Reply #27: Kerry supports Plan Colombia

[IndianaGreen]

The Left has had heartburn with Bill Clinton and his Plan Colombia since its inception.

Kerry supports Plan Colombia, a program which is really a counter-insurgency program under the guise of drug interdiction.

Kerry supports Plan Colombia, a program which has used a new version of Agent Orange on crops and livestock in Colombia resulting in increased birth defects miscarriages among humans and animals.

Kerry supports Plan Colombia, which nothing but another racist colonial war against the indigenous people of the region.

Kerry supports Plan Colombia, which supports the European blooded Colombian elites against the legitimate struggle for liberation of the peasants and workers of Colombia, who are also people of color.

POISON, PARTNERSHIPS AND OIL

Currently there are 3.6 million addicts in the US who do not have access to drug treatment; yet the percentage of the anti-drug budget that is used for treatment has fallen from 60% during the Nixon era to 18% today. A widely-cited study by the RAND corporation has found that treatment is 23 times more effective than eradication and 11 times more effective than interdiction in reducing drug use. So why are we spending over a billion dollars to fight a losing battle in Colombia rather than on making real progress with treatment at home?

Probably because in politics the drive for power and profits tend to override common sense, and because the US involvement in Colombia isn't really about drugs at all. After all, the corporations producing chemical and genetically-modified biological herbicides (as discussed in part one of this special update) aren't the only ones who have lobbied in favor of increased funding for (and are profiting from) US involvement in Colombia. Starting in 1996, a group of corporations formed the US-Colombia Business Partnership in order to promote their financial interests in Colombia. The partnership --made up of several multi-national corporations, including BP Amoco, Colgate-Palmolive, the Occidental Petroleum Corporation, the Enron Corporation, and others-- has been lobbying Congress and pushing Clinton's $1.3 billion aid package since its inception.

So while Occidental's Vice President for Public Affairs is complaining that the drug trade in Colombia is "certainly disruptive of any normal business relationship", Occidental is just one of several oil companies that has been employing drug-funded paramilitary groups to forcibly remove Colombia's indigenous populations from potentially oil-rich lands. The paramilitaries have also been relied upon to combat guerrilla forces who --in an ongoing effort to expel foreign investors from Colombia and to re-nationalize Colombia's natural resources-- have been bombing oil pipelines.

http://www.stopplancolombia.nl/economische%20belangen/e...