The Obama administration plans a new round of ‘public safety’ programs in Latin America.
by Jeremy Bigwood
Published in In These Times, May 13, 2009.
From the article: “Obama may not understand the dangerous waters his administration is drifting into by expanding “public safety” policing programs. If the history of the OPS and similar projects are any indication of what will come, U.S. policing initiatives in Latin America and elsewhere could result in violence and political repression.”
Read all of it, here.
Tags: Amnesty-International, counter-insurgency, dodd, Drug War, empire, human rights, leahy, Merida Initiative, North American Union, obama, Plan Mexico, war on drugs, washington office on latin america, wola
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Tags: aclu, Amnesty-International, Drug War, jayz, manu chao, Merida Initiative, North American Union, obama, Plan Mexico, russell simmons, senator dodd, war on drugs
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New Laws Strike a Symbolic Blow to Prohibition, But Net Result is Increased Law Enforcement Powers
Written by Kristin Bricker for Narconews. Published May 9, 2009
Is the Mexican government planning to incarcerate 100s of thousands of casual drug users? Or does it only want to use the threat of draconian sentences to frighten many individuals so as to control and deploy them?
Read the whole piece here.
Translated by Kristin Bricker from a piece in Milenio by Victor Hugo Michel
Two key passages of the article:
First, Dyncorp. . . :
‘The increase in the concentration of new personnel includes support from private companies that have been contracted by the State Department to bring their own specialists, known as private service contractors.
As of now, the Dyncorp company has contracted three employees to administrate its participation in the Merida Initiative, one of whom will be in Mexico City and will help the Narcotics Affairs Office in the Embassy to “maintain good contact with Mexican security agencies.”‘
Second, who are the ‘human rights organizations’ which might be bought with the Merida blood money (you’ll likely have to follow a paper trail to find out):
“The contracts PSC-09-010-INL and PSC-09-019-INL were offered to two specialists in training Mexican police and military personnel, particularly police, inspectors, judges, and prosecutors.”
This piece, by Laura Carlsen, Director of the Americas Program, Center for International Policy (CIP) [americas.irc-online.org] remains a benchmark for analysis on how the media with their ‘defense’ industry-tied pundits are promoting an expansion of the lucrative destabilizing wars (including the ‘war on drugs’ in Latin America). It was written on March 9, 2009.
When read together with Bill Conroy’s pieces exposing how the United States Government’s Direct Military Sales of lethal hardware and training are a key component of the supply-chain for the narco-cartels, this article offers a critical understanding of Plan Mexico.
Drug War Doublespeak
“Through late February and early March, a blitzkrieg of declarations from U.S. government and military officials and pundits hit the media, claiming that Mexico was alternately at risk of being a failed state, on the verge of civil war, losing control of its territory, and posing a threat to U.S. national security.”
<more>
Available in translation: Doble discurso en guerra contra la droga
Human Rights Organizations Break from Amnesty International’s 2008 Pro-Merida Initiative Letter
Check out this excellent piece by Kristin Bricker, written especially for The Narco News Bulletin on May 7, 2009.
Federal Police Pressure Imprisoned APPO Defendant Juan Manuel Martinez to Confess; Will Family Lawyer Faces Legal Harassment
Read the entire story April 21, 2009 by Kristin Bricker via the Narcosphere here.
An excellent provocative piece by Bill Conroy for Narconews. Written a on April 5th it will continue to have relevance as an empirical expose of the lack of credibility on the ‘drug war’ of the network ‘news’ and their ‘defense’ industry pundits.
His well-documented thesis is that the cartels are obtaining their heavy fire power not from gun shows and straw buyers but from private sector arms exports authorized/licensed by the USG to the MOD. He writes: “Given Mexico’s strict gun laws with respect to private individuals, it is likely most of the DCS (Direct Commercial Sales) program defense hardware approved for export to that nation was directed toward the military or law enforcement agencies. But it is precisely that fact which should be raising some alarm in Washington.”
The corporate media narrative describes the scale of drug violence being due in large part because US gunshow sales and smugglers carrying guns easy-to-buy in the U.S. to Mexico. This is false. Read this to learn why.
Incisive and (historically, economically) contextualized analysis of Obama’s trip to Mexico and the positions he took vis-a-vis human rights, neoliberalism and the ‘war on drugs’.
Check out Mr. President: Calderón Is Not Mexico by Laura Carlsen, Director of the Americas Program at the Center For International Policy
Posted April 17, 2009
Great piece by Todd Miller for NACLA, written April 17 2009
“On August 5, 2008 a group of 20 Mexican soldiers burst into the community of Santiago Lachivia, Oaxaca and fired into a crowd of residents preparing land for a community garden. Cecilio Vásquez Miguel and Venancio Olivera Ávila were killed. In the aftermath, when neither arms nor drugs turned up in the search, the anti-narcotics military unit moved on, leaving a stunned and traumatized community.
This is the war on drugs in Mexico; a “war” that abuses the civilian population, dramatically increases violence, and arguably has very little effect on the flow of illegal drugs to the largest market in the world, the United States.” <More>
