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Thoughts On Coca, Cannabis, Opium & Tobacco – Gifts Of The Great Spirit

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Plan Colombia – A Forgotten US Atrocity

Maybe this looks & sounds familiar, like maybe Oliver Stone familiar?

colombiaHelicopters flown by CIA mercenaries, filled with government troops and US advisors, swoop down on jungle villages at dawn in a tropical country. They come in firing and dropping gas and napalm and they quickly round up everyone in the village.

A few selected villagers are immediately shot “trying to escape”, while the rest are made to stand by while their homes and belongings are burned.

Women and little girls are taken aside for raping, runny-nosed children hide anywhere they can, and old people are beaten with rifle butts for various reasons. There are no young men left in the village to beat, arrest or kill.

Since the villagers obviously are guilty of consorting with the enemy the entire village, or what remains, is taken on a forced march to a government relocation camp, built by US aid.

Meanwhile back at the village aircraft piloted by other CIA mercenaries begin flying low over the landscape for miles around the village dumping hundreds of tons of toxic chemicals that poison the land, water, plants and animals, destroying all possibility of the people ever coming home.

But this is not Vietnam – it is Colombia.

Beginning with the election in 2000 of George Bush and his White House full of would-be foreign policy Machiavellis, and followed by eight years of the Gang Who Can’t Shoot Straight, Americans have had sixteen years of the enormous distractions of Iraq and Afghanistan to keep them from realizing that the US was playing out the Vietnam War all over again in Colombia.

This war has been going on for over sixteen years, and according to the US there is just as much Coca being grown and Cocaine being produced in Colombia in 2014 as there was in 1999. So like most US wars of aggression masked by any of the usual deceits – “War On Terror”, War On Drugs”, or War To Save Democracy” – the war in Colombia accomplished nothing but destroying the lives and the environments of millions of innocent people and further enriching politicians and generals. Per usual.

However, since this particular war was at its most brutal in the beginning, which coincided with the US invasion of Iraq, it was most conveniently overlooked while it was going on, and has since been filed along with yesterdays news by those who control the media in the US. But it happened.

Plan Colombia refers to a One Billion US/year bundle of “programs”, an innocent word for a bunch of deviously-named, US-sponsored state terrorism strategies in Colombia. Beginning in 2000 the US began sending waves of “advisors” to Colombia, accompanied by all the usual military hardware. There these US soldiers hooked up with large right-wing paramilitary organizations and the piddling little Colombian Army and Air Force and began raining violence and death down on millions of people who lived in the Coca-growing regions.

Colombian paramilitary death squads operating under the direct control of the US military would helicopter into a village just before dawn – lessons learned in Vietnam – and begin pulling “suspected guerillas and criminals” from their homes and executing them on the spot, or hauling them to waiting helicopters. Those left behind were told to pack up and move to government “relocation centers” or the soldiers would be back to burn their village and kill them. There were a number of “My Lai” incidents during these raids involving US personnel that were totally suppressed. Nobody has ever been held accountable.

From 2000 – 2003 nearly 2 million people were first sprayed with poison, then bombed with fire, then attacked by soldiers, and then “relocated”. In this same period over 3000 civilians were executed by US-sponsored death squads and many more simply disappeared.

Now in 2016 the villages are mostly abandoned and those that remain are pitiful shells of the prosperity that Coca growing brought them. As part of “Plan Colombia” the US did its usual “lets give the natives another way to make a living” routine and spent millions upon millions building idiotic “aid projects” like Yucca mills in the middle of nowhere that formerly semi-prosperous Coca growers were supposed to keep supplied with Yucca roots, at pennies a kilo, to be ground into flour. Brilliant. Just fucking brilliant.

There are dozens of these monuments to stupidity (or maybe something a bit more sinister) lying around rural Colombia, and meanwhile the Coca growing has moved on to other parts of Colombia, FARC has signed a peace treaty with the government, and the US president has just had a smileyface press moment with the president of Colombia as they celebrate victory in the war on whatever it was.

Another mission accomplished.

 


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If the Drug Cartel Overlords Were Really Smart They Would Choose Plata

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Drug Cartels are fond of giving people who they want to cooperate with them a choice between “Plomo ó Plata” – Lead or Silver. Clearly most people facing a group of nasty psychos armed to their gold teeth with AK-47s will choose Plata – who wouldn’t? Well, evidently the Cartels themselves, for one. It is as if they are destined to choose Plomo, even though some of them do manage to run their hands through a little Plata before they wind up in a bloody heap at the bottom of some god-forsaken ditch in the middle of nowhere. And while it’s completely understandable that the violent, angry men who make up the troops of the Cartels get a thrill out of living and dying this way, it is truly amazing that the more mature people who actually run the cartels, and those who finance and control them from gated communities far away from the flying Plomo, don’t seem to understand what an incredible financial opportunity they are missing because of their obsession with smuggling a few tons of drugs here and there for what amounts to chump change.

 

 

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It’s amazing that these guys, some of whom are very smart, don’t seem to realize that instead of spending their short, dangerous lives chasing small change in the form of drugs they smuggle into the US and Europe they could instead relax, get rid of all the heavily-armed military and police bozos who love chasing them down and killing them at every opportunity, and instead live lives of real wealth, perfect relaxation and great respect. While estimates vary widely, a very liberal estimate of the amount that Americans spend on Cocaine alone is approximately $50 Billion a year. Marijuana, Heroin, and Meth add roughly another $50 Billion, so the total is somewhere around $100 Billion a year. And that, my friends, is chump change compared to what the Cartels could be making – if they were smart.

Here’s why. In researching my new book “The Coca Leaf Papers” I read practically everything that was ever written in the 18th-19th centuries on the medical uses of Coca Leaf in preventing, treating, and curing disease. The list below reveals the major diseases and conditions that were known to be curable or successfully treatable by simple Coca Leaf tea and extracts – not by Cocaine, but by Coca Leaf tea – along with some of the diseases and conditions not well-known in the 1700s-1800s that are at epidemic levels today and that might be treatable/curable with Coca Leaf Tea.

Addiction (Opium/Alcohol/Tobacco), Alzheimer’s/Dementia, Obesity/Overweight, Anemia, ADHD, Angina Pectoris, Rheumatism, Asthma, Whole Body Inflammation, Brain Disorders, Diabetes, Bronchitis, Multiple Sclerosis, Convalescence/Wasting, Congestive Heart Failure, Debility/Overwork, Ischemic Heart Disease, Irritable Bowel Syndrome, Exhaustion/Fatigue, Crohn’s, Fever, SIBO, Heart Disorder, Neuromuscular Pain, Kidney Disorders, Peripheral Neuropathy, La Grippe (Flu), Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, Lung Congestion, Pneumonia/Lower Respiratory Disease, Melancholia (Depression), Stroke, Muscle Pain, Hypertension, Nervous Exhaustion, Migraine, Neurasthesia, Anorexia, Sexual Exhaustion, Shock, Stomach & Intestinal Conditions, Throat Conditions.

So it should be clear that there is plenty of empirical evidence that Coca Leaf tea and tonics can effectively treat a wide range of diseases and conditions that either Pig Pharma can’t touch, or that Pig Pharma charges a fortune to “treat”. And that, of course, is leaving aside the fact that Coca Leaf tea is harmless, non-addictive, and 100% natural while Pig Pharma’s “treatments” all too often fall under the category of that sick old joke – “The treatment was a success but the patient died”. So now let’s take a look at how much Americans – just Americans – spend on Pig Pharma’s ‘medicines’ every year for treating just a few of these terrible maladies, and then we’ll lay out why we think the Latin American Cartels are blowing the opportunity of a lifetime.

Approximate Annual US Spending On Selected Diseases/Conditions Asthma $18 Billion Obesity/Overweight $270 Billion ADHD $35-40 Billion Depression $77 Billion Rheumatism $19 Billion Diabetes $245 Billion Congestive Heart Failure $35 Billion Ischemic Heart Disease $110 Billion Gut Diseases $65 Billion Alzheimers/Dementia $203 Billion Pain $560 Billion Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease $45 Billion Pneumonia/Lower Respiratory Disease $10-$15 Billion Stroke $53 Billion Hypertension $95 Billion I’ll save you the trouble of adding it all up – the total comes to $1,832,000,000.

That’s almost $2 Trillion a year, compared with the $100 Billion or so the Cartels earn from ALL the Coke, Marijuana, Meth, Heroin and other shit they smuggle into the US. Can you see why I say that the Cartels are working for chump change? So, one might reasonably ask, what’s the plan? Well, the entire plan can be summarized in three words. Coca Leaf Spas. Look, the Cartels control huge territories in the Coca growing regions of the Andes in South America, right? And they also control, one way or another, most of the governments of the region, as well as much of the other essential infrastructure. And of course, they control Coca plant production, and they have plenty of capital that they need to invest and are having an increasingly difficult time handling and keeping safe.

One of the wonderful things about the Andes mountain range is that it is home to thousands of the world most wonderful mineral hot springs and other spa-like spots. There are already hundreds of world-class Spas in the Andes, and many thousands of locations that are little more than pools of hot water surrounded by some of the most breath-taking beauty on earth. So let’s say that one or two of the smarter Cartel leaders decided to get out of the drug smuggling business altogether and instead to go into the Spa business, and to concentrate just on weight loss for people who are medically endangered because of their weight issues. Americans alone (let’s not even mention the rest of the overweight world at this point) spend $270 Billion a year on obesity “treatments”.

Now of course not everyone who is obese or severely overweight could afford a month in a Coca Leaf Spa in the Andes, but what do you want to bet that the moment that a Coca Leaf Spa opened in some beautiful location in Bolivia, Peru, Brazil, or Colombia that it would be booked solid? How about a hundred Coca leaf Spas? My guess is that the Cartels couldn’t build those things fast enough to accommodate all the people ready to fly to South America for a month or two of treatment, plus of course an annual follow-up.

And that’s just for medically dangerous weight treatment. How about people with more money than anyone deserves to have who just want to keep that girlish/boyish figure? You know, movie stars and models and trophy wives. The revenues that would flow from just weight-loss Coca leaf Spas would make that $100 Billion in drug smuggling look like pretty small change.

Now, what if those same Coca Leaf Spas could also help people get on top of their Diabetes, their Depression, their Heart and Gut diseases? And what if you could take Mom or Dad, who have Alzheimers and whose only prospect in life is a slow, drooling, diapered decline into nothingness, and go with them to a Coca Leaf Spa high in the Andes where they could gradually make a complete or even a partial recovery? And where you, by the way, could lose a few excess pounds and get that funny little tic in your heart to go away. Of course, we don’t really KNOW for a fact that Coca leaf treatment can slow, reverse or cure Alzheimers (because we can’t run medical/scientific studies with Coca Leaf), but when you read the medical and scientific evidence about Coca Leaf’s effects on brain issues from the centuries before anti-drug hysteria swept Coca Leaf out of existence as a legitimate medicine you’ll probably agree with me that it may be worth a try and almost certainly can’t hurt.

It would certainly be interesting to watch DEA/US Government thugs try to stop thousands of families with loved ones in wheelchairs or hobbling on canes or walkers heading for South American Coca Leaf Spas, and it would be even more interesting and uplifting to see those same families returning to the US a month or so later minus the wheelchairs, canes, and walkers. Just imagine for a moment what it would mean to millions of families if they could bring their parents back from the dark hole of Alzheimers/Dementia. And even if it turned out that Coca leaf tea isn’t a successful treatment for Alzheimers/Dementia, think of the impact on families if they could get control of even a few of the diseases listed above, which we know for a fact could be effectively treated and even cured by a month or so at a Coca Leaf Spa in the Andes. And of course there probably isn’t a single DEA thug (or NSA/CIA spook, or corrupt politician, or moralistic Bible-thumper) who doesn’t have someone who they love in their family who is suffering from one or more of these eminently curable diseases – so you have to ask yourself how much resistance would there actually be to an initiative that holds out the promise of a cheap, pleasant, and safe cure?

What would it take for this vision to become reality? Actually it would take just one person – the right person – in a position of power within a single Cartel to take a serious look at the possibilities, to order his bankers and accountants and lawyers to create a workable scenario for implementing an initial small string of Coca Leaf Spas, and to ensure that there would be no in-country hassling of Spa visitors from police or politicians. Then it would be a matter of appropriate staffing, ensuring that there was first-class medical support on-site, and then stepping back out of the way of the flood of people seeking the kind of relief and healing that only the leaf of the “Divine Plant” can offer. So I have to ask the Drug Cartel leadership – Plomo ó Plata señores?