No reader of Narconews.com can be wholly ignorant of the massive violations of human rights standards and of international law which are essential igredients of the Drug War.
Each winter, in the new year, I have researched some of the figures on the US injustice system and those who it incarcerates. And each year the news is worse than the preceeding year.
Really, reader, the US government should make its own statistics state secrets, for they show a massive and calculated level of official perversion and criminality.
It is an extreme violation of human rights to single out a minority group for incarceration: Some say this amounts to genocide; "an attempt to destroy an ethnic group in whole or in part."
Our own Justice Robert H Jackson, chief US prosector at Nuremberg said then, "Aggressive war remains the supreme international crime."
Let us deal with the genocidal US prison system first.
The official numbers show an incarceration level for black males of 4,800 per 100,000 of population. For whites this falls to 715/100K!
The black male child born this year will have just under one chance in three of being jailed at some point in his life. The white child only one in 23!
In the USA at this moment there are 603,000 young African males in college versus 791,600 in prison.
One third of all African-American males between 20-29 years of age are in jail, on parole or under probationary supervision.
The whole world was appalled by the torture exposed at Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq. This crime was disclosed not by judicial investigation but by the very perpetrators themselves; believing themselves immune from legal responsibility they themselves filmed the fun.
How many know that the perps were in civil life jail guards in the Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia systems?
And in these state systems we see that at least 21% of male prisoners experienced some form of coerced homosexual activity, and 10% of all prisoners were forcibly raped.
We saw the director of the California system bragging in public how he whould personally escort a nototious offender to his new home where the new prisoner's cellmate would greet him: "Hi Honey, I'm Spike."
Is rape becoming part of the prescribed punishment for American prisoners?
And then we hear of prisoners held in sensory deprivation for upwards of 20 years. Are we back in the days of the Count of Monte Cristo?
Some older numbers still retain their poignancy: Between 1987 and 1999 the Federal penal system grew from 41,000 prisoners to 130,000.
In the combined State systems, between 1991 and 1997, the drug prisoners increased from 21.3% to 57.9% of total population.
And the same period for the Federal gulag: 20.7 to 62.6%.
We can only suspect that the most recent numbers in these categories are even more dismal.
And of course, here at Narconews.com we have any number of excellent reporters right on the spot in the target countries of South America who can describe the aggression and repression carried out there using the mask of the Drug War.
It is time, and past time for us all to call for the arrest, prosecution and punishment of American officials before the International Criminal Court for these crimes.
From the Imperial Capital
Chris Herz
cdherz44@yahoo.com
