Drug rackets, gambling, and extortion as an added touch of corruption

...anything real about the vast, corrupt, murderous, failed U.S. "war on drugs." He has surely put his life in danger by doing so.

I think the 'management' of the trillion+ dollar illicit drug trade is aimed at directing this revenue stream to U.S. banksters, the Bush Cartel, the CiA and other beneficiaries, and that every U.S. "anti-drug" entity is involved in this mindboggling corruption--DEA, FBI, AFT, DOJ, the U.S. military, the lot. It's not just the notoriously secretive and well-heeled CIA. The Bush Junta expanded this corruption within and to every agency. (This may even have been one of the disputes between the Bush Junta and the CIA.)

And that's just the direct corruption. What this Mexican official is talking about is the indirect corruption--for instance, the use of the "war on drugs" by the Pentagon to expand its footprint in Latin America with new military bases (Honduras, Colombia) and the reconstituted U.S. 4th Fleet (the Caribbean) as a boondoggle for its private contractors and for war planning purposes; or the vast, trillion+ dollar "war on drugs" industry, crowded with private contractors, at home and abroad, including the "prison-industrial complex."

And it doesn't end there. The U.S. "war on drugs" has been used to murder thousands of trade unionists and other advocates of the poor in Colombia, as prep for U.S. "free trade for the rich"--a horrible phenomenon that we are now seeing, post-coup, in Honduras. In Colombia, this has also been accompanied by the brutal displacement of FIVE MILLION peasant farmers from their lands. Thus, billions of our tax dollars are serving Monsanto, Drummond Coal, Chiquita, Exxon Mobil, Chevron, U.S.-based transglobal retailers and other mega-corporations, not to mention the favored drug lords, by making land and resource theft easy and by creating slave labor conditions.

WE are funding these murders and this human displacement crisis. About half the murders of trade unionists in Colombia are committed by the U.S.-funded, U.S.-trained Colombian military, according to Amnesty International, and the other half are committed by their closely tied rightwing paramilitary death squads. The Colombian military was even following USAID/Pentagon-designed "pacification" plans to cleanse the countryside of peasant farmers. This is what our $7 BILLION in "war on drugs" money to Colombia has done.

And the cocaine just keeps on flowing.

So, there is direct cash flow corruption. There is direct and indirect war profiteering. There is the "free trade for the rich" game plan. And there may well be a component of that game plan that includes Big Pharma's long range plans to monopolize the trade in recreational and addictive drugs by legalizing them, once the "small players"--such as some of the peasant farmers in Colombia, or the medical marijuana retailers in California--are eliminated.

It is very curious that it is the rightwing, U.S.-friendly presidents of Colombia and Guatemala who are the most visible recent advocates of legalization. I think that this points to Big Pharma (and related Big Ag). I think that the Federal raids on medical marijuana retailers in California also point to Big Pharma. The Feds are eliminating the competition for them, before they make their legalization move here. (The presidents of Colombia and Guatemala are "running it up the flagpole" on their behalf, to get the momentum for legalization started.)

These thoughts derive from a lifetime of observing the corrosive impacts of the U.S. "war on drugs" on our own society and on others. This is not just a colossally failed program. It is not just a "pest management" operation and a "gravy train" for police-state employees. It is a completely upside down policy--a la Alice in Wonderland--that claims to be a "war on drugs" when it is, in truth, a "war FOR drugs."