. I  saw Santana at one of their first gigs outside the Mission District back in 1969 when they played a benefit for a recently deceased Hell’s Angel’s family at Longshoremen’s Hall along with Janis, the Airplane and the Dead. It was Reconquista night–they took the place and sent it soaring. Ended with most of the Dead, including Garcia joining in an extended jam to close out the night.

Carols Santana in Mexico City……….

Here is Los Lobos in Salt Lake City radio studio January 2009…clasico..

Friday treat, music vid without Michael Jackson..

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in Chapultepec Park,

Mexico City April 2008

“The U.S. Mexico relationship is increasingly being designed as a security issue.  The bilateral relationship is becoming militarized. The people who define this crucial relationship to both countries are increasingly in the Pentagon and the military.” -Laura Carlsen, Centre for International Policy

President-elect Obama made the happy noise that there would be a “change” in US drug policy, that the emphasis would be on prevention and rehab–”demand reduction”–over enforcement and incarceration-”supply reduction.”  Now that he’s occupying the White House, it appears that those were just words.

Money speaks louder and with more authority.  See my June 11 post ”Obama’s Rebranded War.”

Buried in the 2009 Supplemental Appropriations for Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Pandemic Flu is “$470 million to address growing violence along the United States-Mexico border by supporting the Government of Mexico’s war against organized crime and drug-trafficking.”

Counting all our counternarcotics programs, US funding and support of Calderon’s narcoguerra–a bloody all-out militarized machine that has FAIL painted across it–will far exceed a billion dollars next year. The Obama administration is poised to put Bush’s efforts in the shade when it comes to the Drug War.

Yesterday, June 17, Abigail Poe at Just the Facts, a joint project of the Center for International Policy, Latin America Working Group Education Fund and the Washington Office on Latin America, filed this:

Mexico to surpass Colombia as the #1 recipient of U.S. aid in Latin America

If Mexico receives the $481 million requested in the FY2010 Congressional Budget Justification, total aid to Mexico in the 2008-2010 period would surpass, by over $200 million, the $1.4 billion requested by the Bush Administration in the original Mérida Initiative package.

… As military and police aid to Colombia continues to follow a downward trend, and assistance to Mexico continues to rise, it will be increasingly important that the way in which it is allocated is closely monitored to make sure it is not being given to police or military units accused of corruption or human rights violations, or spent on a model that gives the armed forces inappropriate new roles while having little impact on narcotrafficking and related violence.

Yes, well, that horse bolted out the barn some time ago.

On May 6, more than 100 human rights groups and other NGOs in Mexico sent a letter to the US Senate and House regards the upsurge in abuse of civiliasn by the Mexican army since Calderon unleashed them.

We make specific mention of the current context in which President Felipe Calderón recently sent to the Mexican Congress a package of legislative reforms that provide a state of emergency that would justify the Mexican Army’s control over civilian authority when they are insufficient or ineffective, or when considered strategic for national security. That context is a concern over possible abuses generated by such the militarization of public safety.

Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission reported that they received 1,230 abuse complaints against the military in 2008 — seven times the number for 2006, the year Calderon took office and sent the Mexican army into the zocalos. But not much has been done about these complaints, according to Human Rights Watch. In February the New York-based HRW released a 128-report charging the Mexican commission with “failing to live up to its promise” and “tolerating abusive practices.”

These “abusive practices” include murder, kindapping, rape and torture.

After obtaining written testimony from 25 victims of Mexican army abuse, Mexican newsweekly Proceso reporter Gloria Leticia Diaz filed a story on June 6 charging members of the 28th Infantry Battalion based in Baja California with the systematic beating and torturing of Tijuana police officers.The local cops were strung up and beaten for six hours at a time, had electrical shocks applied to their genitals and feet and were suffocated with plastic bags wrapped over their heads.

The day after this report appeared, soldiers in Ciudad Juarez went after two journalists covering a traffic accident involving a Mexican army vehicle. Local televion coverage showed the photographer from Juarez’ El Diario being knocked to the ground and clubbed with rifles by the Mexican army troops. Another photographer from PM daily was also roughed up and had his camera snatched by the soldiers. More on this from Reporters san Frontieres.

Calderon and his supporters in Washington call the military occupation of Juarez a “success.”

By what standard?

Since the Army rumbled into the streets of Ciudad Juarez six months ago the murder rate has soared 67% with 671 homicides. Ninety-one cops have been murdered during the same period, averaging about 15 per month.

While Calderon’s army was busy rounding up mayors and local law enforcment and charging them with corruption, a dozen Mexican soldiers were arrested and charged with working for Los Zetas, another ten soldiers were later hauled in for being on Chapo Guzman’s Sinaloa payroll.

Putting aside such worrisome developments in the narcoguerra, Air Force Gen. Victor E. Renuart Jr, commander of the US Northern Command told US Senators in March that Calderon’s aggressive militarization was just the ticket for victory. Or something.

“The challenge for the Mexican government is … sustainment of that effort, because their military is not that large. So we’re working with them in a direct relationship to build more of the capability to allow them to sustain that effort in some of these cities.”

Senor, senor, do you know where we’re headin’?
Lincoln County Road or Armageddon?
Seems like I been down this way before.
Is there any truth in that, senor?

“Senor (Tales of Yankee Power)”–Bob Dylan

The unrepentant one-eyed Wobblie John Ross delivers a blistering report on the Hermasillo day-care fire that snuffed the lives of 46 poor and working class children..a story that lost its shelf-life to the narcos-on-everything  reporting that dominates news from Mexico.

Since Ross delivers his reports as a newsletter and not a blog, I’m putting it up here…and hope he doesn’t get pissed and come after my ass. Go to the links above and subscribe.

46 MEXICAN TODDLERS SACRIFICED ON THE ALTAR OF NEO-LIBERALISM; WEB OF CORRUPTION ENTANGLES PRI GOVERNOR, PRESIDENT’S WIFE

MEXICO CITY (June 18th) – Words are powerless to describe the unspeakable horror that engulfed the working class “Y” colony in the northern Mexican desert city of Hermosillo June 5th when a grubby industrial warehouse that had been rented out as a day care center burst into flames trapping over 100 toddlers inside.

With the emergency exits blocked, no fire extinguishers on the premises, and defective smoke and fire alarms, neighbors frantically fought to rescue their children.  One brave young man repeatedly slammed his pick-up into the front wall to open an escape hatch – he was later cited for inflicting property damage.  57 youngsters were carried out of the ABC Day Care Center alive.  41 were not, most of them burned beyond recognition in their cribs and cots. 26 of the children rescued remain hospitalized in grave condition – five more have since died.  In one heartbreaking incident, a surviving child’s face was so badly disfigured that her parents did not recognize her and she was given to another family whose own child had burned up in the conflagration.

Preliminary investigation into the tragedy point to gross negligence by the authorities, the collusion of federal and Sonora state government officials, and influence trafficking on the part of the three listed owners, one of whom is a cousin of Margarita Zavala, the wife of Mexican president Felipe Calderon.

The privatization of government day care centers under Calderon and his right-wing predecessor Vicente Fox graphically underscores how neo-liberalism dilutes safety standards and sacrifices children’s lives to boost profit margins.

The killer blaze is supposed to have begun in a section of the warehouse where state government documents were stored when an air conditioning unit malfunctioned, sending out sparks that ignited stacks of documents – but one air conditioning repairman consulted for this report insists that such a chain of events is improbable at best.

The suggestion that the fire was deliberately set to get rid of incriminating evidence of the malfeasance of outgoing Sonora governor Eduardo Bours was dismissed by authorities as unfounded rumor.  Bours himself called the allegations “an urban myth.”

Whatever its true origin, the fire quickly spread into the day care facility that shared the warehouse but was not immediately detected because of the disabled alarm system and a false polyurethane ceiling that had been extended over the center, reportedly to protect the children from asbestos used in the construction of the structure.  When the polyurethane ignited just before 3 PM nap time, flaming shards of plastic fell upon the toddlers and toxic fumes filled the room – the warehouse windows were ten meters above the floor and could not be broken out.

The ABC Day Care Center had been certified to be in compliance with building and safety codes by the Hermosillo Fire Department May 26th, just ten days before the tragedy.  It now appears that no inspection occurred on the premises and the certification is a carbon copy of a clean bill of health absolving the owners of any violations issued annually since 2005.

The apparent complicity between local officials and the owners of the ABC Day Care Center, all of whom are connected to Bours’ regime has incited bitter indignation.  10,000 citizens took to the streets of Hermosillo in 100 degree plus heat a week after the disaster.  What began as a silent march soon erupted in thunderous denunciations of the outgoing governor (elections are scheduled for July 5th) and the Calderon administration. Demonstrators later set up an impromptu graveyard in front of Hermosillo city hall.

The indignation has gone national: at a book presentation in Mexico City, the country’s most lauded author Elena Poniatowska interrupted her literary remarks to vent her rage at the negligence and veniality of Mexican authorities.  Similarly, Carlos Monsivais, the renowned chronicler of Mexican civil society and poet laureate Jose Emilio Pacheco spoke out in anger at other events in the capital.

The ABC Day Care Center is one of more than 1500 such facilities covering 223,000 children that have been privatized by the Mexican Institute of Social Security (IMSS) since 2000 – the IMSS continues to run 142 day care centers on its own.  Under the privatization schema, the yearly cost per child was reduced from 3800 pesos to 2100 with a subsequent deterioration in services – food quality, medical attention, and educational programs as well as safety standards all declined, according to Dr. Gustavo Leal, an investigator at the Autonomous Metropolitan University (UAM) in Mexico City and columnist for the national daily La Jornada who specializes in the IMSS.

In Sonora, 79 out of 87 government day care centers have been sold off, many to for-profit business interests with ample political clout – at least 13 owners have family ties with Governor Bours revealed an independent probe by the investigative unit of the national daily El Universal.  State and federal authorities have yet to disclose a full list of those who hold the concessions.

Bottom line investment in infrastructure may well explain the inappropriateness of the site selected for the ABC Day Care Center – a factory warehouse (the space had previously been occupied by a clothing maquiladora) on the corner of Railroad and Mechanics Avenue in an industrial section of the Sonoran capital.  The nursery fronted a gasoline station and was flanked by a tire factory yet inspectors repeatedly certified the building for use as a day care center.

The three owners of the ABC listed on IMSS documents are part of a compact clique of “picudos” or wealthy Sonorans with business and family ties to both Bours and Calderon.  Sandra Tellez Nieves is the wife of Bours’ life stock and poultry sub-secretary (Sonora is a cattle ranching state and Bours himself owns the largest poultry producer in Mexico.)  Marcia Gomez del Campo is the spouse of Antonio Salido, Bours’ Secretary of Infrastructure and the cousin of the once-ruling PRI candidate for Hermosillo mayor in the July 5th elections.  To close the circle, Marcia’s father, Roberto Gomez del Campo is the uncle by marriage of Governor Bours’ wife.

The third partner in the ABC operation, Gildardo Urquides Serrano, is the owner of three privatized day care centers in Hermosillo and Nogales and the finance secretary for the PRI candidate to succeed Bours, Alfonso Elias Serrano. Urquides’ father, prominent Hermosillo businessman Jose Luis Matiela, a Bours crony, is listed as the owner of the doomed warehouse and rented the building to the Sonora finance secretariat to stash state documents which in turn sublet space to the three owners of the ABC day care. Monthly rent for the warehouse, 30,000 pesos in 2008 (approximately $2800 USD a month) was raised a thousand fold to 300,000 pesos in 2009 without explanation.

What role Calderon family ties played in securing the day care contracts for the three is being closely scrutinized.  Marcia Gomez del Campo is the cousin of Calderon’s wife Margarita Zavala.  The First Lady describes Marcia as a distant relative whom she cannot remember ever meeting.  But according to a spread in the May 31st society section of the Hermosillo daily El Imparcial, Zavala, Calderon, and Gomez del Campo were all guests at the 80th birthday party of Zavala’s grandmother Mercedes Gomez del Campo, held at a posh Mexico City Catholic college two weeks before the ABC was consumed by flames. Photographs accompanying the article show Marcia and Margarita posing with family members.

As First Lady, Margarita Zavala is the honorific president of the Integral Family Direction or DIF, which provides social services for needy families and abused children.  According to Dr. Leal, the DIF plays a pivotal role in recommending owners for newly privatized day care facilities.

The IMSS was created by depression-era president Lazaro Cardenas to provide workers with health care, run the nation’s public hospitals, and manage ancillary social services.  Many of its functions have been dismantled by the last five neo-liberal presidents to the detriment of those for whom they were originally intended.  For example, the privatization of workers’ pension funds, formerly a function of the IMSS, has led to a reduction of a third to a half of workers’ retirement accounts, and government failure to adequately fund the hospital system has forced workers to seek private health care.

In a gambit to further downgrade the IMSS, which has always been controlled by the PRI, Felipe Calderon, a member of the right-wing PAN party, has created a two-tier day care system under the aegius of the Social Development Secretariat (SEDESO).  8000 decentralized day care centers have been chartered in private homes in poor neighborhoods to care for more than 200,000 children while their parents – often single mothers – are at work.

Under the Calderon scheme, SEDESO advances day care providers 35,000 pesos to recondition their homes as nurseries – parents are obliged to pay 700 pesos each month per child for the service, a fee covered under the government’s “Opportunities” poverty program.

Additional funds for both the IMSS and SEDESO day care centers are made available to the providers based on attendance.  A 2008 government audit revealed the names of hundreds of children on provider lists whose existence could not be verified, suggesting widespread fraud down at the grassroots.

Curiously, Calderon inaugurated the SEDESO neighborhood day care center network in Chalco, a desperately poor squatter city in the misery belt surrounding Mexico City where in 1989, the much-reviled ex-president Carlos Salinas de Gortari initiated his Solidarity anti-poverty program.  20 years later, Chalco remains just as poverty- stricken as it was before Salinas instigated Solidarity in a maneuver to buy the votes of the poor.  For the PRI and the PAN, the poor are essential electoral cannon fodder and both parties are battling for their allegiance in the upcoming July 5th midterms.

Until she declared her candidacy as the PAN nominee for a Mexico City seat in the lower house of congress, Lia Limon ran the SEDESO day care program.  Limon was briefly married to Luis Carlos Ugalde – Felipe Calderon is listed as best man at their Cuernavaca wedding.  Ugalde was subsequently appointed chairman of the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) which stage-managed Calderon’s fraud-tarred “victory” over leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in the 2006 presidential elections.

Also running for a seat in Congress this July 5th is Mariana Gomez del Campo, former Mexico City director of the PAN, and a cousin of both Margarita Zavala and Marcia Gomez del Campo.  Electoral politics here often take on the taint of a family enterprise.

Despite the vehement rejection of neo-liberalism by Latin American voters in at least a dozen countries and the installation of social democrat presidents who defend the responsibility of the state in providing social services for their citizens, Mexico continues down the primrose path to neoliberal disaster.  The next social institution up for privatization here is the beleaguered prison system, an inferno of violence and corruption that has been hopelessly overcrowded by the incarceration of poor people caught up in Calderon’s never-ending War on Drugs.

The construction of 12 new private prisons will be financed by Interacciones Bank, the property of Carlos Hank Rhon, scion of the late Carlos Hank Gonzalez, the boss of all bosses during much of the PRI’s seven-decade chokehold on power – as Secretary of Agriculture under Salinas, Hank Gonzalez was the go-to guy for the privatization of the agrarian sector during the run-up to NAFTA.

Once the prisons are built, they reportedly will be operated by the Florida-based GEO Corporation (formerly Wackenhut), the big player in the U.S. private prison industry in which Bush vice-president Dick Cheney’s Vanguard Group is said to be heavily invested – arrest orders for Cheney were issued in 2008 by a south Texas Grand Jury because of his alleged involvement in a GEO-run detention facility where Mexicans being held for deportation were brutalized.

Just as the privatization of prisons has earned GEO and Cheney a tidy fortune, the privatization of Mexican day care centers has meant big-time profits for the owners of the now defunct ABC who took in 400,000 pesos a month before their business burnt down, about a half million Yanqui dollars annually.

But the “benefits” of neo-liberalism are not limited to the private sector.  Even the parents who gave their children to Gomez del Campo and her partners to be warehoused under such life-threatening conditions at the ABC “day care” have “benefited” by the neo-liberal machinations.  Last week, the Calderon government offered them free funerals for their dead children.

Some of us are illegal, and some are not wanted,

Our work contract’s out and we have to move on;

Six hundred miles to that Mexican border,

They chase us like outlaws, like rustlers, like thieves.

We died in your hills, we died in your deserts,

We died in your valleys and died on your plains.

We died ‘neath your trees and we died in your bushes,

Both sides of the river, we died just the same.

–’Deportee’, Woody Guthrie and Martin Hoffman

The grisly murders of a 9-year old girl and her father in Arizona’s Pima county just north of the Mexico border grabbed headlines this weekend due to the alleged killers involvement in the extreme anti-immigration Minutemen movement. See my posting  from yesterday.  More details can be found  in a  big takeout this morning at Everett, Washington’s Herald

Much noise will be made by Minutemen and other anti-immigrant activists (including nativist airhorns like Lou Dobbs) over the murdered father reportedly dealing dope for Chapo’s Sinaloa cartel. That’s the main media frame on things Mexican these days. Working the game for the cartels in the US is a high-risk job for immigrants, but so is legit employment–and for much less money.

3 dead after construction accident in Austin

06/14/2009

Associated Press

The three men killed when part of a scaffold collapsed and plunged them several stories down were immigrant construction workers with families in Latin America, friends and family say.

It was unclear who employed Raudel Ramirez Camacho, 27; Wilson Joel Irias Cerritos, 30; and Jesus Angel Lopez Perez, 28, the Austin American-Statesman reported Saturday.

The men died Wednesday afternoon while working on a high-rise apartment project, said Harry Evans, a battalion chief with the Austin Fire Department. Officials say two of the workers fell 11 to 13 stories while a third fell a shorter distance onto the roof of a seven-story parking garage.

Irias and Lopez were from a rural town in Honduras and had been in Austin for less than a year after a stint in Florida, said their neighbor Ruben Flores.

“They were paisanos,” Flores said. “They were very hardworking. They would leave every morning at 6 a.m.”

Ramirez had a wife, a 2-year-old daughter and 5-year-old son in Queretaro, Mexico, said his father-in-law, Arturo Miranda, who lives in Austin.

“My daughter is destroyed,” said Miranda. “I haven’t been able to stop her from crying by telephone. She keeps asking me to tell her it’s not true.”

Since 1995 the on-the-job death rate for Mexican workers here in the US  as compared to native-born laborers has almost tripled–going from 30% to 80% more likely to die.

- Deaths among Mexicans increased faster than their population in the U.S. Between 1996 and 2002, as the number of Mexican workers grew by about half, from 4 million to 6 million, the number of deaths rose by about two-thirds, from 241 to 387. Deaths peaked at 420 in 2001.

- Though their odds of dying in the Southeast and parts of the West are far greater than the U.S. average, fatalities occur everywhere: Mexicans died cutting North Carolina tobacco and Nebraska beef, felling trees in Colorado and welding a balcony in Florida, trimming grass at a Las Vegas golf course and falling from scaffolding in Georgia.

- Even compared to other immigrants — those who historically work America’s hardest jobs — what’s happening to Mexicans is exceptional in scope and scale. Mexicans are nearly twice as likely as the rest of the immigrant population to die at work.

‘Dying to Work’, an Associated Press investigative report..

Emily Timm at the Workers Defense Project in Austin today told a local TV reporter:  ”That sort of story is always shocking and very upsetting, but based on what we found in our study, these abuses are widespread.”

142 construction workers died on the job in Texas in 2007.

Timm: “That’s nearly twice as many deaths as any other state in the country. And, those statistics exist because regulators are not doing their jobs, because we don’t have strict enough policies to make sure employers are doing their part to ensure the safety of their workers.”

Full story at News 8 Austin. For an in-depth report on the perils of construction work in Texas,  go to Melissa del Bosque’s  feature in this week’s Texas Observer.

And if the risks are high for immigrant workers, the pay is not. Consider the new Orlando Magic venue  construction..

City officials have accused one of the biggest contractors working on the new Orlando Magic arena of underpaying more than 100 workers — and angry union leaders say the company is also hiring undocumented workers to build the team’s home court.

Orlando officials overseeing the construction of the $480 million city-owned venue say Capform violated city policies meant to ensure that workers in the construction trades are paid a fair wage. The city requires contractors and subcontractors to pay their workers the local ”prevailing wage” for the job they are doing.

Capform was awarded a $19.8 million contract to build the concrete superstructure of the new arena. It began work in October and will be largely finished this month.

After city officials notified the company of the violations, some workers were given back pay. Jim Renaud, vice president of the Carrollton, Texas-based company, said Capform resolved all of the problems, which he called ”clerical errors” resulting from workers being transferred from other job sites with different pay scales.  –Miami Herald

As for the three dead young workers in Austin–Raudel Ramirez Camacho, Wilson Joel Irias Cerritos and Jeus Angel Lopez Perez–I wonder if the future occupants at the 21 Rio condo will know their names or how much they sacrificed for the view.

After taking the blame for a spike in kidnappings and home invasions in Phoenix over the past few months ,the  sicarios in Sonora must be laughing their asses off at this one.  Cheap but brutal irony comes along led by this crazy bitch.

An outspoken anti-immigration activist from Everett has been arrested in Arizona in connection to a deadly home invasion robbery.

Shawna Forde, the executive director of the Minutemen American Defense, is one of three accused in the shooting deaths of 29-year-old Raul Flores and his daughter, 9-year-old Brisenia Flores, at their home in Arivaca, Ariz., a town 10 miles north of the Mexican border.

Two others – 34-year-old Jason Bush and 42-year-old Albert Gaxiola – were arrested. All three have been charged with two counts of first-degree murder, one count of first-degree burglary and one count of aggravated assault.

According to the Pima County Sheriff’s Office, two men and a woman posing as police officers forced their way into the Flores ‘ home in the middle of the night on May 30.

It is not known exactly what transpired next, but Raul Flores and his daughter were shot and killed. The girl’s mother was wounded and is recovering in a local hospital, deputies said.

Investigators believe the killings were premeditated by thieves looking for drugs and money.

Investigators believe Forde masterminded the home invasion robbery, which Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik described as “evil” and “heinous.”

Read it here..

In February Forde was claiming to have been shot, beaten and raped by a Mexican drug cartel.

More on that here

I expect you’ll find more detail on this at  Orcinus before the day ends. Ms Forde and her little gang are from Neiwert’s backyard.

Posted in Anti-Immigration, Arizona, Drug Cartels, Drug War, War on Drugs, Narcotraficantes, Los Zetas, Organized Crime, Mexico, Drug Trafficking, Drug War, Law Enforcement, Mexico, Murder, Radicals, War on Drugs, White Nationalism Tagged: Anti-Immigration, Arizona, Cocaine, Crime, Drug Cartels, Drug Wars, Heroin, Marijuana, Meth, Mexico, Minutemen, Murder, Nativist, Organized Crime, Right Wing Extremists, Seattle, Shawna Forde, Sonora, Tucson, Washington state, White nationalists ]]> http://julydogs.wordpress.com/2009/06/13/home-invasion-murders-narcos-no-minutemen/feed/ 5 julydogs forde http://julydogs.wordpress.com/2009/06/11/narcoguerra-times-obamas-rebranded-war/ http://julydogs.wordpress.com/2009/06/11/narcoguerra-times-obamas-rebranded-war/#comments Thu, 11 Jun 2009 19:38:33 +0000 julydogs http://julydogs.wordpress.com/?p=1271 Continue reading →]]>

On May 28, President Obama’s “drug czar” Gil Kerlikowske had an exchange with the National Journal..in which the former Seattle police chief said,

“We should stop comparing this to a war and be much smarter about how we are dealing with it–and in a much more comprehensive way. I’ve ended the war on drugs.

…Reducing the demand in the country is absolutely critical if we are not only to improve our own safety and security but also that in other countries”

Sounds promising. But it’s just rebranding. Happy horseshit for the hopeful.  The proof is in the pudding–and the pudding in Washington is always colored green.

According to the White House National Drug Control Strategy FY 2010 Budget Summary billions more  will be spent on “supply reduction” than “demand reduction.”

In 2010 nearly twice as much federal funding will go the “war” that Kelikowske says is “over” than to drug treatment and prevention programs–$9.9 billion for the cops and military, $5.167  for the demand side.

That’s a 2.7% bump for military and law enforcement, a 0.8% reduction for Obama’s  much touted prevention/treatment course.

And that’s just part of the Big Picture.

There are many many billions more heading into various counternarc0tics, counternarcoterrorist programs squirreled away within  DOD, State, Homeland Security, DOJ.  I am still wading through budgets and reports and can’t begin to pull a full expenditure together. One thread that runs steady through them all is the Pentagon.

From what I’ve seen thus far–despite the unease the Obama administration may have with the word—it’s definitely a war.

And its expanding.

More to follow.

* Map circa 1999.

Fewer damn bullets back then…and no heads on the dance floor.