The Drug War: As Useful as Shoveling Water
Sanho Tree is a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies and leads IPS’s Drug Policy Project. I recently spoke with him about the waging of the Drug War under the Obama administration. For more on Plan Colombia see this powerful video from Sanho Tree and Witness for Peace and my interviews with him from 2001 and 2003.
Sanho Tree: First of all, Obama has about more than 500 appointed positions that require Senate confirmation that he is allowed to appoint, and about half of them have been appointed thus far. And that’s par for the course. He’s actually ahead of the curve in terms of Presidential transitions. But it just takes a long time to put all the people into the bureaucracy and to really set policies.
Having said that, we still don’t have a director of AID (Agency for International Development), for instance, or DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration). So, in that sense, there’s a lot of the permanent bureaucracy that is acting on autopilot. And they are right to do that until they get instructions to the contrary, new guidance, new policies. And we’re talking about a lot of layers of policies. So, without focusing high level attention on this issue, there’s not a lot of radical change that’s gonna happen anytime soon.
The new drug Czar is a fairly decent guy, actually, Gil Kerlikowske, a thoughtful guy, and he’s doing a lot of stuff quietly–not on Plan Colombia, but on other Drug War issues–quietly, that is quite positive, even though he continues to put out the rhetoric that soothes the ($23 billion a year) Drug War bureaucracy… It’s a lot of money and a lot of civil servants, many of whom would love to knife him in the back if they got a chance. (more…)
Real Reds
Eugene V. Debs addresses a massive crowd in Chicago, 1912 (Source: Indiana State University)
It’s sad that so many people take the silly back and forth about President Obama’s alleged “socialism” seriously. If the name Eugene Victor Debs was as well known as it should be, such nonsense would be recognized for what it is.
Nick Salvatore is the author of Eugene V. Debs: Citizen and Socialist (University of Illinois Press, 2nd edition 2007), a fascinating and engaging biography of the socialist leader and presidential candidate and a detailed history of the early radical American labor movement.
Lenny Flank edited Writings of Eugene Debs: A Collection of Essays by America’s Most Famous Socialist and Reds,White and Blue: An Anthology of American Socialism and Communism 1880-1920 (Red and Black Publishers, 2009).
Both generously took the time to answer some questions about their books.
G&R: How did Eugene Debs define socialism and how much was his vision influenced by Marx and the European movements?
Nick Salvatore: EVD read Marx and some of the more popular European socialists, but they were never a driving force for him. His understanding of socialism for America owed more to an effort to maintain American democratic values in an era of industrial corporate development. (more…)
Hunter Thompson’s Ancient Gonzo Wisdom
Ancient Gonzo Wisdom: Interviews with Hunter S. Thompson (Picador, 2009) doesn’t stand on its own like, say, David Barsamian’s interviews with Noam Chomsky, but it does make a fun addendum to the books and articles the good doctor (of chemotherapy, divinity, and journalism) left us.
One of the principles of Gonzo Journalism is spontaneity, but most of these interviews, edited by Thompson’s widow Anita, suggest he was much more interesting seated behind a Selectric than behind a microphone. This could be the fault of the interviewers, who ask a lot of the same unthoughtful questions (about drugs, Nixon, getting beaten up by Hell’s Angels, etc.), to which Thompson gives a lot of different answers.
“I’ve always considered myself basically an anarchist,” he told High Times in 1977, “but every once in a while you have to come out of the closet and deal with reality.” It would have been interesting if someone had asked Thompson (whose ever-present aviator sunglasses and cigarette holder are to vaguely-defined rebellion as silhouetted mouse ears are to talking-animal themed amusements) if he ever considered the “reality” of the material and human wreckage his lifestyle created.
For an “anarchist”, Thompson had a striking disregard for the working people he collided with as he staggered through his adventures: the waitress terrorized by attorney Oscar Acosta in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas; the maids who had to deal with his spectacularly demolished hotel rooms; or anyone who happened to be on the road when he was enjoying his “favorite drug experience”: “big motorcycle, head full of acid…going 120 miles an hour.”
Ancient Gonzo Wisdom opens with some lines by W.H. Auden: “Time…Worships language and forgives/Everyone by whom it lives…” which isn’t true, or shouldn’t be, because celebrity priviledge isn’t much better than class priviledge, even for celebrities who wrote remarkably true, funny, and powerful things about rotten and powerful people.
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