Overwhelming evidence reveals massive fraud in the 2006 Mexican presidential election between “president-elect” Felipe Calderón of the conservative PAN party and Andrés Manuel López Obrador of the more liberal PRD. In an election riddled with “arithmetic mistakes,” a partial recount uncovered evidence of abundant stuffing and stealing of ballots that favored the PAN victory.
Meanwhile, US interests were significantly invested in the outcome of Mexico’s election. Though neither candidate had any choice but to cooperate with the US agenda, important differences existed around energy policy, specifically with regard to foreign privatization of Mexican oil and gas reserves.
Though the energy sector of Mexico is already deeply penetrated by US capital, as it stands, the Mexican government owns and controls the oil industry, with very tight restrictions on any foreign investment. Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex), the fifth largest oil company in the world, exports 80 percent of its oil to the US. Sixty percent of its revenue ($30 billion per year) currently goes to the Mexican government, accounting for more than 40 percent of the Mexican government’s annual revenues.
Calderón promises a more thorough and streamlined exploitation of Mexico’s oil, demanding that Mexico remove barriers to private/foreign investment (which are currently written into the Mexican Constitution). Obrador, on the other hand, insisted on maintaining national ownership and control of the energy sector in order to build economic and social stability in Mexico.
In June 2005, Mexico signed an accord called Alliance for the Security and Prosperity of North America (ASPAN) with Canada and the US. The point was made that this accord would be binding on whoever became president of Mexico in the upcoming elections. Included in ASPAN is a guarantee to fill the energy needs of the US market, as well as agreements to forge “a common theory of security,” allowing US Homeland Security measures to be implemented in Mexico.
Five months later, in November 2005, an “audition” was held with Mexican presidential candidates before members of the US Chamber of Commerce in Mexico City. All candidates were asked whether they would open the energy sector in Mexico, especially the nationalized oil company, Pemex, to US exploitation.
Felipe Calderón received resounding applause when he answered that he is in favor of private investment in Pemex, and of weakening the labor unions. He also received applause when he stated that he supported George Bush’s guest worker program and that he agreed the border needed to be secured or militarized. Obrador said that he would not allow risk capital investment in Pemex—but hastened to add that other sectors would be opened to investment.
Calderón won the audition, Obrador was granted the role of understudy. Former US Ambassador to Mexico Jeffrey Davidow told Obrador, “If you win the election, we will support you.” But when Obrador appeared to be the front-runner in the election, PAN allied with forces in the US to launch a feverish campaign against him.
Though US laws prevent US influence in other countries’ elections, anti-Obrador ads airing on Mexican TV were designed by US firms and illegally financed by business councils that included such transnationals as Wal-Mart and Halliburton. US election advisers Rob Allyn and Dick Morris were contracted to develop a media campaign that would foment fear that Obrador, with ties to Chavez and Castro, posed a dangerous Socialist threat to Mexico.
Outgoing president Vicente Fox violated campaign law by making dozens of anti-Obrador speeches during the campaign, as the PAN party illegally saturated airwaves with swift-boat style attack ads against Obrador. Under Mexican law, ruling party interference is a serious crime and grounds for annulling an election.
While Obrador’s campaign and hundreds of independent election observers documented several hundred cases of election fraud in making their case for a recount, most Mexican TV stations failed to report the irregularities that surfaced. Days after the election The New York Times irresponsibly declared Calderón the winner, and Bush called to personally congratulate Calderón on his “win,” even though no victor had been declared under Mexican law. Illegal media campaigns combined with grand-scale fraud had had their effect.
linkThere was clear evidence that the election was stolen. Whether you believe that or not is immaterial. The Mexican people believe it and since the election there has been a popular revolution taking place.
The drug cartel meme is just a cover to hide the popular revolution taking place in Mexico.
back in 2007 the EPR began disrupting the energy distribution network.
The Popular Revolutionary Army, or EPR for its initials in Spanish, said Tuesday's explosion and two similar attacks on Pemex pipelines in Guanajuato state last week marked the beginning of a "national campaign of harassment against the interests of the oligarchy and this illegitimate government."The people of Mexico are not taking this lying down. Calderon in response has turned the army loose against the Mexican people and has been accused by independent human rights organizations of committing atrocites against the Mexican people.
The report by the National Human Rights Commission is the first official document to back up long-standing allegations of human rights abuses by soldiers ordered by President Felipe Calderon. Soldiers allegedly submerged at least one person in a well, sexually abused two children and raped two teenage girls.
In Michoacan, Soberanes said soldiers rounded up and tortured at least seven adults and one child in a small town.
linkThe killing of two young metalworkers in a military siege against strikers at a steel mill in Mexico signals a sharp escalation in the class struggle in Mexico.
Two young workers were shot to death, and more than 30 others were injured on Thursday, April 20, following an armed assault by Mexican security forces seeking to put an end to a strike at the Sicartsa steel mill in the city of Lazaro Cardenas, in the southwestern Mexican state of Michoacan.
Workers who spoke to the Mexican Daily La Jornada described the attack as a wanton assault in which state and federal security forces — one thousand strong — fired indiscriminately on picketing miners, who resisted fiercely.
Eyewitnesses reported that after killing the first worker, 19-year-old Mario Alberto Castillo, a cop put his boot on Mario’s bleeding head and dared the strikers to rescue him. A second worker, Hector Alvarez, 36, was killed shortly thereafter. The New York Times and a Mexican daily, La Crisis, reported that a third person may have been run over and killed by a police vehicle.
The military-style assault began at 7 a.m. and lasted until 1 p.m. It was initiated by Michoacan State police with the support of the Federal Preventive Police. Initial reports also suggested that a heavily armed elite squad — the Grupo Aereo de Reaccion Inmediata (The Immediate Reaction Airborne Group, GARI) — fired at the pickets from helicopters. This operation was well prepared; while most of the police units appear to have been armed only with tear gas canisters and truncheons, a disciplined squad, armed with AR-15s, AK-47s (two kinds of assault rifles) and 9 mm pistols, was assigned the task of shooting at the workers. GARI is an elite commando unit normally used to combat terrorist and drug-gang activity. Following the confrontation, the strikers discovered scores of spent rifle shells littering the floor of the plant. The entire operation brings to mind the attacks on students and workers during Mexico’s dirty war in the 1970s
linkThis is no drug war. This is the people rising up against an illegitimate government and that government using it's military in an attempt to quash the rebellion.
"For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst and provide for it." - Patrick Henry
The level of injustice and wrong you endure is directly determined by how much you quietly submit to. Even to the point of extinction.
