My proposal...
'Something to think about: While the prohibition of drugs has been largely ineffective and costly (in money, lives, crime), regulated legalization -like that of Holland- can be a better solution to both addiction and crime. And living free from fear of crime should be treated as a basic need of society. In general, our policy should be that of "teaching them how fish," not of "giving them the fish." The final form of this system would be determined by the acceptance of the people themselves: Each and everyone of these proposals should be submitted to referendum. And, the basis of everything else: We should learn to live, not FROM, but WITH Nature. This would amount to COMING OUT OF THE JUNGLE.'
I touched up the original proposal a little bit. DRUGS is a major problem and part of the official hypocrisy, and countries like Colombia and Afghanistan are falling apart because of it. Meanwhile the gravest crimes happening in tolerant Amsterdam is...pickpocketing.
Likewise, LIVING FREE FROM FEAR OF CRIME should not be treated as an accident or something you buy when you get rich enough to live in a guarded luxury compound. We should go to the root causes of it. It's funny that now that Iraqis are "free and democratic," they live terrorized under the fear of crime.:confused:
"Anyone who owns a car faces the threat of carjacking, as bold bandits stage assaults in broad daylight, often killing their victims as an afterthought."
Crime Casts Fear in Iraq
Residents, like Hussein's former physician, who felt safe under the old regime are now being terrorized by killers, thieves and vandals.
By John Daniszewski
Los Angeles Times
Sunday 03 August 2003
BAGHDAD -- A man walked into Dr. Mohammed Alrawi's private clinic in an upscale part of the capital last Sunday moaning and complaining so loudly of kidney pain that he was ushered straight past waiting patients.
Inside, the "patient" immediately pulled out a pistol and shot the doctor through his right eye, killing him.
As the gunman dashed out, he passed Alrawi's wife, Bushra, who also practices medicine at the clinic. "I looked at his face. I will never forget that face," she recalled.
"I went to my husband. I saw him collapsed in his chair. I hugged him while his blood covered the floor."
Murder is stalking this city. In the aftermath of the U.S. campaign to oust Saddam Hussein, residents who have no memory of violent street crime during his iron-fisted rule are now being terrorized by killers - not to mention thieves and vandals - whose motives range from retribution to rapaciousness. The crime wave poses a challenge for the U.S.-led occupation as it grapples with a multitude of problems - electricity shortages, joblessness and a guerrilla campaign among them - that have destabilized this shattered country. Iraqi police have started to work, but ineffectually. They defer to the U.S. soldiers, who often have no clue about what is going on in the streets and alleys around them.
Alrawi, 52, was a former dean of Baghdad University, physician to Hussein and chairman of the Iraqi Physicians Syndicate. His family believes he is the latest victim of reprisal killings aimed at prominent members of the former Hussein government. Others think that is farfetched - maybe it was a personal vendetta of some sort, they say, or a botched robbery.
As hundreds of his relatives, friends and colleagues mourned Alrawi at his funeral Wednesday, trying to make sense of the crime, officials with the Iraqi police and the U.S.-led occupation authority said they had no information about the investigation. At the Yarmouk police station, the U.S. staff sergeant in charge struggled to remember the case. His Iraqi interpreter, trying to help, reminded him that Alrawi was a very important man.
Once-privileged families such as the Alrawis have been left vulnerable and confused in the wake of Hussein's fall. Sunni Muslims who enjoyed favor under the Baath Party, they now live in fear of retribution from poorer sectors.
But others are being targeted as well.
People who work with the U.S. authorities have been victims. Haifa Aziz Daoud, the manager of an electricity distribution office in Baghdad, was gunned down in June by someone who rang her doorbell at 7 a.m. She died in her daughter's arms. Seven newly graduated police recruits in the city of Ramadi were blown up by a bomb set in a bag of rice last month. And the U.S.-sponsored mayor in Haditha was shot to death with his son while driving around the western Iraqi city.
Anyone who owns a car faces the threat of carjacking, as bold bandits stage assaults in broad daylight, often killing their victims as an afterthought.
http://www.truthout....3/080403F.shtml
Democratic Union Coalition (DUC is out and MRRP 
