Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff
“In this context, the current offensive follows the neo-liberal manual on indigenous territories,” columnist and indigenous rights activist Gloria Munoz Ramirez recently wrote. “It is about sowing terror with a baseline of murders and disappearances until families abandon their lands…”
justdrew wrote:So, if the PRI regains power, I'm betting the rate of violence goes way down
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/ap ... an-leaders
'War on drugs' has failed, say Latin American leaders
Watershed summit will admit that prohibition has failed, and call for more nuanced and liberalised tactics
Jamie Doward
guardian.co.uk, Saturday 7 April 2012 16.51 EDT
Guatemala's president Otto Perez Molina believes a new approach to Latin America's war on drugs is urgently needed. Photograph: Johan Ordonez/AFP/Getty Images
A historic meeting of Latin America's leaders, to be attended by Barack Obama, will hear serving heads of state admit that the war on drugs has been a failure and that alternatives to prohibition must now be found.
The Summit of the Americas, to be held in Cartagena, Colombia is being seen by foreign policy experts as a watershed moment in the redrafting of global drugs policy in favour of a more nuanced and liberalised approach.
Otto Pérez Molina, the president of Guatemala, who as former head of his country's military intelligence service experienced the power of drug cartels at close hand, is pushing his fellow Latin American leaders to use the summit to endorse a new regional security plan that would see an end to prohibition. In the Observer, Pérez Molina writes: "The prohibition paradigm that inspires mainstream global drug policy today is based on a false premise: that global drug markets can be eradicated."
Pérez Molina concedes that moving beyond prohibition is problematic. "To suggest liberalisation – allowing consumption, production and trafficking of drugs without any restriction whatsoever – would be, in my opinion, profoundly irresponsible. Even more, it is an absurd proposition. If we accept regulations for alcoholic drinks and tobacco consumption and production, why should we allow drugs to be consumed and produced without any restrictions?"
He insists, however, that prohibition has failed and an alternative system must be found. "Our proposal as the Guatemalan government is to abandon any ideological consideration regarding drug policy (whether prohibition or liberalisation) and to foster a global intergovernmental dialogue based on a realistic approach to drug regulation. Drug consumption, production and trafficking should be subject to global regulations, which means that drug consumption and production should be legalised, but within certain limits and conditions."
The decision by Pérez Molina to speak out is seen as highly significant and not without political risk. Polls suggest the vast majority of Guatemalans oppose decriminalisation, but Pérez Molina's comments are seen by many as helping to usher in a new era of debate. They will be studied closely by foreign policy experts who detect that Latin American leaders are shifting their stance on prohibition following decades of drugs wars that have left hundreds of thousands dead.
Mexico's president, Felipe Calderón, has called for a national debate on the issue. Last year Juan Manuel Santos, Colombia's president, told the Observer that if legalising drugs curtailed the power of organised criminal gangs who had thrived during prohibition, "and the world thinks that's the solution, I will welcome it".
One diplomat closely involved with the summit described the event as historic, saying it would be the first time for 40 years that leaders had met to have an open discussion on drugs. "This is the chance to look at this matter with new eyes," he said.
Latin America's increasing hostility towards prohibition makes Obama's attendance at the summit potentially difficult. The Obama administration, keen not to hand ammunition to its opponents during an election year, will not want to be seen as softening its support for prohibition. However, it is seen as significant that the US vice-president, Joe Biden, has acknowledged that the debate about legalising drugs is now legitimate.
Fernando Henrique Cardoso, former president of Brazil and chairman of the global commission on drug policy, has said it is time for "an open debate on more humane and efficient drug policies", a view shared by George Shultz, the former US secretary of state, and former president Jimmy Carter.
© 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.
http://www.democracynow.org/2012/4/16/l ... _us_policy
Latin America v. Obama: U.S. Policy on Cuba, Drug War, Economy Under Fire at Colombian Summit
AMY GOODMAN: The Americas Summit concluded Sunday without agreement on the key questions of whether Cuba should be allowed to attend the regional meetings and on the issue of legalization of drugs. Latin American leaders at the meeting in Cartagena, Colombia, said Cuba should be invited to the next summit in Panama in 2015, but the U.S. and Canada dissented. Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa boycotted this year’s meeting because of Cuba’s exclusion. The Organization of American States, which runs the summits, excluded Cuba 50 years ago. President Obama said Cuba would be welcome to attend in the future if it becomes more democratic.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Cuba, unlike the other countries that are participating, has not yet moved to democracy, has not yet observed basic human rights. I am hopeful that a transition begins to take place inside of Cuba. And I assure you that I and the American people will welcome the time when the Cuban people have the freedom to live their lives, choose their leaders, and fully participate in this global economy and international institutions.
AMY GOODMAN: Several leaders also called on the U.S. to consider decriminalizing drugs as a way of combating the illegal trafficking that’s spawned violence across the region. President Obama ruled out legalization, instead announced more than $130 million in aid for increasing security and pursuing narco-traffickers and drug cartels in the region. He expressed willingness to hold a discussion on drug policy, but said legalization could lead to greater problems.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: It is entirely legitimate to have a conversation about whether the laws in place are ones that are doing more harm than good in certain places. I, personally, and my administration’s position is that legalization is not the answer, that, in fact, if you think about how it would end up operating, the capacity of a large-scale drug trade to dominate certain countries, if they were allowed to operate legally without any constraint, could be just as corrupting, if not more corrupting, than the status quo.
AMY GOODMAN: Meanwhile, the U.S. announced that a free trade agreement with host country Colombia will come into effect in May, far earlier than expected. The agreement had earlier been deferred because of Colombia’s weak record on workers’ rights, including murders and attacks on union activists. In announcing the deal, the Obama administration said Colombia had made, quote, "historic" progress on worker protections and human rights. Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos hailed the agreement.
PRESIDENT JUAN MANUEL SANTOS: [translated] It will generate employment. It will generate employment in Colombia, more than 500,000 jobs. It will lead to economic growth, about 0.5 to 1 percent, in a permanent form. This has many different benefits for the Colombian people and for the well-being of Colombia. And there are many sectors that have direct and immediate access to most important markets in the world.
AMY GOODMAN: The summit was marred by a prostitution scandal involving 16 U.S. security personnel. Eleven Secret Service and five military personnel were removed from their duty and sent back from Colombia to the United States. The U.S. Secret Service is investigating claims they brought prostitutes to their hotel rooms in Cartagena late Wednesday and had a dispute over payment with one of the women. President Obama said he expected a rigorous probe to be conducted.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: If it turns out that some of the allegations that have been made in the press are confirmed, then of course I’ll be angry, because my attitude with respect to the Secret Service personnel is no different than what I expect out of my delegation that’s sitting here.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, to talk more about the summit, we’re joined now by Greg Grandin, professor of Latin American history at New York University, author of Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism. His most recent book, Fordlandia, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in history.
We welcome you back to Democracy Now!, Professor Grandin.
GREG GRANDIN: Thanks for having me.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the significance of this summit, though what most people in this country are hearing about is the prostitution scandal allegedly involving U.S. Secret Service that were supposed to be protecting the President.
GREG GRANDIN: Yeah, well, this scandal—I mean, this is just, I think, something that just came out into the open; I’m sure it’s nothing new for these kind of events. I mean, what’s interesting about it is Cartegena is a Caribbean city, so the Caribbean has a reputation as being a kind of playpen of the United States, a kind of place of sex tourism. So I’m sure that this is not going over well in Latin America itself. I mean, it kind of harkens back to the days of, you know, Fredo Corleone and Hyman Roth setting up, you know, meetings, setting up rendezvous with, you know, businessmen. So I’m sure it was—it’s something that kind of over—set a bad tone for the rest of the summit.
The summit itself is a bit of a—it’s a bit of a show, a bit of a spectacle. It began under Bill Clinton in the 1990s and was very much tied to trying to move the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas along. And it started running into problems in Quebec during a rising anti-globalization movement, and then in 2005 in Argentina, which really did kind of derail the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas. So, at this point, it’s unclear what the purpose of this summit is. Latin Americans themselves are creating these bodies that are excluding the United States, that are deepening integration, political and economic integration. This seems to be a venue in which they come together in order to criticize Washington, quite effectively.
AMY GOODMAN: And these bodies are threatening to the United States. Why have they excluded the United States? And why do they agree to come to this meeting, though some of the Latin American leaders did not attend, like Rafael Correa of Ecuador, protesting Cuba’s exclusion?
GREG GRANDIN: Yeah, and Hugo Chávez is ill, so he didn’t attend, and Cuba is excluded. So there are a number of people who didn’t attend. I think they attend because it does provide an effective high-profile venue in order to—in order to show their unity over a number of issues and voice their concerns to the United States, to Washington. What we saw in this episode, in this instance, was remarkable unity over three issues: one, humanizing policy towards the drug problem; two, including Cuba; and then, three, a kind of unexpected criticism that really did bring together, coelesce, a lot of Latin American leaders, which was Brazil’s criticism of U.S. monetary policy.
AMY GOODMAN: And explain that criticism.
GREG GRANDIN: Well, Dilma Rousseff, the president of Brazil, was actually in Washington a few weeks ago, just last week, and she previewed this criticism. And the criticism is that the United States is basically depreciating its currency, and as—in order to solve its own financial problems. But that has the effect of valuing, raising the value of Latin American currency, and that creates a trade imbalance. That makes U.S. goods that much more cheaper for Brazilians and for Colombians and for Mexicans to buy, so it deepens the trade imbalance between Latin America and the United States. And it also has the effect of raising the value of debt that foreign bondholders owe or bankers owe, Latin American external debt. So it really puts pressure on Latin American economies. I mean, in the 1970s and 1980s, the United States largely, to a large degree, solved the economic crisis of that period, the crisis of Keynesianism, through a sharp austerity program that generated the debt crisis, that shifted from industrial capitalism to finance capitalism. And I think Dilma is voicing concern that the United States is trying to do the same: get out of the mess it’s created by shifting the burden to Latin America. And there’s been—it was remarkable unity.
AMY GOODMAN: Dilma Rousseff is an interesting figure, the successor to Lula in Brazil, she, herself, a Brazilian guerrilla who was held in captivity for several years and tortured.
GREG GRANDIN: Yeah. I mean, and she came into office on the heels of Inácio Lula’s enormous popularity. He had two terms in office, and he left with over 80 percent pop—he was much more confrontational in—around a number of issues, around trade issues, around foreign policy. And the sense that Dilma Rousseff would be more of a technocrat, more willing to accommodate Washington’s interests, maybe on some issues she has. She has kind of gone along with some of the—some of U.S. foreign policy concerning Syria and maybe even Iran. She has distanced Brazil from Iran a bit, but not completely. Her foreign policy team is still very critical of Washington policy in the United Nations, in the Middle East around the Palestine-Israel conflict. And she’s been very critical around economic issues, including this. I mean, it was quite surprising how strident, how strong and sharp her criticism was. She talked about flooding Latin America with cheap money. And—
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the Colombia Free Trade Agreement.
GREG GRANDIN: Well, the Colombia Free Trade Agreement, you know, obviously, this is something that Barack Obama ran against as a candidate, ran against John McCain, said it would be bad for U.S. workers. And then, pretty much as soon as he got into office, he started to shift gears. He left pretty much the whole Bush team in the U.S. Trade Representative Office, and they continue to work towards passing and toward cobbling together a free trade agreement with Colombia.
Colombia—there’s a couple of things to know about Colombia. Colombia is the worst country in terms of labor organizing, hands down. Last year, 40 unionists were killed, and that was 60 percent of the global total. The human rights community, the labor community in the United States has been asking the Obama administration to basically build into any free trade agreement a number of guarantees. One, they wanted to see real change on the ground, before they went forward—say, a three-year period where there would be no murders, no executions of trade unionists. The White House refused that. They asked for a mechanism built into the trade agreement that would void the treaty if executions started to rise again. The White House refused to do that.
It’s largely symbolic, I think. I think the effect it’s going to have on the U.S. economy is minuscule. It really is kind of playing to domestic politics. Obama has an election coming up. He’s got to play to the Chamber of Commerce. He’s got to play to—you know, against Mitt Romney, who could position himself better on the economy. And I think what he’s doing is he’s betting his election on the backs of Colombian trade unionists.
AMY GOODMAN: Obama said that Colombia has actually made historic progress, and his administration said Colombia created a new labor ministry, prosecution of crimes against union workers, and steps to fight discrimination against Afro-Colombians and women, had assuaged their concerns and made it possible for the free trade deal.
GREG GRANDIN: Yeah, well, it’s kind of—I mean, all of these changes apparently went into effect two weeks ago, so there’s very little time to verify, very little—and who’s going to verify, who’s going to confirm? Again, the fact of the matter is Colombia is the worst country in the world to be a trade unionist. So if you’re willing—if you’re saying Colombia passes the threshold of what’s acceptable, then what country doesn’t pass the threshold of acceptable?
And a case in point is Guatemala. Guatemala brought its murder rate of unionists down to zero in order to get—in order to get the Central American Free Trade Agreement passed. As soon as that free trade agreement was passed, the murder rate of trade unionists shot up again. And so, there’s no guarantees that this won’t happen in Colombia. The mechanisms built into it is exactly what’s in NAFTA, and there has yet been a violation or a fine based on labor—violations of labor rights.
AMY GOODMAN: And the significance of President Obama spending three days in Cartagena, in Colombia, the longest any U.S. president has spent in Colombia?
GREG GRANDIN: Well, I think Colombia is a close U.S. ally, despite this very interesting dissent about drugs, that it’s being led actually not by the traditional critics of the United States, but by its two closest allies, Guatemala—very conservative presidents: Guatemala, Otto Pérez Molina, and in Colombia, Juan Manuel Santos. It’s fascinating. But aside from that, I think Colombia is the United States’s anchor in the region, in some ways, so it makes sense that he would spend a lot of time there.
AMY GOODMAN: Has President Obama changed policy towards Latin America from President Obama?
GREG GRANDIN: From—no, no. There’s—I mean—
AMY GOODMAN: From President Bush.
GREG GRANDIN: Yeah, there’s—I mean, the best way to think about it is a process of inertia. What started under Bush, or what actually even started under Clinton, just continues under Obama. The two main pillars of U.S. foreign policy—increasing neoliberalism and increasing militarism around drugs—continue. They feed off of each other and have created a crisis in that corridor, running from Colombia through Central America to Mexico. That’s been a complete disaster, and there’s no change.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to talk about the drug war after break. We’ll be bringing in Ethan Nadelmann. Greg Grandin teaches Latin American history at New York University, author of Empire’s Workshop as well as Fordlandia. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. Back in 30 seconds.
http://www.democracynow.org/2012/4/16/o ... owing_call
Monday, April 16, 2012 Whole Show
Obama Refuses to Back Growing Call for Drug Legalization to Stem Spreading Violence in Latin America
AMY GOODMAN: We’re joined by Ethan Nadelmann, founder and executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance. He is joining us from Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, where he’s attending the World Economic Forum’s regional Latin American meeting, but here to talk about the significance of this meeting that has taken place, the Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia. We’re also joined by Greg Grandin of New York University, Latin American history professor there.
Ethan Nadelmann, the significance of President Obama’s stance against decriminalization or any kind of legalization of drugs, the position he’s taken on drug policy, and the leaders in Latin America, what they have said in response?
ETHAN NADELMANN: Well, I would not put that much significance into President Obama saying he’s opposed to legalization or decriminalization. That’s sort of the standard patter one expects from the politicians. They’ve been scared of their own shadows on this issue for a very long time.
But what’s much more important, Amy, is sort of looking at the tea leaves in all this stuff, because that’s why this summit is even—notwithstanding the nuance of the comments that were made—is really going to go down in a sort of historic way in terms of the transformation of the regional and global dialogue around drug policy. This is the first time ever that you’ve had a president, and for that matter, a vice president, saying this is a legitimate subject of discussion, the decriminalization, legalization. This is the first you’ve had a president saying that we’re willing to look at the possibility that U.S. drug policies are doing more harm than good in some parts of the world.
So, then you have the other leaders in the region. President Santos is, you know, as was just said before, an important ally of the United States, the former defense minister under President Uribe, somebody with a lot of credibility in waging a drug war. And he’s very focused on opening this up. And he’s not—you know, Time magazine has him on the cover this week as the emerging Latin American leader of significance. Otto Pérez Molina is very focused. Laura Chinchilla, the president of Costa Rica, came away saying she was very pleased that the Central American nations were benefiting because of the opening of this discussions. You have the funny situation of Evo Morales, the leftist leader of Bolivia, former head of the coca growers’ union, lecturing the United States about—essentially, sounding like Milton Friedman, that "How can you expect us to reduce the supply when there is a demand?" So there’s the beginning of a change here. I don’t think it’s going to be possible to put this genie back in the bottle.
AMY GOODMAN: Mexico’s President Felipe Calderón renewed calls on the United States, the world’s largest market for illegal drugs, to do more to curb consumption, as well.
PRESIDENT FELIPE CALDERÓN: [translated] Consumer countries—generally, the United States—should make a bigger effort to reduce consumption, and consequently, the extraordinary flow of economic resources that goes into the hands of the criminals.
AMY GOODMAN: And, of course, the Colombian president himself, as you mentioned, Santos, I mean, who’s been the recipient of millions in drug war money, still coming out for decriminalization. Ethan Nadelmann?
ETHAN NADELMANN: Well, you know, it’s an interesting time for President Calderón. I mean, his term ends later this year. He has waged the war on drugs for a long time. He’s pointing his finger at the United States and saying, "Why don’t you reduce your demand and stop sending so many guns down our way?" You know, at the summit, he expressed his appreciation for new organized crime agreements. But at the same time, he’s also floating and supporting this new discussion. When he was in the United States last year traveling around, he started saying, if the U.S. cannot reduce its demand for illegal drugs, it’s time for it to investigate, quote-unquote, "market alternatives," which was seen correctly as codeword for legal alternatives. His foreign minister, Patricia Espinosa, in February said that now Mexico does in fact support a debate about the legalization issue. So, the real question, I think, with Calderón is, in the extended period in which he’s a lame duck, after the election in July but before he leaves office in December, will he speak out? Will he make an effort to speak more boldly, in the way that Santos and Otto Pérez Molina are right now?
And the other question is his likely successor, Peña Nieto, coming from the old PRI party, the one that dominated Mexican politics for something like seven decades. The general thought has been that he just wants to sort of put all this—go back to the old understanding between government and gangsters, that PRI model for so many years. But as one former president, César Gaviria, said to me recently, when somebody becomes president, they’re faced with a new situation. So the new president of Mexico, come next year, is going to have to decide, does he want to let this whole debate dwindle? Does he want to just keep suffering the consequences of a failed U.S. policy? Or does he want to actively participate in the initiatives of Santos, Otto Pérez Molina, Chinchilla and others?
AMY GOODMAN: And what about the fact that this is an election year, Ethan Nadelmann?
ETHAN NADELMANN: Well, it simply means that you’re not going to hear much of this in U.S. politics. I’ll be curious to see whether Fox News or Romney’s campaign try to pick on Obama even for the modest acknowledgments he made. But the interesting thing, of course, Amy, on this issue is that this is very much an issue that’s of the left and the right. As was said before, some of the leading proponents of drug policy reform in the region are coming from the right and the center-right, both the current presidents, Santos and Otto Pérez Molina, but also former presidents, like Cardoso, Gaviria and Zedillo from Brazil, Colombia and Mexico, who are the ones who spearheaded these important global commissions that helped open up the issue. In the United States, you know, the two lions of the conservative movement in the late 20th century, William Buckley and Milton Friedman, it’s in the Republican Party primaries that you hear libertarians like Ron Paul and Gary Johnson talking to this issue. You know, it’s people like former Secretary of State George Shultz or Frank Carlucci who are clearly opposed to the drug war. It’s Grove Norquist, the anti-talks partisan, who’s very much a committed opponent of the drug war. So this is very much a bipartisan issue. We’re not going to see the same sorts of sniping from left and right on this issue as on others. And I think that means that this debate is going to grow stronger and more bolder as a result.
AMY GOODMAN: Professor Greg Grandin, the alarming rate of drug-related violence in Central America that all are trying to deal with?
GREG GRANDIN: Yeah, I mean, it’s a direct consequence of Clinton’s Plan Colombia, which has telegraphed the violence up through—up from Colombia through Central America. It had the effect of breaking up the transportation cartels, but did little about production or consumption, so therefore just increased the incentive for cartels and gangs in Central America. This was a moment when these countries were coming out of these devastating civil wars, just trying to put their institutions, civil institutions, back together again. It was like a tsunami. And added to that was the disruptions, the dislocations of neoliberalism, first NAFTA and then the Central American Free Trade Agreement, which just created massive dislocation in the countryside and destroyed agrarian markets, and just, you know, both created this void and vacuum that the drug violence filled. I mean, these are really the two legacies of the Clinton administration.
I’m a little bit—little bit more pessimistic about the United States’s ability to respond to this. I mean, you know, the United States, what we’re seeing, what’s at play—what you see at the Summit of the America is really an international forum, foreign policy forum, that what’s on view is domestic political sclerosis. The three things the U.S. could do to improve its situation and its relation with Latin America—Cuba, normalize relation with Cuba; humanize its drug policy; and three, and then have a more kind of humane trade policy—what stops that is—and then also immigration, so four things—is domestic politics. I mean, we always have an election in the United States. There’s always short-term interests that mitigate any—against a rational long-term response. But then there’s also deep interests within the United States. There’s the military-industrial complex, which makes a lot of money on the drug war. There’s SOUTHCOM, whose whole reason for existence is the drug war in Latin America. I mean, it’s going to be a lot—it’s going to take a lot to kind of pry those interests off of this policy and lead to a more rational response, I think.
AMY GOODMAN: Ethan Nadelmann, you’re speaking to us now, not from Cartagena, but from Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, where you’re there for the World Economic Forum regional meeting. The significance of this, following Cartagena right now?
ETHAN NADELMANN: Well, it was planned before people knew that this was going to be on the issue of the Summit of the Americas, but I’ll be on a panel in a few days with the president of Guatemala, Otto Pérez Molina, with the assistant secretary of state in the U.S. for law enforcement matters in narcotics, William Brownfield, and with the Mexican interior minister, whose job it is to wage the drug war. So it’s notable that, in a forum like this, which mostly focuses on business issues, that this issue is on the agenda. It’s consistent, however, with the fact that you now see the legal business communities in places like Mexico City, Monterrey, Guatemala City, beginning to step up and say this isn’t working.
And I should also just say, Amy, I agree with the previous speaker: this is going to be very difficult to sort of bring this—keep this discussion going in an above-ground way. You know, there is a prison-industrial complex. There are vested interests and powerful bureaucracies that have spent decades trying to suppress and ignore this discussion. Already, the U.S. is trying to find ways to maneuver this discussion into places where it will get stuck in sorts of intellectual quagmires and go nowhere.
But I think that, on the other hand, people like Santos, Otto Pérez Molina and others are savvy enough and are investing enough of time, of their own energy, to keep this thing moving, to understand that civil society, the intellectuals, the drug policy experts need to be engaged, and that if we just turn this over to the governments’ drug czars or their foreign ministries, this thing will die. That’s where the U.S. wants it. The others know it has to expand out for it to be effective.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you both very much for being with us, Ethan Nadelmann of the Drug Policy Alliance, speaking to us from Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, and Greg Grandin, teaches Latin American history at New York University, author of Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism and Fordlandia, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in history.
This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. When we come back, the debate raging in election politics now about women’s work in the workplace both outside and inside the home. Stay with us.
More victims in Mexican massacre just across U.S. border
Friday - 5/4/2012, 4:32pm ET
J.J. Green, wtop.com
WASHINGTON - The bodies of at least nine people were found dead in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico on Friday morning, intelligence sources tell WTOP. Some were hanged from a bridge, others were found in a truck and still others were dumped in front of city hall.
There are conflicting reports as to how many bodies were found.
Nuevo Laredo is just across the border from Laredo, Texas. All of the victims showed signs of torture, their hands were bound and their eyes covered, the sources say.
The incident appears to be retaliation by Los Zetas drug cartel. The victims were allegedly identified by their killers as members of the Gulf cartel.
Mexican military and police authorities are investigating. U.S. Homeland Security officials are watching the situation carefully because of its proximity to the U.S. and the encroaching violence growing out of the cartel drug wars.
http://www.wtop.com/215/2852855/Torture ... oss-border
8bitagent wrote:Zetas(who make al Qaeda and Taliban look like choir boys) could come into America guns ablazing, with car bombs and take over whole towns and the media and US government would try it's best to cover it all up and keep it quiet.
Shifts in cartel areas of influence in Mexico's Drug War
http://app.en25.com/e/es.aspx?s=1483&e= ... a3cc700801
The decapitated head found in a plastic bag on a hiking trail in the shadow of the Hollywood Sign four months ago belonged to a man known to local authorities as the former “concierge” in Los Angeles for the now-defunct Cali drug cartel, the Mad Cow MorningNews has learned exclusively.
...
When the head of Harvey Medellin, a 66-year old Mexican national, was discovered alongside a hiking trail in Los Angeles, the moment many have dreaded— when the Drug War raging in Mexico would spill over onto the streets of a major American city, arrived, and passed without recognition.
...
Western banks 'reaping billions from Colombian cocaine trade'
While cocaine production ravages countries in Central America, consumers in the US and Europe are helping developed economies grow rich from the profits, a study claims
Ed Vulliamy
guardian.co.uk, Saturday 2 June 2012 14.34 EDT
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/ju ... aine-trade
The vast profits made from drug production and trafficking are overwhelmingly reaped in rich "consuming" countries – principally across Europe and in the US – rather than war-torn "producing" nations such as Colombia and Mexico, new research has revealed. And its authors claim that financial regulators in the west are reluctant to go after western banks in pursuit of the massive amount of drug money being laundered through their systems.
The most far-reaching and detailed analysis to date of the drug economy in any country – in this case, Colombia – shows that 2.6% of the total street value of cocaine produced remains within the country, while a staggering 97.4% of profits are reaped by criminal syndicates, and laundered by banks, in first-world consuming countries.
"The story of who makes the money from Colombian cocaine is a metaphor for the disproportionate burden placed in every way on 'producing' nations like Colombia as a result of the prohibition of drugs," said one of the authors of the study, Alejandro Gaviria, launching its English edition last week.
"Colombian society has suffered to almost no economic advantage from the drugs trade, while huge profits are made by criminal distribution networks in consuming countries, and recycled by banks which operate with nothing like the restrictions that Colombia's own banking system is subject to."
His co-author, Daniel Mejía, added: "The whole system operated by authorities in the consuming nations is based around going after the small guy, the weakest link in the chain, and never the big business or financial systems where the big money is."
The work, by the two economists at University of the Andes in Bogotá, is part of an initiative by the Colombian government to overhaul global drugs policy and focus on money laundering by the big banks in America and Europe, as well as social prevention of drug taking and consideration of options for de-criminalising some or all drugs.
The economists surveyed an entire range of economic, social and political facets of the drug wars that have ravaged Colombia. The conflict has now shifted, with deadly consequences, to Mexico and it is feared will spread imminently to central America. But the most shocking conclusion relates to what the authors call "the microeconomics of cocaine production" in their country.
Gaviria and Mejía estimate that the lowest possible street value (at $100 per gram, about £65) of "net cocaine, after interdiction" produced in Colombia during the year studied (2008) amounts to $300bn. But of that only $7.8bn remained in the country.
"It is a minuscule proportion of GDP," said Mejía, "which can impact disastrously on society and political life, but not on the Colombian economy. The economy for Colombian cocaine is outside Colombia."
Mejía told the Observer: "The way I try to put it is this: prohibition is a transfer of the cost of the drug problem from the consuming to the producing countries."
"If countries like Colombia benefitted economically from the drug trade, there would be a certain sense in it all," said Gaviria. "Instead, we have paid the highest price for someone else's profits – Colombia until recently, and now Mexico.
"I put it to Americans like this – suppose all cocaine consumption in the US disappeared and went to Canada. Would Americans be happy to see the homicide rates in Seattle skyrocket in order to prevent the cocaine and the money going to Canada? That way they start to understand for a moment the cost to Colombia and Mexico."
The mechanisms of laundering drug money were highlighted in the Observer last year after a rare settlement in Miami between US federal authorities and the Wachovia bank, which admitted to transferring $110m of drug money into the US, but failing to properly monitor a staggering $376bn brought into the bank through small exchange houses in Mexico over four years. (Wachovia has since been taken over by Wells Fargo, which has co-operated with the investigation.)
But no one went to jail, and the bank is now in the clear. "Overall, there's great reluctance to go after the big money," said Mejía. "They don't target those parts of the chain where there's a large value added. In Europe and America the money is dispersed – once it reaches the consuming country it goes into the system, in every city and state. They'd rather go after the petty economy, the small people and coca crops in Colombia, even though the economy is tiny."
Colombia's banks, meanwhile, said Mejía, "are subject to rigorous control, to stop laundering of profits that may return to our country. Just to bank $2,000 involves a huge amount of paperwork – and much of this is overseen by Americans."
"In Colombia," said Gaviria, "they ask questions of banks they'd never ask in the US. If they did, it would be against the laws of banking privacy. In the US you have very strong laws on bank secrecy, in Colombia not – though the proportion of laundered money is the other way round. It's kind of hypocrisy, right?"
Dr Mejia said: "It's an extension of the way they operate at home. Go after the lower classes, the weak link in the chain – the little guy, to show results. Again, transferring the cost of the drug war on to the poorest, but not the financial system and the big business that moves all this along."
With Britain having overtaken the US and Spain as the world's biggest consumer of cocaine per capita, the Wachovia investigation showed much of the drug money is also laundered through the City of London, where the principal Wachovia whistleblower, Martin Woods, was based in the bank's anti-laundering office. He was wrongfully dismissed after sounding the alarm.
Gaviria said: "We know that authorities in the US and UK know far more than they act upon. The authorities realise things about certain people they think are moving money for the drug trade – but the DEA [US Drugs Enforcement Administration] only acts on a fraction of what it knows."
"It's taboo to go after the big banks," added Mejía. "It's political suicide in this economic climate, because the amounts of money recycled are so high."
Anti-Drugs Policies In Colombia: Successes, Failures And Wrong Turns, edited by Alejandro Gaviria and Daniel Mejía, Ediciones Uniandes, 2011
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