yet another bloodbath caused by unconscionable U.S. drug policy

Unsurprisingly, the U.S. media, while dutifully reporting the ongoing street violence in Jamaica, has been rather lax in reporting the true cause of these events: The War On Drugs.

The real story is that the USDOJ has for months been exerting pressure on the Jamaican prime minister to arrest and extradite a Jamaican "drug lord" wanted in New York on drugs and weapons charges. The prime minister, finally bowing to this pressure, went into his stronghold in a Kingston slum with guns blazing. Results were predictable: at least 60 killed so far, most of which appear to be innocent bystanders.

"The violence shows no signs of abating and has spread to adjoining neighborhoods." The linked article, of course, contains no word of criticism or analysis regarding the wisdom of provoking a massive gun battle in the streets of a densely populated neighborhood for the purpose of (slightly) inhibiting the supply of cocaine and marijuana to the United States, where, needless to say, there is a rather high demand for this product.

Jamaica, of course, does not appear to have much of a drug problem, per se, except insofar as its neighboring country, a wealthy and powerful global hegemon (that would be us), is apparently rather insistently forcing its own "drug problem" onto Jamaica (and into its streets, with maximum deadly violence, accompanied by the inevitable social and economic disruption).

A policy with these results is clearly sociopathic, and begins to approach my own personal definition of "evil".