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Hey Scott, don’t think the term “forum” is appropriate for YOUR opinions on the topic. While I agree with some of your rant, I find much of the article to be a simple way to express your personal opinions about what you don’t agree with. While I do love CR and its people, and when push comes to shove, YOU will be calling the US for as much help as you need when CR is bullied by a regional country. And I bet the good ole US will be there, and more than likely we won’t be sending drones to save your ass. Happy Holidays, like the articles.
We fear for our Sovereignty as a nation and feel the government has become a cancer. War on drugs instead of legality is just one issue.
I debate metally if I should move to CR.
I spent alot of time in CR and my wife is from CR. Our kids are basically little gringos but speak spanish. They still love it here in th U.S..
For me CR has the freedoms and taxes we used to have here. It’s like the U.S. in the 50’s. The huge setback in my mind is that I do not believe that a country can have NO military protection. Scott, Please help me here…(seriously but hypothetically) If CR was literally on its own, and a latin country decided to invade CR, how long would it that entity to secure CR? My guess is 2 days. What do you think?
Maybe an Iranian induced nicaraugua?(hypothetical). If a country jumped in on behalf of CR, How long would negotiations of a withdrawl take before it happened? I guess a month. How about you? How much damage to the people and land would there be when it was all over? I think it would be a devastation. what price would the invading country pay?? realistically,if it eventually coplied? my guess is a slap on the wrist. Is this thinking wrong? Am I so far out in left field I need a reality check. When I read history books…. I am not so sure and feel uneasy about a brutal world and no protection whatsoever. (assuming you dont want any military presence in CR).PS… At this point, I am not sure if the U.S. is going to be the one protecting you, or the one you need protection from..
[quote=”azvetman”]Hey Scott, don’t think the term “forum” is appropriate for YOUR opinions on the topic. While I agree with some of your rant, I find much of the article to be a simple way to express your personal opinions about what you don’t agree with. While I do love CR and its people, and when push comes to shove, YOU will be calling the US for as much help as you need when CR is bullied by a regional country. And I bet the good ole US will be there, and more than likely we won’t be sending drones to save your ass. Happy Holidays, like the articles.[/quote]
North Americans are infected with fear. It has been a part of our culture since the beginning. The irrational fear is the reason for:
all the guns in personal hands,
the force behind the genocide against native americans,
The keeping of old fashioned slavery till a war ended it, the acceptance of a ridiculously large military foisted upon us by the powerful and wealthy who need it to maintain their hegemony,
our submissive acceptance of the corporate plutocracy that we have been lead to believe is a democracy,
our fear and mistrust of any new visionary and progressive ideas and the reason for our distrust of all things foreign.Scot, there is no way you will be able to reason with that fear. Fearful Americans will never understand how it is possible for a country to live happily without a military. This American view is an old, conservative world vision and one which seems contagious and self perpetuating. I hope I never see it manifest in Costa Rica.
Fear – hmmm.
Hey, I’m ok with fear; we all have to deal with it. The question for me is which fears I listen to and how I respond. And separating really fearful stuff from the marginal. The drug problem and the war on drugs is important but other issues trump this problem.
This whole discussion on drugs really is about a larger topic. For me it is just one piece of the puzzle concerning how our institutions (political, governmental, educational, financial, family, where do I stop) in the US, Europe and elsewhere are floundering. Everything is UNRAVELING! And about to change. Within ten years, we will not recognize the USA or CR as compared with today.
My guess is that this forum is populated with Boomers who have been blessed with lives of relative peace and prosperity and saturated with drugs. We have never been confronted with any real dose of national tragedy. That is NOW changing! New rules for living are being imposed – NOW!
So, how do I prepare for the new realities of the immediate years ahead? I don’t really care about who is to blame for the current situation of the horrible drug problem. Right now, I believe we are seeing the waters recede from our shores to be followed by the rushing tzunami that will hit shortly. I am moving to Florida where home prices are much more attractive than CR now. Where US based communities will better serve my wife and I than US enclave communities in a foreign country.
We are in the Fourth Turn!
Michael (writing from Richmond VA on the way to SW Florida)
your moving to fl.
the land of either the rich,the poor or the heavily endebted soul.
I hope your not disappointed.This was probably my most interesting read here folks. It is highly likely the future will bring large changes to the culture of drug use in all nations and highly unlikely that it will affect where we choose to retire. As a fellow looking forward to retiring at 45 I have found no nation with so very much to offer as Costa Rica.
Please remember, for every greater good comes a price…enjoy what good you are the beneficiary of and strive for perpetual improvement. Anyone who once wore a uniform knows the price people paid for our greater good. Enjoy it and remember the cost…it was paid in full.Good luck on the Florida move. I have lived here for the last 30 years and an ready to get away for good. It is unbearably hot and muggy most of the time. The geography is flat as a pancake so the only beauty you will find will be in the sky or the sea. Bugs abound. The weather and geography in CR are better suited to my taste.
Its always fun to stir up the pot… putting articles like this always bring out the crazy and far right and left. When I worked in the U.S. Embassy in Paraguay we would always get people calling us asking about the secret military base we had down there, or what are plans were with the underground water table there. My commander would just hang up laughing because he would knew there was a some weird blog out there.
This war on drugs have a lot of different angles, a lot of military brass feel that it is useless as far as stopping it from the boarders of the U.S. It has been a huge contractors heaven. It has stabilized Colombia and pushed the FARC to almost nonexistent compared to the 80’s. In 1984 was the first time I came to Panama and from there on flew many missions all over Central and South America. We used to have F4, 16 and A7’s fly up and down intercepting planes and boats from Panama to Florida. Now we are scattered up and down the areas will various types but not intercepting near as much as we used to.
In Colombia, that was a big success in many ways but at a large financial price but it did create a lot of jobs for contractors! If we did not help Colombia it would be far worse today that in the past. In the past it was bad but it would be worse.Hi, again,
I have friends from Columbia who are very glad for the UA help. They are very concerned about Presidente Chavez and his Gran Columbia ambitions which at some time will include the Canal.
Yes, I expect heat and humidity and bugs in SW Florida come Summer. But that is when I vacate for a month in CR or back to the Jersey Shore. My primary concern for the relocation is the safety of my wife and I with the coming collapse in the USA. We are getting out of NJ and the Northeast because it is getting too dangerous. Watch the news and the reaction to Gov. Christie’s initiatives. Crime is accelerating now. People are pissed. The state debts and their consequences are starting to agitate not just individuals but groups – read “class war”. Its happening; right in my Shore town even. [b]Drugs will be the least of our problems. [/b] Who will have the money to buy them?
My wife and I have chosen SW Florida as maybe the safest place when this country blows. At that time, I question, who will protect the Americans and Brits in CR? Remember the influx of poor Nicaraguans into CR during the last Contra affair? How Ticos had to put razor wire on their walls to deter the home intruders looking for booty and food?
I will selectively visit CR but prepare for the next ten years in SW Florida away from as much turmoil as possible.
Michael
[quote=”MICHAELANGELOF”]Hi, again,
I have friends from Columbia who are very glad for the UA help. They are very concerned about Presidente Chavez and his Gran Columbia ambitions which at some time will include the Canal.
Michael[/quote]
I hope you are just being funny here about Chavez wanting to take over Colombia and the Canal. Otherwise, your judgement on other world issues should be seriously questioned.
Florida is an climate improvement over any place further north but I am not so sure it would be much safer should we develop serious societal and economic problems. There are a lot of guns and very few people who know anything about self sufficiency in this country ( I am one of them). I would have more confidence in the people of a small Costa Rican farming community for self sufficiency than I would for a similarly sized North American community.,…and much of the north has a completely dead winter growing season. Try imagining yourself in a house on a frozen farm field in Ohio with no food or fuel supplies…and a large population of hungry, cold people who are armed to the teeth.
[quote=”ticorealtor”][quote=”spirit”]I hope you are just being funny here about Chavez wanting to take over Colombia and the Canal. Otherwise, your judgement on other world issues should be seriously questioned.
[/quote]You are right they are not trying to take over Colombia or the Canal, but if you don’t think that Chavez is putting pressure on South and Central America to become as one and he as the dictator you are sadly confused. At the last Sur Americana conference he reiterated on how the Americas need to group as one with out the U.S. involvement. He also joins with other dictators for financial backing to sway Latin America his way.
As for the canal what are your thoughts about the boarder problems with Nicaragua and Costa Rica? Do you believe that someday there might be two canals?
The politics of Latin America is very crazy and all of it is connected and most of it is just hear say…. and 90 percent of it you don’t hear about. What you don’t think will effect you is what really does. The drug war that is happening in Mexico is directly related to people that are in Colombia, Panama and here in Costa Rica!
As for Colombia, Chavaz hates the idea that the U.S. has been able to stabilize the country. With out the U.S. involvement it would have been so unstable that the FARC could still be running the country. What is happening in Mexico was happing in the 1980’s until we started supporting the Colombia government in the 90’s which has pushed back the FARC to a small corner in the south east. This has won the support of the majority of the Colombians because now they don’t have as much fear and blood shed as it was in the 90’s. In the U.S. you didn’t hear much and didn’t care much because it was not at your boarder.
Tell me what proof do you have that Colombia is not a success? Do you hear about as much be headings or neck less as death incidents in Colombia?You have been brainwashed.
The US redefined the FARC as a drug cartel in order to justify the freeing up of money and hardware donated in the war on drugs for use in general insurgency operations.There does seem to be some evidence that the FARC had gone beyond the role of tax collector, but it was anecdotal and did not amount to accusing them of being the major drug traffickers in Colombia.
Meanwhile, you neglected to mention the paramilitaries, despite the fact that US State Dept described them as drug traffickers when it talked of the FARC being tax collectors. So too have you left out mention of the numerous US personnel which have been arrested smuggling drugs or exchanging weapons for drugs with the paramilitaries.The villain in this century old Latin American drama has always been the U.S, called by the 19th century Cuban patriot , Jose Marti, “El Monstro Del Norte”. face it, buddy; we are the bad guys in the world. We are the ones with soldiers occupying other countries, we are the ones dropping bombs and killing civilians, we are the ones subverting freely elected governments, we are the ones assasinating democratically elected leaders, we are the ones confiscating precious resources for excessive consumption and we are the biggest market for and the biggest smugglers of drugs.
OK, Chavez is just a kindly uncle attending to his own business.
Fact is though that he has openly declared his intent of bringing Simon Bolivar’s Gran Columbia back to life. He envisions himself as the modern day Bolivar. And has openly stated his aims of attacking Columbia; he supports FARC against Columbia.
Panama was originally part of Gran Columbia and it was part of Columbia before the US wrenched it away for the canal.
1+2=3
If the US is the “bad guy”, does that mean that Chavez and Ortega are the “good guys”? Who wants to move to Venezuela?
Drugs are not the root of our problems. They are simply a physical manifestation of deeper essential damage to the American soul. Therefore we can see how rouges like Noriega and Ortega and Chavez and many others conspire with thieves to undermine American society
I don’t think Scott smokes anything but you guys are sure living in fantasy land if you think the US government is not up to its eyeballs in drug dealing.
You might want to check out Michael Levine’s work. He is a 25-year veteran of the DEA turned best-selling author and journalist. His articles and interviews on the drug war have been published in numerous national newspapers and magazines, including the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and Esquire.
Levine writes:
“When Nixon first declared war on drugs in 1971, there were fewer than 500,000 hard-core addicts in the nation, most of whom were addicted to heroin. Three decades later, despite the expenditure of $1 trillion in tax dollars, the number of hard-core addicts is shortly expected to exceed five million. Our nation has become the supermarket of the drug world, with a wider variety and bigger supply of drugs at cheaper prices than ever before. The problem now not only affects every town on the map, but it is difficult to find a family anywhere that is not somehow affected. (pp. 158, 159)
The Chang Mai factory the CIA prevented me from destroying was the source of massive amounts of heroin being smuggled into the US in the bodies and body bags of GIs killed in Vietnam. (p. 165)
My unit, the Hard Narcotics Smuggling Squad, was charged with investigating all heroin and cocaine smuggling through the Port of New York. My unit became involved in investigating every major smuggling operation known to law enforcement. We could not avoid witnessing the CIA protecting major drug dealers. Not a single important source in Southeast Asia was ever indicted by US law enforcement. This was no accident. Case after case was killed by CIA and State Department intervention and there wasn’t a damned thing we could do about it. CIA-owned airlines like Air America were being used to ferry drugs throughout Southeast Asia, allegedly to support our “allies.” CIA banking operations were used to launder drug money. (pp. 165, 166)
In 1972, I was assigned to assist in a major international drug case involving top Panamanian government officials who were using diplomatic passports to smuggle large quantities of heroin and other drugs into the US. The name Manuel Noriega surfaced prominently in the investigation. Surfacing right behind Noriega was the CIA to protect him from US law enforcement. As head of the CIA, Bush authorized a salary for Manuel Noriega as a CIA asset, while the dictator was listed in as many as 40 DEA computer files as a drug dealer. (pp. 166, 167)
The CIA and the Department of State were protecting more and more politically powerful drug traffickers around the world: the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, the Bolivian cocaine cartels, the top levels of Mexican government, Nicaraguan Contras, Colombian drug dealers and politicians, and others. Media’s duties, as I experienced firsthand, were twofold: first, to keep quiet about the gush of drugs that was allowed to flow unimpeded into the US; second, to divert the public’s attention by shilling them into believing the drug war was legitimate by falsely presenting the few trickles we were permitted to indict as though they were major “victories,” when in fact we were doing nothing more than getting rid of the inefficient competitors of CIA assets. (pp. 166, 167)
On July 17, 1980, drug traffickers actually took control of a nation. Bolivia at the time [was] the source of virtually 100% of the cocaine entering the US. CIA-recruited mercenaries and drug traffickers unseated Bolivia’s democratically elected president, a leftist whom the US government didn’t want in power. Immediately after the coup, cocaine production increased massively, until it soon outstripped supply. This was the true beginning of the crack “plague.” (pp. 167, 168)
The CIA along with the State and Justice Departments had to combine forces to protect their drug-dealing assets by destroying a DEA investigation. How do I know? I was the inside source. I sat down at my desk in the American embassy and wrote the kind of letter that I never myself imagined ever writing. I detailed three pages typewritten on official US embassy stationary—enough evidence of my charges to feed a wolf pack of investigative journalists. I also expressed my willingness to be a quotable source. I addressed it directly to Strasser and Rohter, care of Newsweek. Two sleepless weeks later, I was still sitting in my embassy office staring at the phone. Three weeks later, it rang. It was DEA’s internal security. They were calling me to notify me that I was under investigation. I had been falsely accused of everything from black-marketing to having sex with a married female DEA agent. The investigation would wreak havoc with my life for the next four years. (pp. 168-171)
In one glaring case, an associate of mine was sent into Honduras to open a DEA office in Tegucigalpa. Within months he had documented as much as 50 tons of cocaine being smuggled into the US by Honduran military people who were supporting the Contras. This was enough cocaine to fill a third of US demand. What was the DEA response? They closed the office. (p. 175)
Sometime in 1990, US Customs intercepted a ton of cocaine being smuggled through Miami International Airport. A Customs and DEA investigation quickly revealed that the smugglers were the Venezuelan National Guard headed by General Guillen, a CIA “asset” who claimed that he had been operating under CIA orders and protection. The CIA soon admitted that this was true. If the CIA is good at anything, it is the complete control of American mass media. So secure are they in their ability to manipulate the mass media that they even brag about it in their own in-house memos. The New York Times had the story almost immediately in 1990 and did not print it until 1993. It finally became news that was “fit to print” when the Times learned that 60 Minutes also had the story and was actually going to run it. The highlight of the 60 Minutes piece is when the administrator of the DEA, Federal Judge Robert Bonner, tells Mike Wallace, “There is no other way to put it, Mike, [what the CIA did] is drug smuggling. It’s illegal [author’s emphasis].” (pp. 188, 189)
The fact is – and you can read it yourself in the federal court records – that seven months before the attempt to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993, the FBI had a paid informant, Emad Salem, who had infiltrated the bombers and had told the FBI of their plans to blow up the twin towers. Without notifying the NYPD or anyone else, an FBI supervisor “fired” Salem, who was making $500 a week for his work. After the bomb went off, the FBI hired Salem back and paid him $1.5 million to help them track down the bombers. But that’s not all the FBI missed. When they finally did catch the actual bomber, Ramzi Yousef (a man trained with CIA funds during the Russia-Afghanistan war), the FBI found information on his personal computer about plans to use hijacked American jetliners as fuel-laden missiles. The FBI ignored this information, too. (p. 191)”
You can see more about Levine’s books and radio show at http://www.expertwitnessradio.org.
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