Today's Stories

April 28, 2009

Michael D. Yates
At the Factory Gate

John Stauber
Beyond MoveOn

April 27, 2009

Pam Martens
The Far Right's Plot to Capture New Hampshire

Patrick Cockburn
Torture? It Probably Killed More Americans Than 9/11

Andrew J. Bacevich Guardian of the Status Quo: Obama's Sins of Omission

Mitu Sengupta
The Bloodbath in Sri Lanka

Franklin Lamb
Hillary Does Beirut: The 165-Minute Swoop-In

Firmin DeBrabander
Crimes of Economic Madness

Dave Lindorff
Wide Open to Pandemic?

Russell Mokhiber
How Corrupt is That?

Mike Whitney
Pinter's Message to Obama

Mark Weisbrot
Overhauling the IMF

Rev. José M. Tirado
Iceland's New Dawn: How the Right Got Trounced

Website of the Day
American Casino

April 24-26, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Putting the Bush Years on Trial

Marjorie Cohn
Torture Used to Try to Link Saddam with 9/11

Andy Worthington
Who Ordered the Torture of Abu Zubaydah?

Jeremy Scahill
Are Leading Democrats Afraid of a Special Prosecutor to Investigate Torture?

Chris Floyd
Top of the Heap: the Democrats' Teachable Moment on Torture

Mike Whitney
A Housing Crash Update

Anthony DiMaggio
Obama and the Housing Crisis

Chris Kromm
Democratic Lobbyists Key to Fight Against Employee Free Choice Act

Saul Landau
Seventeen Months in "the Hole:" an Interview with the Leader of the Cuban Five

Dave Lindorff
Free John Walker Lindh

Greg Moses
The Debt Looters

Joshua Frank
Calling for a Coal Moratorium: an Interview with Ted Nace

Fred Gardner
Collective Farming and the Lynch Case

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Homework, Testing and Stealth Apartheid in Education

David Michael Green
Of Tea Parties and Teleprompters

Ramzy Baroud
Middle East Spies: a New Front in Gaza's Conflict

Rannie Amiri
Mubarak's Expanding Enemies List

Laura Carlsen
Mr. President, Calderon is Not Mexico

Richard Morse
The Haitian People Need a Lobbyist

Nikolas Kozloff
Protecting the Bald Eagle: a Task Now Falling to ... Hugo Chavez?

Kent Peterson
The Fight to Save Mexico's Mangroves

Robert Bryce
The Ethanol Scammers Rent a General

Niranjan Ramakrishnan The Financial Experts

Ron Jacobs
Torture is More Than Just "Harsh Tactics"

Richard Rhames
Roman Legends, Book Burning and History's Hunt

Stephen Martin
Wherefore Art Thou American Dream?

David Yearsley
Rodgers, Hammerstein, Michener and Nostalgia's Clammy Embrace

Poets' Basement
Khalil and Mankh

Website of the Weekend
Doug and Andrea Peacock on Grizzlies and Edward Abbey

April 23, 2009

Eamonn Fingleton
How the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times Buried the Madoff Scandal for at Least Four Years

Ray McGovern
Obama Plays Hamlet on Torture

Michael Ratner
The Torture Commission Trap

Alan Farago
The Quicksand Economy

Rob Larson
Business Gets Carded

Nadia Hijab
The Real Heroes of Durban

Fawzia Afzal-Khan
Deconstructing the Taliban

Dave Lindorff
Are Members of Congress Being Blackmailed?

Helen Redmond
Selling Out Single-Payer: the "Public Option" Con

Adam Federman
The Battle Over New York's Marcellus Shale

Website of the Day
An Interactive Map of Vanishing Employment Across the Country

April 22, 2009

Chris Floyd
The Fatal Thread: Torture, War and the Imperial Project

Joanne Mariner
Torture Evidence and Terror Blacklists

Vijay Prashad
Obama's Afghan Plan: Fracturing the Antiwar Movement

Gareth Porter
U.S. Lacks Capacity to Win Over Afghans

Dean Baker
The Tyranny of Bad Economics

Peter Morici
Housing Sales and Fixing the Economy

Winslow T. Wheeler
Eliminating Bad Pentagon Habits

Barucha Calamity Peller
The Battle to Take Back the New School

Harvey Wasserman
Chernobyl Could Happen Here

Aisha Brown /
Dedrick Muhammad
White Privilege in the Americas

Teo Ballvé
Obama's Feel Good Meeting with Colombia's Uribe

Website of the Day
Ahmedinejad's Durban Speech: What He Actually Said

April 21, 2009

Randy Rowland
Lindy Blake's Great Escape

Dave Lindorff
Jay Bybee's Conspiracy to Torture

Fidel Castro
The Secret Summit

George McGovern
Pull Out of Iraq This Year

Greg Moses
The Unemployment Channel

Benjamin Dangl
Argentina Remembers

Sonia Nettnin
Saving Lives in Gaza

Frank Barat
The Death of Bassem: a Shooting at the Wall in Bil'n

Binoy Kampmark
Legal Purgatory and John Demjanjuk

John V. Walsh
Code Red for Single Payer

David Macaray
SAG Should be Praised, Not Assailed

Website of the Day
Bonus Man: For Executive Assholes Everywhere

April 20, 2009

Mike Whitney
Housing Bust Comes Roaring Back, Worse Than Ever

Andrea Peacock
Histrionics and Legalisms in Missoula

Henry A. Giroux
Ten Years After Columbine: the Tragedy of Youth Deepens

Liaquat Ali Khan
Drone Attacks on Pakistan's Indigenous Tribes

Fred Gardner
Obama's DoJ Backs Prosecution of Medical Marijuana Providers

Stephen Soldz
Obama, Blair, Panetta and the Torture Memos: Praising Moral Cowards, Ignoring Real Heroes

Nadia Hijab
Obama's Multi-Polar Middle East

Dave Lindorff
The Meeting in Trinidad

P. Sainath
India's Press Nixes "R" Word

Nelson P Valdés
A Modest (Transition) Proposal to Obama

Mark Engler
American Empire Foreclosed?

Belén Fernández
The FARC Can't Dance

Website of the Day
Dear Mr. Buffett...

April 17-19, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Thin Ice From Here to the Horizon

Saul Landau
Infiltrating Alpha 66: a Conversation with Gerardo Hernandez, Leader of the Cuba Five

Franklin Lamb
Persia Rising

Ralph Nader
The Greedsters Are Back!

Fred Gardner
Obama's Chimerical Marijuana Policy: a Guide for the Perplexed

Dean Baker
A Win-Win Solution: Tax the Rich!

Rannie Amiri
The Curious Case of Benjamin Netanyahu

George Wuerthner
The War on Predators

Dave Lindorff
No Amnesty for Torturers

David Swanson
Personal Torture Laws

Jim Goodman
The Control of Food

Kathy Sanborn
Economic Fallout Hits Families Hard

Don Monkerud
Economic Recovery for Whom?

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
The People's Money

David Michael Green
Home of the Barricaded, Land of the 'Fraid

Nelson P Valdés
The OAS Charter, Cuba and the United States

Manuel Gomez
From the Bay of Pigs to Trinadad and Tobago

Dr. Susan Block
On Sex Addiction: the Deadliest Sin?

Ramzy Baroud
Non-Violence in Palestine?

Christopher Brauchli
Banning Barbie

Stephen Martin
Statelessness: the Final Frontier

Ron Jacobs
Tearing the Whole Building Down: the Dead in Greensboro

David Yearsley
Monkey Music

Lorenzo Wolff
A Song for the End of the World

Poets' Basement
Moser, McTeer and Buknatski

Website of the Weekend
New England Journal of Medicine Report on Civilian Deaths in Iraq

April 16, 2009

Mike Whitney
A Bulletin From the Captain of the Titantic

Russell Mokhiber
The Top 10 Enemies of Single-Payer

Ronald Teska
From Iraq to Appalachia

Gareth Porter
Predator Blowback

Paul Fitzgerald /
Elizabeth Gould
Thinking Like an Afghan

Benjamin Dangl
Latin America Changes

Kevin Pina
Haiti: Obama's First Foreign Policy Disaster?

Robert Bryce
Another Ethanol Producer Goes Bust

George Wuerthner
See the Forest: the Value of Dead Trees

Paul Garon, David Roediger and Kate Khatib The Surreal Life of Franklin Rosemont

Website of the Day
Socialism and the Facebook Generation

April 15, 2009

Kathleen and Bill Christison
Solving Palestine While Israel Destroys It

Ray McGovern
W, the Torture Decider

Robert Sandels
Is There a Latin American Policy?

Heather Williams /
Paul Baker
Carbon Cap and Trade: How Wall Street will Game the Regs and Trash the Planet

Jack Willoughby
The Lessons of the S & L Crisis

David Swanson
Habeas at Bagram?

Paul Craig Roberts
94 Years of Serfdom

Sara Mann
Norman Rockwell and the Perils of Nostalgia

Kenneth Couesbouc
John Maynard's Martingale: How Keynes Got Rich

Binoy Kampmark
Tax Haven Hypocrisies

Kekuni Blaisdell, Lynette Hi'llani Cruz, George Kahumoku Flores, et al.: An Urgent Letter to Obama on the Rights of Native Hawaiians

Website of the Day
Taxa: the Paintings of Isabella Kirkland

April 14, 2009

Conn Hallinan
The Afghan Rubik's Cube

Mike Whitney
Why is Goldman Sachs So Scared of Mike Morgan?

Peter Morici
Taxing Grandma to Subsidize Goldman Sachs

Greg Moses
Economic Curveballs: the Laffer Posse

Fidel Castro
Obama's Cuba Policy: Not a Word About the Blockade

Robert Weissman
No Blank Check for the IMF

Rebecca Macaux /
Philip Primeau
Somali Piracy and American Foreign Policy

Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero
The Dubious Revoution: Biofuels, the Next Generation

Dave Lindorff
Snatch-and-Jail Justice: the Ugly War on Immigrants

Walter Brasch
The Resurrection of Intolerance

Benjamin Day
Why Has the Press Failed Us in Reporting on Health Care Reform?

Website of the Day
The Appraisal Bubble

April 13, 2009

Patrick Cockburn
Iraqi Militia Fear Reprisals After US Exit

Uri Avnery
Our Dissonance

Jeremy Scahill
A Test Case for Habeas Corpus: Will Obama Prosecute the Somali Pirate in a US Court?

Martha Rosenberg
Suicide Syndrome: Are VA Protocols Behind Iraq Vet Suicides?

Karl Grossman
A Radioactive Extension for Aging Nuclear Plants

Nadia Hijab
Still Waiting: Obama and American Muslims

Sam Smith
America's Cultural Bear Market

James McEnteer
Peru's Shining Example

Sean McMahon
Globalizing Politicide: Israel's Strikes on Sudan

Namihei Odaira
Makota's "Campaign Against Poverty"

John V. Walsh
Bossnapping

Website of the Day
Declining IRS Audits for Big Financial Houses

April 10 / 12, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Resurrection and Revenge

Chris Floyd
Hope Abandoned: Obama Protects CIA Torture Memos

Mike Whitney
"Liquidate the Banks; Fire the Executives!" Warren's Devastating Report to Congress

Saul Landau
How the Media Bought the Surge

M. Reza Pirbhai
Obama's Afghanistan Plan and India-Pakistan Relations

Franklin Spinney
The Art of the Scam: Wall Street and the Pentagon

Rannie Amiri
Iran's Elections: Why Arab Leaders Want Ahmadinejad to Win

William Blum
The Ideology of Barack Obama

Matt Vidal
Why Card Check Would Help the Economy

Jeff Howison
Death of the Square Deal

Jeff Leys
Resisting the Af-Pak War: the Creech Air Base Arrests

Dave Lindorff
America's Imperial Wars: Why We Need to See the Horrors

Ramzy Baroud
Israel Investigated: But Will It Repent?

Missy Beattie
The Grateful Dead, Wounded and Displaced

Fred Gardner
Fakes Left, Goes Right: Obama's Crossover Dribble on Marijuana Policy

Harvey Wasserman Another $50 Billion for Rust Bucket Nukes?

Suzan Mazur
A Revolution in Biology: an Interview with Nobel Laureate Paul Nurse

Bernard Umbrecht
German Capitalists Take Fire

David Macaray
A Word Clooney, Hanks and Baldwin Should Learn: Solidarity

Janet Kauffman
How to Starve (or Feed) a River

Ron Jacobs
Daring to Struggle, Failing to Win

Norman Solomon
Getting a Death Grip on Memory

Michael Winship
Let the Railsplitter Awake!

Richard Rhames
Empire, Ennui and Extra Cheese

Wanda Fucha
Brother, Can You Spare a Million Bucks?

David Yearsley
My Journey to the Heart of Rahman

Lorenzo Wolff
Getting Beyond the Black-and-White: Jason Isbell's Challenging New Album

Ben Sonnenberg
Rossellini's Louis XIV: "Neither the Sun Nor Death Can be Gazed Upon Fixedly"

Jeffrey St. Clair
Savage Incongruities: the Photographic Life of Lee Miller

Poets' Basement
Corseri and Corzett

Website of the Weekend
The Palestine Chronicle Needs Your Help!

April 9, 2009

Mike Whitney
The Decade of Darkness

Patrick Cockburn
What It Would Take to Mend Fences with Islam

Stephen Soldz
Caught on Tape: Diagnostic Abuse of Veterans

P. Sainath
The Rise of the Shoe-cide Bomber

Ellen Cantarow
Israel's Master Plan for Transfer

Gareth Porter /
Jim Lobe
Obama and Israel's Threat to Strike Iran

Jeremy Scahill
How Many Democrats Will Stand Up Against Obama's Bloated Military Budget?

Jerry Kroth
Saving GM From Bankruptcy--With the Stroke of a Pen

Binoy Kampmark
Fujimori Convicted: A Measure of Justice in Latin America

Fidel Castro
My Meeting with the Black Caucus

Website of the Day
Bird Song Radio

April 8, 2009

John Prados
The Af-Pak Paradox

Bill Moyers /
Michael Winship
Changing the Rules of the Blame Game

Winslow T. Wheeler
The Tooth Fairy and the Defense Budget

Russell Mokhiber
PBS Lashes Back

Kathy Sanborn
Depression Fury

Rev. William E. Alberts
If the Shoe Fits: Bush and Al-Zaidi

James McEnteer Rashomon and the Binghamton Shooter: the Rush to Interpret Jiverly Wong's "Statement"

Nadia Hijab
Olmert's Nightmare

Adam Turl
Card Check on the Ropes

Kevin Zeese
Escaping the Drug War Quagmire

Website of the Day
Walk Score Your Neighborhood

April 7, 2009

David Price
Counterinsurgency's Free Ride

Uri Avnery
Who's the Boss?

Chris Floyd
Talking Peace in Prague, Dropping Bombs in Pakistan

Winslow T. Wheeler Defense Cuts: Gates and the System

Marjorie Cohn
Prosecuting the Bush Torture Team: Spain Leads the Way

Dean Baker
Hands Off Social Security

Diana Johnstone
NATO, Strasbourg and the Black Block

Dave Lindorff
Politicizing Accounting

Martha Rosenberg
Life on HBO's Factory Hog Farm

Evelyn Pringle
Motherhood and the Psycho-Pharmaceutical Complex

Website of the Day
Gaza: Closed Zone

April 6, 2009

Michael Hudson
The IMF Rules the World

Andy Worthington Bagram: Guantánamo's Dark Mirror

Ray McGovern
Profiles in Cowardice: Eric Holder and Colin Powell

Deepak Tripathi
The Pakistan Enigma

Mike Whitney
Bernanke's Financial Rescue Plan: a Glide-Path to Destitution

Norman Solomon
Meet the New Escalators: the Democrats and the Afghan War

Jonathan Cook
Israel Railways Accused of Racism in Firing of Arab Workers

Judith Bello
Justice for the Developmentally Disabled

Deena Metzger Blackwater in Liberia

Dr. M. Kamiar
"There's No 'Eye' in Iran:" Obama's Pronunciation Problem

Website of the Day
Prison Talk

April 3-5, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
From Twin Towers to Twin Camelots

Kathy Kelly /
Brian Terrall
Getting a Closer Look at the Killer Drones

Sue Sturgis
Fooling with Disaster? Startling Revelations About Three Mile Island Raise New Doubts Over Nuclear Plant Safety

Peter Morici
Girding for a Depression

Kathy Sanborn
Homeless in Tent City, USA

Andy Worthington
Britain's Guantánamo: Fact or Fiction?

Rob Larson
Subprime Supreme Court: The Roberts Court Has Become a Powerful New Tool for Business

Saul Landau
Biden and Nixon: a Tale of Two Latin American Experiences

Steve Early
An Evening with Andy Stern

John Goekler
Was Gaza Israel's Waterloo?

Rannie Amiri
Arab League Reconciliation Summit a Bust

Dave Lindorff
Hooray for Juries! A Courtroom Victory for Ward Churchill and Academic Free Speech

Lee Ballinger
Sound Garden: Tom Morello at the Grammy Museum

Ron Jacobs
Artifacts for Survival

David Macaray
AIG Plays the Sympathy Card

John Wight
G20: Capital's New World Symphony

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
Race in the Obama Era

Mychal Bell
Surviving Jena Six

Missy Beattie
Hoop Hopes, War and Peace

Reza Fiyouzat
The Iran/US Rapproachment Dance

Michael Boldin
The War on Drugs is a War on You

Christopher Brauchli
The Pope's Batting 50-50

Charles R. Larson
Too Much Stuff

Susie Day
Bernie Breakout Shocker!!

Stephen Martin
Gordon Brown's Chicken Run at the G20

Kim Nicolini
"Last House on the Left:" Vigilantes of the Bourgeoisie

David Yearsley
Homage to Moog and Mallards

Phyllis Pollack
An Interview with Legendary Rock Producer Chris Kimsey on Working with the Stones, Ronnie Wood, Jimmy Cliff, Peter Tosh and Saint Jude

Poets' Basement
Foley, Valentine and Kozak

Website of the Day
The Corner Store

April 2, 2009

Robert Weissman
What If Obama Had Treated Detroit Like Wall Street?

Eric Toussaint /
Damien Millet
A G20 Meeting for Naught

George Bisharat
Israel's Impunity Must End

Russell Mokhiber
Something is Rotten at PBS

Franklin Lamb
Has Washington Lost Lebanon?

Gareth Porter
Settling Scores in Iraq: Maliki Draws US Troops into Crackdown on Sunni Rivals

David Macaray
Obama and the Ruling Class: "Only the Little People Pay Taxes"

Chris Genovali
B.C.'s Bloody Grizzly Hunt

Sam Smith
The Politics of Adulation

Suzan Mazur
Is Neo-Darwinism Dead?

Website of the Day
Fighting for Change in St. Louis

April 1, 2009

Chris Floyd
Surging Further Into the Afghan Abyss

Stanley Heller
Israeli War Crimes: Thank God, It Was Only Rumors

Mark Brenner, Mischa Gaus and Jane Slaughter Obama's Perilous Plan for Detroit: Restructure the Big 3, But Not With Bankruptcy

Jonathan Cook
The Slow Demise of Ehud Olmert

Eric Walberg
EU in Tatters: Only the Protesters Have Any Vision

Richard Morse
Why Haiti Can't Forget Its Past

Don Fitz
Guess Who Came to Dinner with a Match? Green Mayoral Candidate's Van Firebombed in St. Louis

Laray Polk
Texas and Evolution

Belén Fernández
12 Años de Soledad?

Harvey Wasserman
Cracking the Media Silence on Three Mile Island

Website of the Day
Pentagon Fraud Investigations Fell, While Contracts Soared

March 31, 2009

Uri Avnery
The Deception Tango

Peter Lee
Ghosts in the Machine: the World's Hottest Cyberwar Battlefield

Nicholas Dearden
A New Global Debt Crisis

Dave Lindorff
The Obama Betrayal

Joanne Mariner
"We'll Make You See Death"

Ron Jacobs
Obama's Pakistan Gambit

Wiliam S. Lind
Another Lost War

David Michael Green
Who Says the GOP Doesn't Have a Plan?

Benjamin Dangl
Beyond Elections in the Americas

Johnny Barber
Meditation in Orange

Dedrick Muhammad
Economic Inequality: the Foundation of the Racial Divide

Website of the Day
How the Obama Dems Took Over the Peace Movement

March 30, 2009

Michael Hudson
Financing the Empire: Do US Face G20 Mutiny?

Patrick Cockburn
What Next in Afghanistan?

Henry A. Giroux
Hard Lessons

Mike Whitney
Where's Eliot Spitzer Now That We Need Him?

Ralph Nader
Where's All the Money Coming From?

Paul Craig Roberts
Obama's War on the (Upper) Middle Class

Jeremy Scahill
The Logistical Nightmare in Iraq

Robert Bryce
The Cellulosic Ethanol Delusion

Jonathan Cook
Remembering Land Day in Palestine

Ray McGovern
Obama Bombs

Website of the Day
Hersh: Syria Calling

April 28, 2009

A Crackdown Compounded

The Failed Border Security Initiative

By TOM BARRY

Something isn't working.

In late 2005 Michael Chertoff, the new secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), launched the "Secure Border Initiative" as the umbrella program for border control and immigration enforcement. The announced goal of SBI, described as "a comprehensive multiyear plan to secure America's borders and reduce illegal migration," was to gain "operational control of both the northern and southern borders within five years."

Now, in response to calls for more border security by regional politicians and fears of a spillover of Mexico's drug-related violence, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano has announced a renewed operational focus on southwest border security. The new initiative, "The Southwest Border: The Way Ahead," continues to meet recent increases of cartel violence in Mexico with strong action and solidified coordination with federal, state, local, tribal, and Mexican authorities.

SBI benefited from an infusion of new congressional funding initiatives in 2005 and 2006 for the border wall, the virtual fence, more Border Patrol agents, and more detention beds. The new initiative, in contrast, will largely rely on redeploying existing personnel and resources to the border. It emphasizes increased collaboration between federal and local law enforcement agencies to rid the country of "criminal aliens" and to interdict flows of drugs and arms.

Risk-Based Security Enforcement

DHS says the new initiative will be based on a "risk-based decision-making process." All the various DHS initiatives that are part of its SBI umbrella program contend that they are "risk-based." DHS contends it is protecting the homeland against "dangerous goods and people."

In practice, however, its array of border control and immigration enforcement programs casts a wide net—with most of the arrests being immigration violators and drug law offenders rather than dangerous criminals. Marijuana leads, by far, the list of illegal drugs seized, even though there is widening consensus, even in the criminal justice community, that marijuana is not a "dangerous good," especially when compared with cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamines.

A key component of the new border security initiative is the Border Enforcement Security Taskforce (BEST), which brings together federal and local law enforcement agencies, along with Mexican officials, in a collaborative but Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)-directed effort to deploy teams "where transnational criminal organizations exploit vulnerabilities along the nation's border."

DHS is doubling the number of ICE agents on BEST teams throughout the southwest borderlands that will lead transborder criminal investigations. The expansion will allow DHS to "strengthen the program's ability to dismantle the leadership and supporting infrastructure of the criminal organizations responsible for perpetrating violence and illegal activity along our borders and in the nation's interior."

The achievements of the existing BEST teams don't support ICE declarations that their investigation and prosecutions are "risk-based." The existing 95 members of BEST teams in the Southwest were responsible for 1,000 criminal arrests in 2008, but most of its arrests—1,256—were for administrative violations, presumably transgressions of immigration law. Marijuana seizures topped the list of drugs confiscated. BEST seized 42,400 lbs. of marijuana, 1,803 lbs. of cocaine, and 66 lbs. of heroin.

Operation Stonegarden's Friendly Forces on the Border

The new border security initiative announced by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano in March 2009 stresses DHS collaboration with local law enforcement through a variety of operations. Introducing the new initiative in testimony to the Senate's Homeland Security Committee, DHS Secretary Napolitano said that through Operation Stonegarden DHS will "enhance state, local, and tribal law enforcement operations and assets along the border."

Operation Stonegarden is a federal assistance program ($60 million in 2009) for local law enforcement that is limited to borderland counties. The assistance is not general funding but for additional personnel and overtime pay for homeland security operations. A major problem, as in all DHS federal/local programs, is that funding is not accompanied with internal regulations specifying exactly what the homeland security funds can be used for.

As a result, Operation Stonegarden recipients can use DHS' own broad mission—"protecting the nation against dangerous goods and people"—to justify their own extra expenses for picking up local drug users and illegal immigrants. Under Operation Stonegarden, dangerous people are defined as "criminal aliens," but criminal aliens include all illegal immigrants, according to the operational contract. Similarly, all illegal drugs are included in the search for "dangerous drugs."

Since the program was initiated shortly after the DHS's creation, the rationale for the program has evolved—from a "first-responder" to terrorism program to a border security program focused on drugs and illegal immigrants. Officially it is a program of DHS's Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to provide grants to "designated localities to enhance cooperation and coordination among local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies in a joint mission to secure the United States borders along routes of ingress …"

The program elapsed in 2005 but was renewed in 2006 under DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff. Writing in HS Today, a securities industry magazine, Joshua Filler, the original director of DHS's local coordination office, applauded the relaunching of the operation, pointing to the example of funding in Maine to explain its counterterrorism objective.

Filler, now the CEO of Filler Security Strategies, wrote:

"While Maine itself isn't likely to be the target of a terrorist attack or other catastrophic event, it could be used as an infiltration point or launching pad by terrorists to strike other parts of the United States—in fact, that's essentially what happened on 9/11. If Maine and small northern border states are to receive federal funds, which they should, this is one of the best uses of those funds since it will have the biggest antiterrorist impact with a limited budgetary impact."

Operation Stonegarden is no longer couched in counterterrorism rhetoric. Basically, it functions as one of the many ICE and Border Patrol programs aimed at increasing cooperation with local police forces, with program recipients being limited to borderland law enforcement agencies. As such, complaints about Operation Stonegarden reflect the kind of criticism leveled against such ICE programs as Operation Community Shield, the 287(g) Program, and Secure Communities, namely that involving local police in immigration enforcement leads to racial profiling and increasing community distrust of law enforcement.

The sheriffs' departments that receive Operation Stonegarden funding don't so much focus on the "routes of ingress" into the United States as on the immigrants and illegal drug users in their own communities.

This was the case in Otero County, in southeastern New Mexico, where sheriff deputies used the Stonegarden grant to hunt for illegal immigrants in the Chaparral, a largely Latino settlement on the edge of El Paso. In September 2008 a federal judge issued an injunction barring the sheriff's department from enforcing immigration laws through Operation Stonegarden.

The injunction specifically bars the department from "engaging in unlawful discriminatory activities and racial profiling for the purpose of identifying and apprehending undocumented and illegal immigrants pursuant to Operation Stonegarden." In addition, the order bars the department from "unlawful retaliation, coercion, harassment, threats, and intimidation," and tells the department not to conduct "unlawful community-wide raids targeted at low-income Latino residents in Otero County."

In addition to receiving Operation Stonegarden funding, Otero County is cashing in on the immigrant crackdown boom by way of two county-owned prisons that house ICE and U.S. Marshall Service detainees. Both are operated by Management & Training Corporation, a Utah-based private prison firm.

While the founding premise of Operation Stonegarden was that the borderlands—north and south—were the gateway regions for potential terrorists and therefore needed increased vigilance, the practice of involving local police has focused DHS resources on borderland residents at least as much as transients.

The program is also controversial in the northern borderlands, where local police have become increasingly involved in the Border Patrol's crackdown on immigrants and illegal drugs. In Washington State, a county sheriff has declined Stonegarden funding, saying that immigration law enforcement is not a public safety priority. The sheriff in Jefferson County in Washington, near the northern border, declined to apply for a Stonegarden grant in 2009.

Sheriff Michael Brasfield complained that the language in the grant application that described undocumented immigrants as "criminal" was insensitive and felt the overall document was unacceptable. "Unfortunately, the inclusion of language describing illegal aliens as 'criminal aliens' that 'are drawn here by criminal activities,' coupled with the requirement that participating agencies (described as 'Friendly Forces') agree to detain illegal aliens and turn them over to the Border Patrol, makes the overall document unacceptable," Brasfield wrote in his Jan. 12 letter.

Echoing the common complaint that Border Patrol and local police involved in joint operations are intruding into the lives of community members in the Bellingham, Washington area, activist Rosalinda Guillen told a local TV station, "It's almost like they're looking for something to do and we're the targets."

Crackdown-Compounded

The new Border Security Initiative, announced in response to the alarm about spill-over violence from Mexico, will bring more personnel to the southwest border and place additional technology at strategic locations in order to crack down on the illegal activities that fuel the drug war in Mexico.

It's another crackdown initiative from DHS, and it will mean more canine teams at borderland checkpoints, a stepped-up "criminal alien" dragnet, and expanded cooperation with local police. DHS assures that the new deployment will be the result of a "risk-based decision-making process."

"The Way Ahead" is a two-pronged strategy. DHS says that the new crackdown on the northern side of the border will complement "Mexico's crackdown campaign against drug cartels in Mexico."

With this new deployment of personnel and resources, the border will assuredly become more secure when measured by the usual metrics of success in the drug war and the immigrant crackdown. Soon, the Border Patrol will be erecting new billboards at checkpoints and entry stations that hail the new drug seizures. In forthcoming news releases, the public information office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will boast of the number of criminal aliens arrested and deported. So, too, will there be a rash of pronouncements about the number of southbound arms seized at the border.

"The Way Ahead" initiative, despite the likely success indicators, is another front in the long-running war on drugs.

Forty years ago, President Nixon, responding to the alarm about Mexico supplying drugs to America's youth, launched Operation Intercept along the border to interdict marijuana shipments. That short-lived initiative, which was halted largely because of Mexican government complaints about long lines of traffic at the border, was the opening shot of the "war on drugs" of the new Republican administration.

Started as a unilateral offensive, the "war on drugs" has since gone global—and bilateral, in the case of Mexico. The last four decades have seen a long string of tactical victories but year after year of strategic defeat despite increased international cooperation. The endless string of achievements—number of acres eradicated, bundles of drugs seized, traffickers arrested, etc.—underscores the continuing failure of the drug war.

Rather than using the drug-related violence in Mexico as an opportunity to point to the failure of the crackdown approach to the drug problem, the Obama administration has reaffirmed U.S. support for the military-led drug crackdown in Mexico and authorized the redeployment of DHS resources and personnel along the border to fight the war and simultaneously contain its violence.

Not only does the new DHS initiative constitute yet another front in the failed drug war, it also incorporates the systemic failures of the U.S. crackdown on immigrants and crime. By joining the various crackdowns—U.S. drug war crackdown in Mexico, immigrant crackdown, drug war at home, and "get-tough" law enforcement—the DHS is compounding the problems of all these mounting crackdowns.

It's a crackdown-compounded, and follows old paths rather than pointing to a way ahead.

Tom Barry directs the TransBorder Project of the Americas Program at the Center for International Policy in Washington, DC. He blogs at borderlinesblog.

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