Donald Trump has ordered the aerial fumigation of Colombian coca fields using the same controversial glyphosate herbicide employed in the past. The Latin American human rights organization WOLA is raising objections to more fumigation:

On February 10, the Colombian government said it planned to eradicate 130,000 hectares of coca this year, using techniques that will possibly include the spraying of herbicides from aircraft. […]

When assessing the wisdom of restarting aerial spraying, it’s also paramount to consider how this policy will impact Colombia’s obligations under international human rights law. The pursuit of drug control objectives does not relieve governments of their fundamental obligations to protect and promote human rights, including people’s rights to live in dignity, to be free from hunger, and to enjoy an adequate standard of living. […]

Many studies exist about the health and environmental risks associated with spraying of glyphosate, the active ingredient in the herbicide mixture that Colombia used in the past and proposes to use again … El Espectador reported last year on a Colombian government study that found the following:

“‘In humans, evidence of glyphosate exposure was considered as a risk factor for non-Hodgkin lymphoma, Hodgkin lymphoma, lymphomas, multiple myeloma, and miscarriages.’ In addition, it notes that ‘other outcomes reported as an adverse effect from exposure to glyphosate, with statistically significant estimates, were beta cell lymphoma and attention disorders and hyperactivity.’” […]

The original plan was to end the 50 year conflict that had cost 260,000 lives and to reintegrate more than 13,000 FARC revolutionaries back into peaceful society. Complicating the coca eradication program are dozens of killings of FARC fighters after a 2016 peace deal was entered into under former President Juan Manuel Santos. The human rights of Colombia’s most peaceful demonstrators are violated. Deaths of human rights activists are said to be 289 or 736 depending on who is asked. The murders weaken current Colombian President Duque’s prospects for future peace talks with guerrillas.

The state that inspired the book ‘What’s the Matter with Kansas?’ continues to ignore cannabis prohibition’s uncanny ability to ignite a populist revolt whenever and wherever law enforcement exceeds its authority.

Exceeding their authority, the Kansas Highway Patrol targets motorists who are merely exiting Colorado into Kansas. According to studies, the KHP prefers intercepting those who look ethnic, or who display Colorado or out-of-state license plates, this in a state that was anti-slavery during the Civil War. The first complaints arose in 2016. The bogus stops didn’t stop. Now a lawsuit has been filed by the ACLU and three plaintiffs who were detained by the KHP. The legal action is drawing wide public attention to corrupt police tactics, such as the Kansas Two Step:

Ninety-three percent of the Kansas Highway Patrol’s traffic stops in 2017 involved cars with out-of-state plates, according to a lawsuit challenging the practice as an infringement on motorists’ constitutional rights. […]

The complaint … challenges a law enforcement practice known as “the Kansas Two Step,” a maneuver used to detain drivers for canine drug searches. The maneuver, which is included in the agency’s training materials, is a way to break off an initial traffic stop and attempt to reengage the driver in what would then be a consensual encounter.

The way the “Kansas Two Step” works is this: A trooper stops a vehicle with out-of-state plates under the pretense of a minor traffic violation. The trooper issues the driver a ticket or warning for the infraction, then turns around and takes a couple of steps away from the vehicle before turning around and asking the driver to agree to answer additional questions. When the driver denies transporting anything illegal, the trooper requests consent to search the car. If the driver declines to consent to a search, the trooper detains the driver for a canine drug search. […]

Litigating against illegal marijuana searches by the Kansas highway police might seem odd given that Wichita is home to the fabulously wealthy and influential Charles Koch DBA Koch Industries. Koch has criticized marijuana prohibition and he funds the Charles Koch Institute that works for juridical reform. So where is the Koch action plan for legalizing medicinal cannabis in Kansas and eliminating drug related stops and asset forfeitures by the KHP?

Chicago’s FBI Office recently tweeted a reminder to those applying for a job with the venerable agency:

Illinois decriminalizes recreational marijuana on Jan. 1, but #DYK federal laws on marijuana aren’t changing? To apply to #FBI, you’ll still need to be marijuana-free for 3 yrs.

The waiting period for applicants appears to affect regular marijuana consumers along with people working in the marijuana industry and anyone taking Schedule 1 restricted drugs. Current FBI agents and staff face risky hurdles should they need to self-medicate with federally forbidden substances. And what’s with the 3 years? Why anabolic steroids for 10 years? Do J. Edgar Hoover’s specter and COINTEL schemes still haunt the hallowed halls of the Washington FBI building named after him?

Hoover refused to recruit long hairs, bearded men, “pot heads” and people he called “pear heads.” If by pear heads J. Edgar was referring to small-minded people and not just individuals with misshapen craniums, then why can’t the FBI be euphoric over mother nature’s herbal-based wonder drugs that lead to mind expansion and even improved mental health? Or will the US face a bleak future of pear heads in the FBI and other federal agencies?

The Nasa—an Indigenous group in Colombia—want their land back, and they want it back now. To demonstrate their resolve, they’re employing eco-terrorism in an eco-friendly way to sabotage agricultural crops of colonial origins or ownership while simultaneously confronting Colombia’s illicit drug industry over its unlicensed use of their land. The Nasa’s goals have not won them many friends:

Since 2015, they have been carrying out direct actions in which they cut down cane fields, plant organic crops in their place, and allow the native vegetation to cover additional areas within the same reclaimed lands. They call this action “the liberation of Mother Earth,” […]

Since the signing of the Peace Agreement between FARC and the government, the United Nations Security Council in Colombia had verified 226 murders through March 2019. The accord led to the formation of armed dissident groups that splintered from the FARC, including right-wing paramilitary groups like The Black Eagles (Las Águilas Negras) — a decade-old moniker adopted by many disparate groups to spread fear — and an increased presence of organized crime groups, who “are fighting over territory for marijuana and poppy cultivation,” said José.

In 1991 a new constitution was enacted in Colombia that included Indigenous peoples’ rights, but according to the Nasa peoples’ documentation, between 1991 and 2005, “15 massacres were carried out in those years, with more than 500 dead.” … [More recently] two members of the Indigenous Guard from the San Francisco reservation in the municipality of Caloto had been killed by an armed group. Five people were also wounded, among them a 7-year-old boy.

“Who did it? It’s an armed group that’s trying to control and manage the drug trade and this has us very concerned, because the threats continue to be very frequent in our territory,” said one of the traditional leaders of the Nasa people, who spoke anonymously for security reasons.

The Nasa and the Liberators of Mother Earth believe that with these development policies, Indigenous people will continue to remain repressed. “The new government says that they’re not going to buy even one more meter of land for Indigenous peoples and they will neither create nor recognize more collective territories for Indigenous peoples,” said José. “On the contrary, the government says that these lands have to join in the development of capitalism. We don’t want to join; we want to liberate the land and live simply.”

Diana, a young Indigenous woman who introduced herself only by her first name, is responsible for the political education of the young people in this village of liberators. “We’re on maximum emergency alert because they’re killing us, and it’s so painful that this is happening in the north of Cauca,” … “Their development policies — and the planting of illicit crops that the government supports — are destroying our way of life.” […]

The history of settler colonialism is rich with the profits from drug wars as prohibitions tend to provide a wide variety of efficient and inhumane tools to repress civilians as well as earth’s liberators.

Examples include Colombian government drug war hype that conflates Indigenous people like the Nasa with FARC. Using similar strategies, international mining and oil companies operating in Mexico are infamous for terrorizing the Indigenous into abandoning their homes and land by getting the government or military to arrest young village men on false drug charges, or by staging phony drug raids outside villages at night, sometimes setting off incendiaries encompassing ten-meter flash zones and sending shrapnel into villages that endangers children and the elderly.