This bizarre article in the Washington Post seemed unaware of its own implications.
In fight against drugs, Cuba and U.S. on same team
Cuba is surrounded by countries used as cartel way stations. But it has distinguished itself as a tough place to traffic drugs — and also an unlikely behind-the-scenes partner with its decades-long rival, the United States.
While the U.S. and Cuban governments have squared off over politics and the American economic embargo for generations, they have also quietly cooperated on drug-enforcement issues […]
In the eyes of U.S. counternarcotics officials, many of America’s closest neighbors regularly receive failing grades for their efforts to stop the drug trade. Mexico, where 100,000 have died in drug-related violence over the past eight years, remains “a major transit and source country for illicit drugs destined for the United States,†according to a 2014 State Department report. In Jamaica, drug-related corruption is “entrenched†and “widespread,†while in Guatemala, “transnational drug trafficking organizations are able to move drugs, precursor chemicals and bulk cash with little difficulty,†the International Narcotics Control Strategy Report states.
But the same report offers rare praise for America’s longtime communist foe.
Wow. Apparently, all those people died in Mexico because they weren’t pure enough drug warriors like the U.S. and Cuba.
Cuba’s reputation now — of omnipresent police, strict punishment for drug crimes and low demand from users — contrasts sharply with its pre-revolution heyday. Before the Castros came to power, Havana’s nightclubs and casinos had the full range of illicit substances, and opium dens were a fixture of the city’s once-bustling Chinatown. Soon after taking over in 1959, Fidel Castro and his rebel army shut down the casinos, imposed draconian drug laws, and sent addicts and others to Marxist reeducation camps for hard labor. While American hippies grew their hair long and indulged in pot-fueled paeans to Che Guevara, the real communists in Cuba came to associate recreational drug use with ideological deviation and other political taboos.
So, what you’re saying is, the U.S. today, unlike the hippies of decades ago, is more akin to the real communists in Cuba.
“Cuba’s a police state, and I don’t believe the Cuban government wants to be a hub for drug smugglers,†said Barry McCaffrey, a retired general who served as the White House drug czar during the Clinton administration and is a former commander of the U.S. military’s Southern Command, which focuses on Latin America. “They saw it as a threat to their children, the work force, their economy, their government.â€
Again, wow.
Cuba is like us when it comes to the drug war, because they’re a police state.
The article is so unwittingly true.
Only in drug war wonderland can government officials celebrate their unified adherence to the policies of a police state.
“Check it out guys, we’ve got the same drug policy as that police state over there, isn’t that great! I wonder what else we have in common!”
Cuba is also keenly aware that if it allows drugs, the folks who have been trying to overthrow it would have an excuse to ostensibly “fight drugs”. Plus Cuba’s history as a place where the Mafia used it as a playground also creates an antipathy towards drug smuggling.
THE GREENING OF CUBA
http://endingcannabisprohibition.yuku.com/topic/493
Witness an entire nation transforming its agriculture from mechanized-petro-dependent to organic techniques. THE GREENING OF CUBA profiles Cuban farmers and scientists working to reinvent a sustainable agriculture, based on ecological principles and local knowledge rather than imported agricultural inputs. When trade relations with the socialist bloc collapsed in 1990, Cuba lost 80% of its pesticide and fertilizer imports and half its petroleum- the mainstays of its highly industrialized agriculture. Challenged with growing food for 11 million in the face of the continuing US. embargo, Cuba embarked on the largest conversion to organic farming ever attempted. Told in the voices of women and men – the campesinos, researchers, and organic gardeners – who are leading the organic agriculture movement, THE GREENING OF CUBA reminds us that entire nations can choose a healthier environment and still feed their people.
http://vimeo.com/57272128
The greening of Cuba: organic farming offers hope
https://www.greenleft.org.au/node/9913
Commercial and HEMP with THC Farming
http://havanajournal.com/forums/viewreply/3595/
Medical Treatment system in Cuba
Our government stooges are praising a repressive police state?
Next, they will be saying the Nazis were cool.
Protect & Serve (themselves!)
Barry McC was no stranger to advocating bloodthirsty drug policies, here and elsewhere around the world. Of course, what do you expect from the man responsible for this?
And then he gets hired on afterward as a DrugCzar. If anything ‘sent a message’ back then, it was the hiring of a man capable of ordering unnecessary mass murder to oversee the organization used to justify the occasional serial, police-initiated, drug policy-related murders of illicit drug consumers and unfortunate innocents caught in the crossfire…all authorized by the same government under which he committed mass murder earlier.
Does this give those who’ve just found Pete’s Couch an idea of how much the prohibs hate us? How much they might hate you?
Thanks for the link Kapt,
I heard years ago from Vets that x Czarbarry McCaffrey was involved or even ran the Opium Pipeline out of Vietnam. With returning Vets bringing back ounces of smack as an extra to the GI Bill. Seed money for many. Then Thailand with Sounder and the School of Assassins, then Iraq and Kuwait and probably a hand in Afghanistan, Mexico and no doubt Colombia. So the spooks and drug czars must be afraid cannabis will take away their business…
Also on the Same Team
https://www.facebook.com/222DdC/posts/10152810691457326?comment_id=10152812393712326&offset=0&total_comments=1
SUBSCRIBE TO THE WASHINGTON POST TODAY! “so unwittingly true”
Seriously it wouldn’t be the first time the DEA partnered with a dictatorship. The Corporation is looking to open up new markets.
Yet another journalist who is too lazy to write an article, so he just reproduces the handout from the justice dept. Piss poor wapo.
“Cuba’s a police state, and I don’t believe the Cuban government wants to be a hub for drug smugglers,†said Barry McCaffrey. “They saw it as a threat to their children, the work force, their economy, their government.â€
—————————–
Whoa, shit just got seriously weird.
When I lived in south Florida in the ’70’s I worked for a construction company owned by two brothers whose family fled Cuba when Castro took power. During Castro’s takeover they lost everything, but their business savvy served them well after they fled Cuba and set up residence and resumed their business in Miami. When I was hired to work for their company the lead foreman gave every new hire the same advice, “Never mention Cuba, do not bring up Cuban cigars or Cuban rum. Do not speak of Cuba or Castro in any way. If you do, you will be fired.” I got to know the two brothers who ran their parent’s company quite well (even though their pocket change was worth more than my car and everything else I owned). Though quite young when their family fled, they were well versed on what happened to their immediate family and other family members and friends as well.
If my exiled Cuban employers at the time had any idea that a quasi-US official would utter the words, “They [the Castro regime] saw [drugs] as a threat to their children, the work force, their economy, their government†as an obvious form of praise for said regime, they would transport themselves forward in time with the nail gun I was using, the cement mixers, various lengths of rebar and pay Barry a quiet visit.
I need to go buy some special duct tape, Barry McCaffrey just broke my internet.
“…the real communists in Cuba came to associate recreational drug use with ideological deviation and other political taboos.â€
Real capitalists in the United States associate recreational drug use with ideological deviation and other political taboos, as do the real theocrats of the world. Just about any place one finds social tyranny, police states, theocracies, kleptocracies, and so forth, one finds the harshest of laws targeting recreational drug use. It’s not something any society should be proud of.
Drug experiences compete with the power of capitalists, politicians, and theocrats because the very existence and prohibition of illicit substances exposes the ignorance, hypocrisy, and pathology of those in power. The powerful may fail to consider this circular dynamic, and instead see drugs as a devil—the penultimate scapegoat for all society’s ills. Society’s ills, however, can usually be traced to those in power. As long as an alleged drug menace exists, leaders will use this manufactured danger to remain in the dark while deflecting public opinion away from their own fraud and incompetence.
Sounds exactly like the rare praise for the Taliban just a month before 9/11.
http://www.ipsnews.net/2001/08/drugs-un-pays-rare-tribute-to-taliban-over-opium-ban/
Clearly we need more effective allies like Cuba, Iran, Malaysia, Singapore, and Saudi Arabia to fight the scourge of people getting high.
Oh gee, will people one day wake up and realize that government….all of them…are the real criminals. Will people realize they have been deceived? Hardly, but we gotta try and wake them.
governments do seem to harbor criminals frequently, usually at the top levels.