Outcry over Mexican elections falling on deaf ears

[Judi Lynn]

Outcry over Mexican elections falling on deaf ears
Mark Almond - The Guardian
Tuesday 15th August, 2006

A couple of years ago television, radio and print media in the west just couldn't get enough of 'people power'.

In quick succession, from Georgia's rose revolution in November 2003, via Ukraine's orange revolution a year later, to the tulip revolution in Kyrgyzstan and the cedar revolution in Lebanon, 24-hour news channels kept us up to date with democracy on a roll.

Triggered by allegations of election fraud, the dominoes toppled. The US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, was happy with the trend: 'They're doing it in many different corners of the world, places as varied as Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan and, on the other hand, Lebanon ... And so this is a hopeful time.'

But when a million Mexicans try to jump on the people-power bandwagon, crying foul about the July 2 presidential elections, when protesters stage a vigil in the centre of the capital that continues to this day, they meet a deafening silence in the global media. Despite Mexico's long tradition of electoral fraud and polls suggesting that Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador - a critic of the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) - was ahead, the media accepted the wafer-thin majority gained by the ruling party nominee, Harvard graduate Felipe Calderon.
(snip/...)

http://story.irishsun.com/p.x/ct/9/id/5cfcd1f178d45eba/cid/45d771c7290844e9/

[Kutjara]

1. People-power is fine, as long as the people seeking power...

...aren't on your own doorstep. That might start the people at home thinking, and we definitely can't have that, can we?

People-power is much better when viewed from a distance, among people who are supposedly very different from us and therefore no threat.

When the same people we meet every day on the streets of Los Angeles, Phoenix, Santa Fe and Abilene start getting agitated, well, that just won't do.

Imagine if Mexico got a socially-responsible government that ruled for the benefit of the people and believed that human happiness was the most important goal for which it could strive. Hell, people here might start thinking it's a pretty good idea too. And then where would we be?

[nosmokes]

3. write your congress critters and tell them you would support a resolution

asking the Mexican government to conduct a complete recount.

copy your letter to your nearest Mexican consulate. google Mexico for the addresses

[niallmac]

6. Too early in the morning. I read you to say; 'revolution'

I agree, a resolution of support would be appropriate from this supposed democratic nation.
I would also consider letting my congressman know that if our country continues to
devolve into corporate fascism I would support a 'revoluton.'
Probably get another form letter reply.

[nosmokes]

7. har! chances of either are prolly about equal. *sigh*n/t

[Kurovski]

2. K&R.(nt)

[Peace Patriot]

4. I didn't expect anything else from the U.S. corporate news monopolies.

They've been slandering or black-holing the amazing, peaceful, democratic, leftist revolution in Latin America all along. They colluded on the theft of two presidential elections here, and on much else. U.S. journalism has become the tool of U.S.-based global corporate predators. And what is at issue in Mexico, as here, is global corporate predation. And the beauty of it all is that the Mexican protesters--as with the peaceful revolutionaries throughout Latin America--don't give a fuck what our corporate news monopolies think. They have their own corporate news monopolies trying to lord it over them, and they just ignore them and use their own channels of communication. In Venezuela, all of the media is owned by fascists, who not only berate Hugo Chavez and his government 24/7, but openly supported a violent military coup against the elected president. The people came out into the streets by the tens of thousands and stopped the coup. We need to develop smarts like that--the smarts of ignoring corporate propagandists. Latin Americans are way ahead of us on this, but we're getting there. I think we have a heavier propaganda load to deal with, and fewer channels of people-to-people communication. And we are the corporate fascist prize--they've put a lot of thought and scheming into controlling us and our elections, because we theoretically hold the power--as a sovereign people--to regulate and even to dismantle many of these bad actor global corporations that are inflicting so much grief on everyone. They now directly control our elections with the new electronic voting systems run on TRADE SECRET, PROPRIETARY programming code. That's the only way they can stay in power, given what they have been doing. We may have to deal with it differently than the Mexicans. I think that even the bad, corporate Mexican politicians still have some sensibility, or at least accountability. Ours have neither. They will brutally beat us down without a thought, and there is nothing and no one to stop them. We may have to create subtler, more dispersed protest--for instance, the Absentee Ballot voting protest. (Boycott these new election theft machines. Refuse to vote on them. Inflict election officials with mountains of paper ballots to deal with, and thus force election reform at the state/local level. A very North American protest. It's easy. Everybody can do it--and nobody has to occupy the capitol.) (WE can't even get to square #1, finding the ballots in the garbage dump, because, in many places now, there are NO ballots--it's all rigged electronically, leaving no evidence behind.)

Leftists in the U.S. need to abandon any expectation that the war profiteering corporate news monopolies are going to cooperate in their own demise. The first thing a leftist (majorityist) government here will do is to dismantle these corporate news monopolies. They know that. That's why they directly colluded on the stolen 2004 election. Forget them! Concentrate on how to retrieve the MECHANISM of power: the vote!

[ananda]

5. USA interests in Mex. at stake..

BushInc wants a Mexican president who is friendly
to NAFTA and CAFTA and USA corporate interests,
which of course would hurt the poor and cause even
more immigration, giving fanatical border vigilantes
the fantasy objects of all their militant wet dreams...
and giving USA employers in Mexico more cheap
labor and cheap operating costs.

Sue