Consequences of Bitemporal Hemianopia

[Lostagain]

Here's an interesting observation concerning GII's inability to see outside of the microscope he has pointed on Iraq, Iran and Afganistan. It does not bode well for those of us who either live or want to live in many parts of Latin America:

[I can't edit my spelling in the title but it should be Hemianopia. L.A.]

Sept. 26, 2007, <http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5165095.html>
Colombian official warns of drug cartels' growing reach
Santos laments lack of U.S. focus on Latin America

By DANE SCHILLER
Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle

The United States should return its attention to Latin America because drug cartels are spreading their influence through the region and streets and nations are lost to crime, Colombian Vice President Francisco Santos said Tuesday.

"Drug trafficking has spread like a cancer, like a cancer, in countries with very weak institutions," Santos said during an interview with the Houston Chronicle editorial board, in an effort to promote the Andean nation as a strong partner to the United States. "You are going to have a huge problem on your hands in the very, very near future."

Santos, who in 1990 was kidnapped by then-cocaine king Pablo Escobar, said that while Colombia has wrestled mightily with drug cartels, worse could now be ahead for other nations.

The drug cartels are looking to Peru, Bolivia and other countries to expand their coca crops, he said, and Mexico, now home to the world's most powerful cartels, had better fortify itself.

"You need to be tough, really tough, because they are tough criminals and the business is so big that they will try to fight it out to the end," Santos said.

Colombia serves as an example of how dramatic a nation's battle with cartels can get.

Although activity has comparatively quieted there since the 1990s, the cartels had run roughshod over the society as they terrorized the population, murdered politicians and judges, and, in a famous incident, blew up an airliner in flight, killing an alleged witness and more than 100 others.

A region forgotten
Many Latin Americans have said the United States has largely forgotten about the region over the last six years as it has focused on the Middle East, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the fight against terrorism.

"You need to pay attention to the continent, and you don't see that, to tell you the truth," said Santos, a former newspaper editor who was elected in 2002.

He said the United States focuses largely on economic issues. "It is like the policy is free trade, that is it," he said. "Not good enough."

Santos held out his country's efforts to extradite drug traffickers to the United States and spray poison on crops as evidence of its policies, but conceded it has not had much success in reducing the supply — a problem many say is caused by the United States remaining the world's biggest cocaine market.

John Walsh, a senior associate at the Washington Office on Latin America, a human rights and foreign policy monitoring organization, said that although the amount of Colombian cocaine has not dropped, the Bogota government is doing more than any other country to eradicate coca crops.

It has also done a lot in terms of busting covert laboratories, arresting traffickers and extraditing major players to the United States, he said.

In 2000, a $5 billion Clinton administration initiative called Plan Colombia was enacted to help Colombia take on the cartels and attack illegal coca production.

Colombia is aggressively seeking to show that it is trying to be a good partner, Walsh said, in hopes of persuading U.S. lawmakers to approve a free-trade agreement. The accord, signed in November 2006, has been languishing in Congress.

"With regard to the trade deal," Walsh said, the Colombians "are saying, 'Do not treat us badly because we have been a good partner and want to remain that way' "

[Ciza29]

In the book "Cocaine: An unathorized Biography", it states the US government has spent over $300 Billion dollars in the last 15 years in its war on drugs.

You can't stop a demand issue by attacking supply. It just causes prices to go up and then more people are willing to take the risks.

What we are seeing is the balloon principle. If you try to press the air out of secured balloon, it just goes to another part of the balloon.

If we clamp down of Colombia, then Bolivia and Peru provide more. Most of the problems in Latin America are caused by US policy.

Does Colombia want us to give them even more money?

[JMitch1959]

Please stop with the medical terminology.
What the **** is a bilateral hemienieopia sic.

As to your article lost again.
We're doing are damndest to shut down, and dry out that financial **** hole, slime mold, where the socalled masters of the universe are doing their damndest to destroy the nation state of Colombia as well as the Nation-state of the United States of America, that British Crown Colony of the Cayman Islands, where approximately 80% of hege fund, locust fund, funny money mother****ers operate in anonymity working their mystical magic of the marketplace and making the world a generally ****ed up place according to their global imperial design.

So, in conclusion go to www.larouchepac.com and join the movement and support our latest flank the HomeOwners and Bank Protection Act of 2007 legislation to promote the general welfare of the U.S. political economy and tell the hedge funds to go **** themselves in the infamous words of Dirty Dick Cheney, and lest you think me off topic again Honky Tonk, by drying up this swamp of iniquity by declaring their bull**** fictitious, fraudulent immoral global financial swindle over and that hell no we won't pay their monetary claims based on these facts in a general bank holiday freeze bankruptcy re-organization of what are valid pricipaled, important to the public interest financial claims, and what claims are declared bull**** and not to be paid.

And by shutting down this **** hole it will cripple the drug trade in Colombia, and make it much less difficult for the Colombian government to deal with these maggots, who are deployed by those who are trying to destroy the nation of Colombia. Viva Colombia... Viva the United States of America...
Let us do humanity a great service and strike down these financial pirates of the Caribean once and for all.

[Ciza29]

JM,
I admire your passion and focus on what you believe.

[El Capitan]

Originally Posted by JMitch1959

Please stop with the medical terminology.
What the **** is a bilateral hemienieopia sic.

In bitemporal hemianopia vision is missing in the outer half of both the right and left visual fields, in effect giving you tunnel vision. This should not be confused with the brownish tinge and obscured field of view associated with optirectomitis which in essence, just gives you a ****ty outlook on life.

[Lostagain]

In my own personal view of the world, which isn't always connected to everyone else's reality, the only rational solution to shut down the Latin American drug cartels is to legalize it, tax the sales almost to the point of creating a black market but not quite, use the tax money to pay for treatment and other social costs, and watch the price drop to the point that it isn't worth the bother to have criminal gangs running the trade. Of course, we'll have to deal with multi-national companies who will want to get into the production and sales game, but if we let the addicts sue to recover from the consequences of their addiction, that'll tend to scare the big companies away. And think of the unintended consequence - personal injury lawyers could have another avenue to riches - a cause close to my heart.

As for whether it is hedge funds or others financing the drug cartels, I think it is all done by insurance companies and their associates. They make the hedge funds look puny by comparison.

P.S. Thanks, El Cap. I couldn't have said it better myself.

[Ciza29]

LostAgain,
I am in complete agreement with legalizing drugs. The Billions we spend could be put to actually helping people, not to mention freeing up law enforcement for real crimes and needing about half as many prisons and judges. I am also anti hedge funds.

I know oil companies and insurance companies control much, I just am not smart enough or powerful enough to know what to do with them.

[JMitch1959]

Hell no to drug legalization,
We're going to need clear thinking citizens in order to develop their minds with a classical education of learning universal physical principles such as those discovered my geniuses of the past and present such as Kepler, Gaus, Beethoven,
Davinci, Leibniz, Schiller, LaRouche, Mozart, Bach, Vernadsky, et al. and to build the great projects such as the world wide mag-lev train system starting with a land bridge accross the Bering Strait, and a 300 mile an hour transrapid, as the Germans call it riding on a cushion of air supplied by state of the art for magnetic levitation technology that should have been implemented decades ago but for the pathetic post war post-industrial, eco-fascist, cultural de-generacy, including people ****ing up their minds and lives as well as those around them on drugs.

The Post industrial society and the mind numbing jobs like McDonalds and Disneyworld will be a thing of the past. So put away your marihuanna etc.
Their will not be so much coolie labor where you'll be allowed to smoke dope and push a broom. In the new economy we'll be building some wild **** that you'll need a clear mind to help make your contribution to the next great world wide Rennaisance. The answer to ending insane warfare is economic cooperation between sovereighn nation states and don't let the mag-lev train leave the station without you on it or in self induced drug intoxication.

The future is bright at www.larouchepac.com and leave your drugs at the door, or better yet flush them down the toilet with the other ****.

[Lostagain]

Do I detect a bit of an appeal to prejudice and emotion rather than reason in the following words?: "but for the pathetic post war post-industrial, eco-fascist, cultural de-generacy, including people ****ing up their minds and lives as well as those around them on drugs." Ahhh, what was that fancy Latin term for that kind of argument???

To quote an often maligned ex-president: "Let me make one thing perfectly clear" -- I don't advocate the use of recreational drugs by anyone. But if someone is determined to use them, it is his/her personal choice. I just am tired of trying to control stupid decisions of individuals and if some dumb f*ck wants to kill himself on an overdose, then he should have the freedom to do so. I only want to minimize the social consequences of his stupidity by creating a viable means to offer him medical treatment to stop his drug addiction and to eliminate the criminal drug trade and its horrible consequences brought to bear on far far too many innocent people, especially in Latin America. We have tried the path of criminality in drug control and despite the billions of dollars put into it, the problem is increasing geometrically. Perhaps it is time to try a new path. At least we will have new problems to deal with.

As for mind numbing jobs, E-man and I can attest that farm work is one of the most mind numbing things you can do. But, I like to eat and I haven't seen a machine yet which picks strawberries when they are ripe and actually have flavor. Maybe fearless leader could put his "genius" to work and invent one. In the mean time we are going to have plenty of repetitive mind numbing jobs and most of the people who do them are hard working honest folk who aren't strung out on smack or blow.

[HonkyTonk]

"[I can't edit my spelling in the title but it should be Hemianopia. L.A.]"

LA, I believe you can modify a topic heading by using the Thread Tools in the red bar.