Friday, August 18, 2006
Los Ricos
That the world's third-wealthiest man is from Mexico, a country still plagued by poverty, is remarkable. But what's more remarkable is this: He's not the only ultrarich Mexican out there.
Mexico is quickly becoming a land of business dynasties, families that have grown fabulously wealthy through a combination of government favoritism and the privatization of hundreds of state-run enterprises in the 1990s. advertisement
"We have a huge concentration of capital in this country," said Celso Garrido, an economist at Mexico City's Autonomous Metropolitan University. "They're the superrich, the fantasticos."
These are the Mexicans who drive Porsches and live in mansions in Lomas de Chapultepec, the Beverly Hills of Mexico City. The kind of people who have no trouble getting U.S. visas and who fly into Scottsdale Municipal Airport on private jets for weekend shopping trips.
Other Mexicans refer to these people as "the 100 families" and know them from the social pages of the Reforma newspaper, where their sons and daughters appear playing polo, skydiving and sailing yachts.
These Mexican dynasties have also begun investing billions of dollars in the United States in the past decade. Americans buy and use their products, everything from cement to kitchen appliances, every day.
As these business conglomerates, often called grupos, grow, they face new challenges: greater scrutiny from foreign regulators, global competition and the advancing age of their patriarchs. But one thing remains clear: In Mexico, wealth is still a family affair.
Big business
The reach of these families and their businesses is enormous: Anyone in the western U.S. who ate a Thomas' English muffin, an Entenmann's pastry or a slice of Oroweat bread for breakfast already has contributed to the Servitje family fortune today. And tonight, countless American barflies will order up Coronas and make María Asunción Aramburuzabala, Mexico's richest woman, a little bit richer.
For these families, globalization has paid off handsomely. For example, 35 percent of stoves and refrigerators in the United States are made by a Mexican company called Mabe, founded and still led by the Berrondo family. They're sold under the Hotpoint and GE brand names.
Many of these families control the grupos that have so many kinds of companies they put General Electric to shame. Some are world leaders in their industries. They include the Bailléres family and its Grupo BAL, the world's biggest producer of silver. The Larrea family's Grupo México is the world's third-largest producer of copper and owns three mines in Arizona.
Meanwhile, América Móvil, one of Slim's companies, was named the top-performing technology company in the world by BusinessWeek this year. It beat out companies like Apple, Google, Dell and Microsoft.
Slim himself is now third on Forbes magazine's list of the world's richest people, right behind Bill Gates and Warren Buffett.
Many of the Mexican business dynasties took off in the 1990s, when President Carlos Salinas de Gortari began dismantling Mexico's centralized economy. Salinas sold off more than 1,000 state-run companies from metal foundries to railroads. Mexican tycoons snapped them up at bargain-basement prices.
Slim, for example, led a consortium that bought the Telmex telephone monopoly for $443 million, less than two-thirds of its true value. Ricardo Salinas Pliego, who is unrelated to the former president, bought state-run Imevisión and turned it into the TV Azteca network, which has affiliates in Phoenix and Tucson.
The families then organized the companies into voting and non-voting shares. That allows them to control companies with little investment, sometimes 4 or 5 percent of the shares.
Many of the companies are expanding their plants and warehouses in the United States. Gruma is buying up competitors, including the Cenex Harvest States tortilla plant in Phoenix. Televisa, the media and sports empire controlled by the Azcárraga family, tried but failed to buy the U.S. network Univision this year. Slim bought the CompUSA chain of electronics stores in 2000 and owns a big chunk of Saks Fifth Avenue.
In all, Mexican capital investments in the United States went from nearly nothing in 1995 to $6.7 billion in 2005. The numbers show that far from being just a source of illegal migrants, Mexico is increasingly becoming a source of investors, said Dawn McLaren, a research economist at Arizona State University.
"Here are we are, complaining about illegal immigration and saying Mexicans should get out of our country," McLaren said. "So it is extremely surprising for Americans to find that there is a huge amount of foreign direct investment coming in."
Growing pains
Some of the grupos have run into trouble when they've tried to take this clubby, family-based business model abroad. In 2001, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charged one of Slim's lawyers with insider trading during the CompUSA purchase. Then, a Texas jury slapped Slim with a $454 million verdict for sabotaging a U.S. company's plans to open CompUSA stores in Mexico.
Slim and his lawyer won both cases after legal battles, but the controversies tarnished what was Slim's highest-profile venture in the United States.
Many analysts also are becoming more concerned about the near-monopolies that many of the companies enjoy. There are only two television networks in Mexico, six radio chains, two beer companies (though they own several brands) and two major food processors.
"Mexico is just suffused with obstacles to competition," said George W. Grayson, a Mexico expert at the College of William & Mary in Virginia. "It is still full of public and private monopolies and bottlenecks."
Televisa, led by Emilio Azcárraga Jean, has created the most controversy lately. In March, the Mexican Congress passed a law aimed at divvying up the radio waves. The law allows frequency-holders, mainly Televisa and TV Azteca, to freely branch out into digital services, while newcomers will have to bid for new bandwidth. The so-called Televisa Law outraged other broadcasters and may face a court challenge.
New generation
Soon, Mexico's business dynasties will have to face another thorny issue: the advancing age of their founders.
Carlos Slim is 66. The heads of Gruma, Grupo Famsa and Grupo BAL are all in their 70s.
With so many businesses to control, some families are starting to hire CEOs rather than doling out companies to sons and nephews. Other grupos, like glass manufacturer Vitro, have fractured as second- and third-generation heirs struggle for control.
The younger generations also tend to lack the boldness of their predecessors. The late Emilio "The Tiger" Azcárraga Milmo wielded Televisa's media power against enemies like a modern-day William Randolph Hearst. His 38-year-old son is known as "Kid Azcárraga" and is more reserved and technocratic.
Chris Hawley Republic Mexico City Bureau Aug. 16, 2006
Appears the US, UK, and their king and dictator ruled kiss ups are not the only nations begging sorely needed revolutions. Half of Mexico trying is trying its damndest to join their club. But then, there is the other half. Will we take them down all at once or one at a time? I don't know but would like to be around to find out.
Thursday, August 17, 2006
Emigration
Contemporary Plague?
by Elsa Claro —Granma International staff writer—
IT is highly possible that the British, French, or Belgians do not consider as immigrants the enormous contingents of their ancestors that went to other lands as officials of their governments or as go-getters of all types. But they were. They settled in those distant territories, depriving the native inhabitants of authority and riches.
Those countries, deprived of a natural development and now exploited by the replacement of the colonizers, transnational corporations and various financial institutions, are the principal donors of displaced individuals heading for the former metropolises, in search of new horizons or escaping from war. Language and cultural ties progressively influence the choice of where they go at a progressive rate.
In the 1980s, Britain received some 50,000 immigrants annually from countries that, like India, were conquered by the former nation. That figure has already risen to 160,000. The same has happened in other nations; as poverty increases, the number of people seeking relief grows.
Recently there was a migratory wave toward distinct points of Europe. The death of three people who tried to scale the Melilla border fence (which separates Spain from Morocco) led to the routine reflections regarding the migration problem. At the end of 2005, in the same area, there was a virtual mass assault by Sub-Saharan Africans. Fear resulting from the vulnerability of the moment provoked the EU to discuss development and aid projects for the forgotten continent.
With the exception of a third palisade, now almost completed, in the same place where thousands and thousands make desperate attempts in search of a better life, the rest of the announced projects are stalled half-way. At least to date, announcements about attacking poverty in order to prevent the need to abandon native lands have not moved beyond words. Thus, in recent months more than 7,400 Africans landed in the Canaries, a figure five times that of 2005. In just three days, 252 arrived in fishing canoes from Guinea Bissau.
The Spanish authorities had talks with 10 African nations from whence the undocumented migrants originate, but there is little they can do about their economic situations.
The flow can become exceptional. Its also arouses the worst reactions. According to the European Statistics Office, many Europeans feel no great sympathy for emigrants. They believe that they take their jobs in times of high unemployment or endanger existing jobs because they will break their backs doing anything to survive.
The right takes those beliefs as its banner and uses them as the crux of their promises in search of voters. The majority believes such "arguments," even though it has been demonstrated that emigrants take up jobs little sought after by natives.
Paradoxically Europe and the United States have and continue providing emigrants. For a long time now Spain has not been the "empire where the sun never sets." It has had economic situations provoking strong human exoduses. In the 50s and in the following decade, there were several of those mass human stampedes.
Something similar is happening in other countries. Currently 100,000 Britons are seeking better-paid jobs or a better future abroad, while the country is nourished with doctors and other specialists from African, India or Eastern and Central Europe.
North-North flows are seen as normal. Those that capture attention are those from the poor world. It could be, I tell myself, because one group travels by airplane and the other by whatever means possible. There are many paradoxes. None of them are comparable to the fact that each country individually or in pacts like that of the EU, is passing legislation in order to shield themselves and impede the entry of foreigners. They are acting against their own interests given that those whom they condemn are those who contribute to the demographic renovation that they lack.
The continual aging of the population is creating a shortage in pension funds created by income tax. Nearly all of these receptor nations have achieved a somewhat stable population thanks to emigrants. Europe will need 44 million foreigners before 2050 in order to have a balanced demography.
A similar trend has begun in the United States. Immigrants are complementing the growth of the U.S. economy to the point that entire sectors would be paralyzed if they were pulled from their positions, but Bush insists in limiting their rights.
When discussing the issue almost no one mentions that the 200 million foreigners living abroad generate a wealth of 1.67 billion Euros (some two trillion dollars) and with their work contribute to the development of the area in which they are located, while at the same time helping the Third World from where they came. Mexico, for example, receives nearly the same amount of income in this way as it does from sales of oil. Several Central American nations obtain a larger volume of hard currency through family remittances than from their total exports. India is among the top receivers of money sent by nationals working abroad.
The conditions that they attain are better or worse depending on geographical area. The majority of Africans that emigrate lack much competitiveness, due to the poor state and the deformed structures left behind by their conquerors.
The Sub-Saharan emigrants are among the poorest and least educated. Sometimes they have to cross through several nations to make it to the European border that Spain has become, a place to remain or from where to head for other destinations. To cross the Straits of Gibraltar they use small, precarious "boats," that claim thousands of lives each year. But in the Channel that separates the UK from France, the occurrence is no less.
The boats are made of inflatable rafts and beds, among the heterogeneous and dangerous means to cross one of the highest maritime traffic areas in the world. Those who arrive via the Euro tunnel try to find transport of any kind: hiding under trucks or trains. Hidden in the roofs and sides of vehicles on account of heavy fines. Those who risk their lives come from the former French or British colonies.
The issue remains at its point of departure. If previously they harvested those nations, imposed inconvenient administrative methods, now they continue controlling them via international finance agencies (read IMF or the World Bank and its usual debts and adjustment programs); if on top of that they provoked differences and unbridled ambitions, or used some individuals as a facade in order to guarantee already established interests, they cannot expect ecstatic resignation.
This is one of those volcanoes that could erupt at any moment.
Being from the U.S. - and having our daily news be an onslaught of US immigration issues I was blissfully unaware that Europe was facing the same. Thank you for the enlightenment!
A very learning and open read thanks for having it as allways i leanr from you .Bless you pocho for showing the many sides to the issues.
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
Tie Them To A Tree
In one section, under How to Recognize an Illegal this advice is given among the things to look for are "If they carry a short garden hose, used to siphon gas from your car at night" and "If they carry their lunch in a plastic bag composed of stolen oranges and burritos."
The thought of people handcuffed to trees with their lunches waiting for arrest is absurd, but could be true, if this group of trouble causing radicals is allowed to get away with this. America is lawless and out of control.
Poll Question
I question your lack of the third possibility in your either/or poll about predicting the winner in the Hesbollah/Israeli war; "neither. If the side that claims victory is not the one favored by your poll does that make the victory or the poll invalid? What can your poll possibly show beyond which team had the most fans? I would have chosen that third choice in whatever war you debate.
# posted by gregrandgar: Thu Aug 24, 08:18:47 PM UTC
Most victories and polls are invalid, in one way or another. This is the truth, neither wins in a war, all are loosers, some just loose more than others. Your choice is a good one.
I think you have it figured gregrandgar. There is not a whole lot of debate about such things that go on here. We do tend to approaches from preset perspectives. They are not ones generally shared in the United States. That is a plus. Though that nation is represented among them, the contributors and users listed in the left column also bring to Furtherleft experiences and thoughts gained from residence in Brazil, China, South Africa, Romania, Germany, Mexico, New Zealand, Greece, Thailand, England, Scotland, and India.
If you are disapointed about lack of debate incentive on our poll, you might look for even worse examples in that regard among others that may show up here. Another would be those of the US CNN propaganda hate machine on the Lou Dobbs site. I personally prefer the polls offered by al Jazeera for a slant considerably more balanced than his and appropriate to world thought.
I think the so called "winner" in this conflict will be known decades from now. Its too early to declare one at this stage. Was this conflict the catalyst of the downfall of the zionist empire? or was it the catalyst for the gradual integration of Hezbollah into a political (rather then military) force similar to Sein Feinn? was this an insignificant battle in a larger imperial war? how many more times will it be repeated? So many questions remain.
Who knows...only time will tell.
Once you hear the details of victory, it is hard to distinguish it from a defeat.
-Jean-Paul Sartre, writer and philosopher (1905-1980)
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
A Dummy Run
Against Hezbollah
Stolen from Asia Times by Ehsan Ahrari
"The Bush administration ... was closely involved in the planning of Israel's retaliatory attacks" against Hezbollah. That is the conclusion of American journalist Seymour Hersh in his latest essay in The New Yorker.
If that, indeed, is true, then America's image as a military power, along with the image of the Israeli military, has been severely tarnished. This is not the end of the negative spillover effect from Israel's palpable failure to damage severely the fighting capabilities of Hezbollah. The United States might be in for more damaging fallout emanating from this fiasco.
According to Hersh, President George W Bush - who joined the Texas Air Guard to avoid being drafted for Vietnam, and has limited experience and little knowledge of the potential capability air power in warfare - and Vice President Dick Cheney - who used a variety of legal loopholes to avoid being drafted and being shipped to South Vietnam in the 1960s - believed that "a successful Israeli Air Force bombing campaign against Hezbollah's heavily fortified underground missile and command and control complexes in Lebanon could ease Israel's security concerns and also serve as a prelude to a potential American preemptive attack to destroy Iran's nuclear installations, some of which are also buried deep underground."
White House sources have "vigorously denied" the veracity of Hersh's report. Press Secretary Anthony Snow said, "The piece abounds in fictions," and "assailed" Hersh's use of "unnamed sources". However, the editors of The New Yorker stand by the story.
US Department of State officials envisaged Israel's bombing campaigns "as a way to strengthen the Lebanese government". One wonders about the basic wisdom of this rationale. How can one destroy parts of Lebanon, kill hundreds and displace thousands of civilians, and expect the Lebanese government to emerge as a strong entity from that disaster?
No amount of air campaigns - no matter how limited the resulting damage - could have had a positive effect on the governing capabilities of the Lebanese government. By the same token, any Israeli ground campaign would have united the Lebanese behind Hezbollah. The uncanny unifying power of a war on a polity under siege was something both the Americans and Israelis totally ignored while they were planning or carrying out the military campaign against the country of Lebanon.
No one in the Bush administration bothered to revisit the historical annals to educate themselves about the carnage that the Israeli invasion and occupation created in Lebanon in the early 1980s. The very creation of Hezbollah is associated with that invasion and the ensuing occupation of that country.
US president John F Kennedy described many decades ago how success and failure, related to major political events, are handled in Washington. He observed, "Success has many fathers; failure is always an orphan." In that context, no one in the Bush administration now admits even having known about the Israeli air campaign, much less having any part in it. Hersh does not believe those statements.
In fact, Robert Novak, another Washington-based columnist with excellent political connections, wrote on August 6: "The Israeli government's effort to clean Hezbollah out of southern Lebanon was carefully planned by the IDF [Israel Defense Forces]. US officials informed me 24 days ago they would give the IDF a week to liquidate the terrorists before Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice could pursue a ceasefire. But the long-planned Israeli operation in southern Lebanon found no quick success as Hezbollah proved itself a formidable fighting machine."
Hersh's report, though in harmony with Novak's analysis, also talks about the Bush administration's lead role in preparing an air-campaign plan to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities and then approaching the Israelis to share intelligence on Iran and Lebanon - since Iran is reported to have played a crucial role in advising Hezbollah in constructing elaborate and complex tunnel systems to store its missiles and other military wherewithal.
The intended plan was to coordinate an air campaign with Israel. An anonymous source close to the US Air Force told Hersh, "The big question for our air force was how to hit a series of hard targets in Iran successfully." Hersh states, "And so the air force went to the Israelis with some new tactics and said to them, 'Let's concentrate on the bombing and share what we have on Iran and what you have on Lebanon.' The discussions reached the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld."
Hersh's essay supports what has become part of intuitive thinking - if not conventional wisdom - among Iran specialists in Washington about the real intentions of the Bush administration. There is little doubt that the neo-cons, both within and outside the government - are champing at the bit about attacking Iran - the last major confrontational state, after North Korea perhaps. Syria has never been regarded as a challenge of the same caliber as Iran to the US or to Israel. That was one reason the template for an air attack on Iran was handed over to Israel by the Bush administration. The thinking in Cheney's office, according to Hersh, was, "We can learn what to do in Iran by watching what the Israelis do in Lebanon."
The Sunni Arab states were expected to do the dirty work for the Bush administration after Israel successfully destroyed the fighting capabilities of Hezbollah. Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan were to put pressure on Iran. That plan would have worked without much pressure from the United States. The three sycophant Sunni states were suffering from the growing paranoia from what they envisaged as the rising Shi'ite power in their region.
However, the powerful resistance of Hezbollah and its enormous popularity in the Arab street also caught the dictators of those states off guard. They originally criticized Hezbollah, but "shifted their position in the wake of public protests in their countries about the Israeli bombings", in the words of Hersh.
Hersh's observations about a number of Bush officials in this episode are also interesting. Rumsfeld was ambivalent ("jaded") about the Lebanon war. Rice, once again, distinguished herself by her traditional characteristic of being bowled over by Cheney and by demonstrating an absence of independent thinking that was an attribute of her predecessor, Colin Powell.
A National Security Council functionary with strong Israeli ties, Elliott Abrams, "supported the Israeli plan", even though his spokesman denied it. The Joint Chiefs of Staff, once again, lived up to their reputation of having no backbone in terms of giving strong advice to the administration that was contrary to the thinking of Cheney and other neo-cons.
Now that there is ceasefire, there are ample discussions of who won and who emerged as a loser in this war. From the Arab perspectives, there are still two clear winners and three equally apparent losers. The chief winner is Hezbollah and its execution of asymmetric war against the high-tech Israeli military. As much as he is berated in the US and in Israel, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has created a niche for himself as an Arab hero of this war.
The second major winner is Iran and its low-tech missiles and training of Hezbollah. It is worth noting, however, that Iran still faces the long shot of becoming a target of the Bush doctrine of regime change that continues to lurk in the background.
The most troublesome aspect of the general foreign-policy approach of the current US administration is that it refuses to learn from its past failures and almost seems eager to repeat them, regardless of the ensuing catastrophic consequences. Hersh discusses how "intelligence about Hezbollah and Iran is [still] being mishandled by the White House the same way intelligence had been ... [when] the administration was making the case that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction".
The three major losers of this war are Israel, the United States and Lebanese democracy. When the ceasefire was implemented, Hezbollah, though it was bruised as a fighting force, was still defiant and full of its combat spirit. The Israeli government, on the contrary, is already undergoing the post-conflict acrimonious blame game that might end up costing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert his job.
The Bush administration, if it was really using Israel's air-attack plan as a "dry run" against Iran, will have to think long and hard about its next approach toward the Islamic Republic. The very future of democracy in Lebanon is in jeopardy for now.
Once all is said and done, the most welcome development from this fiasco might be the possibility of a diplomatic engagement between Iran and the United States, once Washington finally realizes that giving war a chance in Lebanon did not lead to any lasting or peaceful solution to the Hezbollah-Israeli conflict.
Sunday, August 13, 2006
Feliz Cumpleaños
En Su Ochento Fidel
Con los pobres de la tierra
Quiero mi suerte echar
El arroyo de la sierra
Me complace mas que el mar
With the poor of the earth
I want to cast my lot
A mountain brook
Pleases me more than the sea
- José Martí
80 anos mas para el comandante Castro.
"I began revolution with 82 men. If I had to do it again, I do it with 10 or 15 and absolute faith. It does not matter how small you are if you have faith and plan of action." -Fidel Castro
By not allowing us to go see conditions with our own eyes the US travel ban to Cuba is illegal, immoral and unconstitutional. They are afraid of what we might learn about solidarity.
Well, let's see Troutsky. The Further Left Library carries the Keep On Crossin' Manifesto. I'll check.
It says there: "When in the course of human events it becomes necessary to cross borders of political, social, linguistic, cultural, economic and technological construction...we wiIl cross. For long before there were borders, there were crossers. We are the proud sons and daughters of these crossers, and we hold that crossing is a basic human right. Furthermore, we hold this right to be in-illegal alienable." Yep, it is OK.
People travel back and forth between Mexico and Cuba all the time. Neighbors here have. I believe the same is true from Canada. One of our users reported going from Toronto. It just takes a slight detour to get there from the US. Here is a travel agency which prearranges trips between US and Cuba via either Cancun or Nasau.
Won't the US guardians of freedom get you and carry you down for re education as to what freedom is and isn't? Not if your passport is left unstamped, a part of the package. Or, if on your own, a couple bucks or maybe even a smile and a wink gets the same. They understand.
Keep on crossin'!
Wednesday, August 09, 2006
Petition To Sign
To Demand an Immediate International Criminal Tribunal for Israel to Stop Global War!
To: The United Nations General Assembly
The brutal bombings and invasion of Lebanon and Gaza are acts of Israeli state terrorism. The U.S. invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, and the present U.S.-Israeli threat to Syria and Iran indicate their ruthless struggle for hegemony in the oil-rich Middle East, which would escalate into a global war.
At least 900 people have been killed in Lebanon, more than one-third children, and 3,000 wounded. The number of refugees in Lebanon has already exceeded one million. Whole residential areas, roads, bridges, ports, power stations, factories and other infra-structure have been destroyed by Israeli precision bombing. Lebanon’s economic and infrastructure damage tops $2.5B as of 4 August 2006.
In Gaza hundreds have been killed. Homes, greenhouses, bridges, water and sewerage treatment plants and electricity generators have been destroyed in the latest acts of Israeli genocide sadistically code-named ‘Operation Summer Rain,’ which began on 27 June 2006. Israel continues its brutal air strikes on the Gaza Strip almost daily.
Israel must be prosecuted immediately for its war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide against the Peoples of Lebanon and Palestine to stop the war escalating into a global catastrophe. Frances A. Boyle, Professor of Law, University of Illinois, has asserted the legal framework for The United Nations General Assembly to immediately establish an International Criminal Tribunal for Israel (ICTI).
“The United Nations General Assembly must immediately establish an International Criminal Tribunal for Israel (ICTI) as a ‘subsidiary organ’ under U.N. Charter Article 22. The ICTI would be organized along the lines of the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia (ICTY), which was established by the Security Council.
“The purpose of the ICTI would be to investigate and prosecute Israeli war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide against the Peoples of Lebanon and Palestine--just as the ICTY did for the victims of international crimes committed by Serbia and the Milosevic Regime throughout the Balkans.
“The establishment of ICTI would provide some small degree of justice to the victims of Israeli war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide against the Peoples of Lebanon and Palestine--just as the ICTY has done in the Balkans. Furthermore, the establishment of ICTI by the U.N. General Assembly would serve as a deterrent effect upon Israeli leaders such as Prime Minister Olmert, Defense Minister Peretz, Chief of Staff Halutz and Israel’s other top generals that they will be prosecuted for their further infliction of international crimes upon the Lebanese and the Palestinians.
“Without such a deterrent, Israel might be emboldened to attack Syria with the full support of the Likhudnik Bush Jr. Neoconservatives, who have always viewed Syria as ‘low-hanging fruit’ ready to be taken out by means of their joint aggression.
“The Israeli press has just reported that the Bush Jr administration is encouraging Israel to attack Syria. If Israel attacks Syria as it did when it invaded Lebanon in 1982, Iran has vowed to come to Syria’s defense.
“And of course Israel and the Bush Jr administration very much want a pretext to attack Iran. This scenario could readily degenerate into World War III.
“For the U.N. General Assembly to establish ICTI could stop the further development of this momentum towards a regional if not global catastrophe.”
We, the undersigned, demand that The United Nations General Assembly immediately establish an International Criminal Tribunal for Israel (ICTI) as a ‘subsidiary organ’ under U.N. Charter Article 22 to prosecute the Israeli Prime Minister Olmert, Defense Minister Peretz, Chief of Staff Halutz and Israel’s other top generals and war criminals for their infliction of international war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide against the Peoples of Lebanon and Palestine.
Sincerely,
Click Here To Sign
Operation Summer Rain, what sick minds it takes to call the atrocities of war a name like that.
I signed too.
Monday, August 07, 2006
Duh?
"Mr. President, it is probable that soon will end the shame, the persecution, and the lack of liberty in Cuba."
"What? Are we going to close Guantanamo?"
Preaching Lies
*
thats just so anti Jesus but guess most mean humans who want to murder need to blame someone and think thay are doing good .Scary scary read o wait there NEW AGE christans not followers of jesus ops i keep forgetting
I know so much good the world does and is trying to do in humanity,s.But why cant we as humans like Mexico and say enough we need true caring people in charge who cant be bought off threw family and so called friends how can someone be a friend when what they are doing will poison your kids you your grandchildren .I have talked to many and some could careless about the next generation they say they are on there own how can we ?????How could someone not care what pain have they lived threw to feel this way????What if they where healed would they still not care what if they had a child they loved with all there heart who was poisoned by something they had oked to be made to be used to poison the world????
Sunday, August 06, 2006
Have A Sad Birthday
Memorial protest demonstrations are occurring around the world. There may be one nearby you can join. If not, it is pretty easy to make one: A hunk of cardboard, a magic marker, a public sidewalk, two feet, one backbone, five letters, two words, easy to spell, "NO WAR".
im starting to think tv and games have caused most americans to become numb to death and destruction why so many horror movies and stuff the need to be scared or to try and feel .Me i dont like horrow lived it enuff i want peace .Why cant everyone see 1 babys death is still a childs death what if it was yours.1 humans death who did not live by the sword to die by it is a horror people wake up smell the death it will be in the wind soon dust travels and depleated uranium is dust once used at a bullet or on a bomb .WE are all humans doggoneit or each another for of life ALL HUMANS GET IT WHAT WILL MURDER ONE WILL MURDER OTHERS AND MURDERING IS JUST NOT FRICKING RIGHT
Friday, August 04, 2006
Israel's Cyber-Soldiers
July 28, 2006
Israel backed by army of cyber-soldiers
From Yonit Farago in Jerusalem
WHILE Israel fights Hezbollah with tanks and aircraft, its supporters are campaigning on the internet.
Israel’s Government has thrown its weight behind efforts by supporters to counter what it believes to be negative bias and a tide of pro-Arab propaganda. The Foreign Ministry has ordered trainee diplomats to track websites and chatrooms so that networks of US and European groups with hundreds of thousands of Jewish activists can place supportive messages.
In the past week nearly 5,000 members of the World Union of Jewish Students (WUJS) have downloaded special “megaphone” software that alerts them to anti-Israeli chatrooms or internet polls to enable them to post contrary viewpoints. A student team in Jerusalem combs the web in a host of different languages to flag the sites so that those who have signed up can influence an opinion survey or the course of a debate.
Jonny Cline, of the international student group, said that Jewish students and youth groups with their understanding of the web environment were ideally placed to present another side to the debate.
“We’re saying to these people that if Israel is being bashed, don’t ignore it, change it,” Mr Cline said. “A poll like CNN’s takes just a few seconds to vote in, but if thousands take part the outcome will be changed. What’s vital is that the international face of the conflict is balanced.”
Doron Barkat, 29, in Jerusalem, spends long nights trawling the web to try to swing the debate Israel’s way. “When I see internet polls for or against Israel I send out a mailing list to vote for Israel,” he said. “It can be that after 15 minutes there will be 400 votes for Israel.
“It’s very satisfying. There are also forums where Lebanese and Israelis talk.”
Israel’s Foreign Ministry must avoid direct involvement with the campaign but is in contact with international Jewish and evangelical Christian groups, distributing internet information packs.
Amir Gissin, the Israeli Foreign Ministry’s public relations director, said: “The internet’s become a leading tool for news, shaping the world view of millions. Our problem is the foreign media shows Lebanese suffering, but not Israeli. We’re bypassing that filter by distributing pictures showing how northern Israelis suffer from Katyusha rocket attacks.”
Who Are Terrorists?
Wednesday, August 02, 2006
Try To Tell Us
Something We Don't Know
For all those ignorant citizens of the US who think that they personally have no hand in the atrocities in Lebanon and Gaza - Democracy Now interviewed Frida Berrigan, a Senior Research Associate with the Arms Trade Resource Center at the World Policy Institute.
Every American citizen is guilty of what goes on in Isreal and what they do to Lebanon. The very structure of their country is geared to be part of it. This article says that $500 is spent on each individual in Isreal per year for the military budget from the 3 billion America profides. It is a crime against humanity to support this. This is one of the reasons America has its reputation of being evil and needs to be stopped.
Its been revealed by the Guardian that both bunker busters bombs on Qana and the bomb that claimed the lifes of 4 UN employees were made in the USA
If all Americans are guilty then all who left are also thay ran from the changes that needed to happen but then im sure thay could aford to but did thay warn the world .The ones who are not for this war and try there best in the ways thay can im sure will pay with all here and sad thouse who knew leave and stand in safty cause thay can aford to leave .But then ill stay here cause where i was born right or wrong is where i belong on Turtle Island.
The Count emerged briefly from his July 9 2006 posting in our Archives and reported that the 11 individuals we list as Contributors live in 8 different nations, and of those, 9 have immigrated by choice or otherwise from 7 different homelands. Nice going Count, but where one is, was, and went is much less important than what they think and do, especially as expressed on this Forum.
There is a quote in our Library: "I hear in patriotic utterances a slave of limited vision who justifies a master’s brutality and position. Geographic boundaries are naught but fences around hearts within. They better control and maintain riches and power of those who configured the lines and formulated repeated lies. One can break out by dreaming beyond a master’s litany and joining the universal quest for freedom. Are you ready to fight the master, or does love of lies, worship of toys, and hunger for crumbs hold you back?"
Blaming all US citizens for what happens is a bit silly, even if you extend the argument to all citizens of the world. Then where do you draw the line of culpability? For the American economic and political machines extend their reach around the globe with the (explicit and implicit) help of the world's people. I'm guessing that everyone posting to this blog is typing on a computer with at least a few pieces of Americana in it.
Tuesday, August 01, 2006
Highest Honor
*Sunday, July 30, 2006
Short Anathema
Once in a while we receive input on our lead in top post from someone new to the Forum which isn't scrapped for being idiotic. That of today didn't say much, just "Nice blog". But EIA, the source, said more on the originating blog, a lot more. It is worth looking at.
No matter what else we may do to move toward ends drawn from heart felt belief, all we can accomplish in the cyber section of this world is spread what we see as truths. As was stated by Emiliano Zapata Salazar, "It is not only by shooting bullets in the battlefields that tyranny is overthrown, but also by hurling ideas of redemption, words of freedom and terrible anathemas against the hangmen that people bring down dictators and empires." The EIA blog is doing that.
Gracias Pocho,
Viva Zapata. Solidaridad con el pueblo Mexicano contra la fuerzas imperialistas y el verdadero Presidente de la Republica Mexicana Andrés Manuel López Obrador
Rescuers pull out the body of a baby from the ruins at the village of Qana in south Lebanon, July 30, 2006. At least 54, including 37 children, were killed during an Israeli air strike at the village on Sunday morning. (Xinhua Photo)
How can anyone look at the photos of these children and not know war isn´t the answer. What if it suddenly was the children of those who don´t care.
There are other sites that show the true horror of it. One is linked here and another is here. Maybe if we have to see it, instead of being protected from it, the world will be more willing to end it.
Wouldn't it be nice to show some pictures of happy children at play? Here is one.
It shows Israeli kids writing messages on bombs to be used, messages such as:
Dear Lebanese/Palestinian/Arab/Muslim/Christians - Kids,
Die with love.
Yours,
Israeli Kids
Hate, disgust, extreme…. What word can describe such photos? And they whine Arabs are teaching their kids hate to Israelis! No teaching necessary. How can they and we not? Your gifts were received Israeli kids as shown in the links yabasta left above.
Thursday, July 27, 2006
Too Late for Empire
*Thursday, July 20, 2006
Racism and Israel
Racism has existed world around ever since some in societies found it sufficient excuse for striving to enjoy better lives at expense of others. It is certainly no stranger to those of any European nation that either engaged in or watched plundering of Asian and African societies. It is no surprise that William Shakesphere treated it in matter of fact manner or that it shows in common paintings of a Swedish appearing Jesus.
Then we have the USA, born of, torn of, and yet suffering aftermaths of the commerce of slavery while claiming "Land of the Free". Racism was the essential genocidal defining of its territory. It generates the begrudging non welcome that each wave of immigrant peoples grants to the next. It defines the difference in its attitudes toward and relations between it and northern and southern neighbors. It determines who is elected to which office, what laws are passed, and which are enforced. As in some other nations, there is nothing that happens in that country not influenced by racism.
Even the word "racism" itself is code used to hide underlying nature of events. It is not a legitimate noting of biological divergence. There is no scientific basis for the concept of human races anymore than there is to so classify differences between spotted and chestnut horses. Its non biological basis developed and was promoted as moral justification for slavery, genocide, colonialism, and imperialism in order to square with otherwise trumpeted and contrary social beliefs usually encoded in religions. Its falsity serves rulers well as an effective divide and conquer strategy. Fools and charlatans buy into, use it, and live by it.
Though visible skin coloration differences are easily noted racist benchmarks, they are not the only determinants. Jewish people, whatever that means, whether used in reference to religious adherence, common ethnic heritage, or residents of the state of Israel, tend to hoist a banner noting racist victimization. There are nods of agreement given to that cry by those who aid, supply, protect, and cover for Israel but always in shamed fear of recognizing its obverse, that the victims are also perpetrators.
An old man's memory retains childhood comments heard among US neighbors in late 1930's, "A new family moved in on the next block but - they are Jewish", spoken in sense of disgust and need to do something about it. Cartoonists vied for laughs by drawing oversized stereotypical noses. "Jewed" was a common expression for being cheated.
There was no secret in the US or Europe of Hitler's racist justified gift to accepting German people in the extermination holocaust of Jews, Gypsies, communists, anti-war and political activists, and any other grouping that might have caused a dream to be realized as nightmare. It wasn't just in Germany that the holocaust saw root. Non Jewish European anti-nazi resistance fighters refused to aid parallel Jewish counterparts. The scourge was cheered in Germany and considered elsewhere in tense of "So what, we don't like them either".
Then came the end of WWII. Those who feigned standing tall above it all perceived a need to appear to do something in remedy of a racist travesty which so clearly contradicted worn social and political litanies. Their solution waited in racist agreements accorded to racist Zionists at the end of the previous WWI, that named "The War To End All Wars".
Aside from looking away at the slaughtering of zionist guerilla warfare which brought about changing British colonialism to Israeli domination, the western world's acquiesence to the take over was characterized by racist attitudes --- Now, we don't like Jews but Mid-Easterners differ from us even more. Palestine seems fitting. Skins there tend to darker complexion, people there pray funny, and hasn't that area always been a subjugation playground?
You know you have the right god when it hates the same people you do. So a racist one chanting "homeland" appeared from the ashes of a racist holocaust. Somehow that translated to justify and bring about another racist war with no plausible end against people on even lower rungs of the racist ladder.
So much for my take on the generalized was leading to the is. Now read some example specifics of the is. The article below appeared today in NNN, the Non-aligned Nation News.
An NNN-BERNAMA Special Report by Ramzy Baroud
KUALA LUMPUR, July 20 (NNN-Bernama) -- Racism is "the belief that one racial group is inferior to another and the practices of the dominant group to maintain the inferior position of the dominated group. Often defined as a combination of power, prejudice and discrimination."
This is how the British Library defines racism on its website. The above definition hardly deviates from the essence of almost all definitions of the ominous concept.
And, indeed, the concept is being fully utilised with Israel's onslaught against the Palestinians, and the international community and media's mild, if not accommodating response to the onslaught.
The capture of Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, is an act of self-defence. According to international law and the Geneva Conventions, he can be considered a prisoner of war.
But not according to CNN, Fox News and BBC, which presents the soldier as a victim, who was "kidnapped" by Palestinian "militants" who are "affiliated" with the Hamas Government.
By not challenging the Israeli narrative in any meaningful way, the uncritical media has become a tool in the hands of Israel's war strategists and their eternal concoctions.
Consider this example. An Israeli military commander tells a BBC correspondent dispatched to the border area between Israel and Gaza that Israel intends on opening the border for "as long as it takes" to offset the humanitarian crisis developing in Gaza.
The Israeli Army representative in a barefaced lie declares that the border has always been open despite the perpetual Palestinian threat on the state of Israel. The BBC correspondent thanks him and signs off.
Is it possible that the BBC is unaware of the fact that Gaza has been under a strict military siege since Hamas' democratic advent to power through the January 2006 elections?
Could it be that the Western media has missed the dozens of shocking reports that have warned that the Israeli siege -- which began months before the capture of Shalit -- was soon to create chaos and panic among the already malnourished Palestinians in Gaza? Did they all miss statements by top Israeli officials vowing to carry on with the siege until the outset of Hamas?
Some reporters misrepresent facts out of ignorance not by design. But if that indeed was the case, then how can one excuse the fact that the same media that coined the term "kidnapping" to describe the action of the Palestinian fighters who captured Shalit refused to use the same association to describe the kidnapping of most of the elected Palestinian Cabinet, mostly academics with no connection to any militant wing?
Israel's military spokesman insisted that they are "all terrorists" and Israel "like any democratic" country has the right to protect itself against terrorists.
If that was true, why did Israel refrain from kidnapping them until Palestinian fighters embarrassed the Israeli Army and captured their first prisoner of war in a long time? Is "rounding up" Palestinian ministers and scores of legislators the same as having a soldier captured in what has been for long a one-sided Israeli war?
If you are an avid viewer of Fox News or a reader of the New York Times, then Israel is yet to exceed its legitimate legal boundaries: that of a democracy opting to defend its citizens.
But only racism can lead to such rationale. Only a racist media portrays the capture of a soldier whose army units have besieged Gazans for years, denying them food and medicine, as a violation of all that is holy.
Only a racist media presents the kidnapping of 9,000 Palestinians, now in Israeli jails, as a just outcome of Israel's routine arrests of Palestinian terrorists or potential terrorists.
Only racism can play down the Israeli destruction of Gaza's infrastructure, which is justified without question, for such actions are necessary to impede the militants' efforts.
And yet, Israel is praised for its "generous" act of allowing some food to be transferred to Gazans, who ironically have gone hungry because of the Israeli-spearheaded international campaign to punish Palestinians for electing Hamas.
Only racism can completely remove from the current discourse the murder of dozens of Palestinian civilians at the hands of the Israeli Army (90 civilians in seven weeks) as the reason that led to the Palestinian raid on the Israeli Army post and the capture of Shalit, and instead depict the current escalation as if it was entirely the work of the Palestinians, with Israel's slate still clean.
Indeed, Israel's slate will continue to be clean as long as racism and inequality are the concepts according to which this conflict is explained. Israel has the right to do all the above actions without hesitation because Israel is not Palestine, and the lives and well-being of the residents of Israel, at least some of them, cannot be equated with Palestinians. Turn the tables for a moment and you'll understand how repellent such racism is.
Inequality has always been at the heart of this conflict, the late professor Edward Said used to say. Racism is at the heart of inequality, I must add.
The media can be ignorant, biased and self-serving, indeed, but it can also be utterly racist.
-- NNN-BERNAMA
To kill anyone who is diffrent i think is wrong but thats my thoughts if we cant heal mind body and spirit no mater the persional belife then are we not no better than the animals we eat or the weeds =herbs we kill????
Wednesday, July 19, 2006
No Moral Compass
Atrocities of the Promised Land*
Words fail; ordinary terms are inadequate to describe the horrors Israel daily perpetrates, and has perpetrated for years, against the Palestinians. The tragedy of Gaza has been described a hundred times over, as have the tragedies of 1948, of Qibya, of Sabra and Shatila, of Jenin - 60 years of atrocity perpetrated in the name of Judaism. But the horror generally falls on deaf ears in most of Israel, in the U.S. political arena, in the mainstream U.S. media. Those who are horrified -- and there are many -- cannot penetrate the shield of impassivity that protects the political and media elite in Israel, even more so in the U.S., and increasingly now in Canada and Europe, from seeing, from caring.
Israeli atrocities to examples of how Israel is victimized. But a military establishment that drops a 500-pound bomb on a residential apartment building in the middle of the night and kills 14 sleeping civilians, as happened in Gaza four years ago, is not a military that operates by civilized rules.
Christison's article took the words right out of my heart. It took no expertise to get them there, no more than habit of pondering events from beyond managed propaganda disguised as news by so called 'mainstream' US and European press. There are those who will require validation by what they term a 'proper' source before accepting Kathleen Christison's calling Israel as seen. Let those note she is a former CIA political analyst and has worked on Middle East issues for 30 years. I add one comment for others who, on reading the article, reflect 'It is about time'. The right time was 60 years ago.
Monday, July 17, 2006
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
bless you all and may we all live in peace soon in real happyness knowing we are all one in humanity .Im so honored bless you all.
As the poet said once...
Partner,
You know
You can count
On me
Not up to two
Or up to ten,
But count
On me.
If several times
You feel me
Unsociable without reason
Don't think "what a slack",
The same way you can count
On me.
But let´s make a deal,
I would like to count
On you,
It is so nice
To know you exist,
One feels alive.
Happy birthday partner.
Friday, July 14, 2006
The Dying Dollar
Junta, jumping the present government and taking over. Spanish word but fits America´s situation well.
The US wants all oil to be sold in dollars. When the US needs more dollars, it prints them. That makes its dollars worth less but so what? Stock markets rise, the rich who already have plenty get richer, and the poor can't buy as much bread. So let them eat cake.
When other countries need dollars to buy oil, they have to borrow them from the US and either pay back the loans at high interest or have the loans extended by doing what the US wants. That's what the World Bank and International Monetary Fund are for. Gets the best allies money can buy.
If oil were sold in Euros, the US would have to have Euros. The only way for the US to get Euros is sell things to countries that have Euros. The US doesn't have much that anyone wants to buy.
Saddam Hussein began selling oil in Euros. Have you wondered about the real reason behind urgency of the US invasion of Iraq?
Iran and Venezuela plan selling oil in Euros. Same game. New name.
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
No Water, No Farm
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Whats really bad my friend is that the water is getting more and more contaminated as it heads south my friend .But does this or any other governing body stop to see the poisons in the water like in China as here in ol usa they don't stop to care for the future its all about now with no care to who's down hill or down water way including there own .Government and corporations don't care if they did it would never have become so polluted in the first place.
Been thinking whats also so bad is human run the goverments and the companys who allow this I think One to realy think on is what have humans over all become????
Tuesday, July 11, 2006
Who Really Won?
*Mexican elections are stolen before, during, and after Election Day. Just look at what happened in the days leading up to the tightest presidential election in the nation's history this past July 2nd.
By law, the parties and their candidates close down their campaigns three days before Election Day. On Wednesday night June 28th as the legal limit hove into sight, a team of crack investigators from the Attorney General's organized crime unit descended on the maximum security lock-up at La Palma in Mexico state where former Mexico City Finance Secretary Guillermo Ponce awaits trial on charges of misuse of public funds much of which he appears to have left on Las Vegas crap tables.
During his nearly six years in office, outgoing president Vicente Fox has often used his attorney general's office against leftist front-runner Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to counter his growing popularity, including a failed effort to bar the former Mexico City mayor from the ballot and even imprison him.
Now. in a desperate last minute electoral ploy by Fox's right-wing National Action or PAN party to boost the fortunes of its lagging candidate Felipe Calderon, the agents tried to pressure Ponce into testifying that AMLO and his PRD party had used city revenues to finance his presidential campaign but Ponce proved a stand-up guy and ultimately rebuffed the government men.
The imprisoned finance secretary's refusal to talk greatly disappointed both Televisa and TV Azteca, Mexico's two-headed television monopoly that together have waged an unrelenting dirty war against Lopez Obrador for months and even years. Indeed, TV crews were stationed out in the La Palma parking lot to record Ponce's thwarted confession for primetime news and both networks had reserved time blocks on their evening broadcasting, forcing the anchors to scramble to fill in the gap.
That was Wednesday night. On Thursday June 29th, Lopez Obrador's people awoke to discover that the candidate's electronic page had been hacked and a phony message purportedly signed by AMLO posted there calling upon his supporters to hit the streets "if the results do not favor us." Although officials of Lopez Obrador's party, the PRD, immediately proved the letter to be a hoax, the pro-Calderon media broadcast the story for hours as if it were the gospel truth, eventually forcing the PRD and its allies to reaffirm that AMLO would abide by results released by the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE), the nation's maximum electoral authority, even if the IFE's numbers did not favor the candidate.
The PRD pledge was a reiteration of a "pact of civility" that Televisa had browbeat PRD president Lionel Cota into signing in early June. "Hackergate", as the scandal quickly became known, was designed to prevent Lopez Obrador's supporters from protesting the fraud that the electoral authorities were already preparing.
That was Thursday. On Friday, June 30th, after more than five years of false starts, Fox's special prosecutor for political crimes placed former president Luis Echeverria under house arrest for his role in student massacres in 1968 and 1971. Not only was the long overdue arrest portrayed by big media as a feather in Fox's and therefore, Calderon's cap but it also put the much-hated Echeverria, a pseudo-leftist with whom Calderon has often compared Lopez Obrador, back on the front pages. Since Echeverria is an emeritus member of the PRI, the bust killed two birds with one very opportunist stone.
That was Saturday. On Sunday, July 2nd, Felipe Calderon and the PAN, aided and abetted by the connivance of the Federal Electoral Institute, Mexico's maximum electoral authority, stole the presidential election before the nation's eyes.
As mentioned above, Mexican elections are stolen before, during, and after the votes are cast. During the run-up to July 2nd, the IFE, under the direction of Calderon partisan Luis Carlos Ugalde systematically tried to cripple Lopez Obrador's campaign. Venomous television spots that labeled AMLO "a danger" to Mexico were allowed to run sometimes four to a single commercial break for months on Televisa and TV Azteca despite an indignant outcry from Lopez Obrador's supporters. The IFE only pulled the plug on the hit pieces under court order. In a similar display of crystal clear bias, Ugalde and the IFE winked at Vicente Fox's shameless, unprecedented, and unconstitutional campaigning for Calderon, and refused to intervene despite AMLO's pleas for the president to remove himself from the election.
One of the IFE's more notorious accomplishments in this year's presidential elections was to engineer the non-vote of Mexicans in the United States, an effort that resulted in the disenfranchisement of millions of "paisanos" living north of the Rio Bravo. Undocumented workers were denied absentee ballot applications at consulates and embassies and more than a million eligible voters were barred from casting a ballot because their voter registration cards were not up to date and the IFE refused to update them outside of Mexico. Untold numbers of undocumented workers who could not risk returning to Mexico for a minimum 25 days to renew their credential were denied the franchise the IFE was sworn to defend. The PRD insists that the majority of undocumented Mexicans in the U.S. would have cast a ballot for Lopez Obrador.
The left-center party has considerable strength in Los Angeles and Chicago, the two most important concentrations of Mexicans in the U.S. When thousands of legal Mexican residents from Los Angeles caravanned to Tijuana to cast a ballot for Lopez Obrador, they found the special polling places for citizens in transit had no ballots. The 750 ballots allocated to the special "casillas" had already been taken by members of the Mexican police and military.
In Mexico City, when voters in transit lined up at one special polling place according to noted writer Elena Poniatowska, hundreds of nuns presumably voting for the rightwing Calderon displaced them and were given the last of the ballots.
Back in the bad old days when the long-ruling (71 years) Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) stole elections with impunity, most of the larceny took place in the polling stations stolen or stuffed ballot boxes, multiple voting, altered vote counts but since national and international observers like the San Francisco-based Global Exchange became a regular feature of the electoral landscape here, such overt fraud has diminished and the cumulative number of anomalies recorded in 130,000 casillas July 2nd seemed insignificant when compared to the size of the victory Calderon was already claiming the morning after i.e. the John Kerry Syndrome, named in memory of the Democratic Party candidate's sudden capitulation in Ohio in 2004 for much the same reason.
Nonetheless, this "fraude de hormiga" (fraud of the ants) which steals five to 10 votes a ballot box, when combined with the disappearance of voters from precinct lists ("razarados" or the razored ones) can fabricate an electoral majority the long-ruling PRI (which failed to win a single state July 2nd) was a master of this sort of "alquemia" (alchemy) during seven decades of defrauding Mexican voters.
During the build-up to July 2nd, independent reporters here uncovered what appeared to be IFE preparations for cybernetic fraud. One columnist at the left national daily La Jornada discovered parallel lists of "razarados" on the IFE electronic page one of the lists contained multiples of the other. While Julio Hernandez made a phone call to the IFE to question this phenomenon, the list containing the multiples vanished from his computer screen.
Similarly, radio reporter Carmen Aristegui was able to access the list of all registered voters through one of Felipe Calderon's web pages the list had been crossed with one containing the personal data of all recipients of government social development program benefits former social development secretary (SEDESO) Josefina Vazquez Mota, is Calderon's right hand woman and the PAN candidate's brother-in-law Diego Zavala, a data processing tycoon, designed programs for both the IFE and the SEDESO. Utilizing voter registration rolls and lists of beneficiaries of government programs is considered an electoral crime here.
AMLO's people went into July 2nd fearing a repeat of 1988 when the "system" purportedly "collapsed" on election night and did not come back up for ten days. When results were finally announced, Cuauhtemoc Cardenas has been despoiled of victory and the PRI's Carlos Salinas was declared the winner.
Lopez Obrador's fears were not unwarranted.
When on July 2nd AMLO's voters turned out in record-breaking numbers, Interior Secretary officials urged major media not to release exit poll results that heralded a Lopez Obrador victory. Ugalde himself took to national television to declare the preliminary vote count too close to call and Mexicans went to bed without knowing whom their next president might be. Preliminary results culled from the casillas (PREP) that ran erratically all night and all day Monday showed Calderon with a 200,000 to 400,000-vote lead activating suspicions that cybernetic flimflam was in the works. When the PREP was finally shut down Monday night, the right winger enjoyed a commanding lead and Televisa and TV Azteca proclaimed him a virtual winner U.S newspapers like the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, and Chicago Tribune followed suit and the White House was poised to celebrate a Calderon victory.
But there was one fly in the IFE's ointment: 42 million Mexicans had voted July 2nd but only the votes of 39 million appeared in the PREP and Lopez Obrador demanded to know what had happened to the missing 3,000,000 voters. Then on a Tuesday morning news interview with Televisa, Luis Carlos Ugalde admitted that the missing votes had been abstracted from the PREP because of "inconsistencies". Indeed, 13,000 casillas 10% of the total had been removed from the preliminary count, apparently to create the illusion that Calderon had won the presidency.
Meanwhile all day Monday and into Tuesday, AMLO supporters throughout Mexico recorded thousands of instances of manipulation of the vote count a ballot box in Mexico state registered 188 votes for Lopez Obrador but only 88 were recorded in the PREP. Another Mexico state ballot box was listed 20 times in the preliminary count. Whereas voters in states where the PAN rules the roost, cast more ballots for president than for senators and congressional representatives, voters in southern states where the PRD carried the day cast more ballots for congress than for the presidential candidates. Among the PRD states that purportedly followed this surreal pattern was Tabasco, the home state of two out of the three major party presidential candidates Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and the PRI's Roberto Madrazo.
On Wednesday morning, with the tension mounting to the breaking point and demonstrators already massing in the street, a final vote count began in Mexico's 300 electoral districts. Although the tabulation of the votes was programmed to finish Sunday, IFE officials pushed the recount ahead at breakneck speed. As the day progressed, PAN and PRI electoral officials, charging Lopez Obrador's people with trying to obstruct the process, repeatedly rejected PRD demands to open the ballot boxes and recount the votes inside one by one in instances where Lopez Obrador's tally sheets did not coincide with numbers in the PREP or were different from the sheets attached to the ballot box. When a recount was allowed such as in one Veracruz district, Lopez Obrador sometimes recouped as many as a thousand votes.
Surprisingly, by early afternoon, AMLO had accumulated a 2.6% lead over Calderon and his supporters were dancing in the streets of Mexico City. And then, inexplicably, for the next 24 hours, his numbers went into the tank never to rise again at the same time that the right-winger's started to increase incrementally. By late evening, AMLO was reduced to single digit advantage and a little after 4 AM Thursday morning, Calderon inched ahead. It had taken 12 hours to count the last 10% of the votes and still there were districts that had not reported.
When Lopez Obrador addressed the press at 8:30, he condemned "the spectacle of the dance of numbers" and announced that the PRD and its political allies would impugn the election he had proof of anomalies in 40,000 polling places (a third of the total) and would present them to the "TRIFE", the supreme electoral tribunal with powers to annul whole districts and states, within the 72 hours dictated by the law.
Then, in his typically hesitating, Peter Falk-like way of saying things, AMLO called for the second election the one that takes place in the street beginning at 5 PM this Saturday in the great Zocalo plaza at the political heart of this bruised nation.
Although Lopez Obrador's words were perhaps the culminating moment of this long strange journey, Mexico's two-headed TV monster chose to ignore them - Televisa was otherwise occupied with "entertainment" news, and soon after the screens filled up with game shows and telenovelas (soap operas.) Although it had not yet concluded, the telenovela of the vote count disappeared into the ether of morning television.
I had already read the John Ross article when yabasta posted it. A close friend and movement companion of many years who has continued as an activist both in the US and Mexico emailed it to me and asked my opinion. My response to him is repeated here.
A general view here and my own is that Ross pretty much has it right. That doesn't mean it will make any difference. Whether one is for Calderón or López, the overiding public opinion in these parts is simply that is the way it has been and is. This time however it may turn out differently down the road, if not now.
I have had an advantage of view in watching developments unfold that are not privy to most Mexicans. That derives from cynically sweating with left perspective through each day of the US 2000 fiasco and this time making daily marks on memories of that script concerning what is happening here in Mexico.
It has been deja vu all over again and comes as no surprise. It shouldn't, for public presentation both north and south of the border has been obviously managed by the same people who held sway in 2000 and again now in 2006, whether those were and are involved as party functionaries, analytic pontificators, or press whores.
There are some differences between Florida 2000 and Mexico 2006. The latter was a contest between different wings of the same corporate party, the one with slightly different speeches labeled democrat and republican, but at base having identical interests and avoiding at all costs any illusion of class conflict.
Mexico's contest is clearly seen and acknowledged by people here as that which can't be admitted up north by those of either branch of the US political establishment. For Mexicans, whether they favor Calderón or López and jabber in offices or streets, it is expressed as what it is, a division between those suffering nothing left to lose and others either relatively rich or comfortably wishing to be more so.
There is another difference and it bodes well either this time around or down the line. That lies in the important difference in political outlook of US and Mexican people, one not understood at all north of the border.
The gringo sees himself with power unto himself as an individual separated from the forces that effect him. His predilection for facing impinging problems is to try and modify those forces. The Mexican though considers himself an integral part of an essentially staid environment, changes to which are out of his hands. He handles problems by changing himself rather than that around him. The Gringo says "I will change things", the Mexican, "I will change". As the first goes about fucking things up, the other fits in.
That is expressed in our most repeated multi-meaning phrase, "Ni modo". Applied to the current situation it can be taken as "What the hell else would you expect" and "Who gives a shit". That sort of fatalism would be construed horribly unproductive by left activists north of the border, but that's because Gringos can view such an attitude of distancing from what they believe is normal politics only through distorting ignorance and arrogance of their own preconceptions .
Here however, it assumes a different slant and portends different effect. What it comes down to is the practice of a real en vivo anarchy. That is not the sort construed by political social/theorists in their writing rooms. It is one taught instead through uncountable generations of native thought and life. It operates by simply paying no more attention to the forces of government than absolutely necessary and instead continuing on with life as learned. "Ni modo" becomes "Fuck it and fuck them, whatever they do won't bother me".
López caused a large portion of the nation's people to briefly duck out from the labyrinth of solitude's protective masks with doubtful thoughts of faint held hopes there may be something to this modern way. Now they don them again but having absorbed memories of what López championed. Those won't go away and may be reinforced by what is to come.
The question now becomes one of how the Mexican goes about changing himself to better fit to and survive in his environment. I look for that to be an even deeper entrenchment into the unorganized anarchism expressed above.
Though I wish it different, I expect Calderón to come out on top in this thing just as I did Bush in 2006. If so, consider who it is that Calderón and greedy grabbers both north and south are to govern. If my expectations are correct, it will be a free people even more ungovernable than before.
What will happen to López, the somewhat visionary leader, is not important. There will be others. One won't be Sub Comandante Marcos now morphed to Delegate Zero. That is no matter how left lovely his social thoughts seem to revolutionary theorists and politico-techno analysts locked into composing well thought treatises from old slogans and wishes. Nor, will it emerge from the credit he is due for serious organizing.
Something else is happening in the world of which to take note, something the Fox's, Calderón's, and Bushes fear but don't grasp. People of the streets of Mexico may not give a damn, but they are not ignorant. They know of Cuba, Venezuela, Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador, and who knows where else tomorrow. There is reason for the street popularity of Che T-shirts, posters, and books. Whether win or probable loss, on the future scene or not, and despite Mexico's integral bonding to the shark of the north, López may have perhaps unwittingly turned a lot of eyes and hearts southward for guidance.
My take.
Sunday, July 09, 2006
The Count
Next to the garbage can residing one, my favorite Sesame Street character was always The Count. He might describe the Further Left Library, Forum, and Chat as follows.
In the last one year, July 9 2005 through July 8 2006, the Library and Forum together have had 16,809 page loads from 9,926 unique visitors, of which 6,391 were first time visitors and 3,535 were returning. Daily averages over that period are 46 page loads from 27 unique visitors, of which 18 were first time and 9 returning.
Usage patterns changed when the Forum was installed October 11 2006. The current last 100 page loads show the Forum now accounting for 82% of the total and the Library 18%. Joint Library and Forum daily averages since then are 47 page loads, 31 visitors of which 21 are first time and 10 returning.
This extrapolates to a yearly expected use of the Forum and Library jointly to 17,155 page loads and 11,315 unique visitors of which 7,665 are first time and 3,650 returning. Narrowing that to a Forum's 82% share gives an expected 14,067 annual Forum page loads from 9,278 visitors of which 6,285 are there for the first time and 2,993 returning.
The Further Left Chat Room would normally experience one to 12 participants at any single time when it was a part of Yahoo chat madness. Twenty two was the maximum I recall. There was no noting then of how many came and went during any particular period.
The Chat's activity diminished greatly after moving to the EWC chat system in mid June 2005. But, so did the madness as it rapidly dropped to zero. There were 9 distinct chat participants yesterday, 16 during the past week, 30 in the past month, and 248 since the June 17 2005 move to the EWC chat system. Those figures varied little over the past year.
We are not a large chunk of the world of information but neither are we invisible. You can't kick a rock out of the path until you see it there. Hopefully we have and will continue to shed a bit of light along the way.
Friday, July 07, 2006
Who Knows?
Wednesday, July 05, 2006
Why Not Feed Them?
And then you think of a country that wants to steal the place of world leader, United States of America, that spends its billions on war for its own profit. Whose business is starving children?
Tuesday, July 04, 2006
Celebration Of Sorts
In a way, my neighbors may be right (political entendre intended). Though my years of life now span a third of their nation's 230 year blood and pillage stained history, there is no denying that US birth and subsequent early residence account for a quarter of those of the nation they commemorate today. I cannot similarly calculate the fraction of our close to 20 years expatriation to Mexico in terms of its longevity. That is because it is impossible to finger the coming to nationhood for one where European conquest tended toward marriage to rather than slaughter of most of its original inhabitants. We will not attend the neighbors' festivities but instead, mark here my and many's others views of that which they celebrate.
A few years ago, Guadalajara fútbol fans chanted "OSAMA, OSAMA" during a match with the US after one of its players disrespected Mexico, its team, and fans by blatently urinating on the field of play. The story was carried in indignant news from the north but without mention of the instigating event.
One of my neighbors was so offended she hung American flags outside her house. I followed suit and hung something on ours too, an impressionistic rendering of that flag. It brought no mention to my face from passing gringos but many V and thumbs up signals from Mexican's. That picture was the very first post on this Forum last October. It seems appropriate today to offer it again as my comment on the birthday party at hand.
Some words in line with thoughts underlying generation of that graphic are better presented by one more talented in such realm than I. It was found and stolen from a chat room acquaintance and appears on the August 31, 2005 archive of her impotentire blog. Letter to an American Know-All
Dear Sir,
I had an opportunity of going through your website and all its articles. It so happened that somebody in one of the chat rooms happened to paste this link on the mains and I decided to glance through it. Without beating around the Bush (wish I could literally do that!!!) I’d like to thank you for your articles which were indeed very well written (as I’m sure many have told you) albeit, unconventionally written.
I seize this opportunity to put across my point of view. Naturally you’d like to know who I am. Well my name is Sucheta and I am a 3rd year law student, studying in Calcutta (that’s in India in case you don’t know and do not ask me where India is …George Bush raised this query at the time he assumed office-this isn’t a rumour, by the way! ). I’d like to put the view of most third world nations across, which happen to be cowed down by the sheer money and muscle power of the U.S. At this point, you may in all probability delete my mail because listening to what the people of starving nations think or feel is naturally of no significance. I mean if they’re poor, and starving… they probably deserve to kick the bucket and make space for others (applying American logic).
American arrogance has been reflected time and again in its foreign policy. It would be interesting to note that the U.S., like Frankenstein, has this habit of creating monsters which rebel against their creator. Take Saddam for instance. He was well supplied with arms and ammunition and placed in a position of power in order to keep Iran in its place. But Saddam had ambitions of his own and since he refused to toe Uncle Sam’s line, he was deftly removed, thousands of innocents massacred and a nation pulverized… all for its brimming deposits of liquid gold. After all, surely the U.S. has permanent sovereignty over the natural resources of all the nations of the world. Saddam should have meekly handed over those accursed oilfields to the Big Boss. The funniest thing is that the U.S. still expects the world to digest its fabrications about those weapons of mysterious disappearance.
The U.S., of course, is the world’s self-appointed moral guardian. It will tell us what leaders we ought to elect, what ought to be our system of governance, what products we ought to use (including rubber goods, I suppose) and who deserves to live, who deserves to perish. Take Afghanistan for instance. The Taliban was set up in order to oust the Soviet Russia from Afghanistan but yet again, Frankenstein’s monster turned against its creator and had to be done to death ( how many innocent children were bombed to smithereens of course does not matter…they were Asians after all and their lives of scant value).
The United States has set new standards in hypocrisy. It attempted to keep out goods manufactured by the “lesser” nations by going high on rhetoric…ostensibly talking about the fact that child labour had been used and as such the States’ heart was crying out for those pitiable creatures ( the fact that U.S. sanctions drive millions of children to their deathbeds is another insignificant detail). Yet the United States, along with Somalia, are the only nations which refused to ratify the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child. We, the “lesser” nations are, of course, not surprised. I mean the U.S. can never be accused of consistency in anything apart from perpetrating terror.
The Kyoto Protocol controversy is yet another example which exposed the States’ contemptuous attitude towards international will and international obligations. The U.S. chooses to use the United Nations as an instrument to spread its reign of terror and when it falters in its designs, the U.N. is naturally termed “redundant”.
The United States, in its fight against “terror” chooses to overlook the terrorism perpetrated by Israel against the Palestinians and by Pakistan upon the Kashmiris, the reason being that they happen to be allies of the U.S. in their bid to colonise the world. America will teach the world what being “civilized” is, it will decide our foreign policy for us, it will hand us weapons to fight one another ( the arms lobbies’ interests are definitely paramount…lives don’t count) and then preach love and peace! The U.S. representatives showed their true colours at the Cancun meet where their anger at the solidarity expressed by the third world led them to abandon their veiled warnings in order to proceed with open (and vulgar) threats. This is The Great United States of America for you…long live the Americans, the rest of the world can go hang!
Irrespective of who wins the elections, whether Kerry or Bush, to the rest of the world, it would make no difference because the tyrant will live on… the tyrant called The United States. The rest of the world cowers in fear.
Yes, life is of no value…unless it’s an American life. The rest of the people are mere lumps of flesh and bone…destined to survive…never to live.
Thank you America!!!
Sucheta.
O bless you Pocho for posting the peace flag and the letter it realy does show me how the world veuws usa people .I also wanted to thank you for the use of it as you know i think of it as a peace flag and you call it the war flag .Sad thing is not all usa people are like as the leaders.
Pocho, you have found a post that is full of truths. I hope many read it here and recognize it. My respect to the author for telling it.
Oh so true Redwine i miss her to she was allways nice and kind to me but a Tiger when crossed bless her i pray she knows shes missed.
Also she was a very very smart Lady.
Monday, July 03, 2006
And Get On With It
"If the world is upside down the way it is now, wouldn't we have to turn it over to get it to stand up straight?" - Eduardo Galeano
There is another map called 'Peter's Projection' which shows the Earth with its actual land areas - very interesting, gives a completely different perspective on world politics.
Thanks to Pisces for informing us that Peter’s World Map is only one that represents countries, continents, and seas accurately according to their surface areas. Here it is (inverted) for comparison.
We have been duped into believing false facts about the Earth and for self serving political reason. Traditional Mercator maps show countries incorrectly in proportion or relative size to one another, to the advantage of the European colonial powers who drew the maps as they dominated and exploited the world, while the southern continents (Africa, South America, Australia) are shown far too small. Observe these 4 blatant fallacies:
1)- Traditionally, Europe, with its 9.7 million sq kms appears to be larger than South America which is 17.8 sq kms. But in fact, South America is nearly twice the size of Europe!
2)- Traditionally, North America, having 19 million sq kms, appears to be considerably larger than Africa which has 30 million sq kms. The fact is that Africa is really the largest continent in the world and its true dimensions have been fudged by colonial England to play it down.
3)- Traditionally, Scandinavia, having 1.1 million sq kms, appears to be as large as India which has 3.3 sq kms. In fact, India is three times the size of Scandinavia, and its true form is very elongated.
4)- Traditionally, Greenland, having 2.1 million sq kms appears larger than China when in fact China with 9.5 million sq kms is more than four times larger!
And, then we have the USA Dumbdowner Projection. The view presented here is its normal Far Right side up to more easily read the labels and better grasp the profound mental depth behind its construction.
Ok to laugh or cry how about i do both .o where o where is the total truth oh man what is the plan????
“I am astonished each time I come to the U.S. by the ignorance of a high percentage of the population, which knows almost nothing about Latin America or about the world. It's quite blind and deaf to anything that may happen outside the frontiers of the U.S.”
Another quote by Eduardo Galeano
All America seems to see on a map is their own country and the rest a big back yard for its use.
i read this and my heart broke.
"All America seems to see on a map is their own country and the rest a big back yard for its use. "
American is the whole place the U>S>A> is the fenced off country .America is the whole land or was called turtle island to many but seams no mater what .WE are all judged by the eleat and the rich and the people who just want a simple life and not a wroldly life o well .Kepp it of mark it off how i feel
Looks like I was born in Dragon Country - I just love that US Dumbdowner Projection - I think I just wet myself laughing.
Just think i was born in the year of the wood Dragon .Dont change i was born in the USA on the land mass called america but then im dumb i think the whole thing is america not just the fenced in part.
"Peter’s World Map is only one that represents countries, continents, and seas accurately according to their surface areas"
Unfortunately that is not true. Equal area maps have been around for centuries. The Peters Projection itself is identical to the Gall Orthographic Projection of 1855,. That in turn was a modification of an equal area projection created in 1772.
The Peters Map is a good counter to the Mercator as it does get land mass areas more or less right but this is at the expense of shape.
The problem with any map is that it tries to render a sphere onto a cylinder. There is not a world map in existence that can do this without some distortion of size, shape or distance.
The bottom line is that if you want to see what the world looks like, get a globe.
