Friends of Brad Will

Jurors Need to Know That They Can Say No

By PAUL BUTLER
Published: December 20, 2011
IF you are ever on a jury in a marijuana case, I recommend that you vote “not guilty” — even if you think the defendant actually smoked pot, or sold it to another consenting adult. As a juror, you have this power under the Bill of Rights; if you exercise it, you become part of a proud tradition of American jurors who helped make our laws fairer.
Read more »

Why Should We Care About Mexico?

by LAURA CARLSEN

Excerpt:

The private and public sector promoters of war reap hundreds of millions of dollars in public funds. They grow stronger as their lobbyists buy off politicians with campaign donations and the Defense Department assures itself a lion’s share of taxpayer dollars.

Peace is their enemy.

. . .

In a recent article on the winners and losers in the war on terrorism, Gareth Porter put it succinctly,

“Aggressive U.S. wars are not merely the result of mistaken policies, but of the national security institutions pursuing their own interests at the expense of the interests of the American people. The ‘war on terror’ is a means for those institutions to maintain the present allocation of national resources and power to the national security sector for the indefinite future.”

Entire analysis here.

Ex-general Replaces Leftist Leader in El Salvador’s Security Cabinet as Washington Reasserts Influence in Central America

23 November 2011, by CISPES

Quote from the article: In the 2009 cable, the U.S. Embassy official warns that funding for the Mérida Initiative, one of the U.S. “War on Drugs” initiatives in Mexico and Central America, would be “contingent upon guidance from Washington regarding how best to work around Melgar.”

According to the Salvadoran digital periodical El Faro, the US finally forced Melgar out by leveraging a second international program, Partnership for Growth; El Salvador is one of four countries worldwide handpicked by the US for the new program. El Faro’s sources in the Ministry of Security claim that Melgar’s removal was a U.S. condition for sealing the Partnership for Growth, officially signed just four days prior to Melgar’s resignation. The program’s initial report named violence and crime as El Salvador’s primary constraints to economic growth, quickly turning what the U.S. had publicly touted as an economic development program into another security initiative.

Editor’s note: Amazing that the President of El Salvador accepted as a USG condition for delivery of one neoliberal (’development’) program (Partnership for Growth) that another USG neoliberal ’security’ program (Plan Mexico) be implemented by a former Salvadorean General, in violation of El Salvadorean law (and likely to the dismay of most Americans informed about Plan Mexico or Partnership for Growth).

Ex-general Replaces Leftist Leader in El Salvador’s Security Cabinet as Washington Reasserts Influence in Central America

Yesterday, President of El Salvador Mauricio Funes swore in retired general David Munguía Payés as the country´s new Minister of Public Security and Justice, following the sudden resignation of Manuel Melgar from the position on November 8. The move prompted outspoken opposition from Salvadoran social organizations who view it as a violation of the 1992 Peace Accords that ended the country’s Civil War and transferred public security from military to civilian administration.

Rest of piece here.

Granting Golpismo

There’s just so much money in the non-profit industrial complex. And it’s so unrepentantly imperialist. Take, for example, the recent “Grants to Support U.S. Ideology in Foreign Hospitals and Schools,” offered by USAID: Number of Grants: 26; Estimated Size of Grant: $2,000,000.

more of this excellent piece on the role of USAID and NGOs they support in whitewashing coups by buying off ‘civil’ society here.

The Trenches of Mexico: “You Can’t Call the Police on the Army”

“Both Calderón and Obama, in slapping the open wounds of Mexico with weapons and cash, are disastrously ignoring primary causes, the root and branch of drug trade and corruption—the booming drug demand in the US, the decimation of Mexican employment, and a spike in violence due to an over-enforced border, family separation and neoliberal trade agreements. If you don’t talk about why millions of Mexicans are jobless, uneducated and wayfaring (an estimated seven million youths, or ninis, those that ni estudian, ni trabajan, neither study nor have jobs), then you are not going to “win” the drug and human-trafficking “war”, you are only going to prolong it and drag even more bodies into the already blood-flooded trenches.”

From excellent article written by John Washington on Friday, 21 October 2011

There is nothing more disconcerting than the patriotic enthusiasm of a downtrodden population. The government’s tolerance of crime dishonors patriotism, which calls for decorum before hysteria or praise. Government corruption turns popular joy into a sarcasm which reflects the impunity and recklessness of the government.

-José Vasconcelos, 1935, writing of events in September 1910.

So begins this incisive dismantling of Calderon’s and Obama’s attempt to celebrate and perpetuate the indefinite militarization of Mexico.

Opinion: Latin America’s left at the crossroads

Here’s an important quote:
“The year 2010 marked the 200th anniversary of independence for many Latin American nations. While the region may have achieved its political independence it still remains, 200 years later, deeply tied – and subordinated – to the larger world capitalist system that has shaped its economic and political development from the conquest in 1492 right up to the present period of globalisation.

The new global capitalism swept Latin America by storm in the 1980s and 1990s. Neo-liberal programmes were imposed by international financial institutions, western governments, and local elites. The region experienced a sweeping transformation of its political economy and social structure. . . . A new breed of transnationally-oriented elites and capitalists forged a neo-liberal bloc and led the region into the global age of hothouse accumulation, financial speculation, credit ratings, the internet, malls, fast-food chains, and gated communities. Neo-liberalism forged a social base among emerging middle classes and professional strata for which globalisation opened up new opportunities for upward mobility and participation in the global bazaar. But neo-liberalism also brought about unprecedented social inequalities, mass unemployment, and the immiseration and displacement of tens if not hundreds of millions from the popular classes, which triggered a wave of transnational migration and new rounds of mass mobilisation among those who stayed behind.”

The article: Leftist governments in Latin America are facing resistance not only from the right, but from their own bases, as well.
William I. Robinson

The triumph of left-leaning former army officer Ollanta Humala in Peru’s presidential elections this past June has observers wondering if Peru could be the latest “Pink Tide” country in Latin America. The so-called Pink Tide refers to the ambiguous turn to the left in recent years in several Latin American countries. The neo-liberal model that has changed the face of the continent’s political economy and devastated the poor and working classes over the past two decades has come under challenge by these nominally left governments, whose populist and redistributional policies, however, may now be reaching a crossroads.

For the rest of this important article, click here.

Too Little, Too Late: Commissioner Kelly Tells NYPD to End Stop-and-Frisks That Led to Thousands of Bogus Marijuana Arrests

By Kristen Gwynne | Sourced from AlterNet September 23rd, 2011

After a decade of unjust marijuana arrests, Raymond Kelly has finally issued a memo to New York City police, ordering them to end the illegal stop-and-frisk procedures that resulted in the arrests of so many young black and Latino youths.

The memo said:

“Questions have been raised about the processing of certain marihuana arrests. At issue is whether the circumstances under which uniformed members of the service recover small amounts of marihuana … from subjects in a public place support the charge of Criminal Possession of Marihuana in the Fifth Degree.”

The stop-and-frisks that helped generate the astounding 536,000 marijuana arrests between 1979 and 2010 violate the intent of the law in two ways. First, stop-and-frisks are legal only to find and confiscate guns. Second, possession of small amounts of marijuana is decriminalized in New York.

But when officers sweep poor neighborhoods to stop-and-frisk colored youths, they often demand kids empty their pockets, or pull the contents out themselves. If weed had been inside, police arrest them for marijuana “in public view,” which is not decriminalized, and the consequences of which bar arrestees from receiving federal loans and housing, as well as finding careers. This is all despite the fact that the weed wasn’t “in public view” until the cops put it there. Kelly clarified the standards for this type of arrest in the memo. Read more »

The Pending US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement: False Claims Versus Hard Realities

Quote from the excellent piece written by James Jordan, National Co-Coordinator for the Alliance for Global Justice (published September 6th in Upside Down World):

“US intervention in Colombia has caused more problems than it has helped and the FTA would only make things worse. Recent investigations by the Colombian Attorney General have uncovered extensive US involvement regarding domestic spying by former President Álvaro Uribe’s administration. Information was shared with and analyzed by embassy staff and domestic spying programs were funded by the CIA. Activities included gaining access to the bank accounts, following the families and bugging the offices of Colombian magistrates.”

Read the entire rebuttal of the Obama Administration and Congressional propaganda pushing this unpopular policy here.

Useful resource on ‘drug war’ militarization of border etc.

We demand effective policies to replace those of the Bush and Obama Administrations. Brad Will’s murder in broad daylight, his likely murderers identified by witnesses and in documentary evidence, should have resulted – if there were real law enforcement cooperation between the USG and the Mexican Government – in accountability by now. Until there is accountability for Brad Will’s murder and the murder of 28 other innocents in Oaxaca, we will recognize the fraud of such cooperation under the ‘drug war’.

Most of you probably already follow the excellent work of the TransBorder
Institute and its director David Shirk. If not, highly recommended, and
included here is the most recent note from David and a link to the
institute’s monthly report.

*ACTTing Out in Arizona –*

*Where the Drug War now has a “Unified Command”*

* *

· Arizona is “ground zero” in the reconfigured war on drugs.

· Numbers tell the story of the failed drug war and a misguided
combat against transnational crime.

· ACCT is a paper alliance created to demonstrate Obama’s border
security/transnational crime strategy.

· It’s all about marijuana and immigrants – the same old story of
border control, now called border security.

Arizona and the U.S.-Mexico borderlands are the “ground zero in the war on
drugs.”

That’s the assessment of the Arizona Criminal Justice Commission (ACJC), the
state office that receives federal criminal-justice grants — and which then
redistributes these Department of Justice (DOJ) grants to Arizona’s
multiagency drug task forces and other counternarcotics programs.

Making the essentially same threat assessment about the border’s frontline
status in protecting the U.S. against the transnational threat of illegal
drug flows, the Obama administration launched its Southwest Border
Initiative in March 2009, calling it the “way ahead” in combating drug
trafficking.

As part of that 2009 initiative, which brought together the resources of the
Departments of Homeland Security (DHS) and Justice (DOJ), DHS launched the
Arizona-based Alliance to Combat Transnational Threats (ACTT) in September
2009, describing it as an “innovative” and “unprecedented” multiagency
assault on crossborder drug trafficking.

*Old Drug War Numbers and Body Counts*

* *

ACTT does point to the large number of immigrant apprehensions and drug
seizures as evidence of its progress against transnational threats.

The Border Patrol and allied sheriff’s departments provide post-ACTT
operation reports of the numbers of illegal aliens arrests, marijuana
seized, weapons confiscated, and assets seized and forfeited.

Typically, ACTT boasts of the number of “illegal aliens” apprehended and
thousands of pounds of marijuana seized.

The title, for example, of a May 27, 2011 CBP release reads:

*“ACTT Operation Yields More than $4.4 million in Marijuana” *
* *
Followed by the subhead:
*“Intelligence-Driven Operations Continue to Yield Results”*
* *

The total results of this 60-day operation in Pinal and Pima Counties were:
“732 illegal aliens arrested, one U.S. citizen, 8,925 pounds of marijuana,
and 17 firearms.”

Another “intelligence-driven operation” by ACTT aimed to “counter
transnational criminal organizations in the Arizona corridor” called
Operation Trident Surge targeted TCO traffic on Forest Service and BLM lands
over three months. The headline of the May 27 CBP media release about this
ACTT operation read: “1,759 people arrested; 23,650 pounds of marijuana
seized.” There were no other reported results, and nothing about how any of
the arrests or marijuana seizures related to government intelligence about
transnational criminal organizations.

Marijuana seizures also headlined another ACTT operation in Pinal County,
which boasted “more than 5,900 pounds of marijuana seized.” The operation
also reported 55 illegal aliens apprehended, five U.S. citizens arrested,
$115,000 in illicit currency seized, four firearms confiscated, and five
stolen vehicles recovered. Typically, no other illegal substances except
marijuana were seized and there was no attempt to show how the operation
targeted transnational crime.

Media releases and internal Border Patrol summaries of ACTT arrests and
seizures echo the agency’s decades-long tradition of measuring border
control progress by way of immigrant arrests and drug seizures –
disconnected from such other measures as the illegal immigrant population,
drug consumption levels, and drug prices.

What has changed, though, is that DHS and the Border Patrol use the same
categories of statistics as part of an unconvincing attempt to demonstrate
progress in combating transnational organized crime and deterring
transnational threats.

*U.S. Military Gets in on the ACTT* Read more »

Great interview on history of US-Mexico government relations

Great interview on history of US-Mexico government relations. Well-argued examination of these governments’ wars against their own peoples, here.

Debunking the ’success’ of Plan Colombia

Good thing that Colombian security officers are training Mexican anti-narcotics squads. (Try to ignore Juan Forerro’s typical parroting of ‘drug war’ boosters’ narrative.)

Death and Drugs in Colombia, New York Review of Books, June 23, 2011 by Daniel Wilkinson
Quote: “Paramilitaries also confessed to judicial investigators that they had collaborated extensively with military officers, both before and during Uribe’s presidency, including two generals Uribe chose to lead branches of the armed forces. Perhaps most damning was evidence of collaboration with top DAS officials—including the President’s intelligence chief, who allegedly supplied the AUC with names of trade unionists who were then assassinated. Other troubling allegations involved Uribe’s younger brother—who has been accused of running a paramilitary group in Antioquia—and the use of his own cattle ranch as a meeting place for paramilitaries.

To date, only one former paramilitary has implicated Uribe himself directly in paramilitary activity—yet his testimony was full of inconsistencies. He was assassinated in 2009.

Uribe and his top officials have denied all those allegations.

The people who would know the full extent of whatever collaboration took place on Uribe’s watch are the ones he extradited to the US.

Since the extradition, however, they have essentially stopped cooperating with Colombian investigators. Several—including Mancuso—have explained that if they revealed all they know, they would be unable to protect their families from reprisals in Colombia.” (my underline)

and

“López’s book shows that the Ralito Pact’s reference to “refounding the nation”—from which the book takes its title—was not merely pompous rhetoric. Rather, it reflected a broader objective shared by the AUC commanders and local politicians and landholders: to legalize the enormous wealth and power they had amassed during years of paramilitary expansion.

The paramilitaries had driven more than one million poor farmers off their lands, preparing the way for what the authors refer to as a “counter-agrarian reform.” Large landholders and investors—including paramilitaries and other traffickers—acquired the land, and corrupt officials helped them obtain title. As one former paramilitary put it: “We went in killing, others followed buying, and the third group legalized.””

Read more about this brutal effort to legalize the stolen wealth of Colombians by US-backed paramilitaries in this account highlighting US government supported laundering scheme overseen by the ARD, a yet-to-be indicted (it is arguably illegal to give material support to terrorist organizations like the paramilitaries benefited by this scheme) USAID vendor, based in the state of human rights champion, Senator Leahy of Vermont.

The rest of the review is here.

American Banks ‘High’ On Drug Money: How a Whistleblower Blew the Lid Off Wachovia-Drug Cartel Money Laundering Scheme

A revealing examination of the games the Federal Government, D.C.-tied ‘human rights’ organizations, and the big banks play on the way to militarization of Latin America and the Caribbean.

Quotes from the story:

With headline stories across the nation exposing massive fraud and money laundering schemes infilitrating the American financial systems: how could it have been so difficult for the Feds to establish criminal intent for these lawbreakers?

Although in selected cases, a civil complaint filed by the SEC (Security Exchange Commission) is usually offered to corporations and banks that allow them to wiggle out of a criminal indictment in exchange for a fine. A civil fine is usually the norm but the bulk of wrongdoing goes unpunished.

Experts familiar with large corporations and banks that violate the law have said the fine these companies pay the government is merely the cost of doing business.

. . .

We are currently living under government more interested in preserving the integrity of financial operations that it has investigated for fraud and money laundering. Even more appalling is the fact our government found the institutions guility of intentionally breaking the law. And still no real punishment.

. . .

Adam Kaufman, chief of the investigative division of the Manhattan D.A. office defended the approach in the AP story, by saying, “prosecutors could have indicted low-level bank employees who handled the transactions on a daily basis. But that wouldn’t get the executives making the decisions and figuring out exactly who that is can be daunting.”

. . .

The DA summed up what many believe is true, that banks and corporations are “too-big-to fail and too-big-to jail.”

Call Off the Global Drug War

An oped for the New York Times by former US President Jimmy Carter
June 16, 2011

From the oped:
“In an extraordinary new initiative announced earlier this month, the Global Commission on Drug Policy has made some courageous and profoundly important recommendations in a report on how to bring more effective control over the illicit drug trade. The commission includes the former presidents or prime ministers of five countries, a former secretary general of the United Nations, human rights leaders, and business and government leaders, including Richard Branson, George P. Shultz and Paul A. Volcker.

The report describes the total failure of the present global antidrug effort, and in particular America’s “war on drugs,” which was declared 40 years ago today.
. . .
The commission’s facts and arguments are persuasive. It recommends that governments be encouraged to experiment “with models of legal regulation of drugs … that are designed to undermine the power of organized crime and safeguard the health and security of their citizens.” For effective examples, they can look to policies that have shown promising results in Europe, Australia and other places.”

Read the entire oped here.

Mexicans are uneasy about America’s outsourced war on drugs

Many believe that Calderón’s drug policies have been imposed by the US, which provides aid under the Mérida Initiative
For the Guardian by Luis Hernandez Navarro
Tuesday 14 June 2011

Cipriana Jurado is a Mexican activist who for years struggled to assert the rights of maquila workers in Ciudad Juarez on the US border. She directed the Centre for Research and Worker Solidarity until, in mid-March 2010, she took refuge in the United States and applied for asylum because her life was in danger. On Saturday 11 June 2011, the United States granted her political asylum.

Her asylum application was accepted on the basis of evidence that the Mexican army persecuted her after she sought to defend a family from which three members, including two women, disappeared in Chihuahua in late 2009. The Mexican army has been used in Chihuahua as part of the federal anti-drug strategy, and it has been repeatedly linked to human rights violations.

Cipriana Jurado is the first human rights defender to receive political asylum for being persecuted by the Mexican army – the same army the United States is supporting to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars in the war against drugs.

Her asylum sets a precedent. It also illustrates the complex relations between Mexico and the United States in the war on drugs.

To read the rest of this excellent article, click here.

Great piece by ‘drug war’ insider turned opponent

40 Years of Drug War Hasn’t Worked; “Time for a Change,” Says 9-Year Veteran
The public understands how disastrous it’s been — now it’s time for the politicians and law enforcement to change course.
June 15, 2011 |

The “War on Drugs” was launched by President Richard Nixon 40 years ago this week. In 1980, at the end of its first decade, I began a nine-year career as a “captain” in the war on drugs. I was the attorney in the U.S. House of Representatives principally responsible for overseeing DEA and writing anti-drug laws as counsel to the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime.
Read the rest here.

Mexican Guns Tied to U.S.

Article in Wall Street Journal by Evan Perez suggests many of cartels’ weapons come from US.

An intriguing passage states “Mexico has strict restrictions on gun ownership, with most legitimate sales processed through one store on a military base near Mexico City.” This and other elements of the story invite suspicion that a significant portion of the cartels’ weaponry may come from the Mexican military via the US government, including the State Department-authorized Blue Lantern program exposed here.

Mexico’s Anti-Drug War March Demands Far-Reaching Political Reforms

Posted on: 05/09/2011 by Laura Carlsen

Thousands of Mexicans changed the face of national and international politics May 8 in the world’s first mass protest against the drug war.

Read the rest of this excellent piece here.

Mexicans Reject Calderón’s War

Posted on: 21/04/2011 by Alfredo Acedo

The clock on the Torre Latinoamericana strikes 5:00 on April 6th as the ragtag group that fills the esplanade of the Bellas Artes museum yells ‘No more blood!’ and ‘Down with Felipe Calderon!’. This is not a common place to begin a protest, but this march was called by poets and artists, friends, followers, and men and women who read the poems and articles of Javier Sicilia. They all believe that poetry and art will triumph over death.

After the murder of his son and six of his friends on March 28 in Cuernavaca, the poet and social activist published “An Open Letter to Politicians and Criminals,” in which he condemns Calderon’s war as being poorly planned, poorly executed, poorly directed, and for putting the country in a state of emergency. In his letter he also called upon his fellow Mexicans to struggle for peace and justice.
For the rest of the article, please click here.

US Teaching “Counterinsurgency” Courses To Mexican Military in Drug War

State Department Report Details Special Forces “Mobile Training Teams” South of the Border
Posted by Erin Rosa – to Narco News.

To fight the drug war in Mexico the US military conducted specialized trainings both inside and outside of the country with a focus on combating “narco-terrorism” and “counterinsurgency” conflicts, according to a recently declassified report from the State Department and Department of Defense. The document (PDF), which details foreign military training in the 2009 fiscal year, sheds more light on to the kind of instruction Mexican soldiers were receiving from the United States as violence and deaths continued to increase in the country. This includes the deployment of “mobile training teams” that were used to teach special forces combat techniques. Click here for the entire article and links to original State Dpt. and DoD report.

Pentagon Fingered as a Source of Narco-Firepower in Mexico

Posted by Bill Conroy to NarcoNews – February 13, 2011
The Big Clubs in Mexico’s Drug War Aren’t Slipping Through the Gun-Show Loophole

Consulate wires leaked by Wikileaks indicate that U.S. military grade weapons are in the hands of Mexican Drug Cartels. The attempt, by the Obama Administration to finger gun sellers in the U.S., as the source of our “Border War,” is challenged in the report from NarcoNews.

“The lot numbers of some of the grenades recovered, including the grenade used in the attack on Televisa, indicate that previously ordnance with these same lot numbers may have been sold by the USG [U.S. Government] to the El Salvadoran military in the early 1990s via the Foreign Military Sales program.”

To read this excellent piece, click here.

State Department looking for U.S.-trained Zetas in all the wrong places

Leaked cable exposes diplomatic sleight of hand
by Bill Conroy – for NarcoNews

A 2009 State Department cable made public recently by the nonprofit WikiLeaks media organization appears to be an effort by the U.S. Embassy in Mexico to do some deceptive damage control on the drug-war front.

To read the rest of this intriguing article, click here.

Mexican Journalist Says Politics Behind Asylum Delay

By Patricia Giovine

EL PASO, Texas – Mexican journalist Emilio Gutierrez, who fled his homeland in 2008 with his teenage son after receiving death threats from the army, says the lengthy delay in his asylum hearings in the United States is due to the politically sensitive nature of his case.

The hearings, which had been scheduled to resume Friday, were postponed until May 12, 2012, after the reporter’s attorney asked for a delay due to scheduling conflicts.

“We had hoped the new date for the hearings would be set for a couple weeks later, not a year and two months later,” Gutierrez told Efe, adding that political reasons are behind the lengthy delay.

The U.S. government is reluctant to grant him asylum “because they don’t want to publicly acknowledge that they’ve been financing – through the Merida plan – a (Mexican) army that has committed all kinds of abuses against Mexican civilians,” he said.
For the rest of this piece, click here.

The Military Command Behind Mexico’s Violent Drug War

This is an excellent article documenting the mentality of the US military and State Department intent on militarizing Mexico:

The US Northern Command’s Work With Mexican Armed Forces Has ‘Increased Dramatically’ and May Be Expanded

By Erin Rosa
Special to The Narco News Bulletin

October 22, 2010

Drug Prohibition

Letter
Published: October 19, 2010

To the Editor:

Re “In Mexico, Scenes From Life in a Drug War: Monterrey’s Habit” (Op-Ed, Oct. 17):

Ricardo Elizondo Elizondo’s essay about the drug war in Mexico says that Mexico must take notice of its own drug use problems and that “there can be no solution until we come to terms with the truth.”

I am sure that is true, but there is a larger truth at work that trumps all others in the drug war: We must end the folly of prohibition — that is, end the drug war — or there will be no solution.

All of the harm and horror associated with the drug issue that Mr. Elizondo wrote of are really a function of prohibition.

The case has been incontrovertibly made elsewhere. The drug war must go. We all know it; only those with a stake in it want it to continue.

D. H. Michon
St. Paul, Oct. 18, 2010

The Murderers of Mexico

The Murderers of Mexico
October 28, 2010
Alma Guillermoprieto

Excerpt from this fascinating piece in the New York Review of Books which reaffirms the failure of the ‘war on drugs’ which we’ve been citing as a pretext for militarization of Latin America and the Caribbean:

“It’s not that Guzmán has influence whereas other traffickers do not; it’s that every trafficker has a great many appointed officials and elected politicians on his payroll but Guzmán has more than the rest. The most distressing conclusion one can draw from de Mauleón’s articles is not that President Calderón’s war on drugs is being lost but that it may not even be fought.”

Weary of Drug War, Mexico Debates Legalization

By Tim Johnson | McClatchy Newspapers
Wednesday, September 8, 2010

MEXICO CITY — A debate about legalizing marijuana and possibly other drugs — once a taboo suggestion — is percolating in Mexico, a nation exhausted by runaway violence and a deadly drug war.

Read the entire article here.

Don’t miss some great comments on this article on the McClatchy site either.

Mexico: The Voice of the Community Faces Numerous Threats

Written by Emilio Godoy
Wednesday, 25 August 2010

(IPS) – The Jenpoj (”winds of fire) community radio station in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, which plays an important role in keeping the Mixe indigenous community informed, has had its equipment confiscated and has fought and won a court case to get a broadcast license.

“Things are still lagging, and freedom of expression continues to be violated,” Sócrates Vásquez, the director of the tiny 1000-watt radio station, which broadcasts from the Mixe indigenous community of Santa María Tlahuitoltepec, told IPS. “They treat us as if we were the same thing as a university or commercial station.”

The World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC) in Mexico delivered a report Monday to special rapporteurs on freedom of expression Frank La Rue, of the United Nations, and Catalina Botero, of the Organisation of American States (OAS), outlining the difficulties faced by community stations.

The two carried out an Aug. 9-24 visit to Mexico to investigate violence against journalists. Eight reporters have been killed in Mexico so far this year, and seven media outlets have been attacked.

See more here.

López Obrador’s Alternative Plans for Mexico

This seems a fair and useful assessment of the current run-up to the Mexican presidential elections and Obrador’s position in it. I wonder why Obrador’s position on the militarization of Mexico under Calderon was overlooked (I can’t believe he is ambivalent about this extreme transformation of Mexico).

Rob

López Obrador’s Alternative Plans for Mexico
Written by Daniel McCool
Thursday, 29 July 2010 00:00

Mexico’s poor performance both politically and economically over the past few years cannot only be blamed on external factors, according to López Obrador. He is critical of the neo-liberal model being followed by the National Action Party of Felipe Calderón Hinojosa and has an alternative plan which he presented to the nation on July 25th in the main plaza of Mexico City.

Whereas the political left in Mexico has apparently self destructed over the 2006 election results and differences over whether to recognize the “victory” of Felipe Calderon or not, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, or “AMLO,” his nickname derived from his initial, is proclaiming a new alternative political program for the country, and apparently intends to participate in the 2012 presidential elections.

To read the entire article published at UpsideDownWorld, go here.

(US) Hemispheric Militarization reaches Costa Rica

Under the guise of ‘war on drugs’

“After receiving a diplomatic request from the US Embassy, on July 1 the Costa Rican legislative assembly approved a measure to grant unprecedented access to a U.S. military fleet in Costa Rica’s waters. The vessels will arrive for at least six months to assist counter-narcotics operations by Costa Rican authorities. Costa Rica has long been used a stopping point of entry for drugs coming from Colombia and Panama on their way further north.
. . .
Critics say that a massive foreign military landing at their shores not only directly violates that constitution as it stands today, but tears at the moral fabric of a nation which constitutionally abolished its own army in 1949.”

WOLA nor Adam Isaacson working with them add wishy-washy comments (not condemnation) adding to their terrible record defending the ‘drug war’.

To learn more about expanded U.S. militarization (and WOLA’s nonchalant response to it), read full July 15, 2010, article, “Fear, Suspicion as US Military En Route to Costa Rica”, by Joseph Shansky here.

Human Rights Defenders Seek Protection in Mexico

Quote from NY Times article by Marc Lacey:

“Activists working on cases connected to the drug war are particularly vulnerable because drug trafficking organizations, and their many accomplices in police forces and governments, show little tolerance for criticism.”

is this the government with which the US is seeking law-enforcement cooperation in the so-called ‘drug war’?! Besides the complete impracticability of the ‘war on drugs’ as a narco-trafficking reduction method, the continued provision of lethal aid by the US Government (including the Obama Administration which is increasing it) is deeply immoral given the systemic abuses, corruption and impunity Mexicans face at the hands of their own government officials.

Contact your elected officials (Representatives and Senators) to let them know you oppose the Merida Initiative (Plan Mexico) and that you demand that the murder of Brad Will be resolved.

The author should have mentioned Brad Will.

Human Rights Defenders Seek Protection in Mexico
By MARC LACEY, Published: June 19, 2010

MEXICO CITY — With a drug war raging around them and an unreliable judicial system in place, Mexico’s human rights activists have their hands full as they grapple with a growing new class of victims: themselves.

“I’m not going to be silenced,” insisted Silvia Vázquez Camacho, an activist from Tijuana, who is now in hiding after receiving a series of threats on her life in recent months. Despite her bold declaration, the fear in her voice was palpable, and she acknowledged that she had been forced to take a respite from her activism.

Mexico has a long history of cases in which the authorities, whether they wear badges or business suits, trample on the rights of the powerless. Acknowledging that, the government 20 years ago created a formal commission to officially identify violations and recommend — but not order — remedies. Citizens groups also rose up, however, to level the playing field and represent victims of wrongful arrests, torture, illegal land grabs and numerous other transgressions.

But the system is being severely tested by what human rights activists say is a concerted attack on their rights. Read more »