Wednesday, April 01, 2009

Shoveling Water: War on drugs, War on people

Please take a few minutes to watch this excellent short film produced by Witness for Peace, that considers the human and environmental costs of the disastrous ongoing efforts to eradicate coca production in Colombia using aerial fumigation. The film features occasional Transform blogger Sanho Tree, a drug policy analyst from the Washington based Institute for Policy Studies.






The film producers provide the following description;

"Journey to the heart of coca country where United States tax dollars have financed the aerial fumigation of 2.6 million acres of land in Colombia – the world's second most biodiverse country.

See cropdusters target coca plants, the main ingredient of cocaine, with concentrated herbicide as part of the U.S. war on drugs.

Listen to people on the ground, hear about the impacts, and learn new ideas about how to solve this deadly problem."





2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Brilliant, moving and tragic. This is a comprehensive view from the people on the ground, suffering the horrible consequences of eradication.
Should be compulsory viewing for those who support aerial eradication.
The plea from some of the poorest and most marginalised people is for help to address underlying issues, rather than the symptoms of the war on drugs.

joebanana said...

Outrages, sickening, horrifying,this is NOT terrorism ? This is not chemical warfare ? WTF has the United States become? Who, or how, is this "helping"? This is utter insanity, criminal insanity, and it is so scary to see it's come this far. This "war on drugs" is a human rights violation, it's caused more death, and harm than it ever could have prevented, it's cost more wasted tax dollars than any reasonable human being would allow, and to continue this criminal(terrorist)activity for 30 years, and to not learned anything (like "it's not working")is pretty pathetic