----- Original Message ----- From: David B. Briones To: narcon...@yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, December 11, 2008 9:25 AM Subject: [narconews] Bricker: Why Plan Mexico will Crash and Burn
December 11, 2008 Please Distribute Widely Dear Colleague, Narco News continues to provide our readers with coverage of Plan Mexico, or the Merida Initiative as it is formally known. Now, Kristin Bricker brings us an extensive review demonstrating how and why Plan Mexico will fail at its goals of reducing crime and violence, while doing even more damage in the process to human rights and the quality of peoples’ lives. Bricker vets the current state of the “War on Drugs” and how it has worsened the consequences of drug policy inside the United States while increasing government and police corruption in Mexico – and violent harm to its citizens - to a new high. She narrows down to five the most likely reasons that Plan Mexico is doomed to fail - all of which involve corruption in law enforcement agencies (and on both sides of the border) – and reviews the major recent events and cases that the current drug war model has exacerbated South of the Border. Bricker writes: “…Plan Mexico, officially known as the Merida Initiative, has a number of striking similarities to Plan Colombia. So far, the US has sunk nearly $5 billion in US personnel, armament, aid, pesticides, and training to Colombia’s military and police in order to continue the drug war in that country. The results: Plan Colombia has exacerbated violence in the region, has been implicated in massacres of indigenous communities in resistance, and has failed to meet its own benchmarks. “…Every time the government has found networks of informants in its agencies and has subsequently purged the corrupt agents, more step up to take their place. While ten government agents on the cartel payrolls were caught in 2001, Operation Clean-up has swept up at least thirty-five so far…and the arrests are still coming. These networks of corruption stretch across government agencies and seem to have better inter-agency coordination and communication than the agencies themselves. They are sophisticated, well-organized, involve some of the highest-ranking government officials, and—most importantly—are easily replaceable.” Read all of Bricker’s report, along with other new from Latin America, online at Narco News: http://www.narconews.com >From somewhere in a country called América, David B. Briones Webmaster The Narco News Bulletin http://www.narconews.com webmas...@narconews.com Narco News is supported by: The Fund for Authentic Journalism P.O. Box 241 Natick, MA 01760 http://www.authenticjournalism.org The Fund receives online donations at this web page: http://www.authenticjournalism.org Apply for your co-publisher's account, here: http://www.narconews.com/copublisher/application.php Subscribe for free alerts of new reports: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/narconews Suscribete gratis para alertas de nuevos reportajes en espanol: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/narconewsandes Inscreva-se para alertas gratuitos de reportagens do ultimo minuto em portugues brasileiro: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/narconewsbrasil
