The European Commission Vice President Neelie Kroes has told a Dutch newspaper that the Euro would survive a Greek exit from the currency. The announcement comes during a strike endorsed by two of Greek’s largest public sector unions. The Greek government has been seeking foreign investment and additional funds from the IMF, EU and the ECB. These institutions have made spending cuts a prerequisite for additional funds, and it is looking increasingly unlikely that there is the political will in Greece to implement the necessary cuts.

It is refreshing to see Ms. Kroes say what many having been saying for some time. The Greek government has proven itself incapable of taking the necessary decisions that it needs to make in order to keep itself in the single currency. Ms. Kroes expressed the sentiments of many on the continent during the interview:

“The Greeks have to realize that we Dutch and we Germans can only sell emergency Greek aid to our taxpayers if there’s evidence of good will.”

It is well known that numbers were fudged and excuses made in order for Greece to join the euro in the first place, and it is only recently that the full ramification of that decision has been felt.

There is no reason to think that given another bailout the fiscal situation in Greece will improve. There is an opportunity now for some politicians to show that it is possible for the single currency to suffer one casualty. For too long European politicians have tried to keep Greece in the euro. Now it seems that all of the measures taken in Europe have been completely ineffective in getting the Greek government to pass the necessary austerity measures. Even with a Greek default, which will be disastrous for Greece, the sovereign debt crisis in Europe will be far from over.

I hope the realization that the European Commission finally seems comfortable with some countries defaulting will be a wake up call to other countries in the euro. If tough austerity measures are not taken soon the recession in Europe will deepen. All that is needed is more political will.

Image: Shutterstock/kanvag

Seriously though, if I were Zach Horowitz or Edgar Bronfman I’d be pretty pleased with Obama’s job performance. Mere hours after Wikipedia, Reddit, Google and thousands of other websites participated in an online protest against SOPA, and four days after Obama announced his own opposition to the bill, news hit the wires that the long arm of the law finally caught up with Megaupload after a two-year international investigation headed up by the FBI and Justice Department, and the takedown has already had collateral effects. More broadly, domain name seizures are now more frequent than ever and he signed on to a global intellectual property enforcement treaty for which he claims Senate ratification is unnecessary.

Essentially ACTA imposes the terms of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act on the participating nations, other than that there are a lot of grey areas in the treaty (a good explanation as to what it could actually do can be found here). Because ACTA’s terms are more or less congruent with current US law, Obama claims he doesn’t need to put it to a Senate vote. For this reason, Darrell Issa has described ACTA as “more dangerous than SOPA” in that it subverts congressional authority to regulate foreign trade and intellectual property.

At The Atlantic, Alexander Fumas explains some of the objections to ACTA:

… It is worth noting that the negotiations throughout most of the process were highly secret with negotiators forced to sign non-disclosure agreements, a fact that, according to one cable, made even some of the negotiating parties uncomfortable. There were few avenues for public or civil-society input. Meanwhile many U.S. based multinational corporations and their interest groups, including the Recording Industry Association of America, the Motion Picture Association of America, Sony, and Time Warner were consulted via formal USTR advisory boards.

Have a look at the list of signatories and two things will become abundantly clear. First, this treaty is not about counterfeiting because the major countries with counterfeiting problems have not signed it, namely China, Indonesia and others in southeast Asia. Second, the majority of the signatories are countries with a robust market for American entertainment; Japan, Canada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, and the EU, which lends credence to the idea that the treaty was crafted for the sake of Hollywood and large media conglomerates.

Europeans are already quite upset about it.

As for Obama’s promise to veto SOPA and PIPA, which are merely tabled not defeated, contre the jubilant internet’s chest-thumping, well, Obama said he wouldn’t detain Americans indefinitely without due process either.

Before the hearing, as James Fallows of The Atlantic reports, Clapper released his “Worldwide Threat Assessment.” It read, “We do not know … if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons.”

Clapper thus reaffirmed the assessment of 16 U.S. intelligence agencies in 2007, reportedly repeated in 2011, that the U.S. does not believe that Iran has decided to become a nuclear weapons state.

In December, when Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said that if Iran went all out, it might be able to build a nuclear weapon in a year, Pentagon spokesman George Little hastily clarified his comments: “The secretary was clear that we have no indication that the Iranians have made a decision to develop a nuclear weapon.”

On Jan. 8, Panetta himself told CBS: “(Is Iran) trying to develop a nuclear weapon? No. But we know that they’re trying to develop a nuclear capability. And that’s what concerns us. And our redline to Iran is: Do not develop a nuclear weapon.”

On Super Bowl Sunday, President Barack Obama told NBC’s Matt Lauer that he hopes to solve the Iranian problem “diplomatically.”

From the above, we may conclude that the administration does not believe that Iran has crossed any redline on the nuclear issue — and President Obama does not want war with Iran.

Who, then, does want war? Ayatollah Ali Khamenei? Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?

From their actions, it would appear not. If Iran wanted war with the United States, any terror attack inside this country or on U.S. forces in Iraq or Afghanistan could bring that about in an afternoon.

Expulsion of the International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors from the Natanz enrichment facility, covering up the IAEA cameras, breaking the seals on the low-enriched uranium stockpiled there, or removing the LEU would be a fire bell for the Pentagon.

But the IAEA inspectors and LEU are still there.

When the alleged plot by a used-car salesman in Texas to hire Mexican cartel criminals to blow up a D.C. restaurant and kill the Saudi ambassador was revealed, Iran denied it emphatically and demanded to interview the alleged mastermind.

Moreover, Tehran has yet to retaliate for the assassinations of five of its nuclear scientists and four terror attacks by Jundallah in Sistan-Baluchistan and PJAK, a Kurdish terrorist organization operating out of Iraqi Kurdistan. Iran has alleged Western and Israeli involvement in these attacks.

Now that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has denied any U.S. involvement, Mossad is the prime suspect behind the killing of the nuclear scientists. And U.S. writer Mark Perry, in Foreign Policy, alleges that Mossad agents posed as CIA and used U.S. dollars in London to recruit Jundallah.

If this is true, this would be a false flag operation to provoke Iran into lashing out at America. Apparently, Iran did not take the bait.

Why have the Iranians not followed through on their threat to close the Strait of Hormuz and begun to dial it back?

War with the United States would be a disaster. Though the Tehran regime might survive — as Saddam Hussein’s survived Desert Storm — Iran’s navy, most of its armor, anti-aircraft and anti-ship defenses, and its strategic missile force would be destroyed, as would much of the country’s infrastructure. Iran would be set back years.

Who, then, wants war with Iran?

All those who would like to see exactly that happen to Iran.

And who are they? The Netanyahu government and its echo chamber in U.S. politics and media, the neoconservatives, members of Congress, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum.

And as the Obama administration is the major force in U.S. politics opposed to war with Iran, its defeat in November would increase, to near certitude, the probability of a U.S. war with Iran in 2013.

Yet if the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence community are correct — Iran does not have a bomb and has not decided to build a bomb — why should we go to war with Iran?

Answer: Iran represents “an existential threat” to Israel.

But Israel has 200 atomic bombs and three ways to deliver them, while Iran has never built, tested or weaponized a nuclear device. Who is the existential threat to whom here?

And though a U.S. war on Iran would be calamitous for Iran, it would be no cakewalk for Americans, who could become terrorist targets for years in the Gulf, Afghanistan, Baghdad’s Green Zone, Lebanon and even here in the USA.

Year 2012 is thus shaping up as a war-or-peace election, with Republicans the war party and Democrats the peace-and-diplomacy party.

And as the months pass between now and November, this will become clear to the nation.

Today the President signed an executive order freezing all Iranian government assets held or traded in the U.S. This order is the latest in a series of sanctions that have been placed on Iran by the European community and the U.S. The new sanctions include blocks on the Iranian central bank. The move comes quickly after the President said that Israel and the U.S. were “in lockstep” regarding their policies on Iran. These sanctions are an unwise move that will serve only to encourage anti-western rhetoric in Iran, and will damage an already suffering Iranian economy.

The animosity between Iran and the west is escalating. The assassination of an Iranian nuclear scientist (almost certainly carried out by Israeli intelligence), economic sanctions from Europe and the U.S., British and American Navy ships in the Persian Gulf, and unconfirmed reports that Israel will strike Iran as soon as April are all kindling to the neoconservatives’ fire.

What seems to be constantly overlooked is the fact that economic sanctions and assassinations will only unite a country that has a legitimate opposition. As has been noted here at TAC before, if there is one issue that will dilute the political opposition in Iran, it is foreign intervention. The backlash against a pre-emptive western strike against Iran would be severe enough without the economic hardship which our sanctions are placing on the country.

The President in his State of the Union said that no option was off the table in regards to Iran, and we should believe that he means what he says. It is a shame that the President who campaigned so heavily on the follies of the Iraq war is now engaging in eerily familiar rhetoric.

Image: Shutterstock/yui

All politicians favor “values,” and when those on the social Left claim to stand for “family values,” as Obama has been doing, they have as much right to that term as anyone else. Indeed I can respect people I disagree with on just about everything, because they act on the basis of their beliefs.

Some of my Republican friends, who make fun of my attitude, ask me whether I really admire Obama as a person of principle. I respond by explaining that to whatever extent he acts on the basis of conviction, Obama deserves my respect. I wish I could say the same about Mitt Romney or other GOP presidential candidates who waffle every time they encounter liberal journalists or think that a hostile reporter may be eaves-dropping. Although I disagree with Ron Paul’s judgments about Iran, I have to recognize that Paul stands up for his constitutional principles. I find the same integrity in John Bolton, whom I have known for many years. Although I would not trust the war-happy Bolton anywhere near Foggy Bottom, let alone as Secretary of State, I’m sure he would never betray his conscience. For me that does count for something.

The users of the value-word are mostly hack Republicans, trying to avoid mine fields. Value-talk typically consists of phrases intended to reassure one’s base while revealing nothing that could get hurt the speaker. In the current presidential primaries several Republicans have departed from this script by telling us what they would do to oppose gay marriage and restrict abortions. I applaud this honesty, which for me is far less distasteful than hearing someone announce that he or she is the candidate of values. The only “value” that I find in such politicians is the priority of getting elected.

But standing for principle may not be enough. I also wish to hear from the advocates of traditional social positions how they intend to implement them. It seems that even those with whom I agree in principle have sometimes held questionable views about constitutional matters. It is state legislatures, not courts or federal bureaucrats, which should be dealing with abortion and gay marriage. Congresswoman Bachmann and former Senator Santorum both misstated this procedural matter during primary debates, although Santorum later corrected his mistake. All attempts at end-runs around state governments in order to have the feds decide social issues is not only constitutionally wrong but also dumb. Do social traditionalists honestly believe that the federal government is more likely to ride to their rescue than the state legislatures of our more conservative states? It is mostly the federal administration that has steered the country leftward throughout my life. I see no reason to believe this will change in the foreseeable future.

The beginning of the GOP’s value-noises coincided with two developments. One, after the resounding defeat of presidential candidate Barry Goldwater in 1964, it became clear that any politician who suggested that he would substantially cut back the welfare state was destined to lose. This became particularly evident after Lyndon Johnson introduced extensive entitlement programs after his victory against Goldwater. Thereafter the GOP decided to run as the party that would protect a steadily expanding bundle of entitlements.

Two, the country veered politically and socially to the left with the civil rights and feminist revolutions. But some Americans thought these developments went too far and resented the role of unelected judges in bringing them about. The reaction against abortion rights and other consequences of a revolutionary epoch allowed the GOP to find a new lease on life. The GOP would be for “values” and in an even fuzzier way for “getting government off our backs.” But electoral interests trump these sound bites. Although presidential candidates are rhetorically for “trimming government waste,” Republican presidents fill the federal administration with their hangers-on—and even create new ones for the overload.

The same presidents have appointed federal judges who are less radical than their Democratic counterparts, but this has hardly changed the scope of judicial governance. Except for recent proposals by Newt Gingrich for Congress to oversee federal judges, Republican presidential contenders have called for nothing that would weaken the federal judiciary or limit its ability to shape social policy. Blasting activist courts in campaigning may be more profitable than trying to make the problem go away for social conservatives.

I hadn’t thought much about the Komen Foundation before their recent PR fiasco, but I am inherently suspicious of big organizations and they are a giant in the breast cancer industry. That they peddle awareness with pink buckets of Kentucky Fried Chicken and a pink-ribboned NFL only increases my skepticism. Barbara Ehrenreich (who was diagnosed with breast cancer several years ago) skewered the culture promoted by organizations such as Komen in her book Bright-Sided(reviewed in TAC here):

The first thing I discovered as I waded out into the relevant sites is that not everyone views the disease with horror and dread. Instead, the appropriate attitude is upbeat and even eagerly acquisitive . . . There are between two and three million American women in various stages of breast cancer treatment, who, along with anxious relatives, make up a significant market for all things breast cancer related. Bears, for example: I identified four distinct lines, or species, of these creatures, including . . . the Nick and Nora Wish Upon a Star Bear, which was available . . . at the Komen Foundation Web site’s “marketplace.”

And bears are only the tip, so to speak, of the cornucopia of pink-ribbon-themed breast cancer products. . . “Awareness” beats secrecy and stigma, of course, but I couldn’t help noticing that the existential space in which a friend had earnestly advised me to “confront [my] mortality” bore a striking resemblance to the mall.

Not going to do it, said Dr. Paul to cheers. And why should he?

Observing developments in U.S. foreign and defense policy, Paul’s views seem as far out in front of where America is heading as John McCain’s seem to belong to yesterday’s Bush-era bellicosity.

Consider. In December, the last U.S. troops left Iraq. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta now says that all U.S. combat operations in Afghanistan will end in 18 months.

The strategic outposts of empire are being abandoned.

The defense budget for 2013 is $525 billion, down $6 billion from 2012. The Army is to be cut by 75,000 troops; the Marine Corps by 20,000. Where Ronald Reagan sought a 600-ship Navy, the Navy will fall from 285 ships today to 250. U.S. combat aircraft are to be reduced by six fighter squadrons and 130 transport aircraft.

Republicans say this will reduce our ability to fight and win two land wars at once — say, in Iran and Korea. Undeniably true.

Why, then, is Ron Paul winning the argument?

The hawkishness of the GOP candidates aside, the United States, facing its fourth consecutive trillion-dollar deficit, can no longer afford to sustain all its alliance commitments, some of which we made 50 years ago during a Cold War that ended two decades ago, in a world that no longer exists.

As our situation is new, said Abraham Lincoln, we must think and act anew.

As Paul argues, why close bases in the U.S. when we have 700 to 1,000 bases abroad? Why not bring the troops home and let them spend their paychecks here?

Begin with South Korea. At last report, the United States had 28,000 troops on the peninsula. But why, when South Korea has twice the population of the North, an economy 40 times as large, and access to U.S. weapons, the most effective in the world, should any U.S. troops be on the DMZ? Or in South Korea?

U.S. forces there are too few to mount an invasion of the North, as Gen. MacArthur did in the 1950s. And any such invasion might be the one thing to convince Pyongyang to fire its nuclear weapons to save the hermit kingdom.

But if not needed to defend the South, and a U.S. invasion could risk nuclear reprisal, what are U.S. troops still doing there?

Answer: They are on the DMZ as a tripwire to bring us, from the first day of fighting, into a new land war in Asia that many American strategists believe we should never again fight.

Consider Central Asia. By pushing to bring Ukraine and Georgia into NATO, and building air bases in nations that were republics of the Soviet Union two decades ago, the United States generated strategic blowback.

China and Russia, though natural rivals and antagonists, joined with four Central Asian nations in a Shanghai Cooperation Organization to expel U.S. military power from a region that is their backyard, but is half a world away from the United States.

Solution: The United States should inform the SCO that when the Afghan war is over we will close all U.S. military bases in Central Asia. No U.S. interest there justifies a conflict with Russia or China.

Indeed, a Russia-China clash over influence and resources in the Far East and Central Asia seems inevitable. Let us get out of the way.

But it is in Europe that America may find the greatest savings.

During the Cold War, 300,000 U.S. troops faced hundreds of thousands of Soviet troops from northern Norway to Central Germany to Turkey. But not only are there no Russian troops on the Elbe today, or surrounding West Berlin, they are gone from Germany, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. Between Russia and Poland lie Belarus and Ukraine. Moscow no longer even has a border with Turkey.

Why, when NATO Europe has two nuclear powers and more than twice the population of a Russia whose own population has shrunk by 8 million in 20 years and is scheduled to shrink by 25 million more by 2050, does Europe still need U.S. troops to defend it?

She does not. The Europeans are freeloading, as they have been for years, preserving their welfare states, skimping on defense and letting Uncle Sam carry the hod.

In the Panetta budgets, America will still invest more in defense than the next 10 nations combined and retain sufficient power to secure, with a surplus to spare, all her vital interests.

But we cannot forever be first responder for scores of nations that have nothing to do with our vital interests. As Frederick the Great observed, “He who defends everything defends nothing.”

Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?

Copyright 2012 Creators.com

When I talk about shared responsibility, it’s because I genuinely believe that in a time when many folks are struggling, at a time when we have enormous deficits, it’s hard for me to ask seniors on a fixed income, or young people with student loans, or middle-class families who can barely pay the bills to shoulder the burden alone. And I think to myself, if I’m willing to give something up as somebody who’s been extraordinarily blessed, and give up some of the tax breaks that I enjoy, I actually think that’s going to make economic sense.

But for me as a Christian, it also coincides with Jesus’s teaching that “for unto whom much is given, much shall be required.” It mirrors the Islamic belief that those who’ve been blessed have an obligation to use those blessings to help others, or the Jewish doctrine of moderation and consideration for others.

…

Our goal should not be to declare our policies as biblical. It is God who is infallible, not us.

…

And as important as government policy may be in shaping our world, we are reminded that it’s the cumulative acts of kindness and courage and charity and love, it’s the respect we show each other and the generosity that we share with each other that in our everyday lives will somehow sustain us during these challenging times. John tells us that, “If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.”

Recognizing that the context is very, very different, his pitch reminds me of a line from Lincoln’s second inaugural address, “strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces.” Of course, Lincoln also imposed the first income tax, so he probably wouldn’t have seen any irony in it.

My support for the National Prayer Breakfast has always been qualified; on the one hand, I think it’s valuable to affirm a common spiritual grounding, mercurial though that may be, among the nation’s leaders. On the other hand–and this is probably nothing new–using the forum of a power-obsessed civil religion group to push religious justifications for raising taxes (while a newer civil religion group glomms on for publicity) makes the whole thing seem like an opportunistic sham, on all sides.

(A small aside: The Fellowship is famous for the fact that they don’t refer to themselves as Christians, preferring to describe themselves as “of Jesus.” Endless expansion of government power is entirely congruent with their strategy of targeting the rich and powerful who will in turn lead the rest of us toward a bright and virtuous dawn. So the anti-institutional stance–one I’ve always understood Jesus to have–supposed in their avoidance of the term “Christian,” is belied by the way they go about recruiting and retaining members and the way they seek to redirect power in the world. In other words, this is like modern-day liberals calling themselves “of liberty.”)

For more on the subject of bringing the Heavenly Kingdom to Earth be sure to check out Gene Callahan on Eric Voegelin in this month’s issue, in which he sees gnostic impulses in both progressivism and neoconservatism’s tendency to “immanentize the eschaton.”

It was reported today that Greece needs an extra 15 billion euros in order to bring its debt down to a workable level. Greece is currently in negotiations with private investors, which could end in a deal that could reduce the Greek debt burden by up to 100 billion euros. It was hoped that a deal would make a bailout from the Eurozone bailout fund and the IMF more plausible, however a European Union official has suggested that such a deal would not restore enough confidence in the Greek economy to secure additional funds. 

The main challenge for the Greek government is to somehow find a way to cut spending and implement a feasible debt reduction program while the domestic economy is struggling and the recession is worsening. There are a number of political obstacles that must be overcome before fiscal decisions are considered. The EU and IMF will not consider a bailout unless the Greek government is able to make labor market reforms, which of course involves talks with unions. At this time, these talks are still ongoing. The negotiations will be difficult, especially considering the fact that lowering of the minimum wage is being considered.

It has not been a good last few days for Europe. A fiscally binding treaty that would give power to the unelected European Commission to scrutinize the budgets of constituent nations has strong support despite objections from the Czechs who are concerned that some of the treaty’s obligations conflict with its own constitution, and the British, who have not had their concessions considered. Sarkozy, who is up against a strong socialist opposition in the upcoming French elections, has announced a financial transaction tax due to be implemented in August.

Whether it is for political gain or to dismiss accusations of idleness, the actions being taken in Europe are only prolonging the economic crisis Europe finds itself in. The powers that be in Europe are taking the chance to consolidate power and make a mockery of democracy in the name of solving a crisis largely of their own making. Even were Greece to reform its labor market and collect all of the extra funds it needs through private investment and another bailout, its stability would still be far from guaranteed.

Image: Shutterstock: zimmytws

But para 3 begins “US officials said they have seen no intelligence to indicated that Iran is actively plotting attacks on US soil.”  The article then goes on to cite the alleged Iranian-Mexican drug dealer plot to kill the Saudi Ambassador in Washington – which has been outside the government regarded almost universally as a fabrication – as evidence that “some Iranian officials…are now more willing to conduct an attack in the United States…”

Yes indeed, the threat from Iran will be, like Matthew 26:11’s observation about the poor, always with us.

Warner winds through a troubling analysis of today’s illegal immigration problem, which he contends is increasingly about illegal drugs rather than people (in fact he seems rather open, or at least sympathetic, to allowing productive undocumented families living here to stay here rather than forcing them back to the horrors across the border: 40,000 dead to cartels in the last few years). Disagree on how he gets there, but what he finally concludes is that our first priority should be ending the violent trade that is driving both drugs and illegal persons across that border in the first place.

“That means doing something about our unquenchable drug consumption that drives the crime in Mexico and increasingly in the United States. Either we cut back which seems unlikely, or we stop paying the cartels for it, which can be done.”

Sadly, each day we wait to address this fork in the road, the bloodier and more powerful the cartels are becoming. According to Wired  magazine last week, Los Zetas, which has become the largest and most brutal cartel in Mexico, has overwhelmed authorities in the state of Tamaulipas on the other side of the Texas border to the point that the central government has been forced to set up military bases and has sent some 13,000 Mexican soldiers (30 percent of the Army’s counter-cartel troops) to try to wrest back control.

The Zetas, which were initially formed by ex-Army Commandos akin to our Special Forces, operate with virtual impunity in no less than 17 Mexican states and beyond. Last year, Mexican lawmakers acknowledged that some 71 percent of municipal governments in Mexico were under the influence of one of the major criminal organizations in the country today.

Los Zetas has emerged as the most violent, committing crimes only imagined in hell, not distinguishing between civilians and criminal associates, adults and children, clean and dirty government officials. Journalists and bloggers have been slaughtered, as has anyone else who’s gotten in the way. The gang has pushed beyond Mexico’s borders, as the now-infamous drug corridors have exploded with new opportunities, and weak and corrupt governments fall prey to their well-armed and fearsome presence. A particularly horrific story last spring has become the norm in places like Guatemala today:

One of Guatemala’s worst massacres since the end of the country’s decades-long civil war was the work of the brutal Mexican drug cartel the Zetas, Guatemalan officials said Monday.

The gang’s violent signature could be seen in the manner and style in which the 29 bodies were found: bound, beheaded and strewn across a grassy field near their cut-off heads, said Guatemalan Interior Minister Carlos Menocal.

Two children and two women were among the dead, most of whom worked on the dairy ranch where the bodies were found, according to Luis Armando Garcia, 23, a survivor of the bloodbath, who talked to The Associated Press in the hospital in San Benito….

A message written in blood on one of the ranch building’s walls said the killers were looking for ranch owner Otto Salguero. Menocal said authorities were trying to find out more about Salguero, whose whereabouts were unknown.

Heartbreaking are the stories that writer Warner says signal this transformation on the landscape of illegal immigration today.

Now the game has changed, he (Arizona ranger Jim Chilton) says. The lone immigrant is not seen so much. Border crossings tend to come in packs led by a coyote, a criminal guide. He in turns works for the cartels, which force the immigrants to carry drugs across the border, or sometimes human cargo held for ransom. They are modestly paid for their effort. Those who collapse from exhaustion along the way are left behind to suffer  slow and agonizing death. The Border Patrol often comes across skeletal remains.

Woe to the immigrant to who try to avoid the cartels if they happen to get caught. Last summer, and independent-minded coyote was leading some 30 people across the border when they were spotted by cartel members keeping watch …

They swooped down on horseback and drove the group back to a safe house in Mexico, where they raped the women and tortured the men. They made an example of the offending coyote by cutting off all of his fingers …

It’s commonplace that women trying to navigate the border must prepare for rape — the cost of crossing. They’re told to carry birth-control polls. Special treatment for children? Not a chance.  More likely they’ll be used to hide drugs. A rancher say our own mafia have some limits to their  cruelty. Not the cartels.

No doubt most readers are feeling fairly sick to their stomachs about now, not quite sure how to square this seemingly primitive, altogether merciless, barbaric behavior with the 21st century western civilization we take for granted on this side of the border. But “the American people create the problem,” says one sheriff quoted in Warner’s report. Sure. That complaint is so-oft repeated it’s an accepted talking point of every pundit, expert, professor, politician and law enforcement official on the subject.

He’s right, of course, but what to do about it? The common retort to the one and arguably best solution — decriminalizing and regulating the drugs, beginning with marijuana, to ultimately shut down the black market that drives cartels to put drugs in the body cavities of Mexican children — is that the “cartels are quite adaptable,” and have already diversified into other areas, like stealing oil from pipelines and hawking pirated goods. Give me a break. Anyone with access to Netflix can watch “The Untouchables”  and understand fast enough that this response is as lazy as it is knee-jerk, and only used (quite ineffectively) to try to justify a boatload of self-serving political and bureaucratic interests in favor of perpetuating drug prohibition. They are called drug cartels for a reason. Start by eliminating their primary source of income and see how far they go. In the meantime, I’ll be watching street violence and incarceration rates in the U.S drop (drug offenders count for about 500,000 of our record-high incarceration rates of over 2.2 million Americans today) and some sanity brought back to the society as the billions of dollars used to fight the war shifts over to helping treat people’s drug-related addictions.

There is an organization of retired police officers called LEAP (Law Enforcement Against Prohibition) who say the same thing. Their website is definitely worth a look. Meanwhile, Latin American leaders — the very people who have the most at stake — have been wisely calling for an end to the American Drug War for years. Two years ago, former officials making up The Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy released a report with this goal in mind — so far, to little effect.

“The available evidence indicates that the war on drugs is a failed war,” former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso said in a conference call with reporters from Rio de Janeiro. “We have to move from their approach to another one.”

The commission headed by Cardoso and former presidents Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico and Cesar Gaviria of Colombia calls on U.S. and Latin American governments to acknowledge the insufficiencies of current policy and to engage in a debate about new alternatives.

But what do they know anyway?

Last week, a woman and her 3-year-old daughter living in an apartment house in Fitchburg, Mass., were terrorized when FBI agents tore through their front door with a chainsaw without warning. Once inside, they forced her, face-down on the floor for 30 to 40 minutes at gunpoint, according to reports, while her daughter cried frantically in the other room. The federal agents (not local police, mind you), it turned out, were engaging in a mass drug sweep called “Operation Lone Wolf,” and they had the wrong house. She got a tepid apology and a promise to reimburse the landlord for the broken door.

It seems like these “mix ups” are happening more all of the time, and oftentimes to tragic ends and in the nation’s poorest, and most disenfranchised communities. Another sad casualty in the daily War on Drugs, and just one more reason to heed Warner’s concluding point, that we cut off this problem at the head.

Isn’t it time?

Photo: Agencia Esquema

Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren — the standard-bearer for a combative new progressivism — made the case to MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell last night that members of the Senate shouldn’t own stock.

“I realize there are some wealthy individuals – I’m not one of them, but some wealthy individuals who have a lot of stock portfolios” she told him.

Hard to see how Warren wouldn’t be, by most standards, wealthy, according to the Personal Financial Disclosure form she filed to run for Senate shows that she’s worth as much as $14.5 million. She earned more than $429,000 from Harvard last year alone for a total of about $700,000, and lives in a house worth $5 million. [emphasis added]

Warren isn’t calling herself poor, but is saying that she doesn’t own a lot of stock. Buzzfeed put a clarifying update at the bottom of the post, but it requires wading through literally dozens of words to read.

Late last week, SBE Deputy Secretary Justin Riemer confirmed to The BRAD BLOG both the referral to the AG’s office as well as the fact that an investigation into the ballot petition fraud was officially being carried out by the AG.

“This issue has been referred to the State AG by the State Board of Elections, after learning of allegations of fraudulent signature gathering in that case, and a number of others,” Riemer told us by telephone. “My understanding is that an investigation is under way,” he said.

Regarding the dubious signatures, Gingrich has been quoted as saying, “we turned in 11,100 — we needed 10,000 — 1,500 of them were by one guy who, frankly, committed fraud.”

Does Gingrich really expect people to believe “one guy” was responsible for all 1,500? That’s a huge number, and if it was, why why wouldn’t they just name him? Either way, it’s hardly the behavior of an anti-establishment candidate.