Beyond Supply and Demand: Obama’s Drug Wars in Latin America

[Derechos]

In its first year, the Obama administration has embraced and even extended its predecessors’ militaristic counter-narcotics policies in the Americas. In doing so, it has also adopted the basic tenets and priorities that have shaped U.S. drug control policies for decades. Among the most prominent examples are the administration’s decision to deploy U.S. military personnel to Colombian bases, the decertification of Bolivia and Venezuela as having “failed demonstrably” in upholding counternarcotics agreements, the continued funding for Plan Colombia (an estimated $672 million in 2009), and Obama’s expansion of the Merida Initiative, the “regional security partnership” brokered by the Bush administration with Mexico in October 2007.1 Under Obama’s watch, funding for the Mexican initiative almost doubled in 2009 to $830 million, making it the largest U.S. foreign aid program.2

All of this unfolded even as the director of National Drug Control Policy, R. Gil Kerlikowske, suggested on various occasions that the new administration was making a historic shift on drug policy. In October, for example, Kerlikowske told the Association of Chiefs of Police that “it’s become increasingly clear that the metaphor and philosophy of a ‘War on Drugs’ is flawed. . . . . it’s time to adopt a different approach.”3 This echoed sentiments he expressed in June, when he emphasized the need to move away from “divisive ‘drug war’ rhetoric” as part of a broader U.S.-led effort “to reduce the demand for drugs which fuels crime and violence around the world.”4

The Obama administration has made some gestures in this direction, most significantly making it a low priority for federal law enforcement to go after state-authorized medical marijuana retailers and suggesting a new orientation toward prevention and treatment. But to genuinely change the philosophy animating the so-called War on Drugs, it is essential to understand and question the international political and economic foundations of U.S. drug policy. These much-neglected foundations continue to fuel violence, repression, and economic coercion both within and beyond the United States’ borders.

https://nacla.org/node/6429

[Peace Patriot]

1. 2,000 bodies found in a recent mass grave in La Macarena, Colombia. The U.S. "war on drugs"

is a U.S. war on the poor.

The La Macarena massacre (includes a description of, and links to docs about, U.S. ops in La Macarena)
http://www.cipcol.org/?p=1303

The UK military connection
http://www.tribunemagazine.co.uk/2010/02/04/silence-on-british-army-link-to-colombian-mass-grave/

[protocol rv]

2. Agitprop 101

I researched this story, and there's a certain lack of clarity regarding it. The Nuevo Herald refers to a claim by the town mayor at La Macarena, who says there could be up to 2000 bodies in a common grave in the town cemetery. It also says the Colombian military claims they are FARC bodies. The story seems to have been picked up and inflated to a certainty by blogs and other internet media, but using Google I wasn't able to find anything from any source with a solid account - it's always "claims" and "could be".

The Soviets developed a technique, called Agitprop, which used a story seeded in a small newspaper in country x (whose editors were usually bribed), making a claim (usually something attacking the USA), then they would chain link the story moving it up the line until it was picked up by Pravda (which of course would claim it was just quoting such and such source from country x).

The US copied this practice, and it reached a very high level of sophistication during the Bush administration. Dr Abram Shulsky, a graduate of the University of Chicago, wrote that in intelligence warfare "truth is not the goal". He worked in the infamous "Office of Special Plans" at the Pentagon, set up by Douglas Feith and Paul Wolfowitz to fabricate lies which would be used by the USA to justify the invasion of Iraq. I am posting a link discussing Dr Shulsky here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abram_Shulsky

and here's a discussion about the Office of Special Plans

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_special_plans

The OSP inner workings were revealed by an insider who "came out of the cold" Karen Kiatkowski.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Kwiatkowski

If the readers are interested, it's also possible to follow the thread to see how the group of people working within the OSP, the key lie manufacturing operation to move the US to invade Iraq, have close ties to Israeli intelligence. For example they included Larry Franklin, a Pentagon employee who eventually was indicted as an Israeli spy, for passing documents to Israel lobby agents who wanted to instigate a war between the USA and Iran (this of course is an Israeli agitprop operation still ongoing, because the Israelis and their Israel lobby allies in the USA maneuver the country to start wars on Israel's behalf).

I bring up the OSP as an example of the use of Agitprop because it has been so well documented. While I'm not claiming the Macarena case is an agitprop operation, it seems to have evolved as an informal agitprop cause - similar to the one we've seen here regarding the Chevron case in Ecuador. Another observation: Several years ago, while doing research on the way government and media lie, I read Dr Shulsky's doctorate thesis at the University of Chicago - the man has a PhD on how to lie properly. One theme he brings up is that agitprop is more effective if it's based on a partial truth.

Therefore I am sure that, if there's a thorough investigation, the Macarena site will indeed include bodies of innocent people. However, how many bodies and which fraction are FARC killed in combat versus innocent people, will have to remain in doubt. Macarena could turn out to be like the "giant" mass graves Clinton and Blair claimed existed in Kosovo prior to the start of the US led bombing campaign on 24 march 1999 - this was a false claim the US nor Britain were able to prove. Below a provide a list

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_war_crimes#Kosovo_War_1998-1999

Please observe this list includes only one incident PRIOR to the US bombing, which precipitated a Serbian reaction as Kosovo entered a period of civil war. This means the argument made by Clinton and Blair, that Serbian forces were carrying out mass murder (used to justify the bombing which in turn precipitated a war on the ground), was a lie.

Macarena could turn out to be true, like the Katyn massacre.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre

The Katyn site was first attributed to the Nazis by the Soviets, but subsequent investigations show the massacre was carried out by the Soviets when they invaded Poland at the onset of the Second World War. They murdered and buried over 20 thousand Polish citizens, then tried to cover it up, but they failed, the corpses had been buried fully clothed, with documents showing they were alive when the Soviets invaded Poland, and came from areas which the Soviets controlled.

[Peace Patriot]

3. Protocol rv, your racism against the Indigenous has discredited you. Other DUers should know...

...in Comment #36, here...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=405x30994

Your comments about the "rainforest Chernobly" in Ecuador--the Chevron-Texaco toxic oil spill the size of Rhode Island, which has destroyed fisheries, rivers and streams and the living of 30,000 Indigenous people in the Amazon forest--and your racist remark, that the charges against Chevron should be disregarded because they were "presented by an Indian," taint all your other comments on Latin American issues. You are an oil corporation apologist. And your remarks are so ignorant, uninformed and so like the crap put out by Chevron's 12 P.R. firms--which they hired to discredit the Indigenous who filed suit against them for damages and cleanup--that your views have no credibility whatsoever.

In fact, I advise other DUers to use my Rule No. 1 from the Bush Junta as a guide to determining the truth of your statements: To wit, whatever you assert, the opposite is the truth.

Thus, we can surmise that your elaborate, garbled, and mindboggingly twisted, concoction of "Soviet agitprop," Rumsfeld's ""Office of Special Plans," and Israeli intelligence, to try to throw doubt on this massacre, is a load of crap--and, indeed, it is as big a load of crap as you have ever peddled at DU--and we can also surmise that, since you question this massacre, the massacre has particular importance, politically, to the U.S., the CIA and the Pentagon. I have guessed that it was possibly "turkey shoot" practice for Afghanistan. My suspicions are reinforced by your bullshit.

In the thread I cited above, you stated "there was no rainforest Chernobyl in Ecuador." I then cited dozens of both 'mainstream' and alternative sources on the huge toxic Chevron-Texaco oil spill in Ecuador, which has been referred to, time and again, in the press as "the rainforest Chernobyl." You have not even acknowledged that the oil spill occurred, let alone that the spill covers an area the size of Rhode Island and has damaged the health and livelihood of 30,000 Indigenous people who depend on the Amazon rainforest for fresh water, fisheries and a subsistence living.

I repeat: You are an oil corporation apologist. You will say anything in their defense, no matter how untrue. And, when push came to shove, in the discussion about the "rainforest Chernobyl" in Ecuador, you said that we should disregard evidence because it was presented by "an Indian."

The basic psychological problem of racists is that they cannot face reality. They cannot believe that someone from what they consider a "lesser race" or "subhuman group" can be as intelligent and as skilled, or more intelligence and more skilled, than they themselves, of their "superior" race. They not only deny that "all men are created equal"; they deny the evidence of their own eyes and their own rational minds, that some members of what they consider a "lesser race" or "subhuman group" are in fact superior to them in intelligence and/or skill.

And this psychological problem of unreason and fake, puffed up superiority, is very like corporate P.R., which tries to get us to believe the opposite of what is true about their products and their motives and which often uses a fake, puffed up sense of superiority--the notion that if you possess such and such a product, you are superior to everyone else--to peddle their toxic, earth-killing crap.

It does not surprise me to find a racist defending Chevron-Texaco--or trying to make a massacre of the poor seem untrue. And it is quire appalling to me to witness an example of such a subservient, confused mind.