deep brown skin and black hair who freed people from bondage and ushered them to safety. She welcomed them to safe homes and offered food, shelter, and help reuniting with family and loved ones. She met them wherever they could be found and organized countless others to provide support and aid in various forms so they would not be recaptured and sent back to captivity. This courageous soul knew well the fear and desperation of each one who came to her, seeing in their eyes all the pain she felt years ago when she had been abused and shackled and finally began her own journey to freedom.

Deep in the night she cried out to God begging for strength, and when she woke she began her work all over again, opening doors, planning escape routes, and holding hands with mothers as they wept for children they hoped to see again. A relentless advocate for justice, this woman was a proud abolitionist and freedom fighter. She told the unadorned truth to whomever would listen and spent countless hours training and organizing others, determined to grow the movement. She served not only as a profound inspiration to those who knew her, but as a literal gateway to freedom for hundreds whose lives were changed forever by her heroism.

Some people know this woman by the name Harriet Tubman. I know her as Susan. Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, from Becoming Ms. Burton: From Prison to Recovery to Leading the Fight for Incarcerated Women (May 2017)

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The Liberator: Susan Burton on the War on Drugs, Black Motherhood and Freedom - The Root

MANILA Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said on Tuesday he would recall some police to fight his controversial war on drugs, nearly a month after suspending the entire force from all operations in the bloody narcotics crackdown.

In an about-face on his decision to remove the 160,000-member Philippine National Police (PNP) from his signature campaign, Duterte said the country was beset by security and law enforcement challenges and he needed more manpower to sustain the crackdown on drugs.

"So, I need more men. I have to call back the police again to do the job most of the time on drugs, not everyone," he told reporters.

Duterte has been scathing in his criticism of a police force he declared "corrupt to the core" after it was discovered that rogue drugs squad officers had kidnapped and killed a South Korean businessman at the PNP headquarters.

His decision to bring some police back into the campaign comes after a month of uncertainty about whether he would maintain the momentum of a merciless campaign that has defined his eight-month-old presidency, and has earned him international notoriety.

More than 7,700 people have been killed since his first day in office, some 2,555 in operations in which police said drug suspects resisted arrest.

Activists believe that extrajudicial killings have taken place during sting operations, and that many of the other killings were carried out secretly by police, or assassins working for them.

Authorities vigorously reject the allegations.

Since the Jan. 30 police suspension, the drug trade has come back out of the shadows, more than half a dozen drug users and dealers in some of Manila's toughest areas told Reuters.

'SOONER, THE BETTER'

PNP chief Ronald dela Rosa on Monday warned that gains in the drug war would be lost with police on the sidelines and "the sooner we return, the better".

The Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA), which has only 1,800 members, would lead the anti-drugs campaign, with the support of the military and PNP. Duterte said police would no longer conduct their own operations under his revised strategy.

The armed forces and PDEA signed an agreement on Tuesday to share intelligence and jointly go after "high value targets" in the narcotics business.

The military would provide firepower behind the PDEA in hostile situations, but troops would not be involved in street-level operations.

"It's meant to be PDEA-supervised, whether done by the military or the police. There should always be a PDEA ... who will be supervising everything," Duterte said.

Duterte has resolutely defended the campaign and lambasted anyone who speaks against it, including world leaders like then U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and former U.S. President Barack Obama. He has promised to humiliate anyone who is willing to debate him on the issue.

He said he had ordered dela Rosa to recruit young men for task forces who were "imbued with the fervor of patriotism" and not tainted by corruption.

He did not specify what task forces.

"I have to do it because I don't have enough men," Duterte added.

PNP spokesman Dionardo Carlos said he was not aware of a decision to re-deploy police for the drugs war.

"We have to await proper instructions and guidelines," he said. "We need to know where are we on the drug situation and where we left off."

Separately, the Senate announced on Tuesday it would hold an inquiry into allegations by a retired policeman that Duterte had operated a team of hit men during his 22 years as mayor of southern city of Davao. Duterte's aides have rejected that.

Former Davao police commanders and the Commission on Human Rights would also be questioned about their previous investigations into a so-called Davao death squad, according to Senator Panfilo Lacson, who will head the inquiry.

(Additional reporting by Enrico Dela Cruz; Editing by Robert Birsel)

WASHINGTON President Donald Trump's nominee to be the director of national intelligence pledged on Tuesday to support thorough investigation of any Russian efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election, seeking to reassure lawmakers worried that partisan politics might interfere with a probe.

MEXICO CITY A defiant Mexico said on Tuesday it would only stay in NAFTA if it suited it and rejected the imposition of any tariffs or quotas when renegotiating the trade deal U.S President Donald Trump wants to recast to benefit the United States.

EMERSON, Manitoba Jaime French was jarred out of bed in Emerson, Manitoba early one morning this month by pounding at her front door, just yards from the U.S. border. A face peered in through the window, flanked in the darkness by others.

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Philippine president to bring police back into war on drugs - Reuters

The foul-mouthed Philippines president whos bragged about throwing criminals out of helicopters and gunning down drug offenders in the streets has a new target: children as young as 9, including his own son.

President Rodrigo Duterte, who has said he will kill all the countrys criminals, is among the backers of a bill that would lower the age of criminal responsibility from 15 to 9, the Washington Post reported on Sunday evening.

Duterte reportedly said last April he would murder his own son if the boy ever used drugs.

In my country, there is no law that says I cannot threaten criminals, Duterte said in October. I do not care what the human rights guys say. I have a duty to preserve the generation. If it involves human rights, I dont give a s. I have to strike fear.

Other children were in the cross hairs.

Last year, a 4-year-old girl and a 5-year-old girl were killed in separate operations seeking relatives with links to drugs. Duterte has called those deaths collateral damage.

A draft version of the bill that would lower the criminal age to 9 states: Most children above this age, especially in these times when all forms and manner of knowledge are available through the Internet and digital media, are already informed and should be taught that they are responsible for what they say and do.

This article originally appeared on Fox News.

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Duterte says he would kill his own child in war on drugs - New York Post

If I like the record, why did I hate the show?

A boy I had a crush on several years ago, who also wrote about music, was pretty into the War on Drugs. It was during that sweet time when Kurt Vile was still in the band, a couple of years after the release of Wagonwheel Blues, which was critically lauded and total catnip for think pieces about authenticity and Americana's strong revivalist foothold in both psych and pop.

After we were done making out to the Walkmen's You & Me, he would set Wagonwheel Blues on his turntable and "Arms Like Boulders" would come on. Adam Granduciel and Kurt Vile would noodle, and Granduciel would sing about planets full of oil in the kind of spacey, Dylan-esque way that all music writers adored, and I would make out with this guy, genuinely enjoying myself.

Then a month or so later, he texted me.

"Hey, War on Drugs is coming to Hi-Dive [sic], want to go?"

I liked the record, I liked the dude, I said yes, and I went.

Like five lifetimes later, the show was overand I was left with one lingering question: If I like the record, why did I hate that?

What I Think Now: I totally pretended to like that show for that guy. That's part of the nuance. Because after that show, he was going on and on about how much he loved it and I wasn't self-assured enough to say what I really thought.

Which is that it was excessive. Look: Granduciel is talented, and the War on Drugs is a project that showcases his best skillscrafting introspective songs that don't sink into themselves and grooves that propel without losing steam, like some sort of perpetual motion machine.

But that man does not know when to stop a solo. I started to see, after standing for two hours staring blankly into the middle distance as the War on Drugs slowly morphed into a jam band before my eyes, that they need the limitations of a studio record to shine. Like many talented guitar players, if you give Granduciel an inch, he will play forever and ever, amen.

So, yeah, that's the problem. I like the War on Drugs. I do not like seeing the War on Drugs. And I trusted my own tastes so little that I saw them three more times, after their subsequent releases, and finally at the last show I turned to my friend and said, "I'm sleepy. I'm leaving."

It felt great. That weekend, I put on Slave Ambient and enjoyed it sitting down, sun coming in my window.

Self-awareness comes slowly, and it comes even more slowly for me. Much like a War on Drugs jam, it's a long journey to get to the point, but every part feels important. Unless you witness it livethen it's kind of a drag.

Was It Worth It: You can like something in some situations and not in others. You can not like something that everyone likes or says you're supposed to like. You can leave in the middle of a show if you're not enjoying yourself (just don't be a dick about it).

There is not just "I hate this" and "I love this," and a big part of me owning my own taste and asserting my own opinions was figuring out the gray area within them.

And never going to see the War on Drugs again.

Yes, it was worth it.

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Bands I Pretended to Like for Boys. Part Ten: The War on Drugs - TheStranger.com