“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.”

Neither WOLA nor Adam Isaacson working with them have much meaningful to add other than obfuscation (which says plenty!).

Read full July 15, 2010, article, “Fear, Suspicion as US Military En Route to Costa Rica”, by Joseph Shansky here.

And Plan Mexico is modeled on Plan Colombia except there are no benchmarks to allow the public (or the GAO) to measure its failure. Great.

Here’s a quote:

“If Colombians are victims of this regime, indeed of this State, one has to ask who the beneficiaries are. The answer has to be sought. This is an International Criminal Legal issue. Amongst many other facts that require volumes to be exposed, Colombia is the largest recipient of US military aid and cooperation in the continent. The Colombian regime is the closest ally of transnational corporate interests (pharmaceutical, tourism, mining, oil, agribusiness, food, energy, biopiracy, infrastructure projects such as dams, the arms trade and almost anyone involved in anything and everything from the legal and illegal organized global crime networks). Through FTAs, the Colombian regime has delivered national sovereignty, freedoms, resources, labour, nature and more to foreign interests at an intolerable expense for Colombians. Investors are attracted to put money into the Colombian economy for guaranteed profit in exchange for absolutely nothing for the Colombian population: No jobs, no transfer of technologies, no profit for the Colombian economy. The Colombian criminal regime promised Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, on November 21 2008, to deliver 50% of Colombian territory to mining and other transnational corporate interests [iii]. Every crime of the Colombian State revolves around corporate profit.”

by COHA Research Associates Elizabeth Sahner, Carl Patchen, & Kyle Tana along with Research Fellow Dan Boscov-Ellen

• It no longer is just Mexico’s drug war as violence and corruption begins to engulf the U.S.
• No prospect that the U.S. will adequately fund the anti-drug war.
• Drug battle places a crushing strain on Mexican economy.
• If and when barriers to Mexico’s ground transports to the U.S. are entirely lifted, a crisis arising from the smuggling of drugs and migrants into the U.S. is sure to follow.

more here.

“Washington is funding both sides of the drug war. U.S. military aid to this corrupt system has flowed rapidly under the Obama administration.”

Here’s the synopsis:
The July 5 mid-term election in Mexico will continue narcotraffickers’ creeping reach into all sectors of the country’s political life. The army and police are already drenched in narco-scandals, while reports show that political campaigns and government offices have also been infiltrated or co-opted by traffickers. But Mexico is not a failed state, such extensive corruption and illicit wealth creation actually depends on the state.

The rest here.

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.

In the same breath, we’re told that President Calderon with the aid of the U.S. government is winning the war on drugs, significantly weakening organized crime, and restoring order and legality.

None of these claims is true. Instead they are critical elements in waging the hypocritical drug war in Mexico. Read more of this excellent article by Laura Carlsen outlining the disinformation and fear tactics used to strong arm Plan Mexico through a pliant Congress and Senate here

*** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***

Note: The Merida Initiative Round II (aka Plan Mexico) was passed by the Congress in February, by the Senate March 10th late in the evening, and signed into law by President Obama(!!!!) March 12th, 2009 (today).

We are now looking forward to stopping the delivery of as much of the military/police ‘aid’ package as we can in order to have those resources properly invested in local and regional economic development programs which recognize the Mexican, Latin American and Caribbean peoples’ right to their own form of developing their economies.

We will continue to inform our elected officials that the funding of a ‘failed policy’ (see GAO November 2008 report on lessons learned from Plan Colombia) is wasteful and – given the record of massacres and systematic abuse by the Mexican, Latin American and Caribbean military and police forces – is incredibly dangerous for the citizens of those regions.

No metrics to allow lawmakers to measure success on the stated goals of this Bush Initiative were included in the spending package guaranteeing that ‘drug war’ profiteers (consultants, security and arms corporations, and U.S. extractive industries benefiting from a more powerful (but still quite unpopular) Mexican right wing President will continue to peddle disinformation with no scientific, public policy counterweight.

We have and will continue to propose that the mainstream D.C.-based human rights organizations join the many organizations which have spoken out against Plan Mexico and take a position against the ‘war on drugs’.

U.S. Policy Toward Latin America in 2009 and Beyond

You can download the witnesses’ testimonies at the site above.

The U.S. Congress is beginning to recognize the failure of the ‘war on
drugs’. That’s because of your work and the many fighting the domestic
and international policies which benefit drug cartels and corrupt
governments while increasing violence and human rights abuses and
promoting the high profit of narco-industry and its security and
banking partners.

Contact your Congressional Representative to schedule a face-to-face
meeting as part of the International Day of Action announced by
Friends of Brad Will last week.

The Drug Enforcement Administration is in an optimistic mood. A new DEA report insists that the antidrug campaigns Washington has undertaken with Colombia and Mexico in recent years have dramatically slowed the flow of cocaine into the United States. The DEA’s principal piece of evidence is that average street prices for the drug have soared over the past twenty-one months from $96.61 per gram to $182.73, which suggests “that we are placing significant stress on the drug delivery system.” There’s just one problem with the DEA’s proclamation of success. We’ve heard it all before. Many, many times before.

The rest here:
http://www.nationalinterest.org/Article.aspx?id=20386

Not to mention 4 million Internally Displaced People too scared to tell U.S. government backed paramilitaries tied to Colombian government and powerful landholders (cattle ranchers et al) to return their land.

Clear that inside-the-beltway p.r. has infected some human rights organizations’ analysis and ACTIONS.

Here’s a recent biopsy of Colombian democracy after 8 years of ‘aid’ from the U.S. under Plan Colombia.

And keep in mind that Plan Mexico includes a significant amount of money for intelligence gathering. And that investigations of members of the Colombian military/government for systematic human rights abuses have dragged on for years, inconclusively:

Colombia’s intelligence chief steps down

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ac7ba574-a174-11dd-82fd-000077b07658.html

Colombia’s intelligence chief has stepped down after acknowledging her agents secretly spied on left-wing political opponents of President Alvaro Uribe, in the latest surveillance scandal to tarnish his administration.

Maria del Pilar Hurtado, DAS security agency director, resigned after a leading opposition lawmaker charged this week that officers had illegally kept tabs on members of his Democratic Pole party, the government said on Thursday.

Mr Uribe last year fired his top police chiefs after an illegal wiretapping scandal that fueled worries about intelligence practices in Colombia, where Washington has spent billions in aid to help fight guerrillas and cocaine barons.

“The country still can and should count on the DAS; it would not be fair for the work of hundreds of agents to be stained by the actions of a few,” Ms Hurtado said in a statement.

She will be temporarily replaced by Joaquin Polo, the deputy director, the government said.

Senator Gustavo Petro, one of Mr Uribe’s most vocal critics, said DAS agents had been monitoring him and other party members on the president’s orders. Ms Hurtado said she ordered no such surveillance, but fired an agent involved before resigning.

The DAS has been at the center of scandals in the past. Mr Uribe’s former security chief, Jorge Noguera, is under investigation on suspicion he helped paramilitary death squads hunt down victims. He was jailed, then freed on a technicality.

Mr Uribe, hugely popular for his US-financed crackdown on the country’s guerrillas, last year replaced his national police commander and police intelligence chief after they admitted they had no knowledge of the wiretapping of state officials, opposition leaders and journalists over the years.

That scandal broke when a local news magazine published a story about recorded conversations of jailed paramilitaries apparently organizing crimes from their prison cells.

Scores of Mr Uribe’s political allies have been jailed or are under investigation for suspected ties to paramilitary commanders who carried out massacres and land grabs in the name of counter-insurgency before agreeing to a peace accord.

Mexican Torture Training Raises Questions About U.S. Military/Police Aid
by Laura Carlsen published at the Huffington Post.

Excellent piece! Carlsen raises troubling questions on the role of human rights organizations in supporting funds for institutions which have and continue to abuse Mexican and Latin American people with impunity!

She writes: “Some Washington human rights groups have claimed that Plan Mexico will help Mexico reform and eliminate illegal practices such as torture. But the aid package funds the same forces that commit those atrocities with virtual impunity.”

Add your comments at Huffington Post to get that important discussion continued! Help provide attention to the campaign we’ve been working on:

Demanding accountability for Brad Will’s murder and the murder of many other innocent people by the Mexican security forces;

Exposing u.s.g. support for right-wing human rights abusing governments and institutions in Mexico and El Salvador;

Amplifying how popular movements for human rights and against corruption are at risk from the Bush/Leahy Merida Initiative;

Exposing the role of some d.c.-based ‘human rights’ organizations in legitimizing the ‘drug war’ as a pretext for increasing militarization under Merida!

From article: “Two videos of a torture-training session with the police force of León, Guanajuato shocked the Mexican public last week and raised serious questions about human rights under the Calderon offensive against organized crime. For readers with strong stomachs, the videos can be found here.” (link at Huffington Post).