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Today's
Stories
March 3, 2005
John Ross
Mexico's
Fox Schemes to Jail Front-Running Leftist
March 2, 2005
Saul Landau
/ Farrah Hassen
The
"Noble Liars" Attack Syria
Mike Roselle
The State of Oregon vs. Mike Roselle: Criminalizing Environmental
Dissent
M. Junaid Alam
Columbia University and the New Anti-Semitism
Suzan Mazur
Inside the Polygamy Cults of Southern Utah
Jackson Thoreau
Texas Congressman Calls for "Nuking Syria"
Michael Donnelly
No Love for Teresa Heinz; John Edwards Gets a Pass
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Uncle
Bucky Makes a Killing
Website of the Day
The Ghosts of Karl Marx & Ed Abbey
Wars
of the Laptop Bombers
March 1, 2005
Scott Richard
Lyons
Million
Dollar Bigotry
David Lindorff
Stealing Workers' Pensions
Patrick Cockburn
/ David Enders
Bloodbath in Iraq
Ron Jacobs
The Last Poets Recalled
Tanya Garcia
USA Next: the Industry Front Group to Privatize Social Security
Joseph Pietri
The Drug Trail Ends in Kathmandu: Golden Tar Heroin and the Black
Prince
Kona Lowell
Woody: Broken in Vietnam
Paul Craig
Roberts
The
Coming End of the American Superpower
Website of
the Day
Petition: No US Intervention in Iran
February 28,
2005
Gary Leupp
Year
4 in the Five Year Plan: a June Attack on Iran?
Bill Quigley
Haitian Police Open Fire on Nonviolent Marchers
Mickey Z.
The
Million Dollar Interview: Mary Johnson on Clinton Eastwood, Hunter
Thompson and the "Right to Die"
Paul de Rooij
Why
Ted Honderich is Wrong on All Counts About Israel
David Swanson
Basic Income Guarantee Versus the Corp Media
Mario Lamo
Jimenez
Maria
Full of Cultural Contradictions at the Oscars
Emma Perez
The Attacks on Ward Churchill: a Test Case in the Neocons Purge
of Academia
Diana Johnstone
Censorship
and the Empire
Website of the Day
Stop the War Campaign!
February 26
/ 27, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
An
American Jew Laments Decline in Jewish Influence
Noam Chomsky
Nuclear
Terror at Home
Rev. William E. Alberts
Rhetoric in the Air; Reality on the Ground
Fred Gardner
AARP Gets Pot-Baited
Gary Leupp
Bush and Camus on Freedom
Saul Landau
An Interview with Cuban VP Ricardo Alarcon (Part 3): the Miami
Mafia
Robin Philpot
Second Thoughts on the Hotel Rwanda
Yitkhak Laor
In Praise of the Facts
Ben Tripp
Out of Sight; Out of Mind
Justin Taylor
Zizek Seen Over the Handlebars
Jack Random
The Wounds from Wounded Knee
Rafael Renteria
Ward Churchill and White America
Jim B.
Reflections on the Eve of Fatherhood
Seth DeLong
Land Reform in Venezuela: More Like Lincoln Than Lenin
John Chuckman
A Season of Depressing Political Reruns
Alison Weir
Relativity, LA Times Style
Richard Oxman
Political Solitude: From Garcia Marquez to Maria Full of Grace
Dr. Susan Block
It Always Rains in California: All About Female Ejaculation
Poets' Basement
Landau, Lowell, Louise, Davies, Soderstrom, Norris & Albert
February 25,
2005
Roger Burbach
Murder
in the Amazon
Behzad Yaghmaian
Iranian Distrust of America: 50 Years in the Making
Kurt Nimmo
Conclave of the Brats
Joshua Frank
Diagnosing the Green Party
John Farley
How to Stop the War in Iraq: Punish Pro-War Politicians
Lawrence Reichard
The D'Aubuisson Memorial: Flowers of Evil
Pratyush Chandra
The Royal Coup in Nepal and Global Imperialist Designs
David Smith-Ferri
When
the Battlefield has No Borders
Website of
the Day
The 2005 Election in 3-D
February 24,
2005
Omar Waraich
The
Galloway Saga: Smearing an Anti-War Politician
Brian Cloughley
Bribing and Twisting Amerian Journalists: Valerie Plame &
30 Pieces of Silver
Tom Wright
Torture Nation: Abu Ghraib, a Year Later
Sharon Smith
The Anti-War Movement After Kerry: Learning All the Wrong Lessons
Dave Lindorff
Do These Roosting Chickens Have Flu?
Fred Feldman
Lynching Ward Churchill
James Reiss
On Hearing About a Plot to Assassinate President Bush
Diane Christian
Bad
Blood: Ritual & Sexual Torture in Iraq
Website of
the Day
The Gray Line
February 23,
2005
Werther
The
Poisoned Well: What the CIA's Nazi Files Can Tell Us About Iraq
W. John Green
A Salvador Option for Iraq? How Negroponte Changes the Ground
Rules
James Petras
A New Face to Bush Foreign Policy?
Conn Hallinan
Cornering the Dragon: the Return of the China Lobby
Joe Pietri
Cannabis: the Goose that Lays Golden Eggs (For Consumers and
Cops)
Louis Proyect
Hunter Thompson and the "New" Journalism
Alexander Cockburn
Hunter
S. Thompson and Gonzo
Website of
the Day
Did You Make the Blacklist? Why Not?
February 22,
2005
Naseer Aruri
The
Politics of the Hariri Assassination: Remapping the Middle East
Richard Manning
The
Economy of Hunger: Starvation is Part of the Economic Plan
William A.
Cook
Righteous
Racism Running Rampant
Paul Craig Roberts
The Agents of Instability
Ken Krayeske
Dr. Thompson is Out
Dave Zirin
How the Owners Destroyed the NHL
Kirkpatrick
Sale
Imperial
Entropy: the Collapse of the American Empire
February 21,
2005
Hunter S. Thompson
"He
Was A Crook"
John Ross
Mexico:
the Pentagon's Proxy Army in Iraq
Ward Churchill
What Did I Really Say? Why Did
I Say It?
Dr. Teresa
Whitehurst
Military Recruiting on Channel One: Geometry 101, Brought to
You by the US Navy
David Swanson
Fighting for a Living Wage, State by State
Dave Lindorff
All the News That's Fit to Fake
Stew Albert
Fear and Loathing: HST
Michael Neumann
Strategies
in Palestine: a Shrinking Pie in the Sky
February 19
/ 20, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Back
to Salem: Paul Shanley and the Return of "Recovered Memory"
Kathleen Christison
Struggling
for Justice in Palestine
Ted Honderich
On Being Persona Non Grata
Gary Leupp
Self-Hating Gays: Welcome to the White House & Welcome to
Commit Suicide
Don Santina
Reparations for the Blues
Jennifer Roesch
John Negroponte: Dirty Warrior
Scott Richard
Lyons
Ward
Churchill and the Identity Police
Chris Clarke
Ward Churchill and Liberal Outrage
George Beres
Censorship in the Land of Wayne Morse: Gagging W. Churchill in
Oregon
Harry Browne
The Belfast Heist: the Plot Unravels
Manuel García,
Jr.
Who Killed Rafik Hariri?
Mark Scaramella
Lessons from the Hidden Afghan War
Michael Donnelly
Whatever Happened to John Edwards?
John Pilger
First, They Attack the Past
Norman Madarasz
Death Wish for Reform in Brazil?
Surendra Devkota
The Monarchy in Nepal
Deborah Rich
How Anti-GMO Ballot Measures May Miss the Mark
Fred Gardner
When Dr. Tod Met Merle Haggard
CounterPunch
News Service
About King Mswati: Political Developments in Swaziland
Richard Oxman
CounterPunching Arthur Miller
Poets' Basement
Albert, Giebel, Tripp, Engel and Orkin
February 18,
2005
Ben Moxham
In
East Timor, the Nightmare Continues
Dave Lindorff
The
Scum Also Rises: the Bloody Career of John Negroponte
Larry Birns
Negroponte: a Resume of Death Squads, Deceptions and Bribery
Gregory Elich
N, Korea's Phantom Nukes and the US's Subversion of Diplomacy
Samuel Logan / John Meyers
The Future of Colombia's Paramilitary Death Squads
Nicole Colson
Shock and Awe on Civil Liberties: From Lynne Stewart to Ward
Churchill
Suzan Mazur
Whose National Security Are We Talking About?
Mickey Z.
"One
Man Has Stopped Killing"
February 17,
2005
Joshua Frank
Hogtying
of the Deaniacs
Paul Craig
Roberts
Bush's
Willing Sychophants: the Conservative Media
Robert Fisk
Under
the Shadow of Death in Lebanon
Christopher
Brauchli
Where
Time Stands Still: Kinsey and Darwin in Cobb County, GA
Dr. Teresa
Whitehurst
Military
Recruitment TV: Why Send Them to College, When Your Kid Can be
Cannon Fodder?
Alison Weir
Russia, Israel and Media Omissions
Ahrar Ahmad
A Review of Shahid Alam's "Is There an Islamic Problem?"
Saul Landau
An
Interview with Cuban VP Ricardo Alarcon: "The US Tramples
the Laws It Wrote"
Website of the Day
Petition to Support Ward Churchill
February 16,
2005
Robert Fisk
Lebanon:
a Battlefield for the Wars of Others
Kevin Zeese
Creating a Real Ownership Society: Share the Wealth; Protect
Retirement
Gary Leupp
Meanwhile, in Nepal...
Ron Jacobs
Why the Iranian Opposition Should Not Trust the Bush Administration
Jessica Leight
Oil-Flush Chavez Begins to Strut His Stuff
Greg Moses
Houston, You've Got a Problem: Documenting Voting Irregularities
in Texas
Mark Engler
The Last Porto Alegre
Jack McCarthy
Where's the Outrage About Pat? Buchanan Does a Churchill
Bill Christison
US
Foreign Policy Dangerously Slanted Toward Israel
Website of the Day
The
World is Melting: a Photo Survey by Gary Braasch
February 15,
2005
CounterPunch
News Service
Dean
a "Safe" Moderate, Says NYT Citing CounterPunch
Robert Fisk
The
Killing of Mr. Lebanon
Uri Avnery
"Sharm-al-Sheikh,
We Have Come Back Again"
Stan Cox
Fighting Big Pharma in Little Digwal
Mickey Z.
Radio
Active North of the Border: an Interview with Chris Cook
Dave Zirin
Bashing Bush: Jose Canseco Comes Clean
Nadia Martinez
Ending
World Poverty? Opening at the World Bank, Apply Now
Lila Rajiva
"Little Eichmanns" and the 'Harijan': the Danger of
Magical Thinking in Politics
Paul Craig
Roberts
The
American Job Sell Out
February 14,
2005
Robert Jensen
Ward
Churchill: Right to Speak Out; Right About 9/11
Brian Cloughley
Kuwait's Freedom, Bush-style
Patrick Cockburn
Outcome
of the Iraqi Elections: Shortages, Corruption, Guerrilla War
Gary Leupp
Post-election Iraq: What Next?
Michael Donnelly
Sacred Nature: Just Another Commodity?
Dave Lindorff
When Bush Came to My Neighborhood
Elaine Cassel
The
Lynne Stewart Verdict
February 12
/ 13, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Ward
Churchill's Genes
Saul Landau
Alarcon
Speaks: an Interview with the Vice President of Cuba
Paul Craig
Roberts
Nothing
to Fear But Bush Himself
Patrick Cockburn
Two Years After the Fall of Saddam, the Resistance Controls All
Major Roads into Baghdad
John Feffer
Bush
v. N. Korea: Round Two
Mickey Z.
Right to Remain Silent; Duty to Speak
Kurt Nimmo
Viva la Cucaracha!
Fred Gardner
Waiting for Raich
Dave Zirin
Fighting the New Republic(ans)
John Chuckman
Hiroshima, Mon Amour
Ben Tripp
A Leftist on the Bush Payroll
Carol Norris
"Buddy, Can You Spare a Dwarf?"
Robert Fisk
No Middle East Peace Without Justice
Frank / Chowkwanyun
Muzzled Activist in an Age of Terror: the Case of Sherman Austin
Mike Whitney
Condi's Euro Tour
Deborah Frisch
A Psychologist's Defense of Ward Churchill
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Reading Khomeini in Colorado
Christine TenBarge
What's So Special About Ward?
Ron Jacobs
Curtis Mayfield's Train to Jordan
Dr. Susan Block
Chemistry of Love: a Valentine's Greeting
Poets' Basement
Louise, Smith-Ferri, Ford and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Free Sherman
February 11,
20055
Manuel Garcia,
Jr
The
Eight Percent War
Kurt Nimmo
Ann
Coulter's Racism: Where's Geronimo When You Really Need
Him?
Dave Lindorff
Guckert
or Gannon? The Perfect Plant; He Fit Right In
Larry Birns
War is Peace; Slavery is Freedom: Democracy According to Elliott
Abrams
Bill Quigley
Twenty Questions: a Social Justice Quiz
Tom Barry
Bush's State of Delusion
Jennifer Van
Bergen
Lynne
Stewart's Conviction Hurts Us All
February 10,
2005
Dave Lindorff
What
Academic Freedom?
Christopher Brauchli
The Love of Slaughter: From Rwanda to Iraq
Patrick Cockburn
In Baghdad, It's Easy to Get Killed
Nicole Colson
Have the Democrats Surrendered on Abortion Rights?
Suzan Mazur
More
on the Assassination of Lumumba from Mr. Garsin of Kinshasha
Michael Donnelly
Salvaging an Opposition
Mike Stark
Driving Ossie Davis: "Give Them a Little Truth, a Little
Hope"
Greg Moses
Taking
Jesus Back from the Hijackers
Website of
the Day
The Missionary Positions
February 9,
2005
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Duck
and Cover Redux: Bunker Busters and City Levellers
Mickey Z.
What Ward Churchill Didn't Say
John Ross
Hecho
en Mexico: the Iraqi Election
Tom Barry
Ambassador of Lies: Elliott Abrams, the Neocon's Neocon
Conn Hallinan
The
Coup in Nepal: Nursing the Pinion
Patrick Cockburn
Sistani's Vision for Iraq: Cricket is Fine, But Chess is "Absolutely
Forbidden"
Steen Sohn
Danish PM Says It's OK for Israel to Violate UN Resolutions
Tim Wise
Reflections on Empire and Uppity Indians
Website of
the Day
Support Antiwar.com
February 8,
2005
Patrick Cockburn
Shia/Kurd
Coalition to Dominate New Iraqi Govt.: "It's an Electoral
Pact, Not a Party"
Brian Cloughley
Out
of the Mouths of Generals: "It's Fun to Shoot Some People"
Steve Breyman
Against the Selfishness of the "Ownership Society"
Harry Browne
"Don't
Get on that Plane!": Soldiers Seek Asylum in Ireland
Doug Giebel
"We Love Free Speech in America": the People, the President
and Ward Churchill
Nate Collins
The Censorship of Ward Churchill and Dancehall Reggae: It's the
Same Beast
Dave Lindorff
It's Time for a Labor-Oriented Newspaper
David Smith-Ferri
Sanctions and the Health Crisis in Iraq
February 7,
2005
Paul Craig
Roberts
Bush's
War on Jobs
Carolyn Baker
The New McCarthyism on Campus: Churchill and the Attack on Higher
Ed
Joshua Frank
Marc Cooper's Hit List: First Mumia; Now Ward Churchill
Mickey Z.
Warning: More Hate Speech from W. Churchill
Patrick Cockburn
The
Kidnapping Gangs of Iraq
Mike Whitney
Tom Friedman: Scribe for New Age Imperialism
Stacie Jonas
Pinochet: Fit to be Tried
Dave Zirin
A Miserable Super Sunday: Clinton, Bush and the FBI
Tariq Ali
Imperial
Delusions
February 5
/ 6, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Ward
Churchill and the Mad Dogs
Kurt Nimmo
A Ward Churchill Kind of Day
Joshua Frank
Liberals Trash Ward Churchill
P. Sainath
Mumbai's Man-Made Tsunami
Patrick Cockburn
Sistani's Triumph; Allawi's Bust
Laura Carlsen
Bush, Rice and Latin America
Dave Lindorff
How the NYT Killed the Bush Bulge Story
Pamela Olson
West Bank Story
Behzad Yaghmaian
The Future of Sudanese Refugees in the West
Saul Landau / Farrah Hassen
A Threatened UN in King George's Court
Roger Burbach
World Social Forum: a Tale of Two Presidents
Robert Fisk
History by Laptop
David Swanson
James Forman and the Liberal-Labor Syndrome
Justin E.H. Smith
Gay Marriage: a Report from Canada
Cacie Hart
The "State" of the Union: More War and a Ban on Love
Ron Jacobs
Chairman Bob Avakian: a Revolutionary Life
Mickey Z.
Viewing America from the Outside
Ben Tripp
Republican Heroes: a New Breed of Good Guy
Ben Sonnenberg
France at the End of the Devil's Decade: Renoir's Rules of the
Game
Poets' Basement
Smith-Ferri, Davies, Collins, & Albert
Website of
the Weekend
John Trudell: How to Earn a 17,000 Page FBI File
February 4,
2005
Brian Cloughley
The
Army Symphonist: "Sometimes the Only Way to Change the Behavior
of Someone Like That is to Kill Them"
Bill Christison
Election
Parallels: Vietnam, 1967; Iraq, 2005
Elaine Cassel
Did Zoloft Make Him Do It?
Jacob Levich
Chomsky and the Draft
Kanak Mani Dixit
Return of the Royalists in Nepal
Ron Jacobs
The
Downward Spiral in Iraq
February 3,
2005
Ward Churchill
On
the Injustice of Getting Smeared: a Campaign of Fabrications
and Gross Distortions
Sharon Smith
Resisting
Soldiers Need Our Support
Mickey Z.
Leslie
Gelb Asks Iraq: Who's Your Daddy?
Mike Whitney
President of Alienation: a Desperate State of the Union
Jenna Orkin
9/11 the Sequel: the Toxic State of Lower Manhattan
Saul Landau
Elections Won't Prevent Civil War in Iraq
Yitzhak Laor
Strange is the Silence
Dave Lindorff
The
Assault on Social Security: a New Campaign of Lies
February 2,
2005
David Domke
/ Kevin Coe
Bush's
Brand of Christianity
Noam Chomsky
Iraq
After the Elections
M. Shahid Alam
O'Reilly's
Fatwah on "Un-American" Professors: FoxNews Puts Me
in Its Crosshairs
Richard Oxman
Ringing in 1984 with Ward Churchill and Derrick Jensen
Joshua Frank
The Suckering of Howard Dean
Dave Lindorff
A History Lesson from the NYT
Nina Hartley
Feminists for Porn
Website of the Day
War is a Racket
February 1,
2005
Joshua L. Dratel
The
Torture Memos
Patrick Cockburn
New Doubts About Allawi
Robert Fisk
"The Only Decent Food We Get is at Funerals"
Uri Avnery
The Stalemate
Col. Dan Smith
"W" Stands for Withdrawal
Alison Weir
Making America as "Secure" as Israel
Alan Farago
Heaven and Hell in the Everglades
Ray Hanania
Low Voter Turnout of Iraqi Expatriates: Less Than 10% of Qualified
Voters
Paul Craig
Roberts
American
Police State
Website of the Day
Statisticians Refute Official Rationale for Exit Poll Errors
December 22,
2004
James Petras
An
Open Letter to Saramago: Nobel Laureate Suffers from a Bizarre
Historical Amnesia
Omar Barghouti
The Case for Boycotting Israel
Patrick Cockburn / Jeremy Redmond
They Were Waiting on Chicken Tenders When the Rounds Hit
Harry Browne
Northern Ireland: No Postcards from the Edge
Richard Oxman
On the Seventh Column
Kathleen Christison
Imagining
Palestine
Website of the Day
FBI Torture Memos
December 21,
2004
Greg Moses
The
New Zeus on the Block: Unplugging Al-Manar TV
Dave Lindorff
Losing
It in America: Bunker of the Skittish
Chad Nagle
The View from Donetsk
Dragon Pierces
Truth*
Concrete
Colossus vs. the River Dragon: Dislocation and Three Gorges Dam
Patrick Cockburn
"Things Always Get Worse"
Seth DeLong
Aiding Oppression in Haiti
Ahmad Faruqui
Pakistan and the 9/11 Commission's Report
Paul Craig
Roberts
America
Locked Up: a System of Injustice
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click
Here for More Stories.
|
March 2, 2005
CIA Warns of Ingovernability of Mexico
Fox
Schemes to Jail Front-Running Leftist
By
JOHN ROSS
Mexico City.
The table is being laid here for a political
battle of biblical proportions as the Mexican Congress, under
the hammer of the rightist National Action or PAN (the party
of President Vicente Fox) and the once-upon-a-time long-ruling
(71 years) Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), prepare to
strip left-wing Mexico City Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador
(AMLO) of both his office and the immunity from prosecution ("el
fuero") it affords him, for the heinous crime of seeking
to build an access road to a hospital despite a court order barring
him from expropriating a private right-of-way.
If convicted of contempt of
court charges in this momentously forgettable imbroglio, Lopez
Obrador could be sentenced to prison for up to eight years and
would be automatically stripped of his political rights and excluded
from next year's presidential election--AMLO has been a ten-point
front-runner in the race for the job ever since 2003 mid-term
elections.
Long-time political observers
here, not just this grizzled veteran of 20 years of partisan
felonies, see this PRI-PAN ploy to get rid of Lopez Obrador as
one of the dirtiest tricks ever perpetrated in the deviant annals
of recent Mexican electoral history, one that indeed spells the
end of the line for Mexico's glacial "transition to democracy."
Even the U.S. Central Intelligence
Agency, in a recent evaluation of security risks in the hemisphere,
warns that such a provocative turn of events could so polarize
Mexico in anticipation of the 2006 presidential elections as
to make this distant neighbor nation "ungovernable."
Out at the scene of the crime
that could unchain a volcano of public protest if the PAN-PRI
scheme prospers, the shaggy winter grass wags tranquilly in the
breeze - but just over the bucolic hillside one can detect the
grinding of gears as heavy machinery digs at the earth, preparing
the foundations of transnational corporate headquarters that
have made the Santa Fe district of extreme western Mexico City
a high rent landscape.
Depending upon whose calculations
one buys; "El Encino" ("The Oak") is a 100,000
or 83,000 square meter swatch of much-coveted terrain. Once
 national land
deeded to rancher cronies by dictator Porfirio Diaz (1876-1910),
El Encino eventually fell into the hands of real estate speculators
operating under the shady corporate handle "Promotora Internacionales
Santa Fe" ("International Promoter of Santa Fe.")
Back in 2001, when Mayor Lopez
Obrador seeking to accommodate the new site of the upscale British-run
ABC hospital broke ground on an access road that skirted the
Encino property, Promotora Internacionales obtained a court injunction
barring construction until the land ownership issues were unraveled.
The speculators also alleged that the city was blocking access
to the property--a pair of two-foot wide footpaths - by parking
its heavy machinery there, and demanded that the Mayor and/or
his representatives be held in contempt of court for doing so.
One day in early February 2005,
members of the congressional commission assembling the evidence
and preparing the charges against AMLO took a field trip out
to El Encino to examine the property for itself and the embattled
mayor tagged along to kibitz. While commissioners accompanied
by federal judicial agents, surveyed the property lines, Lopez
Obrador joked with reporters that the proof of his innocence
was staring them right in the face--there was, in fact, no access
road to the hospital nor had there ever been one. He had discontinued
construction upon learning of the court order. Whether or not
compliance was immediate has been difficult to determine--aerial
photographs are nebulous and there are no witnesses other than
the grass to inculpate the mayor.
Upon such legaloid hair-splitting,
the fate of the Aztec nation may rest.
Despite their day in the country,
the majority of the congressional commissioners--two PANistas,
two PRIistas and a token member of Lopez Obrador's left-center
Party of the Democratic Revolution did not seem to much care
about the details of the matter--one PAN deputy snoozed in his
car during the outing. On February 23rd, having shut down the
investigation into the land ownership issue, the PAN-PRI- dominated
commission gathered up its findings, all of which seemed to support
criminal charges formally filed against AMLO by the nation's
attorney general Rafael Macedo de la Concha, and put the full
chamber on notice that it would soon send the legislature their
recommendations to strip Lopez Obrador of his "fuero."
The PRI-PAN majority in congress
is expected to approve the request for "desafuero"
(the taking away of the "fuero") and bind Andres Manuel
Lopez Obrador over for criminal prosecution.
Although the PRD, which controls
the Mexico City legislative assembly would continue to govern
Mexico City as it has since 1997 (PRD militants are sworn to
take the doors of City Hall to prevent the opposition from laying
claim to the building), the mayor will be forced to step down
to face the music for the sin of trying to build a road to a
hospital.
Stripping AMLO of his immunity
from prosecution will require half of the 500 seat lower house
plus one. With 150 PANistas unanimously prepared to oust Lopez
Obrador, only 91 members of the PRI's 240 strong congressional
delegation need to join their right-wing rivals to send Lopez
Obrador to trial.
PRI president Roberto Madrazo,
an AMLO enemy since the two slugged it out year after year in
the swamps of their home state Tabasco in the late 1980S and
early '90s, has told his majority bloc in congress they are free
to vote their conscience on the desafuero - but it is a well-known
fact that PRIistas have no conscience and inevitably, reflexively,
vote the Party line.
Despite the high-minded claim
that he would rather beat AMLO in the polling place than through
legalistic flimflam, Roberto Madrazo is not about to pass up
this golden opportunity to deconstruct his blood rival's political
ambitions.
And besides, Roberto Madrazo
has made it abundantly clear in recent weeks that, if he has
anything to say about it, he will be the PRI's presidential nominee
in 2006 and getting the front-runner out of the way early will
be a big boost in his campaign to retake Los Pinos, the Mexican
White House, from the PAN.
Interior Secretary Santiago
Creel too, Fox's hand-picked successor, has good reason to want
Lopez Obrador out of the way in 2006. Back in 2000, Creel lost
the Mexico City mayor's race to AMLO by just three points. Although
Creel overspent campaign limits by a half million dollars and
accepted large campaign donations from dubious sources, Fox's
attorney general was never prosecuted.
In what must be a high water
mark for political hypocrisy, Santiago Creel now insists that
bringing charges against "El Pejelagarto" (a gar-like
Tabasco swamp fish and AMLO's totem animal) is not politically
motivated and that the dispute over El Encino is really just
between "particulars." El Peje's plight is lamentable
but "no politician is above the law", as Creel and
Fox never seem to tire of braying.
At the end of February, La
Jornada revealed that both President Fox and his attorney general
Macedo de la Concha have similarly disobeyed court injunctions
and, like Creel, were never brought to justice.
PAN dissidents who suffered
decades of PRI political chicanery shake their heads in disbelief
to see National Action use the same kind of dirty tricks against
Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and the PRD. "The PANista are
like the Jews--first the Nazis committed genocide against the
Jews and now the Jews do it to the Palestinians" mused Don
Juanito Suarez, a tailor and one-time PAN partisan who sympathizes
with El Peje, while taking his evening tea at the popular downtown
Café La Blanca here.
The congressional vote on the
desafuero is anticipated by the ides of March but is subject
to legislative manipulation and the PAN-PRI alliance may hold
the measure off the floor until Holy Week (March 20th-27th) when
the capitol empties out and Mexico goes to the beach. Although
scheduling the crucifixion of AMLO at the same time as that of
Jesus Christ puts a biblical cast on Lopez Obrador's martyrdom,
bringing the vote to a head during the high holy days would theoretically
diminish the mobs of Peje supporters determined to lay siege
to the congress and prevent a vote from being taken. In the
past, campesinos have ridden horses into the chambers and protestors
tossed heavy coinage from the balconies to prevent unpopular
votes by the congress.
As the nation counts down to
Desafuero Day, the capitol is on tense stand-by. Lopez Obrador
has called for massive civil disobedience on the day the decision
comes down--the law stipulates that all parties be notified 72
hours before the vote is taken, giving the PRD and its allies
ample time to organize the turn-out. For weeks, AMLO's supporters
have been working door to door, organizing neighborhood resistance
to the desafuero, handing out little Mexican flag lapel buttons,
and hanging house signs that read "Todos Somos El Peje"
("We Are All El Peje") from every pedestrian overpass
in town. Encampments of protestors have begun to sprout up in
public parks and plazas, always a sign that activists are digging
in. Brigades of young people invade football matches and parade
through subway cars passing out literature and calling for popular
support for El Peje. "Maybe we need to pile up sticks and
stones in our homes" one passenger laughed in earshot of
La Jornada collaborator Jaime Aviles, an outspoken AMLO booster,
Aviles also reports that the
Mayor's older supporters --he has a huge constituency of senior
citizens for whom he now provides a $60 USD monthly stipend in
lieu of any federal help for pensionless retirees whatsoever--are
pooling resources to pay for anti-desafuero Masses to be celebrated
in many federal district churches. Last week saw the first pilgrimage
to the shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe to ask the Brown Madonna's
intervention to halt the desafuero.
Signs of impending unrest abound.
PRI and PAN national headquarters here are reportedly contracting
private security forces in the event of unruly mob attacks, not
trusting to the Mexico City police to get the job done, and the
French news agency Agence France-Presse just handed out gas masks
to all its reporters for the turbulent days to come. Writing
in La Jornada, Aviles suggests that long dormant guerrilla groups
in the capital's outlying suburbs could be stirred to act as
the result of the desafuero.
In a March 1st communique from
the mountains of Chiapas, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation's
quixotic spokesperson Subcomandante Marcos made it clear that
while the Mayan rebels do not support Lopez Obrador or the party
he represents, the Zapatistas view his possible desafuero as
a serious injustice and call upon all their members to join in
demonstrations around the country to oppose it.
President Fox is empowered by the constitution to impose martial
law on the capitol should the protests turn too hectic and even
declare a state of exception.
In recent weeks, the embattled
mayor has received support from unexpected corners including
the National Human Rights Commission, the rector of the National
University (UNAM), and the Cardinal of Mexico City, Norberto
Rivera, the nation's most powerful Churchman whose cathedral
sits just across the Zocalo plaza from City Hall.
Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's
powers of convocation are formidable--he has repeatedly filled
the Zocalo, the great central plaza spreading beneath his City
Hall offices, to the brim with his supporters when his authority
has been challenged in the past. Giving the rising tide of fury
in the city at the PAN-PRI frame-up, political calculators figure
AMLO could put a half million marchers in the streets of Mexico
City on the day of reckoning, a number that would rival what
his one-time mentor Cuauhtemoc Cardenas was able to turn out
after the PRFI stole the 1988 presidential election from him
in a veritable Tsunami of fraud.
Indeed, the desafuero of Lopez
Obrador bears a marked resemblance to that disgraceful episode
in recent Mexican electoral history. In both instances, a left-wing
candidate who seemed destined to win the Mexican presidency was
eliminated from contention, Cardenas by the wholesale burning
of ballots and vote count "alchemy" that turned his
victory to defeat overnight. Now with AMLO about to be scratched
from the ballot, the PAN and the PRI will save the electorate
the trouble of going to the polls at all.
As in 1988, the "coraje"
(both courage and anger) of the protestors is bound to escape
PRD control during prolonged confrontations, considers left political
columnist Luis Hernandez Navarro. With civil society in the
driver's seat, occupying public buildings and tying up Mexico
City traffic day after day, Navarro contemplates the crystallization
of "a movement of historic proportions" that will far
outstrip the reinstatement of AMLO's candidacy. "Fox and
the right do not yet understand what the desafuero has unleashed."
(To be continued)
John Ross has just been awarded the 2005 Upton
Sinclair Award (an "Uppie") by the San Pedro California
chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union for his latest
cult classic "Murdered
By Capitalism--A Memoir of 150 Years of Life & Death on the
U.S. Left".
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