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Latin America Drug Trade Increasingly Complex

It is estimated that "between 60 and 65 percent of all South American cocaine is trafficked to the United States." Most of this smuggling is through the eastern Pacific/Central American corridor...

By Jerry Brewer
Counteracting and reducing drug trafficking throughout Latin America continues to meet ever-increasing complexities. While Mexico and Central America have experienced an insidious and pervasive violent nemesis, South Americans, with primary source countries, have witnessed narcotrafficking syndicates scrambling methodically to engineer new methods and routes to facilitate delivery for increasing demand. The demand for drugs has significantly affected an immense spectrum of international, national, and regional enforcement and continued security concerns. Counteracting and reducing drug trafficking throughout Latin America continues to meet ever-increasing complexities. While Mexico and Central America have experienced an insidious and pervasive violent nemesis, South Americans, with primary source countries, have witnessed narcotrafficking syndicates scrambling methodically to engineer new methods and routes to facilitate delivery for increasing demand. The demand for drugs has significantly affected an immense spectrum of international, national, and regional enforcement and continued security concerns.

The Peace Corps Pullout

But there remain tremendous social and economic needs in Honduras, as in El Salvador and Guatemala. Abandoning these countries may be a sensible precaution for the Peace Corps, but it must be said that the move comes at a time when the people of this region can least afford it.

Honduras Weekly
There is no way to put a positive spin on yesterday's withdrawal of 158 US Peace Corp volunteers from Honduras. The decision to leave was made by Peace Corps authorities in Washington, DC. The organization is also suspending its work in neighboring El Salvador and Guatemala. While there has been concern by the US government over the high homicide rate in Honduras, gang violence, and the growing presence of Mexican drug cartels in Honduras, neither the Honduran government nor US officials have cite specific threats against Peace Corps personnel in the country. In fact, Peace Corps volunteer, Jared Metzker, today criticized the pullout. In an Op-Ed piece in today's Los Angeles Times, Mr. Metzker, argues that the safety concerns have been overblown. He notes that only one Peace Corps worker has been killed in Guatemala in the more than 40 years the organization has been there. "Guatemala is not Afghanistan. Not even close," writes Mr. Metzker.

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Trends in US Drug Use

When policymakers debate thorny questions of drug use and international drug enforcement, it’s wise to remember that cartels, though formidable, are hardly the only suppliers in a vast American drug market.

By Shannon O'Neil
The United States Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration recently released the findings of its 2010 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH). The report draws on data collected from face-to-face interviews of 67,500 people aged twelve years or older across the US (the US government has been conducting this type of research since 1971). Of the many findings in the report, some of the most interesting include: Over 22 million Americans used drugs in the month before the survey; about 9 percent of the population over twelve years old and a slight uptick from 2008 numbers. City-dwellers (9.4 percent) were more likely to use drugs than those residing in more pastoral settings (3.7 percent), and Westerners (11 percent) got high more often than Southerners (7.8 percent). Men were almost twice as likely to use drugs than women, and they liked to smoke pot. And perhaps not unsurprisingly, young people -- aged eighteen to twenty-five -- were more likely to use drugs (21.5 percent) than other age groups.

Mitt Romney: Jobs Genius or Sweatshop Mogul?

What Mr. Romney did as CEO of Bain Capital is essentially what clever, opportunistic investors and business people have done in the maquila industry in Honduras and other countries in Central America and Southeast Asia: Create tens of thousands of jobs that, while certainly better than nothing, are the rough equivalent of sweatshops in the developing world.

By Marco Cáceres
The leading argument behind Republican candidate Mitt Romney's bid for the Presidency of the United States is that he "understands how the economy works" and he "knows how to create jobs" because he alone among the remaining five Republican candidates (Jon Huntsman dropped out today) has significant experience as a businessman in the private sector, notably the 25 years he spent as a consultant with Bain & Company of Boston, Massachusetts, and as CEO of its offshoot private equity firm, Bain Capital. It was during his tenure at Bain that Mr. Romney earned most of his estimated wealth of US$250 million. Much of the current debate about Mr. Romney and Bain centers on the ethics of the leveraged buyouts that were conducted by the firm under his watch, and whether Mr. Romney did more harm than good -- in terms of job creation.

America Shall Not Be Exceptional

Nowhere is an ugly version of American exceptionalism more obvious -- and embarrassing -- than in relation to Guantanamo Bay and the network of secret prisons it has come to represent.

By Brian McLaren
In “America the Exceptional,” an article published in the January 2012 issue of Sojourners, I intentionally misquote Genesis 12 as follows: “And the Lord said to Abraham, I will bless you and make your name great. I will make you a great nation and all nations will submit to your exceptional status. They will kow-tow to your interests, submit to your invasions, and defer to your economic policies. You will act unilaterally and lead, not cooperate with, unexceptional nations. You will use and abuse the alien and stranger among you as you please, for they are not my chosen people blessed by manifest destiny... For I am the Lord who shows favoritism to whom he will, and you are my chosen people.”

The GOP Race: “A Freak Show”

In short, we’re a nation of superlatives. We’re obsessed with bigness: Big cars, huge SUVs, giant trucks, enormous TVs, gigantic abodes, gargantuan pizzas. We want more and, darn it, we’ll elect people who promise to deliver. But how do others see us?

By W. E. Gutman
We Americans know who we are:

* The world’s most formidable military power (we lost in Korea, Vietnam, Somalia, and Iraq; we “won” against tiny Grenada and Panama…); we are being held hostage in Afghanistan. A stalemate will prove worse than defeat.

* The guarantor of democracy (we rank 20th after Norway, Iceland, Denmark, Sweden, New Zealand and Australia).

* The beacon of spiritual impartiality (we abet the incestuous tryst between the body politic and the dinosaurs of the religious right).

* The paradigm of puritan chastity (we wallow in staggering promiscuity and vice).

* The model of equity (we denounce abortion but cheer when a condemned man is hanged, roasted or injected with a lethal cocktail of drugs).

* The guardian of a free press (a faint-hearted mainstream media that won’t challenge the evisceration of civil liberties; the enfeeblement of the middle class; the consolidation of wealth into ever-narrower circles of power; unemployment; racism; the offensive against labor; the soaring price of food and medicines; the predatory healthcare system).

Iran, The Neocons Are At It Again

Editor's Note: The Lobo government is proceeding with plans to re-join the Venezuelan-led Petrocaribe oil consortium, which may help minimize the impact on Honduras of projected hikes in international oil prices, given the West's moves to tighten economic sanctions against Iran to persuade its government to give up its nuclear development program. The sanctions, along with recent threats by Iran to close the Strait of Hormuz and warnings to the US Navy to stay out of the Persian Gulf, are signs of an evolving crisis pitting the US and Europe against the world's fourth largest oil producer and exporter.

By Ralph Nader
The same neocons who persuaded George W. Bush and crew to, in Ron Paul’s inimitable words, “lie their way into invading Iraq” in 2003, are beating the drums of war more loudly these days to attack Iran. It is remarkable how many of these war-mongers are former draft dodgers who wanted other Americans to fight the war in Vietnam. With the exception of Ron Paul, who actually knows the history of US-Iranian relations, the Republican presidential contenders have declared their belligerency toward Iranian officials who they accuse of moving toward nuclear weapons. The Iranian regime disputes that charge, claiming they are developing the technology for nuclear power and nuclear medicine.

How Americans Really Feel About Drugs

Mere weeks after Gallup’s new poll showed a majority of Americans support full legalization of marijuana, Sabet insists that it’s a “fact” that the public doesn’t support legalization. And mind you, it’s not just Gallup’s surveys that show public support for legalization -- in state-based polls in politically diverse states like Massachusetts and Colorado, it’s essentially the same thing: widespread public support for pot legalization.

By David Sirota
Almost exactly eight years ago, I wrote an essay for The Nation magazine looking at how terms such as “centrism” and “moderate” were beginning to be deftly manipulated to shape the parameters of America’s political discourse. In almost every policy debate, these words were being used in with-us-or-against-us fashion to delineate what was -- and what was not -- acceptable. Through such linguistic propaganda over the last decade, America was gradually taught that anything called “centrist” or “moderate” was Good and Serious because it supposedly represented “mainstream” thinking in America -- even as “centrism” was being used to describe policies and politicians that, based on empirical data, increasingly diverged from the actual center of our nation’s public opinion. By contrast, anything positioned in opposition to that branding was wild-eyed “leftist,” “extremist,” “ideological,” “fringe” -- and most of all, Evil and Unserious.

Return to Rigores

This is the real Occupy Movement of which our Occupations in the Global North are symbolic of our solidarity with the people throughout the world who daily put their lives on the line defending their right to land to grow food to feed their families and their communities.

Click for Video

By Chuck Kaufman
On January 9, 2012 an Alliance for Global Justice (AfGJ) delegation from the United States and Canada visited the farming community of Rigores, Honduras, in the fertile Aguán Valley near the country’s Caribbean coast. It was a far different visit than was experienced by a previous AfGJ delegation just six months earlier. On that July 1st morning, our delegation stood in a line at the top of a wash, standing between 40 police armed with military grade weaponry, and peasant farmers determined to hold their land against an illegal eviction. For 3-1/2 hours our delegation faced down the police, who had pistols drawn and snipers targeting us from the tree line.

Breaking the Noxious Grip of Organized Crime in Mexico

Moreover, there is little doubt that powerful organized crime groups and cartels threaten the stability of South and Central America. Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador are currently feeling the heat.

By Jerry Brewer
The fastidious hold on the Mexican government by organized criminals is literally choking the life out of Mexican officials, the rule of law, and has resulted currently in totals exceeding 50,000 people killed. The ever-emerging conflict of organized crime versus enforcement efforts is certainly not new, but there is a clear distinction in this new enemy of the people within their homeland. The virtual strangle-hold on a nation fighting boldly to prevent a failed state has become a monumental task, a nightmare that has lingered on the Mexican soil at least since 2005. The atrocities that would significantly increase until this present day were telegraphed on the streets of Nuevo Laredo nearly seven years ago. That was when Mexico met a superior armed and trained cadre of capable combatants.