Fox didn't mince words:Former Mexico leader's message at UH: Legalize drugs, build bridges.

[Judi Lynn]

Fox didn't mince words
Former Mexico leader's message at UH: Legalize drugs, build bridges.
Copyright 2011, HOUSTON CHRONICLE
May 10, 2011, 9:46PM

Vicente Fox would never be accused of being shy.

The former president of Mexico regularly speaks his mind. Indeed, Fox has been scolded by some in his country for breaking with tradition and speaking out on controversial topics following his six-year term in the presidency, which ended in 2006. Ex-presidents are supposed to stay out of things.

Over the years, Fox has been a frequent visitor to Houston, where his outspoken views are greeted with respect and interest. His latest visit here, to give a speech at the University of Houston Central Campus last week, was no exception.

Fox used the occasion to make new headlines. He called for legalization of drugs as a remedy for the drug-related violence that has beset Mexico for several years. Since 2005, the carnage has claimed more than 34,000 lives.

He makes a point. The question of legalization is never far removed from serious discussion of solutions to the deadly crisis. It is, after all, the huge American appetite for currently illegal drugs that enriches the cartel leaders.

More:
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/7559237.html

[xchrom]

1. indeed.

'It is, after all, the huge American appetite for currently illegal drugs that enriches the cartel leaders.'

[Katya Mullethov]

2. Prohibitions

" How do they fuckin' work ? "

[oneshooter]

3. As a general rule they never do. n/t

[Peace Patriot]

4. Best news I've heard in eons, that a corpo-fascist 'news' rag would be fair to this idea--

legalising all drugs--and that a major "neo-liberal" (the rich get richer), Vicente Fox, would promulgate it. The editorial is ultimately patronizing--like a headmaster lecturing a bright student, son of a billionaire, who said something favorable, say, about Cuba. ('Now, now, Rodney, do you really want to share your inheritance with the maids and butlers?')

---

"We take issue with the former president's assertion that Mexico is simply caught in the middle in the drug war — a victim of its location. We don't believe mere geography absolves Mexico of responsibility for the chaos brought by the drug cartels. There is clear evidence of corruption that has allowed the drug lords to function with something approaching impunity in many areas.

"As with most matters concerning the U.S. and Mexico, the way forward lies in a commitment to close cooperation. We see welcome evidence of this in Mexico's willingness to allow the use of U.S. predator drones to track the comings and goings of the ring leaders." --from the OP (my emphasis)

---

Houston Chronicle: Legalisation is all well and good, as long as our war profiteers can continue war profiteering. (Pat-pat on the head. 'Now, now, Rodney...'.)

Still, it's a breakthrough for SANITY. And it's interesting and encouraging that this is coming from Latin America, and it's not just Fox. A committee of former presidents of Mexico recommended legalising marijuana, not long ago, and re-thinking the entire corrupt, failed, murderous U.S. "war on drugs" (they didn't put it quite that way but general legalisation is where they are heading). Evo Morales in Bolivia legalised the coca leaf (but not cocaine) and threw the DEA and the U.S. ambassador out of Bolivia for colluding with murderous white separatists (who were being funded/organized out of the U.S./Bushwhack embassy). Rafael Correa in Ecuador bristled at a U.S. embassy attache's arrogance at trying to appoint the head of Ecuador's anti-drug force--another indication of the corrupt and dangerous USES of the U.S. "war on drugs" (to infiltrate and plant agents in Latin America's police and military forces; Correa threw the attache out of Ecuador, but nevertheless last year elements in the police force rioted and nearly killed Correa in a coup attempt).

All over Latin America, leaders and voters are realizing what a wretched policy the U.S. "war on drugs" is, from many angles. They don't want U.S. boots on the ground in their countries. Ecuador threw the U.S. military base out; Paraguay refused U.S. troops; and the entire region reacted with alarm at the secretly negotiated U.S./Colombia military agreement to add at least seven MORE U.S. military bases in Colombia and the Colombian Supreme Court declared the agreement illegal.

In fact, Colombia is the prime example for what's WRONG with the U.S. "war on drugs": not only does the cocaine just keep on flowing, not only is the country now overrun with drug lords, not only has the Colombian government itself been run as a criminal enterprise (mafioso Alvaro Uribe in alliance with the Bush Junta), but the Colombian military--funded with $7 BILLION of our tax dollars--has been slaughtering thousands of trade unionists, human rights workers, teachers, community activists, political leftists, journalists, peasant farmers and others, and has driven 5 MILLION peasant farmers from their lands, which were then given to the big, protected drug lords, to transglobal corporations and to rightwing cronies of the mafia don running the country. The U.S. "war on drugs" created massive, endemic corruption at the top.

What I find interesting about Fox's position is that he is a "neo-liberal" yet opposes the "war on drugs." The "war on drugs" is, among other things, a means of prepping a country for U.S. "free trade for the rich." For instance, now that the fascists in Colombia have decapitated the grass roots community leadership--and terrorized the trade unions and the peasants--all on our "dime"--Obama is picking up the U.S./Colombia "free trade" agreement where the Bush Junta left off and is going to present it to this fascist, Diebolded Congress. The prep is murder and mayhem; the payoff is "free trade for the rich." It was Bill Clinton who originated "Plan Colombia" to soften Colombia up for "free trade." The Bushwhacks pushed the political cleansing to the hilt. Now Obama provides the pay-off to U.S. (transglobal) corporations--Drummond Coal, Monsanto, Chiquita, Exxon Mobil, U.S.-based retailers like the Gap--et al: a ready-made slave labor force, vast tracks of land cleansed of 5 million pesky small organic farmers and Indigenous people, fortressed urban enclaves and tourist spots for the rich, decimated leftist opposition. Our corporate/war profiteer rulers ideal "democracy."

So why doesn't Vicente Fox "get it"? Did he find Jesus or what?

In talking about legalisation of all drugs--and by implication ending the U.S. "war on drugs"--he has ended up on the same side as the leftist leaders who have been swept into office on the leftist democracy tide throughout the region--Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Uruguay, Paraguay, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala (and Honduras, until the U.S. supported rightwing coup in 2009, where new U.S. military bases on being built, as we speak). What these leaders have in common with rightwing/"neo-liberal" leaders like Fox, and Calderon, is a devotion to Latin American sovereignty or the need at least to appear to be devoted to it. Calderon, for instance, back in March 2006, publicly lectured Bush Jr. on the sovereignty of Latin American countries, using Venezuela as his example. (I was astonished.) He also insisted that the "Plan Merida" billions be in Mexican control--didn't want to U.S. boots on the ground in Mexico or at least not too visibly.

Now, re-read the bit about U.S. drones being used in Mexico. This is a very important issue to the Houston Chronicle (typical corporate/war profiteer rag)--that the U.S. be able to violate Mexican sovereignty and the rights of its citizens in this way, and perhaps, above all, that Mexico cooperate in demonstrating the usefulness of the very lucrative (to war profiteers) U.S. drone aircraft.

The issue of sovereignty is where the left and the right come together in Latin America. This is why Latin America is virtually united (except for a few U.S. client states) on NOT permitting Honduras back into the OAS (due to U.S.-supported overthrow of the elected president and installation of a rightwing government with a fraudulent election). This is why ALL Latin American countries just formed CELAC, that anti-OAS, which does NOT have the U.S. or its corporate lackey, Canada, as members. What does all this unity have at its core? Large-scale, coordinated resistance to U.S. domination--of which there can be no better example than the U.S. "war on drugs" in Latin America.

Also, the leftist democracies in South America have done very well for themselves by UNITING against U.S. corporate dictates and bullying and "Wall Street"-World Bank-IMF-WTO policies. They landed on their feet in this Bushwhack-induced Depression--by sticking together, by pursuing economic/political integration, south-south trade, social justice and peace. Unity is good for the people of Latin America.

Central America/ the Caribbean is beginning to take note of what a raw deal they have been dealt in their Pentagon "circle the wagons" area, with the U.S. military everywhere and NAFTA and CAFTA favoring U.S. corporate interests and doing nothing for most people--making things worse for most people. That is what Mel Zelaya said, not long before the U.S. trained and funded Honduran military shot up his house, dragged him out of bed and put him on airplane at gunpoint--a plane that stopped at the U.S. air base in Soto Cano, Honduras, for refueling--and threw him out of the country: NAFTA/CAFTA were doing nothing for most Hondurans, so he joined ALBA, the Venezuela-Cuba organized barter trade group, which WAS helping to stem poverty in Honduras.

Add to this the U.S. funded carnage in Mexico and Colombia, and the triumph of the cocaine trade (possibly the purpose of the Bush Junta/Bush Cartel), and you have even Vicente Fox crying foul and having to endure a Houston Chronicle lecture on cooperation.

We may be looking at a U.S. corporate interests vs. U.S. war profiteer interests divide. Funny, how the U.S. has tried so hard to "divide and conquer" Latin America--and yet what may have occurred is a blowback "divide and conquer" in the U.S. imperium. The "war on drugs" has been the war profiteers' backup gravy train to the oil wars. Within the U.S. it is a "prison-industrial" complex boondoggle. BILLIONS and BILLIONS and BILLIONS of our tax dollars have been wasted on the "war on drugs" and all of its attendant police/prison/"justice" and military looters of the public coffers. Outside of the U.S., it causes murder and mayhem wherever it goes. It has been used in numerous ways to offend Latin American countries. It has also enabled Pentagon planning for Oil War IV (Venezuela).

But, now, the more the U.S. aggresses against leftist democracies in Latin America, the more does Latin America unite against the U.S. And the interests of transglobal corporations--Monsanto, Chiquita, Drummond Coal, Exxon Mobil, and various U.S. outsourcers of jobs and plunderers of other peoples' resources--may be seeing a downside to the U.S. "war on drugs" murder, mayhem and arrogance. Brazil, Venezuela, Bolivia and others are trading with China, with African countries, with Japan, with Iran, with Russia, with each other. They are going their own way. They have created a truly competitive global marketplace for their resources and products.

Although U.S.-tied transglobals and banksters don't want to operate in a competitive marketplace, they have little choice any more, in South America anyway and that trend is moving north. Their only other choice is war--to enforce their advantage. But we're seeing the limits and the great downsides of that in Iraq and Libya, for instance, and certainly in the "pipeline" country, Afghanistan. They should have figured that out, way back during Vietnam. Even a massive war machine can lose if its targets are motivated by independence and sovereignty. The U.S. "war on drugs" is one arm of that military octopus--and it is starting to offend peoples' desire for independence and sovereignty, in a very big way in Latin America--to the detriment of U.S. corporate vs. U.S. war profiteer interests. War gets to a point where it is no longer good for business--except for war profiteers.

So we can see where the Houston Chronicle is coming from--trying to attend to the interests of the war profiteers and their latest toy, drones, but torn by something--crediting legalisation of drugs as a viewpoint. What are they torn by? What is Vicente Fox torn by? I think it's that the non-war profiteer industries and billionaires and banksters have a different interest now, than when the "war on drugs" started--and that is getting back into markets that have been made difficult for them, by U.S. warmongering of every kind. The U.S. wars on Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya have been very unpopular in Latin America, along with the growing resistance to the U.S. "war on drugs."

What this means in practical terms is, for instance, Venezuela and Brazil LIMITING corporate profits from their oil and insisting that a good portion of the profits benefit social programs. Corporations--however big and powerful they think they are--are being forced to deal with national governments, who are backing each other up (as Brazil has done on all the U.S. and oil corps efforts to destroy Venezuela's democracy). These are the new rules--created by leftist victories in Latin American elections (which tend to be far, FAR more honest and transparent than our own). And the U.S. "war on drugs" is just too blunt an instrument to change these political dynamics in favor of U.S. corporations.

Could this be what is behind Vicente Fox "getting religion" on legalising drugs? The U.S. "war on drugs" has become counter-productive to other corporate interests?