Mexico’s instability, drug wars, et. al.

[Edward Campbell]

And now courtesy the only person left alive who still stupid enough to believe that the 9/11 terrorists came through Canada, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/us-eyes-fencing-along-canadian-border/article2184300/

U.S. eyes fencing along Canadian border

JIM BRONSKILL OTTAWA
The Canadian Press

Published Thursday, Sep. 29, 2011

The United States is looking at building fences along the border with Canada to help keep out terrorists and other criminals.

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency has proposed the use of “fencing and other barriers” on the 49th parallel to manage “trouble spots where passage of cross-border violators is difficult to control.”

A 2008 file photo shows American contractors building a new fence along the U.S. border with Mexico near Tijuana.
Peter Power/The Globe and Mail

The border service is also pondering options including a beefed-up technological presence through increased use of radar, sensors, cameras, drones and vehicle scanners. In addition, it might continue to improve or expand customs facilities at ports of entry.

The agency considered but ruled out the possibility of hiring “significantly more” U.S. Border Patrol agents to increase the rate of inspections, noting staffing has already risen in recent years.

The proposals are spelled out in a new draft report by the border service that examines the possible environmental impact of the various options over the next five to seven years.

Customs and Border Protection is inviting comment on the options and plans a series of public meetings in Washington and several U.S. border communities next month. It will then decide which ideas to pursue.

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano noted last month the challenges of monitoring the vast, sparsely populated northern border region. She stressed manpower, but also a greater reliance on technology.

Ironically, the moves come as Canada and the U.S. try to finalize a perimeter security arrangement that would focus on continental defences while easing border congestion. It would be aimed at speeding passage of goods and people across the Canada-U.S. border, which has become something of a bottleneck since the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Relatively speaking, Washington has focused more energy and resources on tightening security along the border with Mexico than at the sprawling one with Canada.

But that may be changing.

A U.S. Government Accountability Office report recently warned that only a small portion of the border with Canada is properly secure. It said U.S. border officers control just 50 kilometres of the 6,400-kilometre boundary.

The Customs and Border Protection report says while fences have been a big element in deterring unauthorized crossings of the U.S.-Mexican border, “it is unlikely that fencing will play as prominent a role” on the northern border, given its length and terrain that varies from prairie to forest.

However, the agency would use fencing and other barriers such as trenches to control movement and sometimes delay people trying to sneak across the border, increasing the likelihood they could be caught, says the report.

It doesn’t provide details about what the fences might look like, but suggests they would be designed to blend into the environment and “complement the natural landscape.”

The approach would also involve upgrading roadways and trails near the border.

“The lack of roads or presence of unmaintained roads impedes efficient surveillance operations,” says the report. “Improving or expanding the roadway and trail networks could improve mobility, allowing agents to patrol more miles each day and shortening response times.”

Over the last two years, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has already made what it calls “critical security improvements along the northern border,” adding inspectors at the ports of entry and Border Patrol agents between ports, as well as modernizing land crossings.

Nearly 3,800 Customs and Border Protection officers scrutinize people and goods at crossings. The number of Border Patrol agents working between crossings along the northern parallel has increased 700 per cent since Sept. 11, 2001. And some three dozen land ports of entry are being modernized.

Unmanned U.S. aircraft patrol about 1,500 kilometres along the northern border from Washington to Minnesota as well as more than 300 kilometres of the Canadian border around New York state and Lake Ontario.

This is nothing but pandering to the Hispanic voters in the US Southwest - "see," Ms. Napolitano says, "we are not singling out Mexico for border security, the Canadians are just as dangerous to our security."

The whole idea of Homeland Security was a bad joke when George W Bush put it together, now it devolved into farce - making the American homeland less secure.

 

[Rifleman62]

Take a million or two of the unemployed, borrow a couple or three trillion dollars and fence the whole 6,400-kilometre boundary.

Building the infrastructure, the support and the actual construction should take at least five years, say starting the project in 2012.

Machinery manufacturers, home builders, steel workers, laborers, managers will all be happy. Money will flow, the economy will improve.

Only employ union members, buy American only.

Obama: There, I saved you.

 

[Container]

Youd be surprised how many Americans believe the hijackers came in through Canada. I find myself constantly correcting and family and their friends.

Say a lie enough I guess.

 

[GAP]

Take a million or two of the unemployed, borrow a couple or three trillion dollars and fence the whole 6,400-kilometre boundary.

Building the infrastructure, the support and the actual construction should take at least five years, say starting the project in 2012.

Machinery manufacturers, home builders, steel workers, laborers, managers will all be happy. Money will flow, the economy will improve.

Only employ union members, buy American only.

Obama: There, I saved you.

I don't find myself getting all upset about the US wanting to fence everybody out.....they've gotten progressively protectionist/paranoid in the last 20-25 years......to the point that 1984 is coming true....bit by bit..

wanna fence it off....knock your socks off....legal trade is going through the border crossings anyway.....

but in the meantime....Canada needs to explore other markets...eg: Asia...not so much Europe......we've been lazy because trading with the US has been easy and close...

:2c:

 

[The Bread Guy]

This is nothing but pandering to the Hispanic voters in the US Southwest - "see," Ms. Napolitano says, "we are not singling out Mexico for border security, the Canadians are just as dangerous to our security."

With the fire fueled by some border state politicians.....

With the U.S.-Canada border under sudden intense scrutiny in the United States, a handful of American senators placed it under an ever-harsher spotlight Thursday by asking for the military’s help in patrolling the expansive boundary.

Democratic senators from states located near or along the 6,400-kilometre border are asking the U.S. Department of Defense to provide military radar in an effort to nab drug traffickers who use low-flying aircraft to move their product from Canada into the United States.

New York Sen. Charles Schumer is leading the charge and sent a letter Thursday to Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to formally request help.

Schumer says statistics from media reports and Homeland Security show that drug smuggling from Canada into the U.S. is on a dramatic upswing. According to a region-by-region report he released, border seizures of marijuana increased by 22 per cent from 2007 to 2009.

From 2004 to 2009, seizures of ecstasy increased sixfold, to more than two million doses. Heroin and cocaine seizures have also significantly increased in the past few years.

Schumer was joined in his request by fellow New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Jon Tester of Montana and Herb Kohl of Wisconsin.

“Given what is at stake in combating illegal cross-border activity, and given its past success, (we) write to ask your agencies to co-ordinate in determining whether there are any available military technological assets anywhere around the world that can be more effectively deployed along our northern border to combat drug smuggling,” the senators wrote in the letter ....

 

[Oldgateboatdriver]

Take a million or two of the unemployed, borrow a couple or three trillion dollars and fence the whole 6,400-kilometre boundary.

Building the infrastructure, the support and the actual construction should take at least five years, say starting the project in 2012.

Machinery manufacturers, home builders, steel workers, laborers, managers will all be happy. Money will flow, the economy will improve.

Only employ union members, buy American only.

Obama: There, I saved you.

You don't need that much: In my younger days around the farm, we use to be able to string about 500 feet of cow fence ad day with just three of us and a tractor. That's a mile every two weeks. 6,400 Km = 4,000 miles, so divide by  23 times two work weeks in a year (we're giving ourselves four weeks vacation) and basically, 175 teams of three can do the job.

OOPS! I missed the last sentence: It's going to be done by unionized personnel. Forget I talked.

By the way ERC, how did you get hold of Napoloitano's official Homeland Security picture ???

 

[Fishbone Jones]

The communists put up walls in Europe between themselves and free countries, why wouldn't they do the same between the States and the free NA countries either side of them?

 

[Colin Parkinson]

Well when you consider the lead up to the 1812 war, the states butting up to Canada were not interested in warring with their best customer at all, it was all driven by other states.

 

[Old Sweat]

A few years ago my wife and I were in the lower Rio Grande valley for a month in the winter. We took a boat tour on the Rio Grande. This was a high illegal crossing area and a fence had been authorized. It was a fiasco, partly because the EPA would not allow it to be put along the river bank for environmental reasons. Instead it was several hundred metres in land and the illegals just made their way past it unobserved.

 

[a_majoor]

More on the complicity of the Administration:

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/furious_revelation_OhK6TBqPlEpRglHjsSbiBI#ixzz1ZKCGnptv

A 'Furious' revelation
Feds sold guns to drug gangs

Last Updated: 5:10 AM, September 29, 2011

Posted: 10:24 PM, September 28, 2011

This just might be the smoking gun we’ve been waiting for to break the festering “Fast and Furious” gun-running scandal wide open: the Department of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives apparently ordered one of its own agents to purchase firearms with taxpayer money, and sell them directly to a Mexican drug cartel.

Let that sink in: After months of pretending that “Fast and Furious” was a botched surveillance operation of illegal gun-running spearheaded by the ATF and the US attorney’s office in Phoenix, it turns out that the government itself was selling guns to the bad guys.

Agent John Dodson was ordered to buy four Draco pistols for cash and even got a letter from his supervisor, David Voth, authorizing a federally licensed gun dealer to sell him the guns without bothering about the necessary paperwork.

“Please accept this letter in lieu of completing an ATF Form 4473 for the purchase of four (4) CAI, Model Draco, 7.62x39 mm pistols, by Special Agent John Dodson,” read the June 1, 2010, letter. “These aforementioned pistols will be used by Special Agent Dodson in furtherance of performance of his official duties.”

On orders, Dodson then sold the guns to known criminals, who first stashed them away and then -- deliberately unhindered by the ATF or any other agency -- whisked them off to Mexico.

People were killed with Fast and Furious weapons, including at least two American agents and hundreds of Mexicans. And the taxpayers picked up the bill.

So where’s the outrage?

There’s none from the feds. Attorney General Eric Holder has consistently stonewalled Rep. Darrell Issa, Sen. Chuck Grassley and other congressional investigators.

In a constantly evolving set of lies, Holder has denied knowing anything about Fast and Furious while at the same time withholding documents from the House and Senate committees looking into the mess while muzzling some witnesses and transferring others.

Justice calls the allegations about Dodson’s operation “false.” But Grassley says that’s “a lie,” as he told Greta van Susteren the other day. “The ATF ordered this ATF agent to purchase these guns and in turn sell them, and supposedly track them,” he said. “But he was a lone wolf in the operation -- they wouldn’t give him any help for 24-hour surveillance.”

So now the wheels have come off the official explanation for Fast and Furious. Of course, that explanation never made much sense in the first place.

For one thing, the ATF had no authority to track the guns once they were in Mexico; for another, nobody bothered to inform the Mexicans of this intrusion on their national sovereignty.

Further, we now know that a host of federal agencies (including the ATF, the FBI and IRS, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Drug Enforcement Administration and, very probably, top officials at the Department of Homeland Security) were all in the loop at various levels, as was the White House.

So calling “Fast and Furious” a cockamamie operation gone wrong just isn’t going to cut it anymore.

There are two possible explanations. The first is that the anti-gun Obama administration deliberately wanted American guns planted in Mexico in order to demonize American firearms dealers and gun owners. The operation was manufacturing “evidence” for the president’s false claim that we’re to blame for the appalling levels of Mexican drug-war violence.

If this is true, then Holder & Co. have got to go -- and the trail needs to be followed no matter where it leads. For the federal government to seek to frame its own citizens is unconscionable.

A second notion is that the CIA was behind the whole thing, which accounts for all the desperate wagon-circling. Under this theory, the Agency feared the los Zetas drug cartel was becoming too powerful and might even mount a coup against the Mexican government. So some 2,000 weapons costing more than $1.25 million were deliberately channeled to the rival Sinaloa cartel, which operates along the American border, to keep the Zetas in check.

Of course, there’s a third explanation -- that both scenarios are true, and that those in charge of Fast and Furious saw an opportunity to shoot two birds with one Romanian-made AK Draco pistol.

Time for a special prosecutor, who’s both fast and furious.

Michael Walsh’s new spy thriller, “Shock Warning,” hits stores this week.

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/furious_revelation_OhK6TBqPlEpRglHjsSbiBI#ixzz1ZNxoPatV

 

[Edward Campbell]

Now, here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail is a Canada/US border initiative I do support:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/americas/canada-us-border-patrolling-aircraft-hunt-bad-people-doing-bad-things/article2185795/

Canada-U.S. border-patrolling aircraft hunt ‘bad people doing bad things’

PAUL KORING
GRAND FORKS, N.D.— From Friday's Globe and Mail

Last updated Friday, Sep. 30, 2011

The unmanned planes look north toward the long, lightly defended and admittedly porous Canada-U.S. border – the best route many Americans believe for jihadists seeking to attack the United States to sneak across.

Like their missile-carrying military cousins prowling Pakistan’s skies targeting al-Qaeda suspects, the unarmed Predator aircraft that have patrolled the 49th parallel since 2009 are high-tech, sophisticated and little understood. And they are part of the same diffuse and determined effort the Unites States is making to secure its borders and defend itself.

he unmanned planes look north toward the long, lightly defended and admittedly porous Canada-U.S. border –
the best route many Americans believe for jihadists seeking to attack the United States to sneak across.
Like their missile-carrying military cousins prowling Pakistan’s skies targeting al-Qaeda suspects, the unarmed
Predator aircraft that have patrolled the 49th parallel since 2009 are high-tech, sophisticated and little
understood. And they are part of the same diffuse and determined effort the Unites States is making to
secure its borders and defend itself.

“We’re here to protect the nation from bad people doing bad things,” says John Priddy, U.S. National Air Security Operations director for the Customs and Border Protection’s Office of Air and Marine. He heads the Predator operation guarding American’s northern airspace.

“This is the equivalent of the Cold War in terms of a new type of vigilance,” says Mr. Priddy, who has flown everything from Boeing 747 cargo jets to Apache helicopters.

No one says “terrorism,” but no one has to. On Mr. Priddy’s office wall, there’s a fading photograph of the burned-out tail of a Pam Am Boeing 747 after it was blown up by Palestinian hijackers in Cairo in 1970. The pilot of that flight was his father, also named John Priddy.

Now, with a team of a few dozen, this John Priddy is running a futuristic – and slightly unsettling – surveillance system, a test program with only two planes operating in a relatively small zone that could grow into a fleet of unmanned aircraft watching the border day and night in all weather.

In an effort to demystify the unmanned aerial surveillance along 1,500 kilometres of the Canada-U.S. border, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security invited The Globe and Mail to visit its National Air Security Operations base in Grand Forks, N.D. There, a pair of Predators are prowling America’s northern frontier, providing protection without, the department insists, infringing on the privacy of Canadians on the other side of the border.

Eyes in the skies

On the ground, the Predator-B looks like a giant, ungainly carbon-fibre insect with a flattened hammerhead where a cockpit would usually be found. It sports a spindly undercarriage, long elegant wings and a propeller behind a V-shaped tail. Once aloft, it disappears, the sound of its single powerful engine fading even faster than the blue-grey fuselage melds with the sky. Within seconds it is gone, yet its powerful cameras and radar can peer down, beaming detailed surveillance images taken from many kilometres away.

To illustrate just how detailed and undetectable the Predators can be, Mr. Priddy described how staff watched a car stop briefly on one of the many rural roads that run parallel to the border. A handful of men got out, oblivious to the Predator circling perhaps five kilometres up. These men, like others before them, were Somalis, heading north, trying to sneak into Canada, Mr. Priddy said. The RCMP was alerted.

The full range of the planes’ capabilities is still being explored. Last spring, for instance, during the devastating floods along the Red and Souris rivers, the Predators provided real-time video of water-ravaged areas, and flew all the way up the Mississippi. Ice buildup threatening bridges showed clearly on the radar.

It feels a lot like Big Brother is watching. The data – video, radar and thermal imagery – streams back to control rooms and can be watched live or stored for later analysis. It can be delivered simultaneously to border patrol, police and other ground units, or put on the open Internet in the case of emergencies.

ut even with flights that can last for 10 hours, the Predators provide only an occasional presence over any one spot. It’s the unpredictability of where one could be, and the near impossibility to detect it even overhead, that provide its powerful deterrent value. That’s one of the reasons DHS wants it widely known that Predators are patrolling the borders.

‘Don’t call them drones’

Nothing irks the pilots who fly Predators and other unmanned aircraft more than having them dubbed “drones,” although the ubiquity of the term seems certain to prevail. “Drones” conjure up images of a mostly autonomous existence and these are anything but. The pilot just doesn’t sit inside.

“Call them UAVs – for unmanned aerial vehicle – or just Predators,” a pilot at Grand Forks pleads. Teams of two operate the Predators, with one piloting the aircraft by looking through its forward mounted camera. The other, a sensor operator, controls the turret beneath the nose that can focus camera or radar on objects or people many kilometres away and remain “locked on” even as the aircraft circles. Long flights can be flown by shifts of pilots from any properly equipped control centre with a satellite link.

Almost all the pilots have military backgrounds and long experience flying in very difficult conditions, but say that piloting the Predator is very demanding, made all the harder because the pilots have a very narrow field of vision and have none of the “seat of the pants” feelings of gravity and momentum that regular pilots rely upon. Imagine riding a bicycle while peering through opera glasses while sitting in a closet.

Old base, new war

No active military units remain at this vast air base outside Grand Forks, only the ghosts of another war: a mammoth B-52 Stratofortress bomber and a phallic Minuteman ballistic missile guard the gate, proclaiming “Warriors of the North.”

The Predators are the only aircraft currently stationed here. The two planes, one at a time, patrol from Muskeg Bay, in the Lake of the Woods area on the Ontario-Minnesota border, to roughly 1,500 kilometres west beyond Spokane, Wash., and from the 49th parallel to 160 kilometres south. That’s 246,000 square kilometres to roam, or roughly the airspace over Britain.

In the busy operations centre, there is a keen awareness that Canadians – who throng Grand Forks on weekends for everything from hockey tournaments to shopping sprees – regard the Predators with a mix of trepidation and resentment. “We work closely with our counterparts on the Canadian side,” Mr. Priddy says, aware of the need to reassure Canadians that unmanned planes patrolling the border are meant to protect the United States, not invade Canadian privacy.

U.S. Customs and Border Patrol has used these unmanned aircraft to monitor the 49th parallel since 2009.
Paul Koring/The Globe and Mail

I fully support this idea and I believe Canada should approach the US and offer to co-fund, co-man and co-operate this system to patrol both sides of the border and provide information/targeting to law enforcement on both sides of the border. If the US border is insecure and vulnerable then so is ours.

 

[GAP]

I agree.....rif-raf goes both ways, as do others...

 

[cupper]

You don't need that much: In my younger days around the farm, we use to be able to string about 500 feet of cow fence ad day with just three of us and a tractor. That's a mile every two weeks. 6,400 Km = 4,000 miles, so divide by  23 times two work weeks in a year (we're giving ourselves four weeks vacation) and basically, 175 teams of three can do the job.

OOPS! I missed the last sentence: It's going to be done by unionized personnel. Forget I talked.

By the way ERC, how did you get hold of Napoloitano's official Homeland Security picture ???

Don't forget, this will also be a government project, so there will be a 10,000% mark-up, and additional administrative costs.

This is the same goverment whose justice department spent $16 per person for muffins at a conference for employees to eat along with their $3 per ounce coffees (and no not Starbucks).

 

[cupper]

Apparently Rick Perry would consider sending troops into Mexico to help quell the drug violence.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/perry-send-us-troops-to-mexico-to-fight-drug-wars/2011/10/01/gIQA2qDGDL_story.html

 

[canada94]

Apparently Rick Perry would consider sending troops into Mexico to help quell the drug violence.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/perry-send-us-troops-to-mexico-to-fight-drug-wars/2011/10/01/gIQA2qDGDL_story.html

Why not! They can print more money to pay for more things they can't afford

Great idea!

 

[Container]

If they rolled alot of war on drug money out of one budget into cooperative op with the Mexican side there might be a benefit.

But im not entirely sure that the end game supports the cost. Really the best is to choke the crap out of that border.

The Mexicans need to deal with this. Its their corruption, fueled by the American thirst for drugs admittedly, that continues to allow these cartels to operate at the size and visibility they do. They are definitely winning the who's scarier war for peoples minds.

Unless the government rolls up its sleeves and commits itself to a long clash, and their troops can avoid deserting for the sweet money of the cartels, there is no victory.......if they need it I'll deploy to Mexico for 9 months  ;D

 

[canada94]

If they rolled alot of war on drug money out of one budget into cooperative op with the Mexican side there might be a benefit.

But im not entirely sure that the end game supports the cost. Really the best is to choke the crap out of that border.

The Mexicans need to deal with this. Its their corruption, fueled by the American thirst for drugs admittedly, that continues to allow these cartels to operate at the size and visibility they do. They are definitely winning the who's scarier war for peoples minds.

Unless the government rolls up its sleeves and commits itself to a long clash, and their troops can avoid deserting for the sweet money of the cartels, there is no victory.......if they need it I'll deploy to Mexico for 9 months  ;D

I don't believe Meh-hee-co will ever get rid of the Cartels so long as there is the amount of money there is to be made from the act of drug trading. Not just whole acres of Marijuana fields are being located.. but some with hundreds of acres! It is just as much as American drug laws failure as it is Mexican officials failure at solving the issue.

The violence scares the bijibees out of me! Police and government corruption does not help the issue either.

 

[Container]

Really until the standard of living there gets high enough that, while you'd make more in the cartel, you're comfy and concerned about losing what you've got they'll never get anywhere.

Combine huge poverty in a country where you can see the land of milk and honey from your front door with drug money and there really is no solution.

 

[cupper]

Economically it makes more sense than the other three wars they have going on.

At least the troops would have an easy commute.

Could spend nights and weekends at home with the family. The Minutemen can cover the off hours to give the professionals a break.

Haliburton & its sub KBR are headquartered in Texas, so mobilization costs would be much lower, and you could outsource to the huge illegal immigrant population. Win / win solution to two problems.

 

[canada94]

Really until the standard of living there gets high enough that, while you'd make more in the cartel, you're comfy and concerned about losing what you've got they'll never get anywhere.

Combine huge poverty in a country where you can see the land of milk and honey from your front door with drug money and there really is no solution.

I completely agree

Economically it makes more sense than the other three wars they have going on.

At least the troops would have an easy commute.

Could spend nights and weekends at home with the family. The Minutemen can cover the off hours to give the professionals a break.

Haliburton & its sub KBR are headquartered in Texas, so mobilization costs would be much lower, and you could outsource to the huge illegal immigrant population. Win / win solution to two problems.

"Sarcasm on"

No, no, no. no!

The US by doing so would be skipping there foreign affair platform of first taking over the country by placing a dictator and funding the dictator then one day having to fight said dictator then making a democracy!

Sarcasim off

hehe I do know Mexico is different then Afghanistan, Iraq etc.. But all in all. The Mexican people, would NOT want US troops in their borders policing them. It's also easy for the US to say that what they want is not what stands, and by that token its just as easy for a typical Mexican to join a Cartel and fight US troops..

All it is, is yet again Americans meddling with other countries problems. Although the Americans might see this is as a "helpful" thing to do, everything the US has ever done, and ever had done to it, is always associated with blow back of something stupid it did in the past. IE: Saddam, the Taliban..

Also IMO, Rick Perry is a freaking moron, who flip flops like its his job.