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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Also, here are calls coming from inside the country for international support:

“The recently formed Popular Resistance Front called for delegations to travel to Honduras to stand by the popular organizations of Honduras in support of the return of the democratically elected president and inform the situation.

The Front has called for mass demonstrations in the country. It also called on foreign media, members of grassroots organizations and human rights groups to increase pressure on the coup and support the call for reinstatement of the president.”

Monitor this site for updates.

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

From article:

“I feel that this particular controversy would not have the traction that it does if it were not for the direct role of the U.S. military, especially in light of the turmoil in Oaxaca,” said Evergreen State College’s Grossman. “Oaxaca is not just any old state in Mexico and southern Mexico is not just any old region in the Americas, it’s an area that has had significant repression in very recent years against indigenous peoples by federal forces funded by the U.S.”
. . .
Adding to the specter of U.S. and state violence and repression in the region, the U.S Joint Forces Command released a report in November 2008 that stated Mexico risked becoming a failed state and, if that were to be the case, it would demand U.S. intervention. Meanwhile, the U.S. House passed a spending bill on February 25 which allocates $410 million for the Merida Initiative, a militarization project modeled after Plan Colombia, to “carry out counter-narcotics, counter-terrorism, and border security measures.”

by Frontera NorteSur

“Torture continues, extrajudicial executions and forced disappearances occur, freedom of expression is limited, and practically none of the cultural and economic rights is guaranteed or protected,” charged a report from civil society organizations delivered to the UN Human Rights Council.

Posted on February 10, 2009

Mexico’s government is under the glare of stage lights in different national and international venues for allegedly allowing the systematic violation of human rights. The administration of President Felipe Calderon faces a test today (Feb. 10, 2009), when the Geneva-based United Nations Human Rights Council will submit Mexico to a three-hour exam and possibly assign voluntary make-up work.

Although the UN committee’s grading of Mexico’s compliance with international human rights standards is pending, a network of prominent Mexican human rights organizations has already given the Calderon administration an “F” in the subject matter.

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.