Mother Jones - Comments for "The Drug War's Southern Flank"

Again... GOD BUSH and the GOP making decisions in regards to Taxpayers by giving money to MEXICO to FIGHT DRUGS moving in and out of MEXICO. How much of the 1.4 Billion Dollars will be funneled to the President of Mexico and his cronies...????

GOD BUSH should have been IMPEACHED during his FIRST TERM..

Prohibition didn't work the first time, and it won't work this time.

Alcohol prohibition gave rise to the mafia in America. Moonshining, smuggling, bootlegging, rum running, gangland killings -- all crimes created or promoted by prohibition.

Drug prohibition has the same kinds of effects. The rise of drug cartels, smuggling, drug dealing, and killings due to deals gone bad or turf invaded.

All of that is completely preventable through legalization and regulation. Let's face it, everyone who has decided to use drugs is either already using drugs or about to obtain them.

Eliminate the motive for property crime: legalize and regulate.

What will it take to end Mexican drug trafficking? There is one and only one solution. The re-legalization off all of our now illegal drugs so that they can be sold in legal, regulated and licensed businesses for pennies per dose.

All other efforts are counter-productive
and and a complete waste of money.

These guys still have their heads in the clouds, haven't we learned anything in the last 20 years. Their going to keep bringing it up as long as we keep wanting it and we're going to always want it because changing our consciousness is hardwired into our very being. It's great theatre. Read:
www.americanpassionplay.com

They can urinate away all the money on this that they want to, but instead, maybe what they need to do is sit down with Mr. Calderon, and update the Treaty Of Guadalupe-Hidalgo. It was written a long time ago, about 150 years ago, and it set up the US/Mexico border initially.

A full public review of all facts relevant to the issue is also in order. Getting the public involved, and facilitating and applying their collective decisionmaking capability
will help to bring the issue of the border, and the long and storied history of cross-border crime to successful and mutually acceptable
resolution.
Mexico and the United States have been in this sort of mutually abusive relationship for a while, and getting the facts 'on the table' is imperative to any finalization of policy.
Yeah, I know, in order to do this, the bureaucrats(We live in a bureaucracy, or petrocracy, something like that) will have to lever themselves out of their respective Comfy Chairs and either themselves or through designated agents or agency, compile the necessary information to glean a more thorough understanding of all elements and issues inherent to the border situation.

MY suggestion is a 1-year 'time out'.
Shut the border. Everyone take a little break, have a cup of coffee, look at the map, and ponder the future, and initiate discussion along those lines.
Maps. They really do help. At-issue is the 2,000 mile boundary line that separates the lower 48 from the country of Mexico. Country. Nation. Boundary. Border. Sovereignty. Keywords, here.
So simple, even a layman can 'get it'.
And, that's part of the problem, here, too, because if you read the various stories about all this stuff, it becomes fairly apparent that some of those for-hire legal eagles have in the past allowed themselves to be Bad Actors, as facilitating uncontrolled immigration into the United States to satisfy the labor requirements of some fly-by-night companies and other interested parties has proven quite lucrative.
Case-in-point, Alberto 'let my people in' Gonzales, our erstwhile attorney general, whom I find to be generally disgusting, and a disreputable attorney, behaving in breach of his office, again for profit purposes.
Yet, this is the kind of 'fun' we've witnessed under this glad-handing, naked profiteering 'administrationerer', and as a result, our southern border has been neglected, disregarded, disrespected, which has fairly sinister implications if you consider that YOUR citizenship is in play, here. Bad actors have stationed themselves outside our borders, including inside the country of Mexico, and from that vantage point perpetrated all KINDS of crafty 'business'. I'm not a legal eagle, but I do believe that this just might be considered deliberate subversion, and an economic attack on the United States as a nation. Given that Mexico's history of corruption is fairly well-known, 'la mordida' law enforcement etc., well, wouldn't you know that by virtue of having free and open access to our country through a porous border, those selfsame standards and practices have migrated into our very own system of government, specifically in the BOOKKEEPING department. Part of the current dialogue you're hearing about the election is a desire for reform of federal standards and practices where the budget is concerned. It's my assertion that this will remain a fairly daunting task until the Mexico issue is successfully addressed, and that a more modern version of Guadalupe is laid 'on the table'. Even if Pelosi doesn't want to put Bush's impeachment papers up there, maybe she can at least help start getting this job done...good fences make good neighbors.

Good piece. Succinctly details the failure of the 'drug war'. No reason that sensible harm reduction and demand reduction approaches should be held hostage to an aid package that would give brutal unaccountable security forces weapons and increased surveillance capacity.

I smell some d.c. leftie groups already intent on selling out Mexican anti-NAFTA, pro-indigenous and labor rights activists for a few crumbs of human rights 'training' for the police and ineffective monitoring.

This article is a good start, but is spun by the Bush team into addressing in detail the "drug war" and missing the real story. Mexico is facing widespred popular unrest in proposed privatizations schemes, SuperNafta and lingering rage at Calderon's stolen election. This is an attempt by USA to intervene in Mexico militarily. The justification for the PLan Mexico keeps getting shifted.

CUNY Grad has a conference with this as a panel subject on 2-22

7:05 PM Plan Mexico: Impunity, the ‘Drug War’ and Human Rights in Mexico-moderated by Jason Grote with Harry Bubbins, Laura Carlsen, Hector Sánchez Harry J. Bubbins is an environmental educator who was named Bronx Advocate of the Year, the Enterprise Foundation's Hero of the Month, accepted the Clearwater Award from the Waterfront Center and was a finalist for the Yolanda Garcia Community Planner Award by the Municipal Art Society He was a friend and colleague of Brad Will and has been involved in the movement to achieve accountability for his murder. Laura Carlsen is director of the Americas Program of the Center for International Policy www.americaspolicy.org She has worked as a foreign policy analyst and journalist in Mexico for two decades and is co-editor of Confronting Globalization: Economic Integration and Popular resistance in Mexico.

Jason Grote is a playwright. His plays include 1001, Box Americana, This Storm is What We Call Progress, Hamilton Township, and Maria/Stuart. Visit him at jasongrote.com.
Hector Sánchez is the Policy Education Coordinator for Global Exchange's Mexico Program. He represents the program in Washington, D.C., where he coordinates efforts to inform and organize legislators and key organizations in support of new priorities on trade and immigration.
THE GRADUATE CENTER THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK NoPe - NoPassport ConferenceDREAMING THE AMERICAS / THE BODY POLITIC IN PERFORMANCENoPassport presents a one-day conference with the support of The Alliance for Inclusion in the Arts, Translation Think Tank, and in collaboration with Frank Hentschker and the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center.

the activist was from Friends of Brad Will, the national movement to achieve accountability for the murder of US journalist murdered in Oaxaca Mexico, and to end the impunity if human rights violations.
More:
Update: Friends of Brad Will ejected from public Congressional Hearing on Plan Mexico

For immediate release:

What: Reminding Chairman Engel of the impunity with which U.S. journalist Brad Will was murdered over a year ago, Friends of Brad Will activist Henry Ruben and others are forcefully removed from public hearing.

Time: 10:50 a.m., February 7th

Details:
Congressional Rep. Engels called for Capitol police as Ruben and other activists demanded that opponents of Plan Mexico like the United Steelworkers union, Global Exchange or Witness for Peace be invited to testify. Challenging the series of unbalanced Congressional hearings in which only boosters of the Bush/Calderon ’security pact’ were invited to testify, Ruben warned that Engel’s committee had shown no interest in widespread opposition to Plan Mexico in the U.S. and Mexico and that this risked green-lighting a lethal aid package which would have harmful impacts on human rights activists, workers, and dissidents in Mexico if it were to pass.

Press Contact: Robert Jereski: 212.973.1782; Charlene Debentour: 718.435. 0908

Call with questions re. Detention of Mr. Ruben and others:

Representative Eliot Engel
Chair, Subcommittee on Western Hemispheric Affairs
202-225-2464

Subcommittee on Western Hemispheric Affairs
202.226.9980

Please call both numbers and urge Engel to:

i. Say ‘NO!’ to Plan Mexico;

ii. Have released from Capitol Police custody Henry Ruben and other activists of Friends of Brad Will who were ordered by Engel to be ejected from a public Congressional (sham) hearing on Plan Mexico. 3rd one without opponents to the Bush ‘drug war’ initiative!

For Immediate Release

What: Protest of Sham Congressional Hearing on Bush’s proposed Plan Mexico
When: Thursday 10am at Rm 2212 of the Rayburn House Office Building

Press Advisory: Friends of murdered U.S journalist and activist, Brad Will Challenge Bush Administration Plan Mexico
- Protest Third Congressional Hearings Featuring only Supporters of the Secretive Bush/Calderon initiative

CONTACT: Robert Jereski, 212.973.1782; Harry Bubbins at 646-641-5788

Friends of murdered U.S journalist and activist, Brad Will are challenging the Bush Administration’s secretive Plan Mexico. President Bush is trying to obtain Congressional approval of the $1.5 billion military aid package to Mexico under the pretext of fighting the widely criticized “war on drugs.”

The Friends of Brad Will - a network of friends and family of the U.S. journalist, murdered covering demonstrations by teachers and their supporters in the Southern Mexican state of Oaxaca - are seeking accountability for his murder in October 2006 and justice for other civilians and activists killed by the same security forces and covered up by the same government institutions that would be rewarded by the $1.5 billion package of lethal aid paid for with U.S taxpayer revenue.

On Thursday, February 7, 2008 at 10:00 a.m, a congressional subcommittee in D.C will convene to discuss “U.S. Obligations under the Merida Initiative.” Congressman Eliot Engel - Chair of the House Subcommittee on Western Hemispheric Affairs - has again chosen to listen only to supporters of the Bush Administration initiative. Details of the secretive plan have not even been revealed to the members of the relevant Congressional Committees thereby preventing Congress from exercising effective oversight of the multi-year $1.5 billion spending package.

Members of Friends of Brad Will will attend the hearing to demand fair Congressional hearings which consider the many voices in opposition to this security pact. Harry Bubbins, a former colleague of Brad Will and an organizer with Friends of Brad Will declared that “these (Congressional) hearings are a sham. You have no person representing the serious public concerns about the dangers of Plan Mexico. But you have 6 Administration officials reading from a script about how it’s not going to be like Plan Colombia!”

“What happened to Congressional oversight and co-equal branches of government the Constitution requires?” said Priya Reddhy, a journalist and former colleague of Brad Will. “The Steelworkers have come out against the Plan but we don’t see them here because they weren’t invited!”

In November, 2007, the United Steelworkers union declared their opposition to the pact, joining human rights and fair trade/economic development advocates like Friends of Brad Will and Global Exchange. Recently the Latin American watchdog organization - Witness for Peace - urged their members to contact relevant Congress people to allow popular concerns about the proposed agreement to inform Congressional inquiry.

Friends of Brad Will demands that serious reforms of the Mexican judiciary and police forces precede any military aid being proposed to Mexican government institutions. The organization also demands that the murderers of Brad Will - caught on his own video camera and witnessed in broad daylight by many journalists and others - be brought to justice along with innocent Mexicans murdered by security forces before any lethal aid is extended to Mexican government institutions.

Mexican security forces are notorious for the impunity they enjoy for the murders of human rights abuses across Mexico.

Background

PM is a secret “security pact” supposedly intended to expand the ‘drug war’ in Mexico, but which would provide lethal equipment - including
helicopters, surveillance equipment, and lethal training to brutal Mexican security forces and corrupt government institutions. US weaponry and training has been used by Mexican officials to repress violently dissent and leftist and indigenous movements.

Great article.

Mother Jones - Comments for "The Drug War&#039;s Southern Flank"

Mother Jones - Comments for "The Drug War's Southern Flank"