All options on the table in Central America. No decisions, but good discussions….
Perez:
“We are talking about creating a legal framework to regulate the production, transit and consumption of drugs.” […]
“It’s important this is on the discussion table as an alternative to what we’ve been doing for 40 years without getting the desired results,”
A legal framework to regulate the production, transit and consumption of drugs. Can’t get clearer than that.
Oh, and I like this:
The president added that Central American leaders are considering requiring the United States, the biggest consumer of South American cocaine, to pay the region for drug raids.
“We’re talking about economic compensation for every seizure undertaken and also the destruction of marijuana and cocaine plantations,” said Perez, a 61-year-old conservative.
That’s marvelous!
Update:
Headline of the month. Guatemala Times:
The sooner these countries withdraw from the UN treaty the sooner the world can start healing the damage the war on drugs has done to our society…after the war crime trials are over,,
Would you happen to know how many countries would need to denounce for the Single Convention to be destroyed? I don’t know how many countries are signatories, but I think read somewhere that support would need to drop below 40 countries.
Soon our happy hearts will quiver with Justice for those who are no longer with us.
i smell coup
I thought of that, the US doesn’t have the resources to mount coups in that many countries, especially without anyone noticing their involvement.
I would think that they would also want their puppet ready to step in when the coup is complete,,but that may already be in place for all we know.
I am still waiting for budget hearings,,I want to hear the W&M comm approve the ONDCP budget from 16.5 billion too 25 billion while cutting funding to the countries that are gambling for more funds,,Joe already added 173 mill to the budget request for Guatemala,how much more will it be during the hearings.
We do coups in Central and South America all the time. There’s a long history of US and Corporate backed Coups de etat in Latin America.
While the headlines are inspiring, I cannot help but think that the Central/South American countries who claim to want a discussion about the end to the War on Drugs are simply negotiating for more money or military equipment from the U.S. Once they get it, the discussion ends and those same “leaders” go back to crushing their own people in order to maintain political control. Same as it ever was, Lucy never lets Charlie Brown kick the ball.
Lucy’s ball is punctured!
That is the thought I had as well.
“The president added that Central American leaders are considering requiring the United States, the biggest consumer of South American cocaine, to pay the region for drug raids.”
The problem with that piece of cynicism is that Uncle Sam is flat broke.
Duncan;
You nailed it, I am cynical.
Uncle Sam is never broke when there is something Uncle Sam wants to buy. He just prints/borrows more money, and sends the bill to our great-grandchildren.
This war won’t end because Uncle Sam runs out of money. It will end when Central/South American “leaders” reject his money and support (ie weapons) in exchange for hosting his morality wars.
Latino Dictators rejecting money/weapons/power? I don’t see that happening. Just like Lucy and the football, the end is always the same.
Sicarios incendian Lucy’s pelota y dejan narcomanta:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOOvrIOEA9I
I disagree, this war is already ending because Uncle Sam is beyond broke. In debt actually, really really in debt. So in debt that printing more money doesn’t help anymore because all it does is continue to destabilize the economy. For the first time ever our political leaders lack the ability to throw money at the problem and push the bill down the road. This has been a long time coming, Reagan locked us down this road on August 5th 1981 and the bill must finally be paid.
That is why these South American leaders are willing to stand up now. Do you think they would stand up if they feared a worse retribution then what they are suffering now under the current system? Of course not. They know the empire is crumbling and are moving to reclaim South America for themselves. This is the tester. Like when a cleaner tells you to spray a little on a part of the rug that’s unseen. 20 years ago if they would have sprayed the rug like this the U.S. would not have sent the V.P. down there to try to talk them out of it with a bribe. They would have done what they have done for years. Pay them off under the table while moving more troops into their countries. That didn’t happen this time because the U.S. can’t do it any more, all we could do was send a powerless drug warrior who happens to be the V.P. down with his change purse to beg them to reconsider and tell them not to spend that quarter all in one place.
It is similar to cannabis legalization in the states that are voting on it this year. Washington state has discovered they could make over half a billion dollars in one year if cannabis is legalized and regulated in the state. There is nothing the federal government can do to stop that. Once the state law enforcement stops helping the federal law enforcement the only thing the federal government has left to pressure them with is cutting funding but with over half a billion dollars in revenue the state wont even notice a reduction in funding and the federal government will lose their power over the state. Now just replace Washington state with any or all of South America. Actually it is even better then that because of the distance between the U.S. and South America increases all costs on the U.S. attempting to enforce this war with out local help.
Don’t buy into the empire’s propaganda. History has show us certain paths inevitably lead to certain ends and the end is nigh.
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Uncle can only get away with borrowing money to squander as long as there are willing lenders and recipients who think that the asset backing the currency isn’t worthless. There were a bunch of governments who used sea shells as currency for centuries. It worked fine until one particular person took a walk on a beach and said, “hey, wait a minute…”
Our money is backed by the full faith and credit of the United States of America. The only way to maintain the value of that is to manage the economy correctly, and Uncle Sam has fucked that up in the extreme. You might not understand just how bad the situation is. If the U.S. were a commercial corporation its creditors would have already forced that company into bankruptcy court for liquidation. At some point in time people are going to grasp that Uncle has turned into a spendthrift deadbeat. We’re now borrowing the money just to pay the interest on the debt in order to keep it current. If the Fed loses control of the cost of borrowing we’ll see our economy implode lickety split. Even Uncle can’t restrain the invisible hand forever. The piper will be along to collect his due. It’s only a question of how long we can bullshit the world. I submit that the Latin American discussion about legalization is an indication that Uncle is losing control and people are starting to realize that his assets consist of nothing more than a few carloads of IOUs. The fact that so few of our fellow Americans realize how bad the situation is says to me that there’s practically no hope of pulling our nuts out of the fire before the economy implodes. It’s only a matter of time.
People like to make the false claim that the government is “making money” from prohibition. In reality prohibition is leech sucking the blood out of the economy.
Yes indeedy. The only money left is what’s jingling in your pocket right now.
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All I have in my pocket are Euros, Pounds Sterling, and Canadian dollars. Well I suppose I have a representation of the rest of the world’s currencies in my foreign index funds but the one currency I don’t have any use for is the American dollar. I diversified our holdings beyond the checking account out of US$ almost 2 years ago.
UPI headline reports Pope condemns evil drug war,while propaganda pusher Rueters reports he condemns cartels and drugs,,you can certainly tell which news outlets are pushing ONDCP/USA policy just by scanning the headlines.
not sure if im confused or the headline writer at upi. seemed to me that the pope was taking the usual line of blaming the drug war exclusively on the cartels and the drugs not on the prihibitionists
What? I don’t believe it! Is that a set of balls developing on our southern horizon? Play it again, Sam.
Not balls. Huevos. You should know that.
I am sure if they’re angling for more money… we will have no part of that and probably insist we give too much already to not have any appreciable positive effect.
The message is clear, really — the US would want its money’s worth. Wherein it already insists that more must be done.
Wonderful. Make the U.S. legally and financially responsible for the consequences of its drug war in foreign nations.
Foreign drug war liabilities would undercut prohibition’s bottom line and make it a truly unprofitable enterprise for the federal government, both in terms of exporting tyranny and maintaining its international prestige. Without the official cooperation of Europe and Central and South America, the U.S. drug war is just a fart blowing in the wind.
Most crimes against humanity, such as prohibition, are ultimately challenged and eliminated on the international playing field. This has been true when considering tyrannies such as witch hunting, the inquisitions, slavery, anti-Semitism, genocides, fascism, and various other group-based atrocities committed against specific out-groups throughout history. All required international condemnation, and in some cases a war, to bring change to a specific locale.
A state initiated drug war revolt in foreign nations means we’ve entered the final stages of death for prohibition. From here on, prohibition’s crumbling and collapsing edifice will be like someone is playing a game of Angry Birds with the ONDCP/DEA and U.S. federal government as the targets.
I like it. I’m not so sure they’re angling for more money, first of all, there are the standard channels to get that funding. Those deals are made through diplomatic channels, and involve very specific requests (usually for military hardware like helicopters and training to use them, etc). Angling for these requests goes on in private visits, and in secret. It’s the threat of things like loosening drug laws or (more ordinarily) relaxing enforcement that is generally the driver in those negotiations. The options under discussion would end, not enhance enforcement dollars from the US. It may be, but it doesn’t fit that standard model of these negotiations. Why would you do it in public, when the threats work just fine behind closed doors?
I think they are hedging their bet,,will take more money for now but establishing a hammer to hold at every drug war budget meeting from now on.
They want the US government too underwrite their drug war expenses in the same manner the government underwrites the cartels existence.
The true litmus test will be when they start pulling out of the UN treaty as Bolivia has.
That might be true…but even if it is true of the current people in power they have changed the discussion and that changes everything. This is why it was political suicide to even mention considering legalization for so long. These yahoos might only be talking it, but eventually someone is going to actually do it, and they will be able to do so because these yahoos started talking about it.
“President Laura Chinchilla of Costa Rica knows what everybody should know: the US no longer has the funds to back any promises. That could have been the only reason for her to come to this meeting and to defy the US. Costa Rican Presidents, whether we like it or not, are the best political negotiators of the region. They are also considered to be the closest allies of the US in Central America.” (Emphasis mine – k.)
The paragraph might have read that the US cannot afford to inflate its’ money supply any further to the point of worthlessness. That’s why the CA and LA countries are not so quick to take Uncle’s moolah anymore, not when a yuan is worth more. And China has been very involved in establishing trade relations with the CA and SA countries…whereas Uncle’s sending only guns and bombs.
You don’t need to be Einstein or Hawking to see where this is leading. It’s a multi-polar world now, and Uncle’s not the only game in town, anymore.
I have not heard anymore about China’s effort to convert several SA & CA countries over too the yuan versus their present US dollar backed economy.
There was a reported 14 countries involved,,I read one article on it and haven’t seen another.
Clay, they don’t have to. As the dollar loses value, the Chinese are, as they usually do, biding their time until it becomes obvious the dollar is on the skids…which just about every major nation already knows.
The Chinese hope that the yuan will replace the dollar as the world’s oil reserve currency, and at this rate, it probably will in a couple years, if not sooner. The Chinese are entering into all manner of trade agreements with CA and SA nations for port building, infrastructure, etc., while Uncle seems only intent upon establishing military bases and exporting instability, using drugs as an excuse. Same old game, and this time the locals aren’t having any.
I hope it’s not out of the frying pan into the fire….some of the world’s most enthusiastic prohibitionists are the leaders of china, even making newt look liberal on drugs
Umm, they’re going to have to allow the yuan to trade freely before they can even have that fantasy.
Just read there was “no consensus reached”. The mice could not decide who had to put the bell on the cat.