Here is the full Mexico: Country Reports on Human Rights Practices - 2007
Released by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor
March 11, 2008

The report underscores why Plan Mexico is a terrible idea and should be rejected. Not only is the $1.4 billion price tag exorbitant at a time of record deficits. Not only is the violence already unleashed by the military interdiction model being pursued by the Mexican President Calderon just a taste of what is to come as decapitated drug cartels fight for dominance and as more military units defect to the cartels which happen to offer a higher pay grade.

This Bush security initiative would be horrible - and has already been rejected by the United Steelworkers, Global Exchange, Friends of Brad Will, Witness for Peace and Laura Carlsen the Americas Programs Director for Center for International Policy, because it would reward the impunity with which Mexican government security forces abuse the human rights of Mexicans at a time when an unpopular Mexican President is trying to push through unpopular economic (NAFTA +) and security (the SPP or Security and Prosperity Partnership) policies.

And Mexicans are organizing in huge numbers and are threatened by the militarization of Mexican society proposed through Plan Mexico.

Here below are some choice sections of the U.S. State Department’s findings. (more…)

Harry Bubbins, Communications Director of FoBW meets with Naomi Klein, author of Shock Doctrine, at the private gathering to raise money for The Indypendent newspaper.

Harry Bubbins, Jeremy Scahill - author of Blackwater, the Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army, and Joel Kupferman of the National Lawyers Guild.

We shared information about Plan Mexico and the potential use of Blackwater mercenaries in Mexico as part of efforts to entrench unpopular neoliberal policies. Over the last few years such policies have come under increasing pressure by the multitude not benefiting from it. Plan Mexico anticipates more activists opposed to NAFTA + and the SPP and provides the Mexican Calderon Administration with the ability to crush them.

On March 7, 2008, FoBW attended a strategy meeting in D.C. with some of our allies.

[See more pics here.]

The purpose of the “Strategy Meeting on NAFTA and the SPP” was to “establish a coordinated plan of action to Strengthen and broaden the trinational network of organizations working for fair and democratic trade policies and against NAFTA (and like-minded policies) and its expansion through mechanisms like the SPP.”

Here is a description of the SPP (Security and Prosperity Partnership) and here its connection to Plan Mexico.
(more…)

There was much interesting discussion, sharing of perspectives and strategy.

We broke out into working groups and reported back to the whole.

Some participants: group picture.

These can be discussed at your next Friends of Brad Will meetings across the country and/or just carried out as your local groups see fit (feel free to contact FoBW folks in NYS and California to coordinate/strengthen efforts):

1. Organize to participate in an SPP (Plan Mexico) Counter-summit in New Orleans for the time around April 21-22nd.

2. Sign-on statements for organizations to express opposition to Plan Mexico and SPP and then provide to press/representatives.

3. Resolutions by municipal - city or state - governments.

4. Initiate a referendum/vote on Plan Mexico/SPP.

5. A call-in day to Congress/Parliament(s).

6. Set up individual meetings with Congress/Parliamentary representatives or their staffers.

7. Candidates questionnaires: circulate/request answers to questions by McCain, Obama, Clinton campaigns re. trade/security/human rights and publicize results.

8. Your ideas here.

Building Bridges:Plan Mexico; Puerto Rico Teachers’ Strike; Ruby Dee on The
Emmy By Ken Nash and Mimi Rosenberg

Bush’s Plan Mexico Is Planned Repression
with Laura Carlsen, Director, the Americas Program,
Center for International Policy

LISTEN TO (and download) AUDIO here

WBAI Radio’s Building Bridges: Your Community & Labor Report
Produced & Hosted by Mimi Rosenberg & Ken Nash
Monday, March 3, 2008, 7 - 8 p.m. EST, over 99.5 FM
or streaming live at http://www.wbai.org
***********************************************

Bush’s Plan Mexico Is Planned Repression
with Laura Carlsen, Director, the Americas Program,
Center for International Policy

President Bush announced a $500 million per year security cooperation
plan with Mexico, the Merida Initiative or Plan Mexico. It proclaimed its
targets to be narcotics trafficking, counter-terrorism, border security, and
the administration of justice. But, it is increasingly being used to
militarize the Mexican state to counter grassroots organizing and protest from
Oaxaca to Chiapas and throughout Mexico.

http://nyc.indymedia.org/en/2008/03/95182.html
(more…)