War Breaks Out in the US; Geneva Convention Does Not Apply!

Speculation that the Mexican drug war would cross the border into the U.S. was both right and wrong.

Right: Drug war action is already occurring in the U.S., as witnessed by kidnappings, beatings, torture and slit throats documented in U.S. cities.

Wrong: The U.S. Border cities are not necessarily the first affected. Bloodshed is occurring miles from the border, for instance, in Atlanta and Phoenix.

It is a particularly ugly war. Rusty Payne, a Drug Enforcement Administration spokesman in Washington, stated that cartel operatives are capable of doing anything. Very little is off limits "when you are willing to chop heads off, put them in an ice chest and drop them off at a police precinct, or roll a head into a disco, [or] put beheadings on YouTube as a warning," he told reporter Alicia Caldwell of the Associated Press.

While the U.S. violence has so far not matched the extensive and grisly nature of Mexican drug war action, intelligence from the U.S. Dept. of Justice shows Mexican cartel activity in 230 U.S. cities. Police found five men with slit throats in Birmingham AL in August who were apparently tortured with electric shock before their deaths in a murder-for-hire action by a Mexican drug organization due to a $400,000 debt. Is this the wave of the future for the U.S.?

Citizens with no connection to drug cartels have also suffered a sharp increase in home invasions and kidnappings in Phoenix AZ where they've logged 350 annually for the past two years. Police say the majority of these were perpetrated by Mexican drug organizations. In a June cartel action heavily armed men in stormed a Phoenix house and opened random fire, killing one. The number of kidnappings is difficult to estimate because victims do not always report to the police, but Phoenix was declared the "Kidnap-for-Ransom Capital" in the LA Times last week.

Law officers are worried. "The violence follows the drugs," according to David Cuthbertson, who heads the FBI's office in El Paso TX. U.S. citizens, whether or not they have any connection to the illegal drug industry, also have reason for concern. We on the border with Northern Mexico know that drug war chaos creates a climate of lawlessness that restricts both individual's livelihoods and society's functioning.

War is ugly. It's even uglier when it is undeclared...and outside the bounds of the Geneva Convention. And the evidence indicates that war is breaking out in the United States.

NBC news video found at this link:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/28644830#28644830

U.S. State Dept. Visits War-Torn U.S.-Mexico Border-But will it help?

Photo caption: McGlynn enters auditorium at Chamber of Commerce gathering in downtown El Paso, TX Monday. El Paso Times photo.
When a U.S. State Department official accepted U.S. Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas) invitation to El Paso, we locals hoped for insight. Could Mexico collapse, as a recent U.S. Joint Forces Command report suggests? Will the U.S. $1.4 Billion Merida Initiative package effectively help Mexico quell the drug cartel war? When will the horrifying violence that plagues Mexico, and especially Ciudad Juarez, end?
William L McGlynn, the State Department official, was touted by Reyes as "pre-eminently qualified to share insights about what is really going on in Mexico, and between the governments of Mexico and the United States." However, the presentation was less than enlightening, according to the El Paso Times report on the Chamber of Commerce gathering of 100 civic and business leaders last week on Monday.
McGlynn, after arriving an hour late, could neither predict a cessation to the violence nor disclose what portion of the Merida Initiative aid package would be earmarked for U.S. border security. The audience expressed concerned about the negative business image of the border. Nearly 1700 murders in Juarez since January 2008 make it one of the world's most violent cities. They heard little to assuage their concerns.
City Representative Beto O'Rourke, who attracted national attention last month by suggesting the U.S. discuss drug legalization as a way to diminish the cartel's reign of terror, was "disappointed." When Reyes' twice compared the situation to the movie Last Man Standing, O'Rourke felt he implied we should stand back and watch to see who wins. He commented that simply to "let people duke it out is not showing leadership."
Reyes disallowed a local radio station president, who inquired about drug-related kidnappings in El Paso, from asking a second question after she refuted his contention that the kidnapping reports were "urban legends."
McGlynn is the principal deputy assistant secretary of the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs at the State Department. He intended to also visit Mexico later in the day, but I don't have any information to share about that part of his itinerary.
Cross-posted on Border Explorer in my attempt to promote awareness of the extreme nature of the cartel war situation on the southern border of the U.S.

Hillary Clinton on Morales and Bolivia

(This morning's post is reprinted from The Democracy Center, a progressive blog on Bolivia.)

As the Bush administration heads out the door, the U.S. Bolivia relationship is basically in political tatters. A relationship that started off rocky but hopeful when President Morales took office, descended into an ongoing diplomatic spitting war – over issues ranging from the U.S. Embassy asking Fulbright scholars and Peace Corps volunteers to gather intelligence for it, to charges that Morales was abandoning the battle against illegal coca.


All that hit rock bottom in September when Morales charged the U.S. Ambassador with stirring up political protest against the government and sent him back to Washington, followed by the U.S. sending Bolivia's ambassador packing, decertifying the Bolivia anti-coca effort, and axing Bolivia from a trade program threatening 20,000 jobs.


So the question is whether that sour turn in U.S. relations will change course under President Barak Obama. Morales has made it clear both in private and in public, in a series of speeches in the U.S. last month, that he is hopeful for a new start. How does the incoming administration feel about Bolivia?


Last January, we asked a friend of the Democracy Center, Tim Provencal, a former Maryknoll lay missioner in El Alto, to wade through the snows of Dover, New Hampshire and ask then-candidate Hillary Clinton a question about Bolivia. That video is a part of the Democracy Center's Voices from Latin America campaign which you can learn more about here.


Today Clinton is President-elect Obama's designate for U.S. Secretary of State. That makes her public comments in January, in which she voiced strong support for Morales, all the more relevant. Here's a video of her comments:

Here is a portion of what she had to say:


I understand the pent up desire of the people of Bolivia, especially the indigenous people, to finally have a say in their country and in their future…and I think that the United States has made a series of miscalculations. Granted they go back decades but they've been a particular problem in this [the Bush] administration. I believe we should have done much more to support Morales. He has done what is understandable, as a populist leader, he has turned to those like Chavez who have offered to help him…so I will try to create a new relationship with Latin America and that certainly includes Bolivia.


Time and politics, and the developments in the U.S./Bolivia relationship since September, can certainly have an effect on the way Secretary Clinton will steer that relationship. But if her views expressed in public in Dover a year ago hold, the door seems open for a change of course – and that would be a good thing for both countries.