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What do we do about drugs?
I've been thinking about drugs and how they play out in people's struggle to get money and would like to have a discussion about it. For example FARC gets a lot of shit for growing and transporting coca/cocaine(whether that's true or not is pretty debatable, they say that they just tax coca producing peasants). But should they get any shit from leftists? I've seen people here say that it's ok if you're a communist and work in the banking sector for example or if you own a company(I mean Engels was a great communist but his daddy owned some factories!) while at the same time they will give the FARC crap for cocaine. Is this a case of cognitive dissonance? What if tomorrow I decided to fund a communist party or a union, etc, with drug money? What if I started selling weed on the side and I put all of that weed money into the PSL or SA and just lived off of my wages?
We claim to live and die equal, the way we were born: we want this real equality or death; that’s what we need.
And we’ll have this real equality, at whatever price. Unhappy will be those who stand between it and us! Unhappy will be those who resist a wish so firmly expressed.
The French Revolution was nothing but a precursor of another revolution, one that will be bigger, more solemn, and which will be the last.
-Gracchus Babeuf
i don't really see any problem with FARC or similar organizations getting their money from drug trade. they have to support their war somehow. if it wasn't FARC controlling the growing of cocaine in those areas , it would probably be just other, worse people: cartels and right-wing paramilitaries. and i believe FARC has been implementing a agrarian reform in areas under their control. under capitalism drug trade is not going anywhere, and i don't think 'the moral superiority' of not taking part in bourgeois business does any good for any revolutionary group against the material gains such trade could generate.
if they can sell their cocaine to bourgeois american coke heads and support their war with it, i say good for them, and i hope those yuppies die of overdose.
"We shall not have succeeded in demolishing everything unless we demolish the ruins as well. But the only way I can see of doing that is to use them to put up a lot of fine, well-designed buildings." - Alfred Jarry
Yeah except they aren't the ones that are likely to die from an overdose.
About drug sales, well, eh. Depends. I don't really think its a problem if it was just,about selling drugs, it is about the criminality associated with it. The murders, tortures and all sorts of macabre things that must be done to keep selling it. Never mind the fact that it serves as an outlet for disaffected youth who could otherwise actually help with a Revolutionary situation. Regardless, in my opinion the FARC is nothing but a bourgeois party anyway.
maybe I put that 'overdose' thing there for provocation.
I agree that drug trade is completely horrid business, but the 'war on drugs' kind of policies definitely don't work. I don't think FARC has been associated with the kind of barbaric behaviour of which the drug cartels are known, they directly control and work with those peasants who cultivate cocaine. it is true that drugs are usually used by the most disadvantaged in society, but then again it is something that exists under capitalism and will exist even if groups like FARC or any other left group wouldn't be associated with it.
I don't know where do you get this idea. the foco theory is certainly flawed, but I don't know what makes them bourgeois. too much CIA propaganda maybe?Originally Posted by Antiochus
"We shall not have succeeded in demolishing everything unless we demolish the ruins as well. But the only way I can see of doing that is to use them to put up a lot of fine, well-designed buildings." - Alfred Jarry
Che was a sexy bastard, but I'm pretty sure the FARC aren't following a "Focoist" strategy...I mean, there is this brute fact that they continue to exist -- as opposed to being militarily annihilated 50 years ago. /troll
In response to the OP, I think that taxes upon production are to be expected as a part of the FARC's overall politico-military strategy of building an alternate state power in the regions that they control.
Let us keep in mind that the drug trade as it exists is a creature of policy-making in the United States and Europe, not rural Colombia.
Besides, the processes that force the peasantry from self-sufficient farming into globalized cash crop production started way before the FARC and are way bigger than Colombia. That said, Chomsky of all people has done a decent job (IMO) describing how this process has unfolded in post-WW2 Colombia.
When it comes to Colombia and cocaine it's pretty obvious that the West sides with the right-wing paramilitaries and gangs who produce the coca. The "War on Drugs" money goes into mainly fighting a class war against FARC while coca production in regions under control of the government and their thugs stays steady. A comrade on this forum let me borrow a book one time entitled Cocaine, Death Squads, and the War on Terror: US Imperialism and Class Struggle in Colombia that illuminates how the U.S. expanded the production of drugs by supporting this or that drug cartel over others because they put that money into the production of other goods and develop the economy(Calling them narco-bourgeoisie) while we fight FARC under the guise of a War on Drugs while they're not the major players in the Colombian drug trade. I have a feeling that if communist groups in Afghanistan started making a killing off of the heroin trade then the production of poppy fields would go down as we fight them.
The drug trade is notoriously violent because the only courts that exist are in the gangs and they have to dole out their own form of justice in a unlawful way. If your weed gets stolen you're not reporting it to your local police, you're reporting it to your local gang who will want revenge. But in some places it is legal to buy and sell weed now which cuts out a lot of the violence and savagery connected to the drug trade. The violence they face comes from the Feds who can still come in and raid your co-op(Oaksterdam anyone?). So I could start growing weed legally(kind of) and sell it to clubs without having to worry about fighting over territory from the various street gangs that exist around here.
We claim to live and die equal, the way we were born: we want this real equality or death; that’s what we need.
And we’ll have this real equality, at whatever price. Unhappy will be those who stand between it and us! Unhappy will be those who resist a wish so firmly expressed.
The French Revolution was nothing but a precursor of another revolution, one that will be bigger, more solemn, and which will be the last.
I feel like this is deeply complicated. For one, I don't think referring to "drugs" in the abstract is particularly useful.
Some drugs hold up narco-capitalists who terrorize poor communities (one crime family in my hometown even owns a pay day loan business!).
Some drugs, as you noted, fund organizations like the AUC who are waging a decades long brutal war against the Colombian left.
On the other hand, the hash made by your uncle in his shed from the ten plants he had growing in his sunroom are probably not so concerning.
The life we have conferred upon these objects confronts us as something hostile and alien.
Formerly Virgin Molotov Cocktail (11/10/2004 - 21/08/2013)
Sorry -- thought you said 'What do we do *with* drugs' -- !
= D
Farc controles the cocaine bussiness in these areas along with drug cartels such as Rastrojos or Urabeños (which appeared after the demobilization of the paramilitary groups). this is well documented.
it's more the opposite. Farc have been making a contraagrarian reform, expoiling thousands of farmers in the regions they pretend to control.
yes, they have, they do selective murders, extortion of civilians, mining areas populated by civilians, and so on. they also exploit children, do illegal mining (which causes a huge damage to the environment) and other things
or they could choose not to make part of a bussiness which is one of the main causes of deforestation and environment degradation (contamination of water sources, for example) in rural Colombia. just in 2015, 40.000 hectares in the System of National Parks of Colombia were deforested, mainly for coca crops.
as I said in the first paragraph, it's Farc along with drug cartels the ones controling the whole process of producing cocaine (not the coca, the coca is not produced but cultivated and it's not illegal per se doing it so, many Colombian native nations have been doing it for centuries).
they are. the regions that concentrate cocaine production in Colombia are exactly the ones controlled by Farc: Catatumbo, areas of Guaviare and Caquetá, coastal Nariño and Putumayo.
AUC dissapeared 10 years ago. 10. one would think it would be time for you to know that.
...followed by zero documentation.
OK, so according to you, the FARC is expropriating farmers in regions they do not control? How is that *logically* even possible, setting aside whether it is possible *politically* for FARC to do this?
anyone in Colombia knows that. we see it every day, in the news; people living in the areas of Farc/bacrim influence speak about it, there are several legal processes about it......followed by zero documentation.
for one, see this document from Fundación Ideas para la Paz: http://www.ideaspaz.org/publications/posts/1068
this note in particular speaks about emails between Farc and Clan Úsuga (ex-paramilitaries converted to mere drug traffickers): http://www.elespectador.com/noticias...rticulo-577463
by the way in the very peace agreement rejected two days ago, Farc themselves recognized their responsability in the drug trade.
perhaps I didn't explained myself well, what I meant was "the areas they seek to control". for one, it's well documented how they stripped away thousands of HAs of land from farmers in the Yarí region, and how they legalized it through testaferros ("straw men"?), with the purpose of using it as a corridor to move their cocaine shipments from the jungle. Verdad Abierta speaks about it here: http://www.verdadabierta.com/especia...erras-caqueta/
just a few days ago the government announced that 60.000 hectares of land which were at the hands of Farc, would pass to the Fondo de Tierras that will serve as a reparation for victims of the war.
One thing Trump can't reverse
One thing Trump can't reverse
Trump can't reverse this.
Before Trump takes office, Pres. Obama can free hundreds of wrongly imprisoned people.
TAKE ACTION
Chris,
Trump takes office in less than 40 days.
It's scary. But Pres. Obama just did something life changing that Trump can’t undo--and we need him to do more of it before it's too late. The President just freed 79 more people who were sitting in prison under unfair and outdated drug laws--bringing his total to more than 1,000.1 Under an initiative to provide relief for federal drug offenders and undo the harm of the War on Drugs, President Obama has granted clemency to more people than the last 11 presidents combined! It’s historic.
Trump can’t put any of those people back into prison--but his Klan administration will dissolve the initiative that created this opportunity and shut the door to freedom for HUNDREDS. And these are people who shouldn’t be in prison at all.
But here’s the thing: Obama can free EVEN MORE people before Trump comes to office. That’s why we’re calling on him to expand his initiative and open the doors to freedom for more folks who deserve it--before it’s too late. Will you sign the petition?
Tell Pres. Obama: Maximize the impact of your historical clemency program before it's too late.
Sharanda Jones is one of the people Pres. Obama freed from a cruel and unfair drug sentence. In the late 90s, Sharanda was subject to a targeted attack on Black residents of Terrell, Texas that led to the arrest of more than 100 Black people for low-level crack cocaine offenses.2 In an effort to expand the government informant program, prosecutors gave deals to people who snitched, and pushed for cruel and unusual sentences for those who didn’t. Sharanda didn’t snitch on a couple she knew who was dealing drugs, and though there was never any evidence that she ever possessed or sold drugs, she was sentenced to LIFE in prison.
There are more people like Sharanda who should have never been in prison--but they can’t get clemency because of limits to Pres. Obama’s program. We can't let any more people than necessary languish in prison under a Trump administration. Here’s how Pres. Obama can make sure he leaves behind an even greater legacy of fighting back against the War on Drugs:
Continue reviewing as many petitions for clemency as possible before leaving office.
Speed up the process of approval for extremely low-risk categories of non-violent offenders.
Expand who’s eligible for relief by:
Considering people who did not get retroactive consideration under the Fair Sentencing Act in 2010.
Considering those who filed late for clemency
Identifying people who are eligible but did not file for clemency
We know the next administration will not carry on this legacy. So it’s crucial that Pres. Obama and his staff take these measures to maximize the impact of this historical program.
Sign the petition.
Until justice is real,
--Scott, Rashad, Arisha, Clarise, and the rest of the Color Of Change team
References:
1. "Obama grants 79 more commutations, pushing the total past 1,000," The Washington Post, November 22, 2016
2. "From a life sentence to clemency from Obama," CNN, September 2, 2016
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