SEMANA News is Houston’s largest weekly Spanish-language newspaper focusing on issues relevant to the Hispanic community since 1992 with a circulation of 140,000.
Investigation Articles | admin 11/25/2008 | 
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Flier given out at Amnesty International event last night.
Take action (call them at number at bottom) and pass this on far and wide!
Looks like it was a successful intervention by another human rights effort that shares our extreme shock and dismay at their fronting for the Merida Initiative (aka Plan Mexico).
And pretty interesting: the government is pushing ahead with Plan Mexico and organizations like Amnesty do have a responsibility to stop this dangerous militarization plan. So very well timed.
The use of human rights discourse and the co-optation of human rights advocates by US military and police institutions in Latin America is a tried-and-true public relations strategy pioneered at the infamous School of the Americas. It is not a sign that the US wishes to reform the military or police forces they are involved with.
Why is Amnesty International supporting the “war on drugs”‘?
Read more »
Friends of Brad WIll attended the NYU Conference: Many Yeses, One No: Confronting Corporate Globalization
As the anniversary of the Seattle protests against the WTO approaches,
the world economic system- a system whose logic and shape has been
defined by neoliberal economic theory- is in ruins, and the United
States has elected a new president that many people hope and expect
will bring about “real Change.” Read more »
Events and Actions | admin 11/24/2008 |
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(Malkin repeats the Mexican government suggestion that the human rights abuses, violence, and corruption are all worth it because of their ’success’ in increasing drug seizures and arresting some top traffickers. But the ostensible goal is to lower drug exports to the U.S. and reduce the power of the cartels. Neither of these goals are addressed in the article.
When will the United States Government admit its ‘war on drugs’ approach (Bush’s Merida Initiative aka Plan Mexico) is strengthening by arming and training a brutal and unaccountable, corrupt right-wing government which abuses its own peoples’ labor, indigenous, and basic human rights? And not achieving its ostensible goals of reducing narcotics trafficking into the United States.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/22/world/americas/22mexico.html?ref=americas
Mexico Arrests Ex-Chief of Antidrug Agency
By ELISABETH MALKIN
Published: November 21, 2008
MEXICO CITY — Mexico’s former senior antidrug official has been arrested and accused of accepting bribes from a drug cartel, the authorities said Friday. Read more »
Luis Alfonso de Alba is not only the Permanent Representative of Mexico to the United Nations, but also was the first President of the United Nations Human Rights Council. So, his speech on Thursday November 20th at the University of Texas-Pan American (UTPA) was an opportunity to speak to a powerful figure who has worked for human rights causes. He was the keynote speaker for the Ethics in Intelligence, Security and Immigration: The Moral and Social Significance of Gathering and Managing Information and Borders in the Global Community Conference. Friends of Brad Will’s Nick Cooper was present and brought up Brad’s case and got a vague response (hear the audio or read the transcript). Meanwhile, outside, students held a protest over influence of the CIA and the Department of Homeland Security on their campus. Specifically, the IGKNU, (Integrated Global Knowledge and Understanding Collaboration) is seen by protesters as Homeland Security and the CIA using a partnership with the University to recruit for and legitimize the role of covert and surveillance agencies. Homeland Security is responsible for implementing many problematic policies for those living close to the border who have seen their families separated by recent border policies, increased violence and militarization, and destruction of local economies. A presentation by leftist professors earlier in the day highlighted the history of abuses of the CIA.
Investigation Articles | admin 11/22/2008 |
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(Note: Call your Congressional Rep to underscore your concern with corruption and human rights abuses. We’ve seen what military interdiction ‘drug’ policies have done to Colombia (Conflict-related killings, extra-judicial executions, killings of civilians by paramilitaries (and) by guerrillas, enforced disappearances, abductions by guerrillas, forced displacement, killings of women, enforced disappearance of women and killings of trade unionists have all gone up from 2006 to 2007 and coca production has increased each of the last 3 years as have hectares under coca cultivation. That’s after approx $8 billion in U.S. taxpayer funding to a corrupt civilian government & brutal security establishment in Colombia!). RJ)
http://www.chron.com/disp/discuss.mpl/world/6113838.html
None of $400 million handed to Mexico yet
U.S. wants to be sure drug-fighting aid isn’t pilfered
By STEWART M. POWELL
Nov. 14, 2008
WASHINGTON — Not a dime of the Merida Initiative’s $400 million in promised emergency security assistance has reached Mexico nearly five months after President Bush signed landmark legislation to help the beleaguered neighbor combat drug smugglers’ murderous violence.
The delays are being attributed to delicate U.S.-Mexican negotiations over measures to prevent corruption and protect human rights, the role and number of U.S. personnel in Mexico, and Bush administration steps to satisfy a series of congressional requirements.
Read more »
Wow! This piece by Ricardo Ravelo in Proceso really underscores the waste of funds and likely harmful impacts of the proposed U.S. Merida Initiative (aka Plan Mexico). The second round of funds is currently being pushed for this failed drug war policy. Let’s hope President-elect Obama comes up with practical, non-ideological and human rights-respecting approaches to the huge drug markets in the United States. We know that the current approach throwing good money after bad; increasing the corruption, violence and human rights abuses; thereby destabilizing Mexico is not working. RJ
The agencies in charge of Mexico’s drug war have high-ranking officials who protect the cartels
By Ricardo Ravelo, Proceso
Translation from the original Spanish and notes by Kristin Bricker
The animosity between the heads of Federal Attorney General’s Office and the Public Security Ministry don’t just immobilize the federal government and make its crusade against drug traffickers and organized crime futile. It also shows that both institutions are so porous that the gangsters have already positioned themselves in them. The infiltration is of such magnitude that even Eduardo Medina Mora and Genaro Garcia Luna have become suspect. Read more »
Tags: Amnesty-International, atenco, Merida Initiative, North American Union, oaxaca, obama, Plan Mexico, senator dodd, senator leahy, war on drugs
Merida Initiative Articles | admin 11/17/2008 |
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(Mentions the unresolved nature of Brad’s case and the corruption of the Mexican government)
by Frontera NorteSur
Rodriguez’s murder topped a spectacularly violent week, in which victims in public thoroughfares were shot during peak business hours, businesses were firebombed and the bodies were dumped with intimidating messages in public places.
Posted on November 14, 2008
El Diario de Juarez journalist Armando Rodriguez Carreon was well-known for countless stories about gangland killings in his hometown of Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua. For years, the 40-year-old police beat reporter tirelessly published pieces about the latest executions in a violence-torn city.
Rodriguez launched his journalistic career as a technician and photographer for the Ciudad Juarez Channel 44 television station before moving into print during the early 1990s. His newspaper career closely paralleled the violent rise of the Juarez drug cartel and the women’s slayings that became known worldwide as femicides. Popularly known as “El Choco,” Rodriguez was among the first reporters to write about the discoveries of raped and slain women on the outskirts of Ciudad Juarez.
Rodriguez’s stories, which relied a lot on police sources and often did not implicate any particular suspects, were characterized by an almost matter-of-fact quality that kept to the narrative even as violence kept escalating. On Thursday morning, Nov. 13, Rodriguez became a victim himself when he was shot outside his home by a gunman who reportedly fled in a waiting car. Read more »
By Jorge Carrasco Araizaga and Francisco Castellanos J., Proceso
Translated from the original Spanish by Kristin Bricker for NarcoNews
Through confessions obtained “under torture” and with multiple irregularities, the Federal Attorney General’s office (PGR in its Spanish initials) maintains the three alleged culprits under arrest in the September 15 terrorist attack in Morelia, Michoacan—which left eight people dead and 106 injured—even though many family members and neighbors assure that the accused were in Lazaro Cardenas [250 miles south of Morelia] the moment the attacks occurred.
Tags: Amnesty-International, bush security plan, human rights watch, Merida Initiative, Plan Mexico, senator dodd, senator leahy
Drug War Articles | admin 11/12/2008 |
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“(These murderers) had been ‘vetted’ by U.S. officials for human rights abuses and approved to receive assistance in 2008… in spite of extensive reports that their units had carried out murders of civilians.”
Note: On the passage of Round 1 of Merida Initiative (aka Plan Mexico) funding in June, 2008, Amnesty International declared ‘good news’ weak protections of human rights written into the law. Those protections apply at the discretion of the Secretary of State, allowing her (or him) to hold up (a miniscule 15% of) Plan Mexico funding unless human rights conditions are met. The remaining 85% can be allocated unconditionally!
After 8 years of brutal counter-insurgency, targeting of civilians, and making Colombia a living hell for indigenous peoples, labor activists, dissenters of any kind, such cavalier disregard for the impacts of u.s. ‘drug war’ policy by a ‘premier’ human rights organization like Amnesty International (and others like Human Rights Watch) is disgraceful!
Here below is the excellent report by FOR’s Colombia Program Co-Director, John Lindsay-Poland
Army commanders fired for killings received U.S. training and assistance
Colombian Army commander Mario Montoya resigned today, in the wake of a scandal over army killings of civilians that a United Nations official on Saturday called “systematic and widespread.” A protégé of the United States, Montoya was an architect of the “body count” counterinsurgency strategy that many analysts believe led to the systematic civilian killings. Read more »
As U.S. voters go to the polls the issue of the ‘war on drugs’ looms large both domestically and internationally.
The best journalism on the international ‘front’ has come out of Rolling Stone magazine[the failed ‘war on drugs’ (Dec. 2007)and the ‘war next door’ (Nov. 2008). On the domestic ‘front’, Alternet (Nov. 2008) has written a compelling short piece about efforts to undo some of the damage in the U.S.
And as a corruption scandal hits the Mexican AG’s (Prosecutor General of the Republic’s) office, with more than 35 of its officials revealed to be working for narcotraffickers. today’s New York Times also has an important piece from which a key excerpt is included here.
Take note that it is this AG’s office – which Bush’s Plan Mexico/Merida Initiative is slated to provide $60 million to – which promoted the cover up story that Brad was shot at close range and that he was shot by the activists who in reality were helping him (as is clear in the video and photographic footage, forensic and witness evidence etc.).
November 2, 2008
In Mexico’s Drug War, Sorting Out Good Guys From Bad
By MARC LACEY
It has long been known that drug gangs have infiltrated local police forces. Now it is becoming ever more clear that the problem does not stop there. The alarming reality is that many public servants in Mexico are serving both the taxpayers and the traffickers.
The latest corruption scandal has prompted President Calderón’s attorney general to order a restructuring and purging of his office, and specifically of Siedo, which was formed from another agency that was shut down after being infiltrated by drug spies.
The men in suits, it turns out, were both bureaucrats and bad guys, officials say, corrupt employees high up in an elite unit of the federal attorney general’s office who were feeding secret information to the feared Beltrán Leyva cartel in exchange for suitcases full of cash.
Their arrest, and the firing of 35 other suspect law enforcement officials, represents the most extensive corruption case that this country, which knows corruption all too well, has ever seen. And it raises a question that is on the lips of many Mexicans: how does one know who is dirty and who is clean?
Tags: Amnesty-International, brad will, Merida Initiative, Plan Mexico, senator dodd, war on drugs, wola
Drug War Articles | admin 11/02/2008 |
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