Coca grower appointed drug chief

[Tafari]

Coca grower appointed drug chief


Evo Morales, the Bolivian president, has appointed a coca grower to oversee his country's efforts to combat drug trafficking.

During a trip to the heart of Bolivia's coca-growing region, Morales announced the appointment of Felipe Caceres, a co-founder of his Movement Toward Socialism party, to the job.

"A coca farmer is going to be in charge of the fight against drugs," Morales said, wearing a hat weaved of coca leaves and drawing loud applause from the assembled crowds, many
of them coca farmers.

In recent years, the head of Bolivia's anti-drug efforts has worked closely with Washington, which spends about $150 million a year on coca-eradication programmes in the country.

But Morales, who took office last Sunday, first rose to political prominence as the leader of the country's coca farmers, and led protests against US-backed eradication efforts.

He said the struggle to preserve the legal growing of the plant was deeply tied to his political party, known popularly by its initials, MAS. "MAS was born from the coca leaf," he said. "We will never be separated."

The cultivation and sale of small amounts of coca is legal in Bolivia but the United States says that additional production of the plant - the key ingredient of cocaine - eventually ends up on illegal drug markets.

Herbal teas

Bolivian law allows 30,000 acres of legal coca cultivation. The plant is prized by indigenous farmers for traditional medicinal uses and herbal teas.

Indians in Bolivia chew coca as a mild stimulant to ward off hunger and altitude sickness, and Morales has said he wants to increase production of the leaf for use in medicines, toothpaste and soft drinks.

Morales, who sums up his stance on fighting drugs as "No to zero coca, but yes to zero cocaine", argues that the aggressiveness of the US campaign has stimulated illegal drug production.

Sunday 29 January 2006
Aljazeera
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/8CC837EA-7224-40B8-9D92-A00F8F473F41.htm

http://www.thc-ministry.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5941

[Torkel]

_________________
Miller vs U.S. (230 F 2nd 486,489): "The claim and exercise of a Constitutional right cannot be converted into a crime."

Miranda vs Arizona (384 U.S. 436, 125): "Where rights secured by the Constitution are involved, there can be no rule-making or legislation which would abrogate them."

HAGANS vs LAVINE (415 US 533 N-3,note 5): "Once JURISDICTION is challenged it must be proven by the Plaintiff."

[Torkel]

_________________
Miller vs U.S. (230 F 2nd 486,489): "The claim and exercise of a Constitutional right cannot be converted into a crime."

Miranda vs Arizona (384 U.S. 436, 125): "Where rights secured by the Constitution are involved, there can be no rule-making or legislation which would abrogate them."

HAGANS vs LAVINE (415 US 533 N-3,note 5): "Once JURISDICTION is challenged it must be proven by the Plaintiff."

[Don Quixote]

i can tell you one thing for certain :-

the manufacture , transport and sale of cocaine in Bolivia just ended.

when Snr.Felipe Caceres says he is going to end the refining of coca leaves into cocaine in Bolivia , he means it.

looks like the CIA will have to use Columbian cocaine to fund its illeagal 'black ops' from now on.

President Morales is a good man.he is genuinly a 'man of the people'.
i hope he does some good for his people before he is 'removed' by the
corporations that own us and our alleged governments.

good luck President Morales.i hope you make it brother.

--------------------------------------------------------------

who are the most powerful entities in your country ?

thats right ! the corporations.

--

PEACE.

JUSTICE

AND FREEDOM

FOR ALL THE PEOPLE OF THE 'AMERICAS'

.

[Pepper]

http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2006/668/668p17.htm
BOLIVIA: A well of hypocrisy

George Monbiot

Civilisation has a new enemy. He is a former coca grower called Evo Morales, who is currently the president of Bolivia. On May 15 he stood before the European parliament to explain why he had sent troops to regain control of his country’s gas and oil fields. Bolivia’s resources, he says, have been “looted by foreign companies”, and he is reclaiming them for the benefit of his people.

The week before he told the summit of Latin American and European leaders in Vienna that the corporations that have been extracting the country’s fossil fuels would not be compensated for these seizures.

You can probably guess how this has gone down. British PM Tony Blair urged him to use his power responsibly, which is like Liberal Democrat Mark Oaten lecturing the Pope on sexual continence. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice accused him of “demagoguery”. The Economist announced that Bolivia was “moving backwards”. The Times, in a marvellously haughty leader, called Morales “petulant”, “xenophobic” and “capricious” and labelled his seizure of the gas fields “a gesture as childish as it is eye-catching”.

Never mind that the privatisation of Bolivia’s gas and oil in the 1990s was almost certainly illegal, as it took place without the consent of Congress. Never mind that — until now — Bolivia’s natural wealth has only impoverished its people. Never mind that Morales had promised to regain national control of Bolivia’s natural resources before he became president, and that the policy has massive support among Bolivians. It can’t be long before US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld calls him the new Hitler and Bush makes another speech about freedom and democracy being threatened by freedom and democracy.

This huffing and puffing is dressed up as concern for the people of Bolivia. The Financial Times fretted about the potential for “mismanagement and corruption”. The Economist warned that while the government “may get richer, its people are likely to grow even poorer”. The Times lamented that Morales had “set back Bolivia’s development by ten years or so ... the most vulnerable groups will find that an economic lifeline is soon removed from their reach.” All this is humbug.

Four days before Evo Morales seized the gas fields on May 1 an even bigger expropriation took place in an even poorer country: the African republic of Chad. When the Chadian government reasserted control over its oil revenues, not only did it ensure that an intended lifeline for the poor really was removed from their reach, but it also brought the World Bank’s claims to be using oil as a social welfare program crashing down in flames. So how did all those bold critics of Evo Morales respond? They didn’t. The whole hypocritical horde of them looked the other way.

The World Bank decided to fund Chad’s massive oil scheme in 2000, after extracting a promise from the government of Idriss Deby — which has a terrible human rights record — that the profits would be used for the benefit of the country’s people. Deby’s administration passed a law allocating 85% of the government’s oil revenues to education, health and development and placing 10% of them “in trust for future generations”. This, the bank said, amounted to “an unprecedented system of safeguards to ensure that these revenues would be used to finance development in Chad”.

Without the World Bank, the project could not have gone ahead. It was asked to participate by Exxon, the leading partner in the project, to provide insurance against political risk. The bank’s different lending arms stumped up a total of US$333 million, and the European Investment Bank threw in another $120 million. The oil companies (Exxon, Petronas and Chevron) started drilling 300 wells in the south of the country, and building a pipeline to a port in Cameroon, which opened in 2003.

Environmentalists predicted that the pipeline would damage the rainforests of Cameroon and displace the indigenous people who lived there; that the oil companies would consume much of Chad’s scarce water and that an influx of oil workers would be accompanied by an influx of AIDS. They also argued that subsidising oil companies in the name of social welfare was a radical reinterpretation of the bank’s mandate.

As long ago as 1997, the Environmental Defense Fund warned that the government of Chad would not keep its promises to use the money for alleviating poverty. In 1999, researchers from Harvard law school examined the law the government had passed, and predicted that the authorities “have little intention of allowing it to affect local practice”.

In 2000, the oil companies gave the government of Chad a “signing bonus” of $4.5 million, which it immediately spent on arms. Then, at the beginning of 2006, it simply tore up the law it had passed in 1998. It redefined the development budget to include security, seized the fund set aside for future generations, and diverted 30% of the total revenues into “general spending”, which, in Chad, is another term for guns.

The World Bank, embarrassed by the fulfilment of all the predictions its critics had made, froze the revenues the government had deposited in London and suspended the remainder of its loans. The Chadian government responded by warning that it would simply shut down the oil wells. The corporations ran to daddy (the US government) and, on April 27, the World Bank caved in. Its new agreement with Chad entitles Deby to pretty well everything he has already taken.

The World Bank’s attempts to save face are almost funny. Last year it said that the scheme was “a pioneering and collaborative effort ... to demonstrate that large-scale crude oil projects can significantly improve prospects for sustainable long-term development”. In other words, it was a model for oil-producing countries to follow. Now it tells us that the project in Chad was “less a model for all oil-producing countries than a unique solution to a unique challenge”.

But however much it wriggles, it cannot disguise the fact that the government’s reassertion of control is a disaster both for the World Bank and for the impoverished people it claimed to be helping. Since the project began, Chad has fallen from 167th to 173rd on the UN’s Human Development Index, and life expectancy there has dropped from 44.7 to 43.6 years. If, by contrast, Morales does as he has promised and uses the extra revenues from Bolivia’s gas fields in the same way as Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has used the money from Venezuela’s oil, the result is likely to be a major improvement in his people’s welfare.

So on the one hand you have a man who has kept his promises by regaining control over the money from the hydrocarbon industry, in order to use it to help the poor. On the other you have a man who has broken his promises by regaining control over the money from the hydrocarbon industry, in order to buy guns. The first man is vilified as irresponsible, childish and capricious. The second man is left to get on with it. Why? Well Deby’s actions don’t hurt the oil companies. Morales’s do. When Blair and Rice and the Times and all the other apologists for undemocratic power say “the people”, they mean the corporations. The reason they hate Morales is that when he says “the people”, he means the people.

[Pepper]

Here is the Washington Post smear campaign; either you attack the peasants or you're against us...

LINK
Bolivia's Morales Wants to Expand Coca Use

By Marcela Sanchez
Special to washingtonpost.com
Friday, May 19, 2006; 12:00 AM

WASHINGTON -- If Bolivian President Evo Morales has his way, you may soon find yourself ordering a cup of mate de coca instead of cappuccino at your favorite cafe.

Morales wants to give thousands of Bolivian coca growers access to new markets. He envisions an expanded use for coca as an ingredient in beverages, chewing gum and toothpaste and as a food-flavoring agent.


Traditionally, the leaf has been used in the Andean region to stave off hunger, cold and fatigue as well as for medicinal and sacred practices. By the 1980s, illegal drug traders had converted Bolivia into one of the world's top suppliers of coca for the lucrative cocaine market.

Morales' plan is the second of a two-pillared drug-fighting strategy. The first is the continuation of conventional methods of cocaine interdiction as well as the crackdown on drug traffickers, money laundering and the importation of chemicals used to make cocaine. Bolivian officials say that some of those conventional efforts have already yielded greater results than in years past.

The second pillar, the so-called "revalorization" of the coca leaf, is the problem. Since the 1961 U.N. Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, coca itself has been classified as an illegal substance as harmful as cocaine or heroin. Morales and many others see this classification as a historical error that needs to be corrected.

"Coca is not cocaine," Morales told the European Parliament this week. How can it be possible, he asked, "that coca is legal for Coca-Cola but it isn't for native peoples and peasants?" Under a special exception in the 1961 Convention, the use of coca leaves as a flavoring agent without their alkaloid component is permissible, an exception that Coca-Cola continues to take advantage of.

Bolivian officials brought a similar message to Washington last week. During a meeting of the Organization of American States' Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission, Mauricio Dorfler Ocampo, Bolivia's vice minister for foreign affairs, asked the international community to distinguish between the leaf's legal and illegal uses. He also asked for a change of coca's status in international conventions in order to help his government provide coca growers with viable alternatives to make a living.

So far their request has been received with skepticism on both sides of the Atlantic. Officials fear that legitimizing the leaf will undermine the overall drug war. It would also be a symbolic defeat as Bolivia would surely rise in the ranks of top coca producers after recent and highly praised reductions.

In Washington, officials believe production is increasing already. Anne Patterson, assistant secretary for international narcotics and law enforcement affairs, says Morales' commitment to coca eradication is "lackluster." On a recent visit to La Paz, she told Bolivian officials that current eradication rates are now half of what they were in 2005.

Officials from other countries in the Americas also have expressed concerns that Morales' plans would mostly favor illegal drug trafficking. Specifically, they fear a worsening of its corrosive effects in their own streets -- where gun-related violence fueled by the cocaine trade is on the rise, as this week's Sao Paulo killings demonstrated.

Under current Bolivian law, cocaleros can legally grow up to 12,000 hectares for traditional domestic consumption, namely coca tea and coca chewing. The European Union has agreed to fund a study to determine a more accurate measurement. Morales sees the study as an opportunity to ensure that the 12,000 figure will increase.

One might say that by arguing that more cultivation is needed, Morales is already recognizing defeat in efforts to stem the supply of coca leaves for the illegal market. Also, it seems naive to think that encouraging coca growers to produce crops for products yet to be marketed would be any more successful than crop substitution has been for overall reduction of illicit coca use. Meanwhile, drug traffickers, with their highly sophisticated means for developing and delivering their product worldwide, would be the first to profit from increased production.

Morales embodies a fundamental change of power in Bolivia that, as he likes to proclaim, is putting the country in the hands of its rightful owners -- the indigenous majority. As part of that change, Morales is expected to assert control over the lands and resources of his ancestors. Morales has already nationalized the hydrocarbon industry. For coca, he wants to develop alternative products.

Yet, the former leader of a coca growers association has a long way to go in convincing the international community that his plan is a novel approach to combat drugs by promoting alternative uses rather than continuing attacks on indigenous coca suppliers.