Tag Archives: war on drugs

Latest Developments, September 16

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In the latest news and analsis…

Broken promises
The UN says donors are not living up to their promises in Haiti and around the world.
“There is a troubling distance between what we have promised and what we are actually doing to support the global partnership for development. And that gap is expected to widen,” according to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

Missing plutonium
Wired’s Danger Room reports on the difficulties encountered by the US, which has sold 17.5 tons of fissile material to other countries over the last 60 years, as it seeks to “secure all vulnerable nuclear material” worldwide.
“And there’s just one other problem. Subtracting all the nuke material that’s been accounted for and secured still leaves 2,700 kg — nearly three tons — outstanding. And that’s enough material to make dozens of nuclear weapons.”

The drug hemisphere
The White House’s new list of major drug producing or transit countries names 22 states, of which 17 are in the Americas.
“Pursuant to section 706(1) of the Foreign Relations Authorization Act, Fiscal Year 2003 (Public Law 107-228)(FRAA), I hereby identify the following countries as major drug transit or major illicit drug producing countries: Afghanistan, The Bahamas, Belize, Bolivia, Burma, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, India, Jamaica, Laos, Mexico, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Panama, Peru, and Venezuela.”

Corporate transparency
In a piece carrying the headline “Licence to Loot,” the Economist looks into international efforts to end the secrecy surrounding beneficial ownership of companies.
“Campaigners and, increasingly, criminal-justice agencies want the rules tightened—and not only in faraway islands. The case for this is highlighted in “The Money Laundry”, a new book by Jason Sharman, an Australian academic. As a test, he tried creating companies in various places without using a real (verified) ID. Of the 47 providers of registration services he approached in OECD countries, no fewer than 35 agreed to form shell companies without requiring proper documents. Some also helped to open bank accounts. Classic tax havens were on the whole much more rigorous.”

Anti-bribery legislation
Global Financial Integrity’s Tom Cardamone writes about a new paper entitled “Busting Bribery: Sustaining the Global Momentum of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act” authored by a pair of American law professors to counter the US Chamber of Commerce’s recent campaign against the anti-bribery legislation.
“To the idea that a company could be insulated from a charge of bribery if it had an anti-corruption program in place [Harvard’s David] Kennedy and [Northeastern’s Dan] Danielsen note that this would merely allow corporations to implement ‘fig leaf’ FCPA compliance programs in order to avoid criminal culpability.  Rather than leveling the playing field as the Chamber suggests, this provision could increase the incidents of bribery while reducing the likelihood of conviction.”

Democratizing the IMF
According to the findings of a Center for Global Development online survey, development workers in 81 countries overwhelmingly favour an end to Europe’s exclusive hold on the International Monetary Fund’s leadership.
“First, both European and non-European participants reject Europe’s traditional selection prerogative by large margins, with equally strong support for an open, transparent, competitive selection process. Agreement with an open process characterizes 92 percent of respondents from low-income countries, 90 percent from middle-income countries, and 84 percent from high-income countries.”

Bad food
Calling voluntary guidelines inadequate, a UN expert called on national governments to stand up to the food industry by imposing taxes and tougher regulations on unhealthy foods that kill about 3 million people per year worldwide.
“It is crucial for world leaders to counter food industry efforts to sell unbalanced processed products and ready-to-serve meals too rich in transfats and saturated fats, salt and sugars. Food advertising is proven to have a strong impact on children, and must be strictly regulated in order to avoid the development of bad eating habits early in life,” according to Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food Olivier De Schutter.

Expensive food
Mother Jones food and agriculture blogger Tom Philpott rejects the Wall Street line that soaring demand and relatively stagnant supply, rather than rampant speculative trading, explain the record food prices that have pushed millions into poverty and hunger around the globe.
“One way that investors morally justify the price surge they have set off is by arguing that while it might boost hunger in the short term, higher prices draw additional investment into agriculture, which will help “feed the world” going forward. But this, too, is hype. Indeed, commodities aren’t the only ag-related bubble now in the process of puffing up—prices of farmland, too, have exploded as investors search for new ways to cash in on Wall Street’s food pitch. And as investors snatch up farmland in places like Africa and Latin America for export crops, the amount of land devoted to feeding low-income residents of those places dwindles, and food insecurity rises.”

NCD generics
Intellectual Property Watch reports on concerns that next week’s UN summit on non-communicable diseases will concentrate on prevention to the exclusion of a much-needed debate on treatment as NCDs become a bigger problem in poor countries.
“But public health advocates see a coming crisis in treatment and want measures now to address it. For instance, Health Action International issued a briefing paper this week showing medicine prices are often too high for those on low wages, and urging the summit to ‘refocus on the attainable goal of universal access to essential medicines as a core priority for the treatment of NCDs.’

Ideology promotion
London School of Economics PhD student Karl Muth argues Carnegie Mellon University is set to “sow the seeds of African neoliberalism” with its announcement of a planned new campus in Rwanda’s capital, Kigali.
“However, liberal universities have a history of large influence in post-conflict zones, particularly in places recovering from internal conflict.  While the influence of the Chicago Boys after the 1973 Chilean coup is the most famous example, various neoliberal institutions have had more subtle effects, from encouraging the rapid evolution of economic policy in the Philippines to opposing minimum wage laws in post-handover Hong Kong.  The disorder of post-internal-conflict political reformation combined with the fact that incoming regimes are more likely to have military might than economic expertise allows foreign institutions to have disproportionately more influence.”

Latest Developments, August 23

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In the latest news and analysis…

With rebel forces having overrun Moammar Gadhafi’s main Tripoli compound, the international community – despite the occasional voice that cautions “the game isn’t over yet” and the long-time leader’s vow to fight to the death – is increasingly discussing a post-Gadhafi Libya, Middle East and world. The Christian Science Monitor’s Scott Baldauf wonders if Africa will miss Gadhafi who, for all his well-publicized faults, also was the “the single-largest contributor to the budget of the African Union, a prime aid donor for poor African countries, and a dependable advocate for pan-African cooperation.” UC Irvine historian Mark LeVine presents an “initial Libyan scorecard” on which the big losers – aside from Gadhafi and his close associates – include the UN because of NATO’s flagrant disregard for the rules of engagement set out by Security Council resolutions and the International Criminal Court because it will once again look like a dispenser of victors’ justice. But Open Society’s Alison Cole says it is “crucial for the maintaining of international justice that the ICC arrest warrants are implemented through the transfer of the three suspects to The Hague,” regardless of whether or not Libya is willing and able to conduct the trials itself.

In other prominent legal news, a New York judge has dismissed sexual assault charges against former International Monetary Fund head Dominique Strauss-Kahn because the prosecution had lost faith in the reliability of the alleged victim as a witness, despite “the finding of Strauss-Kahn’s semen in three places on Diallo’s hotel uniform.” Commenting on an unrelated case, a UN official has called on the US to do more to protect women from domestic violence.

The Guardian’s Jason Burke writes about the 9/11 wars and their cost, estimating the total numbers of dead at 250,000 and of injured at 750,000: “This may be fewer than the losses inflicted on combatants and non-combatants during the murderous major conflicts of the 20th century but still constitutes a very large number of people.” The Council on Foreign Relations’ Stewart Patrick instead focuses on the “bright spots” of international efforts against perceived terror threats over the last decade. He points to “a more robust legal architecture to combat this scourge,” as well as agreements regarding money laundering and nuclear weapons. Patrick also says the US “has renounced torture, as well as extraordinary rendition and ghost prisons,” though the Nation’s Jeremy Scahill’s recent work on Somalia suggests that may not be the case. Meanwhile, Sudan is not happy it is still stuck on the US terror list, even after agreeing to last month’s secession of South Sudan. “We have been promised time after time … that once a peace agreement is passed, Sudan will be lifted from the list of countries harboring terrorism,” according to former Sudanese ambassador to the US, Mahdi Ibrahim. “But each time we realize the bar is raised.”

As for the war on drugs, Organization of American States Secretary General Jose Miguel Insulza says countries with large numbers of drug users should “not put all the blame on drugs producing countries, but rather assume the responsibility as the countries to which drugs are destined.”

A subsidiary of Canada’s Barrick Gold is in talks with the Tanzanian government “over allocating mining areas to artisanal miners” around one of its projects, a measure the country’s home affairs minister described as “the only way” to restore peace to the surrounding area. The company says May clashes between villagers and police caused seven deaths at its North Mara mine.

Bloomberg reports Finland’s Nokia Siemens surveillance technology is being used by Bahraini intelligence against democracy activists who say they were tortured as a result of their text messages. But the company has done nothing illegal, according to the report: “Companies are free to sell such equipment almost anywhere. For the most part, the U.S. and European countries lack export controls to deter the use of such systems for repression.”

Acclaimed author Arundhati Roy suggests there is a suspicious level of corporate support for India’s proposed anti-corruption law: “At a time when the State is withdrawing from its traditional duties and Corporations and NGOs are taking over government functions (water supply, electricity, transport, telecommunication, mining, health, education); at a time when the terrifying power and reach of the corporate owned media is trying to control the public imagination, one would think that these institutions — the corporations, the media, and NGOs — would be included in the jurisdiction of a Lokpal bill. Instead, the proposed bill leaves them out completely.” She continues, writing that “by demonising only the Government they have built themselves a pulpit from which to call for the further withdrawal of the State from the public sphere and for a second round of reforms — more privatisation, more access to public infrastructure and India’s natural resources.”

The Center for Global Development’s Lawrence MacDonald says construction of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline that would connect Canada’s “tar sands” to refineries in Texas would amount to dropping “the world’s biggest carbon bomb” on India and other countries threatened by rising sea levels and adverse weather conditions. “Perhaps it’s time that India and other developing countries hard hit by runaway climate change turn the tables and start asking tough questions about U.S. energy policy in general and the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline in particular,” according to MacDonald. He says now is the time to speak up as the State Department holds hearings ahead of a decision on whether or not to approve the project by the end of the year.

 

Latest Developments, August 18

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In the latest news and analysis…

As the violent crackdown on Syrian protestors continues, Western leaders have called for the country’s president, Bashar al-Assad, to step down and are threatening more sanctions. “We call on him to face the reality of the complete rejection of his regime by the Syrian people and to step aside in the best interests of Syria and the unity of its people,” said a joint statement by the leaders of France, Germany and the UK. “For the sake of the Syrian people, the time has come for President Assad to step aside,” US President Barack Obama said. And while there were no threats of international military action, a new UN report says the Syrian regime may have committed crimes against humanity and calls for an investigation by the International Criminal Court.

Peru’s new left-leaning government has suspended its US-funded coca eradication program while it rethinks its drug fighting strategy. Though saying the move is meant only to be a “pause,” the country’s anti-drug czar also suggested 12 years of eradication efforts had done little to reduce cocaine production in the Andean nation that could soon become the world’s top exporter of the drug. And in Mexico, there are growing questions about the human and economic toll of the country’s war on drugs. But in a move designed to crack down on planes smuggling drugs through Central America, the Honduran government is proposing a no-fly zone over an area representing more than a quarter of the country’s total territory.

Apparently not swayed by a recent Economist article suggesting “shale gas should make the world a cleaner, safer place,” South Africa’s government has extended by six months its moratorium on drilling for the controversial energy source. The country’s mining minister imposed the ban earlier this year and commissioned a study on the impacts of fracking but still has some lingering questions. Anglo American and Shell are among the companies eager to extract South Africa’s shale gas but they have encountered opposition from farmers concerned about water contamination risks.

The UK government is vowing to resist any “Robin Hood” tax on financial transactions, following noises from France and Germany that they intend to introduce such a measure to generate revenue and discourage market speculation. “Any financial transaction tax would have to apply globally — otherwise the transactions covered would simply relocate to countries not applying the tax,” according to a British Treasury official.

“No clear evidence exists that microfinance programmes have positive impacts,” according to a new study by the UK’s Department for International Development, citing a lack of “rigorous quantitative evidence” on the subject. The study’s lead researcher has urged “a more holistic approach to financial services for the poor, which would put more focus on savings, remittances and financial literacy rather than on the obsessive interest in microcredit of the last few years.” Another, as-yet unpublished DFID study on microfinance in Africa is said to reach similar conclusions but, according to the Guardian, the department has already locked in funding to expand African microfinance programs.

Christian Aid has blasted the anticipated UK tax deal with Switzerland, saying it will undermine efforts to tackle international tax dodging, which the NGO estimates costs poor countries $160 annually, “far more” than the amount of aid they receive. “Poor countries lack the political and economic clout to do such deals with Switzerland – but they too lose billions as a result of money being illegally hidden in tax havens,” according to a Christian Aid press release. “And just like the UK, they need that money to fund vital public services such as schools, hospitals and justice systems.”  The statement calls on G20 countries to put a stop to “the tax haven secrecy exemplified by Switzerland” by forging “a new system of automatic information exchange between Governments – including those of poor countries – to help them to detect when citizens hide wealth offshore.”

Like Christian Aid, the French government does not like Switzerland’s so-called Rubik plan – which Germany has accepted and the UK looks set to do the same – that allows Swiss banks to retain their secrecy while falling into line with European tax rules. “We understand the choices made by Germany and Great Britain who, not so long ago, held similar positions to our own,” a French finance ministry source told Le Monde. “It’s only human to want the money right away.” But the source said transparency remains the French priority. Meanwhile, a number of African governments are reportedly looking to set up their own tax havens in order to “modernise the African financial sector.”

Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs paints a picture of the world economy in which the super-rich have used the “global tax competition” argument to secure tax cuts from their home governments and tax havens have multiplied despite feeble protests from politicians: “In the end the poor are doubly hit, first by global market forces, then by the ability of the rich to park money at low taxes in hideaways around the world.” One of the essential steps he believes governments must take in order to end the current economic crisis is the balancing of budgets “in no small part through tax increases on high personal incomes and international corporate profits that are shielded by loopholes and overseas tax havens.”

Hexayurt Project director Vinay Gupta writes “we must acknowledge that the field of human rights has become a gridlock of rights, entitlements, preferences and theology. Rights directly conflict with each-other, as in the right to property directly conflicting with the right to assured access to water. Without a global jurisdiction, no government can enforce any kind of coherent rights doctrine, particularly in the face of borderless problems like terrorism or environmental crisis.”

University of South Carolina geographer Edward Carr argues development (as well as humanitarian) workers need to think more about their own work’s environmental impact: “While an intervention appropriate to a community’s current needs may result in improvements to human well-being in the short term, the changes brought on by that intervention may be maladaptive in ten or twenty years and end up costing the community much more than it gained initially.”