GOP Tough Guys Call for War on Mexico
“Poor Mexico, so far from God, so close to the United States.”
I spotted a mention in social media about the Mexican government installing a piece of the Berlin Wall in Tijuana, just a stone's throw from the US Border Wall. The donor originally tried to gift his piece of history to former President Trump, but was rebuffed.
Via ABC News
The 3-ton pockmarked, gray concrete slab sits between a bullring, a lighthouse and the border wall, which extends into the Pacific Ocean.
“May this be a lesson to build a society that knocks down walls and builds bridges,” reads the inscription below the towering Cold War relic, attributed to Tijuana Mayor Montserrat Caballero and titled, “A World Without Walls.”
For Caballero, like many of Tijuana's 2 million residents, the U.S. wall is personal and political, a part of the city's fabric and a fact of life. She considers herself a migrant, having moved from the southern Mexico city of Oaxaca when she was 2 with her mother, who fled "the vicious cycle of poverty, physical abuse and illiteracy.”
The best part of this installation from the Mexican point of view is that it worked. Check out this quote from the big kahuna at Gateway Pundit, a prime source of right wing commentary and misinformation.
What a punch to the gut of every law-abiding citizen in this country!
Mexican officials mounted a piece of the Berlin Wall next to the US border in Tijuana, Mexico.
The base of their monument reads, “May this be a lesson to build a society that knocks down walls and builds bridges.”
They mock our nationhood. They mock our sovereignty.
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There’s mucho bad sh*t going on between the US and Mexico. Here’s what’s going on, from bad to terrible.
The New York Times published a big reveal on the kidnapping and murder of 43 college students from Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College students in Mexico in 2014.
For the longest time, blame for this crime rotated among various cartels, local police, and the military. If you picked any of these three entities, congratulations, you were one third right.
A vast trove of about 23,000 unpublished text messages, witness testimony and investigative files obtained by The New York Times point to an answer: Just about every arm of government in that part of southern Mexico had been secretly working for the criminal group for months, putting the machinery of the state in the cartel’s hands and flattening any obstacle that got in its way.
The police commanders whose officers snatched many of the students that night in 2014 had been taking direct orders from the drug traffickers, the text messages show. One of the commanders gave guns to cartel members, while another hunted down their rivals on command.
The military, which closely monitored the abduction but never came to the students’ aid, had been showered with cartel bribes, too. In the text messages, which were caught on wiretaps, traffickers and their collaborators griped about the soldiers’ endless greed, calling them “whores” whom they had “in the bag.”
Up until now there was no way of determining the motive for this slaughter. Now we know; it was a case of mistaken identity fueled by paranoia.
Cartel lookouts, seeing buses full of unknown young people driving in town, tipped off the leadership, which was on a heightened state of alert, fearing a takeover attempt by a competing criminal organization.
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Texas Gov. Abbott has gone above and beyond for the right wing’s quest to demonize migrants and protest President Biden’s immigration policies.
Eleven buses, carrying 435 migrants, many of whom were recruited under false pretenses, have been sent to Los Angeles, courtesy of the State of Texas. Los Angeles has been smart; migrants are greeted by social service workers and nonprofit groups that administer Covid tests, provide clothing, food and showers and help them contact relatives who live in the region.
A busload arrived just as emergency preparations for Tropical Storm Haley were underway, and Angelenos took offense. Now there is sentiment to sue the state of Texas… or get the Justice Department to investigate.
I’m thinking that Gov. Abbott and his minions don’t care one way or not about legal ramifications. He’s got the State National Guard watching over the underwater barbed wires attached to floatation devices. Individual guardsmen have reported receiving orders have been given not to render assistance to children caught up in these traps.
Members of the Texas Guard have blown the whistle on an unlawful intelligence gathering operation.
From the Army Times:
An investigation by Military Times and The Texas Tribune has found that Texas National Guard leaders disbanded Operation Lone Star’s intelligence wing after whistleblowers reported the WhatsApp surveillance, which targeted migrant groups to track them through Mexico, because they believed it violated long-standing rules against state-run spy operations. During the same period, another team from the intelligence directorate allegedly sent classified FBI intelligence to their Texas Guard colleagues in an apparent violation of federal secrecy laws, according to an internal incident report.
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There were the makings of an international incident last week as a National Guardsman fired across the border, wounding a 37 year old civilian in Ciudad Juarez. The Consulate General of Mexico in El Paso met with senior officials from the Texas Department of Public Safety, who assured them the service member had been placed on administrative leave while an investigation took place.
From the Texas Tribune:
It’s the second time that a Texas National Guard member has shot a civilian while deployed for Operation Lone Star, and the third known time that a soldier has fired their weapon while on duty at the border.
On Jan. 13, Spc. Angel Gallegos shot migrant Ricardo Rodriguez Nieto in the shoulder near Mission in the Rio Grande Valley. The soldier claimed he accidentally fired his service handgun while wrestling with Rodriguez Nieto, who denied touching Gallegos and said the shot was fired from the kitchen into the living room of an abandoned home. Other migrants who witnessed the shooting echoed Rodriguez Nieto’s version of events when interviewed by Texas Rangers.
According to documents provided through an open records request, the Hidalgo County District Attorney declined to present the case to a grand jury, citing insufficient evidence and unclear jurisdiction.
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Finally, there is the prospect of acts of war or even an invasion of Mexico. A bunch of feeble-minded folk still believe the war on drugs means storming over our Southern border. Mexicans, having been invaded no less than 10 times by the US since 1806, can’t be expected to greet our military forces with open arms.
Nearly all of the Republican candidates for president say they want to up the ante at the US-Mexico border. Whether it’s Navy Seals raiding narco factories, drones bombing targets, or just a plain old invasion, they want it, and they want it now!
Up on Capitol Hill, the same people who are proud of their plans to shut down the government this year, are hoping to enable Dear Leader (or someone like him) as soon as they take the oath of office.
Via the International Crisis Group, based in Britain.
At the centre of the martial posturing in Congress is a draft law floated in the U.S. House of Representatives. In early 2023, Congressmen Dan Crenshaw and Mike Waltz, two Republicans from Texas and Florida, respectively, introduced the “AUMF [Authorisation for the Use of Military Force] Cartel Influence Resolution”.
In language echoing the expansive 2001 authorisation for use of military force in response to the 11 September 2001 attacks, the legislation would empower the president to use “all necessary and appropriate force” against those “foreign nations, foreign organizations or foreign persons affiliated with foreign organizations” that the president determines have committed specified drug-related offences or used violence to control territory for illicit means.
On the other side of the aisle, House members Jesús “Chuy” García of Illinois; Joaquin Castro of Texas; and Nydia Velázquez of New York have introduced a measure barring a U.S. president from unilaterally taking military action against the Mexico as an amendment to the 2024 Department of Defense appropriations bill.
Acts of war against Mexico would constitute a hemispheric crisis, starting with US dependence for things as diverse as produce and computer chips should the border be closed. Mexico is now America's largest trading partner; both nation’s economies would suffer immeasurably.
The 1.6 million Americans living in Mexico could potentially become targets for terrorism or retaliation by drug cartels. On our side of the border, we could see racist and vigilante violence against Mexican-Americans
One possibility our riled up brave boys and girls in Congress haven’t likely considered would be the drug cartels bringing the war into the US. One insight into where this might happen can be realized by comparing crime rates in the cities flanking both sides of the border.
Many US Border cities are among the safest in the country in contrast to their counterparts just across the border. Tijuana, just a few miles from where I’m sitting now, has the highest rate of homicides in Mexico.
The Mayor of TJ and her nine-year-old son live in a military barracks as a deterrent to being assassinated, as a consequence from police raids leading to confiscation of 1700 guns (almost certainly made in the USA) from a criminal gang.
Most of the homicides in Mexican border cities are connected to cartels involved in the drug trade. Typically, northward bound drugs like fentanyl are smuggled over the border by US citizens thru regular ports of entry.
It doesn’t take a genius to realize drug cartels seek to minimize their violent activities along the US side of drug smuggling routes (mainly highways). Business is business, and drug lords don’t need the grief that comes from extra focus on easy access distribution channels.
“Closing the border,” a popular fantasy on the right, would actually enable terrorism violence in the US. Building walls and stationing GIs along the border won’t stop the flow of drugs and/or the infiltration of bad guys. There will be those seeking to retaliate against the inevitable acts of cruelty occurring in their country.
Reaper Drones Over Houston, a Substack essay by Krulak, starts off with portraying an imaginary situation set in 2026 South Carolina, filled with snippets of things that have actually happened in other settings.
The Cactus Lounge Massacre marked one of the darkest turning points in the war. A mere dozen miles from Marine Corp Recruit Depot Parris Island a group of a dozen gunmen opened fire killing 8 and wounding 12 more almost instantly, several patrons and staff fled the restaurant as the gunmen opened fire killing or wounding 6 more, but 16 escaped into the surrounding woods and waterways. The gunmen then worked fast, barking orders in unaccented American English, detaining the survivors and executing those too wounded to move, they would be the lucky ones.
Kidnappings had become relatively common as the Cartels needed prisoners to exchange or ransoms to fund themselves… Security footage would later show some marines admonishing each other not to resist for fear of danger to the female recruits amongst them (this footage would remain Classified through 2042 and would stir controversy even in the 2040s… though as many commentators pointed out, in light of the “Gun-Free Zones” recently implemented 25 miles around military bases, there was little they could do). In total 14 civilians, Marines, and Naval staff were loaded into unmarked windowless vans, and driven away. None would survive.
5 days later 13 bodies were found Strung up from bridges in West Virginia, Florida, and Tennessee. Each showed signs of torture, the women showing signs of the worst sexual abuse before being shot, and the men covered in hammer blows having finally died of brain trauma and fractured skulls.
Serious people across the ideological spectrum have tried to warn of the consequences of pursuing a military strategy against the cartels in Mexico.
Via Counterpunch:
The Miami Herald observes that “Mexico would most likely respond to a U.S. military strike by expelling the DEA and other U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies operating in the country. That would result in an increase in fentanyl smuggling across the border.”
The American Prospect points out that “Even a single drone attack would seem highly likely to end up in a direct confrontation with the Mexican military.” Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said during a press conference that Mexico was “not going to permit any foreign government to intervene in our territory, much less that a government’s armed forces intervene.”
Mexicans remember past US military incursions. The US invaded Mexico in 1846, in what Mexicans call la intervención norteamericana, known in the US as the Mexican War. Mexicans suffered the humiliation of having their capital, Mexico City, occupied by US troops. When the war was over, the US walked off with half of Mexico’s territory. If you live in California, the American West or Southwest, chances are good that you are living in what used to be Mexico. The humiliation of that time will come flooding back into Mexican hearts the moment a US soldier steps across the border. Mexicans know US imperialism when they see it.
At Reason, the subject is covered in Republicans' Dangerous Plans to Turn the War on Drugs into a Real War by Attacking Mexico
If, like most libertarians, you oppose the War on Drugs as a whole, you obviously have reason to oppose this massive potential escalation. But even if you take a more favorable view of drug prohibition, you would do well to draw the line at turning the metaphorical war into a real one.
The present decades-long War on Drugs is already a horrific disaster. It kills and imprisons large numbers of people in both the US and abroad, while stimulating organized crime, and doing little to curb harmful addiction. It's a massive infringement on liberty and bodily autonomy. The "war" has also severely undermined both individual constitutional rights and structural constitutional limits on federal power.
The current fentanyl crisis—used as a justification for attacking Mexico and other drastic measures—is itself largely a result of the War on Drugs, a predictable consequence of the "Iron Law" of prohibition, under which banning markets incentivizes dealers and users to turn to harder, more potent drugs.
Some of the best analysis I’ve found was by Gene Lyons in the Chicago Sun-Times:
Indeed, I’ve never met a Mexican who believes that country’s government has either the will or the ability to eradicate drug smuggling as long as we Yanquis keep buying the stuff. Not even Roberto Montenegro, the courageous Mexican reporter who arranged my helicopter ride and who was murdered on the cathedral square in Culiacán a couple of months after I left.
This, too, as Frum astringently points out: Mexicans do have a democracy, and they do get to vote. What’s more, they know a whole lot more about us than we know about them, and most feel that we’ve corrupted them more than the other way around. No Mexican politician can afford to be seen as countenancing a U.S. insult to that country’s sovereignty.
“Mexicans are dying,” Frum points out, “because of American drug purchases. Mexico has about one-third the population of the United States but four times the homicide rate.” Most are dying in gang wars over market share. “Does Mexico do too little to halt the flow of opioids northward? The United States does nothing to halt the flow of guns southward.”
Every Mexican citizen knows this proverb: “Poor Mexico, so far from God, so close to the United States.”
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News Items From the Monday News Bureau
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Talk Louder About Defunding the Police By Hamilton Nolan at The Way Things Work. Eds Note: the smartest essay on the topic I’ve ever seen. Read the entire thing. And then go look in the mirror–ahem, Todd Gloria.
This is a case in which all of the street protests we can muster, including the biggest ones in our nation’s history, have been no match for the rote path of the public discourse, which leads always back to a set of conventional wisdom that everyone is too afraid to admit has failed. There is an opportunity for you to be a part of the solution to this. It’s a simple but important move: Talk about the issues. Talk about the substance of what is happening. Talk about the actual policy changes that we could try and what tangible changes in the world would result.
Do not—do not!—fall into the trap of trying to sound like some sort of worn out political consultant by focusing all of your discussion on your personal analysis of the rhetorical value of a slogan. As soon as you start saying “I agree with the goals, but ‘Defund the police’ is a really bad slogan…” you are steering the conversation away from where it needs to be. If you find yourself falling into this trap, ask yourself: How much time have I spent today talking about the underlying structural causes of poverty and deprivation and economic inequality that form the ingredients for crime? How much time have I spent today honoring all of those people murdered by police by talking about the real reasons why those injustices happened? How much time have I spent today gently telling my neighbor, who is scared of imaginary rioters, about the centuries of US history that produced the woeful inequalities of today, and how we might remedy some of that inequality with enlightened policies like hiring some social workers instead of buying the Sheriff’s department a new helicopter? Have I put in my hours today making the discourse better? Or am I lazily floating into Shitty Meet The Press pundit territory, even though I am not paid for it?
Critiquing a slogan without doing anything to bring about the justice that the slogan seeks is a cowardly move. If you think “Defund the police” is a good goal but a bad slogan, then go and get your city to reallocate funds from policing into social services and then come back to the discourse and spread the good word about how that worked. Until then, let’s focus on the important things and not the unimportant things. Another election is coming, and the Republicans and the Democrats and the financial markets and the police contracting companies all agree on one thing: We are going to keep funding the cops more and more even though a century of history tells us it makes no sense. If you think that is dumb, you’re right. Please talk about why it is dumb with your elected officials. Thank you.
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The Real Crime Isn’t Shoplifting—It’s Wage Theft by Jason Linkins at The New Republic
Unlike shoplifting, this is not a penny-ante crime, and it’s carried out every day with the ruthless efficiency of the boardroom. An L.A. Times column of a more recent vintage, courtesy of Michael Hiltzik, tells a fuller story. He enumerates many ways in which employers pull their own coordinated smash-and-grab jobs on their employees’ paychecks: “They may pay workers less than the legal minimum wage, fail to pay overtime, deny workers legal meal breaks or rest periods, divert workers’ tips, or require them to work off-the-clock to prepare for their shifts or to perform duties after their shifts have ended.”
And those are some decidedly old-school techniques. The “one neat trick” to screwing workers in today’s gig economy is simply to misclassify them as independent contractors, “thus sticking the workers with expenses that would be covered for employees.” All in all, the true cost of wage theft amounts to something substantially north of chump change: A 2017 study from the Economic Policy Institute “estimated that low-wage workers lose more than $50 billion annually to wage theft.”
Moreover, a 2021 study from the Center for Public Integrity found that while firms that “hire child care workers, gas station clerks, restaurant servers and security guards are among the businesses most likely to get caught cheating their employees,” wage theft is a way of life at “many major U.S. corporations.” One such scofflaw that gets top billing in Hiltzik’s column is Home Depot, which in June settled a class-action lawsuit over wage theft to the tune of $72.5 million. That the firm’s former CEO Bob Nardelli was recently on Fox Business hyping up the threat of shoplifting is enough to make a cynic wonder: Is he fomenting public fear over an urban legend to distract from the real thieving?
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Californians can now carry driver’s licenses on their phone as part of pilot program Via The Los Angeles Times
Residents can download the CA DMV Wallet app on their smartphone and follow the instructions to scan their driver’s license, or ID. The mobile driver’s license program is in a pilot phase, limiting participation to 1.5 million people, according to the California Department of Motor Vehicles.
Several airports, including Los Angeles International Airport, accept mobile licenses as a form of identification. But users should still carry their physical driver’s license — law enforcement, state government agencies and businesses are not yet accepting the mobile licenses.
I can't get over what an incredibly stupid idea it is to even consider invading Mexico. First of all, not every citizen if that country is a drug dealer or a member of drug-dealing cartel. A lot of innocent people could be killed. Secondly, drug trafficking within Mexico is Mexico's problem, not ours. Thirdly, we can legitimately go after drug traffickers once they are in the USA or in in our coastal waters. Fourthly, I sincerely doubt that the only country trafficking drugs into the USA is Mexico.