Whore: (verb) To debase oneself by doing something for unworthy motives, typically to make money.
-The New Oxford American Dictionary
It's a challenge to make adult sense of the absurdities coming out of Colombia right now.
I had first planned to write about the Drug War aspect of President Obama's summit meeting in Cartagena, since it's quite amazing when the right-wing president of Colombia publicly lobbies the US president to shift the Drug War from military operations against supply in Latin America to a more social approach against demand in the US. After all, Colombia is the highly militarized US showcase nation in the 40-year Drug War.
"Despite all of the efforts, the immense efforts, the huge costs, we have to recognize that the illicit drug business is prospering," Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos told the attending leaders. He even advocated a process of decriminalization, though he recognized this was only a "starting point to begin a discussion that we have been postponing for far too long."
This is real news.
Our Drug War is a military/police enterprise focused on attacking the supply of drugs coming from Latin America. Santos seems to concede it's a dismal failure. He also knows the accumulated conditions of that failure are so entrenched in the hemisphere that it's hard to even begin to discuss a way out.
Presidents Santos and Obama and Hillary Clinton at the Havana Club in Cartagena
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Barack Obama's administration is so cowed by entrenched, die-hard drug warriors that it's doubling down on marijuana busts as local governments across the nation go the other way and ease enforcement of marijuana laws. The Feds are like fundamentalist puritans who see the decriminalization of marijuana as the social equivalent of a "gateway drug" leading to crack-addict Hell. There's a desperate need for a much more pragmatic approach.
Besides the call from our Latin American neighbors for a more sane, demand-oriented approach to international drug problems, there was an equally consensus-driven call for the US to drop its aggressive and counter-productive 50-year embargo of Cuba.
Here's the right-wing Santos again on lifting the embargo on Cuba: "There is no justification for that path that has anchored us in a Cold War. ... It is the hour to overcome the paralysis produced by ideological stubbornness." As expected, President Obama remained mired in the "ideological stubbornness" of the Florida Cuban vote.
When it came to approving a labor agreement with Colombia, Obama was in total agreement with the rightist Santos. It did not matter that AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka had lobbied hard against the agreement, citing killings of trade unionists and other human rights abuses. Trumka responded by saying, "We regret that the administration has placed commercial interests above the interests of workers and trade unions."
Back in 1984, I was deported from Honduras for sitting down with union leaders who shared with me and friends a litany of murders and rights abuses against trade unionists. That was during the Contra War. It seems little has changed in 28 years. Capital and profits always trump unions and the human rights of workers.
It's quite revealing that while profound historical discussions during the summit focused on reforming the Drug War, lifting the outmoded Cold War embargo of Cuba and violent abuses of trade unionists, that the really big story to come out of Cartagena is that US Secret Service agents and military security officers purchased sex.
And who is thumping the scandal? None other than Rep. Peter King, chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security and the greatest War On Terror whore in America.
The heavy breathing soon began. Could any of the ladies contracted from the Pley Club brothel have been al Qaeda agents? How was the President's safety affected? How much of a black mark was it on the honor of the United States? Whose heads would have to roll?
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