Soldiers stand next to a detainee and seized packages of marijuana in Tijuana, northern Mexico. Photograph: Rodrigo Abd/AP

The Mexican president, Felipe Calderón, said today he would consider a debate on legalising drugs, as his government announced that more than 28,000 people have been killed in drug violence since he launched a crackdown against cartels in 2006.

The director of country’s intelligence agency, Guillermo Valdes, also said the authorities had confiscated about 84,000 weapons and seized $411m (£258m) in US currency and $26m worth in pesos.

Valdes released the statistics during a meeting with Calderón and representatives of business and civic groups, where attendees explored ways to improve Mexico‘s anti-drug strategy and called on the government to open a debate on legalisation.

Calderón said he has taken note of the idea of legally regulating drugs in the past. “It’s a fundamental debate in which I think, first of all, you must allow a democratic plurality [of opinions],” he said. “You have to analyse carefully the pros and cons and the key arguments on both sides.”

Three former presidents – César Gaviria of Colombia, Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico and Fernando Cardoso of Brazil – urged Latin American countries last year to consider legalizing marijuana to undermine a major source of income for drug cartels. Mexico’s congress has also debated the issue.

But Calderón has long said he is opposed to the idea, and his office issued a statement hours after the meeting saying that while he was open to debate on the issue, he remains “against the legalisation of drugs”.

The latest debate on legalisation was proposed by the historian and writer Héctor Aguilar Camín, who said: “I’m not talking just about marijuana … rather all drugs in general.”

The most recent official toll of Mexico’s drug war dead came in mid-June, when the attorney general said 24,800 had died. Valdes did not specify a time frame for the new statistics.

The government does not regularly break down murder statistics, but leading newspapers who have kept their own counts say last month was the deadliest yet under Calderón: according to the daily Milenio, 1,234 people were killed in July. The Mexican government says most victims were involved in the drug trade.

Some delegates at the meeting criticised the government for lacking consistent statistics on the drug war and an effective way to communicate its successes. They also said the government needs to do more to combat the financial arm of organised crime.

“There’s no systematic policy for investigating or seizing the assets of organised crime,” said José Luis Piñeiro, a security expert at Mexico’s Autonomous Metropolitan University, “nor a system of locating the properties of organised crime”.

[Via: Guardian]

One would think that America is experiencing Boom Times with the way the government is throwing around money lately.  The recent announcement that a flotilla of warships and troops will be sent to Costa Rica would ordinarily be laughable for its wastefulness, but with America experiencing an unemployment rate north of 20% and the median duration of unemployment at the highest in the last 50 years, this should be no laughing matter.

• Costa Rica is a democratic republic with a very strong system of Constitutional checks and balances.
• Costa Rica does not have a military; it was abolished in 1948.
• Recent president, Oscar Arias, was a Nobel Peace Prize winner in 1987.
• Costa Rica consistently ranks as one of the happiest places on Earth according to many polls, including the first ever “happiness poll” conducted by Gallup, where it was determined to be #1 in The Americas.

Therefore, the U.S. Empire builders could use their political and economic might alone to subjugate these neo-colonies to a very profitable neoliberal agenda. This agenda included allowing U.S. corporations easy access to pillage these nations’ public sectors through privatization, letting multi-national corporations overrun these nations’ local markets and farms through the elimination of trade barriers, and increasing the exploitation of their workers and the devastation of their natural resources by tossing out national labor and environmental standards. Because of the profits enjoyed by a few as a result of these measures, they carried the day, though they, in turn, created a simmering spirit of rebellion in the semi-colonies’ peasantry and workers that would inevitably find expression.

Via: Activist Post

With the number of medical marijuana patients expanding dramatically in the Big Sky State, with storefront operations springing up around the state, and with at least one group of medical marijuana advocates/entrepreneurs touring the state in a medical marijuana caravan complete with pot smoke-filled vans and doctors issuing instant recommendations via web cam, opposition is increasing to the way Montana’s medical marijuana law is playing out.

Sign of the times

Medical Marijuana Vendor

In 2004, 62% of Montana voters approved a medical marijuana ballot initiative. The number of registered patients and caregivers remained relatively low until last year, when the Obama administration announced that it would not prosecute medical marijuana users and providers in states where it is legal. At the beginning of last year, the number of registered medical marijuana cardholders was about 3,000. Now it is closing in on 15,000. And alongside the increase in registered patients has been a boom in “dispensaries,” or caregiver storefront operations.

While growing concern is evident across the state, it has burned red hot in Billings, a city of about 100,000 people on I-90 in southeastern Montana, where Western conservatism is strong. There, things have turned ugly, with fire bomb attacks on two medical marijuana businesses a month ago as the city council approved a moratorium on new medical marijuana business licenses. Accompanying those attacks was graffiti painted across windows: “Not in our town,” it said.

“That fire bombing was just terrorism,” said Mike Meno, communications director for the Marijuana Policy Project, which bankrolled the 2004 initiative. “There is no other word for it. Local activists are telling us that people opposed to medical marijuana think it is something you can still dispute, that it’s not even legal. This kind of thing is leading both sides to sort of step back and try to pass some strong regulations so people understand these are law-abiding operations.”

And just last week, a group calling itself Safe Communities, Safe Kids emerged in a controversial fashion as children coming home from the last day of school in some Billings schools carried with them flyers containing its anti-medical marijuana message — although not its name. The school board said it shouldn’t have happened.

Now, Safe Communities, Safe Kids is engaged in a quixotic quest to place an initiative to repeal the Montana Medical Marijuana Act on the November ballot. Success is extremely unlikely — the group now has one week to collect 24,000 signatures — but the effort highlights the deep antipathy developing toward medical marijuana in various quarters of the state.

The legislature is one of those quarters, and lawmakers are busily drafting a variety of measures aimed at reining in what they view as a medical marijuana program out of control. Yesterday, Gov. Bryan Schweitzer (D) told reporters he agreed that the program needed “a legislative fix” and that he was open to working with legislators in the new session later this year. … Continue Reading

Congressman Ron Paul is the most conservative, grandfatherly man to ever be admired by America’s marijuana enthusiasts. On Friday night’s episode of HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, he reminded those who may have been suffering an impaired short-term memory at that late hour why, exactly, they should like him.

Speaking live from Clute, Texas, the libertarian-leaning Republican did what few other members of Congress will and openly called for the United States’ War on Drugs to be abolished.

“What about when FDR came to office in ’33,” asked Maher. “One of the first things he did was repeal prohibition. He said we can’t afford this anymore. Well, we have prohibition in this country. … When he was making radical changes he said look, we’re serious now. We’re going to make serious changes and people like liquor.”

“Well, in this country, people like pot,” said Maher to a wave of cheers and applause. “If we ended that prohibition, that would be a giant pooling of money.”

“I don’t like pot,” said the congressman. “But I hate the drug war, so I would repeal all of prohibition. But, I wouldn’t even bother taxing it. People have the right in a free country to make important decisions on their own lives. If they want to make mistakes, they can. They just can’t come crawling to the government to get bailed out or taken care of if they get sick.

“I believe in freedom of choice in all that we do, as long as the individual never hurts anybody else. So that means I would get rid of all the federal laws. I would dispose with the drug war. We’re spending tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars on this, then we march into places like California, override state law, arrest sick people and put them in prison.”

“It makes no sense whatsoever,” he insisted.

“Amen, stoner,” joked Maher.

This video is from HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, broadcast Feb. 20, 2009.

GARMSER, Afghanistan — The Marines of Bravo Company’s 1st Platoon sleep beside a grove of poppies. Troops in the 2nd Platoon playfully swat at the heavy opium bulbs while walking through the fields. Afghan laborers scraping the plant’s gooey resin smile and wave.

Last week, the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit moved into southern Helmand province, the world’s largest opium poppy-growing region, and now find themselves surrounded by green fields of the illegal plants that produce the main ingredient of heroin.

The Taliban, whose fighters are exchanging daily fire with the Marines in Garmser, derives up to $100 million a year from the poppy harvest by taxing farmers and charging safe passage fees — money that will buy weapons for use against U.S., NATO and Afghan troops.

Yet the Marines are not destroying the plants. In fact, they are reassuring villagers the poppies won’t be touched. American commanders say the Marines would only alienate people and drive them to take up arms if they eliminated the impoverished Afghans’ only source of income.

Many Marines in the field are scratching their heads over the situation.

”It’s kind of weird. We’re coming over here to fight the Taliban. We see this. We know it’s bad. But at the same time we know it’s the only way locals can make money,” said 1st Lt. Adam Lynch, 27, of Barnstable, Mass.

The Marines’ battalion commander, Lt. Col. Anthony Henderson, said in an interview Tuesday that the poppy crop ”will come and go” and that his troops can’t focus on it when Taliban fighters around Garmser are ”terrorizing the people.”

”I think by focusing on the Taliban, the poppies will go away,” said Henderson, a 41-year-old from Washington, D.C. He said once the militant fighters are forced out, the Afghan government can move in and offer alternatives.

An expert on Afghanistan’s drug trade, Barnett Rubin, complained that the Marines are being put in such a situation by a ”one-dimensional” military policy that fails to integrate political and economic considerations into long-range planning.

”All we hear is, not enough troops, send more troops,” said Rubin, a professor at New York University. ”Then you send in troops with no capacity for assistance, no capacity for development, no capacity for aid, no capacity for governance.”

Most of the 33,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan operate in the east, where the poppy problem is not as great. But the 2,400-strong 24th Marines, have taken the field in this southern growing region during harvest season.

In the poppy fields 100 feet from the 2nd Platoon’s headquarters, three Afghan brothers scraped opium resin over the weekend. The youngest, 23-year-old Sardar, said his family would earn little money from the harvest.

”We receive money from the shopkeepers, then they will sell it,” said Sardar, who was afraid to give his last name. ”We don’t have enough money to buy flour for our families. The smugglers make the money,” added Sardar, who worked alongside his 11-year-old son just 20 yards from a Marine guard post, its guns pointed across the field.

Afghanistan supplies some 93 percent of the world’s opium used to make heroin, and the Taliban militants earn up to $100 million from the drug trade, the United Nations estimates. The export value of this harvest was $4 billion — more than a third of the country’s combined gross domestic product.

Though they aren’t eradicating poppies, the Marines presence could still have a positive effect. Henderson said the drug supply lines have been disrupted at a crucial point in the harvest. And Marine commanders are debating staying in Garmser longer than originally planned.

Second Lt. Mark Greenlief, 24, a Monmouth, Ill., native who commands the 2nd Platoon, said he originally wanted to make a helicopter landing zone in Sardar’s field. ”But as you can see that would ruin their poppy field, and we didn’t want to ruin their livelihood.”

Sardar ”basically said, ‘This is my livelihood, I have to do what I can to protect that,”’ said Greenlief. ”I told him we’re not here to eradicate.”

The Taliban told Garmser residents that the Marines were moving in to eradicate, hoping to encourage the villagers to rise up against the Americans, said 2nd Lt. Brandon Barrett, 25, of Marion, Ind., commander of the 1st Platoon.

In the next field over from Sardar’s, Khan Mohammad, an Afghan born in Helmand province who lives in Pakistan and came to work the fields, said he makes only $2 a day. He said the work is dangerous now that Taliban militants are shooting at the U.S. positions.

”We’re stuck in the middle,” he said. ”If we go over there those guys will fire at us. If we come here, we’re in danger, too, but we have to work,” said the 54-year-old Mohammad, who supports a family of 10.

An even older laborer, his back bent by years of work, came over and told the small gathering of Afghans, Marines and journalists that the laborers had to get back to work ”or the boss will get mad at us.”

Staff Sgt. Jeremy Stover, whose platoon is sleeping beside a poppy crop planted in the interior courtyard of a mud-walled compound, said the Marines’ mission is to get rid of the ”bad guys,” and ”the locals aren’t the bad guys.”

”Poppy fields in Afghanistan are the cornfields of Ohio,” said Stover, 28, of Marion, Ohio. ”When we got here they were asking us if it’s OK to harvest poppy and we said, ‘Yeah, just don’t use an AK-47.”’