nonseq said:
.....The rebels in Colombia, responsible for random assasinations of whole villages, are paid with coke money.
The sistuation is a whole lot more complex than that in colombia though - I'm not sure if you're saying that drugs are responsible for messing things up there, I'm pretty sure in terms of structural the issues the US government is directly repsonsible for a lot of this, its not like FARC are the only bad guys there.
"Plan Colombia, due to expire this year, has made Colombia the third-largest recipient of US military assistance after Israel and Egypt, receiving US$3 million per day in military aid. Eighty per cent of Plan Colombia has come in the form of military funding."
"With US training, two-thirds of the Colombian army are now involved in protecting the oil-rich sectors of the country. Under US supervision, the Colombian military recently launched “Operation Shield”, a new attempt to secure oil pipelines, to which the US has donated 10 Huey and Blackhawk helicopters. A new counter-guerrilla unit has been created especially to police the Cano-Limon oil field, in Arauca, near the Venezuelan border, which some fear could become a base for aggression against Venezuela."
" ...despite a 2001 Colombian government report estimating that the guerrillas received only 2.5% of total cocaine revenues — mostly as taxes levied on crop producers. In contrast, around 40% of the drug profits make their way into the hands of the right-wing paramilitaries and their allies."
"A central part of this “anti-drug” strategy has been the spraying of herbicides over the region, particularly a strengthened version of Roundup, or glyphosate, produced by US mega-corporation Monsanto. Over 600,000 hectares of Colombian jungle, the second-largest portion of the Amazon Rainforest after Brazil, has been sprayed in the past five years. The spraying has had a devastating impact on the region, poisoning animals, the water table, crops and the jungle, and causing illness, birth-defects and death amongst the local population."
"Washington justified its Cold War spending on the Colombian military as preventing the spread of “communism”. One of the main effects was the growth of the right-wing paramilitaries, currently responsible for more than 80% of human-rights violations in Colombia, including the assassinations and massacres of union leaders, human rights activists and student leaders."
from here
Also ...:
"Four U.S. soldiers were arrested in April on suspicion of trying to smuggle hundreds of thousands
of dollars worth of cocaine from Colombia to the United States on a military aircraft.
Two other soldiers were arrested this month on suspicion of trying to sell ammunition to anti-government paramilitary forces that the United States is training Colombian troops to fight against. The two men were reportedly found in possession of more than 30,000 rounds of ammunition in a Bogota apartment."
from here
Personally I'm into boycotting Coke (the stuff you might drink) for how they've been playing things in colombia:
"Coca-Cola's main Latin American bottler, Panamco, is on trial in the US for hiring right wing paramilitaries to kill and intimidate union leaders in Colombia. Since 1989, eight trade union leaders from Coca-Cola bottling plants have been murdered by paramilitary forces, and the lawsuit, filed by the United Steel Workers of America, charges that the paramilitary worked with the blessing of, or in collaboration with, company management."
from here