SierraTimes.com By Emiliano Antunez

As the Images of a few joyous Iraqis celebrating their "liberation" aired on television, some sobering news was being delivered back home. The Federal Bureau of Prisons reported that over two million Americans are currently incarcerated. America thought of as the home of the "free," actually has one of the highest per-capita incarceration rates in the world.

The War on Drugs is the biggest culprit; it's the biggest contributor to our burgeoning prison population. Lighting a blunt or doing a line in the confine of one's home is harmless to everyone, except the person indulging. That's of course until you make marijuana and cocaine illegal, naturally attracting the attention of violent criminals all across the globe looking to make the big score. Of course these violent criminals must be stopped. An alphabet soup of bureaucracies and laws must be produced to put a stop to this newly created criminal class. Jails must be built to house the offenders and make the streets "safe". This plan of action would make the Taliban green with envy.

Laws based on religious and moral values, also make jailbirds of folks whose crimes consist of putting their private parts in the wrong place. Paying for your sexual pleasures can also land you a stint in the poky. Who would have thought that at the dawn of the 21st century someone would go to jail for having a same sex partner? It happened recently in Texas where police on a faulty tip broke into the wrong apartment, but still managed to collar two homosexuals getting it on. Saddam would admire such action, and Uday might have even joined in the festivities.

Perhaps you don't indulge in drugs the government classifies as illegal? You are not in the habit of paying for your sex, nor accustomed to sexual relationships the Lord does not approve of? Well, maybe the IRS wants to review your W2,1099 or 1040? Not that they suspect you of cheating on your taxes. We all know how happy you are to hand over more than 40% of your income to the niggardly and efficient U.S. Government. If you have a "not for profit" organization that is not in lockstep with the administration in power's views, you will more than likely be blessed with an audit. If by chance you are not satisfied with the way the government spends your money, you can always enjoy the life of leisure in a federal penitentiary. Fidel Castro dreams of the day when he can make Cubans produce for him the way Americans do for "Uncle Sam."

Maybe you pay your "fair share" of taxes? You don't have a not for profit, and stay out of politics. By chance, do you own your own business? In that case, do you know who your customers really are? The Department of Homeland Security thinks you should. Do you make large cash deposits? The IRS wants to know. Do all your employees have a Social Security card and or a green card? The INS wants to see them. Maybe you're into importing and exporting? U.S. Customs wants to know exactly what and how much. Marx could only fantasize about such a level of economic control.

You say you own some land or rental property. Do you know what's on every inch of your property? Do you know what all your tenants are up to 24/7? The DEA and the FBI think you should. If they suspect you are not a good property owner, they are more than willing and able to take it off your hands, and auction it to a more responsible individual. There are credible reports that Venezuela's aspiring dictator, Hugo Chavez is studying "Zero Tolerance" policies to model his own private property confiscation laws after.

Do you have children? Are you raising them "correctly"? Your states Department of Children and Family services would like to know. Are they getting an "adequate" education? The Department of Education and your local school board are truly interested. Are they reciting their Pledge of allegiance every morning? Hitler could only dream of exercising such subtle mind control over his youth.

Some Iraqi's may really believe they have been "liberated," in time many will be faced with the ugly truth. Perhaps like most people in the United States they won't notice or care. Iraqi's may soon be to busy finding out who's winning in "Arabian Idol," or the latest edition of that other reality show "Choose Your Harem." Maybe the latest Nintendo version of "Saddam Palace Raid" or "B2s Over Baghdad" will be all the rage. If history is any indication, Iraqi "liberation" will be very short lived, if it ever even existed.

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By Mike Ceaser THE WASHINGTON TIMES

     PERIJA MOUNTAINS, Venezuela — Illegal drug cultivation is said to be increasing amid these dark green mountains since Venezuela's abandonment more than a year ago of its eradication program. T

     The Perija range, which straddles the Colombian border near the Caribbean coast, has long been a source of concern for drug-control officials because its steep, remote slopes offer prime conditions for cultivating and hiding illicit crops.

     For more than a decade, the Venezuelan military with United States cooperation carried out annual eradication campaigns involving hundreds of soldiers who chopped down and yanked out clandestine fields of marijuana, opium poppies and coca, the raw material for cocaine.

     But last year, as Venezuela experienced social and political upheaval including an aborted military-led coup in April, the country carried out no eradication.

     "[The mountains] are full" of drug crops, said a national guardsman in the town of Machiques who participated in past eradications but requested anonymity. "The places we destroyed have regrown."

     In fact, drug acreage in Venezuela is tiny compared with the numbers in Colombia, Peru and Bolivia, long centers of illegal drug exports. In 2001, Venezuela eradicated 117 acres of coca and 96 acres of poppy crops, while the other three eliminated tens of thousands of acres. Still, nobody is certain how much illegal drug cultivation exists in Venezuela, since it has no monitoring program.

     In 2002, Colombia's eradication program, part of the U.S.-funded $1.9 billion Plan Colombia, achieved its first-ever coca-acreage reduction, cutting coca cultivation there by 15 percent. But the advance was partially nullified by higher output in Peru and Bolivia.

     For critics of drug eradication, the shift of cultivation to other countries is the inevitable "balloon effect," in which a reduction in one place encourages production elsewhere. Small coca plots have also been discovered in Ecuador.

     "You can achieve a short-term reduction in a limited area ... but it pops up somewhere else," said Adam Isaacson, who directs the Colombia program at the Center for International Policy in Washington.

     Though there are no numbers on illegal drug acreage in Venezuela, recent reports agree that plantings in the Perija range have increased.

     The U.S. State Department's International Narcotics Control Strategy Report for 2002, issued last month, said that during the 2001 eradication effort, coca fields as large as 20 acres were found in the Perija range for the first time. Also, the report said, "three cocaine base labs in this region were discovered for the first time ever in Venezuela, indicating what could be a troubling new trend."

     Cesar Romero, a ranger in Perija Mountains National Park, said that in the last few years rangers have more frequently encountered drug cultivation during patrols. Last September, he stumbled onto a harvested poppy field covering about six acres.

     "It is increasing," he said.

     Like other areas where drug cultivation has flourished, the Perija mountains are lawless and impoverished. Except for occasional military patrols, the central government is nearly absent. The poor inhabitants have few saleable crops, since fruits and vegetables would spoil during the long mule trips to towns.

     State lawmaker Javier Armata, who represents the Yupa tribe in the legislature of Zulia, which contains the Perija range, said Colombian guerrillas pay indigenous people with cash, food and medicine for planting drugs.

     "[The guerrillas] say drug planting is the best way to earn money," said Mr. Armata. Still, according to military officers and news reports, most drug cultivation in the mountains is done by Colombian peasants.

     While Colombia's eradication has sharply reduced drug acreage in its southwest, coca farming has surged in the east, bordering Venezuela. And Colombia's political violence has sent thousands of peasants, some of them drug farmers, fleeing to Venezuela seeking refuge. There are also reports of drug cultivation on Venezuela's flatlands south of the Perija range.

     Gen. Alberto Jose Gutierrez, commander of an infantry division whose responsibility includes part of the Perija range, predicted that Plan Colombia would lead guerrilla groups to move to Venezuela.

     "They will try to enter our territory," he said. "But we have taken measures. We have our frontier posts."

     Gen. Gutierrez said the government's eradication program had ended before his transfer to the region and that he did not know the reason why. The military's central command in Caracas did not respond to requests for comment.

     The eradication halt is not the first time Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez has opted out of the U.S.-backed drug war. Shortly after becoming president in 1999, he banned U.S. anti-drug overflights, citing national sovereignty.

     While border military regiments are short of fuel and other supplies necessary for carrying out eradication expeditions, some here suspect a political motivation in the drug-eradication halt.

     The Chavez government faced great political turmoil over the past year. Last April, Mr. Chavez was kidnapped by military officers aligned with his political foes, and released after two days of international pressure. In December, leaders of the interests that Mr. Chavez unseated by a popular landslide in national elections four years earlier shut down Venezuela's oil industry — the country's main income-earner — in a crippling general strike that collapsed less than two months ago.

     Fernando Villasmil, president of the Zulia state legislature, says the Chavez government has drastically reduced the military's presence along the frontier, leaving an opening for guerrillas.

     "If [the government] doesn't take radical measures, [the drug crops] will expand in size," he said. "We will change from being a transit country for drugs into a producer country."

Toward a "Tupiniquim" Path that Leads to Reality Narco News By Karine Muller Part III in a Series, reported from São Paulo March 30, 2003

"The valorization of consensus masks the conflict" - Dr. Davi Capistrano

MARCH 26, 2003; LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY, SÃO PAULO, BRASIL: As the National Anti-Drug Secretary (SENAD, in its Portuguese initials), led by Colonel Paulo Roberto Ulchôa, in the national capital of Brasilia, presented a document last Wednesday in favor of maintaining the current drug policy, 130 health specialists, members of Congress, journalists and others interested in the issue met simultaneously in São Paulo, in a shadow meeting, to discuss the same issue from a distinct point of view.

Luís Inácio "Lula" da Silva, who assumed the presidency last January, is maintaining the structure and program of the anti-drug office, which the proponents of a new drug policy consider to be a grave error. "I am in favor of Lula's government but against his current drug policy," said Dr. Hevaldo Oliveira of the Northeastern state of Recife. "In a country where 80 percent of the population uses licit and illicit drugs, you can't have an 'anti' drug policy without a policy 'about' drugs," he said. According to the Congressman, the money is always spent on 'repression' of users and never on treatment.

The SENAD was created by the government of Fernando Henrique Cardoso in 1998 and was placed in the presidential cabinet. Its first secretary, a civilian and a judge from São Paulo, Walter Maierovitch, present at today's meeting, says the initial model for the national program completely mirrored that of the International Drug Convention of the United Nations in New York, of 1989. This document, at present, has not been repealed and has been imposed by the USA on many countries as a form of reducing the production and consumption of drugs. "In Colombia, the use of herbicides to reduce the planting of coca, for example, ends of killing other crops and harming the riverside dwelling populations of Ecuador," said Judge Maierovitch. He called it “chemical warfare,” noting that, "The USA says it is proud of having reduced the cultivation of the plant by 30 percent."

The judge revealed that not long ago, a United Nations meeting to audit drug enforcement was held in Brazil, according to him, so that the finger could be pointed at Brazil, in case the country was not complying with the UN Convention that guides the current anti-drug policy. Citing as an example of the wrongness of the 1989 convention, he said that it classifies marijuana at the same level as heroin.

He added that in spite of the alliance with the failed North American "war on drugs," Brazil should take a different route, opposing the US impositions through the Organization of American States (OAS) and to treat drug policy as a multilateral question.

The city of São Paulo formed the Municipal Council on Public Drug Policies, a name much more adequate than the "anti-drug" agency of the Cardoso government or that dealing with "stupefacient" of the previous Governor Geraldo Alckmin's state administration in São Paulo. And the states of São Paulo and Porto Alegre are incorporating harm reduction into their policies, which is gaining increased international support, according to Fábio Mesquita, a doctor in Public Health and vice president of the International Harm Reduction Association. The specialist said that the meeting in the Legislative Assembly is historic and runs against the national discussion in counterpoint to the policy promoted by Colonel Paulo Roberto Ulchôa a few days ago in Brasilia to Readpreserve the current drug policy.

“We should amplify this movement with a petition to promote a permanent debate. That is how we will gain more force," said Sandra Batista, the coordinator of Relat (the Latin American Harm Reduction Network).

The current coordination by the SENAD has demonstrated a total subordination to the North American policy of a "War on Drugs." It follows the orders of John Walters, the current North American drug czar, who increases penalties against drug users in the USA. And that is exactly why many of those who were present in São Paulo had been invited to the government’s meeting in Brasilia, but preferred to offer their position in resistance, and call the press to shine the light on their position, as more worthwhile than going to the halls of government power.

The psychotherapist Célia Szterenfeld, coordinator of this week's meeting in Rio de Janeiro, proposed a change in the current drug policy, authored by 35 representatives from 17 states formulated by their experience in each one. This document was very well received by all the representatives here in São Paulo, which demonstrates that there is a legitimate group in resistance, working together for the good of the public interest and not just their private interests.

The principle goal of this meeting in the Legislative Assembly was to create a resistance movement to the North American imposition and to demand that the Lula government create a new agency, under civilian control, under a different name than that of National Anti-Drug Secretary (SENAD). The next step, now, is to spark a discussion in Brazil so that it is not confined to the intellectual, political, or professional, circles, and the question is addressed by the entire population. It is time to popularize these ideas to foment a public consciousness that speaks for itself.

The terminology of "war" must definitively be extinguished. It is certain that the North Americans push this idea in their schools, using cops and soldiers who act like they protect the “children” from drugs, inciting them to fight against them. And from this comes the propaganda of drug war, of chemical warfare, of a war on terrorism, a war on Iraq… What this group wants is a drug policy that does not follow this path and instead follows our reality, that of the tupiniquim, the Brazilian, transparent, barefoot, and free of the conservative apparatus that sustains and creates more narco-trafficking mafias, that justifies repression against the user in order to perpetuate its own existence.

By Luis Gómez Narco News Andean Bureau Chief April 5, 2003

As Manuel Rocha, the former US Ambassador to Bolivia, tries to present his credentials as the new Ambassador in Venezuela to that nation's President Hugo Chávez, the new Viceroy has arrived here: David N. Greenlee. His trajectory as a repressive agent in this country, that dates back 15 years, is surprising… And in recent days he has demonstrated that he is hell-bent on maintaining the Bolivian chapter of the so-called War on Drugs. In a few moments, kind readers: the story.

According to a report published in the biweekly Bolivian magazine, El Juguete Rabioso ("The Rabid Toy"), Greenlee's relation to this country dates back to 1965, when the new ambassador served as a Peace Corps volunteer. Later, he left for Vietnam, and became an expert in undercover operations in the US "diplomatic" schools… where he shared experiences with the ex "Southern Command chief Gary Speer, and with Otto Reich." The article in El Juguete Rabioso can be read, in Spanish, here:

membres.lycos.fr

Greenlee met his wife, Clara Jeanet Murillo, here in Bolivia, and has worked here as a diplomatic official. In fact, at the end of the 1980s he was interim ambassador for nearly two years, after the 1986 resignation of Edward Rowell. All of this was the product of an internal crisis caused by Bolivia's largest drug scandal, the tragedy in Huanchaca, in which not only were various people assassinated (including the scientist Noel Kempff and the Congressman Edmundo Salazar), but also, the first (and only one ever found in Bolivia) cocaine hydrochloride laboratory was discovered for making the famous white powder.

Greenlee took advantage of his nomination as ambassador to initiate a wartime policy, according to the Juguete Rabioso report, focusing the entire war against narco-trafficking upon a single enemy: the coca growers' movement. In fact, Congressman Evo Morales once commented to Narco News that "Greenlee personally led various repressive operations in the Chapare, and planned some of them such as the Villa Tunari massacre," in 1988, where twelve people were assassinated (including women and children) and more than twenty were wounded.

This, without even mentioning - and we will bring you this story - that it was Greenlee who, from the second largest US Embassy in Latin America (it is barely smaller than that of Brazil), pushed the passage of a law that for a long time violated the rights of the farmers, users, and drug addicts, as well as having criminalized the coca leaf ever since: Law 1008. "About the regulation of coca and controlled substances," as the law is titled, which is to say, the local anti-drug law.

But Mr. Greenlee, who counts among his abilities the speaking of Quechua (the most spoken language in the Chapare) isn't just part of a black past in Bolivia. After having been US Ambassador to Paraguay, he was nominated last September 5th by George Bush to his new job in Bolivia. And don David Nicol, returning to the country of his wife, did not waste time… After a little more than a half year of pressuring President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada to change his position on coca in the Chapare, as Narco News Authentic Journalist Alex Contreras has already reported.

A few weeks ago, after the February 11 to 13 rebellion in La Paz, there was an action - it can't be called "undercover" - to destabilize, or, as the leader of the Movement toward Socialism party (MAS) says: To threaten the principal leaders of the party of the coca growers and the other Bolivian social movements with death.

"I got a letter yesterday..."

On Saturday morning, March 22nd, Congressman and coca growers' leader Evo Morales met with the Vice President of Bolivia, the former journalist Carlos Mesa. The Vice President delivered a "letter" sent directly from the office of Ambassador Greenlee. This same letter, days before, had been delivered by Mesa to the Senate Leader for the MAS party, the veteran union and social leader Filemón Escóbar.

The document, a white page without stationary nor anyone's signature, said that the United States Embassy had obtained "trustworthy" information about a supposed coup d'etat that the MAS was planning for April, together with "key military personnel." According to the "diplomatic" letter, the leaders of this witchcraft would be Antonio Peredo Leigue, the former Vice Presidential candidate for the MAS and current National Congressman, and the same Evo Morales, but that "internal struggles inside the party might delay the execution of this plan, and might even make the execution of this plan impossible so that it won't happen."

Internal fights? Well, certainly events prior to the delivery of this singular "letter" from Mr. Greenlee had demonstrated that problems exist inside of the MAS party, but the reference made by the document is much more serious: "There is a group inside of MAS that wants to see Evo Morales and Filemón Escóbar assassinated during this coup in April." Kind readers: Did you get that? Well, they got it in the MAS too, because on March 27th they formally responded to Ambassador Greenlee.

In a communiqué titled "We defend Democracy: No to the Coup!" the MAS clarified that it is "not, directly or indirectly, promoting attitudes to alter the life of a democratic order in the country, such as the state of law." And with respect to the supposed intentions to assassinate Evo and Filemón Escóbar, they made two convincing points:

1. "We publicly and formally challenge Mr. David Greenlee… to demonstrate in a documented, trustworthy, and real, manner on what he bases his asseverations," as well as calling upon the Ambassador to identify "who is plotting against the life of compañero Evo Morales Ayma."

2. To leave it "clearly established to national and international public opinion that the national government and the United States Embassy will be held exclusively responsible for any attempt upon the life of our national leader, compañero Evo Morales.

What has the Viceroy David Nicol Greenlee said in response? Well, nothing, or barely a pair of mentions in the local press about a United States law that obliges him to inform friendly governments about this kind of threat and his "moral" obligation: "As the U.S. government, we have certain ethical, legal, and moral, requirements that we always try to comply with." And as for the source of the "letter?" "I have no comment."

It seems that this decorated Vietnam veteran has ripped a hole in his "undercover" work… because his nighttime threats have been responded to… clearly, not like he demanded in writing last March 14th, the date on which he met with Vice President Mesa to deliver his little letter: "We solicit your collaboration to inform Morales about this attempt, in a manner in which he understands and accepts the seriousness of this information so that he takes the appropriate measures to protect himself. At the same time, we solicit you to confirm to us that this warning was delivered/reported and, later, to also let us know the reaction of Morales to this information."

On and on... No one can believe that an Ambassador with so much experience in the field of intelligence and repression could be naïve. He's not. The insidious planting of rumors inside of the MAS (that a group "inside of the MAS would want to have Evo Morales and Filemón Escóbar assassinated during this coup in April") has had its effects, but, on the other hand, it has caused the government and its intelligence agencies to have to work to cover their tracks.

A difficult swallow and the government's "investigations"

Last week, due to the internal tensions generated by Greenlee's "letter," and the more important tensions in the Chapare and in the Parliament, the MAS had to swallow a bitter pill. On Wednesday, March 26, in open session of the National Congress (Senators and Deputies together), Senator Filemón Escóbar, tired of legislative inactivity, publicly denounced this letter, warning that the mentioned coup d'etat would not have the current president as its victim, but, "rather, the MAS and Evo Morales."

During almost 48 hours there were statements and problems between Evo, Filemón, and other MAS leaders, demonstrating that all was not well inside that movement, as Filemón confirmed later in an interview with the daily La Razón in La Paz (March 28, 2003). In a press conference in the halls of Congress on the 27th, and again with the coca growers on the 29th, the MAS came back and demonstrated that internal unity reins and that the political enemy could not divide them.

Amid a grand assembly in the Chapare town of Lauca Ñ, the coca growers showed their solidarity with Filemón Escóbar and Evo Morales against the death threats and what appeared to be a plot for a "self-coup" by the current government.

They also decided to radicalize their actions against the institutions of so-called "alternative development" and, beyond that, in all corners of the Chapare region, the forced eradication of coca leaf is being resisted by small groups and demonstrations trying to kick the military's Joint Task Force out of the zone.

Internal divisions? Sure there are: It's a political party! But this incident has caused the opposite of what Mr. David Nicol Greenlee wanted: Today the coca growers and the MAS are more united than ever and their struggle in defense of their sacred leaf is stronger.

On the other hand, in a show of speed and "intelligence," the government, in just a few days, had to really work its agents to make sure that none of its interrogators would leak the letter by the Viceroy Greenlee. Last Saturday the news spread that the government of Sánchez de Lozada already knew about the "coup" for mid-April and that some military soldiers would be involved with it. (Don't forget, kind readers, how a mid-April date of a coup in Bolivia would resonate with the anniversary of last April 11th's attempted and failed coup in Venezuela: Was that the idea behind the timing? To simulate a coup from the Left to discredit the pro-democracy cause in Latin America?) Supported by a simplicity the broke the record of operating speed by the Brazilian intelligence agencies (even faster than when they were led by the narco-nazi Klaus Barbie years ago), the Bolivian president asked the opposition to let him govern and not be seditious…

Evo gave it back to him hard: "The seditious one is he who doesn't listen to the people and governs instead in his own interests, those of his social class and of the multinational corporations... (Sánchez de Lozada) has to change his advisors and see the reality that the people live in and not that of his partners… A half block from Murillo Plaza, there are people begging while their children lick the streets."

Thus, kind readers, Mr. Greenlee could not frighten the embattled social fighters of the MAS and its bases of support. But he tried, enthusiastically, to do it… albeit through an absurd route. And while the New Viceroy spends the money of U.S. taxpayers writing seditious letters, the coca growers have taken the offense and are fighting hard battles in the Chapare… We pray that you stay in contact with Narco News, from where, soon, you will be able to receive more reports about the War on Drugs in Bolivia, the New Viceroy Greenlee, the heroic defense of the coca leaf and the democracy that continues, alive and well, in this country.

<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuela's Electronic News Posted: Tuesday, April 01, 2003 By: Patrick J. O'Donoghue

A Venezuelan citizen has been arrested at Mexico City airport allegedly carrying 16.7 kilos of heroin. 

Edwin Manuel Cervitec traveled on a Mexicana de Aviacion flight from Caracas with the heroin hidden in double lining in his suitcase and clothes. 

• Cervitec (27)  has told the Mexican Police that an unknown person nicknamed Carlos gave him the clothes to hide the drugs.

The suspect informed the police that his final destination was Monterrey on the Mexican border with the USA.