Merida Mythology (and other philosophical fallacies)

by James “Slow Pokey” Ritter | July 9, 2011 | The Trailer Park Show

Mike Whitney is a libertarian, has long written about banking from a libertarian perspective and he’s quite prolific. I have a lot of libertarian views myself but they always seem to turn me off with their general failure to grasp the obvious or, as I would say,  REALITY.

Mr. Whitney’s article  Wall Street’s Role in Narco-Trafficking is a good example of the fallacy of Libertarian philosophy. He tries to make the point that the The Merida Initiative  is a failed plan. It becomes obvious he’s a conspiracy theorist.

He starts off with: “Imagine what your reaction would be if the Mexican government agreed to pay Barack Obama $1.4 billion to deploy US troops and armored vehicles to New York, Los Angeles and Chicago to conduct military operations, set up check points, and engage in fire-fights that end up killing 35,000 US civilians on the streets of American cities.”

I would like Mr. Whitney to tell me which of the above mentioned cities has ever had its mayor assassinated? Or how about city council members or county commissioners? How about police chiefs or officers assassinated, or  sheriffs or their deputies? Or how about police stations attacked? You can’t compare these. You cannot ignore the political, economic, or societal differences between the American cities and any city in Latin America.

If TCO’s [Transnational Criminal Organizations] were assassinating police chiefs, mayors, teachers, businessmen or priests,or car jacking or kidnapping any girl they want or shooting anyone they think is in their way, I would welcome Mexican help for our underfunded, under equipped, under trained army in their efforts to to bring my city back to some kind of civilized condition. As I said before we are not the reason for their troubles. They have asked for help and we are providing it.

To try and blame The Merida Initiative for the current situation in Latin America, and in particular the “corrupted” political system and “militarized” country, is to ignore history. As far as his claims that America wants to “sell more weaponry, strengthen its free-trade regime, and sluice more drug profits into its big banks” go, remember there are lots of foreign weapons all over Latin America. US weapon sales may have been high but they have never been the only salesman in theater.  Latin American governments are free to purchase weapons on a global market .  Furthermore, we have friends in Latin America who are threatened by their neighbors who want power. Would Mr. Whitney have us ignore the rest of the world in the Libertarian way? Let’s pretend there is no Hugo Chavez threatening his neighbors or that he’s buying arms in overwhelming numbers for no reason and that he has to defend himself from those EVIL AMERICANS. Are you going to tell me the only reason he and others are arming themselves  to the teeth is because of The Merida Initiative? Is it really because America is the bully in the neighborhood as so many lefty’s claim. Oh, that’s right – Hugo only wants peace  and he’s working overtime to get it.

We ignore the world at our own peril.

There’s nothing new in Hugo’s desperate attempts to mess with Mexico even from 2005 and he doesn’t hesitate to get openly involved in Mexican Politics or any one else’s for that matter.

And as far Whitney’s claim that American banks “sluice more drug profits into its big banks” is concerned, we do have laws. Not all bankers are crooks.  Now how much inter-connected activity our US banks have with banks in Latin America, like Panama which is a major banking center in the area, I don’t know. Mr. Whitney may have a point but I did not recognize a connection of the banks from his article. It seems that the only way to “sluice more drug profits into its big banks” would be through wire transfers or other ways available to transfer hard cash into a US bank.

As for cash confiscated by the cops, I know they keep it and channel it into their own budgets.

Misguided counter punches

“The drug war has become the major vehicle of militarization in Latin America.” Laura Carlsen tries to establish this in her article in ” CounterPunch”  I pretty much explained how the militarization of Latin America as been going on forever and will continue, with or with out a drug war. To continue reading Laura Carlsen reveals her true nature as a far left “blame America for everything” person. Does Miss Carlsen or Mr. Whitney think America is the only country in the world? Maybe all the lefties would like to go live in Costa Rica. Yes, Mr. Whitney and Miss Carlsen, I’m positive it’s all America’s fault that their peaceful tranquility has been shattered. Yes, yes, America forced Nicaragua to invade Costa Rica. And please let’s not forgetHonduras. That’s Americas fault too, right? Yes, all in the name of “expanding US power and beefing up profits on Wall Street”.

Then Whitney brings on Charles Bowden to tell us about Juarez, Mexico. Doesn’t say how long Mr. Bowden lived in Juarez or even if he’s ever been there. All I could find was this. It’s difficult to go any further left than Democracy Now (It can be done but it’s difficult). Juarez needs the Merida Initiative and, as I said, if LA was like Juarez I would welcome Mexican help. If these libertarians and lefties get their way we may need Mexican help since LA will be a Mexican city  in a few short years if things don’t change.

Other echoes in the chamber

Then there’s “Why Is the U.S. Fighting Mexico’s Drug War?” by Laurence M. Vance of the Future of Freedom Foundation.  He takes the hard core Libertarian line — you could even say he wrote the book.

Then he end’s with James Petras from Global Research which, as far as I can tell, is a New World Order conspiracy theorist hangout site. They never quite explain just how   “the biggest US banks receive, launder and transfer hundreds of billions of dollars to the drug lords’ accounts, who then buy modern arms, pay private armies of assassins and corrupt untold numbers of political and law enforcement officials on both sides of the border….” Well okay, he references a piece in The Guardian, May 11, 2011.  Finally we get to some meat. In the story it states, “The authorities uncovered billions of dollars in wire transfers, traveller’s cheques and cash shipments through Mexican exchanges into Wachovia accounts.”  Key words here are “Mexican exchanges” and “into dollar accounts from so-called casas de cambio (CDCs) in Mexico, currency exchange houses with which the bank did business.”  So let’s be clear. It’s not like drug dealers were walking into the U.S. bank with bags of money. The article does say the bank was fined extremely heavily for it’s failure to  “apply the proper anti-laundering strictures” so there are laws against this type of activity. But it would appear there is more then one U.S. bank willing to take the risk. It also appears the prosecution was in no hurry.

And then “Awash in sanitized drug profits, these US titans of the finance world can easily buy their own elected officials to perpetuate the system.”  Presumably that’s why they needed bailouts – which will draw a close look at their books, just what any bank conducting illegal activity would want. / Not.

I talked briefly about the banking system. I’ll readily admit that banking laws and procedures are extremely complex, but I do know that check cashing stores are a part of it. You can take cash into one and LOAD your debit card and then use that debit card to deposit money in your bank account or buy money orders or travelers checks - here, too.  There seems to be a never ending variety from which to choose. Heck, the sky’s the limit. These cards are very popular in the Hispanic community.  The Guardian article is quite lengthy and very informative. Why they got off so easy? Must be because they could “easily buy their own elected officials” and if that’s the case I’d say they got their money’s worth.

I long knew of Panama’s involvement in all of this.

Conclusion

In any case Mike Whitney hasn’t convinced me. While it is true that some major banks were involved, whether knowingly or not could be argued. Our banking system is not perfect and while one bank even a very large one with tentacles throughout the financial world going bad is not good, it’s not a condemnation of the entire system.  At the end there’s this “Every major bank in the US has served as an active financial partner of the murderous drug cartels…”  No Mr. Whitney, I don’t think so.

The Libertarian point that Whitney makes is that the The Merida Initiative was a tool for American meddling in world affairs. I understand the Libertarian view is that we should not be involved in international affairs beyond doing business with partners. While this sounds great on the face of it – and it’s a concept with which it is hard to argue – it is a failed policy and in the global economy and our position in it I would argue that we can’t go down that road even if we wanted to.

Let me turn the reader toward this report, Against US World Retrenchment: An Interview with A. Wess Mitchell . While not focusing on Latin America it does reflect a point of view regarding America’s global obligations with which I concur.