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| Start Trade War, Lose Drug War |
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Posted by CN Staff on May 24, 2002 at 08:18:17 PT By Paul Knox Source: Globe and Mail 
Anyone who thinks a pan-American free trade deal is in the bag ought to follow the current machinations in the U.S. Senate -- follow it as closely as the people I met last week in the heartland of conflict-ridden Colombia.I'd spent the day with Francisco Santos, vice-presidential candidate on the front-running ticket in this Sunday's election. We were in Tolima province, where they grow a lot of coffee and rice, and where they used to grow a lot of cotton. The Santos entourage was to stay the night at a guest house near a textile factory run by a man named Gustavo Bernal. Mr. Bernal asked some local businessmen, farmers and political types around for whiskey, anise-flavoured aguardiente and a chicken dinner. Since Mr. Santos stands to become the second-most powerful person in the Colombian government later this year, it was hardly surprising that our host also served up what can only be described as a pitch. The most impressive part was his up-to-the-minute knowledge of U.S. trade politics. This stuff is fairly heavy lifting, so please bear with me. After 11 years, a U.S. law called the Andean Trade Preferences Act expired last week. Overnight, businesses in the poorest part of South America lost tariff exemptions worth billions of dollars on products such as cut flowers, textiles and minerals. ATPA was originally designed to help farmers substitute legal crops for illegal opium poppies and cocoa leaf. But powerful U.S. senators say it's bleeding jobs from textile-producing states. That would make ATPA's renewal hard enough. Worse still, it is now tied to the much broader issue of so-called trade-promotion authority. This is the free hand President George W. Bush wants in negotiating major deals such as the free trade area of the Americas -- which optimists believe will be reached by 2005. The House of Representatives has passed a fast-track bill, but the Senate is balking. It is expected to vote this week on a trade bill that would renew the Andean concessions, but also allow senators to tinker with the FTAA and other major deals after they're negotiated. Mr. Bush has said he will not sign such a bill. So protectionism is alive and thriving. Canada and Europe aren't shy about it, of course. But it's the United States that's supposed to be the greatest apostle of free trade, and yet everything in Washington points in the opposite direction. Aside from the trade legislation, a farm bill approved this month by Mr. Bush was stuffed with new subsidies. Put it all together, and you can hardly blame people for asking what's going on. That's what Mr. Bernal's pitch was about. Mr. Santos and his presidential running mate, Alvaro Uribe, are proposing to inject significant subsidies into Colombia's coffee and cotton industries. The message he got at dinner was: Go for it. According to Mr. Bernal, even with the Andean exemptions in place, foreign competition has devastated Colombia's cotton industry. Production is just one-eighth of what it was in 1979. During the same period, illegal drug production has soared, providing employment to tens of thousands and a steady income to right-wing paramilitaries and left-wing guerrillas. Meanwhile, the United States is spending $1.3-billion (U.S.) to help Colombia and neighbouring countries fight the drug trade. Don't be surprised if Colombia's next government asks for more. And don't be surprised if 2005 comes and goes with the FTAA still chugging uphill, like the great big trade deal that couldn't. Source: Globe and Mail (Canada) Related Articles & Web Site: Colombia Drug War News Collateral Damage from Colombia's Drug War Growers Bear Brunt of Plan Colombia Home Comment Email Register Recent Comments Help |
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| Comment #3 posted by Lehder on May 25, 2002 at 06:16:53 PT |
| Presidential elections to be held in Colombia on Sunday will set the stage
for a sharp escalation of the US military intervention in the war-torn South
American country. Alvaro Uribe Velez, a right-wing former governor and the candidate favored by Washington, is projected to come at least within striking distance of winning more than half the ballots cast, thereby avoiding a run-off next month.... Uribe has not only urged an increase in military aid, but has said he would welcome the deployment of US combat troops on Colombian soil.... Together, Colombia and Venezuela have the capacity to supply the US with more oil than is now being pumped out of all the countries of the Persian Gulf combined. The major oil companies have been pressing Washington to escalate its intervention in the region to create a better climate for the exploitation of its vast potential reserves. The Colombian election and the growing US intervention are being watched warily by governments throughout the region. An intensification of the US-backed counterinsurgency campaign, it is widely expected, will spill over the borders into the neighboring countries of Brazil, Peru, Ecuador and Venezuela, triggering a continental crisis. http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/may2002/colo-m25.shtml It is really quite pointless to warn the government, as many people have, that its policies will ensnare us in another Vietnam. The government has more resources than you do and knows precisely what its aims are: destabilization of societies and democratic governments and exploitation of resources and people for the benefit of corporations and the wealthy elite, many of whom are barely literate. Modern weapons, media control and political sophistication assure that the condition of low intensity war can be maintained indefinitely by means of manned and drone air power and by arming and manipulating various rebel and criminal groups. The mistake in Vietnam of massive daily loss of American life and its televising will not be repeated as the war for global domination engulfs all the people of all the earth. WWIII has begun in earnest and it's too profitable to stop. Our twelve carrier air groups are invincible! Next stop: Hudson's Bay. [ Post Comment ] |
| Comment #2 posted by FoM on May 24, 2002 at 13:07:16 PT |
| The Week Online with DRCNet, Issue #238 -- May 24, 2002 A Publication of the Drug Reform Coordination Network "Raising Awareness of the Consequences of Drug Prohibition"
Phillip S. Smith, Editor, psmith@drcnet.org Subscribe: http://www.drcnet.org/signup.html TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Coalition for Higher Education Act Reform Joins with Members
of Congress at US Capitol to Call for Repeal of HEA Drug
Provision
2. British MPs Call for Massive Drug Policy Reform, But Reject
Legalization -- for Now
3. Incoming Dutch Government Threatens Coffee Shops
4. Budget Crunch: Drug War Fuels Mississippi Prison Binge, No
Money Left for Education
5. High School Drug Courts Spreading in West Virginia
6. Newsbrief: Marijuana Exile Steve Kubby Claims Refugee Status
in Canada
7. Newsbrief: British Cannabis Cafe Owner Freed
8. Newsbrief: North Carolina Drug Courts Face Ax Because of
Budget Woes
9. Newsbrief: New York City Cops in Paraphernalia Sweep, Big
Hoopla, Misdemeanor Arrests
10. Newsbrief: Seattle Marijuana Initiative Signature-Gathering
Now Underway
11. Newsbrief: Santa Cruz to Place Needle Disposal Boxes in
Public Restrooms
12. Errata: Different Kinds of Mushrooms
13. The Reformer's Calendar [ Post Comment ] |
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Comment #1 posted by kaptinemo on May 24, 2002 at 08:51:03 PT:
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| Antis keep making a simple mistake; they like to think they can secularize the illicit drug trade from 'legitimate' trade as they have secularized the public's perceptions about drugs, themselves. Such as in "drugs and alcohol"...even though it is demonstrably provable that alcohol is a drug, and a 'hard' one at that. But there's a problem here; the money gained from illicit drug trafficking in Colombia winds up buying legitimate goods and services. Goods and services in essentially impoverished areas. That the locals need to maintain themselves. (When the drug lord is the only stable employer you have, who do you think the campesinos will turn to? When the only 'alternative' is a government whose right-wing cat's-paws kill you for being a 'Marxist' for uttering a peep about your present wretched economic state?) Here in the US the RICO statutes have been largely ineffectual in affecting their intended targets, the local importers and distributors. (Remember the 13 tons of cocaine that was seized last year? The market prices on the Pacific Coast dropped.) The big boys are still in business. And they are still buying their imported goodies and propping up an essentially depressed economy...the same kind of goodies which local businessmen in Bogota are still stocking. Since banks all over the world would collapse if real enforcement of dirty laundering laws were enacted, the situation will only get worse. Trade cannot be secularized as the antis wish it would. Black markets are created by precisely that kind of dunderheaded 'thinking'. The antis have only themselves to blame for this situation... [ Post Comment ] |
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