Here's some imperialism without Zionism. A little dated, but I thought that this might inform the current thread on Isreal. This is from a speech given by Gustavo de Greiff, former Colombian attorney general turned Drug War dissenter. (He lost his visa for that.)
The full version (follow the link) includes plenty of details on Plan Colombia.
-david
----------------- Plan Colombia and the War on Drugs
By Gustavo de Greiff R. Translated by Al Giordano
Special to The Narco News Bulletin
<snip>
In light of that, one questions: Why insist on a failed policy? As the Drug Commission of the Bar Association of New York County in 1995 warned, "The appropriate goal of any anti-drug policy must be the diminishment of its consumption and the evils that its use or abuse cause, and to minimize the damages that are associated with this problem. Also, any policy that causes more damage than the social problems it proposes to solve must be reevaluated as to the convenience of continuing it."
We believe that a change of strategy is necessary to combat the problems that create the production, the sale and the consumption of drugs, and we think that the origins of the production and the sale are solved by their legalization. And those created by consumption are solved with education about the danger that the abuse of narcotizing and psychotropic drugs brings and with the availability of medical treatment for addicts.
As don Carlos Fuentes recently affirmed, with legalization there would continue to be addicts but, at least as for drugs, the gangs of narco-traffickers and the corruption related to them would disappear.
Why, it is asked, has it not been possible to arrive at this change in strategy to combat the problem of drugs? We think that is because there are many interests behind it. On one side are the traffickers and the corrupt officials that, naturally, do not what to end the "business." On the other side, dishonest politicians who know the uselessness of prohibition and nonetheless insist on it to seem like moral leaders of the community. And there are people who enjoy the income of labor in service of the agencies in charge of the "war," whose jobs would disappear with legalization. Together with them, honest politicians (that, fortunately, also exist) fear a rise in the consumption upon regulating the production and sale of drugs that are today prohibited. But also, there is the government of the country whose citizens are the major consumers of cocaine and marijuana and an important consumer of heroin, because the anti-drug policy serves as an excuse to intervene in the internal affairs of those countries where the plants from which these drugs are extracted grow.
Colombia has suffered a textbook case of this intervention, when, in 1995, the United States Ambassador, whether upon his own initiative or instructions from his government, threatened Colombia with de-certification if it persisted in is banana commerce policy with the European Union, a business that threatened a banana company in the United States. Have you heard about that?
That's why, also, the species of threat that drug trafficking represents to the national security of our countries has been invented. That merited a sharp response from the academic John Sax Fernández, who when, some years ago, he was questioned by reporter about whether, in fact, drug trafficking represented a threat to national security. He answered: "Drug trafficking is a threat to the national security of our countries to the extent that it serves as an excuse for the United States to intervene in our affairs."
<the rest is found at: http://www.narconews.com/degreiff1.html >