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"Imperial Crusades: a Diary of Three Wars" by Cockburn and St. Clair

Today's Stories

October 2, 2007

Ibrahim Warde
Logical Lies About Bin Laden's Wealth

 

October 1, 2007

Al Giordano
The Clinton Campaign's Reckless Race for Big Money Donors

Paul Craig Roberts
From Burma to Iraq: Hypocrisy Rules the West

Moshe Adler
The Crimes of Microsoft

Ingmar Lee
My Kayak Journey Down the Wild Pacific Coast

John V. Walsh
Ahmadinejad is Not My Enemy

Norman Solomon
Political Science and Truth of Consequences

Roger Burbach
Historic Victory in Ecuador for the Left

Ramzy Baroud
The Politics of Assassination

Stephen Lendman
The Maestro of Misery: Greenspan's Dark Legacy

Susie Day
Honey, I Shrank the Military!

Website of the Day
Letters from Fort Lewis Brig

 

September 29 / 30, 2007

Alexander Cockburn
Clinton Time: Do We Set Our Clocks Forward or Back?

Uri Avnery
So What About Iran?

Andrew Cockburn
Iraq's WMD Myth: Why Clinton is Culpable

Jeffrey St. Clair
Through the Gates of Lodore

Wajahat Ali
The Good, the Bad and the Iraqi

Andy Worthington
The Curse of the Military Commissions

Don Santina
Ethnic Cleansing in San Francisco

Ralph Nader
Free Lunches, for Corporations!

Fred Gardner
The Man Behind the MoveOn Ad

Seth Sandronsky
The US Economy Since 1980

Gideon Levy
The Children of 5767

William S. Lind
A Ticking Bomb

Reza Fiyouzat
An Anti-Imperialist Case Against a Nuclear Iran

Richard Rhames
Wag the Tail, Frag the Dog

David Michael Green
Buyer's Remorse: Their Purchase, Our Regret

Zach Mason
Hate and Hope in Herndon

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Ali, Davies and Suss

Website of the Weekend
Domestic Crusaders

 

 

September 28, 2007

Kathleen and Bill Christison
The Teflon Alliance with Israel

Roberto J. González /
David H. Price

When Anthropologists Become Counter-Insurgents

Saul Landau
September, the Cruelest Month in Chile

Tom Clifford
Burma by the Numbers

Christopher Brauchli
Of Toxic Almonds and Bad Beef

Martha Rosenberg
Spinning Suicide Statistics

Dave Zirin
Soldier in Winter: John Carlos Speaks Out on the Jena 6

Laray Polk
Bush Library or Lockbox?

Binoy Kampmark
When Reagan Turned Brown

James McEnteer
Hell, Columbia: an Academic Hotshot Introduces a Petty Tyrant

Website of the Day
Concerned Anthropologists

 

September 27, 2007

Alan Farago
Housing Market Crashes and Burns

Andy Worthington
A Bad Week at Guantánamo

Jonathan Cook
Why Did Israel Attack Syria?

William Hughes
Billy Graham, a Prince of War Exposed

Ray McGovern
Bush, Oil and Moral Bankruptcy

Ron Jacobs
Joe Biden's Plan to Chop Up Iraq

Dave Lindorff
Quit the Party! Join the Mass Resignation Movement!

Joshua Frank
Pruning the Green Party

Anne Dachel
The CDC, Vaccines and Autism

Website of the Day
The God-O-Meter

 


September 26, 2007

Bill Quigley
HUD's Home Wreckers

Paul Craig Roberts
A Pandemic of Police Brutality

Jeff Kisseloff
Still Smearing Alger Hiss

China Hand
Is China the True Target of Financial Sanctions Against Iran?

Behzad Yaghmaian
At the Gates of Paradise

Sonja Karkar
The Quality of Mercy in Gaza

Mike Ferner
Interrupting the Empire, 30 Seconds at a Time

Col. Dan Smith
Freedom to Speak, Freedom to Learn

Clifton Ross
Bollinger's Barbarous and Ignorant Speech

Brenda Norrell
A Meeting of Indigenous Peoples in Caracas

Website of the Day
The Smearing of Jean Maria Arrigo, a Psychologist Opposed to Torture

 

September 25, 2007

Nicole Colson
On the March Against Racism

Uri Avnery
Foam on the Water

Brendan Cooney
Ahmadinejad on Broadway: Free Speech? Arrest Him!

Harry Browne
Bruce Springsteen Comes Home ... to Hell

Marjorie Cohn
The Drift Toward War with Iran

David Macaray
The UAW-GM Strike: the Long Knives are Already Out

Ralph Nader
Hypocrisy and Inverted Priorities in Congress

Dan Bacher
Schwarzenegger, the Climate Change Hypocrite

Anthony Papa
Perverted Justice & America's Drug Laws

Christopher Ketcham
All Politicos Now Classed as Sexual Deviants

Website of the Day
John Waters on Free Speech

 

September 24, 2007

George Ciccariello-Maher
Racist Violence from Jena to Oakland

Saree Makdisi
The War on Gaza's Children

David Keen
Action-as-Propaganda: Learning About the Iraq War from Hannah Arendt

Sherwood Ross
Just How Powerful is the Israel Lobby? Only Cheney Knows for Sure

Ron Jacobs
Greenspan's Open Secret

Donna Saggia
The Cult of the Military and the Decline of Democratic Values

Mike Ferner
Free Speech Takes a Capitol Beating

Malini Johar Schueller
Norman Hsu is a Model Minority

Monique Dols
and Dylan Stillwood
Ahmadinejad and Columbia

Website of the Day
The Promotion


September 22 / 23, 2007

Alexander Cockburn
On Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine"

Jennifer Loewenstein
Beneath the Hideous Veneer of Security

Linn Washington, Jr.
The Injustice in Jena: Prosecutorial Misconduct More Dangerous Than Racism

Jeffrey St. Clair
Going Down in Dinosaur: Oil, Dams and Whitewater (Part One)

Alan Farago
Genuflecting to China

Brian Cloughley
Of Hate, Hubris and Atrocities

Robert Fantina
The Deadly Pattern of US Imperialism

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Land Tenure and Resistance in New Mexico

Jason Hribal
Fear of an Animal Planet

David Rosen
Slugger Sex: Athletes, Violence and Male Sexuality

Mike Whitney
The Era of Global Financial Instability

John V. Walsh
Who Will Lead a Filibuster of the Iraq War Spending Bill?

Dave Lindorff
Why Aren't We Banning Blackwater Here?

David Michael Green
Hiding Behind a Camouflage Skirt

Fred Gardner
Claudia Jensen (Look Back in Anger)

Cassandra Jones
Support Our Mercenaries

Roger van Zwanenberg
Pluto Press Under Attack by Israel Lobby

Poets' Basement
Buknatski, Davies and Ford

Website of the Weekend
"For the Bible Tells Me So"

 

September 21, 2007

Karim Makdisi
Letter from Lebanon

M. Shahid Alam
A History of Violence

Alan Farago
Who Will Buy My House?

Joshua Frank
The Demise of the Congressional Black Caucus

Dave Zirin
Notre Dame and the Economy of Sports

Kenneth Couesbouc
A Short History of Lending and Borrowing

Dr. Steffie Woolhandler and Dr. David Himmelstein
Mass Health Care Failure

Ben Terrall
The Streets of San Francisco: Where Impeachment is Taken Seriously--By Everyone But Pelosi

Steve Fournier
Ex-Dems, Sign Up Here

Frederico Fuentes, et al
Voices in Defense of Bolivia

Website of the Day
Sabra and Shatila, Remembered

 

September 20, 2007

Kathleen Christison
Whatever Happened to Palestine?

Zoltan Grossman
An Endless Occupation?

Paul Craig Roberts
As the Empire Slips: Greenspan and the Economy of Greed

Stan Cox
and Wes Jackson
Carbon-Free and Still Wrecking the Planet

Russell Mokhiber
AARP to Kucinich: Drop Dead

Charles Modiano
Jim Crow's Children: the Jena 6, Shaquanda Cotton and Blog Power

Raymond J. Lawrence
Bush's Worrisome Use of Religion

Brendan Cooney
Body-Snatched Nation

Website of the Day
Mind Control for Breakfast

 

September 19, 2007

Paul Craig Roberts
Why Did Senator John Kerry Stand Idly By?

Paul Krassner
The Power of Laughter

Sgt. Martin Smith
The New Private Warriors: Blackwater in Iraq

Seth Sandronsky
Living in a Dilapidated Market: To Rent or Own?

Claud Cockburn
Looking back at the Great Crash

Victoria Buch
Israel's Agenda for Ethnic Cleansing and Transfer

Robert Weissman
Oil Warriors: From Greenspan to Kissinger

Mike Ferner
Can We Talk?

Dan Bacher
Schwarzenegger's $9 Billion Boondoggle for Big Water

Website of the Day
Housing Cost Calculator

 

September 18, 2007

Mike Whitney
U.S. Banks Brace for Storm Surge as Dollar and Credit System Reel

Alan Farago
Interviewing Alan Greenspan: How 60 Minutes Blew It

John Ross
America's Great Wall:
Where Will the Workers Go
When They Finish It?

Ron Jacobs
Nooses Hung From Jena, La. to College Park, Md.

Alex Doherty
Britain's 9/11 "Truth Movement": Who's Responsible?

September 17, 2007

Marjorie Cohn
Erwin Chemerinsky and the Post-9/11 Attack on Academic Freedom

Paul Craig Roberts
Conservatism Isn't What It Used to Be

Ricardo Alarcón
The Return of C. Wright Mills Amid the Dawn of a New Era

Marc Levy
Fake Vets Chasing Fame

Eva Liddell
In 1969 We Already Knew What 2007 Would Look Like

Website of the Day
Propaganda: Your Job in Germany. Directed by Frank Capra, and written by Theodor Geisel

Sept. 15-16, 2007

Alexander Cockburn
The General Came to Washington

Vicente Navarro
How the U.S. Schemed Against Spain's Transition from Dictatorship to Democracy

Mike Whitney
Plummeting Dollar, Credit Crunch

Herman Mindshaftgap
Has There Ever Been a Surge? If so, Has it a Future?

Ellen Cantarow
Girls! Music! Palestine!

Jordan Flaherty
K-Ville: Fox's New Paean to the N.O.P.D.

Zachary Hurwitz
Julio Cusurichi on Amazonian Development

September 14, 2007

Debbie Nathan
New York Times reporter was a member of an illegal underage porn site, claims he was only "posing as online predator"

Franklin Lamb
Sabra-Shatilla, 25 Years Later

Patrick Cockburn
Greet Bush and Die: The Killing of Abu Risha

Farzana Versey
The World's Richest Muslim Tycoon

Alan Farago
This is Florida, Epicenter of the Housing Bust and of Public Corruption

Hank Edson
Bill's New Book is Giving Me a Headache

September 13, 2007

Patrick Cockburn
Petraeus Confided Presidential Ambitions to Iraqi Official

Scott Vest, former Air Force Captain at Minot
The Barksdale Nukes

Andy Worthington
Guantánamo: "Ghost" Prisoners Speak At Last

Michael Baney
Mr. Fixit of Quake-Stricken Peru Has Death Squad Past

Dr. Susan Block
Is U.S. Run by Secret Homintern?

September 12, 2007

Paul Craig Roberts
American Economy: RIP

Stan Goff
The Petraeus Report

William Blum
When Soldiers Mutiny...Only Those Fighting the War Can End It.

Manuel Garcia
Forgetting 9/11

Debbie Nathan
Why One Sex Survey Didn't Make the Big Time

September 11, 2007

Patrick Cockburn
The Fakery of General Petraeus

Iain Boal
Specters of Malthus: Scarcity, Poverty, Apocalypse

Michael Dickinson
Osama on 9/11

Guerry Hoddersen
Free Speech is Not Given, but Taken

Bill Hatch
Irish Politics in Old Time California

Gary Leupp
The Legacy of Luciano Pavarotti

Website of the Day
Elisa Salasin's "My September 11th"

September 10, 2007

Uri Avnery
A Big Victory Against the Wall

Patrick Cockburn
Petraeus's Closet

Saul Landau and Farrah Hassen
Screwing Up In Iraq

David Michael Green
Why Fred Thompson is Uniquely Qualified to be the GOP's Nominee

Pius Adesanmi
A Solidarity Letter to a Victim of Michael Vick

Betty Schneider
How to Deal With Sex Offenders

 

September 8 / 9, 2007

Alexander Cockburn
Will the US Really Bomb Iran?

Saul Landau
The Irrational Drama of a Declining Empire

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
Hurricane Katrina and Bush's Wars

Ray McGovern
Petraeus, the Westmoreland of Iraq

Matthew Abraham
Finkelstein's Legacy at DePaul

Alan Farago
The Governor and the Growth Machine

Christopher Brauchli
Grand Old Party Animals

Rannie Amiri
Battle of the Camps

Fred Gardner
Will Snoops Get Stopped?

James L. Secor
B-52 Flexing Nuclear Muscles: H-Bombs Over Barksdale

Missy Comley Beattie
Choices: Shall We Stay or Shall We Go Now?

Ben Tripp
Still in the Clover

Francis Boyle
The University of Illinois' Little Red Sambo Show

Joe Allen and Paul D'Amato
Jason Bourne vs. James Bond

Website of the Weekend
Drilling Wyoming: the View from Above


September 7, 2007

Robert Fantina
Those Iraq Reports: Bush vs. Reality

John Ross
Coca-Cola's Raid on a Sacred Mountain

James Brooks
The Occupation Within

Russell Mokhiber
Robert Reich and the Elimination of Corporate Criminal Liability

Joshua Frank
The Green Implosion Continues: Cyberlynching John Murphy

John Walsh
On the Green Party

Mark Brenner
New York Taxi Workers Strike Over Tracking Devices

Mike Ferner
"I Will Salute No More Forever"

Website of the Day
Help Save Osny Zachary's Life

 

September 6, 2007

Kathleen and Bill Christison
Bush, Iran and Israel's Hidden Hand

Allan J. Lichtman
When General Petraeus Speaks, Don't Listen ...

Norman Solomon
The Secret Addiction of Thomas Friedman

Yifat Susskind
Hurricane Felix's First Responders: Courage and Tragedy on the Miskito Coast

Catherine Fenton
Why I Am Going to the Protest

Laura Santina
Can the War Machine be Contained?

Farzana Versey
Fission Kashmir

Yves Engler
Haiti: Where a Wage of $2 a Day is Too Much for the Lords of Industry to Pay

Kelly Overton
Bang Bang; Shoot Shoot: Is Hunting Racist?

Michael Simmons
One Jew's Views: The Strange Genius of Drew Friedman and Kominsky Crumb

Website of the Day
Dams and Genocide in Guatemala

 

 

September 5, 2007

Stan Goff
The End Begins

Michael Dickinson
Working for Mother Teresa: Memoirs of a Rebellious Volunteer

Matthew Abraham
Standing Firm with Norman Finkelstein and DePaul's Heroic Students: a Defining Moment

Patrick Cockburn
The Basra Debacle

Dave Lindorff
Beware the Wounded Beast

Paul Craig Roberts
Who Are the Fanatics?

Clifton Ross
Ecuador and the Struggle for Latin American Unity

Elizabeth Schulte
Katrina's Forgotten Refugees

Joseph Grosso
Labor Day in New York City

Ben Terrall
Where's Nancy? On Trying to Protest Pelosi in San Francisco

Website of the Day
A Guide to Narco Dollars

 

September 4, 2007

Jean Bricmont
Why Bush Can Get Away with Attacking Iran

Patrick Cockburn
Cut and Run in Iraq

Ron Jacobs
The Haditha Massacre: Spinning a War Crime

Tom Kerr
Buried Alive on San Quentin's Death Row

Gary Leupp
The Case of Jose Maria Sison

Sonja Karkar
The Weeping Olive Trees of Palestine

Heather Gray
The Best and Worst of America: 9/11, Joseph Lowery and the Lethal Silence of Billy Graham

Fidel Castro
The Super-Revolutionaries

Jackie Corr
Home Depot Comes to Butte--Begging Bowl in Hand

Sunsara Taylor
Katrina and the Progress of the System

Website of the Day
Colombia Journal

 

September 3, 2007

Patrick Cockburn
Brits Flee from Basra

Eamon McCann
Qana, Derry: The Dead Lie in Familiar Shapes

Joshua Frank
The End of the Green Party?

Chris Floyd
Post-Mortem America: Bush's Year of Triumph

Marjorie Cohn
A Look at Bush's Iran War Plans

Walter Brasch
The News Drones: How Fake Photos Helped Lead the US to War in Iraq

Matt Reichel
Redefining the American Dream

Website of the Day
Don't Get Fooled Again

 

September 1 / 2, 2007

Alexander Cockburn
Entrapment Snares Larry Craig

Andy Worthington
Britain's Guantánamo

Saul Landau
The Tragic Ordeal of the Cuban Five

David Keen
An Occident Waiting to Happen: Intellectuals and the War on Terror

Patrick Cockburn
The Collapse of Iraq's Health Care Services

Diana Johnstone
Back in Uncle Sam's Pocket

George Longstreth, MD
& Karen Longstreth, RN
The Sorrows of Occupation: Life in the West Bank

Linda M. Woolf
A Sad Day for Psychologists--a Sadder Day for Human Rights

Ralph Nader
Wrapping the World with Advertising

Fred Gardner
The Trial of Mollie Fry, MD

Ben Tripp
Enquiry in America Today

David Michael Green
American Indigestion: Why Bush Governs from the Gut

Missy Comley Beattie
Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places: What the GOP Hasn't Learned About Tolerance

Michael Dickinson
Who's Cheating: Remembering Princess Diana

Paul Krassner
Assholes of the Week: From Larry Craig to Wesley Clark

Ron Jacobs
A Sports Nation of Millions

Poets' Basement
Buknatski, Davies and Mickey Z

 

 

 

 

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October 2, 2007

Pawns, Presidents and Pragmatists

The Great Mexican Chess Match

By JOHN ROSS

This capital's Tiennemens-sized Zocalo plaza, lodged as it is at the heart of the Mexican body politic, has sometimes been transformed into a monumental chessboard. Under leftist mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (2000-2006), whom many still think won last year's fraud-blighted presidential election; annual Chess Days attracted tens of thousands of players. One year, Chess Day broke the Guinness Book of Records mark for simultaneous games being played. On another, the plaza floor was squared off to create the world's largest chessboard.

This September 15th, "La Noche Mexicana" ("The Mexican Night"), the eve of Independence Day ceremonies when the President traditionally delivers the "Grito" of "Viva Mexico" from the balcony of the National Palace in a colorful display of absolute executive power, the Zocalo was once again converted into a gigantic chess game, this one featuring multiple phalanxes of human pieces.

Last year, in the wake of the hotly-contested July 2nd election, supporters of the aggrieved Lopez Obrador encamped under tents that covered the great square in a massive mobilization to dissuade outgoing president Vicente Fox, whose manipulation of electoral law allowed his right-wing PAN party to sneak past AMLO, from declaiming the final "Grito" of his six year reign. The threat of a mass "mooning" and other random acts of creative resistance forced Fox to beat a retreat to his home state of Guanajuato where he speechified to a hundred hardy souls in the same town from which the Father of Mexican Independence, the priest Miguel Hidalgo, had once fired the opening salvo of the war of liberation from the Spanish Crown: "Long live Mexico! (Let's Go Kill Some Spaniards!")

But Fox's successor, Felipe Calderon, whose talent for legitimatizing his rule has been troubled by his dubious 2006 victory, could not forego this golden opportunity to appear very presidential in public and the stage was set for face-off with his detractors.

Lopez Obrador's pawns seized the opening advantage by re-pitching their tents in the center of the 48,000 square meter plaza and reinitiating last summer's occupation. Calderon's players responded by raising a six-foot high metal barricade just beneath the presidential balcony on the National Palace edge of the Zocalo - the barricade was backed up by several thousand plainclothes members of the president's elite military guard and the militarized police. Then the President's men played the electronic gambit, plugging in what was billed as the most powerful sound system in all of Latin America - the electronic arsenal had been leased from the Ocesa corporation which specializes in stadium shows and other magnum pop "spectaculars."

But AMLO's people - their leader was on tour in the provinces as he has been for almost a full year since the stolen election signing up followers for his new left political party - were not to be outmaneuvered. With the approval of Marcelo Ebrard, AMLO's successor as Mexico City mayor, the leftists set up their own huge bank of speakers and the War of Words was declared.

Beginning on September 14th, the dueling decibels deafened denizens of the city's old quarter without mercy. At one point, both sides hooked up their speakers to construction cranes and moved them to the dead center of the Zocalo in a tableau that left-wing La Jornada columnist Jaime Aviles would describe as resembling a medieval battlefield with the giant speakers replacing antique catapults.

Finally, in the interest of civil sanity, a compromise was hammered out between the President and his foes although Lopez Obrador has never recognized Calderon's legitimacy. In lieu of AMLO, leftist senator Rosario Ibarra de Piedra, a 76 year-old world-renown human rights spokesperson often dubbed "the Mother of the Disappeared", would deliver the "Grito de los Libres: ("The Cry of the Free") between nine and 10 PM on the western rim of the square and then cede to Calderon on the National Palace balcony across the Zocalo.

Since Mexico's two-headed TV monopoly Televisa and TV Azteca only trained their cameras on Calderon, most of the nation did not bear witness to this extraordinary political chess match.

In addition to his "Grito", Calderon presided over the traditional Independence Day military parade from his presidential balcony at which two of his young sons appeared in military garb - Calderon himself donned military dress earlier this year, inciting speculation of a military coup.

During an unprecedented ceremony last December 1st, the new president, who is also commander-in-chief of the armed forces, was sworn in by high military brass and he has governed ever since with the military at his side. The media monopolies have covered his other flank.

The chess match in the Zocalo was mirrored by a similar showdown in the congress of the country, where legislative gridlock was the benchmark of Fox's six years in office. Due to the intransigence of the opposition - the once-ruling PRI (71 years in power) which was beaten badly in '06, and AMLO's forces mostly concentrated in the Party of the Democratic Revolution or PRD - little meaningful legislation was passed during the Fox years and Calderon was determined to break the logjam, even borrowing bits and pieces of Lopez Obrador's platform to strike a conciliatory pose. With the opposition able to neutralize the PAN's slight majority in both houses, the President would be forced into mind-boggling compromises to move his legislative package.

At the top of his must-pass list, Calderon has been touting "fiscal reform" he deems essential to animating an economy that is growing at the slowest rate in Latin America, and refurbishing the nation's threadbare tax base. Despite rampant corporate tax evasion and precipitously declining revenues from the national oil corporation PEMEX (PEMEX accounts for 70% of a social budget that barely keeps 72,000,000 Mexicans living in and around the poverty line from open rebellion), fiscal reform has long been deferred.

Calderon's proposals included a flat tax for corporations who live by the loophole and a 5% gasoline surcharge that automatically will trigger further inflationary surge (the cost of the basic food basket has leapt 34% in the right-winger's first year in office) and chances that big business or an unquiet electorate would allow such legislation to clear congress seemed remote until the president, an unlikely political pragmatist, exhibited a chess player's adroitness by coupling passage of fiscal reform with a long-sought revamping of Mexico's electoral laws.

Under the provisions of the proposed electoral reform, Mexico's maximum electoral authority, the Federal Electoral Institute or IFE, which the opposition holds accountable for the 2006 vote-rigging, would be restructured with all nine commissioners of its governing council including IFE president Luis Carlos Ugalde, a Calderon crony, being removed from office. In addition, federal subsidies to the parties would be cut by two thirds, thereby depriving Televisa and TV Azteca of millions of Yanqui dollars in political advertising.

Moreover, all negative advertising would be prohibited under the revision - Calderon's corporate backers invested huge sums in a non-stop barrage of hit pieces designed by U.S. right-wing political consultant Dick Morris that labeled Lopez Obrador "a danger" to Mexico. The "black" campaign is thought to have been a key factor in a presidential race that was decided by just .5% of the nation's 43 million voters. The new law would also bar carpetbaggers like Morris who designed similar smear campaigns against Evo Morales in Bolivia and Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega, from hawking his dubious wares to candidates here.

As might be anticipated, the television titans went ballistic at the specter of losing millions in political advertising revenues and embarked on a 24-7 electronic tirade of personal vindictiveness, assailing individual legislators in both the PRI and the PRD and even suggested that Calderon, in pushing for the trade-off, had betrayed those who had put him in power in the first place, threatening to wash their hands of a president who appeared to be their puppet just a few months ago.

Indeed in an effort to curry favor with the television giants on the eve of the July 2006 vote-taking, Calderon's PAN had pushed through congress the infamous "Televisa Law" that gave the corporados a 40 year concession on the entire electro-magnetic spectrum - that law was declared unconstitutional by Mexico's increasingly independent supreme court last spring, infuriating the TV moguls.

Despite the corporate outrage spewing from the tube, Calderon stuck to his guns and both reforms passed both houses of congress with minimal opposition. Because they are constitutional amendments, the measures must be ratified by at least 16 of Mexico's 31 state legislatures and Televisa and TV Azteca have turned their vitriol on the nation's governors in an attempt to prevent passage. Although the two-headed television demon is reduced to just a few gambits, it is not yet checkmate.

What happens next? The next round is sure to feature Calderon's efforts to "reform" Mexican energy policies, specifically opening up electricity generation and petroleum resources to private investment, including transnational oil corporations. Indeed, fiscal and electoral reform are just warm-ups to this high stakes match.

John Ross is on the mend from eye extraction and will soon be on his way back to Mexico. If you have further information write johnross@igc.org






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