after 40yrs, washington is quietly giving up on a futile battle that has spread corruption & destroyed thousands of lives from independent: After 40 years of defeat and failure, America's "war on drugs" is being buried in the same fashion as it was born – amid bloodshed, confusion, corruption and scandal. US agents are being pulled from South America; Washington is putting its narcotics policy under review, and a newly confident region is no longer prepared to swallow its fatal Prohibition error. Indeed, after the expenditure of billions of dollars and the violent deaths of tens of thousands of people, a suitable epitaph for America's longest "war" may well be the plan, in Bolivia, for every family to be given the right to grow coca in its own backyard.
The "war", declared unilaterally throughout the world by Richard Nixon in 1969, is expiring as its strategists start discarding plans that have proved futile over four decades: they are preparing to withdraw their agents from narcotics battlefields from Colombia to Afghanistan and beginning to coach them in the art of trumpeting victory and melting away into anonymous defeat. Not surprisingly, the new strategy is being gingerly aired in the media of the US establishment, from The Wall Street Journal to the Miami Herald.
Prospects in the new decade are thus opening up for vast amounts of useless government expenditure being reassigned to the treatment of addicts instead of their capture and imprisonment. And, no less important, the ever-expanding balloon of corruption that the "war" has brought to heads of government, armies and police forces wherever it has been waged may slowly start to deflate.
italians occupy site of proposed US military base in vicenza from global research: Opposition to what would be a major new hub for the U.S. military in Europe is not new. Protest marches have filled Vicenza's streets. The Italian Prime Minister has lost his job. But now construction has neared, and protesters have occupied the site to prevent it. See background here. This morning around 10 a.m. the movement opposing the new U.S. base in Vicenza, Italy, entered and occupied the site. The police were caught completely off guard and the activists were able to cut the fence and gates and occupy the area. Once the police arrived, they were planning to forcibly remove the protesters. However, the protesters are occupying an area that was the airport Dal Molin, which is technically under control of the Italian civilian aviation authority, ENAC, who has said the protest is legitimate. So far the police have backed off. Tonight there will be a public assembly followed by a dinner and concert. Monday, Feb 2, had been announced by the movement as the start of a week of initiative to protest the demolition work that is being carried out in preparation for the construction of the base, but it looks like the activists got off to an early start!
doctors spooked by israel's mystery weapon from danger room: Critics continue to press the case that Israel committed "war crimes" in its war with Hamas, because of the civilian casualties in Gaza. Ironically, many of these wounds may have been caused by a weapon designed to reduce collateral damage. Not that the Israelis admit they have the thing. We first reported on Dense Inert Metal Explosive (DIME) munitions in 2006... There are a large number of reports from Gaza that suggest this type of weapon has been used, and, unfortunately, caused civilian deaths. There are reports and pictures of victims peppered with small particles, and descriptions which are consistent with very localized blast... Erik Fosse, a Norwegian doctor working in Gaza says that the weapon "causes the tissue to be torn from the flesh. It looks very different [from a shrapnel injury]. I have seen and treated a lot of different injuries for the last 30 years in different war zones, and this looks completely different." According to Fosse and his colleague Mads Gilbert, the weapon typically amputates or tears apart lower limbs and patients often do not survive. It's no more illegal than normal blast-and-shrapnel weapons, but it is a mystery.
iceland to be assimilated into the eu from guardian: Iceland will be put on a fast track to joining the European Union to rescue the small Arctic state from financial collapse amid rising expectations that it will apply for membership within months, senior policy-makers in Brussels and Reykjavik have told the Guardian. The European commission is preparing itself for a membership bid, depending on the outcome of a snap general election expected in May. An application would be viewed very favourably in Brussels and the negotiations, which normally take many years, would be fast-forwarded to make Iceland the EU's 29th member in record time, probably in 2011.
chinese state media goes global from asia times: Even as the People's Liberation Army (PLA) is projecting hard power across the four corners of the earth, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is mapping out a multi-pronged strategy to publicize globally the apparent viability of the "China model". The administration of President Hu Jintao is spending around 45 billion yuan (US$6.58 billion) to boost what party insiders call "overseas propaganda" (waixuan gongzuo). Prominent state media including CCTV and Xinhua news agency will vastly enhance programs and news feeds in different languages for Western and Asian audiences, and an English news channel modeled on al-Jazeera is set to let the world get the Chinese take on issues and events ranging from politics and finance to culture and religion.
dea quits bolivia on morales' order from upi: The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has removed all its agents from Bolivia, complying with orders by President Evo Morales, officials said. The DEA began pulling agents out several weeks ago and the last agents left Thursday, the Los Angeles Times reported. The development comes even as Bolivian officials say coca cultivation and cocaine processing are growing. Morales ordered the DEA out in November, more than three decades after the DEA began working there. He expelled U.S. Ambassador Philip Goldberg last year and the Bush administration has decertified Bolivia's anti-drug campaign. Citing senior law enforcement officials, the Times reported this is the first time the DEA has been ordered to pull its entire operation out of a country. Officials said DEA personnel would be redeployed to bordering countries, where they could monitor developments in Bolivia.
from afp: The United States on Friday rejected as "patently absurd" charges by Bolivian President Evo Morales that the US government is encouraging drug-trafficking in Bolivia.
"The charges that have been made are just patently absurd," State Department deputy spokesman Robert Wood told the daily press briefing in Washington. "We reject them categorically."
Wood said the Bolivian government will only hurt its own people.
"The United States has had good cooperation with the Bolivian government over 35 years with regard to counter-narcotics cooperation... Should the Bolivian government decide to sever its working relationship with us with regard to counter-narcotics, it's going to impact the Bolivian people... And we're going to continue to look for ways to do what we can to counter the narcotics in the region," he said.
Morales, a staunch opponent of the Washington government, said the staff from the US agency had three months to prepare to leave the country, because "the DEA did not respect the police, or even the (Bolivian) armed forces."
"The worst thing is, it did not fight drug trafficking; It encouraged it," the Bolivian leader said, adding that he had "quite a bit of evidence" backing up his charges.
Presidential Minister Juan Ramon Quintana presented a series of documents and press clippings at a news conference, which he described as "object data" that had influenced Morales' decision to suspend DEA activities last week.
Quintana said Morales was ready to present the evidence to incoming US president Barack Obama "to prove the illegality, abuse and arrogance of the DEA in Bolivia."
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from independent: After 40 years of defeat and failure, America's "war on drugs" is being buried in the same fashion as it was born – amid bloodshed, confusion, corruption and scandal. US agents are being pulled from South America; Washington is putting its narcotics policy under review, and a newly confident region is no longer prepared to swallow its fatal Prohibition error. Indeed, after the expenditure of billions of dollars and the violent deaths of tens of thousands of people, a suitable epitaph for America's longest "war" may well be the plan, in Bolivia, for every family to be given the right to grow coca in its own backyard.
