Daily Archives: June 14, 2017

Many small-time users and dealers have been killed in the Philippines since Duterte took office on June 30. Police say about one-third of the victims were shot by officers in self-defence during legitimate operations.

Photo by: Reuters

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte speaks during a meeting with soldiers at Camp Capinpin in Tanay, in this file photo.

Human rights groups say around 9,000 people have been killed in the Philippines since President Duterte announced his war on drugs last year.

They were killed during police drugraids or by unidentified assailants.

More recently, senior officials such as police officers and politicians believed to be involved in drug trafficking, have also been targeted.

Many areas where drug dealing was rife have now become safe.

TRT World's Asia Reporter Shamim Chowdhury reports from the country's capital, Manila.

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China establishes relations with Panama at Taiwans expense

Jailed US student released in North Korea

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Thousands killed in Philippines since Duterte's war on drugs began - TRT World

The following editorial appeared in The Orange County Register on Friday, June 9:

While American foreign policy has for years fixated on the conflict in Syria and the Middle East, just across the border in Mexico and throughout Central America tens of thousands of people lost their lives last year because of the conflict between drug cartels competing to deliver illicit drugs into the United States.

According to a recent report from the International Institute for Strategic Studies, whereas approximately 50,000 lives were lost in Syria last year, approximately 39,000 were killed in Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, much of which is attributable to drug-war violence.

Mexicos homicide total of 23,000 for 2016 is second only to Syrias, and is only the latest development in a conflict that stretches back to 2006, when President Felipe Calderon deployed the military to combat drug cartels.

Although the exact number of people killed because of the drug war in Mexico is unlikely to ever be known, a recent report from the Congressional Research Service cited estimates from 80,000 to more than 100,000 in that country alone.

The cause of this violence is obvious, and it is a direct, predictable consequence of our failed policy of drug prohibition. In the near-half century since President Richard Nixon declared a war on drugs, hundreds of thousands of Latin Americans have been killed in conflicts fueled by a lucrative illicit drug trade made possible by our prohibition of drugs.

This is an insight a certain New York developer possessed 27 years ago. Were losing badly the war on drugs, Donald Trump said in 1990. You have to legalize drugs to win that war. You have to take the profit away from these drug czars.

While Trump may have since lost this insight, the fact remains that the war on drugs does more harm than drugs themselves.

Last year, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos used his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech to call for a rethink of the drug war, which contributed to decades of conflict in Colombia that killed hundreds of thousands.

Rather than squander more lives and resources fighting a War on Drugs that cannot be won including in our inner cities the United States must recognize the futility and harm of its drug policies.

The following editorial appeared in The News & Observer on Monday, June 5:

Presidents are measured by their responses to crises. And in his response to Saturdays terror attack in London, President Donald Trump came up small.

In a moment that called for sympathy and support, the president instead launched a storm of petty and peevish tweets. In one, he criticized the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, a liberal Muslim with whom the president has had an ongoing feud. Trump tweeted: At least 7 dead and 48 wounded in terror attack and Mayor of London says there is no reason to be alarmed.

Khan was indeed trying to calm his city, but Trumps implication that the mayor viewed the horrific event as no reason to be alarmed was a gross manipulation of what the mayor said and did. The mayor told the BBC that he was appalled and furious that these cowardly terrorists would target innocent people and promised, we will never let them win, nor will we allow them to cower our city.

Once again, Trump simply lost control and blasted away on Twitter without measuring his words.

He even used the tragedy to huff and puff about how we must stop being politically correct and get down to the business of security for our people. He added later, We need to be smart, vigilant and tough. We need the courts to give us back our rights. We need the Travel Ban as an extra level of security.

Oh, yes, the travel ban the one aimed at six predominantly Muslim countries thats been repudiated in U.S. courts.

If only had Trump stopped with the one tweet that was appropriate: Whatever the United States can do to help out in London and the U.K. we will be there. But he didnt.

This attack of course prompts heightened concern worldwide, and should. And it will undoubtedly focus attention on a need for the civilized nations of the world to redouble anti-terrorism efforts, although theyve never backed down from concentrating on that ongoing crisis.

Trump is in a position to lead that anti-terrorism campaign, but when he politicizes a horrible tragedy such as this to push for his travel ban, he weakens himself. Rather, he should focus on working with other countries in a position to help the United States root out terrorist cells and destroy them forever. That will take cooperation with allies and it will be accomplished with diplomacy, not the kind of bullying rhetoric to which Trump seems addicted.

The following editorial appeared in the Star Tribune on Tuesday, June 6:

Competition from the global exchange of goods and services benefits consumers and countries, while unfair competition penalizes those who play by the rules and erodes confidence in the rules themselves. Thats why its essential that international agreements governing free trade are upheld.

Accordingly, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao should heed members of Congress urging the U.S. government to enforce the Open Skies agreement with Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

This bipartisan congressional consensus alleges that three airlines from those nations Qatar Airways, Etihad Airways and Emirates benefit from government subsidies worth more than $50 billion, which the congressional members and U.S.-based carriers such as Delta Air Lines believe give the airlines an unquestioned and unfair advantage that threatens the global aviation system and with it good-paying jobs here in the U.S.

In fact, according to an analysis from the Partnership for Open and Fair Skies, which includes Delta, American and United as well as several key airline-sector unions, every daily long-haul, round-trip flight lost to a Gulf carrier due to subsidized competition results in a net loss of 1,500 U.S. jobs.

According to the partnership, from 2011-2016 the Gulf carriers grew capacity at a rate more than six times the global GDP growth rate, suggesting that the subsidies are taking passengers from airlines based in nations working within the Open Skies framework. And the danger of overreliance on these Gulf carriers was clear when Mondays Mideast diplomatic spat between Qatar and five nations disrupted air travel.

Some U.S.-based carriers and air cargo lines that are not part of the partnership disagree with many of its claims, and the Gulf carriers deny the level of subsidies. And some consumers contend that the subsidies lower fares. But the best way to lower prices is global competition operating on a level playing field.

Support for free-trade pacts will decline even further if the public doesnt have the confidence that they will be enforced. Its critical for the airline sector and the economy at large for the U.S. to take the steps necessary to ensure a free and fair environment for airlines.

The following editorial appeared in The Gazette on Friday, June 9:

We dont pay workers to dig holes and fill them in for no reason. Government could do this to create jobs, but it would produce nothing of value at a cost to society.

Yet we talk about jobs provided by competing sources of energy without much concern for the return on investment.

President Donald Trump and other advocates do this when defending the coal industry. They point to coal miners as justification for ending the war on coal. The coal mine, they tell us, supports households that patronize businesses. The little league coach works at the coal mine. The job is reason enough to continue with coal. It is a weak argument, at the expense of sounder economic logic.

Environmentalists counter pro-mining arguments by citing the high and growing employment associated with solar. They quote Januarys 2017 U.S. Energy and Employment Report, which generated a media frenzy about the economic benefits of solar employment.

Solar employed more Americans in 2016 than coal, gas and oil combined. It comprised 43 percent of the electric sectors workforce.

If jobs were a good measure of an industrys worth, we would build roads with human shovel brigades instead of heavy equipment. Construction would cost more, with less efficient output, but would create more jobs.

We cant afford to do this because societys wealth is not enhanced by needless amounts of work. Standards of living improve only when output becomes greater and more efficient, as we find ways to produce more with less effort and expense. That is why we build roads with machines that out-produce hundreds of manually operated shovels. We need the most road miles for the least expense.

In assessing energy, we should focus less on jobs and more on helping end users afford to power offices, homes and cars. We should not fight for coal mining unless the jobs benefit consumers. We should not applaud solar employment as if the jobs are a means to an end.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration reports all those solar workers who outnumber their peers in oil, gas and coal produce 1 percent of the countrys electric needs. One coal miner produces as much energy as 79 workers in the solar industry. Two natural gas workers produce as much as 79 solar employees. One can argue the veracity of the data, but it is clear the industry needs to increase per-worker output.

Theres only one reason that the solar workforce has been increasing so rapidly (25 percent gain last year) despite its dismal record of worker productivity and minuscule share of U.S. electric power government policies that have subsidized the solar industry nearly 350 times more than fossil fuels per unit of electricity production, wrote Mark J. Perry, in an article for the Washington Examiner.

Society needs a surplus of affordable power, from diversified sources, produced and consumed as efficiently as possible with vigilant efforts to protect the environment.

If solar can compete, without massive and eternal subsidization, society will benefit. Solar will become more competitive as it minimizes the number of employees needed to produce a unit of power.

We should not defend any energy source as a means of creating expensive, low-yielding jobs. It is not fair to people who can barely pay utility bills, and it is no means of growing our economy. We should favor energy products that give us the most for the least.

The following editorial appeared in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on Thursday, June 8:

Corporate shareholders are using their voting power to influence greater transparency by companies about the financial consequences of climate change. Big investors could turn out to be the environmental movements best friends in pressuring major corporations to address climate concerns.

A surprise vote last week by 62.3 percent of ExxonMobil shareholders highlights the power big money has over corporate behavior. Investors voted to instruct the petroleum giant to be more transparent about the cost of global measures designed to keep climate change to 2 degrees Celsius. The shareholder rebellion occurred at the companys annual meeting in Dallas. A year earlier, a similar proposal got only 38 percent support.

Top institutional shareholders could be behind this shift toward greater corporate environmental accountability. Their support came despite a company campaign that included calling, writing and lobbying shareholders in person to vote against climate-related proposals.

Institutional asset managers typically dont challenge management on social or political issues, but they can and should. Major asset management firms oversee trillions of investment dollars that can be used to reflect growing concerns among shareholders about important issues.

Besides, examined from a purely financial-benefit perspective, rising sea levels and global temperatures could hinder companies like ExxonMobil from operating in certain environments, which would translate into reduced financial performance and lower share values. Companies are required to declare such risks to shareholders if their investments could be affected.

New York Times columnist Gretchen Morgenson wrote recently that giant asset management firms BlackRock and Vanguard, which control a combined $9 trillion in assets, each voted in favor of management-sponsored proposals about 95 percent of the time. The days of automatically yielding to management could be ending.

Rubber-stamping sends a signal that corporations are operating perfectly and dont need to change, which Morgenson noted is an assessment clients would not agree with in some cases. She said they probably would support more transparent operations and better shareholder service overall.

Vanguard and BlackRock refused to disclose their Exxon votes, which came the same day President Donald Trump announced the U.S. would pull out of the Paris climate accord. That decision might have influenced their vote. Similar resolutions on climate change accountability won majority votes at Occidental Petroleum and Pennsylvania utility PPL, and hefty support at other companies, according to St. Louis Post-Dispatch business columnist David Nicklaus.

Nicklaus said investor clout is also being felt in the St. Louis region, with 44 percent of Emerson shareholders supporting a 2016 proposal asking the company to produce a sustainability report. The same percentage of Ameren investors backed a resolution for a climate change report.

Corporations have responded to investor pressure in the past, such as during the boycott movement to end apartheid in South Africa. This is a welcome wake-up call for executives to make climate change a priority concern.

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'War on drugs' is costing thousands of lives | Guest columns ... - Arizona Daily Sun

Thavy, 24, spends her days avoiding the police, looking for a quiet place to sleep and trying to keep her heroin withdrawal at bay.

Before the campaign started, I could stay in one place, she said, remembering a time when passersby and police officers would ignore her as she used heroin or slept beside her children in public.

Like thousands of other drug users, Thavy, who asked to withhold her full name, was caught up in a nationwide crackdown that began in January. To date, more than 8,000 people have been arrested as part of the sweep, according to National Police statistics.

Branded as a six-month endeavour at the outset by the government, the crackdown should be reaching its end, though a senior official told The Post yesterday that a July meeting will help to determine if it will continue beyond the half-year mark.

While the crackdowns effectiveness in deterring drug use overall is unknown, a few things are clear: it has led to significant disruptions in outreach programmes, put pressure on crowded prisons and has received harsh criticism from human rights observers.

According to National Police spokesperson Kirth Chantharith, the first 163 days of the campaign saw the arrest of 4,298 suspected drug dealers and traffickers and 3,569 drug users. Observers say that despite the high number of traffickers arrested, the actual campaign tells a different story.

While emphasising the importance of halting the drug trade, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights spokesman Sovanna Mann expressed concern that equal treatment is meted out regardless of the quantity of drugs found, the level of profits gained or whether medical attention is needed, rather than incarceration.

Human rights observers also called attention to overcrowding in Cambodian prisons, which Cambodian Center for Human Rights Advocacy Director Duch Piseth said has drastically increased the number of Cambodians awaiting trial in detention.

The use of extended pre-trial detention was already a problem in Cambodia before the recent crackdown. With this huge influx of new detainees into Cambodias already over-stretched criminal justice system, disproportionate and unjustified restrictions on the liberty of those facing criminal charges, as well as their right to be presumed innocent, are only likely to worsen, Piseth said.

The drug crackdown has caused alarm among local HIV prevention NGOs and the World Health Organization (WHO), who fear it will cause a spike in the already high HIV rate among injecting drug users, which was nearly one in four as of 2012. According to WHO Country Medical Officer Laurent Ferrandini, for arrested users, accessing antiretroviral drugs was difficult or impossible in some detention locations.

People using drugs were more difficult to reach through prevention programmes as they tend to avoid contacts that could lead to their identification as they become more afraid of being arrested, he said. He believed this fear accounts for a dip in the number of people visiting NGO-run drop-in centres providing basic HIV care and prevention services.

Mith Samlanh, an organisation that provides HIV prevention services, noted an alarming drop in programme beneficiaries receiving services, with the organisation distributing 17 percent fewer clean needles and syringes in the first five months of the year, compared to the same period last year, because fewer beneficiaries had lined up to collect them.

In order to ensure the quality of services, the [people who inject drugs (PWID)] need to at least receive three to four needles and syringes a day, explained Sem Sithat, a Mith Samlanh representative.

Another reason for the decline may be that the police have targeted people with any equipment related to drugs including clean needles for arrest.

When [the police] go for the crackdown, they dont care if you are using drugs; if they find equipment related to drugs, they will arrest, said Mith Samlanh outreach worker Thearith, who did not want to disclose his name because he was a former user himself.

Data collected by Mith Samlanh showed a 10 percent overall decline in PWID participation among the 430 people in the NGOs programmes.

According to another representative, Pin Sokhom, around 100 of the organisations beneficiaries were arrested during the campaign. Last year, the organisation was able to reach about half of its 430 participants more than twice week.

But right now [we reach] less than 15 people more than twice a week, he said. They [are] afraid to access services.

HIV prevention NGO Khana, which serves as the flagship organisation for HIV services provider Korsang, also reported a high number of arrests 41 out of more than 300 people they serve. Of these, a recovering heroin addict with HIV named Thhan Dang died in early May, having been unable to access methadone and antiretroviral therapy during his incarceration at the Prey Speu detention centre in Phnom Penh.

While medical services do exist in prisons and detention facilities, Khana Executive Director Chob Sok Chamreun said, they do not respond to the needs of an ever-growing population of incarcerated drug users. They just treat based on the symptoms, he said. If you [have a] fever, they give fever medication; you are shaking, they give medication to prevent shaking. Is that drug treatment? No.

Despite their reservations, neither Khana nor Mith Samlanh condemned the anti-drug campaign. Representatives of both say they support the initiative, but hope for better collaboration between the government and organisations providing support to drug users.

Our definition of success might be different from the government, said Sithat.

For us, we can say that if the victims are arrested, they can have the appropriate services, access social services when they are released, they can have opportunities like other people, and they have no chance of relapsing and are healthy. Then it is success.

Sithat proposed the government share information with outreach programmes about which users have been arrested and about needed services. Expanding methadone substitution therapy to prisons and other facilities would also help. Currently, the Khmer-Soviet Friendship Hospital in Phnom Penh houses Cambodias only methadone clinic.

Prisons Department spokesman San Keo dismissed worries that prison conditions were not adapted to the needs of drug users, stressing that the users have a personal responsibility to improve their lot. They receive food and medical treatment like everyone else, and when they change their behaviour and attitude [to become] like normal people, they will receive skills education, he said, citing sewing classes for women, and woodworking and welding classes for men.

Among six drug users interviewed by The Post last week, three had spent time in prison and detention centres. Of these, all continued using drugs, with two reporting that substances remained easily accessible within prison walls.

Asked whether the government could do more to cooperate with civil society, National Authority for Combating Drugs Secretary-General Meas Vyrith proposed via SMS that NGOs come to [the] NACD for discussion.

Vyrith said that he considers the campaign a success and suggested it could be extended, though the government has not decided whether it will do so. This decision, he said, depends on the outcome of a meeting planned for early July involving the NACD, relevant government institutions and provincial governors.

However, Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director for Human Rights Watch, criticised the measures that have already been taken, saying drug users face extortion and violence from police followed by more abuse in rehabilitation centres, and that the drug war should be getting wider attention internationally.

Whats amazing is this story on Cambodias own drug war has almost been almost invisible in the international news, perhaps because its hard to compare to the savagery of the Philippines shoot them down on the street drug war, and international editors see only room enough for one drug war story, he said.

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Is Cambodia's war on drugs working? - The Phnom Penh Post

The loss of superstar celebrities to drug overdoses shines a bright spotlight on our countrys drug epidemic. Princes death last year showed again that wealth is no protection from the ravages of drug addiction.

Yes, we know that heroin and opioid addictions can occur after treatment with those drugs for painful conditions. That may be somewhat understandable.

But what about the use of, say, crystal meth? Why would someone willingly put something in his body that used long enough can cause:

Persistent psychotic symptoms including delusions, paranoia and hallucinations.

Increased mental health issues like depression, anxiety and social isolation.

Confusion and odd behavior.

Feeling of bugs crawling on the skin.

Body sores from picking at their skin.

Cracked teeth.

Stroke.

Coma.

(Source drugabuse.com)

We read an article on U.S. News and World Reports website titled We have lost the war on drugs by Jeff Nesbit. He is a former director of legislative and public affairs for the National Science Foundation.

Nesbit noted that over 50,000 people died of drug overdoses in the United States in 2014. Over half were from heroin and prescription painkillers.

The truly alarming point of the story, though, is that the number of deadly overdoses has doubled just since the year 2000. It is evident that the abuse of opioids is largely responsible for the increase in overdoses, but the author points out that all these deadly drugs get a hold of your brain and never let go.

Nesbit urges an approach that combines compassion for the victims of drug addiction with giving them the understanding and knowledge of what it truly takes to regain control of their brain.

In short, it takes treatment and education not criminal prosecution to fight the war on drugs.

* Editorials reflect the opinion of the publisher.

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Losing the war on drugs | News, Sports, Jobs - Maui News - Maui News