Peace Patriot
Peace Patriot's JournalThe "framing" of this article's argument is odd.
Here is where it begins to go...strange.
"The specter of fraud looms especially large this year because the party that perfected the buying of votes and rigging of elections...," the PRI, "...is favored to return to the presidency...".
I expected the sentence to read, "The specter of fraud looms especially large this year because" millions of Mexicans protested the vote rigging of the last presidential election, when leftist Lopez Obrado was denied the presidency by only 0.05% of the vote. Indeed, the country almost came apart because of that fraud, which apparently was engineered at the top with electronic tabulators that were brought in allegedly with the help of the Bush Junta (which desperately wanted an administration in Mexico that would welcome the ruination of Mexico--an overly democratic people who have stubbornly resisted 'privatization' of their oil--by the corrupt, failed, murderous U.S. "war on drugs."
Uh, it ain't the PRI's "old ways" (corruption, cronyism) that is the main problem in Mexico these days--the problem is NEW; it is ELECTRONIC; and, just as here, control of the electronic tabulation makes it EASY, not only to steal elections but also to write pre-election "narratives" that fit the fraudulent results.
"Narratives" like this one--alleged news articles that slip in the corporate editors/owners view of leftist Lopez Obrador as "an unreformed erratic" by attributing this opinion to "numerous Mexicans" as follows:
"Numerous Mexicans have expressed near-existential dismay over the choices they have in this election; they chafe at the prospect of the PRI's return, can't stomach more of the current, discredited government, and see Lopez Obrador as an unreformed erratic." --from the OP
These are the 1%-ers having cocktails in their villas--these so-called "numerous Mexicans" in their "near-existential dismay." They (the rich, the corporate) have no candidate. PAN/Calderon (the Bush Junta's choice) has been discredited and was a disaster for Mexico on many fronts. The vast majority of Mexicans (the real "numerous Mexicans" nominated the two candidates that THEY wanted to choose between--the PRI representing the old system that was corrupt but worked versus the Left (Lopez Obrador) representing the new leftist democracy movement that has swept through South America into Central America and avows social justice and independence from the U.S. and its corporate/war profiteer masters.
What is odd is that the L.A. Times would dwell on election fiddling of long ago and ignore much more recent, massive and massively disruptive election theft--against Lopez Obrador! They describe Lopez Obrador's (and multi-millions of Mexicans') objection to that fraudulent count as "political grandstanding." But, by God, if those millions of people had been able to get their votes counted, Mexico would never have allowed the Bushification of the "war on drugs" and the horrible, bloody disaster that it has been and would be making progress on social justice to catch up with Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina, Ecuador, Bolivia, Uruguay, Peru, Nicaragua and other countries with leftist governments.*
And this is the problem with this article. The rich and the corporate have no candidate and they are going through paroxysms of no doubt drunken "existential" angst at the parties that corporate reporters attend. These parties are crammed with Mexicans of a particular type (thus, "numerous Mexicans" (was it at the embassy in L.A.?) And the corporate reporters SHARE their "near-existential dismay." The old corrupt regime or good leftist government on behalf of the 99%. Such a regrettable choice!
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*(This list would include two more countries with leftist governments--Honduras and Paraguay--but for the U.S.-supported rightwing coups in those countries--Honduras in 2008, Paraguay recently. Though the U.S. has not been nailed yet on the coup in Paraguay, I think we can be sure that it will be. It's what the U.S. does--supports 1%-er rule in Latin America by whatever means--election fraud, USAID funding of rightwing causes and candidates, CIA dirty tricks, vast propaganda and/or outright coup d'etats. The U.S. even personally conducts rigged elections, as in Honduras and Haiti. And when it can't bust a democracy, it sends in the DEA to smash up and bloody the society and make it more malleable.)
"Manufacturing Contempt" (the corporate press on Chavez vs. Capriles)
Excellent analysis of the totally screwed up, unreliable corpo-fascist press coverage of the Venezuelan presidential election.
The title of the article is actually, "Our Man in Caracas: The U.S. Media and Henrique Capriles," from Keane Bhatt's blog, "Manufacturing Contempt" (which mostly deals with this topic: corporate press vs. Chavez).
Found it at NACLA:
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/6/18/our-man-caracas-us-media-and-henrique-capriles
And at Venezuelanalysis:
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/7065
Both of these sources provide some balancing analysis, information and dissent if you at all wonder why huge numbers of Venezuelan voters keep voting for an incompetent, buffoon dictator.
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(Note: I will be unavailable to reply to comments the rest of today, but will check out any replies tomorrow morning. I felt that this article needs immediate circulation--we have so few instances of up-to-the-minute analysis of corporate press bullshit on Venezuela.)
U.S.-backed thugs have tortured several of LatAm's top leftist leaders,
or have imprisoned, kidnapped, beaten and/or threatened them with coups and/or assassination plots.
Michele Batchelet, recent former president of Chile, imprisoned and tortured by U.S.-backed thugs, and her father murdered by them in the course of torture--their crime? being political leftists.
Lula da Silva, recent former president of Brazil, imprisoned and tortured by U.S.-backed thugs for union organizing (steelworkers union).
Dilma Rousseff, current president of Brazil, imprisoned and tortured by U.S.-backed thugs in truly horrible ways, during the same era, for activities related to a leftist guerrilla group who were fighting the U.S.-backed thugs who had taken over their country.
Jose Mujica, current president of Uruguay, imprisoned and tortured by U.S.-backed thugs for activities related to a leftist guerrilla group who were fighting the U.S.-backed thugs who had taken over their country (same era).
Evo Morales, current president of Bolivia, kidnapped and beaten by U.S.-backed thugs in collusion with the DEA, for union organizing (Indigenous coca leaf farmers union). He was also nearly overthrown by U.S.-backed thugs (white separatists) in 2008, organized and funded right out of the U.S. embassy.
Hugo Chavez, current president of Venezuela, kidnapped and his life threatened by U.S.-backed thugs in the 2002 coup attempt.
Daniel Ortega, current president of Nicaragua, never caught by the U.S.-backed thugs (Reagan's henchmen, the "contras" but saw many of his compadres and other lovers of social justice murdered, in their effort to defeat the brutal, hated, U.S.-backed Somoza regime.
Mel Zelaya, president of Honduras, overthrown in 2009, by U.S.-backed thugs who shot up his house, terrifying his family, dragged him out of bed, kidnapped him and flew him out of his own country at gunpoint, with a refueling stopover at the U.S. military base in Honduras.
The above U.S.-backed thugs, in every case, were funded, "trained," equipped and given every support by the U.S. government, most of them part of the "security state" (military, spies/covert operatives, police), and all of them fascists--the only political stance that the U.S. has ever supported in Latin America.
But "the times they are a-changing"! Are they ever! The above leaders of the leftist democracy movement that has swept South America and parts of Central America, have all been elected by their countries' voters, and are all very popular, and furthermore have joined together in individual alliances and in new institutions to assert their common goals of social justice and independence from the fascist-loving U.S. government.
You wonder what's happening in Latin America these days? Start with this: Something like half of the elected presidents of the region were personally brutalized by U.S.-backed thugs in their youths or more recently. And whatever activities of theirs got them noticed by U.S.-backed fascists, and targeted for torture, kidnapping, overthrow or death, those activities are now "badges of courage" in today's Latin America. THEY have been chosen, by big majorities of the voters in these countries, to lead this revolution.
Their commitment to peace is remarkable in the circumstances. But, really, it takes more courage to be peaceful when you have been harmed than when you have little or nothing at risk. These are very, very courageous people, and they are determined, as individuals and as an allied group, to end the horrific U.S. domination of Latin America and the brutal, bloody, monstrous exploitation of the people of Latin America to benefit the 1%, here and there.
The victims of U.S.-backed torture regimes are now running Latin America...
...and THEY know that--as Rousseff's predecessor, Lula da Silva, said, in his final speech as president, "The U.S. has not changed." He himself was jailed and tortured for union organizing during the same era of U.S. "training," funding and support of the torturers, as was the current president of Uruguay, José Mujica, as was the recent former president of Chile, Michele Batchelet (who also lost family members including her father to the U.S.-backed torturers).
Evo Morales, president of Bolivia, was kidnapped and beaten up by state agents in collusion with the DEA--and funded, equipped and "trained" by the U.S.A.--for organizing the Indigenous coca leaf farmers union. Daniel Ortega, president of Nicaragua, though Reagan's thugs never got hold of him, saw myriad compadres in the overthrow of the hated, brutal Somoza regime murdered by U.S. funded/"trained" death squads, in Reagan's illegal war on Nicaragua. Hugo Chavez was jailed for two years (though not tortured) by a U.S.-backed "neo-liberal" regime which had murdered hundreds of poor protestors--the event that launched the Bolivarian Revolution. (Chavez, a young military officer, rebelled against that slaughter, became a hero in prison and went on to be elected president.) He later suffered being kidnapped, as president, and his life threatened, by U.S.-backed rightwing coupsters who suspended the constitution, the national assembly, the courts and all civil rights, in their brief effort, in 2002, to overthrow Venezuela's democracy, peacefully countered by tens of thousands of Venezuelans who flooded the streets and demanded restoration of their constitution and their elected president--the event that launched the continent-wide leftist democracy movement of today in South America.
When Lula da Silva said that "The U.S. has not changed," he was speaking of the Obama administration, which colluded in the overthrow of Honduras' democracy in 2009. Now the rightwing death squads and U.S.-supported state agents--murderers, torturers, rapists--are active in Honduras and the Pentagon is expanding its military bases there--a haunting parallel to Reagan's war on Nicaragua which was launched from Honduras.
It truly is not possible to say that "the U.S. has changed" under Obama. Billions of our tax dollars are pouring into rightwing causes and brutal and oppressive militaries and police forces, in LatAm, as we speak. The U.S. never supports honestly elected leaders in LatAm. Where it can't rig the elections (many LatAm countries, these days, have far, FAR better election systems than our own), it allies with fascists and brutal thugs to plot coups and other disruptions. The only positive thing I can say about Obama, on LatAm, is that, if he has any decent intentions there (a possibility), he doesn't appear to have the power to act on them. U.S. policy on LatAm is run by the Miami mafia on behalf of war profiteers and transglobal monsters like Exxon Mobil. Clinton puts a cosmetic gloss on these brutal policies (for instance, staging a U.S. State Department-run phony election in Honduras, under martial law). And Obama doesn't seem to have anything to do with it. On the contrary, he seems to be dictated to, by the likes of John McCain (telecommunications interests in Honduras) and Jim DeMint (SC-Diebold)--not to mention Otto Reich and John Negroponte, the Bush Cartel and the big, protected drug lords.
Such a bloody shame! What an opportunity lost, to do the right thing, for once--to do the right thing after half a century of doing the wrong things--the worst things. Murder, torture, robbery, filthy oppression, brutal domination. The Latin Americans were ready to forgive--to forgive it all--with the election of the first black man as president of the U.S. Then they saw Honduras unfold--with Brazil in particular fighting like mad to prevent it--and they knew that "The U.S. has not changed." The U.S. is not its people. The U.S. is not even its president. It is something else. A vast, global, criminal gang comes to mind.
I hope that Dilma Rousseff's book gets published here. Perhaps it will begin to explain to our people, here, what is REALLY going on in Latin America. They aren't getting the truth from the Associated Pukes, the New York Slimes and the Miami Hairball, et al. It must be bewildering to people here who rely on the corpo-fascist 'news' organizations for their sense of the world, how/why REAL leftists are getting elected all over LatAm. They have been given little or no notion of what the U.S. did to Latin America for 50 some years and is still trying to do (with diminishing success). They have been particularly fooled by the Reagan-worship of the corpo-fascist press--Reagan, who was not only behind the illegal war on Nicaragua but also the horrendous carnage in Guatemala and other horrors. Latin Americans REMEMBER these horrible things, and their overwhelming desire for independence, sovereignty, social justice, use of their resources to benefit their own people, human and civil rights and REAL democracy, springs from those riveting memories. The U.S. has never meant well, in LatAm, in the modern era (since FDR) and it doesn't mean well now.
But perhaps the saddest part of all, from our point of view, is that, even with a well-informed citizenry, it is probably not possible to remove the malefactors who are actually running our country--or, in any case, it will not be easy. They have their vulture claws to our innards and intend to rip our society--once the most potentially progressive and powerful society on earth--to shreds. Their latest tool is the 'TRADE SECRET' voting machines--all over the U.S., largely controlled by one, private, far rightwing-connected corporation (ES&S, which bought out Diebold). Our people for the most part don't even know about this control tool, so rotten is the corporate press corps.
To change the U.S., whether at home or abroad--to reverse that damning statement by Lula da Silva--"The U.S. has not changed"--we need to start with the 'TRADE SECRET' voting machines and hold a REAL "Boston Tea Party." Yup, the British East India Company would have loved those machines and would have understood perfectly how it is that our taxes paid for them.
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