Wednesday, September 21, 2022

Petro denounces to the UN the hypocrisy of those who profit from the fight against drugs


The president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, has harshly criticized consumer societies and the hypocrisy of the fight against drugs, which poison the jungles and kill millions of Latin Americans while others fill their pockets in the name of higher values.



Gustavo Petro, President of Colombia - CHEPA BELTRAN / ZUMA PRESS / CONTACTOPHOTO© Provided by News 360

"I come from a country of bloody beauty", Petro began his intense and vehement speech, his first as president of Colombia before the United Nations General Assembly, where he criticized the "hypocritical" discourse of saving the jungle, since it is seen as "the enemy to be defeated".

"The jungle is burning, gentlemen, while you make war and play with it. The forest, the climatic pillar of the world, disappears with all its life. The great sponge that absorbs the planetary CO2 evaporates. The savior forest is seen in my country as the enemy to be defeated, as the weed to be extinguished", he denounced.

"The space of coca and of the peasants who grow it, because they have nothing else to grow, is demonized. For you, my country is of no interest to you except to throw poisons into your jungles, take your men to jail and throw your women into exclusion", he continued.

As he has been doing since he officially moved into Casa NariƱo, Petro has again insisted that the fight against drugs has turned out to be a failure, as has the fight against the climate crisis.

"Decreasing drug consumption does not need wars, nor weapons, it needs all of us to build a better society: a more solidary society (...). Do you want less drugs? Think about less profits (...). Think about a rational exercise of power", he said.

WAR AS AN EXCUSE
 

Petro has asked the international community for help, but stripped of hypocrisy, to save the Amazon rainforest. "The war served as an excuse for not taking the necessary measures (...) When it was necessary to move away as soon as possible from coal and oil, they invented one war and another".

"They invaded Ukraine, but also Iraq, Libya and Syria. They invaded in the name of oil and gas. They discovered in the 21st century the worst of their addictions, their addiction to money and oil. Wars have helped them not to act against the climate crisis. War has shown them how dependent they are on what will kill the human species", the Colombian president declared.

Petro again addressed those he considers responsible for the climate disaster that "fills the planet with viruses" to reproach them for at the same time doing business with medicines and turning vaccines into "merchandise".

"They propose that the market should not save us from what the market itself has created. The Frankenstein of humanity is in letting the market and greed act, surrendering the brain and reason, kneeling human rationality to greed," he lamented.

"The cause of the climate disaster is capital, the logic of relating to consume more and more, to produce more and more and for a few to earn more and more. This is what produces the climate disaster," stressed Petro, who, unlike other leaders at this type of event, did not read his speech.

Petro appealed to the rest of Latin American countries to unite in this attempt to put an end to this irrational power, to this passion for wars that are destroying the current civilization, and at the same time he proposed them to work together to save the Amazon rainforest.

"We can do it if you people from the north don't want to. Only exchange debt for life, only exchange debt for nature. I propose and I call on you in Latin America to put an end to it, do not pressure us to border ourselves in the fields of war, it is time for peace," he said.

"Let the Slavic peoples talk to each other, let the peoples of the world talk to each other (...) From Latin America I call on Russia and Ukraine to make peace (...). There is no total peace without economic, social and environmental justice", he concluded.

No comments: