US lawmakers try to save drug plan

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Reuters

US lawmakers try to save drug plan
Jun 9, 2008 9:29 AM

US lawmakers offered to ease conditions tied to a $1.4 billion drug-fighting plan for Mexico and Central America after the Mexican government called it a threat to sovereignty.

Mexico has rejected the so-called Merida Initiative proposed by President George Bush over demands from the U.S. Congress to monitor how and where the aid - which includes helicopters and encrypted communication devices - is used.

US lawmakers also want to include human rights oversight in the three-year package, which Mexico says is unacceptable. Mexico is also upset by plans to reduce the dollar amount of aid from the original proposal.

But at a meeting of US and Mexican lawmakers in the northern Mexican city of Monterrey on Sunday, both sides agreed to try to save the drug plan and soften the conditions. One way could be by turning the conditions into recommendations rather than requirements.


Read more: http://tvnz.co.nz/view/page/411366/1837282

[aquart]

1. Dump it and legalize. Enough.

[Peace Patriot]

2. Well, this has an interesting history, for sure--that goes back to Bush's ill-fated

visit to Latin America in March 2006. At that time, I was amazed to read of rightwing President Calderon's PUBLIC lecturing of Bush on the SOVEREIGNTY of Latin American countries, using VENEZUELA as an example!

It appears that ALL Latin American leaders--left and right--knew something that hardly any U.S. taxpayers and voters knew--that the Bush Junta had been colluding on an assassination plot against Hugo Chavez, hatched in the Colombian military--a plot that was to be unfolded around the 2006 Venezuelan presidential election in the fall. And they were all--left and right--appalled at it.

This seems pretty clear, as the puzzle pieces of that period are assembled. What is also interesting is the way that Chavez has opened things up for other Latin American leaders, of whatever political persuasion--as to independence from the U.S. Even a corporate fascist like Calderon benefits. He, of course, isn't using his new Chavez-created power to good purpose. More "war on drugs" militarization of Latin American society is NOT GOOD. But--at the very least--he is demanding that MEXICO have control of the funds and the "war on drugs" activities, and that IS good, in this respect: It puts accountability a bit closer to the Mexican people. (No--or fewer--U.S. DEA agents running around their country, answerable to no one.) I have no doubt that all these weapons and helicopters and high tech surveillance will be used to spy on leftist political organizers, and to suppress dissent. But if it is Mexicans making those decisions, then Mexicans have the potential to hold the decision-makers' feet to the fire. They don't have that potential power, when it's the DEA or the FBI or the U.S. military, or Blackwater mercenaries.

Calderon is also coming up against the issue of Mexico's SOVEREIGNTY on the privatization of Mexico's oil industry (which has Constitutional protection against privatization). The Left is giving him a REALLY hard time about it, and has achieved a formal national debate about the issue (on-going right now). This is another price the Bush Junta extracted from Calderon, probably in exchange for help in stealing Mexico's last presidential election (which Calderon "won" by a hairsbreadth margin--0.05%--against a serious Leftist, Lopez-Obrador). The Bushites wanted a place to hide war profiteer contracts (as country after country in Latin America rejects the corrupt, murderous U.S. "war on drugs"). They wanted the Oaxaca teachers' union/campesino uprising squashed. And they wanted control of Mexico's oil.

Calderon is a corrupt, bad dude, in most respects. But it's fascinating to see the workings of the Bolivarian Revolution all the way up into Mexico--with his demand for Mexico's SOVEREIGN control over "war on drugs" funds and activities. Latin American countries have NEVER had this power before, vis a vis the U.S.