DRUG WAR: Green Berets in Honduras

Welcome to the endless "war" on drugs.
An American task force member refueling a Black Hawk helicopter in Puerto Castilla.

The Drug War Gets Hot  -  U.S. Military in Central America

• U.S. bases in Honduras
• Green Berets are on the ground 
• Drug Enforcement Administration "support" teams.
• Endless billions spent in a "war" that cannot be won.

FORWARD OPERATING BASE MOCORON, Honduras

The Drug War is big business . . . for the government.  Endless demands to grow law enforcement with more police (and resulting in more police union members), more expensive equipment, more prosecutors and more prisons with unionized prison guards.

It is a both a war that cannot be won and at the same time the "war" is a growth industry lining the pockets of everyone involved with billions in taxpayer money.  Both the American Left and Right are cashing in on the war bonanza.

The New York Times reports that the United States military has troops on the ground in Honduras to fight the drug war.  The U.S. has been constructing a remote base camp with little public notice but with the support of the Honduran government.

It is one of three new forward bases here — one in the rain forest, one on the savanna and one along the coast — each in a crucial location to interdict smugglers moving cocaine toward the United States from South America.

Honduras is the latest focal point in America’s drug war. As Mexico puts the squeeze on narcotics barons using its territory as a transit hub, more than 90 percent of the cocaine from Colombia and Venezuela bound for the United States passes through Central America. More than a third of those narcotics make their way through Honduras, a country with vast ungoverned areas — and one of the highest per capita homicide rates in the world.

American-Honduran military bases in the drug war 

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The U.S. mission there has been adapted to strict rules of engagement prohibiting American combat in Central America

In creating the new outposts — patterned on the forward bases in Iraq and Afghanistan that gave troops a small, secure home on insurgent turf — spartan but comfortable barracks were built. Giant tanks hold 4,500 gallons of helicopter fuel. Solar panels augment generators. Each site supports two-week rotations for 55 people, all no more than 30 to 45 minutes’ flying time from most smuggling handoff points.

Before his assignment to Central America, Col. Ross A. Brown spent 2005 and 2006 in Iraq as commander of the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment’s Third Squadron, responsible for southern Baghdad.

Colonel Brown is now commander of Joint Task Force-Bravo, where he and just 600 troops are responsible for the military’s efforts across all of Central America. He is under orders to maintain a discreet footprint, supporting local authorities and the Drug Enforcement Administration, which leads the American counternarcotics mission.

The Insane Drug War in Honduras

American troops here cannot fire except in self-defense, and they are barred from responding with force even if Honduran or Drug Enforcement Administration agents are in danger. Within these prohibitions, the military marshals personnel, helicopters, surveillance airplanes and logistical support that Honduras and even the State Department and D.E.A. cannot. 

“By countering transnational organized crime, we promote stability, which is necessary for external investment, economic growth and minimizing violence,” Colonel Brown said. “We also are disrupting and deterring the potential nexus between transnational organized criminals and terrorists who would do harm to our country.”

Conducting operations during a recent day at the outpost were members of the Honduran Tactical Response Team, the nation’s top-tier counter-narcotics unit. They were working alongside the Foreign-deployed Advisory Support Team, or FAST, created by the Drug Enforcement Administration to disrupt the poppy trade in Afghanistan. With the campaign in Afghanistan winding down — and with lowered expectations of what Washington can do to halt heroin trafficking there — FAST members were in Honduras to plan interdiction missions in Central America.

And Honduran Special Operations forces, with trainers from American Special Forces — the Army’s Green Berets — were ferried from the outpost by Honduran helicopters to plant explosives that would cut craters into smugglers’ runways. Honduran infantrymen provided security for the outpost, which remains under Honduran command.

(New York Times)

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A New Zealand Anti-Prohibition Poster.
Debate over the prohibition of alcohol remained one of New Zealand’s most contentious political issues in the 1920s. This pro-continuance poster, probably from 1925 or 1928, shows a New Zealand soldier kicking an old man representing Uncle Sam back across the sea from New Zealand to North America. It urges New Zealanders not to follow the United States in banning alcohol and claims prohibition there (in force since 1919) has caused more harm than good.

Brazil: America's #4 Creditor

America, meet Brazil, your newest creditor. 

While modern Americans often complain and demand more and more Big Government Socialist corporate and individual handouts, our neighbor to the south is creating a powerful capitalist economy.  In other words, unlike Americans the Brazilians are working for a living.

Brazil.  The future of Capitalism?

In fact they are working so hard that Brazil is loaning billions of dollars to the United States to cover our insane national debt.  Currently Brazil is the number four holder of U.S. Treasury debt after China, Japan and the United Kingdom.

In a capitalist world someone has to first earn the money before it can be spent.  Americans love to spend, but they are not as interested in earning it through hard work.  Ring up the national credit card and party all night is now the motto of the USA.  Don't worry Americans say.  Someone else will pick up the check.

So here is a sincere thank you to our friends in Brazil.  Without you we Americans might have to go to work for a living.

Brazil's Low Unemployment

Brazil's unemployment rate fell in April.  The month's 6.4% jobless rate was the lowest for April since 2002, when the current statistical series began, the Brazilian Census Bureau, or IBGE, said Thursday. Labor minister Carlos Lupi was cited by local Estado newswire as saying Brazil may enjoy its lowest-ever unemployment rate this year.

Economists said that the currently tight labor market, with a shortage of skilled workers, should intensify inflationary pressures. "The Brazilian economy is working at full employment, and should continue that way in the medium term," said Tatiana Pinheiro, of Santander Economia. "We believe the effects of the monetary tightening could be more significant in 4Q11."

Jankiel Santos of Banco Espirito Santo said that "Given the clear dearth of workers, one can expect wage negotiations in the coming months may add to current inflationary pressures."

Growth, Growth and More Growth

Brazil's economy increased 7.5 percent in 2010, a record high since 1986, authorities announced Thursday.

Gross domestic product (GDP) of the Latin America's biggest economy reached 3.67 trillion reais ($2.21 trillion) in 2010, according to the figures released by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE).

It is the highest GDP expansion registered in Brazil since 1986, the IBGE said, attributing the high growth rate to the increase of domestic demands in the country.  Industry, which expanded 10.1 percent in 2010, was the most benefited sector from the economic recovery.

The IBGE said among the countries which had already announced their 2010 GDP results, Brazil had the third highest expansion after China and India.

Brazil's economic growth surpassed countries such as South Korea, Japan, Germany and the United States and also exceeded the five-percent world average GDP growth.

Growing Middle Class Fuels Brazilian Economy

As the developed world struggles, Brazil grows faster, on the strength of its export economy, but also rising domestic demand. Its middle class continues to expand — and spend. An estimated 35 million people joined the middle class between 2003 to 2009, and 20 million more are expected to be included by 2014. Unemployment is at a relatively low 6.5 percent.

From the bustle of Sao Paulo, where a vista of modern steel and glass skyscrapers seems endless, to its vast farmlands, Brazilian optimism is on the rise and so is its growing consumer class.

They are consuming everything from cell phones and laptops to Coca-Cola and Nikes, and they were out en masse at the Morumbi shopping center in Sao Paulo on a recent Sunday.  There are 210 million registered cell phones in Brazil, 10 million more than the estimated population of the entire country.

President Dilma Rousseff's chief of staff announced plans to hand over the country's five largest airports to the private sector in an effort to speed up much needed upgrades.

Brazil is also saddled by huge infrastructure needs — and costs. Some private economists forecast that the country will have to spend some $700 billion to a trillion dollars to get roads, airports, sewers and sports facilities ready for both the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics.

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Open Borders in Mexico

Stop.  It is not open borders with Mexico, but open borders in Mexico.

Migrants from Latin America and Asia are seen in an X-ray
image packed into a truck as they were being smuggled through
Mexico on their way to the United States.
(Chiapas Public Security Secretary / May 28, 2011)

I am not sure what to make of this.  Mexico has problems with poverty and exports its poor to the United States.  The immigrants in turn send billions of dollars back to Mexico.  This part I understand.

But now Mexico has effectively legalized illegal immigration into Mexico. 

President Felipe Calderon, his administration chastised by foreign governments for how their citizens are treated, this week signed a new immigration law aimed at reducing the risks.

The measure decriminalizes the act of entering the country without papers and entitles the undocumented to education and health services. It also promises a major overhaul of the scandal-plagued federal immigration agency.

Is the new law just for public relations?  Will many Central Americans now stay in Mexico?

"Migration puts people in a very serious situation of vulnerability," Calderon said. "It puts them in humiliating conditions, exposed to every kind of abuse."  Not only has the journey across Mexico become more dangerous for migrants, it has also become more expensive — and wildly lucrative for those controlling the routes and arranging the kidnappings and extortions.

Nearly 500,000 people from Central America and beyond traverse Mexico each year en route to the U.S., according to the Mexican government human rights office.

The American 2010 Decennial Census counted 50.5 million Hispanics.  The census shows large numbers of Central Americans are coming over the border.

Among them, 31.8 million, or 63%, are of Mexican origin. They are followed by Puerto Rican-origin Hispanics, who number 4.6 million, or 9.2%, of all U.S. Hispanics. Next are Cubans at 1.8 million or 3.5%, Salvadorans at 1.6 million or 3.3%, Dominicans at 1.4 million or 2.8%, Guatemalans at one million or 2.1% and Colombians at 909,000 or 1.8%.

• Salvadoran-origin population grew by 152% since 2000.
• The Dominican population grew by 85%.
• The Guatemalan population by 180%.
• The Colombian population by 93%.
• The Cuban and Puerto Rican populations grow more slowly -- 44% and 36% respectively.
• The Mexican-origin population grew by 54%.

Criminals regularly target thousands of migrants passing through Mexico, Amnesty International said in a statement Wednesday, noting that immigrants "face a variety of serious abuses from organized criminal gangs, including kidnappings, threats and assaults."

In August, authorities found the bodies of 72 slain immigrants from Central and South America on an abandoned ranch near the Mexico-U.S. border.

At least 11,333 migrants were kidnapped in the six-month period from April through September 2010, according to an investigation by Mexico's National Commission for Human Rights.  A map of high-risk areas for immigrants in the commission's February report highlights areas across the country along the unofficial path known as "the migrant's route."

Mexico no longer has a nationwide passenger rail system, but thousands of immigrants hitch rides on freight trains heading north. They huddle on rooftops and cram into spare spaces between cars.

As reports of drug-gang raids and kidnappings become increasingly common, many call it "the train of death." But they say the journey is worth the risk.

"As I tell my friends, we're all going to die one way or another," said Carlos, an immigrant from El Salvador who stopped at a shelter in central Mexico this week. "The thing is, we have to face reality. Because they tell you so many things about what's happening up there, but the need is very great, and with the help of God nothing is impossible."

Others said threats at home are far worse.

"In our countries, the situation is very hard. They're killing for 200 quetzales (about $25), and one can no longer have a business, have a bus, a truck, because if you don't pay the taxes, they attack, and this is the motivation of all the Central Americans who are trying to reach the United States," Guatemalan immigrant Eddie Marroqui said.

Many from Central America have paid $7,000 each for passage to the United States, authorities said.

"It points to how profitable these operations are for the organized syndicates that move people for profit. And it also points to the need for governments to really target that crime in their legislation," said Demetrios Papademetriou, president of the Migration Policy Institute in Washington.

"We (Mexico) are still chasing immigrants as though they are a threat. We are a racist country," said Perseo Quiroz of Sin Fronteras, the Mexican immigrant-rights organization.

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