Iran's Drug War is Disgusting, Depraved…And Commended by the United Nations
The Iranian government traffics in drugs and executes drug dealers. What's not to love?
Over at Bloomberg View, Eli Lake notes that the United Nations loves the way Iran prosecutes its drug war. Even though it's not at all pretty:
Since President Hassan Rouhani's election in 2013, state executions in Iran have spiked. How could a man who promised to free political prisoners preside over this reign of terror?
It turns out part of the answer, at least, is the global war on drugs….
According to [a new] report, released by Ahmed Shaheed, the U.N.'s special rapporteur for human rights in Iran, 69 percent of the state executions of prisoners in the first six months of 2015 were for drug-related offenses. In 2014, when Iran executed 753 people (the highest total in Iran in 10 years), Shaheed said nearly half were killed for drug crimes.
There are many reasons the Iranian state detains, tortures and hangs its citizens. These range from offenses against God to publishing propaganda critical of the regime. But it's the drug dealers who are being hanged the most, according to Shaheed. "The Government holds the view that the implications posed by drug-trafficking to the health and security of the Iranian people render drug-related offences 'most serious' crimes and, therefore, they deserve to be considered capital offences," he wrote.
Lake notes a few ironies, including the small fact that Iran's revolutionary guard faction is a known narco-trafficking crew. The second is that despite the new report, the UN has showered Iran with love specifically for the way it fights the scourge of drugs:
Iran has been widely praised by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime as a model partner in the war on drugs. The office had even proposed a five-year aid package for Iran's anti-drug efforts….As recently as June, the U.N. drug office's representative in Iran generally praised Tehran's efforts to combat narco-trafficking. He repeated the state's line that its police had paid a heavy price in fighting the drug dealers.
So the Iranian government, soon to be given a seat at peace talks about the Syrian civil war it has helped to prolong and intensify, is being praised for battling a drug trade that it also facilitates. What a terrible world.
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I’ll take “Yet another reason to abolish the UN” for 100 Alex.
Ben Carson and Chris Christie approve.
The masocist says, “Hit me!”
The sadist says, “No!”
Well, some people and some drugs.
Lake notes a few ironies, including the small fact that Iran’s revolutionary guard faction is a known narco-trafficking crew.
Who are they selling their drugs to? If they’re selling them to infidels instead of Iranians, then I can see how they could rationalize it.
fuck the photograph selection
I know, right, the picture was cropped at the top! Who does that?
I LOL. Cropping it like that had that effect on me, turning it funny.
There’s nothing funny about a cropped picture.
Not funny really, but sometimes I rather like a cropped picture.
Wow, the UN is even more actively evil than I imagined.
Remind me why this organization has a claim on the moral high-water mark?
Progs seems to like it.
They more or less cornered the morality market some years ago, when, during the aftermath of the Rwandan massacre, the U.N.’s Deputy High Commissioner for the Prevention of Rape was found to have been systematically raping the girls and women in the refugee camps.
I think he took his job title very seriously, but just forgot about the “prevention of” part.
The UN serves some purpose. Mainly, it is a forum for nations to discuss shit before they enlist their citizens to start killing one another. I’d be ok if they just abolished all the UN committees and panels etc. Sure as fuck nothing good comes from those. And their peacekeeping forces don’t seem to be worth a damn, either.
The Security Council probably does some good for the reasons you mention. The rest is utterly useless at best. Except maybe UNHCR.
Link
Sez the guy treating sugar like street heroin. That guy is fucking odious.
I must have missed all the people getting locked up for having sugar packets on them.
You’re right, there’s absolutely no connection between Bloomberg’s unqualified support of harsher treatment of drug dealers and his overarching, broad belief that what people put into their own bodies, be it heroin or sugar is the government’s business.
Two totally separate issues that don’t stem from Top Men thinking.
Just wait. One of these days we’ll be hearing about cooks being arrested for “possession of bacon with intent to distribute to others.”
Now that we know eating it raises the lifetime risk of colon cancer from 5% to 6%, we as a society must DO SOMETHING. Think of children!
could that have happened already with foie in california?
Did I say there was absolutely no connection between the reasoning behind criminalizing drugs and regulating the sale of sugary beverages? There is a lot of space in between absolutely no connection and two things being treated identically.
Wow, ex-mayor Bloomberg is even more actively evil than I imagined.
You don’t become a billionaire by behaving like a capitalist.
+1 stellar ejaculation
Isn’t Bloomberg against capital punishment? Does he want special exceptions for drug dealers who, at best, contribute to someone killing themselves?
I don’t know how American drug laws could get much more draconian besides executions, either. How long do they want to lock drug offenders up for? Life?
Islam is the handy dandy vice grip of sandy billionaires. Yea, I need that ‘c’ in there.
Islam is the religion of love and it is the most misunderstood religion on the face of modern planet, bitch!- thanks to the ape-whore Christians and Jews.
Fuck off, self, and die. Islam is a divineless and dispiriting hallucinogen embraced for its society-constricting strategies by masterful Arab elites who would never subscribe to the joyless and macabre mores writhing on the pages of Koran. Witness the golden playgrounds of the clever princes and their orgiastic lifestyles filtered through the blood of the countless. ALLAHU AKBAR!!! GO ISLAM!!!
Drugs rr bad, mmkay?
The U.N. is grandma’s place for totalitarians. The smell of baked goods and blind acceptance is sweet honey ladled into the dark minds of genocidal-governing maniacs and authoritarian fist-bumpers.
Didn’t the US give a bunch of money to the Taliban pre-911 because they were successfully reducing opium production?
They also sent a shipping container full of little boys.
I thought those were returned because their virginity could not be verified.
The US in 2006 or so was protecting the opium crop. Also see our protection of the opium growers during the Vietnam War.
What does that have to do with our pre-911 policy toward Afghanistan?
If Syria falls – so does Iran. According to the current Iranian regime.
The way Iran fights drugs raises the prices. And the UN is controlled by?????
That picture is a wet dream for …. (I leave it to your imagination – but I have a clue):
Those boys are hung.
“The office had even proposed a five-year aid package for Iran’s anti-drug efforts.”
Can’t cost much; rope is cheap.
+1 industrial hemp growing permit
Iran’s revolutionary guard faction is a known narco-trafficking crew.
So the UN is praising Iran for its successful prosecution of a turf war against rival drug gangs.
Imagine. My. Surprise.
Iran is an evil theocracy in government, but still much better than our ally, Saudi Arabia. And why does Nick send us to a column by the neocon Eli Lake? The drug punishment coverage is good, but Lake typically blames Iran for all the evil in Syria. He leaves out the Saudi-Qatar funding of the so called moderates. Maybe in the beginning the revolt against Assad was by secular humanists who loved civil liberties, and then again maybe the American Civil war was just about slavery. Judging by the fruits of the Arab Spring, a moderate is equivalent to the Muslim Brotherhood, not exactly number one on the civil liberty hit parade. Reason continues to flirt with neocon ideas-like Hey Nick-the Ukrainian coup by neo nazis and corrupt NGO’s was also a purely Jeffersonian uprising too, I guess .