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Today's
Stories
June 15, 2007
John
Ross
Ballot Burning Time in Ol' Mexico
June 14, 2007
Michael
Donnelly
Charred SUVs and the End
of Citizen Eco-Activism
Faisal
Kutty
Scare Canada: The No-Fly List's
False Sense of Security
Harry
Browne
Ireland's Green Party Sells
Out
Charles
Jonkel
From the Arctic to Yellowstone: Bears in a World of Indifference
Steven
Higgs
Murder in a Small Town: "Gay
Panic" in Indiana?
Bruce
Dixon
Black Power Through Low Power
Radio
Bruce
K. Gagnon
What Do We Do Now? A 10-Step
Plan for Antiwar Activists
Website
of the Day
Finkelgate
June
13, 2007
Glen
Ford
Obama's
Siren Song
Marjorie
Cohn
Repression
in Oaxaca
Bill
Christison
A Grave Injustice at DePaul University
Silvia
Cattori
"I Was Not Prepared for the Horrors I Saw": an Interview
with Hedy Epstein
Richard
Gott
Racism and TV in Venezuela
Firmin
DeBrabander
How the Neocons Misread Machiavelli
William
S. Lind
The Perfect (Sine) Wave: Bombing Railroad Stations in Iraq
Keith
Rosenthal
Workers Score a Victory at Harvard
Website
of the Day
GOP and Monty Python Explain: "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques"
June
12, 2007
Jeffrey
St. Clair
How
to Sell a War
Paul
Craig Roberts
The Neocon Threat to American Freedom
P.
Sainath
India's
Plutocrats and the Press
Ralph
Nader
The Biggest Scam in the World
Omar
Waraich
A Black Day for Pakistan's Press
Dave
Lindorff
Things Your Media Momma Didn't Tell You
Harvey
Wasserman
Confessions of an Anti-Nuke Jerk
Malini
Johar Schueller
It Takes a Bomb
Ramzy
Baroud
War Foretold: Mark Twain and the Sins of Empire
Website
of the Day
Palestinian Chronicle Needs Our Help!
June
11, 2007
Patrick
Cockburn
The
War on Journalists
Paul
Craig Roberts
Losing the Economy to Mythology
Uri
Avnery
40 Bad Years: the Rot of Occupation
Norman
Solomon
The Silence of the Bombs
Eva
Liddell
Paris Hilton Doesn't Do Dishes: How Barbie Stood Up to Allen Ginsberg
Rannie
Amiri
Groundhog Day in Pakistan
Rachel
Voss
Poetry and Politics in Nassau County
Christopher
Brauchli
A Wild West Tale, Starring Rev. Dobson and Bill O'Reilly
D.
K. Wilson
Untangling Michael Vick from the Dogs
Website
of the Day
Paris, Mixed Up
June 9 / 10, 2007
Alexander
Cockburn
Dissidents
Against Dogma
George
Ciccariello-Maher
Behind
Venezuela's "Student Rebellion": Who's Pulling the Strings?
Saul
Landau
An
Interview with Ricardo Alarcon, Vice President of Cuba
Robert
Fisk
Believe It or Not in the Middle East
Brian
Cloughley
Troop Support: Deceptions and Insipid Sentiments
Ron
Jacobs
Condoleezza Rice Names the System
Ward
Boston
Searching for the Truth About the USS Liberty
Conn
Hallinan
Dark Plots in Byzantine Beirut
Leonard
Peltier
The Ongoing War on Native American Religious Practices
Lawrence
Davidson
Israel's New Anti-Boycott Task Force
John
Ross
Mass Nude-In Complicates Church-State Scuffling in Mexico
Kate
Allan
Some People Think the Internet is a Bad Thing
Fred
Gardner
Ignorance Marches On
Stephen
Fleischman
Little Boy, Fat Man and Iran
Monica
Benderman
Reading Tom Paine in a Time of Crisis
Geoff
Bailey
A Real Oil Conspiracy: Gouged at the Pump
Missy
Beattie
Faith and War
Patrick
Dyer
A Democrat Revs Up Ohio's Death Machine
Tim
Lengerich
Dispelling the Cowboy Myth: an Interview with George Wuerthner
James
Irani
and David Rahni
Perspectives on the Arrests of Iran-Americans in Tehran
Gary
Leupp
The Unfair Treatment of Paris Hilton
Michael
Tillery
The Heart of a Sportswriter: an Interview with David Aldridge
Michael
Simmons
Beating Off the Squares: the Hipness of Anton Rosenberg
Poets'
Basement
Laymon, Davies and Ford
Website
of the Weekend
This is Sea Shepherd!
June
8, 2007
Serge
Halimi
What
Sarkozy Learned About Politics from the US
Patrick
Cockburn
The Turkish Incursion
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Israel's Attack on the USS Liberty, Revisited
Paul
Craig Roberts
The Secret War
William
Blum
What If NBC Cheered on a Military Coup Against Bush?
Joshua
Frank
Swing-State Strategy: Looking for a Spoiler
Lance
Selfa
How the Six Day War Changed the Middle East
Dave
Lindorff
A "Criminal Conspiracy" in the White House
Lawrence
Ferlinghetti
The Summer of Love: Flashbacks of a Human Be-In
Website
of the Day
Robert Pollin: "Making the Federal Minimum Wage a Living Wage"
June 7, 2007
Marjorie
Cohn
The
Prison is the War Crime
Soldz,
Reisner and Olson:
A Q & A on Psychologists and Torture
Soldz,
Reisner
and Olson, et al:
An
Open Letter to Sharon Brehm, President of the American Psychological
Association
Paul
Craig Roberts
Losing Iraq, Nuking Iran
Bill
Quigley
"How Long Must We Support a Mistake?"
Silvia
Cattori
Sailing to Gaza
Carl
G. Estabrook
What the June Bug Is: Politics in the Dismal Season
Ellen
Taylor
Free the Tweakers!: The Good News About Meth
Corporate
Crime Reporter
BAE Systems, Prince Bandar and the $2 Billion Account at the Riggs
Bank
Brenda
Norrell
Torture Training at Ft. Huachuca: Two Priests Face Prison for Exposing
Torture in Arizona
D.
K. Wilson
What Gary Sheffield Really Said
Kevin
Zeese
Iraq Occupation Coming to a Head Over Oil
Website
of the Day
How the Press Expired
June 6, 2007
Alain
Gresh
Countdown
to War on Iran
Gary
Leupp
Poddy's Crazy Prayer: Bomb Iran, For Israel and America!
Steven
Sherman
The Perils of Humanitarian Intervention
Bruce
Dixon
Is Bill Gates Trying to Hijack Africa's Food Supply?
Corporate
Crime Reporter
The Professor and the Nukes
Brian
M. Downing
The Iraq War and Presidential Politics
Ron
Jacobs
Luv n' Hate: a Different Take on the Summer of Love
George
Bisharat
The Mirage of the Two State Solution
Nicole
Colson
Over to You, Dante: Falwell's Ministry of Hate
Bruce
K. Gagnon
From Italy to Guam: A Global Peace Movement is Taking Shape
Website
of the Day
How the Democrats Should Treat Bush
June
5, 2007
Michael
Neumann
Canada
in Afghanistan
Jonathan
Cook
The Shin Bet and the Persecution of Azmi Bishara
David
Vest
The Democrats' War
Robert
Fantina
America's Cuba Policy
Hoffman,
Parsneau and Chowdhury
CounterTerrorism as International Healthcare
John
V. Walsh
Shaming the Official Antiwar Movement
Richard
Cretan
Yellow Dog: The Strange Love of Martin Amis and Tony Blair
Adam
Engel
Days of Dread: an American Tale
William
S. Lind
The News from Anbar: Has Al Qaeda Over-Reached?
Myles
Hoenig
Free the Oaks! Cut Down Those Yellow Ribbons!
Jim
Minick
Lead-Foot Nation
Website
of the Day
Punk Rock Soap Opera
June 4, 2007
Nizar
Latif
An
Interview with Moqtada al-Sadr
Diana
Johnstone
Sarko
and the Ghosts of May, 1968
Gregory
Wilpert
RCTV and Freedom of Speech in Venezuela
Paul
Watson
The Anchorage Whale Killing Bureaucrats Summit
Susan
Rosenthal, MD
How Cindy Sheehan Unmasked the Democrats
Richard
Ward
The Right of Return to New Orleans
Eva
Liddell
Don't Support the Troops
Zahi
Khouri
Four Decades of Occupation
Evelyn
Pringle
The FDA, GlaxoSmithKline and the Avandia Disaster
China
Hand
About Those North Korean Benjamin Franklins ...
Karyn
Strickler
George W. Bush: a "Ficeist" Leader
Website
of the Day
The Guantanamo Files
June
2 / 3, 2007
Alexander
Cockburn
The
Last of the Texas Outsiders
Marc
Levy
Iraq
Dead Ahead: a Brief Military History and Civilian Guide to Arlington
National Cemetery
Martin
Smith
Camilo Mejía's War: From Foot Soldier for Empire to Rebel
for Peace
Diana
Johnstone
Great Power Meddling in Kosovo
John
Ross
The Oaxaca Volcano Stews
Uri
Avnery
On Generals and Admirals
Sunsara
Taylor
This is Not a Story About Cindy Sheehan
Richard
Neville
Were the Hippies Right?
P.
Sainath
The Farm Crisis and 100,000 Indian Widows
Missy
Comley Beattie
Let's Roar
Nisrine
Abiad
and Victor Kattan
The Hariri Tribunal: a Fait Accompli?
Rannie
Amiri
Lebanon, Bush and the Three Stooges
Margot
Pepper
Deconstructing "Return to Sender"
Eric
Stewart
Censorship and Cop Brutality in the New Bison Wars
Ralph
Nader
The Halberstam Camp
Dan
Bacher
A Victory for the Fish
Shaun
Harkin
and Sandy Boyer
Irish War Protesters on Trial
Richard
Rhames
Selling Five Acres in Crawford
Frederick
Hudson
The Rediscovery of Ella Fitzgerald
Poets'
Basement
Lindorff, Landau and Buknatski
Website
of the Weekend
Gimme Shelter
June 1, 2007
Dave
Marsh
The
FBI and the Godfather (of Soul): James Brown's FBI Files
Saul
Landau
Return
to Cuba: 47 Years Later in Havana
David
Phinney
How the Baghdad Embassy Was Built: Forced Labor and Worker Abuse
Robert
Jensen
The Bigot and the Boycott
Stanley
Heller
Arrest Robert McNamara
Yifat
Susskind
Indigenous Women Fight Back
Robert
Weissman
Corporate Power Since 1980
Paul
Buchheit
Africa and Its Discontents
William
S. Lind
The Folly of Maximalist Objectives
Sherwood
Ross
78,000 Iraqis Have Been Killed by Coalition Airstrikes
Stephen
Lendman
Terrorism Defined
Website
of the Day
Desert Autonomous Zone
|
June 15, 2007
A Year of Calderon
Ballot
Burning Time in Ol' Mexico
By JOHN
ROSS
"As
the first anniversary approaches of Mexico's tumultuous July 2nd
2006 presidential election in which rightist Felipe Calderon nosed
out leftist Andes Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) by .58% of 41.5 million
votes cast amidst allegations of spectacular fraud, the Federal
Electoral Institute (IFE), the nation's maximum electoral authority
that was responsible for staging the much-questioned balloting,
is poised to burn the evidence.
Since the election, Lopez Obrador, who insists he won and says he
is the legitimate president of Mexico, has demanded that the 130,000
ballot boxes ("urnas") be opened and the ballots counted
out one by one. Despite having been rebuffed by the nation's chief
electoral tribunal, codenamed the TRIFE, which declared Calderon
the winner last September 5th, AMLO has been joined by a number
of eminent journalists and private citizens in his crusade.
In
their quest for the truth, the journalists, led by Rafael Rodriguez
Castaneda, director of the long-lived left weekly Proceso, have
sought access to the ballots via Mexico's Freedom of Information
law, one of the most progressive in Latin America. Rodriguez and
others model their petitions on the aftermath of the highly redolent
Florida U.S.A. 2000 presidential debacle which that distant neighbor
nation's Supreme Court awarded to George Bush amidst charges of
rampant flimflam. A subsequent independent ballot by ballot recount
by the New York Times, the Miami Herald, and other major media concluded
that democrat Al Gore would have been the winner if Bush dirty tricks
such as barring thousands of Afro Americans from voting were factored
into the total tally.
Proceso
filed its petition for access to the ballots with the Mexican Supreme
Court soon after the election and despite repeated turndowns, continues
to pursue its demands. Meanwhile, the IFE has barred the door to
a review of the ballots, arguing that Mexico's FOI only applies
to government documents and the ballots are not "documents"
but rather "expressions of electoral preference," a position
that John Ackerman, a specialist in election law a the National
Autonomous University (UNAM) writing in the current issue of the
Mexican Law Review, characterizes as "metaphysical."
On
the other hand, the eight-judge panel sitting as the TRIFE concedes
that the ballots are indeed documents but are simply "unavailable"
to public review. In signing off on Calderon's victory, the TRIFE
readily conceded that the election had been seriously marred by
myriad anomalies but could not or would not quantify their impact
on the final vote count.
The
nearly 42,000.000 ballots utilized in the July 2nd vote taking are
currently under guard by thousands of Mexican army troops in the
republic's 300 electoral districts. Ackerman, who would like to
see the material transferred to the General Archive of the Nation
located in a former Mexico City prison, the Lecumberri Black Palace,
considers that the negatives of the IFE, the TRIFE, and their colleagues
on the Supreme Court to grant FOI access to the ballots, makes Mexico's
vaunted Freedom of Information Act a "hollow" document.
In
legal briefs filed to challenge Proceso's request, lawyers for the
IFE's General Council argue that opening up the ballot boxes would
constitute "a danger to national security" i.e. that the
process could result in "public disturbances." The IFE
excoriates journalists like Rodriguez for pressing the case for
accountability, intimating that their probes are designed to tear
down the electoral system: "(the plaintiffs) attack fundamental
human values" and put the state "in danger." In the
IFE's opinion, the plaintiffs "should be stripped of their
political rights" (Ackerman.)
Actually,
the IFE's refusal to revisit the votes and its intentions to burn
the ballots as is contemplated by Mexican election law, may well
spark "public disturbances." After Calderon was declared
the winner last July, Lopez Obrador mobilized millions in protest,
the largest political demonstrations in the nation's history. Tens
of thousands of supporters encamped in the streets of Mexico City,
shutting down the capital for seven weeks.
Proceso
and other plaintiffs have good reason to be suspicious about what
is inside the ballot boxes - thousands of which were illegally opened
by IFE operators in the weeks following the balloting despite judicial
constraints on violating the seals of the "urnas." Although
the TRIFE refused to order a vote-by-vote recount, it mandated a
partial review of about 9% of the total 130,000 "casillas"
or polling places, (11,000 ballot boxes.) The results of the TRIFE
recount, which have never been officially published, are instructive.
According to Ackerman, Lopez Obrador picked up 10,000 plus votes
on Calderon, marginally reducing his already narrow victory to 233,000
votes. In the recount alone, slightly more than that number - 250,000
votes - were annulled by the TRIFE, which eliminated whole polling
places where the numbers could not be explained.
AMLO's
Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) and two election allies
provided their own ballot-by-ballot analysis of the partial recount
in the face of TRIFE stonewalling.
In
31% of the recounted precincts, less votes were cast than the number
of ballots allocated to the polling place yet no blank ballots were
returned to the IFE as the law mandates, suggesting vote stealing
by Calderon partisans. In 33% of the casillas under review, more
votes were cast than the number the IFE allocated, suggesting ballot-stuffing
in about a third of the recounted polling places.
Nationally, the PRD found anomalies in 72,000 out of 130,000 polling
places, 63%. While some of these may have been minor arithmetic
errors, a shift of 1.8 ballots per ballot box would have given the
election to Lopez Obrador even by the IFE's dubious count.
But
there is good reason to be skeptical about the IFE count. For example,
in six states won by AMLO - including Tabasco, his native state
and that of the third candidate in the race, the Institutional Revolutionary
Party's Roberto Madrazo - 250,000 more votes were cast for senators
and congressional representatives than for president.
Meanwhile
in seven states claimed by Calderon, 80,000 more votes were cast
for president than for senators and deputies.
Extrapolating
from this morass, AMLO's chief election statistician Claudia Schienbaum
calculates that Lopez Obrador won the presidency by more than a
million votes. The only way to prove or disprove this conclusion,
Ackerman insists, is to exhume the ballots.
Other
electoral memorabilia has recently come under scrutiny. A spot by
spot accounting of how the political parties spent millions of state-subsidized
pesos for television and radio ads, contracted by the IFE with a
Brazilian company (IBOPE) that specializes in such arcane matters,
reveals that tens of thousands of Calderon hit pieces aimed at AMLO
between January and July 2006 may have been financed by national
and transnational corporations, a violation of campaign financing
laws. Of 757,000 spots now stored on 35,000 CDs (it would take a
single auditor 248 years to listen to them one by one), who paid
for 231,000 of them is masqued. Calderon's spots, designed by U.S.
political consultant Dick Morris, a champion of right wing causes,
are suspected to have been underwritten by two business councils
that group together such U.S.-based mega-corporations as Wal-Mart
and Halliburton, both of which have significant interests in Mexico.
Under
Article 254 of Mexico's much-amended electoral code, the COFIPE,
all election material including the ballots must be destroyed when
the electoral process is concluded. But operating on the Yogi Berra
theorem that Mexican elections are "never over until they are
over", when the electoral process actually ends is up for grabs.
When the new president is declared the winner? When he is sworn
in? Or when all the appeals have been exhausted? The final determination
has yet to be made by the IFE General Council, that has twice now
postponed incineration of the ballots.
The
COFIPE's injunction to destroy ballots once a presidential election
has been concluded is open to loose interpretation. In elections
where there were few disputes, there is apparently little hurry
to torch the "material expressions of voter preference"
- the ballots from Vicente Fox's relatively calm 2000 election victory
remain in tact albeit under lock and key. But in presidential contests
where vote stealing was patent, Mexican election authorities have
been in a big rush to eliminate the evidence.
In
1988, Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, the candidate of an impromptu left coalition,
is thought to have upset the PRI's Carlos Salinas - he was leading
by a sizeable margin when the vote counting computers mysteriously
crashed. Reports of stolen ballot boxes were widespread and tens
of thousands of partially burnt ballots marked for Cárdenas
were found smoldering in garbage dumps and floating down rivers.
Two months after Salinas was inaugurated, in January of 1989, the
PRI, which then controlled congress as well as the electoral machinery,
in connivance with the right wing PAN, Felipe Calderon's party,
ordered the military to burn the ballots.
Under
the threat of a new round of angry demonstrations by AMLO's supporters
and with one eye on the approaching first anniversary of this still-disputed
election, the IFE General Council voted once again May 30th to postpone
destruction until all appeals are exhausted - Rodriguez's latest
appeal to the Supreme Court remains pending. Another appeal, filed
with the InterAmerican Human Rights Court by independent journalist
Delia Angelica Ortiz could also delay destruction.
How
to dispose of the 1571 tons of electoral evidence that now take
up 2261 cubic meters of space in IFE warehouses perplexes members
of the General Council. Incineration is not the only option and
councilor Teresa Gonzalez argues that burning the ballots would
contribute to air pollution and increase global warming. Carting
the materials off to a sanitary landfill would not be an ecological
solution and given the toxicity that the ballots have radiated could
contaminate water sources.
Instead,
Gonzales advocates going green and shredding and recycling the ballots.
The recycled paper would then be donated to the National Text Book
Commission to print textbooks "for Indians" (sic.)
The
concept of converting the tainted ballots into text books tickles
barber Lalo Miranda as he trims a U.S, reporter's mangy beard in
his stand at the Pino Suarez market in the old quarter of the capital.
"If you ask me this sounds like a text book case of fraud"
he chuckles.
John Ross is recovering from six months on the
road flogging "Zapatistas! - Making Another World Possible"
in Gringolandia, and contemplating what book to write next. Write
him at johnross@igc.org with
further information. |