FREEDOM'S JUST ANOTHER WORD

The mood has been subdued in lovely downtown Noho this week. Nothing of any import has happened so far and there's a lot in the inbox, so we're going to jump right into the drug war tonight.

The corporate component of this war popped up in all too many places today. From last week's issue of Colombia Week, a breakdown of the funds the US Senate appropriated to fight the 'drug war ' notes that half of a $600 million package of aid to the country hinges on US State Department mandated reforms in their internal policies.

The interesting part however was this.

Some $300 million of the aid is slated for drug crop eradication, drug flight interdiction, and military aid, including training by U.S. personnel and support of brigades protecting a pipeline that carries 100,000 barrels a day for Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum.

Note the military aid. It's not the first time I've heard about the interdiction efforts being concentrated in the area of that pipeline. Seems the paramilitary groups like to sabotage it occassionally. In a little reported provision, the funding doesn't stop there.

In addition to the aid focused on Colombia, the bill would also fund the Andean Counter-Drug Initiative at $697 million. The initiative funds institutional development and human rights protection in Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru.

...The bill proceeded to a conference committee for reconciliation with a version the House of Representatives passed in July. Both the Senate and House versions of the bill permit funding the fight against groups the State Department has labeled “terrorist.”

Funny we have a lot of corporate interest in mineral rights in that whole quadrant.

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In a related piece, the defeat of Uribe's austerity referendum (initiated in response to an IMF directive), and the subsequent election of local leftists has energized Columbia's labor movement.

But Uribe still appears determined to slash the government budget, as required under an International Monetary Fund loan agreement that his administration signed in January. He’s contemplating a refinancing of government debt, harsh cuts in social programs, a sales tax hike, and new taxes on pensions. The measures would disproportionately hurt the nation’s working class, already burdened by a flood of privatizations during Uribe’s first 15 months in office.

Union president Juan Carlos Galvis said, “We must keep organizing to channel this new awakening of social consciousness.”

But such organizing won’t be easy. At least 58 Colombian unionists have been murdered this year.

Despite the perils, Galvis remains confident. “The referendum’s failure signaled for the first time to the people that the government could not crush popular protest,” he said. “We know now that it’s possible to win.”

The people are winning all over the Americas. If they can do it there, we can do it here.

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NOTHING LEFT TO LOSE

Looking across the globe to the Middle East piece of this puzzle, Stephen Marshall posted an enlightening dispatch on Noami Klein's presentation at the Media Reform Conference recently held in Madison, Wisconsin.

Naomi distills the neo-con/multicorporate agenda to it's purest form. Her take on Iraq is much more articulate than mine.

I believe that the goal of this war was to bomb, into being, a new free trade zone. Precisely because of the enormous backlash against these economic policies by countries that have already adopted them. Capitalism functions like a drug addict. The drug is growth.

And if you believe, as I do, that that is actually the goal of the war: market expansion and growth... not just oil but water, roads, schools, hospitals, private jails, anything that can be turned into a commodity and sold, then you have to say: 'OK, if that's the goal, how's it going?'

It's going great.

It's not a mess. It's not a morass. It's not a quagmire. In fact, it's going so well that the Economist recently describe Iraq as a "capitalist dream." And the Financial Times described what Paul Bremer has managed to achieve in terms of economic reforms as "a wishlist for foreign investors." And he has done, in six months in Iraq, what it took three decades to achieve in Latin America. In a single day, on September 19, he passed a set of policies that literally usually take three decades to get.

...On September 19, Bremer introduced Order 39, which overturned Iraq's constitution. It allowed 100% foreign ownership of Iraqi businesses and it put 200 Iraqi state companies up for privatization, up for sale. And it also said that companies coming into Iraq can take 100 % of their profits out of the country. It also gave them a massive tax break. Bigger than anything Bush has been able to achieve. The top tax bracket in Iraq before September 19 was 45%, which is what it is in Canada. It's now a 15% flat tax. So this is an economic overhaul. It is shock therapy. It has already led to 70% unemployment, as you know. And we're not hearing about it. All we're hearing about is this strategic discussion from the military side. It's a distraction from the truth... from the fact that the reason they went into the country was to achieve this structural adjustment... to open it up.

This is what Iraqi freedom looks like.

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And while we're in the area, a quick look at the current conditions in Afghanistan does not paint a pretty picture for Iraq's future.

In the two years since the war in Afghanistan, opium production has soared 19-fold and become the major source of the world's heroin. Much of the profit will support warlords and the Taliban. And in Paktika and Zabul, two religiously conservative parts of Afghanistan, the number of children going to school has plummeted as poor security has closed nearly all schools there.

..An analyst in the U.S. intelligence community, who seeks to direct more attention to the way narco-trafficking is destabilizing the region, says that Afghanistan now accounts for 75 percent of the poppies grown for narcotics worldwide.

"The issue is not a high priority for the Bush administration," he said.

So if the Bush regime is so concerned about eradicating drugs why aren't they eliminating the source of 75% of the world's heroin supply? It's not like it would be hard to find. They've already bombed the entire country into rubble and the poppies are practically the only crops growing.

The answer is they don't really want to win this war folks, they just want to keep using your tax dollars to wage it.

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HOMELAND AUTHORITIES

Looking back within our own borders, the temptation of easy drug war money continues to seduce our police departments. I feel badly for the honest cops whose reputations become tainted by the betrayals of their co-workers, but with apologies to Howard, I think they have to be reported.

In New York, Narcotics officers are transferred on charges of overtime abuses.

Facing charges that they cheated the police department of thousands of dollars in overtime pay, 24 detectives and six sergeants have been transferred from the department's Brooklyn South narcotics unit.

...The 30 transferred officers reported between $45,000 to $50,000 in false overtime, O'Looney told The New York Times for the paper's Monday editions.

That would be your tax dollars being stolen in the name of the WODSU. They probably said they were doing surveillance on suspects.

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Meanwhile, here in New England, recently deemed by drug czar John Walters to be the new gateway of heroin into the US, a report rips DEA enforcement efforts.

Three federal agents assigned to fight the drug trade in this port city mishandled evidence, lied to their bosses and were among the least efficient in the country, according to a report obtained by a Boston newspaper.

...The agents have been involuntarily transferred to the Mexican border and could not be reached for comment.

Interesting how these guys are never charged with fraud like civilian embezzlers, they are merely removed to undesirable assignments.

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TELL IT LIKE IT IS

Last word goes to long time activist Mary Jane Borden who is inventing new language to frame this debate.

I'd like to introduce a new term into drug policy vernacular: chemical bigotry...the application of obstinate opinions, prejudices, and intolerance to those whose chemical profile appears one way versus those whose chemical profile appears another way.

Some might contend that chemical bigotry is justifiable because drugs themselves cause death and destruction. This might have a slight ring of truth if drug policies were evenly applied. But as a result of chemical bigotry, a substance like marijuana that is comparatively benign is banned while a substance like alcohol that is fairly dangerous is aggressively advertised. Further, since a regulated market approach to the distribution of what are now illegal drugs has never been tried, perhaps much of the death and destruction attributable to drugs actually finds its roots in drug prohibition. Bigotry will always try to prevent the introduction of new social policies.

The point is that we need to understand that what we really do in drug policy reform is fight bigotry. In doing so, we can develop better strategies and tactics to enable change. We may also find we have much in common with others who have fought in so many other ways to remove its shackles.

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