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Friday, January 24, 2014
Monday, January 6, 2014
The drug war is the latest manifestation of a centuries-old ‘race war’ - Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky recently took part in a video conference with Foundation Degree students about the legacy of the American Civil Rights movement, where he described the war on drugs as a “race war” against poor minorities.
When a student asked how “important Martin Luther King was to the movement,” Chomsky replied by saying “that’s almost like asking how important Nelson Mandela was to the anti-apartheid movement.” He then returned to a point he had made earlier, that the assassination of Black Panther Fred Hampton was the most significant of the period.
“Hampton was a very effective organizer…the most energetic and effective leader,” and he was killed by the FBI and operatives for the United States government, which Chomsky claimed created a necessarily adversarial relationship between “liberation movements” and the government.
Of course, he continued, that’s not the story the government wants citizens to believe, so they were “blanked out.”
“There are things,” Chomsky said, “the white liberal establishment just doesn’t want to be part of history.”
Another aspect of American history that was “blanked out” was “the criminalizing of black life.” He noted that abolition robbed the industrial class of cheap labor, and [they] needed a way to replace it. “Slaves were capital, but if you could imprisoned labor, states could utilize them — you get a disciplined, extremely cheap labor force that you don’t have to pay for.”
“Part of the whole industrial revival was based on the reinstitution of slave labor. That went on until the start of the Second World War,” he continued, “after which black men and women were able to work their way into the labor force, the war industries.”
“Then came two decades, the ’50s and the ’60s, of substantial economic growth. Also, egalitarian growth — the lower quintile did about the same as the upper quintile, and the black population was able to work its way into the society. They could work in the auto factories, make some money, buy a house. And over the course of those same 20 years the Civil Rights Movement took off.”
After correlating the rise of the Civil Rights Movement with the establishment of a black middle class, Chomsky went on to claim that it was on the issue of class that the black liberation movements stalled.
“The black movement hit a limit as soon as it turned to class issue,” he said. “There is a close class-race correlation, but as the black and increasingly Latino issues…began to reach up against the class barriers, there was a big reaction. Part of it was reinstitution of the criminalization of the black population in the late 1970s.”
“If you take a look at the incarceration rate in the United States, around 1980 it was approximately the same as the rest of developed society. By now, it’s out of sight — it’s five-to-ten times as high as the rest of wealthy societies.”
“It’s not based on crime,” Chomsky continued. “The device that was used to recriminalize the black population was drugs. The drug wars are fraud — a total fraud. They have nothing to do with drugs, the price of drugs doesn’t change. What the drug war has succeeded in doing is to criminalize the poor. And the poor in the United States happen to be overwhelming black and Latino.”
Chomsky then made his most explosive statement, claiming that the war on drugs is, in fact, “a race war.”
“It’s a race war. Almost entirely, from the first moment, the orders given to the police as to how to deal with drugs were, ‘You don’t go into the suburbs and arrest the white stockbroker sniffing coke in the evening, but you do go into the ghettos, and if a kid has a joint in his pocket, you put him in jail.’ So it starts with police action, not the police themselves, but the orders given to them.”
“Then there’s the sentencing, which is grotesquely disproportionate — then the highly punitive system instituted after, if anybody ever gets out of prison.” He claimed that “[p]rison’s only about one thing: punishment. They only learn one thing in prison, which is how to be a criminal…and the result is like reinstating Jim Crow.”
“The black population now — they don’t call it ‘slavery,’ but it’s under conditions of impoverishment and deprivation that are extremely severe, so if you look at the past 400 years of United States history, there have only been about 20 or 30 years of relative freedom for the black population. And that’s a real scar on society.”
“The great achievement of the Civil Rights Movement,” he concluded, “can’t be denied, but we shouldn’t overlook the fact that it set in motion forces that would try to overturn those changes to protect class privilege.”
Watch the entire teleconference with Noam Chomsky below.
Sunday, January 5, 2014
Drunk-drive botch-up
Police and traffic officers in South Africa's top tourist cities are making thousands of drunk-driving arrests that fail to result in convictions, amid claims that dockets are being tampered with for cash.
Internal documents obtained by Sunday Times reporters reveal that at Durban Central police station alone, 1481 arrests in 2012 led to only 111 convictions - a rate of 7.5%. This excludes thousands of dockets a year opened at other Durban police stations.
In Cape Town, 3022 drunk drivers were arrested in 2012 and 3089 in 2013, with fewer than 7% convicted, according to a senior official with access to provincial statistics.
Several senior officers interviewed in different parts of the country - some with direct knowledge of the cases - blamed corruption and chasing arrest quotas for dismal conviction rates. All spoke on condition of anonymity. One received death threats this week after Sunday Times reporters began to make enquiries.
They said police officers were not encouraged to build tight cases because convictions did not affect promotion prospects.
"At a typical roadblock, you employ up to 20 SA Police Service and metro police members for an eight-hour shift, getting paid overtime," said one official. "You need a booze bus, blood kits, a nurse to draw blood. Then you need two or three members to drive up to Pretoria every week to take these samples to the lab. It's a very costly, fruitless expense to the state. These members could be used to fight other crimes."
The official also said police officers were being paid to deliberately throw cases.
Another senior police officer said convictions were rare, either because the police botched the cases - intentionally or not - or the prosecutors withdrew charges. "They're also chasing targets and don't want these cases to clog up the courts. It's a scam."
A third official estimated that "80% and 90% of all drunken driving cases are thrown out of court or withdrawn because of botched blood samples or straightforward corruption".
"If one out of every 200 drunken driving cases gets a conviction, it's a lot," he said.
Another official agreed that the figures did not add up. "There's a huge discrepancy between the number of drunks caught and the number of convictions for drinking and driving," he said.
The Independent Police Investigative Directorate confirmed this week that Durban Central police station was in its sights.
"We are investigating a systemic corruption matter related to about 200 drunk-driving cases," said spokesman Moses Dlamini. "There are indeed cases where it is clear there is a problem."
Sunday Times reporters have seen a sample of 17 suspicious drunk-driving dockets at Durban Central from arrests in 2010, 2011 and 2012 in which charges were withdrawn - in all but one case by the same officer, a Captain NEP Ndlazi.
In six cases, Ndlazi closed the dockets several months before blood samples arrived from the laboratory.
The dockets are replete with other errors. In one case, the arresting officer failed to specify the time of the offence. In another, the time of taking a blood sample was "tampered with". Several dockets contain sworn statements showing that chain-of-evidence statements have gone missing or have not been signed - all grounds for throwing a case out.
In six cases, the forensic laboratory said the blood sample could not be analysed because it was "clotted", "dried in transit" or was "too small".
This was highly unlikely to happen without deliberate tampering, one official said. "What they do is put the sample in the microwave or leave it in the boot of the car on a hot day."
A government pathologist, who asked to remain anonymous because he was not authorised to speak to the media, confirmed blood samples taken at roadblocks "generally arrive in good condition" at laboratories.
Ndlazi refused to comment on specific allegations. "I will only discuss the allegations with the person investigating, who must come to me with all the evidence," she said.
Three cases involved minibus drivers transporting passengers. One was chased by a police vehicle after jumping a red light. He abandoned his taxi and fled on foot. When he was caught, he had bloodshot eyes and "smelt of liquor". Another minibus driver reeked of booze and had to be handcuffed after resisting arrest.
Several of the drivers told the Sunday Times they had no idea why the charges against them had been withdrawn. "They said they would contact me and nothing ever happened after that," said one. "It did feel a bit strange."
Another, who, according to his docket, was so intoxicated that he was "unable to blow into the breathalyser", confirmed the charges against him had been withdrawn, but declined to say why. "I got a lawyer," he said.
hofstatters@sundaytimes.co.za
joubertp@sundaytimes.co.za
Wednesday, January 1, 2014
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