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It's a Dallas Morning News report, and, typical of our corporate news monopolies, they think that business losses are more important than democracy and free and fair elections. If business doesn't want to be inconvenienced, they can pay their workers more and support an equitable society, instead of one in which the rich are always getting richer and the poor are always getting poorer. And, in Mexico, we're talking about millions and millions and millions of impoverished people, due to U.S. global corporate predators and neo-liberal (false liberal, the rich get richer) policies.
The Dallas paper quotes another corporate news monopoly--El Universal--saying that Lopez Obrador's supporters in Congress made a mistake in embarrassing Fox. They then quote an unnamed poll that Fox has a 70% approval rating. I frankly don't believe it, and the lack of documentation supports my suspicion. His hand-picked successor won by only a .06 margin, less than one percent, and if Lopez Obrador is right that millions of votes were uncounted or miscounted (and the evidence if I've read about supports his view), then Calderon didn't even win. I suppose it could be a Clinton/Gore situation, where the president's personal popularity outdistances his designated successor and the votes he gets*. But I would have to see a lot more evidence than this, and I really don't believe much of what I read in the corporate press any more. They are so rightwing and such liars! And they are especially bad on the awesome, peaceful, democratic, leftist revolution that is sweeping Latin America.
A president who barricades congress with tanks and Darth Vader troops deserves to be heckled and himself blockaded from congress. Further, one who has presided over as foul an election as this one deserves 2 million people in the streets who won't be moved until every vote is counted. Fox brought it on himself. But what is at issue here is more than a stolen election. It is a lack of inclusion of Mexico's vast poor and brown population in government and economic policy. It is the fascist--and very Bushite--attitude that, if you can grab the reigns of power, all power now belongs to you and your friends and your well-off supporters, and to hell with everybody else. We have become numb to this attitude, but the Mexicans are not. They find it appalling. We are seeing a serious rebellion also in Oaxaca, and throughout the southern states, as well as in Mexico City. This is no small thing. It is a huge revolt against neo-liberalism and globalisation that leaves the poor out, and impoverishes many in the middle class as well. And it is connected to the revolution in South America. Latin American peoples throughout the hemisphere are sick and tired of being exploited and impoverished--and in some cases, gravely brutalized--by U.S. interference in their countries.
Revolts similar to Mexico's have occurred in Bolivia, Venezuela and Argentina, with leftist governments now elected in those countries, as well as in Brazil, Chile, Uruguay and Paraguay (with a strong new leftist movement in Peru which will likely be elected next time around--also in Nicaragua). Friends of U.S. global corporate predators are few and far between (Columbia, a pigsty of pro- and anti-drug money; Guatemala, free of the brutal US-backed military junta, but still right wing; Costa Rica; Panama maybe?). The forward-looking countries are all leftist-run and are banding together in regional economic and political solidarity. They are the future, and the rightwing dinosaurs like Columbia and Guatemala will be left behind. (Venezuela helped Argentina out of its World Bank debt, for instance; and the Latin countries are resisting US/Bushite pressure to keep Venezuela out of the Security Council--Venezuela will likely be seated in th SC next year, with South America's backing.)
The trend is overwhelmingly toward democracy and equitable economic policy. As the recently elected, first indigenous president of Bolivia has said: "The time of the people has come." And if all that Fox/Calderon can answer it with is tanks and Darth Vader troops, then they will most certainly be the losers, in the end. They may try to hang onto power with tooth and claw--and "trade secret" vote tabulation--as the Bushites have, but they would have been wiser just to count every vote, as Lopez Obrador's PEACEFUL millions were/are asking for. But, like the Bushites, they see power as all or nothing. The common good doesn't enter into it. And there is no limit to their greed.
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*(Clinton didn't campaign for Gore, however--whereas Fox did for Calderon--so much so that Lopez Obrador has accused him of impropriety under Mexican rules (using the office and functions of government to favor one candidate--fair rules that sound almost "quaint," given what we've seen Fox's pal Bush do to OUR election system). So if Fox is so popular why didn't it rub off on Calderon? Could it be that Mexicans like Fox, personally, but are becoming very disenchanted with globalisation and the gaping canyon that has arisen between rich and poor? As with Clinton and NAFTA, personal popularity turns to ashes when you lose your job, your home, your medicare care, your kids' education, and, in the case of many Mexicans and some Middle Americans, your farm, your land, your ability to feed yourself and make a decent life.)
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