López narrates how her 19-year-old daughter, Jahaira Guadalupe Vaena López, was abducted in Tlacolula, Oaxaca. She describes her efforts to get the authorities to investigate the crime, how she was warned not to press the matter, how informants told her that her daughter was murdered in a turf battle between fractured drug gangs. Just days before leaving for the United States with the Caravan for Peace, she faced one of the assassins who had been apprehended and listened as he described in detail how her daughter was raped and beheaded.

Margarita has joined some 50 grieving family members to accompany caravan leader Javier Sicilia on a trip across the United States. Sicilia, a poet who lost his son to drug war violence in March of 2011, catalyzed a movement of victims and Mexican citizens fed up with the bloodshed that has claimed more than 60,000 lives and left tens of thousands more disappeared since former President Felipe Calderon launched the drug war five years ago.

Mexico’s Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity decided to organize the U.S. caravan after taking two caravans from Mexico City–one north to Ciudad Juarez on the U.S. border, and one south to the border with Guatemala. Both drew out victims of the drug war and registered their cases to provide support for family members seeking justice and solace.

The decision to take their pain across the border came after discussion with the San Francisco-based group Global Exchange. Soon a coalition came together that included Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, the Latin American Working Group, the RFK Center, the Washington Office on Latin America, our CIP Americas Program, the Drug Policy Alliance, and the National Alliance of Latin American and Caribbean Communities, among the key players. The coalition later expanded to include the NAACP, and local organizations in each of the cities along the route.

A binational meeting in June defined five demands of the U.S. caravan: to open public debate on humane alternatives to drug prohibition, to ban the import of assault weapons and crack down on illegal gun smuggling over the border, to combat money-laundering with full investigation and strict enforcement, to suspend all aid to the Mexican armed forces and end the war on drugs abroad, and to halt the militarization of the border and criminalization of migrants.

I joined the caravan on the final east coast leg of its 6,000-mile trip. I had heard most of the stories before in Mexico, having accompanied the northern caravan and numerous marches and meetings.

I was curious to see the impact on people in the United States. As the women in the room told their stories, each one struck like a cold blade in the heart. Although women are a minority of the war’s deaths, attacks on women usually include brutal sexual violence, and women make up the majority of those actively seeking justice and an end to the war.

Along the route, caravan members like these women have become confident and eloquent spokespersons to end the drug war. They speak from the heart and appeal to the heart. Their empowerment as leaders is one of the most important achievements of the caravan. Another is the sympathy and outrage their testimonies evoke.

And it’s not a one-way street. Caravan members also listened to the stories of U.S. citizens. Like Kimberly Armstrong in Baltimore, whose 16-year-old son was shot and killed by a 14-year-old in endemic drug violence. Or Carole Eady, who struggled her way out of the stigma and life disruption of imprisonment for a drug offense in New York City.

The threads begin to come together. In her brilliant book The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander notes that in Washington, D.C., the caravan’s last stop, it’s estimated that three out of four black men can expect to serve time in prison. She calls this mass incarceration of black people a new racial caste, the latest Jim Crow system of social control, where young black men and women are jailed, stigmatized, and in many cases disenfranchised for life by discriminatory drug laws.

Based on the shared sorrow of losing loved ones to jail, violence, death, or disappearance, Mexicans and Americas found they fight the same unjust system of social control of the poor and people of color. The drug war generates profits for the defense industry and siphons public funds into perpetuating itself. It rips apart families and communities, north and south of the border. The bogus attempt to eliminate rather than regulate something in great demand creates a multibillion-dollar black market run by groups that become more violent as they are selectively attacked. It pits security forces against the public, providing them with the tools to violate human rights and life with impunity. It erodes democracy and the rule of law it purports to uphold.

Whether it’s through imposing a military/police state in Mexico or shunting youth into the margins of society, the drug war machine runs on the human lives it destroys.

A binational peace movement?

The caravan’s call to end the drug war resonated in city after city. But has the caravan forged a binational movement for peace?

Not yet. As the Mexican caravaners go back home, their U.S. hosts return to daily life. Many will simply guard the memory of Mexico’s pain and begin to read the news a little differently.

But others will act. The Peace Caravan has already achieved something remarkable. It brought together groups in U.S. cities that scarcely knew each other before. Some community organizers in the scores of cities from San Diego to the nation’s capital plan to continue the dialogue with the Mexican movement and among themselves.

In New York City, the Latino and African-American communities plan a meeting to discuss the impact of mass arrests and detention. In Baltimore, the movement to block construction of yet another multimillion-dollar prison in one of the nation’s most economically devastated cities is making common cause with movements for drug policy reform, racial justice, and youth rights.

In Texas, faith-based organizations advocating stricter enforcement of gun laws are intensifying their campaign against gun show sales and arms smuggling after seeing close up the human cost of the flow of guns to Mexico. In Arizona, human rights organizations working against the militarization of the border and the death and detention of migrants came face-to-face with activists protesting Mexico’s militarized drug war in a cross-border reflection. In Washington, members of Congress received caravan lobbyists whose power to convince came not from money or influence, but from human empathy and reason.

The way many U.S. citizens understand the drug war has changed through meeting the Mexicans who bear the brunt of it. While U.S. politicians and media portray it as a necessary fight against the threat that organized crime supposedly poses to national security in both countries, the victims spoke of the violence that resulted from the war on drugs itself. Audiences and congressional representatives were surprised to learn that many of the victims on the caravan accused not gangs but the U.S.-funded Mexican police and military for the murder or disappearance of their loved ones.

Organizers now face the question of how the moral victory can lead to a political one. On the drug policy front, U.S. society seems to be moving toward a tipping point despite push-back from law enforcement and private prison interests that make big money off incarceration, as well as from politicians who convert insecurity into “law and order” votes. A recent poll shows Colorado could legalize marijuana in the November elections after a similar measure narrowly lost in California. The award-winning film The House I Live In presents a stunning indictment of the domestic drug war through the words of its enforcers, its participants, and its victims.

But the federal government continues to be on the wrong side of the trend. Some hope that President Obama, if he is reelected, could make bolder moves toward reorienting a policy that imprisons so many mostly African-American youths and costs the nation $51 billion a year, according to the DPA. I’m inclined to agree with a LEAP editorial that warns the reform movement to watch the actions, not the rhetoric, of the Obama administration. It will take a stronger push from constituents to get the administration to take on the interests that benefit from sustaining America’s longest war.

Moral victories plant seeds that are often slow to bear fruit. Evaluating the experience on the last morning in a church hall, exhausted caravan members saw a mix of catharsis and consciousness-raising that gave them strength. Lopez noted that the “the tragedy I’m living through can be useful to a lot of people.” Melchor Flores, whose son was arrested in January of 2009 in Monterrey and never seen again, stated that the caravan had “touched consciences”.

He added, “Wherever my son is, he should be satisfied because he knew I wouldn’t let him down.”

Teresa Carmona, a tiny, white-haired woman whose son Joaquin was murdered in Mexico City, has become a powerful voice before the public and the media. She believes the caravan met its goal.

“We brought the faces of our beloved children, parents, and relatives all the way here, and so we legitimated this pain and this reality.”

In the nation that first invented the drug war and exported it to their country with deadly results, the Mexican bereaved have left a mark in the hearts of thousands of men and women. Sometimes it takes tragedy to make change. The cumulative histories recounted in the peace caravan represent a tragedy of mammoth proportions.

That should be more than enough to act on.

AUTHOR: Laura Carlsen
URL: www.cipamericas.org and http://americasmexico.blogspot.com
E-MAIL: lecarlsen [at] gmail.com

AUTHOR: Martin Hijmans
URL: http://the-pessoptimist.blogspot.com/
E-MAIL: m.hijmans [at] planet.nl

The security source told the Law Enforcement Examiner that the border reinforcements are part of Operation Agatha 5, which the Brazilian government initiated on July 6 on their country’s borders with Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay.

The deployment of troops is aimed at actively assisting Brazil’s border security officers who are outgunned and out-manned by the crime groups that include drug cartels, the source said. Also involved in what’s expected to be a month-long operation are the Brazilian Air Force and Navy, who will use attack helicopters, jet fighters, patrol boats and high-tech equipment, he added.

Agatha 5′s ultimate goal is to significantly reduce criminal activity such as drug trafficking, human trafficking and illegal mining, according to Defense Minister Celso Amorim, who is scheduled to visit southern Brazil Wednesday to inspect the operation in person, according to the Brazilian news media.

Amorim said Brazil’s neighbors were informed of the operation in advance and invited to send observers, the news report said.

Brazilian authorities claim they’ve seized close to 3 tons of illicit drugs, along with 300 boats used by traffickers. They also claim to have confiscated 60 firearms and other weapons.

“Unlike the United States government, who send troops to its troubled borders to answer phones and shuffle paper, the Brazilian troops are taking an active role in protecting their nation’s borders and combating those who violate their laws,” said Police Lieutenant Thomas Spandell, a narcotic enforcement expert.

AUTHOR: Jim Kouri
URL: http://www.renewamerica.com/
E-MAIL: COPmagazine [at] aol.com

Close-up US-Mexican border fence

A U.S. border patrol agent and his family were relieved on Friday when they were informed that the agent will be prosecuted for shooting and killing a Mexican teenager on the banks of the Rio Grande on June 7, 2010, according to a press statement from the U.S. Attorney General’s office.

Justice Department officials said in a news release that its “comprehensive and thorough investigation” determined there was “insufficient evidence to pursue federal criminal charges.”

The Justice Department also concluded that no federal civil rights charges could be pursued in this matter. Under the applicable civil rights statutes, prosecutors must establish, beyond a reasonable doubt, that a law enforcement officer willfully deprived an individual of a constitutional right, meaning with the deliberate and specific intent to do something the law forbids. This is the highest standard of intent imposed by law.

According to law enforcement reports, fifteen-year old Sergio Hernandez-Guereca was shot in his head as U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents tried to detain two men who had crossed into the United States illegally near the Paso del Norte Bridge in El Paso, Texas. The teenager was pronounced dead at the scene.

A federal law enforcement officer told the Law Enforcement Examiner that Hernandez was with a gang of youths throwing rocks at the agents. The anonymous law enforcement source stated that witnesses claimed one agent fired several shots toward the group, but the still unidentified agent claimed he acted in self-defense.

Mexican officials, including President Felipe Calderón, denounced the teen’s death. The country’s secretary of state said the use of firearms was a “disproportionate use of force” in response to rock throwing.

However, police use of force experts have told the Law Enforcement Examiner that the throwing of rocks by a suspect is considered use of deadly physical force according to the “Resistance/Force Continuum.”

“There appeared to be no doubt that the border officer was being attacked using rocks. All you need is a direct hit on the skull by a rock to cause permanent brain injury or even death,” said Lieutenant Richard Fierra, a charter member of the Society of Police Black Belts and an expert in use-of-force training.

The Justice Department claims it conducted a comprehensive and thorough investigation into the shooting, which occurred while smugglers attempting an illegal border crossing hurled rocks from close range at a CBP agent who was attempting to detain a suspect.

During the investigation, law enforcement officers and forensic technicians collected, analyzed and reviewed evidence from the scene of the shooting as well as civilian and surveillance video. They also analyzed law enforcement radio traffic, 911 recordings, volumes of CBP agent training and use of force materials. In addition, investigators reviewed the shooting agent’s training, disciplinary records, and personal history. Also, they conducted site visits and analysis and consulted with the International Boundary and Water Commission concerning jurisdictional issues.

“The investigation revealed that the agent — whose identity has been well-protected — did not act inconsistently with CBP policy or training regarding use of force. Based on a careful review and analysis of all the evidence, the team concluded that evidence would not be sufficient to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the CBP agent violated the federal homicide laws in the shooting of Hernandez-Guereca,” according to Justice Department officials.

“Accordingly, the investigation into this incident has been closed without prosecution.”

AUTHOR: Jim Kouri
URL: http://www.renewamerica.com/
E-MAIL: COPmagazine [at] aol.com

Despite the full knowledge that Clooney’s high-tech spy satellite was watching from 300 miles up in the sky, apparently it did not stop the Government of Sudan from launching a military campaign in South Sudan, including the aerial bombardment of civilians near Bentium, the capital of South Sudan’s Unity State. Nor did it deter the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), a South Sudan military wing, from looting the Sudan military base in the disputed border town of Heglig.

According to the Enough Project’s website, what is important about the Satellite Sentinel Project is how it works to achieve its goals of “deterring and documenting threats to civilians along both sides of the border between North and South Sudan” to prevent a return to full-scale civil war between them. First, the SSP would capture from 300 miles away satellite images of “possible threats to civilians, detect bombed and razed villages, or note other evidence of pending mass violence.” Second, the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative analyzes the captured satellites images for reporting (supplemented by information collected from sources on the ground). Third, the Enough Project then sounds the alarm by releasing the findings to the world through the press and social media such as Twitter and Facebook.

Equipped with all this information, the end-result is that policymakers around the world and all other stakeholders involved would listen and act in favor of intervening to stop a potential massacre of innocent civilians on both sides of the border. In short, the SSP is a case study for making perpetrators of war crimes and human rights abuses aware that the world is watching them.

But here is what the SSP is not doing: By focusing on a deterrence strategy, the SSP does not address the underlying root causes of the conflict between South and North Sudan. Sudan’s conflict is not just a conflict about who is attacking who, but is rather much more complex, caused by interwoven factors of religion, ethnicity, race, and competition for resources. If anything, the presence of the SSP is in fact encouraging competitive behavior between the two sides by pitting them against each other instead of directing their efforts toward reconciliation. In societies such as Sudan, with a history of deep division and distrust, deterrent approaches and measures do not end conflict, but only provide a temporary hiatus. The truth is that South and North Sudan not only have a long history of living together (sometimes in contradiction and conflict), but they also have more in common than a complete separation as symbolized by this satellite.

The bottom line is that the SSP, with all good intentions, sends a powerful message to perpetrators of war crimes and human rights abusers that the world is watching them, but does not provide a lasting solution to Sudan’s complex conflict.

AUTHOR: Ndumba Jonnah Kamwanyah
URL: http://foreignpolicyblogs.com/
E-MAIL: Ndumba.Kamwanyah [at] umb.edu

Close-up US-Mexican border fence

During his meeting with U.S. Vice President Joe Biden in Mexico City on Monday, President Felipe Calderon told Biden that the only way to win Mexico’s “war with the drug cartels” combat organized crime gangs as well as arms trafficking along the border. He also included in his list of priorities the ceasing of rampant cross-border money laundering, according to a press statement.

“There are a number of tools that can be utilized when it comes to laundering cash domestically and internationally,” claims former forensic accountant John Politi, an expert in financial and cyber crime.

Politi told the Law Enforcement Examiner that one such tool is Section 311 of the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001, which authorizes the Secretary of the Treasury to prohibit US financial institutions from maintaining certain accounts for foreign banks if they involve foreign jurisdictions or institutions found to be of primary money laundering concern.

“To make this finding, Treasury officials examine several factors and generally issue proposed rules announcing its intent to apply Section 311 restrictions. At the request of the US Congress, Government Accountability Office analysts reviewed financial and investigative US government documents and met with government officials and representatives of affected bank,” Politi said in a phone conversation.

Treasury’s informal process to implement Section 311 was consistent with requirements in U.S. law. From 2002 to 2005, Treasury identified 11 cases — 3 jurisdictions and 8 institutions — as being of primary money laundering concern and issued proposed rules for 10 of these cases, according to Politi, a former agent with the IRS.

As required, Treasury consulted with the Departments of Justice and State prior to issuing the proposed rules. However, Justice and State officials said that it was difficult for them to effectively assess the evidence on some Section 311 cases because Treasury provided them limited time.

In April 2008, Treasury withdrew two of three notices — all open for between 3 and 5 years –after the Government Accountability Office discussed the cases with Treasury officials. Contributing to this lag was the absence of required timeframes for completing the action and of written guidance specifying a Treasury office to finalize the actions. Treasury views Section 311 as effective because it isolates target institutions from the US financial system and encourages some foreign governments to strengthen their anti-money laundering authorities, according to GAO analysts.

However, some foreign government officials said that Section 311′s implementation precluded their own enforcement or regulatory actions against targeted institutions as U.S. action was unilateral or provided too little information for them to act.

Justice Department officials said that if Section 311′s application is viewed as unsubstantiated, some countries may be less likely to cooperate with the U.S. government on other law enforcement matters or sanctions. Treasury officials said they recognized the concerns, but did not believe they diminished Section 311′s effectiveness.

AUTHOR: Jim Kouri
URL: http://www.renewamerica.com/
E-MAIL: COPmagazine [at] aol.com

Fence along the Israeli-Egyptian border. The project is partly finished, at the end of 2012 the work should be done. Cost: $ 360 million.

Under the title ‘Israel overcome by paranoia’ the military correspondent of the Israeli newspaper Ynet (Yedioth Ahronot), Alex Fishman, writes about the strange way Israel is fencing itself in:

In the year 2000 we built a smart, electronic fence on our northern border. It made sense; after all, Hezbollah is a dangerous and unpredictable foe. In the past decade we started to erect the West Bank barrier: A cement wall along with an electronic fence equipped with sensors and cameras. We’re still building it today. This made sense; we must curb the suicide bombers and illegal aliens. In 2005 we also built a sophisticated fence around the Gaza Strip. It monitors the area, fires on its own, and can even sing our national anthem if you want. It made sense; Hamas is also a dangerous foe. After that we also had to curb terrorism and infiltrators from the Sinai. There is no argument that we need a fence. We also need one on the Golan Heights, after Palestinian refugees crossed the border and rushed into Majdal Shams. So we came up with a proud Zionist response – a sophisticated 15-kilomter fence. In a few years, once the fence on the Jordanian border is built, we shall complete our disengagement from the Middle East. Who would believe that once upon a time we spoke about integrating into the region? By now we are a tiny state with a large fence. How did it happen to us?

He himself gives some of the answers to his last question:
”Apparently this is deeply entrenched in our DNA: A persecuted people who seeks cover.” And ‘We are again Diaspora Jews in our own country. There is no wonder that the polls show a religious revival; after all, it is God who shall protect us.’

I’don’t agree with all that Fishman says. For example: “Such society, which loses its self-confidence, does not convey deterrence. With all the bombs and advanced aircraft, this is not a society that conveys a sense of strength. The Americans and Iranians can sleep well; this is not a society that will decide to strike in Iran and pay the price.” is not a text I could easily get out of the keyboard of my laptop.

But the rest: yes. Somewhere on my Dutch blog I once wrote that it is a remarkable experience for someone who descended from a family that once -literally – lived in the ghettoes of both Frankfurt and Venice, to see how the whole of Israel is turning itself into a fortress that in a creepy way ressembles a gigantic contemporary ghetto.

AUTHOR: Martin Hijmans
URL: http://the-pessoptimist.blogspot.com/
E-MAIL: m.hijmans [at] planet.nl

The BSF director general U.K. Bansal told the BBC on Tuesday that it is not possible to stop border firing completely and his Bangladesh counterpart Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) chief Maj.Gen. Anwar Hossain disagrees and said on Thursday that killing at the border under any circumstances is not acceptable.

The remark is contrary to Indian government’s agreed policy and continues to maintain a shoot-at-sight policy for any Bangladeshi illegally crossing the international divide, foreign minister Dipu Moni told reporters on Thursday.

Last July, the Indian home affairs minister Palaniappan Chidambaram said the Indian guards will no longer shoot people crossing the porous border from Bangladesh. Instead the guards will use rubber bullets after warnings.

Two days after the anger is still being raged, two more Bangladeshi citizens on Thursday have been shot and wounded by BSF at Satkhira in south-east, lieutenant colonel Abu Bashir confirmed with the private wire service bdnews24.com.

Bangladesh Human Rights Commission chief Prof. Mizanur Rahman on Wednesday threatened to raise the issue at the United Nations Human Rights Council, unless BSF stops killing and torture of innocent Bangladeshis.

In December 2010, New York based Human Rights Watch in a report described the Indian border guards as “Trigger Happy” force and documented hundreds of extrajudicial killings, arbitrary detention, torture, and ill-treatment by the BSF.

In January 18, 2012, Indian news channel NDTV showed a disturbing video of what appears to be a group of BSF guards in uniform beating up a young Bangladeshi man ruthlessly near the Bangladesh border after he allegedly refused to give them a bribe. BSF top officers acknowledged that this incident took place and the perpetrators were fired.

The rights groups Odikhar and Ain Shalish Kendra (ASK) documents the killings on the border have denounced the border killings as extrajudicial murders.

The NGO’s stated that it is one of the most dangerous international borders, where an estimated 350 Bangladeshis and 165 Indians have been killed by Indian forces since 2006, since India began to fence the borders.

India in the east, shares 2,544 miles of porous and soft border with Bangladesh and have constructed walls with barbed wire, roughly 70 percent border with Bangladesh to stop illegal border crossing. The rest of the border is running across the delta’s shifting rivers, which are unfenceable, but patrolled.

Livestock, food stuffs, gun-running and drug trade are regularly brought from India into Bangladesh. Illegal immigrants from Bangladesh cross into India to find jobs.

However, Gen. Hossain said on Thursday that the incident of killing at the border is on the decline in the last two months.

AUTHOR: Saleem Samad
URL: http://bangladeshwatchdog.blogspot.com
E-MAIL: saleemsamad [at] hotmail.com

(Movie: Canana Films, 2011, Mexico; Screenplay by: Gerardo Naranjo & Mauricio Katz. Showing: IFFR, International Film Festival Rotterdam)

Laura Guerrrero and her best Friend Su Su are preparing to participate in the Miss Baja California pageant: Laura a 23 year old young woman from the Barrios of Baja has high hopes, and big dreams and winning the Miss Baja Contest is in her opinion the beginning of all things “beautiful”. Su Su her companion and friend is the reason why they arrive just in the nick of time for their first audience, and the reason behind the small altercations, hostilities and arguments with the other contestants whilst cuing. Su Su is also the reason why Laura decides to skip buying her gown, to accompany Su Su to see some friends in a shady part of town, because according to Su Su they can help her secure a spot as semi-finalist in the pageant. Things turn ugly for Laura as they both approach the men in the big American Clunker Cars, the men dislike her, finding her unattractive and not their style. Su Su begs Laura to wait for her, to come and look for her later in the “Millennium Club”.

Despite misgivings Laura acquiesces, to meet her friend later that evening in at the Millennium. But Su-Su has bigger fish to fry and can barely spare her friend a few seconds of attention. Only in the bathroom does she become loquacious again, only to ask for another favor: she needs company and Laura has to stay, will she stay?

But then doom strikes, the club gets raided by a drug gang run by Lino Valdez, and Laura runs for her life, leaving her friend behind in the commotion. The next day Laura approaches a police-officer for help, and it is at that point in the movie where everything changes, no longer, gay and expecting, the audience is no longer drawn into Laura’s playful preparations and expectations about the pageant.

The movie then turns ugly, a raging storm of violence, its tentacles grabbing the audience by the hair, swiftly engulfing them in a series of criminal events, one after another, after another, after another……no stopping, no respite…..ugliness after ugliness, killing sprees of innocent and not so innocent people. In a hidden corner of the movie, the audience becomes subtly acquainted with the corrupt organizers of the Miss Baja Pageant, but above all with the ruthlessness of criminals, who seem to stop at nothing, whose power seem to surpass that of the local law enforcement, the government, in fact, the criminals seem to have even more power than GOD.

The main character of the movie, Laura demonstrates remarkable tenacity and bravery, trying to do the right thing in an environment determined by corruption and criminality. But Laura’s virtuousness sharply contrasts that of her surroundings; the imbibing of criminality and corruption in the city, the almighty gangs, who seem to operate above and beneath the law, with enough cash to buy everything and everybody, even the jury at the Miss Baja Pageant, who at the surprise and dismay of the audience go on to declare Laura the winner of the pageant. But as the movie enfolds, corruption becomes much more wide-spread, because high ranking officials are also corrupt and immoral; Laura is invited to a party at the General’s mansion, only to find herself to be invited into his bed. As the movie unfolds things get uglier and Laura in the end gets arrested, at which point a barrage of hypocrisy breaks lose, the pageant exonerates itself from all allegations of corruption and wrongdoing, by placing the blame on Laura and her presumed audacity. The police who started this whole ordeal stay silent, covering up their negative track record, their involvement in corruption with a PR offensive. Nobody talks about the fact that Laura was framed, a poor girl looking for her lost, disloyal friend.

The brutality of Miss Bala, the fact that it pushes that kind of criminality into the lap of the audience, forcing them to become part of the ugliness, the gluttony and the vanity, all seen through the eyes of the protagonist, Laura. But Miss Bala is more than a movie: the ugliness, the greed and the vanity are real, all right, part of the Mexican border town everyday reality, where gangs rule and drive by shootings are common as muck. Miss Bala shows the everyday reality of Mexico where policemen are corrupt, supplying their meager income with bribes from cartels, where women who dream to get ahead in live have no other recourse than to befriend criminals.

Miss Bala portrays the missed opportunities, the poverty of a border town in the throes of the war on drugs, the American Drugs Enforcement Agency that continues to believe that strong and forceful action will keep cocaine out of the United States. The United States is working vehemently to make cocaine go away, to apprehend drugs dealers, bringing them to justice in the United States, without much avail. In fact actions by the USA, Immigration Services, to deport a large number of gangsters back to El Salvador, Nicaragua and Guatemala, contributed to the growth of the criminality south of the American border.

The Americans who started the war on cocaine in the 1950s have always maintained the standpoint that eradication and prohibition of drugs will keep the drugs out of their society. But cocaine is fixed feature in certain US subcultures: in the upper classes of Hollywood and New York, but also the inner cities of South Chicago were poor Black Youth are hooked on crack-cocaine.

But the real victims are people like Laura Guerrero, citizens of El Salvador, Guatemala and Rio, where drive-by shootings are an everyday occurrence, cities where a human life means nothing! For the people in Colombia, the obliteration of the Cali- and the Medellin Cartel, meant that the gangsters moved under- ground, dispersing their activities to Suriname, Venezuela, Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires, Africa, Europe and the Middle East. Today drug-trafficking involves not only the under – world, drug criminality today is an internationally ramified, economic activity, divided into upper world activities such as the financial support of politicians for office, trade have also become part of the activities of the cartels and under-world activities. The movie indeed provides an accurate impression of the intertwining of the under- world and the upper world, but more than anything the movie shows that in the event of a crime, citizens cannot rely on the police for help. The police is not only part of the corrupt and criminal system, it also uses the law and its monopoly to use violence to infringe upon the rights of the citizens, terrorizing them, putting them at harm’s way.

Miss Bala is above all a movie about thwarted hopes and dreams of a young woman, who in the end walks away, a dead woman walking, or perhaps not! Perhaps, only perhaps if she musters enough strength will she make it out of the hell hole she’s in. Her future is uncertain, but not the future of the gangsters, because they will continue to be an intricate part of the scenery of a border town in the throes of crime and violence.

In Mexico more than 32,000 people lost their lives, in the rest of the continent the numbers of people murdered are equally worrisome. But a clandestine industry that generates more than 25 Billion US dollars annually will not come to a screeching halt anytime soon!

AUTHOR: Natascha Adama
URL: http://natascha23.blogspot.com
E-MAIL: nataliapestova23 [@] yahoo.com

Close-up US-Mexican border fence

2011 was anything but a successful year for the United States’ border security projects including the building of a security fence at the nation’s southern border. A recently released government report reveals that the Homeland Security Department failed to properly supervise contractors hired to increase security at the U.S.-Mexico border.

In 2005, the Bush Department of Homeland Security (DHS) initiated a multibillion-dollar contract to secure part of the nation’s borders through its the Secure Border Initiative (SBI). DHS assigned the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) — which oversees the U.S. Border Patrol — responsibility for overseeing the SBI contract, including SBInet. However, in January 2011, the Obama DHS announced that it was ending SBInet, and replacing it with a new technology portfolio.

The House Homeland Security Committee, led by Chairman Peter King (R-NY), requested the General Accountability Office to assess CBP’s controls over payments to the prime contractor under the original SBInet program, and provide information about the SBI program prime contractor’s reporting against small business subcontracting goals.

GAO assessed CBP controls against federal standards for internal control and relevant federal regulatory provisions, and summarized data on contractor performance against small business contracting goals.

GAO’s review of CBP’s controls over payments to the prime contractor under the original SBInet program identified the need to improve controls in two critical areas. Specifically, GAO found that CBP’s design of controls for SBInet contractor payments did not require invoices with sufficiently detailed data supporting billed costs to facilitate effective invoice reviews or provide for sufficiently detailed, risk-based invoice review procedures to enable effective invoice reviews prior to making payments.

Although CBP’s established procedures were based on the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR), GAO identified numerous instances of CBP contracting officers lacking detailed support in the SBInet contractor invoices they received for review.

Because CBP’s preventative controls were not fully effective, the agency will continue to be impaired in providing assurance that the reported $780 million it already paid to the contractor under the original SBInet program was allowable under the contract, in the correct amount, and only for goods and services provided, and also rely heavily on detective controls (such as timely, effective contract closeout audits) for all SBInet funds disbursed.

The GAO analysts also noted that timely action to improve CBP’s preventative controls is critical for the estimated $80 million in original SBInet program funds yet to be disbursed. Also, in light of the recent DHS announcement that it is replacing the originally conceived SBInet program with a new technology portfolio- based approach, GAO’s findings concerning weaknesses in CBP’s design of controls over payments to the prime contractor under the recently ended SBInet program can serve as “lessons learned” to be considered in designing and implementing controls as part of the newly announced portfolio-based approach to providing technological support to border security.

With respect to performance against small business contracting goals, the prime contractor reported that it met two of the six small business subcontracting goals for the overall SBI program. Specifically, it reported that it met subcontracting participation goals for Historically Underutilized Business Zone and Veteran-Owned small business categories, but was unable to meet the other four small business goals because a large steel purchase significantly reduced the subcontract dollars available for small businesses to participate in the SBI contract.

GAO mades five recommendations to improve CBP controls over prime contractor payments under the SBInet and the successor technology portfolio, including actions to strengthen invoice review procedures, provide more detailed support, and to better focus closeout audits. DHS concurred in principle with all recommendations, but for some, DHS also commented on the cost-effectiveness or others’ role in implementation.

AUTHOR: Jim Kouri
URL: http://www.renewamerica.com/
E-MAIL: COPmagazine [at] aol.com