"MEXICO ON A KNIFEBLADE headlines the British Guardian,"

[donsu]

http://www.counterpunch.com/

"God doesn't belong to the PAN!"
"AMLO deserves a miracle"
"No Pasaran!"
Mexico Approaches the Combustion Point


The Congress of the country is ringed by two-meter tall grilled metal barriers soldered together apparently to thwart a suicide car bomb attack. Behind this metal wall, 3000 vizored, kevlar-wearing robocops -- the Federal Preventative Police (PFP, a police force drawn from the army) -- and members of the elite Estado Mayor or Presidential military command, form a second line of defense. Armed with tear gas launchers, water cannons, and reportedly light tanks, this Praetorian Guard has been assigned to protect law and order and the institutions of the republic against left-wing mobs that threaten to storm the Legislative Palace -- or so the President informs his fellow citizens in repeated messages transmitted on national television.

No, the President's name is not Pinochet and this military tableau is not being mounted in the usual banana republic or some African satrap. This is Mexico, a paragon of democracy (dixit George Bush), Washington' third trading partner, and the eighth leading petroleum producer on the planet, seven weeks after the fraud-marred July 2 presidential election of which, at this writing, no winner has been officially declared. One of the elite military units assigned to seal off congress is indeed titled the July 2 brigade.

MEXICO ON A KNIFEBLADE headlines the British Guardian, but the typically short-term-memory-loss U.S. print media seems to have forgotten about the imbroglio just south of its borders. Nonetheless, the phone rings and it's New York telling me they just got a call from their man on the border and Homeland Security is beefing up its forces around Laredo in anticipation of upheaval further south. The phone rings again and it's California telling me they just heard on Air America that U.S. Navy patrols were being dispatched to safeguard Mexican oil platforms in the Gulf. The left-wing daily here, La Jornada, runs a citizen-snapped photo of army convoys arriving carrying soldiers disguised as farmers and young toughs. Rumors race through the seven mile-long encampment installed by supporters of leftist presidential challenger Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) three weeks ago who have tied up big city traffic and enraged the motorist class here, that PFP robocops will attack before dawn. The campers stay up all night huddled around bum fires prepared to defend their tent cities.

The moment reminds many Mexicans of the tense weeks in September and October 1968 when 12 days before the Olympic Games were to be inaugurated here, President Gustavo Diaz Ordaz ordered the military to massacre striking students in a downtown plaza not far from where AMLO's people are now camped out. 300 were killed in the Plaza of Three Cultures, their bodies incinerated at Military Camp #1 in western Mexico City. The Tlatelolco massacre was a watershed in social conflict here and the similarities are sinister. In fact, Lopez Obrador has taken to comparing outgoing President Vicente Fox with Diaz Ordaz.
-snip-
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I remember that Olympics well - when the two americans raised their fists I was jumping up and down saying YES!

I stand in solidarity with Obrador.

[Howardx]

1. "safeguard Mexican oil platforms"

priorities dont ya know:sarcasm:

[pooja]

2. Wow, can you imagine if American's had camped outside of

the white house and not left until a re-count had been done? Where would we be now? Amazing the passion in people.

[silverweb]

3. Scary.

The warm and hospitable people of Mexico are continually in my thoughts and prayers.

I, too, stand in solidarity with Obrador.

[Bozita]

4. This story doesn't exist in the MSM.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

5. I was talking to someone yesterday... about how I had to walk out

when they had the shrub on TV cause I got so mad...

I asked him if he knew about the protests over the election in Mexico, how they were camping out in the streets of Mexico City and causing all kinds of havoc. He had no idea, thought Fox had been re-elected. So I edumacated him. :evilgrin: It felt good... it felt REAL GOOD!

[Virginia Dare]

6. He could probably tell you what the whack-job..

pedophile had for breakfast today though...

[Viva_La_Revolution]

7. not really...

He doesn't watch TV much, but he did comment about the "little girl who got killed a few years ago", said "that freak" should burn in hell, but since that was all that was on, he pretty much ignored the TV.

I gave him my opinion real quick (he's a nut case, didn't do it, thinks he did, etc) and moved on to the news they WEREN'T SHOWING. Soldiers dying in Iraq AND Afghanistan, protests in Mexico, the Shrub's role in the Israel/Hezbollah/Iran mess.

Just a taste of each. Not enough to put him off, but enough to make him curious. I think I threw in a line about the NSA ruling too. :evilgrin: :patriot:

[mom cat]

10. Lets just start calling the "MSM" PRAVDA! ..... That is what it is!

There is power in naming and we should take the lead.

[marions ghost]

8. This has not been ANYWHERE in US media...

convenient sins of omission ...

[donkeyotay]

9. This they say about the PRINT media. What about tee vee?

MEXICO ON A KNIFEBLADE headlines the British Guardian, but the typically short-term-memory-loss U.S. print media seems to have forgotten about the imbroglio just south of its borders.

I wish the Mexican people who are fighting for democracy in a way we didn't the best. I hope they keep a sharp eye for the agitators as the set-up characterization has already been made: "left-wing mobs that threaten..."

[Bozita]

11. If this were going on in Cuba now, it'd play bigger than Jon-Benet