Drug War Issues
Even as a worldwide campaign to end the death penalty for drug offenses gears up, the resort to the ultimate sanction continues apace, especially in Southeast Asia and the Middle East. According to reports compiled by the anti-death penalty group Hands Off Cain, this month Southeast Asia is reporting no drug executions, but it's a different story in the Middle East, especially in Iran.
International Anti-Drugs Day drug burn, Tehran
Meanwhile, in the Islamic Republic, the executioner has been busy this month. On August 7, three men convicted of drug trafficking and murder were executed in a prison in the holy city of Qom. Authorities provided no details of the murder for which they were convicted, but said they were caught with 1,080 kilograms of opium. They were identified only by first names.
Four days later, three unnamed convicted drug traffickers were hanged in a prison in the southeastern city of Zahedan. They had been caught with 30 kilos of morphine and 22 kilos of heroin.
Things got really busy last week. On August 20, two men were hanged after being convicted of drug smuggling inside a Tehran prison. One of them had been sentenced to life in 2007 for smuggling, but was upgraded after being caught doing it again while imprisoned. That same day, yet another drug trafficker was executed in Zahedan. Bahrum Nikpur was hanged after being found guilty of possessing 14 kilos of opium and six kilos of heroin. Also that same day, four people were hanged for rape and drug trafficking in an unspecified prison in Iran.
It is not clear if there were four drug trafficking rapists, whether it was rapists and drug traffickers executed together, or how many were rapists and how many were drug traffickers. All the same to anti-drug zealots, perhaps.
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Comments
the real drug
The Mother of all drugs
There is a drug epidemic at large that few people seem to be aware of. It has been silently raging for many centuries and is responsible for many times more destruction than all of the other drugs combined. As a result of the abuse of this drug, millions of people around the world have been cast into such a state of despair and alienation that they have been driven to seek solace through the use of the other drugs and alcohol.
It is the same drug that corrupted the thinking of the first European immigrants to the Americas and helped them to rationalize the killing of over 100 million indigenous Americans. That horrendous campaign included the theft of everything from Hudson Bay to the southern tip of South America, and stands as the second worst act of genocide and terrorism ever committed on planet earth.
This is the same drug that corrupted the thinking of the European colonizers of Africa and helped them to delude themselves into thinking that what they were doing was somehow, not only excusable, but Christian. The estimated death toll to that horrendous campaign of terrorism was around 400 million souls. By far the worst crime ever to take place on this planet.
This is the same drug that corrupted the thinking of the leaders of the church in the fifteenth century and inspired them to initiate something called the Inquisition. The resulting three and a half century reign of terror(ism) was responsible for the torture and murder of well over a hundred million people on five continents.
This is the same drug that the leaders of the church were on when they and various monarchies conspired to suggest that they were infallible and omnipotent. The result was six centuries of forced ignorance now referred to as the âdark agesâ.
This is the same drug that the followers of Islam were on in centuries past when they convinced themselves that God wanted them to force their religion onto the rest of the world at the end of a sword. No-one knows how many died as a result of that campaign of religious inspired insanity because record keeping was conveniently not considered necessary.
This is the same drug that the founders of this country were on when they said that they were founding a democracy unlike anything the world had ever seen before but simultaneously declared that it was perfectly acceptable to deprive the vast majority of their constituents the right to vote and even buy and sell others like cattle. Had they not had their reasoning clouded by this drug they would have understood that a democracy differs from all other forms of government by the fact that they, the government, exist to serve their citizens, instead of the existing to find reasons to deprive the citizenry of their god given rights.
This is the same drug that twists the thinking of the current world leaders into continually devoting ever increasing proportions of our resources towards the development of weapons of mass destruction and the perpetuation of un-ending wars around the world. Meanwhile tens of millions starve to death annually for lack of less than a dollars worth of food per day.
Please take note of the irony of the present day situation. The very same people, i.e. the pseudo-Christian and their neo-monarchist accomplices who have, throughout history, been responsible for the most horrible acts of genocide and theft that the world has ever seen are now telling us that it is necessary for them to implement an even more repressive right wing totalitarian state. According to their conveniently twisted âlogicâ, somehow it is the fault of the people that they have been systematically exploiting century after century, and therefore it is now their duty to strip us of any last vestige of Democracy âfor our own goodâ and to subjugate us even more intensely. Unfortunately, this is just another example of the very twisted logic that our pseudo-democratic, power addicted, pseudo-Christian governments have been so well known for throughout the ages.
This is the drug that presently perverts the thinking of most of our current world leaders and makes them blind to the fact that the real culprit is now and has always been their abuse of power. The simple fact is that there is a very easy way to make most of the terrorism, crime and sufferings in the world disappear without killing anyone, and that is to simply initiate an actual democracy and begin to serve all of the people instead of just the rich and powerful. It is that simple but kindness and generosity doesnât put power and wealth (their drug of choice) into the hands of the rich and greedy and that is why that option is continually overlooked.
As you can see the fault lies in our government, church and corporate leaders who are all addicted to the âmother of all drugsâ and are in an ongoing state of denial. In many ways we, the worldsâ people, are guilty of allowing ourselves of being manipulated. Like the country bumpkin who is met on the way to town every month and allows himself to be swindled by the same group of thugs who victimize him through the use of a slightly different version of the same scam time after time. We continually allow the people who are supposed to be protecting us from tyranny to function as the criminal organizations that have always been responsible for the worst acts of tyranny and genocide that the world has ever witnessed.
It is time for the citizens of planet earth to figure out who the addicts are and what the real drug is.
In reply to the real drug by Anonymous (not verified)
Excellent
Every human on the planet should consult this book as it contains an antidote to the ways humans are easily manipulated by the "compliance professionals":
Influence: Science and Practice (5th Edition), Robert B. Cialdini
It is a double edged sword. It allows you to manipulate, but it also allows you to immunize yourself to manipulation. The last part is the most important, because it is from here true freedom - both physical and mental grows. He who reads the books last loses. So gear up :)
In reply to the real drug by Anonymous (not verified)
HELLO
JIGGY JIGGY WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Choices
I clearly understand and agree with your opinions on the negative influences of the Christian leaders and policy makers over the years. However, ultimately people have choices, which means we cant blame and pick-on one particular religion or any(for that matter) for the problems of today. As I just stated, everyone has the choice to do right, or do wrong. Some choices are harder than others, but that choice leads to a right path and a wrong path independent of the various external pressures and variables that initiate that choice. Terrorism isn't so rampant today because Christians and various other groups have been committing crimes against humanity for the past few thousand years. Those decide to blow themselves up, harming others to make a statement still have to make the choice about whether to strap on that vest.
We as a people(the entire world) need to step back and simplify the equation and set religion as a cause aside. It all comes down to choices. Right and Wrong.
In reply to Choices by Anonymous (not verified)
Hmm *Spoilers*
As I understand the post above yours, which I believe you're responding to, the real problem is greed and lust for power and that "drug" is able to overshadow the really cool parts of religion and corrupt the people defining those religions.
However, religions aren't at the root cause of the problem. They're rather symptoms of a more fundamental problem: faith. Faith is to believe in an assumption about reality without ever having seen evidence to support the assumption. Religions are criminal because they add the clause that it is actually a virtue to believe in something in the absence of proof. However, the problems of faith are by no means restricted to religions.
The leaders of nazi Germany or communist Soviet were secular movements that were nonetheless based entirely on faith, and the smallest critique of "scripture" was promptly met with a nice trip to the concentration camp or gulag. In countries like North Korea the leader is even de facto deified or at least the secular parallel of the Pope.
It takes an immsense amount of abuse to thoroughly infect a person with the disease of faith, but once it is done, once faith is more virtuous than empirical evidence, the insulated object of faith is remarkably resilient against evidence.
Clearly there are immense benefits to believing in your fellow humans. We really need to cooperate. But to use this basic, useful trait of the human mind to turn the mind to blind belief is an abuse of the greatest order, and that is NOT what this naturally guided compliance trait is supposed to be used for.
âThe way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason.â Benjamin Franklin
IM GAY
helllo there how r u?
im bored........
what r u doing 2day?
wowowowowowowowowowowo uahasjasdkajf JIGGY JIGGY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
well byeeeeeeee for nowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww <3
xx
WILLY!
HIIII IM WILLYFACE
what ya doin?
hi5 i like uhh you,
i like uhh borat
i like uhh sexytime :)
In reply to WILLY! by Anonymous (not verified)
yes
hello but your not very serious about the matter
i think you shud take your shit somewhere else. okay
DEATH PENIS
death penis yayayayya!
DEATHNESS
helllo i think its very un acceptable for ppl to dye in jail just for drugs i mean GET REAL!
anyways this is a very serious matter and i think the person that commented b4 me like 3 timesssssssss is GAY!
JIGGY YOUR FACE!
okay anyways gettting bak to being serious i think that death penalty shud get canceled and not happen ever and ever again hapily ever after OKAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY! yesssss im very angry RAWRRR. GOSHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
im like sooo bored hellllllllllllo ppls
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