http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfImBQGg6RM

Doesn’t seem like a good idea. Your general attempt at a balanced approach is so strained that I can read that you all are very skeptical, just say so more clearly.

Can you explain: “Less of the military and police aid is lethal. It is almost entirely made up of transport helicopters, surveillance planes, scanning and communications equipment. ” This also seems a distinction without a difference when one considers how the feds used jamming equipment to disrupt pirate radios of the social movement which took over oaxaca city for months (precipitous drop in crime w/out police present). They did not jam the pirate pro-govt. radio which was inciting paramilitaries to attack demonstrators. (they killed 26 including brad will).

You write: “We do not expect the U.S.-donated equipment to be used on counter-insurgent missions in places like Guerrero and Oaxaca, which would carry a very high risk of human-rights abuse.” Glad you recognize that risk. But on what basis can you responsibly claim that it won’t be used in oaxaca or guerrero?

peace,
rob

One major concern i have is that Plan Mexico will give the corrupt and brutal Mexican ’security’ forces more lethal power.

Why would reasonable human rights/development/anti-corruption organizations not demand that only human rights training – and no lethal power (surveillance, weapons, training) – be provided until real improvements are seen.

I’m concerned – based on my observations of the state and federal govts’ treatment of activists (i.e. rapes, murders, abuse in atenco and oaxaca and their cover-ups at the state and federal levels) – that the growing social movements against free trade, corruption, and these very abuses will be directly targeted w/this lethal ‘aid package’.

If people want to pretend that adding human rights conditions would protect against predictable abuses, then they could at least demand an end to impunity as a wise (conservative) investment of $1.4 billion in taxpayer funds. They could say, for instance, what kind of training is necessary to ensure an investigation and prosecution of this:

http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=19485

This picture and many witnesses’ testimony (courageously offered) and still impunity. . .. In my mind, no training can overcome such unwillingness to hold mex. govt. accountable. It has to do with sacrificing people for political expedience. Plan Mexico will make that worse.

Support by ngos for such is gross and myopic. Let me know how i’m wrong, please.

Why keep funding, extending and combining these failed policies? (unless there are some hidden agendas)

Has any analyst reflected on the number of casualties that the drug mafia and the war on drugs have caused in comparison with the casualties of drug addiction?

Any comparisons of the damages related to drug trade with those related to drug use?

For sure, these plans do not quite follow the rational they say the do.

“The Mexican foreign minister, Patricia Espinosa, stressed that no US soldiers, advisers nor private contractors would be deployed in Mexico, nor would the US give specialist military training to Mexican servicemen. She said that the only training Mexican servicemen would get would be from US companies which would train them to use new equipment they were providing: this equipment would be paid for by the US government. She added that the US has also promised to do more to prevent weapons and chemicals used to manufacture illegal drugs flowing from the US to Mexico.

“US officials concurred: they said that neither US soldiers nor advisers nor private sector contractors, such as those deployed in Iraq by companies such as Blackwater, would be deployed in Mexico.”

Are they trying to split hairs on the KIND of contractors allowed to operate in the country?