BBC: Mexico protests target tribunal

[Say_What]

<clips>

Thousands of supporters of defeated Mexican presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador have rallied at the country's top electoral court.

The protesters carried banners and blocked a road, demanding a recount of all votes in the disputed 2 July poll.

The left-wing candidate rejected the tribunal's decision to recount only 9% of votes. "The Mexican people do not want only part of the truth," he said.

His supporters' sit-ins have paralysed the capital for the last week.

Official election results gave victory to the conservative Felipe Calderon by half a percentage point.

"Our institutions cannot remain subject to the power of money, to those who think they own Mexico," Mr Lopez Obrador told protesters gathered in the rain.

"If we permit it we will be accepting a simulated democracy, a democracy of lies."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/5254922.stm

[dipsydoodle]

1. Another link from today

Same subject : http://www.plenglish.com/Default.asp

[larrysh]

2. You know, I could take this guys more seriously......IF.......

he had won more than 35% of the popular vote. Obredor better hope that Tribunal doesn't order a run-off election between he and Calderon. The
3rd party candidate (I forget his name), was pro-business, with a platform (and supporters), not too much different from Calderon. Obredor would get slaughtered in a straight two candidate run-off,
and lose all credibility.

[1932]

3. So you take much more seriously the guy who beat him by .06% who wants to

take the country 180 degrees in the other direction?

And I wouldn't hypothesize about a run-off election based on the previous election. The third party candidate got support from farmers in the countryside because they believed that his party helped them. Those are people in areas that generally went for Obrador.

In a run-off, Obrador is just as likely to get thos votes as Calderon.

[Zorra]

4. Who knows what percentage of the popular vote Lopez Obrador

got? Calderon, as I understand, opposes a recount, just like Bu*h did in 2000. Any honest person would support a recount under similar circumstances. We now know that Bu*h, with the help of Katherine Harris and other corrupt republicans along with a corrupt Supreme Court, stole the pResidential election in 2000.

Why not make sure that the election was honest? There are very few things in this world that are as important as insuring and preserving the integrity of a democracy.

The only ones with anything to lose in this case will be the crooks that stole the election and who oppose a recount because they know they stole the election.

[robinlynne]

11. get real.

[Say_What]

5. "WE DON'T NEED NO STINKIN' RECOUNT" Mexico's Lesson In The Dangers Of The

<clips>

By Greg Palast
for The Guardian, Comment is Free
Monday August 7, 2006

In the six years since I first began investigating the burglary ring we call “elections” in America, a new Voting Reform industry has grown up. That’s good. What’s worrisome is that most of the effort is focused on preventing the installation of computer voting machines. Paper ballots, we’re told, will save our democracy.

Well, forget it. Over the weekend, Mexico’s ruling party showed how you can rustle an election even with the entire population using the world’s easiest paper ballot.

On Saturday, Mexico’s electoral tribunal, known as the “TRIFE” (say “tree-fay”) ordered a re-count of the ballots from the suspect July 2 vote for president. Well, not quite a recount as in “count all the ballots” — but a review of just 9% of the nation’s 130,000 precincts.

The “9% solution” was the TRIFE’s ham-fisted attempt to chill out the several hundred thousand protesting supporters of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador who had gathered in the capital and blocked its main Avenue. Lopez Obrador, the Leftist challenger known by his initials AMLO, supposedly lost the presidential vote by just one half of one percent of the vote.

http://www.gregpalast.com/we-dont-need-no-stinkin-recount

[EFerrari]

6. Election miracles!

Enough to give you religion.



Preserving Democracy: What Went Wrong in Ohio
Status Report of the House Judiciary Committee Democratic Staff

Wednesday 05 January 2005

Executive Summary

Representative John Conyers, Jr., the Ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, asked the Democratic staff to conduct an investigation into irregularities reported in the Ohio presidential election and to prepare a Status Report concerning the same prior to the Joint Meeting of Congress scheduled for January 6, 2005, to receive and consider the votes of the electoral college for president. The following Report includes a brief chronology of the events; summarizes the relevant background law; provides detailed findings (including factual findings and legal analysis); and describes various recommendations for acting on this Report going forward.

We have found numerous, serious election irregularities in the Ohio presidential election, which resulted in a significant disenfranchisement of voters. Cumulatively, these irregularities, which affected hundreds of thousand of votes and voters in Ohio, raise grave doubts regarding whether it can be said the Ohio electors selected on December 13, 2004, were chosen in a manner that conforms to Ohio law, let alone federal requirements and constitutional standards.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_05/010605Y.shtml

[Say_What]

7. a “religious event,” but a statistical impossibility

I laughed out loud when I read this:

...How odd. I checked my concerns with Professor Victor Romero of Mexico’s National University who concluded that the reported results must have been a “miracle.” As he put it, a ??religious event,” but a statistical impossibility. There were two explanations, said the professor: either the Lord was fixing the outcome or operatives of the ruling party were cranking in a massive number of ballots when they realized their man was about to lose.


Supporter of the Party of the Democratic Revolution's (PRD) presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador shout slogans during a protest in central Zocalo Square, Mexico City August 5, 2006. Obrador criticised the top electoral court's decision on Saturday to reject a full recount in a tight election he lost, and vowed to push on with protests against alleged fraud. REUTERS/Henry Romero (MEXICO)

[EFerrari]

15. I just reread this and woke up all my cats

laughing.

May this feather tip the scales.

[Judi Lynn]

12. Anyone interested in this election should read this article

and why is Greg Palast the only reporter who actually does his job, anyway?

Can't believe how our own news industry was completely destroyed within 20+ years.

It's time a solution was developed so Americans could actually know what the hell is happening BEFORE thirty or forty years have passed, as in what our right-wing Presidents did in Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, etc., Central America, and Mexico.

[Peace Patriot]

8. I love how Lopez Obrador keeps articulating the larger issues

surrounding the immediate grievance--the obviously stolen election:

"Our institutions cannot remain subject to the power of money, to those who think they own Mexico...If we permit it we will be accepting a simulated democracy, a democracy of lies." --Lopez Obrado

This is clearly the WHY of the election theft. It's the thing on all the demonstrators' minds. There is no way that Calderon represents the interests of the majority, and, however they rigged it, that's WHY they rigged. The vast poor of Mexico, by far the great majority of people--impoverished by corporatist/fascist policy, which has further enriched the super-rich, just as they're doing here--have no representation in government. The rich are TAKING EVERYTHING. They are crazy-greedy. And there's no way that they "won"--just as there's no way that Bush, who has incurred a $10 TRILLION debt (the part we know about) by larding the rich and destroying Iraq, and "losing" billions of dollars there, and torturing people, and speaking like a blithering idiot, could have been re-elected here.

One can only mourn over the contrast between Kerry and Lopez Obrador, in their understanding of what is at issue.

"Our institutions cannot remain subject to the power of money, to those who think they own Mexico...If we permit it we will be accepting a simulated democracy, a democracy of lies."

And what do WE have, hm? A democracy of lies, where the rich own everything

[Peace Patriot]

9. There is a roaringly funny account of Argentina's economic recovery

shoved out there into the garbage heap of AP-WaPo "news" coverage today.

They attribute Argentina's economic recovery to St. Cajetan (San Cayetano), because Argentinians are making pilgrimages to his church. He is the patron saint of bread, jobs and prosperity. Read about it here...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/07/AR2006080701020.html

Here is my comment, in part

"...AP-WaPo would rather be dumped under a 500-lb bunker buster in Iraq than admit that it was MASS PROTESTS, A PEOPLES' UPRISING, DAMAGING BANK ATM DISPLAYS, MASS REJECTION OF WORLD BANK/IMF "NEO-LIBERALISM" (international theft), and HUGO CHAVEZ that are the keys to Argentina's recovery."

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2442576

They don't mention the mass protests and Chavez (who bought out some of Argentina's onerous World Bank debt, on friendly terms). They play it as a miracle.

And that about sums up our war profiteering corporate news monopoly coverage of Latin America. What utter shit-heads we have running these news departments!

---------

I mean, not to dis the saint, or anything. But, come on....

[Say_What]

10. Argentina s Prez Slams Possible US Penalty

<clips>

Buenos Aires, Aug 8 (Prensa Latina) Argentine President Nestor Kirchner stated "this nation has no longer carnal relations with anyone," after the US suggested economic sanctions on Argentina.

Kirchner remarks took place at the executive headquarters in Buenos Aires, strongly responding to eventual measures against exports to the US, given its stance at the World Trade Organization and the frozen Free Trade Area of the Americas talks.

"The world and people of Argentina must be aware that this is an independent nation and under no circumstance will it make decisions that depend on others," the president noted.

"The US can do all it wants, but Argentina, with all respect for that country and all nations of the world, knows what it must do," he contended.


http://www.plenglish.com/Default.asp

[Judi Lynn]

13. Reuters: Mexico left hits ministry, roads in vote protests

Mexico left hits ministry, roads in vote protests
Aug 8, 2006 — By Lorraine Orlandi

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Hundreds of Mexican leftists blockaded a government ministry and threw open highway toll gates on Tuesday in an escalation of protests against alleged fraud in last month's presidential election.

It was the first time demonstrators have disrupted federal facilities in weeks of protests to support candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who lost the election by 0.58 of a percentage point to the conservative ruling party's Felipe Calderon.

Mexico's government has tightened security around President Vicente Fox since leaders of the civil resistance vowed earlier this week they would organize protests wherever he goes.

One newspaper Web site showed photographs of military snipers deployed to protect Fox on Tuesday during a visit to the central state of Queretaro, where around 30 leftists protested against the alleged vote-rigging in the July 2 election.
(snip/...)

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=2289900

[Judi Lynn]

14. Dallas News:Mexican activists make democracy a controversial carnival

Posted on Tue, Aug. 08, 2006
Mexican activists make democracy a controversial carnival
By Laurence Iliff

The Dallas Morning News

(MCT)

MEXICO CITY - Up and down Mexico City's most famous thoroughfare, Paseo de la Reforma, youths play soccer on all eight lanes, and huge tarps cover miles of pup tents, makeshift kitchens and high-powered stereos.

The monument-studded boulevard, inspired by Paris' Champs-Elysees, has been taken over by demonstrators to pressure the Federal Electoral Tribunal for a recount in the July 2 presidential election. They are led by leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who trails by just 244,000 votes in the official count.

But with their microwave ovens and widescreen televisions, their government cleaning crews and stolen electricity, the demonstrators' version of "civil resistance" feels more like a Mexican carnival. Food, entertainment, and porta-potties are abundant.

With the leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution, or PRD, running both the protest and the city government, there's little fear of any head-busting by riot police. Indeed, cops diverted traffic while protesters planted tent spikes into Reforma's recently repaved asphalt.

Except for dealing with Mexico City's constantly changing hot/cold/rainy weather, these thousands of protesters are pretty much happy campers.
(snip/...)

http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/mld/ledgerenquirer/news/world/15228365.htm

[Peace Patriot]

16. I just caught up with this post, Judi Lynn! It's great! You should make

it an OP. People need to read about the spirit of the revolution in Mexico.