| Number 51 | October 22, 1999 |
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This Week:
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Greetings, Thanks to all who gave feedback on the Internet Service Provider problem that I mentioned last week. I'm working on it. This week the entire Nygaard Notes is about the nation of Colombia. Colombia is now the third-largest recipient of U.S. aid in the world (after Israel and Egypt) and, not coincidentally, is a human-rights nightmare. Tune in to this situation, if you haven't already. As citizens of a democracy, each of us has a responsibility to try to limit the damage that our foreign policy is visiting on the Colombian people. For those who read this in time, there will be a discussion and slide show on the subject at 9:30 tomorrow morning, Saturday October 23rd, at St. Martin's Table on the West Bank in Minneapolis. Entitled "Is Militarism the Only Solution? A Case-Study of Peaceful Resistance in Colombia," the talk is presented by the Resource Center of the Americas. Call 612-627-9445 for more information. Next week: Who is this Nygaard guy? And why is he telling me all this stuff? Nygaard |
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"Colombia has been the leading recipient of U.S. military support and training in the hemisphere in the 1990s, now increasing still further. The pretext is the drug war... The aid in fact goes to military forces that have compiled the worst human rights record in the hemisphere, and are closely linked to paramilitary terrorists and drug lords. Information about the matter is voluminous, and shocking, but little of it reaches the general public, who would be appalled if they knew." -- Noam Chomsky, writing in the Colombia Bulletin |
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Public radio had a story on October 13th about "the largest anti-drug operation in history," as it was called by U.S. officials. The big coordinated effort between the United States and 15 other countries has resulted in the arrests of almost 1,300 people in the past couple of weeks. The big bust was presented as a winning battle in the War on Drugs. The next day all of the major media followed suit, with headlines like "Leader of former Medellin cartel, 29 others arrested," "Drug Busts in Colombia, Caribbean," and "Agents Arrest 1,290 in Big Drug Bust." Reducing Drug Addiction? If you think that the "war on drugs" is about reducing the use of and addiction to drugs, which would not be an unreasonable thing to think, then you might be surprised when I claim that these operations might be expected to have the opposite effect. If I am right, then these stories should not be reported as "good news." Stick with me for a minute while I illustrate. Despite the fact that this week's arrests are only the latest in a long series of "major drug busts" conducted in our hemisphere, U.S. cocaine use is not declining. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse Research, the latest figures on the number of crack cocaine users "does not reflect any significant change since 1988." Likewise, the number of users of powder cocaine "has not changed significantly since 1992." (These figures are always suspect, since it's difficult to measure illegal activities, but these are the official figures.) Significantly, cocaine use is down noticeably since the mid-1980s, when the U.S.-supported "contras" in Nicaragua were using cocaine sales to the U.S. to help fund their war against the government of Nicaragua. But that's a different story. The important point here is that cocaine use has not gone down for many years, so we can't say that anything is decreasing the use of drugs. But could our efforts at reducing the supply actually be working to increase the use of drugs? Maybe. The Associated Press reported this week (in a tidbit that did not make it into the Star Trib or the NY Times) that one major effect of the raids would be to "drive up the price of cocaine by 15 percent." I doubt that this is true, but since this is the claim used to justify the operations, let's assume it is. Then let's think about it for a minute. The trade in illegal drugs is perhaps the closest approximation to a true "free market" that we have in the world today. No taxes, prices freely set by supply and demand, and so forth. What does market theory predict will occur when prices for drugs increase significantly? We can predict an increase in the sale (and therefore use) of drugs. Why? Higher profits increase the ability to evade law enforcement, as well increasing the capacity to use high-tech delivery tools (e.g., jets rather than prop planes), something that is already being seen. Increased profits also, of course, make drug-selling more attractive, and thus would be expected to bring new people into the business of selling drugs. In any market, an increase in profitability is expected to bring an increase in activity, and it usually does. Furthermore, drug addicts are addicts. They don't hold off on their purchases until their drug goes "on sale." They pay whatever the going price is at the moment they need a fix, as I saw clearly when I used to counsel drug addicts. The money? They get the money however they can, often through illegal means. So one might expect higher coke prices to lead to higher crime rates in the communities where the coke is sold. I have seen figures which indicate that the sale of illegal drugs may account for as much as one-third of the Gross National Product of Colombia. That may or may not be true, but it is certainly a significant part of the country's wealth. It also means that it is highly unlikely that any police effort is going to result in significant reductions in supply. It is simply too profitable. Why, then, are these costly and ineffective law enforcement operations reported so consistently as if they were "successes" in the War on Drugs? It seems that arrests themselves, absent any evidence of a reduction in drug use, are seen as "success." To check this out, I looked at the website of the Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, which is a part of the Office of National Drug Control Policy. Under Section V, "Program Accomplishments," there were listed 14 things. Not a single one of them even mentioned drug use or abuse. In this world, it is apparently possible to have success in "drug control," and still have constant or increasing levels of drug use. This is your tax dollars at work. If you listen to the news about Colombia uncritically, you can be forgiven for thinking that we are having some "success" there in the War on Drugs. What we really have is a situation where massive law-enforcement efforts are continually being carried out and are being greatly increased, with no evidence of success, even on their own terms. We might even be making the situation worse, if higher levels of crime and drug addiction are things we don't want. "This is nuts!" It may be tempting for some readers to stop here, throw up their hands and say, "This is nuts! Since none of this makes any sense, I think I will become alienated and apathetic right now." It's important to remember that the people shaping our policies are not crazy, nor are they stupid. In order to make sense of all of this murder and mayhem, you have to work to stay outside of "the box" created by the dominant media. That's part of what Nygaard Notes is all about. For more information on humane alternatives to the War on Drugs from a group that is focused on actually reducing the harm that comes from drug addiction, I recommend visiting the website of the Drug Policy Foundation at http://dpf.org/ You might consider becoming a member; I am. Or, when you get to their site, you could just read their very brief but very clear statement on the subject at hand by clicking on "DPF Opposes Increased Drug War Aid to Colombia." It is commonly believed that listening to or reading "the news" (especially Public Radio!) is a way to be "informed." The reporting on this story is a classic example of why almost the exact opposite can be true. For a broader look at the not-crazy U.S. policy toward Colombia, just read what comes below. |
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The United States is scheduled to send about $300 million to Colombia this year, up from just $22 million as recently as 1995, purportedly for use in the War on Drugs. U.S. drug czar Gen. Barry McCaffrey has asked that this amount be more than tripled next year, to $1 billion, which would mark a 4,000% increase in just five years. In the paragraphs above, I argued that the War on Drugs is not succeeding in reducing the use of drugs in this country. Therefore, unless you believe that our government is totally insane, which I do not believe, then you have to ask what our government is really up to in Colombia. I almost hate to mention the numbers involved, as they are so large as to run the risk of "numbing" the moral response of the reader. Nonetheless, it is important to point out that more than 30,000 people have been killed in Colombia over the past ten years - over 2,000 of them labor union activists - and more than 1 million people have been displaced from their homes. Anti-government guerrillas control an area of Colombia as big as Switzerland, and present a real threat to the interests of the transnational companies that would like to control the oil and gold reserves that are to be found beneath the surface of that country. In fact, it has been reported that transnationals are directly funding the activities of the murderous paramilitary squads that, along with the real military squads, are responsible for more than 85% of the human rights abuses being reported from that country. But the transnationals cannot and will not pay all the bills. That's where the U.S. taxpayer comes in. War on Drugs, War on Democracy As Noam Chomsky says in this week's Quote of the Week, the drug war is not really about drugs. Rather, it is an excuse to justify U.S. aid to yet another murderous and repressive government facing the threat of true democracy. "True democracy" in any country of the Western hemisphere has long been perceived as a threat by U.S. elites, as it raises the possibility of a country developing its economy in the interests of the majority of its people rather than in the our own interests. Since it is politically risky to state the true motivation so baldly, we need to create a bogeyman to justify our venomous intents. Colombia is ideal, as the highly-effective hybrid called "narcoterrorism" (drugs AND terror!) can be invoked to justify herculean efforts to quash popular attempts at democratization. If Colombia had an economy and foreign policy that was truly independent of the United States, would it affect our country very much? Probably not. Cuba's socialism doesn't seem to have plunged the U.S. into depression. The threat they would pose, however, is known as The Threat of a Good Example. The fear of U.S. elites has always been that some country in the hemisphere (now the world) will be successful at creating an economy that primarily serves its own people and that other countries will say, "Hey, we want to do that, too!" True democracy is thus seen as a contagion that may spread. Since the prosperity of the United States is based in no small part on the ability of big business to extract cheap resources, and increasingly labor, from the so-called Third World, it would be very serious if we had more than a couple of Cubas in the world. It might even mean that the average American - you and me - would have to modify our lifestyles in a downward direction. And who wants to be President when that happens?!? That's why so many democratically-elected governments in so many countries over the years have been subject to U.S. attempts at subversion or destruction. I'm talking about Chile in 1973, the Dominican Republic in 1965, Iran in 1953, and so many more that I don't want to list them all. As if to illustrate the role of the mass media in all of this, my search for stories on Colombia in the Star Tribune (Newspaper of the Twin Cities!) over the past year yielded only six stories that were primarily about Colombia, now the third-largest recipient of U.S. aid in the world. Were they about human rights violations against the population? About the dirty war? About the Colombian people's resistance to the forces of globalization? No. Five of them were about drugs, and one was about terrorism. Like Vietnam, Only More Complicated Every serious protest in the United States in recent years seems to get portrayed in the media as "sixties-style," and every crisis in the U.S. political scene is portrayed as either a "new Watergate" or a "new Vietnam." As we say in the street, What's up with that? This is not to say that history never repeats itself. Amnesty International points out that proposed U.S. policy toward Colombia "is the same policy that backed death squads in El Salvador in the 1980s." And it is the policy that started the war in Vietnam. The situation in Colombia looks to me to be a bit more complicated than Vietnam was. I don't see any Colombian Ho Chi Minh, nor do I see the clear road to democracy in Colombia in 1999 that there was in Vietnam in 1954. The guerillas in Colombia appear to be less united than was the Vietnamese resistance, and the presence of the cocaine economy makes it more difficult for U.S. citizens to see the political and economic bases of the 30-year-old civil conflict. The one thing that seems clear is that the efforts of the United States government are making life worse for the Colombian people, not better, and all in the name of the War on Drugs. If you don't want to go to the movie theater in 20 years to see the release of "Apocalypse Now: The Colombian Sequel," then you might want to consider making a contribution right now, in money or time, to the resistance against the current policy of our government in that country. The place to start is by looking at the website of the Colombia Support Network (membership is only $25). Find them at: http://www.igc.org/csn/index.html For more general information on this whole situation, I once again recommend the ZNet website at: http://www.zmag.org/ZNETTOPnoanimation.html A great, brief introductory article by John Pilger in the Guardian (London) can be found at: http://www.igc.org/csn/199910/pilger1019.html |