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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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TLC NewsFlash: Elian and the Drug War
Wednesday 10 May 2000 Return-Path: Received: from finch-punt-12.mail.demon.net ([194.217.242.36]) by shuggie.demon.co.uk with SMTP id for Received: from punt-1.mail.demon.net by mailstore for shug@shuggie.demon.co.uk id 957919578:10:01750:0; Wed, 10 May 2000 00:46:18 GMT Received: from server.soros.org ([207.10.94.222]) by punt-1.mail.demon.net id aa1001476; 10 May 2000 0:46 GMT Received: (from majordom@localhost) by mailhost.soros.org (8.8.8+Sun/8.8.8) id UAA21044 for tlc-cannabis-outgoing; Tue, 9 May 2000 20:06:42 -0400 (EDT) X-Authentication-Warning: mailhost.soros.org: majordom set sender to owner-tlc-cannabis@soros.org using -f Received: from snake-eyes.soros.org (snake-eyes.soros.org [204.168.83.222]) by mailhost.soros.org (8.8.8+Sun/8.8.8) with ESMTP id UAA21040 for Received: by SNAKE-EYES with Internet Mail Service (5.5.2650.21) id Message-ID: <68047186F8E7D2119C9900805F65F19E02F751F6@SNAKE-EYES> From: Jeanette Irwin To: "LIST: TLC_CANNABIS" Subject: TLC NewsFlash: Elian and the Drug War Date: Tue, 9 May 2000 20:05:09 -0400 MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2650.21) Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Sender: owner-tlc-cannabis@mailhost.soros.org Precedence: bulk The Lindesmith Center http://www.lindesmith.org ...NewsFlash ____________________________________________ Elian And The Drug War By Arianna Huffington, The Sacramento Bee May 6, 2000. All rights reserved. This sort of thing just doesn't happen in America. At least that's the unexamined assumption behind the full-plumed outrage at the "excessive force" used during the predawn raid to get Elian Gonzalez. "When you see those photographs of those INS agents in combat gear with automatic weapons entering that house . . . and snatching the kid away," fumed Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), "that's not America." "I couldn't imagine something like that could happen in America," echoed New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. "My first thought," protested Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.), "was that this could only happen in Castro's Cuba." My first thought was: You gotta be kidding, right? Can these savvy politicians really be oblivious to the thousands of SWAT- like night raids that take place every year in America in the name of the drug war? The only thing missing from them are AP photographers leaping fences to capture the action--and media eager to disseminate it around the world. Truth be told, Elian's Miami relatives got off easy. These "dynamic entries," as they are known, regularly involve tear gas, residents thrown to the floor and handcuffed and percussion grenades-- explosive devices intended to disorient everyone present while the police move in. And the raids usually take a lot longer than a surgical three minutes. But the elected officials who were "sickened" by what Elian was forced to witness do not seem remotely concerned by the fact that children are routinely exposed to such un-American--or, in the words of Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.), "intolerable, unnecessary, outrageous"--behavior. "There was no excuse whatsoever," railed Miami Mayor Joe Carollo after Elian had been whisked away, "to have a military force to come in, as a SWAT team, with machineguns at a home where all that you had were patriotic, law-abiding, humble, working men, women and children." The spotlight-loving Carollo was nowhere to be found last year, when a SWAT team at least 15 strong, armed with assault rifles and the wrong address, stormed into the South Florida home of Eddie and Loretta Bernhardt--a law-abiding, humble, working couple. They were roughed up, humiliated and, in Eddie's case, hauled off to jail. Of course, if they wanted the Miami mayor's attention, they should have had the foresight to be Cuban and cute. Where were the "sickened" politicians when Accelyne Williams, a retired 75-year-old minister from Boston, died of a heart attack after being chased around his apartment and forced to the floor by a 13-member Police Drug Control Unit that had knocked down the wrong door? Did anyone hear Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas) complaining that this was a "frightening act . . . and we all ought to be very concerned"? If Easter Eve in Little Havana was the first time all these politicians noticed the use of excessive force, they've been missing a very important trend: the militarization of our local police forces in the name of the drug war. "What you saw in the Elian case," said Ethan Nadelmann, director of the Lindesmith Center, a leading drug policy institute, "is standard operating procedure in drug cases. Policing in the United States is becoming increasingly paramilitarized." So in the name of fighting drugs, we have not only gutted the principle of "innocent until proven guilty," but also the Fourth Amendment, which guarantees "the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures." Perhaps all the investigative zeal unleashed by the tactics used in Miami now can be applied to hearings not on Elian's seizure, but on the drug war raids that daily violate everything our outraged politicians claim to revere: the rule of law, the Bill of Rights, freedom, children, the norms of civilized behavior and the sanctity of our homes. That would be great, but that sort of thing doesn't seem to happen in America. <<<<<<< >>>>>>> You have received this message from The Lindesmith Center ( http://www.lindesmith.org ) because you are signed on to one of our Listserves. If you are interesting in receiving messages on other topics, please visit: http://www.lindesmith.org/listserve.html If you do not want to receive further emails, please click on this link "unsubscribe tlc-cannabis" in the body of the message, (no quotes and not in the subject line). If you are subscribed to more than one TLC list and wish to sign-off all of them, type "unsubscribe *" in the body of the message. Alternately, please contact Jeanette Irwin at mailto:jirwin@sorosny.org To re-subscribe click mailto:Majordomo@soros.org and type "subscribe tlc-cannabis" in the body of the message. __________________________________________________
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