Plan Mexico, Plan Columbia

Plan Mexico: Plan Colombia Heads for Mexico

by Stephen Lendman

Global Research, May 27, 2008

It’s called "Plan Mexico," or more formally the "Merida Initiative," and here’s the scheme. It’s to do for Mexicans what Plan Colombia has done to that nation since 1999, and, in fact, much earlier. Since then, billions have gone for the following:

– to establish a US military foothold in the country;

– mostly to fund US weapons, chemical and other corporate profiteers; it’s a long-standing practice; in fact, a 1997 Pentagon document affirms that America’s military will "protect US interests and investments;" in Colombia, it’s to control its valuable resources; most importantly oil and natural gas but also coal, iron ore, nickel, gold, silver, emeralds, copper and more; it’s also to crush worker resistance, eliminate unions, target human rights and peasant opposition groups, and make the country a "free market" paradise inhospitable to people;

– it funds a brutish military as well; already, over 10,000 of its soldiers have been trained at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC) – aka the School of the Americas (SOA) at Fort Benning, Georgia; its graduates are infamous as human rights abusers, drugs traffickers, and death squad practitioners; they were well schooled in their "arts" by the nation most skilled in them;

– it lets Colombia arm and support paramilitary death squads; they’re known as the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC); for more than a decade, they’ve terrorized Colombians and are responsible for most killings and massacres in support of powerful western and local business interests;

– it funds drug eradication efforts, but only in FARC-EP and ELN areas; government-controlled ones are exempt; trafficking is big business; laundering drugs money reaps huge profits for major US and regional banks; the CIA has also been linked to the trade for decades, especially since the 1980s; after Afghanistan’s invasion and occupation, opium harvests set records – mostly from areas controlled by US-allied "warlords;" the Taliban’s drug eradication program was one reason it was targeted; Colombia’s drug eradication is horrific; it causes ecological devastation; crop and forest destruction; lives and livelihoods lost; large areas chemically contaminated; bottom line of the program – record amounts of Colombian cocaine reach US and world markets; trafficking is more profitable than ever; so is big business thanks to paramilitary terror;

– it’s to topple the FARC-EP and ELN resistance groups; Latin American expert James Petras calls the former the "longest standing (since 1964), largest peasant-based guerrilla (resistance) movement in the world;" it’s also to weaken Hugo Chavez, other regional populist leaders and groups, and destabilize their countries; and

– it supports the "Uribe doctrine;" it’s in lockstep with Washington; its policies are hard right, corporate-friendly and militarized for enforcement.

Plan Colombia turned the country into a dependable, profitable narco-state. Business is better than ever. Violence is out of control and human rights abuses are appalling.

It gets worse. Two-thirds of Columbians are impoverished. Over 2.5 million peasant and urban slum dwellers have been displaced. Thousands of trade unionists have been murdered (more than anywhere else in the world), and many more thousands of peasants, rural teachers, and peasant and indigenous leaders have as well. Paramilitary land seizures are commonplace. Colombian latifundistas profit hugely. Wealth concentration is extreme and growing. Corruption infests the government. Many thousands in desperation are leaving. Colombia’s "democracy" is a sham. So is Mexico’s. Plan Mexico will make it worse. That’s the whole idea, and it’s part of the secretive Security and Prosperity Partnership – aka the North American Union.

It’s planned behind closed doors – to militarize and annex the continent. Corporate giants are in charge, mostly US ones. The idea is for an unregulated open field for profit. The Bush administration, Canada and Mexico support it. Things are moving toward implementation. Three nations will become one. National sovereignty eliminated. Worker rights as well. Opposition is building, but moves are planned to quash it. That’s the militarization part.

Business intends to win this one. People are to be exploited, not helped. That’s why it’s kept secret. The idea is to agree on plans, inform legislatures minimally about them, get SPP passed, then implement it with as few of its disturbing details known in hopes once they are they’ll be too late to reverse.

SPP is ugly, ominous and hugely people destructive. Hundreds of millions in three countries will be affected. Others in the region as well. Plan Mexico is a contribution to the scheme. Below is what we know about it.

 

Plan Mexico – Exploitation Writ Large

The plan was first announced in October 2007 as a "regional security cooperation initiative." It’s to provide $1.4 billion in aid (over three years) for Mexico and Central America on the pretext of fighting drugs trafficking and organized crime linked to it. FY 2008 calls for $550 million for starters with about 10% of it for Central America.

In fact, Plan Mexico is part of SPP’s grand scheme to militarize the continent, let corporate predators exploit it, and keep people from three countries none the wiser. Most aid will go to Mexico’s military and police forces with its major portion earmarked back to US defense contractors for equipment, training and maintenance. It’s how these schemes always work.

This one includes a menu of security allocations, administrative functions, and special needs like software, forensics equipment, database compilations, plus plenty more for friendly pockets to keep our Mexican cohorts on board.

After failing on May 15, House passage will likely follow the Senate’s approval on May 22 – below the radar. It’s one of many appropriations tucked into the latest Iraq/Afghanistan supplemental funding request, and its purpose is just as outlandish. It will militarize Mexico without deploying US troops. It will also open the country for plunder, privatize everything including state-owned oil company PEMEX, give Washington a greater foothold there, and get around the touchy military issue by allowing in Blackwater paramilitaries instead to work with Mexican security forces.

Only privatizing PEMEX is in doubt thanks to immense citizen opposition. Thousands of "brigadistas" were in the streets, protesting outside the Senate and Chamber of Deputies, as lawmakers considered ending PEMEX state-control. They paralyzed debate and brought it to a halt – temporarily putting off a final resolution of this very contentious issue. Big Oil wants it. Most Mexicans don’t. The battle continues. Mexico’s military may get involved.

The US State Department describes them as follows:

– …."impunity and corruption (in Mexico’s security forces are) problems, particularly at the state and local levels. The following human rights problems were reported: unlawful killings; kidnappings; physical abuse; poor and overcrowded prison conditions; arbitrary arrests and detention; corruption, inefficiency, and lack of transparency in the judicial system; (coerced) confessions….permitted as evidence in trials; criminal intimidation of journalists leading to self-censorship; corruption at all levels of government; domestic violence against women (often with impunity); violence, including killings, against women; trafficking in persons; social and economic discrimination against indigenous people; and child labor."

Mexico’s military fares little better with promises Plan Mexico will worsen it. President Calderon now deploys troops around the country. People fear them when they come. They’re purportedly against drugs traffickers, but that’s mostly cover. Their real purpose may be sinister – a possible dress rehearsal for martial law when SPP is implemented.

Mexican soldiers are hard line. Their reputation is unsavory. People justifiably fear them. They commit flagrant human rights abuses and get away with them. The major media even report them. The New York Times, CNN, BBC, USA Today and others cite evidence of rape, torture, killings, other human rights abuses, corruption, extortion, and ties to drugs traffickers. Little is done to stop it. Government and military spokespersons often aren’t available for comment. They’re part of the problem, not the solution. Plan Mexico promises more of the same and then some. Billions from Washington back it.

Social protests in the country already are criminalized. Hundreds are filling prisons. Many languish there for years. Labor and social activists are most vulnerable. Injustice and grinding poverty motivate them. Plan Mexico ups the ante. Things are about to get worse.

Militarizing society is toxic. Police state enforcement follows. Accountability disappears. The rule of law no longer applies. Plan Mexico assures it. So does SPP for the continent. In classic doublespeak, the White House claims it will "advance the productivity and competitiveness of our nations and help to protect our health, safety and environment." Its real purpose is to annex a continent, destroy its democratic remnants, lock in hard line enforcement, and secure it for capital.

SPP Backdrop of Plan Mexico

A detailed SPP explanation can be found on the 2007 article link. It’s titled The Militarization and Annexation of North America – http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=6359

Plan Mexico is part of SPP. It will militarize and annex the continent. It was formerly launched at a March 23, 2005 meeting in Waco, Texas attended by George Bush, Mexico’s President Vincente Fox, and Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin. They forged a tripartite partnership for greater US, Canadian and Mexican economic, political, social and security integration. Secretive working groups were formed to accomplish it – to devise non-negotiable agreements to be binding on all three nations.

Details are hidden. No public input is permitted. Pro forma legislative voting is approaching. It will try to avoid a NAFTA-type battle. Legislatures aren’t being fully informed. The worst of SPP is secret. It’s not a treaty, and the idea is to pass it below the radar and avoid a protracted public debate.

What’s known so far is disturbing, and considerable opposition has arisen but thus far too inadequate to matter. SPP, Plan Mexico, and a final continent-wide plan amount to a corporate coup d’etat against three sovereign states and hundreds of millions of people. It’s to erase national borders, merge three nations into one under US control, and remove all barriers to trade and capital flows. It’s also to militarize the continent, create a fortress-North America security zone, and have in place police state laws for enforcement. Billions will fund it. All for corporate gain. Nothing for public welfare.

SPP takes NAFTA and the "war on terrorism" to the next level en route to extending it further for more corporate plunder. It’s based on outlandish notions – that doing business, protecting national security, and securing "public welfare" require tough new measures in a very threatening world.

SPP bolsters US control. It enhances corporate power, quashes civil liberties, erases public welfare, and creates an open field for plunder free from regulatory restraints. It’s being plotted behind closed doors. A series of summits and secret meetings continue with the latest one in New Orleans from April 22 to 24.

Three presidents attended and were met by vocal street protests. They convened a "People’s Summit" and also held workshops to:

– inform people how destructive SPP is;

– strengthen networking and organizational ties against it;

– maintain online information about their activities;

– promote their efforts and build added support; and

– affirm their determination to continue resisting a hugely repressive corporate-sponsored agenda. Opponents call it Nafta on steroids.

Business-friendly opposition also exists. Prominent is a "Coalition to Block the North American Union." The Conservative Caucus backs it. It has a "NAU War Room." It’s the "headquarters of THE national campaign to expose and halt America’s absorption into a ‘North American Union (NAU)’ with Canada and Mexico." It opposes building "a massive, continental ‘NAFTA Superhighway.’ "

It has congressional allies, and on January 2007 Rep. Virgil Goode and six co-sponsors introduced House Concurrent Resolution 40. It expresses "the sense of Congress that the United States should not engage in (building a NAFTA) Superhighway System or enter into a North American Union with Mexico and Canada."

The April summit reaffirmed SPP’s intentions – to create a borderless North America, dissolve national sovereignty, put corporate giants in control, and assure big US ones get most of it. Militarism is part of it. It’s the reason for fortress-North America under US command. The US Northern Command (NORTHCOM) was established in October 2002 to do it. It has air, land and sea responsibility for the continent regardless of Posse Comitatus limitations that no longer apply or sovereign borders easily erased.

Homeland Security (DHS) and its Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) also have a large role. So does the FBI, CIA, all US spy agencies, militarized state and local police, National Guard forces, and paramilitary mercenaries like Blackwater USA. They’re headed anywhere on the continent with license to operate as freely here as in Iraq and New Orleans post-Katrina. They’ll be able to turn hemispheric streets into versions of Baghdad and make them unfit to live on if things come to that.

SPP maintains a web site. It’s "key accomplishments" since August 2007 are updated on it as of April 22, 2008. Its details can be accessed from the following link:

http://www.spp.gov/pdf/key_accomplishments_since_august_2007.pdf

It lists principles agreed to; bilateral deals struck; negotiations concluded; study assessments released; agreements on the "Free Flow of Information;" law enforcement activities; efforts related to intellectual property, border and long-haul trucking enforcement; import licensing procedures; food and product safety issues; energy (with special focus on oil); water as well; infrastructure development; emergency management; and much more. It’s all laid out in deceptively understated tones to hide its continental aim – enhanced corporate exploitation with as little public knowledge as possible.

Militarization will assure it, and consider one development up North. On February 14, 2008, the US and Canada agreed to allow American troops inside Canada. Canadians were told nothing or that the agreement was reached in 2002. Neither was it discussed in Congress or the Canadian House of Commons. It’s for "bilateral integration" of military command structures in areas of immigration, law enforcement, intelligence, or whatever else the Pentagon or Washington wishes. Overall, it’s part of the "war on terror" and militarizing the continent to make it "safer" for business and be prepared for any civilian opposition.

Congress may soon pass SPP, but with no knowledge of its worst provisions kept secret. It’s to assure enough congressional support makes it law. Nonetheless, federal, state and local opposition is building. It ranges from private activism to vocal lawmakers. In 2008, a dozen or more states passed resolutions against SPP. Around 20 others did it in 2007. Congress began debating it last year with opposition raised on various grounds – open borders, unchecked immigration, a NAFTA Superhighway System, and the idea of giving unregulated Mexican trucks free access to US roads and cities.

There’s also talk of replacing three national currencies with an "Amero." Unfortunately, little is heard about trashing the Constitution or giving corporate bosses free reign. There’s even less talk about a militarized continent against dissent. SPP is a "new world order." Companies are plotting to get it. People better hope they don’t. Disruptive opposition might derail them. It’s building but needs more resonance to matter. Time is short and slipping away. These schemers mean business. They want our future. We can’t afford to lose it.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Mondays from 11AM to 1PM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests. All programs are archived for easy listening any time.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9059

Stephen Lendman is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Stephen Lendman

US Funded Mexico Militarization

This week Inside USA travels to Mexico to look at the the drug war going on there, and to examine how the United States is involved. The bodies are piling up – over 1800 killings so far this year alone.

Democracy Now 

July 31, 2008

ANJALI KAMAT: As the WTO talks collapse, we turn now to the country perhaps most profoundly impacted by US trade during the neoliberal era. In the fifteenth year since the North American Free Trade Agreement was signed, Mexico continues to fall short of the lofty gains that backers of neoliberal globalization had promised. Today, polls show that by a two-to-one margin Mexicans believe they’re on the losing end of NAFTA.

The latest US initiative in Mexico is also attracting scrutiny. Last month, the Bush administration and the Democratic-led Congress agreed on Plan Mexico, a $400 million program to fight Mexican drug trafficking. Much like its predecessor, Plan Colombia, the Mexico initiative has been criticized for emphasizing militarization and security rather than addressing social and economic causes. The bulk of the money will go to military contractors and Mexico’s armed forces. The final version of the bill also omits several key provisions that would have linked funding to human rights.

In a few moments, we’ll talk to three guests about Plan Mexico. But first we turn to an excerpt from last week’s episode of Inside USA, an investigative news program airing on the network Al Jazeera English.

      NARRATOR: Culiacan, Mexico. This is a city on the frontline of war, one that is at its heart deeply tied to policies made in Washington. Since Mexican President Felipe Calderon came to power, more than 4,000 have been murdered in drug trafficking-related crimes, many times more than the number of US soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan in the same time period. At stake, control of tens of billions of dollars of cocaine and methamphetamine flowing annually to American drug users. It’s not just the traffickers who are being killed. Dozens of civilians have been caught up in the crossfire, journalists assassinated, and hundreds of Mexican security forces gunned down.

      In this Culiacan cemetery, the family of one policeman, recently killed, bury his body. He’s being laid to rest in a modest grave next to the extravagant mausoleums built for slain drug traffickers.

      COMMANDER MANUEL HERNANDEZ: [translated] It’s always tough when you lose one of your men.

      NARRATOR: For Police Commander Manuel Hernandez, seeing his men fall has become a regular occurrence, and the fear being killed is beginning to take its toll.

      COMMANDER MANUEL HERNANDEZ: [translated] Of course, I’m scared. I am a human being, and I would be scared, or otherwise I would be crazy. But I’m more scared of not doing my duty for Mexico out of fear for my life.

      NARRATOR: His officer’s death is not expected to be the last. Dozens of graves here are being dug to accommodate the growing casualties. The violence in Sinaloa, home to some of the largest drug cartels in Mexico, is taking place on a massive scale. The capital, Culiacan, averages four executions a day.

      We followed local journalists and police on what has become a grisly daily ritual. On the streets, it seems that the huge number of security forces are completely powerless to stem the violence. Bodies are discovered almost on the hour in all parts of the city.

      REPORTER: As night falls on day two of our tour of this region, three more young men have been gunned down here on the streets of Culiacan—bodies seven, eight and nine in less than forty-eight hours.

      NARRATOR: And the violence is terrifying in its brutality. Recently, in the chilling message from the cartels, nine bodies were decapitated, the heads dumped in the center of the city for police to collect. Often in response to the violence, police are accused of spraying quiet streets with bullets with little regard for civilian life.

      CULIACAN RESIDENT: </>[translated] This is the bullet hole from the police that happened on Friday morning.

      NARRATOR: The residents here keep tallies on each day’s escalating body count by reading what’s referred to as “the execution meter” on the front page of one local newspaper.

      Mexican President Felipe Calderon, more than a year-and-a-half ago, declared war on the cartels. 25,000 troops and police flooded into a number of cities. Also wading into the fight: the United States of America. Approximately a billion-and-a-half dollars of direct military aid was pledged by President Bush. Called the Merida Initiative, or Plan Mexico, the move follows a similar blueprint to the widely criticized and ultimately failed Plan Colombia.

      PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: I made it very clear, you know, to the president that I recognize the United States has a responsibility in the fight against drugs.

      NARRATOR: Under the plan, America will provide training programs and military equipment. Undoubtedly, in terms of influence, it will also tie Mexico closer to Washington. In fact, just one day after the plan was signed into law by George Bush, serious questions were raised about exactly what sort of training the US would provide. Shocking videos surfaced showing Mexican police undergoing a torture training session, directed by a contractor believed to be working for a US private security firm. In one video, the contractor drags an officer through his own vomit. In another, a victim receives shots of water up his nose, a common torture technique.

      MERCEDES MURILLO: They were training people to torture. The guards torturing, the police torturing.

      NARRATOR: Mercedes Murillo is one of Mexico’s most vocal human rights activists. She believes corrupt police forces in Mexico are responsible for a number of murders and also involved in the drug trade itself and that US money and training will only make the situation worse.

      MERCEDES MURILLO: In this, we have in the states, some policemen are good. And some, of course, are bad. But the good ones, I’m afraid that these people are going to make all our police bad.

      NARRATOR: Regardless of who is killing who, there is no doubt that one of the biggest problems here is the staggering number of weapons on the streets. High-powered assault rifles and machine guns are easy to come by despite strict gun laws here. On this street, we witnessed the body of one uniformed police officer shot dead on his way to work. The chances are that the bullets that riddled his car were fired from a US gun. According to some sources, 2,000 illegal firearms are brought into Mexico every day from the United States.

      CESAR CAMACHO: [translated] The fact that the US Constitution allows any person to freely buy, without any limitations, high-caliber weapons has made Mexico full of guns that fundamentally originated in the United States. And with their sophistication and firepower, they are much stronger than the military and police forces here.

      NARRATOR: So, in a game of supply and demand, the drugs flow into America, US guns flow into Mexico. It’s a business known by all.

      MERCEDES MURILLO: The same as you go and buy a hamburger, you can go and buy a gun. It’s the same.

      INTERVIEWER: In America.

      MERCEDES MURILLO: In America, all America.

      NARRATOR: One such weapon was traced to this Texas gun shop just across the border from Ciudad Juarez. Kalashnikovs sold here, like this one made in Las Vegas, Nevada, are now easier to buy, after the Bush administration in 2004 failed to renew a ban on assault weapons, and are now pouring into Mexico.

      JOHN HUBERT: As long as the people over there are willing to pay $5,000 for a gun that you can buy for $600 over here, somebody is going to try to sneak one across the border.

      SHERIFF ARVIN WEST: Oh, it’s anywhere you want to cross.

      NARRATOR: The federal government, according to Texas Sheriff Arvin West, has done little to stop the flood of weapons into Mexico.

      SHERIFF ARVIN WEST: We’ve seen as many as thirteen semi trucks going into Mexico, and the federal government, just non-complacent about it, they could care less. It’s simple. I mean, we’ve got ninety miles or a little over ninety miles of border—right at a hundred miles, actually, of border in this county that’s wide open.

      NARRATOR: On the Mexican side of the border, we watched several vehicles roll through with no more than a passing glance from customs officials here.

      Throughout Mexico, American guns continue to kill. Just weeks ago, in the small town of El Pozo, thirteen people were murdered, one of them a fourteen-year-old boy. The evidence of what happened here we found littered across the ground.

      EL POZO RESIDENT: [translated] They’re afraid that people will come and that when they find them, they’ll shoot them.

      NARRATOR: Like refugees in a war zone, many residents are now packing up to leave. They believe the worst is yet to come.

      Critics say that Plan Mexico is following a tried and failed US policy on drugs. As long as Washington continues to focus on cutting the supply to the US rather than treating the drug problem from within, questions must be asked about its complicity in the escalating violence seen across the border. For those on the streets, the war goes on, fueled by America’s guns on both sides.

      MERCEDES MURILLO: So, they’re mixing security with fear. They’re mixing security with politics. And they’re mixing security with lies.

      SHERIFF ARVIN WEST: What Mexico needs to do is enforce the laws that they’ve got, start putting some of these bad guys in jail.

      MERCEDES MURILLO: We have more people dead right now than in Iraq.

      SHERIFF ARVIN WEST: I guarantee our guys would go down there and, for a lack of better words, would kick ass and take names.

      MERCEDES MURILLO: Because it’s the same: it’s a war.

ANJALI KAMAT: An excerpt of the program Inside USA.

We’re joined now by three guests. Avi Lewis is the host of Inside USA, airing weekly on Al Jazeera English. He’s also a filmmaker. Along with Naomi Klein, he made the 2004 documentary The Take about Argentina’s recovered factory movement. Avi Lewis joins us now from Washington, D.C.

Laura Carlsen is also with us. She’s the director of the Mexico City-based Americas Policy Program for the Center for International Policy. She has written extensively on US-Mexico relations and blogs at the website americasmexico.blogspot.com. Laura Carlsen joins us from Portland, Oregon.

And on the line from Mexico, we’re joined by John Gibler. He’s an independent journalist and Global Exchange Human Rights Fellow based in Mexico. His forthcoming book is called Mexico Unconquered: Chronicles of Power and Revolt. John Gibler is speaking to us from Tapachula near Mexico’s southern border with Guatemala.

We welcome you all to Democracy Now!

Avi Lewis, I want to start with you. You just got back from Mexico. Can you talk about the sense that people have in Mexico of American culpability for the human toll of the war on drugs?

AVI LEWIS: Well, I mean, the images are, of course, dramatic and staggering, and the death toll is shocking. But for me, what this story does is it just recasts the whole conversation about the border. In Mexico, people would be very, very grateful to have a kind of discourse about securing the border the way we have here in the United States. There’s a desperate need to secure the border, because American guns are pouring over the border, and there’s a direct human toll.

But it’s also—this is a movie we’ve seen before, and Plan Colombia is in the background of this whole conversation, because under the sort of, you know—under the story of a war on drugs, if you look at the details of Plan Mexico, $400 million in the first year, more than half of it is going to hardware that both—eight Bell helicopters with night vision equipment that track people back and forth across the border as easy as drugs and a huge IT system for the Mexican Migration Institute, which has as its explicit goal to track the movement of Mexican citizens and Central Americans coming through Mexico. So you have this kind of biometric immigration agenda, which is being swept in under cover of a war on drugs rhetoric. And when there’s this much bloodshed in the streets in Mexico, it’s very easy for the blood to hide the political agendas underneath.

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Laura Carlsen, you’re the director of the Americas Policy Program of the Center for International Policy based in Mexico City. You’ve written extensively about Plan Mexico, and you relate its origins back to NAFTA. Could you talk about that?

LAURA CARLSEN: Well, in March of 2005, NAFTA was extended into the Security and Prosperity Partnership, and this was an unprecedented move for a trade agreement to go into the security area, but it’s something that the Bush administration had been wanting to do for a long time. Essentially, the idea was to push the borders out of the United States and create a North American security perimeter that would include Canada and Mexico. In this way, the Bush government, what it sought to do was to apply the radical national security doctrine to Mexican territory as well. This is a big problem for Mexico, because it not only violates national sovereignty, but it also imposes on Mexico the security priorities of the United States government at a time when those are very belligerent and aggressive priorities throughout the world.

In the case of Plan Mexico, it’s a perfect example of the result of those policies. Essentially, it’s very important what Avi says, that it’s not just a counter-narcotics program, it’s a regional cooperation security initiative that includes counter-narcotics, counterterrorism and border security. So it lumps these together and basically gets a greater military presence for the United States within Mexico, not actual troops, but in terms of its intervention in the Mexican national security apparatus, and imposes the agenda of the United States government on that country.

AVI LEWIS: [inaudible] Sorry, just to jump in. There’s a fellow named Thomas Shannon, who’s a senior State Department official—

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Avi Lewis.

AVI LEWIS: A senior State Department official named Thomas Shannon, who’s deeply involved in the Security and Prosperity Partnership, I think kind of let the cat out of the bag in a speech this past spring, when he was talking about the SPP and North America as a shared economic space, which is the current lingo for this worldview. And he said explicitly, “What we’re doing, in some way, in a certain respect, is armoring NAFTA.” And I think when you look at the intersection of the economic agenda, the cover of the war on drugs, the immigration and border hysteria underneath it, Plan Mexico represents exactly that, the armoring of NAFTA. And, of course, it’s not talked about in those ways when it’s approved by Congress, when Democrats and Republicans reach across the aisle to support it.

ANJALI KAMAT: Laura Carlsen, I—

LAURA CARLSEN: I think that’s correct.

ANJALI KAMAT: Go ahead.

LAURA CARLSEN: I was going to say that it’s no coincidence that this is coming up right at the time in which Mexico’s involved in another very important debate, which relates to the privatization of the oil company. By having a militarized society, you are assuring a certain amount of social control. We know in Mexico that there will be mass opposition to the privatization of oil. And yet, access to Mexico’s oil resources have been another major objective of the SPP, the Security and Prosperity Partnership under NAFTA. So, by having the army in the streets, you’re in a position to quell social uprisings that may be coming up that have to do with control over natural resources, as well.

ANJALI KAMAT: Laura Carlsen, I wanted to ask you to break down Plan Mexico for us. Where is the money going? What is it going into? And what are these human rights conditions that were supposed to be in it? How effective would they have been?

LAURA CARLSEN: There is $116 million going directly to the army in what they call military-to-military support. There’s another major chunk—and some of these figures, we’ll have to wait until the Secretary of State submits its spending report to Congress, because they were changed in the long process of getting it approved within Congress—but the other huge chunk goes to the security forces, to the police, on all levels within Mexico.

There’s another part called institution building. And there are some groups that have stated that this is supposedly the good part of the bill, because it has to do with human rights training and development of the judicial systems, both of which are big needs within Mexico. However, there are a lot of suspicions among the Mexican people that this will not be an effective part of the package, because, first of all, the United States government has little moral authority to carry out human rights training, with Abu Ghraib, with the situation in Guantanamo, as well as a government that formally justifies torture. There’s a lot of suspicion about how it’s going to come into Mexico and do that kind of training. Another aspect is that much of the money will go to private security firms. We recently had the case of the torture tapes, that were mentioned, where a private security firm that has an office in the United States was involved in pain Mexican police forces precisely in torture.

The conditions that were placed originally on this packet were rejected by the Mexican government as a violation of national sovereignty. They included a vetting of police forces and the approval by the State Department that Mexico was indeed following its laws. They were, in the end, weakened after the Mexican government rejected them. And the final conditions have basically no impact whatsoever on the way that this money is supplied. The State Department is allowed to withhold up to 15 percent, which is somewhat absurd, if it’s found that Mexico is not applying its laws in regard to how this money should be spent and how security forces are operating. There’s a stricture that they must maintain the prohibition on torture as a way of getting testimony. I just recently returned from a human rights delegation, in which we were in Chiapas, Oaxaca and Atenco, and we saw numerous cases where torture is routinely used to get confessions. And as long as it can be done with impunity, which it can be, it will be continued to be used.

So I don’t think these human rights conditions will have any impact whatsoever. And the overall impact of the plan will be negative, in militarizing the society, as well as empowering military and police forces who are the worst violators of human rights within the country.

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: We have to take a break for sixty seconds. When we come back, we’ll continue this discussion. We’re talking with Laura Carlsen. She’s the director of the Mexico City-based Americas Policy Program of the Center for International Policy. Avi Lewis is in Washington, D.C. He’s the host of Inside USA on Al Jazeera English. And when we come back, we’ll also bring in John Gibler, on the phone from Mexico. Stay with us.

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: We’re talking about Plan Mexico. We want to turn now to John Gibler. He joins us on the line from Mexico. He’s an independent journalist and Global Exchange Human Rights Fellow based in Mexico. His forthcoming book is Mexico Unconquered: Chronicles of Power and Revolt. John Gibler, your most recent article is titled “Mexico’s Ghost Towns: The Other Side of the Immigration Debate.” Can you talk about it, please?

JOHN GIBLER: Good morning. Yes, thank you. I think it’s essential to understand the link between the so-called free trade regime embodied in NAFTA and migration. NAFTA’s economically structuring of Mexico’s economy has forced millions of small farmers from their countryside, and in so doing, shattered local food production and shattered local economies. That’s forcing people to move across the border, looking for work.

Analysts that I interviewed at the University of Zacatecas said to me, Mexico, under this new economic regime, is exporting the factory of migrants. Also, they said Mexico is mortgaging its future with remittances, the money that migrants send back. And what, they argue, is taking place is that the United States, through NAFTA, is holding Mexico at bay as a kind of reserve army of workers for its own industrial restructuring, thus all the benefits and the luxuries absent in Mexico’s own countryside are being built and constructed and elaborated inside the United States by migrant labor, largely Mexican.

ANJALI KAMAT: Laura Carlsen, I wanted to ask you a question. Can you talk about the impact of Plan Mexico on social movements in Mexico?

LAURA CARLSEN: Yes, Well, already with the Mexican army in the streets, which is something that began as soon as Felipe Calderon became president and will be reinforced through Plan Mexico, what we’re seeing is attacks, basically, on social movements. Within Chiapas, this has been particularly seen in the Zapatista autonomous communities, where the army has gone in, often with the pretense of looking for drug production, which they’ve not found, but they’ve used it to harass those communities, in which major battles over natural resources and the right to autonomy have been taking place. So, indigenous peoples are one group that is at risk.

Another—and this is cases that we’ve seen in the northern state of Chihuahua—has to do with opposition leaders, in general. When Operation Chihuahua started, which is one of the major operations of the drug war, the army came in, and they immediately rounded up several social leaders that had been—had warrants out for their arrest since 2003 for blocking an international bridge in a protest over NAFTA. They were just routinely rounded up as part of these drug war operations. This is another group that we’re going to be looking very carefully at, because we believe that this will be happening in a widespread way throughout the country as the drug war is expanded.

Other groups that are at risk include women, where the military has been responsible for a number of rapes and sexual abuse against women in different parts of the country, and also the opposition leaders and indigenous people and migrants, that were mentioned before, who have become a criminal group under this particular model of a drug war and a fight against organized crime.

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Well, Laura Carlsen, I want to thank you very much for being with us. Laura Carlsen is director of the Mexico City-based Americas Policy Program of the Center for International Policy. Her report, “A Primer on Plan Mexico,” we’ll link to that on our website at democracynow.org. And John Gibler, joining us on the line from Mexico, he’s an independent journalist and Global Exchange Human Rights Fellow based in Mexico. His forthcoming book is Mexico Unconquered: Chronicles of Power and Revolt. Avi Lewis, I want you to stay with us.

Obama’s Address: A World That Speaks As One

Obama’s Address: A World That Speaks As One
07-24-2008 Washington Post

Thank you to the citizens of Berlin and to the people of Germany. Let me thank Chancellor Merkel and Foreign Minister Steinmeier for welcoming me earlier today. Thank you Mayor Wowereit, the Berlin Senate, the police, and most of all thank you for this welcome.
I come to Berlin as so many of my countrymen have come before. Tonight, I speak to you not as a candidate for President, but as a citizen – a proud citizen of the United States, and a fellow citizen of the world.

I know that I don’t look like the Americans who’ve previously spoken in this great city. The journey that led me here is improbable. My mother was born in the heartland of America, but my father grew up herding goats in Kenya. His father – my grandfather – was a cook, a domestic servant to the British.

At the height of the Cold War, my father decided, like so many others in the forgotten corners of the world, that his yearning – his dream – required the freedom and opportunity promised by the West. And so he wrote letter after letter to universities all across America until somebody, somewhere answered his prayer for a better life.

That is why I’m here. And you are here because you too know that yearning. This city, of all cities, knows the dream of freedom. And you know that the only reason we stand here tonight is because men and women from both of our nations came together to work, and struggle, and sacrifice for that better life.

Ours is a partnership that truly began sixty years ago this summer, on the day when the first American plane touched down at Templehof.

On that day, much of this continent still lay in ruin. The rubble of this city had yet to be built into a wall. The Soviet shadow had swept across Eastern Europe, while in the West, America, Britain, and France took stock of their losses, and pondered how the world might be remade.
This is where the two sides met. And on the twenty-fourth of June, 1948, the Communists chose to blockade the western part of the city. They cut off food and supplies to more than two million Germans in an effort to extinguish the last flame of freedom in Berlin.

The size of our forces was no match for the much larger Soviet Army. And yet retreat would have allowed Communism to march across Europe. Where the last war had ended, another World War could have easily begun. All that stood in the way was Berlin.

And that’s when the airlift began – when the largest and most unlikely rescue in history brought food and hope to the people of this city.

The odds were stacked against success. In the winter, a heavy fog filled the sky above, and many planes were forced to turn back without dropping off the needed supplies. The streets where we stand were filled with hungry families who had no comfort from the cold.

But in the darkest hours, the people of Berlin kept the flame of hope burning. The people of Berlin refused to give up. And on one fall day, hundreds of thousands of Berliners came here, to the Tiergarten, and heard the city’s mayor implore the world not to give up on freedom. "There is only one possibility," he said. "For us to stand together united until this battle is won…The people of Berlin have spoken. We have done our duty, and we will keep on doing our duty. People of the world: now do your duty…People of the world, look at Berlin!"
People of the world – look at Berlin!

Look at Berlin, where Germans and Americans learned to work together and trust each other less than three years after facing each other on the field of battle.

Look at Berlin, where the determination of a people met the generosity of the Marshall Plan and created a German miracle; where a victory over tyranny gave rise to NATO, the greatest alliance ever formed to defend our common security.

Look at Berlin, where the bullet holes in the buildings and the somber stones and pillars near the Brandenburg Gate insist that we never forget our common humanity.

People of the world – look at Berlin, where a wall came down, a continent came together, and history proved that there is no challenge too great for a world that stands as one.

Sixty years after the airlift, we are called upon again. History has led us to a new crossroad, with new promise and new peril. When you, the German people, tore down that wall – a wall that divided East and West; freedom and tyranny; fear and hope – walls came tumbling down around the world. From Kiev to Cape Town, prison camps were closed, and the doors of democracy were opened. Markets opened too, and the spread of information and technology reduced barriers to opportunity and prosperity. While the 20th century taught us that we share a common destiny, the 21st has revealed a world more intertwined than at any time in human history.

The fall of the Berlin Wall brought new hope. But that very closeness has given rise to new dangers – dangers that cannot be contained within the borders of a country or by the distance of an ocean.

The terrorists of September 11th plotted in Hamburg and trained in Kandahar and Karachi before killing thousands from all over the globe on American soil.

As we speak, cars in Boston and factories in Beijing are melting the ice caps in the Arctic, shrinking coastlines in the Atlantic, and bringing drought to farms from Kansas to Kenya.
Poorly secured nuclear material in the former Soviet Union, or secrets from a scientist in Pakistan could help build a bomb that detonates in Paris. The poppies in Afghanistan become the heroin in Berlin. The poverty and violence in Somalia breeds the terror of tomorrow. The genocide in Darfur shames the conscience of us all.

In this new world, such dangerous currents have swept along faster than our efforts to contain them. That is why we cannot afford to be divided. No one nation, no matter how large or powerful, can defeat such challenges alone. None of us can deny these threats, or escape responsibility in meeting them. Yet, in the absence of Soviet tanks and a terrible wall, it has become easy to forget this truth. And if we’re honest with each other, we know that sometimes, on both sides of the Atlantic, we have drifted apart, and forgotten our shared destiny.

In Europe, the view that America is part of what has gone wrong in our world, rather than a force to help make it right, has become all too common. In America, there are voices that deride and deny the importance of Europe’s role in our security and our future. Both views miss the truth – that Europeans today are bearing new burdens and taking more responsibility in critical parts of the world; and that just as American bases built in the last century still help to defend the security of this continent, so does our country still sacrifice greatly for freedom around the globe.

Yes, there have been differences between America and Europe. No doubt, there will be differences in the future. But the burdens of global citizenship continue to bind us together. A change of leadership in Washington will not lift this burden. In this new century, Americans and Europeans alike will be required to do more – not less. Partnership and cooperation among nations is not a choice; it is the one way, the only way, to protect our common security and advance our common humanity.

That is why the greatest danger of all is to allow new walls to divide us from one another.
The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand. The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down.

We know they have fallen before. After centuries of strife, the people of Europe have formed a Union of promise and prosperity. Here, at the base of a column built to mark victory in war, we meet in the center of a Europe at peace. Not only have walls come down in Berlin, but they have come down in Belfast, where Protestant and Catholic found a way to live together; in the Balkans, where our Atlantic alliance ended wars and brought savage war criminals to justice; and in South Africa, where the struggle of a courageous people defeated apartheid.

So history reminds us that walls can be torn down. But the task is never easy. True partnership and true progress requires constant work and sustained sacrifice. They require sharing the burdens of development and diplomacy; of progress and peace. They require allies who will listen to each other, learn from each other and, most of all, trust each other.

That is why America cannot turn inward. That is why Europe cannot turn inward. America has no better partner than Europe. Now is the time to build new bridges across the globe as strong as the one that bound us across the Atlantic. Now is the time to join together, through constant cooperation, strong institutions, shared sacrifice, and a global commitment to progress, to meet the challenges of the 21st century. It was this spirit that led airlift planes to appear in the sky above our heads, and people to assemble where we stand today. And this is the moment when our nations – and all nations – must summon that spirit anew.
This is the moment when we must defeat terror and dry up the well of extremism that supports it. This threat is real and we cannot shrink from our responsibility to combat it. If we could create NATO to face down the Soviet Union, we can join in a new and global partnership to dismantle the networks that have struck in Madrid and Amman; in London and Bali; in Washington and New York. If we could win a battle of ideas against the communists, we can stand with the vast majority of Muslims who reject the extremism that leads to hate instead of hope.

This is the moment when we must renew our resolve to rout the terrorists who threaten our security in Afghanistan, and the traffickers who sell drugs on your streets. No one welcomes war. I recognize the enormous difficulties in Afghanistan. But my country and yours have a stake in seeing that NATO’s first mission beyond Europe’s borders is a success. For the people of Afghanistan, and for our shared security, the work must be done. America cannot do this alone. The Afghan people need our troops and your troops; our support and your support to defeat the Taliban and al Qaeda, to develop their economy, and to help them rebuild their nation. We have too much at stake to turn back now.

This is the moment when we must renew the goal of a world without nuclear weapons. The two superpowers that faced each other across the wall of this city came too close too often to destroying all we have built and all that we love. With that wall gone, we need not stand idly by and watch the further spread of the deadly atom. It is time to secure all loose nuclear materials; to stop the spread of nuclear weapons; and to reduce the arsenals from another era. This is the moment to begin the work of seeking the peace of a world without nuclear weapons.

This is the moment when every nation in Europe must have the chance to choose its own tomorrow free from the shadows of yesterday. In this century, we need a strong European Union that deepens the security and prosperity of this continent, while extending a hand abroad. In this century – in this city of all cities – we must reject the Cold War mind-set of the past, and resolve to work with Russia when we can, to stand up for our values when we must, and to seek a partnership that extends across this entire continent.

This is the moment when we must build on the wealth that open markets have created, and share its benefits more equitably. Trade has been a cornerstone of our growth and global development. But we will not be able to sustain this growth if it favors the few, and not the many. Together, we must forge trade that truly rewards the work that creates wealth, with meaningful protections for our people and our planet. This is the moment for trade that is free and fair for all.

This is the moment we must help answer the call for a new dawn in the Middle East. My country must stand with yours and with Europe in sending a direct message to Iran that it must abandon its nuclear ambitions. We must support the Lebanese who have marched and bled for democracy, and the Israelis and Palestinians who seek a secure and lasting peace. And despite past differences, this is the moment when the world should support the millions of Iraqis who seek to rebuild their lives, even as we pass responsibility to the Iraqi government and finally bring this war to a close.

This is the moment when we must come together to save this planet. Let us resolve that we will not leave our children a world where the oceans rise and famine spreads and terrible storms devastate our lands. Let us resolve that all nations – including my own – will act with the same seriousness of purpose as has your nation, and reduce the carbon we send into our atmosphere. This is the moment to give our children back their future. This is the moment to stand as one.

And this is the moment when we must give hope to those left behind in a globalized world. We must remember that the Cold War born in this city was not a battle for land or treasure. Sixty years ago, the planes that flew over Berlin did not drop bombs; instead they delivered food, and coal, and candy to grateful children. And in that show of solidarity, those pilots won more than a military victory. They won hearts and minds; love and loyalty and trust – not just from the people in this city, but from all those who heard the story of what they did here.

Now the world will watch and remember what we do here – what we do with this moment. Will we extend our hand to the people in the forgotten corners of this world who yearn for lives marked by dignity and opportunity; by security and justice? Will we lift the child in Bangladesh from poverty, shelter the refugee in Chad, and banish the scourge of AIDS in our time?

Will we stand for the human rights of the dissident in Burma, the blogger in Iran, or the voter in Zimbabwe? Will we give meaning to the words "never again" in Darfur?

Will we acknowledge that there is no more powerful example than the one each of our nations projects to the world? Will we reject torture and stand for the rule of law? Will we welcome immigrants from different lands, and shun discrimination against those who don’t look like us or worship like we do, and keep the promise of equality and opportunity for all of our people?
People of Berlin – people of the world – this is our moment. This is our time.

I know my country has not perfected itself. At times, we’ve struggled to keep the promise of liberty and equality for all of our people. We’ve made our share of mistakes, and there are times when our actions around the world have not lived up to our best intentions.

But I also know how much I love America. I know that for more than two centuries, we have strived – at great cost and great sacrifice – to form a more perfect union; to seek, with other nations, a more hopeful world. Our allegiance has never been to any particular tribe or kingdom – indeed, every language is spoken in our country; every culture has left its imprint on ours; every point of view is expressed in our public squares. What has always united us – what has always driven our people; what drew my father to America’s shores – is a set of ideals that speak to aspirations shared by all people: that we can live free from fear and free from want; that we can speak our minds and assemble with whomever we choose and worship as we please.

These are the aspirations that joined the fates of all nations in this city. These aspirations are bigger than anything that drives us apart. It is because of these aspirations that the airlift began. It is because of these aspirations that all free people – everywhere – became citizens of Berlin. It is in pursuit of these aspirations that a new generation – our generation – must make our mark on the world.

People of Berlin – and people of the world – the scale of our challenge is great. The road ahead will be long. But I come before you to say that we are heirs to a struggle for freedom. We are a people of improbable hope. With an eye toward the future, with resolve in our hearts, let us remember this history, and answer our destiny, and remake the world once again.

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