Obama will play defense at Summit of Americas
CARTAGENA, Colombia (AP) -- Barack Obama will be on the defensive heading into this weekend's Summit of the Americas, with the U.S. stubbornly clinging to positions opposed by most Latin American and Caribbean leaders as its influence in the region wanes. The American president, who arrived in this steamy Caribbean port Friday afternoon, can expect even some of Washington's friendliest allies to protest U.S. insistence on excluding communist Cuba from the gathering.
Vigorous discussion among the 33 leaders is expected on drug legalization, which the Obama administration opposes. And Obama can expect to be in the minority in his opposition to Argentina's claim to the British-controlled Falkland Islands.
While Obama remains popular in Latin America, many of his positions are not.
Foreign ministers were wrangling behind closed doors Friday over the insistence by leftist countries that the summit's final declaration states unequivocally there be no more such gatherings without Cuba.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/L/LT_AMERICAS_SUMMIT?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2012-04-13-23-18-36
= new reply since forum marked as read
The column was a couple of days ago. He fudges around for most of the column, then, in the last line, basically says that it's inevitable.
So-o-o-o-o, this adds yet more heft to my theory that Big Pharma is now ready to leap into the herbal, recreational and addictive drugs market and that is why RIGHTWING presidents in LatAm are pushing for legalization (very visibly, public statements, etc.).
This has mystified me--especially Manuel Santos, rightwing president of Colombia, the biggest U.S. client state, and the illicit drug capitol of the world. I was amazed when he announced his support for legalization.
Santos was followed by Perez, the rightwing president of Guatemala. And both had been preceded by a commission of former presidents of Mexico (mostly right or centrist). I found this very odd because it has been the LEFTWING presidents of LatAm who have actually taken anti-U.S. "war on drugs" actions (for instance, Morales/Bolivia and Chavez/Venezuela throwing the DEA out of their countries; Morales legalizing the coca leaf (traditional Indigenous medicine, not cocaine); and Correa evicting the U.S. military base from Ecuador--a base whose ostensible purpose was illicit drug surveillance.)
Further, the corrupt, murderous, failed U.S. "war on drugs" is the source of billions and billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars for LatAm militaries and security forces. Why would rightwing presidents want to end this "war"?
There are several possible answers to that question, and it may be a mix of motives. For instance, Santos is engaged in a big internal fight, in Colombia's rightwing party, with Alvaro Uribe, who ran Colombia like a criminal network, filthy with drug trafficking and death squads. Santos might see legalizing drugs as a way of undercutting Uribe's power base. But my best guess is that the main force behind rightwing presidents calling for drug legalization is Big Pharma.
Far right (fascist) columnist George Will now chimes in. Same thing. The right is leading the charge on legalization. What would motivate them?
Colombia has been prepped for a Big Pharma takeover of the illegal drugs market (as well as for other kinds of U.S. "free trade for the rich"
by the brutal displacement of FIVE MILLION peasant farmers from their lands, with state terror paid for by you and me, among other preparations (including the murder of hundreds of trade unionists and other advocates of the poor). A lot of those peasants were growing a few coca plants to supplement poverty incomes, along with growing food. Now they are all poverty-stricken slum dwellers from whom U.S. and other corporations can pick and choose for slave labor. And who got their lands? The big, favored, protected drugs lords, among others (such as corporate palm oil producers, corporate Frankenfood producers, et al.)
My other theory--that the Bush Cartel was using the U.S. "war on drugs" to consolidate the cocaine trade into fewer hands--fits neatly with the theory that Big Pharma will now "launder" this trade into a "legit" business, with legalization.
If my theories are true, then it is quite likely that these rightwing presidents (especially Santos and Perez) had a U.S./Obama okay to run this politically dangerous idea "up the flagpole." It's interesting that Santos initially said--when asked publicly about legalization--that he would not propose it himself because he didn't want to be "crucified," but would support somebody else proposing it. (Then Perez did, and Santos strengthened his position on it.) Obama is even more vulnerable than Santos to "crucifixion" by the military- and prison-industrial complex. The U.S. "war on drugs" is perhaps an even bigger military/police-state boondoggle than outright war. It is, at the least, the fallback "milk cow" between U.S. wars. And it is also, for certain, the means used by the U.S. to spy on LatAm countries, to train, infiltrate and control their militaries and police forces and to undermine and destroy democracy, as well as being used by the Pentagon to expand its military bases in LatAm for projected war scenarios across the "global south."
It is no accident that the plane carrying the kidnapped president of Honduras, Mel Zelaya, out of his country stopped at the U.S. military base in Honduras for re-fueling. The U.S. military presence in LatAm gives the U.S. illegitimate power over LatAm sovereignty--to interfere, to control, to exploit and worse--and it is all in the interest of, a) U.S.-based transglobal corporations, and b) war profiteers.
If Big Pharma is pushing legalization, they have some very strong competing interests to defeat, to get the U.S./Obama or his successor to support legalization. Maybe Obama or his successor will satisfy some of those interests with a war on Iran. But it is difficult to see how they will satisfy them on the home front (--all those lucrative prisons, etc.), except for this: U.S. states/cities are bankrupt. Many U.S. police departments have had such severe cuts that their arrests have fallen 50%. The prisons are so crowded (something like SEVENTY-FIVE PERENT non-violent offenders, mostly drug-related) that a state like California is fobbing off its prisoners on the counties, which can't afford imprisonment either. The STUPIDITY of U.S. drug policy may hit home--is hitting home--at the state/local level.
Given the Bushwhack-induced Great Depression, cuts are inevitable, but where are they going to come from (besides out of services to the poor and worker-paid services like Medicare and Social Security)? U.S. presidents and our political establishment are certainly not going to give up their resource wars. They need the oil too badly and Exxon Mobil, Chevron, et al, basically run the U.S. So legalization could end up being a fight between the war profiteers and the "war on drugs" profiteers and it could be sold as a HUGE (and I mean HUGE) cost saving. (Legalization would put the U.S. in the black not even counting revenues from taxes--and a solvent U.S. can instigate more resource wars for its corporate rulers.)
I think that the thing to watch in Cartegena is not the U.S. pro-"war on drugs" bullshit for public consumption but rather any indicators that we can suss out that the U.S./Obama are not pushing back too hard--i.e., that they actually want (or some on the U.S. team want) legalization to go forward. Also, there are very likely lobbyists around such an important meeting. Keep an eye out for Big Pharma (or other potential beneficiaries, for instance, Monsanto, Chiquita, et al, and big Colombian landowners and Colombia's drug corps).
