The editorial "'Plan Mexico'?" (Page B8, Friday) applauds the efforts of Texas Congressman Michael McCaul to paint yet another shade of lipstick on the pig we named the War On Drugs. Isn't 50 years of failed global drug war schemes enough? McCaul will ask, what is the United States' role in Mexico's war against the drug cartels? Don't bother. When we opted for prohibition of currently illegal drugs, we created the cartels and the subsequent violence. When we cast our role as response by force, as in Plan Colombia, we spread cocaine production back to Peru and Ecuador. Mexico now grows its own opium poppies. The Mexican forces the U.S. helped pay to train were hired away by the Zetas to be the killers we deplore. We have spread narco-violence throughout dozens of other countries in our hemisphere and to West Africa in previous attempts to save Mexico. [continues 165 words]
The following is an excerpt from James Cockcroft's new book, Mexico's Revolution: Then and Now (Monthly Review Press, 2010). U.S. Intervention For decades, Washington, D.C., has been pouring military aid into Mexico. In 2008 there were 6,000 U.S. troops on the Mexican border, and in 2010 President Barack Obama decided to send in more. The U.S. side of the border is militarized, as it was before and during the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1917 and periodically since then. Drones routinely fly over Mexican soil. In the United States, video games show American troops invading Mexico. [continues 2896 words]
Re: "Peace Prize-winning Obama backs military growth in Colombia -- There is more than one route to peace in Colombia, says Tod Robberson," last Sunday Points. As a police officer who worked in the trenches of the drug war for 18 years, I agree with Robberson. There is more than one path to peace in Colombia, namely repealing prohibition laws. After a trillion dollars and 40 years of failed strategies (Plan Colombia, Plan Mexico, mandatory minimum sentencing, etc.), everyone knows that this modern prohibition will continue until we become as wise as our grandparents were in 1933. I marvel how intelligent people like Robberson miss the obvious, certain solution. Howard Wooldridge Dallas [end]
************ Human Rights Organizations Break from Amnesty International's 2008 Pro-Merida Initiative Letter By Kristin Bricker, Special to The Narco News Bulletin Yesterday, 72 Mexican civil society organizations and a Brigadier General of the Mexican Army sent the following letter to US Congress demanding that all military aid to Mexico be immediately halted. The letter comes as the US House of Representative is considering more than doubling 2009 funding for the war on drugs in Mexico. [continues 551 words]
Mexico Arrests Suspected No. 2 in Juarez Drug Cartel Vicente Carrillo Leyva, Son of the Late Kingpin Amado Carrillo Fuentes, Is Arrested in Mexico City. Mexican authorities on Thursday announced the capture of Vicente Carrillo Leyva, a suspected top leader of a family-run drug gang based in Ciudad Juarez and one of the country's most wanted figures. Federal law enforcement officials said Carrillo Leyva, the 32-year-old son of deceased drug kingpin Amado Carrillo Fuentes, was arrested Wednesday while exercising in a wealthy neighborhood of Mexico City. [continues 826 words]
REYNOSA, Mexico - An army convoy on the hunt for traffickers rolled out of its base recently in this border town under the control of the Gulf Cartel - and an ominous voice crackled over a two-way radio frequency to announce just that. The voice, belonging to a cartel spy, then broadcast the soldiers' route through the city, turn by turn, using the same military language as the soldiers. "They're following us," Col. Juan Jose Gomez, who was monitoring the transmission from the front seat of an olive-green pickup truck, said with a shrug. [continues 2515 words]
Complacency and corruption are the real enemies. On a recent trip to Mexico, I asked a family friend -- a professor at the National University -- whether she thought the government was collapsing under the weight of the drug war, which has claimed close to 9,000 lives in the past two years, turned border cities into no-go zones and elicited comparisons between Mexico and Pakistan. "Collapsing?" she said. "It's finally picking itself up." Her point: Mexico's "drug problem" is of very long standing. The rest of the world is only noticing it now because President Felipe Calderon has decided to break with his predecessors' policy of malign neglect of, if not actual complicity in, the drug trade. [continues 762 words]
************ AREN'T DRUG WARRIORS FUNNY? By Pete Guither at DrugWarrant.com "Smoking marijuana causes people to wear the same trench coat for 20 years. That's why it's illegal!" http://blogs.salon.com/0002762/2009/02/24.html#a3314 ************ WILL LEGALIZING POT SAVE CALIFORNIA FROM ITS CASH CRUNCH? By Bruce Mirken, Marijuana Policy Project A new bill could make marijuana California's newest cash crop. http://drugsense.org/url/1QZh5vXn ************ By Kristin Bricker Yesterday the House Passed 2009 Plan Mexico Funding Despite Mexico's Failure to Comply with the 2008 Funding's Human Rights Conditions. [continues 330 words]
"You hope for the best, plan for the worst" AUSTIN -- Texas officials are working on a plan to respond to a potential collapse of the Mexican government and the specter of thousands fleeing north in fear for their lives after recent reports indicated the country could be on the verge of chaos. "You hope for the best, plan for the worst," Katherine Cesinger, spokeswoman for Gov. Rick Perry, said last week. "At this point, we've got a contingency plan that's in development." [continues 569 words]
By Bob Barr, Huffington Post The federal government must turn the decision on drug policy back to the states and the citizens themselves. http://drugsense.org/url/YGjeBq3W Why should other Alaskans be arrested for something Sarah Palin once did with impunity? By Jacob Sullum, Reason Magazine http://www.reason.com/news/show/128824.html Narco News Has Obtained, and Makes Available to the Public, the 38- Page FY 2008 Appropriations Document [continues 275 words]
By Bruce Mirken, AlterNet. Posted July 2, 2008. WHO survey of 17 countries finds that the U.S. has the highest rates of marijuana and cocaine use. http://www.alternet.org/drugreporter/90295/ By Laura Carlsen On June 26, after months of intense manoeuvering in Washington, the U.S. Senate passed the final version of the "Merida Initiative" and the President subsequently signed it into law. [continues 377 words]
A shootout last month in the streets of Tijuana resulting in at least 13 fatalities was a glaring display what happens when society bans intoxicants. Mexico has experienced a drastic rise in violence over the past few years. President Felipe Calderon has focused Mexico's army on combating the drug cartels but, instead of curbing the gangs and cartels, the violence has escalated. Tijuana's main hospital, treating the injured from that gunbattle, has been locked down and surrounded by federal troops. [continues 441 words]
MEXICO CITY -- The United States Congress has scaled back on President Bush's anti-drug plans for Mexico and put human rights conditions on some of the aid, drawing fire from some Mexicans who accuse American lawmakers of meddling in their country's internal affairs. As part of a broader emergency appropriations bill that remains under discussion and could face a presidential veto, the Senate on Thursday approved $350 million to aid Mexico in what has become a pitched battle against drug trafficking. The Senate would also give $100 million to countries in Central America that are in drug wars of their own, as well as to the Dominican Republic and Haiti. [continues 536 words]
At Reason Hit & Run http://reason.com/blog/show/126284.html New York City's little-noticed crackdown on pot smokers By Jacob Sullum http://www.reason.com/news/show/126363.html By Jennifer Kern The drug czar's staff is touring the country hosting summits designed to entice local educators to start drug testing their students -- randomly and without cause. [continues 579 words]
Does the Merida Initiative Represent a New Direction for U.S.-Mexico Relations, or Does It Simply Refocus the Issue Elsewhere? By Laura Starr, research associate, with Maria Delle Donne, research associate, Council on Hemispheric Affairs, December 19, 2007 http://www.worldpress.org/Americas/3020.cfm Fixing the unjust disparity in punishment between crack and cocaine powder By Jacob Sullum http://www.reason.com/news/show/123998.html This year, the Drug Policy Alliance joined with five co-host organizations, the ACLU, the Harm Reduction Coalition, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, Marijuana Policy Project and Students for Sensible Drug Policy (who also hosted their 9th annual conference within the larger International Drug Policy Reform conference) as well as dozens of other partner groups, to bring together a stronger and more diverse population of people and issues. [continues 270 words]
By Silja J.A. Talvi, AlterNet. Posted December 11, 2007. 1,200 activists and experts converged on New Orleans for the Drug Policy Alliance conference, where AlterNet won a prize for its drug war coverage. http://alternet.org/drugreporter/70195/ Laura Carlsen - Director, Americas Program Center for International Policy http://www.chicagopublicradio.org/content.aspx?audioID=16387 Transform Drug Policy Foundation [continues 325 words]
After Thirty-Five Years and $500 Billion, Drugs Are as Cheap and Plentiful as Ever: An Anatomy of a Failure. 1. After Pablo On the day of his death, December 2nd, 1993, the Colombian billionaire drug kingpin Pablo Escobar was on the run and living in a small, tiled-roof house in a middle-class neighborhood of Medellin, close to the soccer stadium. He died, theatrically, -ridiculously, gunned down by a Colombian police manhunt squad while he tried to flee across the barrio's rooftops, a fat, bearded man who had kicked off his flip-flops to try to outrun the bullets. The first thing the American drug agents who arrived on the scene wanted to do was to make sure that the corpse was actually Escobar's. The second thing was to check his house. [continues 15494 words]
MEXICO CITY -- The Bush administration's proposed counternarcotics aid package for Mexico would set in motion a vast reengineering of the country's justice system, revamping the legal education process, creating a network of court clerks and helping to write new laws, according to two summaries obtained by The Washington Post. The $500 million plan would also fund anti-drug and human rights campaigns and new citizen complaint centers. It would provide money for efforts to develop "centers of moral authority" and for media campaigns to create "a culture of lawfulness." [continues 1081 words]
Cultural Baggage Radio Show 11/07/07 - Bruce Mirken, Marijuana Policy Project, Debate: DEA's Dr. David Murray & Dr. Ethan Nadelmann of Drug Policy Alliance Audio: http://drugtruth.net/007DTNaudio/FDBCB_110707.mp3 Century of Lies 11/06/07 Philippe Lucas, Vancouver Island Compassion Society Audio: http://drugtruth.net/007DTNaudio/COL_110607.mp3 By Jacob Sullum, November 6, 2007 A Swiss study reported in the November issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine finds that teenagers who smoke just marijuana seem to be better adjusted than teenagers who smoke tobacco as well as pot. [continues 364 words]
(1) VETS MAKE UP QUARTER OF NATION'S HOMELESS Pubdate: Thu, 8 Nov 2007 Source: Los Angeles Times (CA) Copyright: 2007 Los Angeles Times Author: Associated Press Lonnie Bowen Jr. was once a social worker, but for 17 years the Vietnam war veteran has slept on the streets off and on as he's battled substance abuse and mental health problems. "It's been a hard struggle," said Bowen, 62, as he rolled a cigarette outside a homeless processing center in downtown Philadelphia, where he planned to seek help for his drug and alcohol problem, as he has before. [continues 6565 words]
