CNN: U.S.-MEXICO 'WAR ON DRUGS' IS A FAILURE

Henk Ruyssenaars - Fwds + links

Quote by author Charles Bowden, Special to CNN: "If our drug policy were a ship, it would be called the Titanic."

April 3, 2010 - When I in the summer of 1971 was declared 'persona non grata' - as an independent foreign correspondent in Pnom Penh, Cambodja, where I joined an american Congress delegation investigating US war crimes in the Plane of Jars - I had to fly on the next plane out. That happened to be the CIA's 'Air America' to Saigon. And I was not at all surprised, that the plane had a huge cargo of weapons and drugs. - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/yhld6uf

And in his article Charles Bowden again puts his finger right on the spot, even if he avoids a bit to talk about the financiers. Think logical: who has the money to do all this? Who profits? It is the criminal cartel of financiers that keep on wrecking the world. So they themselves get the power and profits. People never count! Never! Only power & profit does. This is the criminal cartel: Google search. - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/y9dftzz

Below is a lot of what was written, and is written about the malignant banksters criminal cartel and their drug trade. A dirty business which has been going on for ages. As also I wrote many times earlier about the financing of the global drug trade. Excerpt from a 2008 article: "What I strongly suggest is an explanation why this year again the headlines will be "Afghanistan Opium Crop Sets Record." And why an opium destroying fungus - called 'Lotus Eater' - is not allowed to be used by the CIA-criminals and their managers.

How is this possible in countries supposed to be fully under control by the US. And the cartel's 'NATO Coalition of the Killing'? With a US air force and drones overlooking the whole opium crop in - what they call - their 'war theater'? So the competition can be killed (terrorists!) and is kept out of the very profitable business too? While NATO troops and other mercenaries keep the roads nice and open, which they call 'restructuring'.

"And just who really has the capability to refine, transport and distribute this drug? The CIA and associates are the only ones with that kind of capability and junkies pose no threat to the powers that be. Ever hear of the Boxer Rebellion in China when the people tried to stop the Brits from opiating their people to pacify them?

Same old story. Wolves in sheep's clothing would be an appropriate term, though wolves are hardly bad creatures and much more noble and honest than those who use hard drugs to finance their dirty wars and obsession for power. Of course keeping it illegal by-passes any oversight and garners huge profits as it corrupts everything around it." - rainbowhawkmx in a comment.

But, according to the - now by the murderous military machine dominated CIA: "Any disruption of the drug trade has enormous implications for Afghanistan's economic and political stability. Although its relative strength in the overall economy has diminished as other sectors have expanded in recent years, narcotics is a $2.6 billion-a-year industry that this year provided more than a third of the country's gross domestic product.

CIA Director Michael V. Hayden told Congress: "Right now the issue is stability. . . . Going in there in itself and attacking the drug trade actually feeds the instability that you want to overcome."

And Lt. Gen. Michael D. Maples, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency agreed: "There's a real conflict, I think."

YOU KNOW WHAT THE CONFLICT IS? BILLIONS IN DRUG TRADE PROFITS!

That's why an opium destroying fungus called 'Lotus Eater' is not allowed to be used by the CIA and their managers. The opium/heroine trade is just too profitable. The Afghan government has prohibited the aerial herbicide spraying used by the mostly fake U.S. anti-narcotic programs in Mexico and the rest of Latin America. Instead, opium poppy plants in Afghanistan are destroyed by tractors dragging heavy bars. But only 38,500 of nearly 430,000 acres under cultivation were eradicated this year.'' - You can find the rest - also concerning the 'Lotus Eater' - here at Url.: http://disc.yourwebapps.com/discussion.cgi?disc=234999;article=2084;

Excerpt: "While the U.S. federal government has been waging a phony and hypocritical "war on drugs" as an easy way to increase repression in inner cities and confiscate millions of dollars in private assets through unconstitutional forfeiture laws in order to fund its burgeoning police state, it has also been an active participant in the illegal drug trade, using public resources to bring heroin and cocaine into American inner cities at least since the 1960's."

Sound like paranoia? In fact, this information has been confirmed by scholars and researchers throughout the past three decades. Any honest scholar that has researched the issue will tell you that this is the truth, but you will find very little information about it in the mainstream mass media. The most recent scandal involved the Central Intelligence Agency selling crack cocaine in South Central Los Angeles in order to fund the U.S. covert war against the people of Nicaragua.

While the CIA's heavy involvement in the drug trade, and especially the crack cocaine trade, has been well documented by scholars such as Dr. Peter Dale Scott at least since the Iran-Contra hearings in the 1980s, the mass media - like CNN and the Bowden article - are only now beginning to take notice. And even when they do take notice, most of the sheep-like journalists and anchorpeople continue to parrot the absurd government line in contradiction to the blatant facts, which are available to anyone who reads beyond the corporate summaries of government press releases.

On NPR, for example, a reporter commented that since the story wasn't picked up by the New York Times, it must be false. Another reporter on FOX News said "there has been no direct evidence, repeat, no direct evidence, linking the CIA to the crack trade in South Central."

These people are either complete idiots or just flat out liars. The evidence is overwhelming and will convince anyone other than an utter fool. The facts have finally hit the mainstream media only due to pressure from concerned citizens and reporters they could no longer afford to ignore. This link continues to be updated as the story unfolds.

Write your Congresspersons today and demand a full Congressional investigation! Also contact your mainstream news media and ask them why they continue to whitewash the evidence of U.S. government hypocrisy with regard to the drug trade!

Thanks to some real investigative reporting by [HR: the later on 'suicided'?] Gary Webb of the San Jose Mercury News [which 'dropped' Webb! Shame on them!] combined with public pressure by residents of South Central Los Angeles, this story is finally reaching the mainstream news media. [HR: and was killed/spiked very fast!]

If public pressure continues, U.S. government officials may finally be called upon to answer for their actions. One can only hope that the American public will hold the true murderers and drug dealers responsible rather thanletting the story blow over with a few slaps on the wrist the way we did with the Iran-Contra revelations.

This page is one attempt to gather and distribute the evidence so that people can make informed decisions and begin the long process of calling our government to responsibility." - [end excerpt] - And there are many more connections, proving that this is the way it is. - Url.: http://www.csun.edu/~hfspc002/news/cia.drug.html

Or have a look at this Google search: Web Results for "The U.S. Government Is the Biggest Drug Dealer in the World" - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/yhm2ltb

However: this is the story it's all about at CNN:

U.S.-MEXICO 'WAR ON DRUGS' A FAILURE

By Charles Bowden, Special to CNN

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Charles Bowden: 5,000 killed in Juarez in 27 months, one of most violent cities on Earth

• Bowden: Innocents die in crossfire among cartels, army, police

• He says drug trade is a source of money for the Mexican economy

• Bowden: U.S. must face NAFTA's failures and the lethal results of "war on drugs"

Editor's note: Charles Bowden is the author of 11 books, including "Down by the River: Drugs, Money, Murder and Family"; "Juárez: The Laboratory of our Future"; "Some of the Dead Are Still Breathing" and his latest, "Murder City," about Ciudad Juarez. He is a contributing editor of Esquire and writes for newspapers and magazines such as Harper's and The New York Times Book Review.

Tucson, Arizona (CNN) - Last week during the day, some kids in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, were playing soccer in a park when a car slowed down, guys got out and executed a 13-year-old boy. And then they drove away, unmolested in a city with 11,000 army and police officers.

The Mexican government repeatedly states that 90 percent of the deaths in the current drug war are of people who are dirty; that is, criminals involved in the drug business. The killings of reporters and of innocent women, men and children continually belie that statement.

The child was not a cartel member in disguise. Nor were the 15 high school kids killed at a party in a small house in a poor barrio. Their parents had made them hold the celebration of a sports victory at home because it was too dangerous to be out in the city.

I went to Juarez in June of 1995 and never seem to escape the pull of the place. The city then was controlled by Amado Carrillo Fuentes, then the head of the Juarez cartel. Drug Enforcement Agency intelligence told me he was raking in $250 million a week.

American factories were erupting out of the ground in the wake of the passage of NAFTA. [HR: Who has the money? Who profits? The criminal cartel!]

Huge districts of shacks made out of stolen pallets and cardboard boxes were growing faster than the city could map. These shacks were filled with people working full time in those American-owned factories. Murders ran around 250 a year and sometimes the cartel left bodies on the street wrapped in yellow ribbon. Carrillo ran the city and yet his name never appeared in the newspapers nor was mentioned on radio and television.

I THOUGHT I'D STUMBLED INTO HELL

Now the city is dying. About 5,000 people have been slaughtered in Ciudad Juarez in 27 months. It is a destroyed city where 25 percent of the houses are abandoned and 40 percent of the businesses have closed. There were 2,600 murders last year and killings are going on at a faster clip this year. At night, no one is on the streets.

I realize that I was a fool in 1995. I had not stumbled into hell. That was the golden age.

But one constant remains: No matter how many die in Juarez, no matter how low the pay in the American factories, the U.S. government insists the War on Drugs is being won and that NAFTA is a big success.

The Mexican War on Drugs is not lost: it never seriously began. The drug industry is an essential prop under a faltering Mexican economy and has been so for more than 20 years, since the peso crisis of the early 1980s. The money flows into the hands of countless government officials, into the banking industry and into many investments in Mexico.

More people die each day as the government of President Felipe Calderon uses the Mexican army and the federal police to try to get the illegal drug industry under control. Calderon was elected by a razor-thin margin and followed the custom of Mexican presidents by immediately making a show of force. But he badly underestimated the power of the drug industry.

The profits are estimated by many analysts to be between $30 billion and $50 billion a year, although it's notoriously difficult to track. But it is not a piddling sum in a country where oil is the official highest earner of foreign currency and supplies 40 percent of the federal budget. But the oil is running out. Calderon has publicly stated that the oil fields will be gone in 10 years or less.

The next big earner is human flesh, the millions of Mexicans who have fled the economic doom of their nation and send more than $20 billion a year home from the United States. But the recession and job losses in the U.S. have cut into that source.

Tourism ranks third in legitimate sources of money for Mexico, but in a nation where heads keep getting lopped off, tourism isn't thriving.

The illegal drug industry in Mexico employs hundreds of thousands of people. No one knows the payroll, but certainly it includes many people in the army, the 3,500 separate police forces and the government from top to bottom.

IT'S DIFFICULT TO MAKE A LIVING WAGE LEGITIMATELY HERE

The pay varies, but in Ciudad Juarez, one of the most violent cities on Earth, the starting salary in the 400 foreign-owned factories, mainly American, is about 40 bucks a week.

There are 500 to 900 street gangs. No one can live on the pay offered by these factories. In a country with 50 percent of the population living in poverty, the turnover in these plants runs from 100 to 200 percent a year. No one can live long in a gang - but for a while, a kid can live well and feel that his life is a dream of money and power.

The U.S. approach to the killings in Mexico never looks at an economic reason, just as the consequences of our free trade treaty (NAFTA) are never brought up.

[HR: Google search Web Results 1 - 10 of about 2,490,000 for NAFTA +failures.] - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/yfzthe9

The effects wrought by NAFTA launched one of the largest human migrations in the world as poor Mexicans fled collapsing industry and agriculture. Border Patrol statistics show that the number of Mexicans entering the U.S. illegally skyrocketed within two years of the passage of NAFTA.

We also never question our four-decades-old War on Drugs, which has produced cheaper drugs of higher quality at lower prices in thousands of U.S. cities and towns. It has helped create one of the largest prison populations in the world. If our drug policy were a ship, it would be called the Titanic."

The drug dealers cartel: "USS Titanic stays the course!" - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/y8w8jkf

Charles Bowden again: "Anyone who questions the propaganda of the U.S. government on the violence in Mexico, on our War on Drugs or on our free trade agreement is told to come up with a solution, some silver bullet that instantly slays the dragon. [HR: The 'Lotus Eater' for instance.*] But our policies over the decades have created a disaster, and it will take years to reverse the damage these acts of government have inflicted.

The time to start is now. Let's address the true and lethal nature of Mexico's war on drugs - one we are in part bankrolling under the Merida Initiative to the tune of half a billion dollars per year, often tossed into the murderous hands of many in the Mexican army.

We need to have a public discussion of the obvious: Legalize drugs or keep caging Americans for taking drugs - unless of course they are booze, tobacco or happy pills from the doctor - and keep financing the murders of Mexicans.

The first thing to do if we want to come clean about the slaughter in Mexico is start smelling the coffee. We share a 1,900-mile border. We share a history and people. At least 10 percent of the Mexican people now live in the United States as economic or political fugitives.

Recently, the secretaries of State, Homeland Security and Defense flew to Mexico City and promised the Mexican government we would continue exactly the same polices as in the past. I have been told I should be reasonable. I am. And I expect the same of my government. Building prisons and lending support to a murderous war on drugs must stop, and digging deep into the economics and politics behind the hellish state of affairs must begin.

It's a testament to the Mexican people that no matter how hard life is in Juarez, they seem to endure, raise families, smile and try to create a better future. As a Mexican friend told me, "I love Juarez, it is such a needy city."

It is poor and dangerous, a tapestry of one-story buildings. But once you know Juarez it haunts you no matter how you try to flee.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Charles Bowden.

Cable News Network (CNN) You can find this article at Url.:
http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/03/31/bowden.ciudad.juarez.cartels

And Charles Bowden is right, although careful concerning the criminal cartel which profits. And, as David Rockefeller said: "Competition is sin!". In short: the errand boys, the armed 'gofers' from the CIA etc. do the dirty work for the world's biggest drug dealers, the banking cartel and its collaborators. - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/p93vvt

And if you want to know where the profits are divided, see how Rothschild's world usury empire rules the global control of valuables like gold, food, transport [fuel] and fake money etc. - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/y9cpbgw

THE CRIMINAL CARTEL HAS BOTH FINANCIAL AND NUCLEAR POWER

Globally seen now, the criminal BIS banking cartel has both financial and nuclear power. People should have been informed by the compliant media, so they understood what J. Robert Oppenheimer was talking about, when he saw what nuclear power meant. The ''Manhattan project'' cost an estimated two billion [illegally extorted] tax dollars, and the first successful test of the atomic bomb occurred at the Trinity site, two hundred miles south of Los Alamos at 5:29:45 a.m. on July 16, 1945. Oppenheimer was beside himself at the spectacle.

He shrieked, "I am become Death, the Destroyer of worlds."

Mullins: Indeed, this seemed to be the ultimate goal of the Manhattan Project, to destroy the world. Oppenheimer's exultation came from his realization that now his people had attained the ultimate power, through which they could implement their five-thousand-year desire to rule the entire world." - end quote] - The rest by the late and very much missed Eustace Mullins is here at Url.: http://www.whale.to/b/mullins8.html

'War,' as Gen. Butler said: 'is a racket.' - Url.: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4377.htm

And it most certainly is the global criminal cartel's racket. That's why in this case the criminals concentrate on the very profitable drugs business.

All for their own hegemonic power and profit!

And human beings, like in Juarez?

People never count!

Never!

HR