The war against drugs is a holocaust in slow motion ...
A deliberate, class-based, execution of a group of economically useless citizens under the guise of an offensive against narcotics.
So says, David Simon, creator of The Wire.
In this frankly brilliant film currently on inlayer.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01pzz69/Storyville_20122013_The_House_I_Live_In/
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*iplayer
Sounds like an interesting watch
maybe I'll watch it when i get home later. Chances are though that I'll forget about it any never watch it. :(
hey thanks for this. i meant to watch it at the cinema a few weeks ago, but didn't
Really great film, fascinating and tragic.
made me cry :'(
amazing stuff
I prefer his solo stuff.
callback!
Indeed!
Though in all seriousness, this looks harrowing.
what an utterly embarassing quote.
don't be embarrassed, jordan
...said Michael Jackson.
It is a bit of a daft thing to say, and detracts from his point
which is that he believes the war on drugs is a systematic and deliberate removal of a section of society from that society. Namely, the poor.
Actually the problem is that it's taken out of context, isn't it?
I seem recall we don't hear that line until about 60 minutes into the film.
What's incredible about it is that by the time you've been shown all the evidence that line *doesn't* seem remotely like hyperbole.
agreed... by that point it seems quite reasonable
also it's not David Simon who say it
but a historian specialising in America and WW2
Just noticed this was covered in the OP.
i haven't seen this documentary but i will try to watch when i have time
i presume these 'poor' that you speak of have been forced into taking/dealing drugs?
No, but they are targeted for it in a way the rich are not.
i'm going to watch the documentary as i do find this very interesting
but some of these comments just read like the same uncomfortable ''the poor aren't like us, they can't help themselves'' type of opinions that were prevailent during the riots last year.
Not really.
The debate during the riots was about what the poor were doing. The debate about the war on drugs is about what's being done to the poor.
really? i remember a lot of people washing responsibility from the rioters
as they felt were of a higher social class than them. i don't mean to take this conversation off on a tangent however.
ha
this didn't happen?
Maybe a minority of people, but a large one,
said something that utterly stupid. I know a lot of people said utterly stupid things of a slightly different nature when discussing the riots. I'd wager that people said something quite different and you've misjudged them.
Fair enough
I'm pretty sure he qualifies the holocaust statement in the film anyway, I'd recommend it to anyone interested in that type of thing.
cool maybe shut up till then yea?
>>''the poor aren't like us, they can't help themselves" type of opinions<<
Are you sure you weren't confusing people pointing out that most people rioting were being put under extreme pressure by society and thus it could be argued that what happened was understandable, and then deciding that was the same thing as saying it was acceptable?
^ This
Conflation of understandable / explicable with acceptable / justifiable pretty much dooms debates like this to failure
Forced?
You should watch it and then you can make your own mind up.
Don't bite
bite what, sorry?
the maker of this documentary is explicitly comparing the treatment of a certain class of people who deal/take drugs to the holocaust. i find this comparison ridiculous.
i'm well aware that justice systems often favour 'the rich' to 'the poor' (if those are the definitions we are using). it isn't comparable to the holocaust.
not THE holocaust, A holocaust.
lol(ocaust).
i think most people still associate the word 'holocaust' with...well, the holocaust.
and that the documentary maker used this word with such knowledge.
The quote comes from a guy interviewed in the film
not the guy making it.
sorry, yes, mistyped that.
Although, yes, it does indeed draw implicit comparisons with Nazism
and indeed other societies where we think of there having been one form of 'cleansing' or another.
nah
the would be the Holocaust
that*
fucking hell, every.single.post today
you should try to if you can. Would be interested to know if it changes/complicated your viewpoint
well i've read up on the war on drugs (back when i was a bill hicks loving 16 year old)
and i've read up a lot on the holocaust and other genocides recently. i'm by no means an expert on either, but i don't think an hour long documentary will change my mind dramatically. i'm naturally very dubious of the neutrality of documentaries anyway.
but documentaries are not valuable because of their 'neutrality' so your comment is gibberish
why would i let something with an obvious bias affect my view?
Where do you source your entirely neutral data then?
You know, the stuff you mix up in your entirely neutral consciousness and use to form your spectacularly unbiased opinions?
freedom press
How and why would anyone develop a bias?
rag_conspiracy
*skag
hmm, seems like your mind is pretty set on this ...
shame really, as I'd like to think i'm decently informed but some of the stuff in the film really was shocking.
well no, my mind isn't set. if i watch this i'll try to watch it without prejudice as much as is possible.
christ man
Perspective 1 You 0
?
as i clearly stated i'm by no means an expert on either subject, but i feel that i've read enough on both subjects that something like this wouldn't drastically change my viewpoint.
you're going off on one
on the basis of pretty much zero information and taking exception to a single phrase. Worse, Simon is pretty much an authority on this stuff. Perspective: pls to get some on yourelf
sorry, 'zero information' on what, exactly?
i'm not going off on one at all, i simply don't think that the war against drugs is comparable to the holocaust/a holocaust. if you disagree, that's fine.
it's embarrasing because it's true
this ain't rock n roll...this is...jazz time!
why is the fight to eliminate drug crime
a war on poor people?
in a couple of sentences for those who don't have the time to watch the film
Because the fight isn't to eliminate drug crime.
The focus is not, and arguably has never been, on that.
what is it trying to do then?
who cares just argue with jordan
i hear it's a holocaust in slow motion
a deliberate, class-based, execution of a group of economically useless citizens under the guise of an offensive against narcotics
i disagree!
I don't really want to try and condense the film into a couple of sentences, cos I'd be terrible at making the arguments in it.
But for example, the film goes through the reasons that different drugs have been targeted at different times (historically a racial issue), and why politicians/governments have pursued methods that they know don't work (or are at least far less effective than other methods).
If eliminating drug crime was the objective, then they'd be going about it in an almost entirely different way.
in what way would they go about it?
As said above, I don't want to try and make the arguments of the film in a way that doesn't do them justice
so I don't feel qualified to go into detail about it. Especially seeing as I haven't seen the film in a while.
oh, sorry, i'm talking in general
as i hear people say that sort of thing a lot; that its the wrong way to go about eliminating drug crime. i have no idea what a better way would be.
Legalising drugs
because stopping drug use is a smokescreen
A 'catch-all crime' similar to the early criminalisation of homosexuality in ancient greece .... used to target and remove only a very specific section of the 'criminals'- those who are deemed useless, politically problematic etc.
like junkies who break into peoples houses and mug folk on the street?
come on, don't let's get silly here.
Penalties for drug crimes among American youth almost always involve permanent or semi-permanent removal from opportunities for education, strip them of voting rights, and later involve creation of criminal records which make employment more difficult.[115] Thus, some authors maintain that the War on Drugs has resulted in the creation of a permanent underclass of people who have few educational or job opportunities, often as a result of being punished for drug offenses which in turn have resulted from attempts to earn a living in spite of having no education or job opportunities
could they just
not have gone and broken the law instead?
I know its the internet and stuff, but Jesus Soapy... :(
didn't have him down as one of those types, to be honest.
A pity.
aw c'mon
everyone loves the abstinance puritan villain soapy character
oh yeah
you're the one who doesn't like people drinking aren't you?
dear me cromwell.
i don't mind them drinking as long as they're not being a nuisance
but it is fun seeing people hoy a skeppy if the idea of sometimes not having a drink gets tossed about
as if there is no other way to socialise
hoy a skeppy
that's made my day, that.
but seriously
is someone saying that American punitive drug sentencing is a deliberate class war type tactic or just that keep certain sections of society down is just an unfortunate side effect of a well intentioned but failing policing policy?
It's probably somewhere in the middle (minus the "well intentioned" part)
I don't know, I haven't watched the documentary
then how do you know that the conclusion might not be
that if people are so upset about going to jail maybe they should do crimes?
I don't 'know' any of these things for certain
but I'm inclined to think that that's a) a really reactionary Daily Mail response, which are usually wrong, and b) not what the documentary is about.
It's not about the crime though, it's about the response to the crime.
Your comment suggests that punishments can be wholly disproportionate, because the crime shouldn't have been committed in the first place. Should shoplifters have their hands chopped off?
but surely
it's more a perhaps misguided socially conservative response - that steeper punishments mean greater disinsentive to commit crime - than something that could honestly be compared to the Holocaust
Did you watch the film?
There are reasons that comparison is drawn.
http://drownedinsound.com/community/boards/social/4426148#r7360868
Yeah, I can tell you in two sentences.
I can't hope to convince you in two sentences. You would need to see the film before you could decide whether or not you felt it was a fair assessment.
what would the sentences be then?
...
America outsourced most of the jobs these parts of society and it simply doesn't have a place for large swathes of the working classes any more.
By letting them put themselves into the criminal system and by applying incredibly harsh (10 year, 20 year, life sentence) penalties for even fairly minor drug use, it both removes these people from society and creates an entire industry based on creating and running prisons, which then become a driver in the economy.
finally
this thread has taken a very long time for someone to actually sum up some of the arguments without get in a tz
Because, as I said, it's not an argument that boils down to two sentences.
Not everything can be a Sun headline. In fact most of the most important things are stuff you actually have to put some effort in to learn and digest.
the closest thing to a newspaper headline in this thread
is the hypobolic quote in the opening post
I just wanted someone to give a half decent explanation why and had to tease to get it out of someone while everyone was crying that its all too complicated and getting het up over one or two words. It's so much easier when someone just tells it straight.
But the people who introduce stiffer laws and penalties are in possession of the facts historically.
They know it doesn't work. They also know who it targets - the holocaust statement was made because the war on drugs is specifically targeted at a certain section of society, and the aim is not to help or rehabilitate, it's to remove these people.
I honestly think
that as mad and broken as the policies may be if you were to hang out with the lawmakers responsible they would genuinely believe that what they are targetting is a crime and the criminals responsible.
Not persecuting poor people, or black people, or hispanic people, or young men, or any other subset of society beyond the criminal - if it falls more heavily on one of those groups than another, they may say, 'well that community has a crime problem and we're going to root it out'.
it might be wrong and it might be failing but its not the holocaust
I know it's been said a million times in the thread
but the film answers your post a thousand times better than I could.
A lot of them are probably a bit racist though tbf.
thats awfully prejudiced of you DoC
Yeah, guess I can't stop that liberal bigotry from rearing it's ugly head.
I think he was referring to the Department of Corrections
It's tricky because it is essentially self-feeding now.
Its roots go back over a century with the same ideas being used but with the drugs changing. Its targets have also changed. What's different with the last 30 years is that it's become economically powerful. There has been a lot of propaganda and demonisation.
what about if popping a really thick whitehead was against the law?
could you resist?
*poppin' a CAP in a whitey's HEAD, yo!
(anyone looking for a) fix
Why would a government want to do that?
Surely it's more beneficial for these people to have access to education and opportunities, and would eventually benefit the economy. Why would the US government deliberately try and make this not so?
actually really interested to read peoples responses to this.
I can't express in a single post what that film takes 90+ minutes to explain
Suffice to say, it does explain exactly the answer to that question.
Yeah, this.
Only thing that I could add concisely is that there are sections of the economy boosted by this policy.
yeah
i can't really imagine the US government knowingly implementing policy that has been proved to be bad for positive economic progress and actively harmful to large sections of society
...
ITT
people having lengthy, in-depth arguments about a documentary they haven't watched
*a single quote from a film they haven't watched
what's wrong with that?
also itt:
people puzzled about why the US government would do something mean unless it was best for everyone, i mean they're probably good guys they just have misguided good intentions!
Yeah, I was hoping that was just elaborate trolling but I'm starting to wonder.
also itt:
people presuming the us government undertake actions for the sole purpose of causing them suffering. why would they do something with good intentions? they're all evil!
Er, no-one's said that.
my statement isn't any more of a misquote than tiramisu's
http://drownedinsound.com/community/boards/social/4426148#r7361342
http://drownedinsound.com/community/boards/social/4426148#r7361144
not with the sole purpose of causing suffering;
with the main purpose of furthering the interests of certain parts of society to the active detriment of other, less desirable parts. I CAN'T THINK WHEN THAT HAS EVER HAPPENED BEFORE!!!
also itt: heavyhanded sarcasm
I enjoyed it.
right-on man!
*slips on Michael Moore documentary*
satire!
debate and satire! we're great at it!
no you arent
...
:(
SATURE
SUTURE
...the broken US society back togeter again!!!
or something
hippy
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_xF86j3374Ns/TDTp0wHLAZI/AAAAAAAAE1Q/j-MfxbuKYlU/s1600/jean-paul-sartre.jpg
i'm just glad we don't have to worry about these things happening in the US now Obama is in charge anyway!
Shouldn't have left that lying around, sorry.
there should be a war against this thread
*board
gonna watch this now actually
cool
look forward to not hearing your opinions about it
?
i got to about the 40 minute mark and i got a phone call, will probably watch the rest tonight. it was obviously very well produced and a great piece of television, but i'll wait until i've watched it in full before giving any opinion of it.
Thanks for posting this.
I really enjoyed it.
the film is really good
if you lot could shut up for 5 minutes
this is such a good film
thanks for starting this thread
Is mcnulty in it?
predictably
i was fascinated by this film. i was also horrified. sometimes i'm ashamed of what my species do.
I watched it again last night with some friends
It really is fucking excellent/horrifying
I watched this today (it's still available on iplayer until tonight)
Found it really interesting, especially the stuff about sentencing disparities. I had no idea that this was the case.
I didn't find it very emotionally engaging though.