When pursuing their various “wars” on drugs and “wars” on terror, the U.S. and the governments it supports in these “wars” are apt to overlook human rights abuses committed by the militaries and police forces upon which they rely. A new report details how this has played out in the Mexican military

by Whitney Webb

MEXICO CITY – A study published Tuesday by the advocacy group Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) has revealed the woeful inadequacy of the Mexican government in pursuing cases of human rights violations committed by soldiers against civilians — in spite of recent reforms that allow such cases to be heard by civilian, rather than military, courts. According to its website, WOLA is “a leading research and advocacy organization advancing human rights in the Americas.”

WOLA’s report, titled “Overlooking Justice: Human Rights Violations Committed by Mexican Soldiers Against Civilians are Met with Impunity,” examined data made available by Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office (Procuraduría General de la República, PGR). The data showed clearly that the vast majority of investigations, even those in which abundant evidence exists to show proof of wrongdoing, fail to result in punishments for those accused of abuses of human rights, such as extrajudicial killings, torture, kidnappings and the use of excessive force. In all, only 16 of the 505 criminal investigations PGR launched between 2012 and 2016 ended with a conviction.

Furthermore, of those 505 cases, only two involved commanding officers — with the vast majority examining the conduct of rank-and-file soldiers, many of whom claim to have been following the orders of their superiors. WOLA cited this trend as a strong indication that Mexico’s military leadership operates with relative impunity.

The WOLA study also found that the PGR put minimal effort into amassing the evidence needed to successfully prosecute cases, suggesting that many were set up to fail. In addition, it found numerous examples of the Mexican military intervening in cases by limiting civilian access to testimony or by altering crime scenes — actions which further derailed investigations into potential abuses.

Ximena Suárez, WOLA’s Associate for Mexico and lead author of the report, stated in a press release:

Civilian oversight of the military is essential to any democracy, yet the PGR has failed to hold the military accountable for human rights violations. This is particularly important given the government’s reliance on soldiers to patrol streets and take the leading role in the fight against organized crime.”

In response to the report, the Mexican government defended its rights record.

A government statement, cited by the Associated Press, said that the PGR is working toward “structural and institutional changes to put an end to impunity and pursue human-rights violations” through the creation of special investigative units and that the Mexican military would undergo increased human-rights training.

As Suárez noted, Mexico in recent years — since former Mexican president Felipe Calderón authorized an “all-out war” on drug cartels in 2006 — has become particularly reliant on its military for its controversial crackdown on drug gangs as well as for general policing activity. This “war” — claiming over 23,000 lives last year alone — has continued under the current president, Enrique Peña Nieto, despite drawing criticism that it has militarized the streets of Mexico and actually worsened the situation. Current legislation being considered by the Mexican Congress would further expand the Mexican military’s role in matters of public security, while further weakening the civilian justice system.

The Mexican military, despite its high body-count since the drug war began and its tendency to commit human rights violations against civilians, continues to enjoy strong support from the United States.

Since 2008, the U.S. Department of Defense has given over $521 million in assistance to the Mexican military via its Combating Terrorism Fellowship Program and Section 1004 Counter-Drug Assistance Program. In addition, over the course of the drug war, the U.S. military has overseen and paid for the training of large parts of the Mexican military — a program that has increased in recent years, jumping from $3 million in 2009 to $15 million in 2013. Between 2010 and 2015, the U.S. military taught 7,678 elite courses to nearly 9,000 members of the Mexican military, at an estimated cost of $60 million. These courses have covered a wide range of topics, including sniper training, explosives, and psychological operations (psyops).

The U.S. government has also funded the other side of the conflict, having allowed the sale of more than $1.25 million worth of guns to the Mexican Sinaloa cartel in a failed sting operation known as “Fast and Furious.”

In addition, to support from the U.S. government, the U.S. corporate media has also been supportive of the Mexican military, even when it has been caught committing extrajudicial killings and human rights abuses. A 2016 article from The New York Times stated that some consider extrajudicial killings committed by the military a “form of pragmatism,” as the armed forces “cannot rely on the shaky legal system” to properly prosecute those suspected of drug trafficking.

CBS News last year stated that “Mexico’s armed forces have increasingly been pulled into the conflict because police forces are often corrupt or unreliable. That has had its own toll on the troops, who are frequently ambushed and accused of illegally executing detained cartel suspects in some cases.” CBS failed to note that the same police forces that are “corrupt or unreliable” have also been trained, in many cases, by the U.S. government.

The substantial support the Mexican military received from the U.S. is second only, within Latin America, to that received by Colombia. Like the Mexican military, the Colombian military – trained and funded to a large degree by the United States via “Plan Colombia” — has also been exposed as serially violating human rights of Colombian civilians and sharing corrupt connections to drug traffickers, even taking part in the drug trade themselves.

Indeed, the United Nations Drug Control Program (UNDCP) has described the Colombian military as being among “the biggest heroin and cocaine trading institutions” in the world. Colombian military officials have also assisted in training the Mexican military in recent years.

Ultimately, the U.S.’ aid and support for the Mexican military is likely to continue – regardless of whether the military’s human rights abuses continue to go unpunished or not. For much of the past century, the U.S. has repeatedly provided aid to militaries and paramilitary groups throughout Latin America that have partaken in grave human rights abuses as well as genocide.

Yet, despite the abuses, U.S. aid to Latin America has only grown, particularly since the advent of the U.S.’ War on Drugs in Latin America. As MintPress News has previously noted, however, the consequence of this war – as opposed to decreasing drug trafficking – has instead concentrated it in the hands of a wealthy oligarchy that supports the U.S.’ ambitions for dominance of the region.

by Barry Lynn and Matt Stoller

On Tuesday, Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana told the general counsels of Facebook and Google: “Your power sometimes scares me.” The problem, Kennedy said, is that the corporations know too much about us, and too little about themselves.

Kennedy illustrated his fears with two rhetorical questions. “If the CEO came to you … and said I want to know everything we can find out about Senator Graham … You could do that, couldn’t you?” On the other hand, Kennedy said: “You don’t have the ability to know who every one of [your] advertisers is, do you?”

This seeming paradox points to a fundamental problem that Facebook and Google cannot solve on their own; these institutions are designed to gather vast amounts of information about every American, but they are not built to manage that information in the interest of those individuals or the public as a whole, such as by preventing Russian hackers from targeting propaganda at specific voters.

It will take time to figure out how to ensure Google, Facebook and the other giant platform monopolists truly serve the political and commercial interests of the American people. The good news is that there’s a simple way to at least slow the rate at which the problem is getting worse. Don’t allow these dominant platforms to buy other companies.

If it’s clear that Facebook and Google can’t manage what they already control, why let those corporations own more? America’s antitrust enforcers can impose such a rule almost immediately.

For one thing, there is no doubt these corporations qualify for antitrust regulation. Facebook, for instance, has 77 percent of mobile social networking traffic in the United States, with just over half of all American adults using Facebook every day.

Nearly all new online advertising spending goes to just Facebook and Google, and those two companies refer over half of all traffic to news websites. In all, Facebook has some 2 billion users around the world.

For another, the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission have all the authority they need under existing law. Indeed, the FTC itself partially created the “fake news” problem by failing to use its existing authority to block previous acquisitions by these platforms such as Facebook’s purchases of WhatsApp and Instagram.

Had those companies been allowed to grow and compete with Facebook, we would today see less power and control concentrated in that one corporation. The history of the platform monopolies themselves provides ample evidence of the power that comes from buying other people’s technologies.

One of the myths of the tech platforms is that they are innovative actors who invent new ways of doing things. They really aren’t. They are conglomerates.

Google’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin, in a project financed by a National Science Foundation grant, created a way to rank web pages that allowed them to build a very good search engine. They then used cash earned or raised off this early success to buy most of the rest of Google’s key products, including YouTube, Android, Deep Mind, Waze and Doubleclick. At a certain point a few years ago, Google was buying roughly one company a week.

Another lesson of history is that temporary restrictions on how these corporations can use their newly acquired technologies don’t solve the fundamental problem. Seven years ago, Google paid $700m for a company called ITA that provides software for the travel industry. The Department of Justice approved the deal on the condition that Google keep access to the software open to other businesses for at least five years. This year, Google closed that access. As Ted Benson, a former Googler, put it: “That’s an entire ecosystem of airfare startups executed with the stroke of a pen.”

These corporations already enjoy vast advantages over any potential rivals. In the case of Facebook, those advantages verge on being blatantly unfair. In 2013, Facebook bought a mobile data analytics company called “Onavo”. As a recent article in the Wall Street Journal made clear, Onavo allows Facebook to observe the online behavior of internet users, providing Facebook executives with an “unusually detailed look at what users collectively do on their phones.”

Facebook, in essence, gets to see which products are doing well and what features within those products users especially appreciate. It can then use this information to target fast-growing rivals with potentially fatal copycat techniques, and attempt to buy out these competitors.

A few weeks ago, Facebook bought a three-month old social networking company called TBH, which was growing quickly among teenagers. It’s not clear why Facebook bought the company. But it is clear this acquisition will only further entrench Facebook’s monopoly position in social media and expand its power over all competitors.

For this reason, we at the Open Market Institute recently called on the FTC to put a hold on all future mergers and acquisitions by Facebook – and potentially Google and Amazon. Such a ban on mergers would leave many big problems answered. It would not fix the Facebook and Google’s duopoly over online advertising, nor would it prevent foreign actors from using the company’s network to manipulate American voters.

But such a ban would help provide the American people with the time we need to figure out how to ensure these immensely powerful monopolies no longer threaten our most fundamental civic, artistic, economic and political freedoms.

(Barry Lynn is the Executive Director of the Open Markets Institute. Matt Stoller is a fellow at the Open Markets Institute).