Jamaica has been brought to a state of political crisis as a result of the failed (so far) attempt to extradite a drug kingpin, Chistopher "Dudus" Coke. A discussion of the events on a local Pacifica public affairs program, Soujourner Truth, this Friday (audio file can be accessed through the station's program archive file here), provides a very important link between two topics I've discussed this weekend--neoliberalism and the failed drug war. A good deal else is implicated as well, such as the synergy between conservatism and organized crime in battling the left. Mention is made of this history in Hollywood--a history that involves Ronald Reagan, among others.
Though this was entirely beyond the scope of the discussion, it's worth taking note of here, simply because this history has been so thoroughly erase. Reagan's pre-GE career was almost entirely dependent on MCA, which was heavily involved with the mob. In his last stint as President of the Screen Actors Guild, Reagan arranged a sweetheart deal that allowed MCA and MCA alone to both produce TV shows and continue representing talent. The Justice Department eventually ended this illegal scam. Reagan himself escaped prosecution at the time, but there is no doubt that if the Democrats had wanted to pursue a Whitewater-style investigation into Reagan's past, they would not have had to go around inventing shit to accuse Reagan of.
To understand the discussion that follows, a general understanding of what's happened in Jamaica this past week is needed. A good-enough quick overveiw is provided by Jared Mccallister in the NY Daily News:
Jamaica prime minister OKs extradition of alleged drug king pin Christopher (Dudus) Coke
Jared Mccallister Sunday, May 30th 2010, 4:00 AM
After years of opposition and recent pressure from the Obama administration, Jamaica Prime Minister Bruce Golding last week reversed his stance and okayed the extradition of alleged drug king pin Christopher (Dudus) Coke to stand trial in New York.
The failed attempt to take Coke into custody resulted in a state of emergency, gun battles and scores of deaths, as of late last week.
Coke was indicted in Manhattan in 2007 for operating a drug ring and running guns between New York and Jamaica.
Late last week, a top official reported that police regained control of Coke's Tivoli Gardens neighborhood, where his supporters battled with Jamaican Army personnel and police.
But the damage has already been done - to the neighborhood and the reputation of the Golding administration.
The prime minister may have to deal with a political backlash from constituents loyal to Coke. Golding, who heads the ruling Jamaica Labor Party, also admitted he used a U.S. law firm to lobby Washington, to drop the call for Coke's extradition.
And there remains a possibility the opposition People's National Party will step into the discourse against the Golding administration. So far, PNP and JLP leaders have praised the efforts of law enforcement and called for calm in the midst of the violence.
We now turn to somewhat extended comments from the discussion of these events and their significance from the program, the first by prolific author Gerald Horne:
Gerald Horne: "I think it's very important to look at this question in both transnational and compartive terms. If you look at the United States, for example, look at Hollywood labor in the 1930s, when labor was being lead by the left, and in order to confront the strength of the left, the Hollywood moguls basically allied with organized crime, to get a severe beat-down of the left, a beat-down from which it has yet to recover.
That was part of a long-time trend in this country, the decline of working-class organizations and the rise of lumpen organizations, particularly gangs and gangsters. Which we know, particularly those who have familiarity with Los Angeles, has suffused popular culture, music not least.
Now in Jamaica you had a similar trend. Some decades ago, the People's National Party, of Norman Manley, the founder, [his son] Michael Manley whom I'm sure we're all familiar with, was forced to undergo a purge of the left, which lead to a strengthening of the right, which then allied with gangs and gangsters, ... continued to give severe beat-downs to left-wing forces.
Now this situation ... in Mexico is a microcosm of the United States in another way. About 160 years ago, US nationals were reigning supreme in terms of the ilicit African slave trade. Taking Africans from West Africa and even East Africa and dragging them particularly to Cuba and Brazil. ... US Nationals were also ... in the opium trade to China. This created mass fortunes that was then invested in legitimate enterprise, so called, which was part of the ....[process?] known as the primitive accumulation of capital.
Now in Jamaica what you see is the direct copy between drug dealers, and gangsters and so-called legitimate enterprises, particularly the music business.
Keep in mind that Eduard Seaga, the predecessor to Bruce Golding, the head of the Jamaican Labor Party, basically was a music mogul before entering politics. It's no accident that, on the other hand, Bob Marley sang about Trenchtown, and not Tivoli Gardens, which is Seaga's bastion, and now Bruce Golding's constituency, because Tivoli Gardens was part of this whole nexus of business, illicit enterprise, and politics.
Now in Mexico, on the other hand, I have to keep coming back to the story reporting on NPR, about the Sinaloa Cartel basically not being subjected in as harsh a manner to the crackdown of Mexico city government that other cartels.
And by the way there's a very fascinating article in this weeks New Yorker that interestingly enough doesn't deal with the Sinaloa cartel, that deals with its competition, which is very interesting, but it also points out how these drug cartels are supposedly becoming more legitimate, they're marrying into elite families, they're taking their ill-gotten gains and investing it into so-called 'legitimate enterprises' and so the cycle continues.
Horne's commentary is a somewhat detailed reminder of the vast criminal foundations of the wealth of America. The global plundering of the world's resources today by the likes of Haliburton, Chevron, BP and their confederates is merely a continuation of what's been going on for centuries now, with varying degrees of legal cover--or not. This sort of refreshing historical honesty stands in deep, sharp contrast to everything that Barack Obama says and does. Yet, it is precisely an historical reckoning of past sins that's necessary if we are to make a truly equitable new beginning in dealing with the enormous backlog of unsolved problems that confront us in the 21st Century.
Next we hear from Laura Carlsen head of the America's program at the Center for International Policy, responded to a set up by host Margaret Prescod who talked about the wider pattern of drug-war violence encompassing Mexico as well as Jamaica:
Laura Carlson: Each country has its own culture and it's own history, but there's absolutely a connection. And one of the fascinating things about the articles and what's happening in Jamaica now is the frequent reference to Dudus as a Robin Hood in the area. And in fact there's a quote from one woman in the Tivoli Gardens area where the uprising has happened to protect him...[saying] Dudus helps us. When your grandmother dies, he buries her, when your children have to go to school he pays for it. and when you're hungry you go to him.
So what does this mean? In addition to the fact that we have this godfather-like behavior, in which drug lords gain the allegiance of whole communities because of providing these kinds of services, what it means is that the state is not doing its job.
These are sectors that have been abandoned by the state. It's obvious in Mexico, in many rural communities, in the urban poor slums, there are sectors that have been abandoned by the state, and the drug lords have come in and begin to provide basic services that the state is not providing. The other thing that we see is that the state--partly as a result of this abandonment--has lost all moral authority in these regions. The people are willing to take to the streets in violent confrontations to defend the drug lords because they believe that he works more in their interest than the government itself.
And this is a result both of the lack of services provided by the government, but also of the corruption that the people see on a daily basis. In Jamaica there's a lot of accusations of extra-judicial killings, of corruption and beatings at the police station, of corruption within the government itself as you mentioned, and this is very true in many parts of Mexico as well.
It hardly needs stating, but I'll say it anyway: The core of the neoliberal program, first implemented in the Third World, is the sharp cutback in social services for the poor. This is necessary to "balance budgets" in order to get IMF loans. Not figured in the balance sheets are the externalized costs, however, costs which ultimately include the widespread deterioration of civil society, and the take-over of social service provisions by drug lords, financed by the spread of drug addiction and violence in the United States and other wealthier nations. The failure to comprehend--or even have the slightest interest in--the true costs, including the externalized costs, of our various social policies is now leading us inexorably toward a state of global chaos. And the situations that Carlsen described are but one facet of how the costs we ignore come home to roost.
