Today's Stories

November 18, 2008

John Ross
Drilling vs. Direct Democracy in Mexico

November 17, 2008

Michael Hudson
Bankers Shake Down Congress and the G-20

Paul Craig Roberts
When It's a Clear Day and You Can't See GM

Mike Whitney
Busted in Washington

Steve Conn
Where is Nader Country 2008? Mapping the Nader Votes

Andy Worthington
Closing Guantánamo: Advice for Obama

Jonathan Cook
The Real Goal of Israel's Blockade of Gaza: "They Are All Hamas"

Rannie Amiri
Dual Loyalties Will Doom Obama

David Macaray
Bailing Out the Automakers

David Michael Green
Twelve Victories

Charles Modiano
Sports Illustrated and Sexism: Tokenism or a New Day?

Website of the Day
The South Sea Bubble

November 14 / 16, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Heading for the First Hundred Days

Jeffrey St. Clair
How Bill Clinton Doomed the Spotted Owl: a Cautionary Tale for Greens in the Age of Obama

Mike Whitney
Paulson the Bungler

Sasan Fayazmanesh
RIP: the Experts, 1929-2008

Moshe Adler
Keynes: China's Greatest Export?

Anthony DiMaggio
Transcending Race?

Jean Bricmont
Cats, Dogs and Creationism

Sheldon Rampton
The Eisenstadt Hoax: a Real Life Example of a "Fake Fake"

Douglas Valentine
Let the Trials Begin!

Joseph Nevins /
Timothy Dunn
Barricading the Border

Tom Barry
Rahm Emanuel's Political Pragmatism on Immigration

Ron Jacobs
Che Guevara Meets Trashman: the Genius of Spain Rodriguez

Larry Portis
The State of the Israeli State

Mary Lynn Cramer Obama's Brain Trust: Seems Like Old Times

Sherry Wolf
The Myth of the Black/Gay Divide

Peter Cervantes-Gautschi
Secretary of Greed: How Larry Summers Championed Wall Street by Impoverishing the Mexican People

Jacob Hornberger
The Conservative Malaise: Hey, Brother, Can You Spare Some Habeas Corpus?

Lance Selfa
The Center-Right Nation Con

Benjamin Dangl
Vermont Against General Dynamics

Seth Sandronsky
Lifelines in Hard Times

Russell Mokhiber
Time to Give the Friends of Big Coal the Boot

Allan Stellar
Nuke a Gay Whale for the Navy

Kelly Overton
Get Thee to a Shelter: the Obamas and the Million-Mutt March

Martha Rosenberg
Why Mink are Cheering the Economic Crisis

Richard Rhames
Palling Around with Ray the Plumber

David Yearsley
How I Played Hooky from "High School Musical 3"

Lorenzo Wolff
Zach is Back: Songs of Hurt, Rage and Resistance

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Ford and Buknatski

Website of the Weekend
The Eyes Have It

November 13, 2008

Pam Martens
The Two Trillion DollarBlack Hole

Vijay Prashad
Guilt by Participation: Sonal Shah's Membership Has Expired

Patrick Cockburn
Who is Paying for the Iraqi National Intelligence Service?

Jonathan Cook
The Withering Palestinian Economy

Ralph Nader
Obama and the Rogue Regime

Bill Quigley
McCain Owes America an Apology

Lee Sustar
Bailing Out the Big Three

Omar Barghouti
Boycotting Israeli Settlement Products

Steve Conn
More Alaska Fun

Howard Lisnoff
The Last Bastion of Hate

Jeff Cohen
What Indy Media Heroes Can Teach Us

Website of the Day
Who are the Obamagelicals?

November 12, 2008

Johanna Berrigan
Scattered Families: the Iraq Refugee Crisis

Steve Conn
The Big Mystery Election in Alaska

Patrick Bond
Against Volcker

Bokar Ture /
Dedrick Muhammad
Remembering a Black Radical in a Barack Obama America

Alan Farago
The Hispanic Vote in South Florida: Not Dyed Blue Yet

Dave Lindorff
Rescuing Joe Lieberman

Karl Grossman
Break Up Big Oil: Tyranny in the Tank

David Macaray
An Obama Litmus Test: Will Labor Have a Seat at the Table?

George Wuerthner
Act Now to Save America's Public Forests

Susie Day
Heavy Weather

Website of the Day
Does the Planet Have a Future? an Interview with Derrick Jensen

November 11, 2008

James G. Abourezk
How to Vote Against Your Own Interests

Allan J. Lichtman
What Obama Can Learn From FDR

Eric Toussaint
Financing the Bailout: a Holy Union for a Deuce of a Swindle

Ron Jacobs
Moving Beyond Hope: a Leftist Looks at the Near Future

Peter Montague
Green Coal?

Corporate Crime Reporter
BP's Big Spill on the North Slope

Laura Carlsen
Latin America Sends Obama a Piece of Its Mind

Col. Dan Smith
A New Unifying Paradigm?

Morton Skorodin
The Machine Grinds On

David Michael Green
My Michelle Moment

Charles R. Larson
Ask Your Doctor for a Free Sample

Website of the Day
Will Old Faithful Be Sucked Dry?

November 10, 2008

David Roediger
Obama's Victory and the Future of Race in the United States

Paul Craig Roberts
Conned Again?

Peter Lee
Obama's Man in Afghanistan

Corey D. B. Walker
And We Are Not Saved

Jeff Halper
A Bone in America's Throat

Bill Hatch
Look on the Bright Side, Dammit!

Andy Worthington
Guilty By Torture

Bill Quigley
Anger and Hope: Haitian Families Furious Over School Collapse

Peter Morici
Paulson's Folly

Anthony Olszewski
The Advent of a New Black Politician

Kim Nicolini
Exile and Displacement on Bunker Hill

Cpt. Paul Watson
Farley Mowat's Last Book? Maybe Not

Website of the Day
Boondocks, Another Banned Episode

November 7 / 9, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Hail to the Chief of Staff

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Politics of Fire

Vijay Prashad
Obama's Indian: the Many Faces of Sonal Shah

Tariq Ali
Great Expectations

Jean Bricmont
Our Obama Problem

John V. Whitbeck
Obama, Emanuel and Israel

Saul Landau
Politics Among the Ruins: Obama Faces an Economic Disaster

Peter Morici
Gone, Baby, Gone: Another 240,000 Jobs Lost

Lawrence Velvel
Obama and Afghanistan: the Return of Clintonia?

Karyn Strickler
Don't Govern From the Middle

Nativo V. Lopez
Banking on Obama with Open Eyes: Latinos and Obama

Christopher Fons
A Generational Moment: From Jackson to Obama

Alan Farago
Sarah Palin's Limited Engagement

David Yearsley
Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang

Christopher Brauchli
Pardoning Industry: Bush's Latest Executive Orders

Samah Sabawi
Gaza's New Cemetery

Dave Lindorff
Getting the Change We've Earned

Deepak Tripathi
A Revolution to Remember

Beth Sherouse
In the Wake of Lost Initiatives: the Gay Glass is Half Empty

Patrick Irelan
La Belle Dame Sans Regrets: Back to Alaska

Stephen Martin
Barack and the Temple

Richard Rhames
Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss

J. Murray
White Cherokee Mythology

Lorenzo Wolff
Anthems for the Average Kid

Kim Nicolini
Exile and Displacement on Bunker Hill: Art Meets Realism in "The Exiles"

Poets' Basement
Farrelly, Fleming and Browne

Website of the Day
Take Who Takes You (For the New Big O)

November 6, 2008

Frank J. Menetrez
Now What?

John Chuckman
The Big Leap: From Hope to Change

P. Sainath
A Magic Moment (But Still Behind the Global Curve)

Joshua Frank
A Look Under the Hood of an Obama Administration

Edna Canetti
Come, Obama, Change My Life: a Plea from Israel

John Ross
Brad Will is Still Dead

Norman Solomon
Sorry Joe: a Mandate for Spreading the Wealth

Fawzia Afzal-Khan
The Morning After: Pakistan and Its New Bedfellow

Robert Weissman
Mordor Brightens: Obama's Challenge--and Our Own

Harvey Wasserman
A Blow to Nuclear Power in Chicago

Website of the Day
Pot Wins Big

November 5, 2008

Cockburn / St. Clair
Why McCain Lost

Chuck Spinney
How Obama Won

Ishmael Reed
Morning in Obamerica: the Promised Land?

Chris Floyd
A Prism for the New Paradigm: "What If Bush Did It?"

Binoy Kampmark
Obama's Victory: a Nation Divided

Michael Donnelly
The Rebooting of America, 2008

David Macaray
Who Should be Secretary of Labor?

Peter Morici
Obama's First Moves on the Economy

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
What Real Change Should Bring

William Willers
Will We be Forced to Sell Off the Public Lands?

Website of the Day
The Killing Fields of South Africa

November 4, 2008

Kathleen Christison
McCain, Obama and Khalidi

James Ridgeway
A New World?

Winslow T. Wheeler
Cleaning Out the Pentagon Pig Sty

Mike Whitney
Obama's Little Red Book

Conn Hallinan
A New Foreign Policy

Holly M. Barker
The Inequities of Climate Change and the Small Island Experience

Ashley Smith
Where is the Occupation of Iraq Heading?

Andy Worthington
Guilty Verdict Fails to Justify Gitmo Trials

Martha Rosenberg
AIG: Too Big to Play Fair

Stephen Martin
Breakdown of the Globalisation Agenda

Doug Lummis
Full Moon Over Okinawa

Carlos Fierro
An Anarchist View of Elections

Website of the Day
La Pequeña as Sarah Palin

November 3, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
Friends Like These

John Kennedy O'Hara
Voter Lockdown: Prosecuting Voters

Peter Montague
Is Nuclear Power Green?

Steve Conn
Nader and the Youth Vote

Andrew Gebhardt
How Much Do the Differences Between Obama, McCain and Bush Really Matter?

Ron Jacobs
Bombing Syria: Borders are for Sissies

Ralph Nader
Between Hope and Reality: an Open Letter to Senator Obama

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Cleaning Up After Bush

Uri Avnery
Obama and the Order of the Optimists

Dave Lindorff
Studs and Me

Fred Gardner
Adieu, Rimonabant

DC Larson
You Are How You Vote

David Michael Green
McCain Finally Gets Tough

Val Strange
Hopeless Hoi Polloi or Step in the Right Direction?

Tuli Kupferberg /
Jeffrey Lewis
Wailing Wall Street:
Bring Spare Money!

Website of the Day
Pranking Palin (the Uncut Version)

October 31 , 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Change You Can See

Jeffrey St. Clair
Killing Leroy Jackson: the Indian Wars Have Never Ended

Douglas Valentine
Giving Aid and Comfort to the Enemy: McCain's 14th Amendment Problem

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
The Great Bailout Fraud: Misrepresenting the Financial Crisis

Dr. Ignacy Nowopolski
Is the Global Economy a Mistake? an Interview with Paul Craig Roberts

Alan Maass
What's So Funny About Peace, Love and Spreading the Wealth?

William P. O’Connor
Reflections of an Average Joe

Patrick Irelan
Johnny's Tantrums: McCain the "Gook Hater"

Brian Cloughley
Out of Control: Memo From Islamabad

Mats Svensson
The Last Dance in Ramallah

Binoy Kampmark
Into Syria We Went

Steve Conn
The Future of Ted and Sarah

Alan Farago
The Division of Florida: the Politics of Growth

Morton Skorodin
The Bush-Obama-McCain Administration

Robert Bryce
Not McCain

Wajahat Ali
Dear John McCain, Please Stop...

David Yearsley
Palin's Flute, Obama's Voice

Dennis Loo
What to Do with Bush and Cheney?

Pam Martens
Why 2008 Feels Like 1932

Stephen Martin
Defense Strategies in Economic Warfare

Richard Rhames
Nothing for Something: the Doomed Rustic's Lament

Ramzy Baroud
A Third Palestinian Intifada

Missy Beattie
I'm Sick of Their Voices

Howard Lisnoff
Burning Reason: More From the Religious Right

Richard Neville
Pickled Heads: First the Revelation, Then the Revolution

Saul Landau /
Farrah Hassan
Bush Ultra Lite: Oliver Stone's Oedipal Problem

Kim Nicolini
Max Payne: Vigilante Violence as Sex Story

Lorenzo Wolff
Dance to the Music--or Else!

Poets' Basement
Four Poems from the Japanese Trans. by Rexroth

Website of the Weekend
Art Against Empire

October 30, 2008

Cockburn / St. Clair
McCain's Women Problems

Vijay Prashad
Smearing Rashid Khalidi

Paul Craig Roberts
World Tires of Rule by Dollar

Glen Ford
Turning the Tide of Ethnic Cleansing in America's Cities

Stanley Heller
Wall Street Bonus Madness

William Loren Katz
"Kill Him!:" a Political Chronicle

Joshua Frank
Memo to Progressives for Obama: What Happens After the Election?

James McEnteer
The Year of Unreliable Witnesses

Felice Pace
The Big Change: Can "Civic Unreasonableness" Save the Earth?

Jonathan Cook
The Executions at Kafr Qassem

Reza Fiyouzat
Boycott the Elections!

Website of the Day
An Open Letter to Whole Foods

October 29, 2008

Arno J. Mayer
The US Empire will Survive Bush

Eric Toussaint
How the Food and Financial Crises are Interconnected

Matt Gonzalez
What Do They Have to Do to Lose Your Vote?

Steven Conn
Obama and the Camp Followers

Jonathan Cook
Israel Bars Visit to a Father's Grave

Patrick Bond
Strauss-Kahn Strikes Again!

Ramzi Kysia
A Freedom Rider in Gaza City

Douglas Valentine
A Glimpse Inside the Head of Joe the Plumber

Stephen Martin
What America is Owed

Margaret Dooley-Sammuli
Alternatives to Incarceration

Amee Chew
Support Obama, Vote McKinney?

Website of the Day
N-Word Chant Doesn't Phase Palin

October 28, 2008

James G. Abourezk
How to Bail Out the Taxpayers

Andy Worthington
The Empty Chair at Guantánamo

Gary Leupp
The Specter of the Sixties: Palin v. Ayers

Paul Craig Roberts
The End of the American Road

Mike Whitney
Meet the World's New Currency

Gregory V. Button
What the Next President Must Do to Save FEMA

Ralph Nader
Share the Sacrifices, Share the Benefits

P. Sainath
Haunted by Socialism

Martha Rosenberg
Melting Pot in Hell

Charles R. Larson
Palin/Wurzelbacher 2012!

Website of the Day
Why You Can't See Across the Grand Canyon

October 27, 2008

Michael Hudson
Scenes From the Global Class War

Barbara Rose Johnston
The Clean, Green Nuclear Machine?

John Dinges
Palling Around with Dictators: McCain and Pinochet

Mike Whitney
Chickenhawks and the Horrors of War

Mary Lynn Cramer Greenspan's Higher Power

Alan Farago
Origins of the Fall

David Michael Green
Remind Me Again: Who Won the Cold War?

Andy Worthington
The Collapse of Omar Khadr's Guantánamo Trial

George Wuerthner
Is Ranching Sustainable? The Story of Bob the Rancher

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Obamanations of Barack

Website of the Day
Heartland of Darkness

October 24 / 26, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Waiting for the Curtain to Rise

Ishmael Reed
Boogiemen: How Lee Atwater Perfected the G.O.P.'s Appeal to Racism

Mike Whitney
Down for the Count

Don Santina
How Maria Fell: Death in the Central Valley

Scott Boehm
Manufacturing Sympathy: Palin, Special Needs and Identity Politics

Saul Landau
Faith-Based Surge: Whining About Winning in Iraq

Ron Jacobs
Iraq and the Arrogance of Washington

Binoy Kampmark
Afghanistan the Un-Winnable

Linn Washington Jr.
The Great Vote Fraud Hoax

Nicole Colson
Mocking Our Rights: McCain's Disdain for Women's Health

Bernard Chazelle
The Humorology of Power

Brian Jones
Campaign by Codeword

Christopher Brauchli
Down the Drain with McCain's Vetters

Benjamin Dangl
Bolivia Rejects Neoliberalism

Val Strange
The Fraternity of John McCain: Scenes from North Carolina

Joe Mowrey
Name That Candidate: He Supports Petraeus, the Death Penalty, the Bailout, Nuclear Power, the Occupation...

Steve Early
SEIU Learns the Meaning of "No"

David Macaray
Patriotism and the Labor Movement

Allison Kilkenny
You Have the Right to Airport Harassment

Richard Rhames
Open Season

Jim Bell
Nuclear Power's Big Con

Kris De Welde
Domestic Violence and Financial Stress

Barry Clemson
John Wayne Syndrome

Adam Engel
Last Exit to Disneyland

Mark Scaramella
The World's Weirdest Pipe Organ?

Tuli Kupferberg
Nobody for President: the Original Version (Annotated)

Lorenzo Wolff
A Frustrated, Broken-Hearted Joy from Kidnapkin

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Swartzfager and Payne

Website of the Weekend
Patrick Cockburn Dismantles the Surge

October 23, 2008

Allan J. Lichtman
What Voter Fraud?

Todd Chretien
Why I'm Not Voting for Obama

John Ross
No Child Left Behind, Mexican-Style

Peter Morici
Strategies to End the Crisis

Mats Svensson
Short Film Clips at a Checkpoint

Marlene Martin
Don't Let Them Execute an Innocent Man

Robert Jensen /
Pat Youngblood
Looking Beyond the Election and Beyond Elections

Margaret Kimberley
Rightwing Obama Love

Deepak Tripathi
Post-Bush Scenarios

David Morris
Why Joe the Plumber is a Socialist (And You Are, Too)

Website of the Day
Voting While Black in North Carolina

October 22, 2008

Brian Cloughley
Kid Killers are Barbarians

Heather Gray
Raising Hell in the South: the Legacy of J. L. Chestnut, Jr.

Jeff Birkenstein
McCain's Disdain for Spain

Ralph Nader
The Song Remains the Same: Convergence and Avoidance in the Presidential Election

DC Larson
The Growing of a Heartland Nader Raider

David Swanson
Colin Powell, Not Qualified for Government Service

Keeanga-Yamatta Taylor Race and the Election: When the "Real" America Enters the Voting Booth

Larry Everest
9/11 and the Imperial Adventure in Afghanistan

Robert Fantina
Anything to Win

Martha Rosenberg
The Financier's Playbook

Stephen Martin
Giving It Up to the Combine

Website of the Day
Brokers with Hands on Their Faces

October 21, 2008

Vijay Prashad
Wealth's Apostles

Paul Craig Roberts
How Inflation Works: Why I Can't Buy an Old Ferrari

Corey D. B. Walker
Empire and White Supremacy

Steve Breyman
How to "Win" in Afghanistan

Eric Toussaint
The Economic Crisis and Latin America: Time to Delink

Wajahat Ali
Boo Radley Comes Out to Play: the Emerging Muslim-American Electorate

Robert Weitzel
Wasting a Vote for Lincoln's Radical Ideal (Or Why I'm Voting for Nader)

Brendan Cooney
Palinoscopy: an Exploration of Why Liberals are So Obsessed with Sarah Palin

Dave Lindorff
Cuba's Oil Reserves: a Game-Changer?

Marqueece Harris-Dawson / Bob Wing
When You're a Black Candidate There's No Such Thing as a Safe Lead

Patrick B. Barr
Socialist, Socialist, SOCIALIST!

Omar Barghouti
The Boycott and Palestinian Groups: Countering the Critics

Website of the Day
How to Dismantle a US War Plane (and Get Away With It)

October 20, 2008

Michael Hudson
The ABCs of Paulson's Bailout

Anthony DiMaggio
The Scandal That Never Was: ACORN, Rightwing Media and Election "Fraud"

Tariq Ali
Zardari Bans My Books

Uri Avnery
Is Akko Burning?

Bill Quigley
Hammered by the Swedes

Ben Rosenfeld
The Politics of St. Joe, Martyr to a Lie

David Michael Green
Payback's a Bitch: McCain on the Ash Heap

William S. Lind
The Afghanistan Advantage

Chris Genovali
Drill, Baby, Drill (Wink, Wink)

Stephen Martin
The Last Man in America

Howard Lisnoff
Bad News for War Resisters

David Yearsley
Organ Meat

Website of the Day
Our Brother is Sick: the Steve Ferguson Cancer Fund

October 17 / 19, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Blow Ups and Bombers

Jeffrey St. Clair
Inside Hanford: a Trip to America's Most Toxic Place

Pam Martens
How the Banksters are Making a Killing Off the Bailout

Paul Craig Roberts
Government of Thieves

Mike Whtney
No More Investment Banks

Michael D. Yates
Bowling Alley Blues: Racism Dies Hard in Johnstown, PA

Suzanne Smith
The Energy-War Connection: McCain Said It, Why Don't We?

Carl Boggs
Prosecuting Bush

Ralph Nader
Closing the Courthouse Doors

Fidel Castro
The Global Crash

Dave Marsh
The Great Levi Stubbs

Saul Landau
Denial, the Election Musical Comedy

Jo Guldi
The Floods of Heaven

Kevin Zeese
Now the Cost of War Really Matters

Larry Everest
Afghanistan, Not a Good War Gone Bad

Steve Early
Stop, in the Name of Joe!

David Macaray
Hey, Joe

Ben Terrall
When Ike Hit Haiti

Missy Beattie
Palin and God's Children

Don Monkerud
American Exceptionalism

Helen Redmond
Health Care Now's Big Con

Dan Bacher
Schwarzenegger's Delta Vision: Canals and Dams to Bail Out Big Ag

Wajahat Ali
Bush Gets Stoned

Farzana Versey
The White Tiger's Stripes and Gripes

Vladimir Frolov
Medvedev to Obama: We Come Not to Bury America, But to Buy It

Kim Nicolini
Frozen River: At Last, a Great Movie That's Neither Hip Nor Cool

Poets Basement
Gibbons, Corsale, Davis and Fleming

Website of the Day
The Real Sarah Palin?

November 18, 2008

"They Can't Pull a Fast One on Us Anymore"

Drilling vs. Direct Democracy in Mexico

By JOHN ROSS

Berta Robledo, a nurse at the National Pediatric Hospital here, was hunched over the counter at La Blanca, a popular old quarter restaurant, a magnifying glass in one hand, a dictionary in the other, and a print copy of a petroleum "reform" law pending in the Mexican Congress spread before her on the Formica.

The subtext of the measure sent to the congress last March by President Felipe Calderon was the privatization of the national petroleum consortium PEMEX, expropriated from Anglo-American owners in 1938 by Lazaro Cardenas - although Calderon and his associates deny that this is the intent of the legislation. The legal language was convoluted, the fine print was really small, and the words long and devious. "I know they are trying to pull a fast one on us," Berta fussed.

By "they", Robledo signified Calderon's ruling PAN party, the once-ruling (71 years) PRI, and that part of the left opposition PRD that has split with the party's former presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO), now the leader of the National Movement to Defend Mexico's Oil. AMLO is convinced that the bill was drawn up to permit backdoor privatization of PEMEX. Berta Robledo is inclined to agree with him.

When, last March 18th, the 70th anniversary of the nationalization of Mexican oil by the beloved president Lazaro Cardenas, and soon after Calderon had forwarded his "reform" proposal to congress, Lopez Obrador asked a huge throng gathered in the central Zocalo plaza, the heart of the Mexican body politic, if they would join with him in building a movement to defend the nation's oil, Berta Robledo voiced an enthusiastic "Siiiiiiiiiiii!"

Her commitment was tested a month later in April when the PAN and the PRI factions in the Mexican Senate tried to ram through the legislation on fast track with no debate.

To prevent a "madruguete" (literally, an early morning vote behind closed doors from which the opposition is excluded) senators affiliated with the pro-Lopez Obrador Broad Progressive Front or FAP occupied the podium of the upper house for 13 days, preventing a vote and shutting down the legislative process.

Along with 11,000 defenders of Mexican oil, Berta surrounded the senate chambers to bar legislators from entering the building. Like many of the women defenders, Berta took on the persona of an "Adelita", a woman soldier during Mexico's 1910-1919 revolution, and dressed up in a long skirt, a floppy sombrero, with "bandaleros" of fake bullets crisscrossed upon her chest. The Adelitas soon formed brigades to better coordinate their actions - Berta's was #8 captained by the actress Jesusa Rodriguez. Brigade #8 took on the name "Enaguas Profundas" ("Deep Petticoats"), a play on words - Calderon wants to drill in deep Gulf of Mexico waters or "aguas profundas."

Finally after a 13-day standoff, the exasperated PAN and PRI senators along with a group of PRD senators who consider Lopez Obrador to be the leader of the "irresponsible" (sic) left, agreed to debate Calderon's "reform" measure. 21 debates were held from May through August in the senate chambers featuring panels of experts, academics, engineers, technicians, ideologues, one Nobel Laureate (Mario Molino, chemistry) and proxies of Big Oil. The debates were shown on a giant screen set up under a big tent in the Zocalo every Tuesday and Thursday.

When her work schedule permitted, Berta Robledo, decked out in her Adelita finery, followed the proceedings from gavel to gavel, furiously scribbling down notes and booing and cheering on the participants as they expressed their opinions pro and con on privatizing Mexico's oil.

Each Thursday night, Berta would meet with her brigade to review the week's developments, and on Fridays, Berta attended a study circle at the Journalists' Club in the old quarter to gather more information as to just what constituted "privatization." "I still don’t understand it exactly but I'm getting the idea," she told this reporter one night last summer, pausing to sip on her café con leche (without café - it keeps her from sleeping) at the La Blanca counter.

While Berta and her sister Adelitas were educating themselves about the arcane intricacies of the Mexican legislative process, Lopez Obrador was barnstorming the rest of Mexico, visiting 1800 out of the nation's 2400 municipalities or counties to build up the Movement to Defend Mexico's Oil, signing up more than 2,000,000 new members - 200,000 joined brigades prepared to commit non-violent civil disobedience should the PRI and the PAN and their allies in the PRD try to force the bill through the Senate again.

On the weekends, Lopez Obrador often returned to the capital for rousing "informative assemblies" attended by tens of thousands of supporters. When the debates ended in August, it was evident that AMLO, who two years ago, after Calderon stole the 2006 presidential elections from him, drew two million marchers to the Zocalo, had reanimated the largest and most resilient social movement in Mexico.

"We stand with Andres Manuel because we know that he will never sell us out," is how Robledo explains her commitment.

Most observers of the debates concurred that those opposed to Calderon's crypto- privatization proposal had carried the day and the measure would be significantly modified when the Senate Energy Commission drew up a final draft of the legislation.

In September, the PAN, PRI, and PRD senators disappeared behind closed doors to forge a revised measure. Indeed, the legislation which emerged from the closed-door sessions appeared to eliminate many of the features originally submitted by Calderon. Clauses green-lighting the "association of private capital" (read Exxon, Shell, Halliburton et al) in PEMEX exploration, refineries, pipelines, and transportation had been removed, as had been the signing of "risk" contracts with drillers that would have guaranteed them a percentage of the petroleum they bring in - an arrangement explicitly outlawed by the Mexican constitution.

The revised law, which was now characterized as a PEMEX "rescue plan" rather than a pretext for privatization, was exalted by the three parties that had reached consensus on legislative language. The anti-AMLO PRDistas patted themselves on the back with particular exuberance. "We have prevailed in this fight!" PRD Senator Carlos Navarete crowed. Lopez Obrador was not so sure. Berta Robledo had serious doubts.

One by one, the politicos took to television to criticize AMLO for "not knowing how to win." Navarete and his cohorts labeled Lopez Obrador "a loser."

Under the agreement, Mexico's offshore deposits would be mapped and divided into 115 distinct blocs, some in deep water. One clause that piqued AMLO's suspicions would allow Big Oil to contract for entire tracts, some the size of entire Mexican states - Lopez Obrador feared that this would effectively grant transnationals control over the future of PEMEX production. To remedy this possibility, the leftist, meeting with a committee of experts assembled to counsel the movement on the legislation, recommended a 17-word addition (five of the 17 words were prepositions) that would have explicitly prohibited entire tracts from being contracted to just one driller.

On the eve of the Senate vote on the legislation, Lopez Obrador summoned thousands of Adelitas and "Adelitos" to vote on whether or not to support the PEMEX "rescue" bill. In a street-side demonstration of the movement's resourcefulness, participants cast paper ballots in a hundred homemade ballot boxes lined up along Juarez Avenue - 11,000 voted to reject the Senate language unless the 17 magic words were added and vowed to begin civil disobedience the next morning. 6000 others endorsed the bill as it now stood.

The Adelitos were assembled outside the Senate chambers by 8 AM on October 23rd to voice their opposition. Berta sat down on the sidewalk and sang the words to the old labor anthem "We Shall Not Be Moved" in Spanish. Then word spread that the senators had elected to convene in a legislative office building a few blocks away and AMLO's militants marched out to confront them. 1400 "robocops" from the militarized Federal Preventative Police (PFP) blocked the demonstrators' access to the office building. Senators who opposed the "rescue" such as 81-year old Rosario Ibarra, an AMLO ally, were excluded from the session. Calderon's Secretary of Public Security Genaro Garcia Luna stood at the door of the meeting room and controlled who was to be let in. Ibarra was kept out until the measure was passed - without Lopez Obrador's 17-word addition that would have blocked the deeding of entire offshore tracts to one transnational driller.

The following Tuesday (October 28th) with the lower house or Chamber of Deputies poised to ratify the "rescue" bill, Berta Robledo dressed up in her Adelita togs for the final battle and accompanied Lopez Obrador to the doors of the Legislative Palace - along with 15,000 fellow defenders of Mexico's "petroleo." Shaken by this massive display of opposition, the three parties that supported the measure allowed AMLO an opportunity to address the Chamber and once again he insisted upon the 17-word addition (deputies from the FAP unfurled a huge banner with the words inscribed upon it) and called upon the solons to reject the law without their inclusion. ""If you do not add this provision, you will be accomplices to the privatization of PEMEX," he challenged.

The atmosphere suddenly grew charged when it was discovered that the PAN and the PRI had actually altered the language sent over from the Senate to include the unconstitutional "risk" contracts that had been removed from the first draft of the law. Lopez Obrador's supporters in the Chamber seized the podium, blowing whistles and plastic horns and sirens to disrupt the session. Fistfights and shoving matches erupted and the turmoil only subsided when the PAN and the PRI and the anti-AMLO PRD agreed to eliminate the changes. The "rescue" bill was finally ratified - without Lopez Obrador's additions.

For seven hours while the politicos squabbled, Berta Robledo had waited outside the legislative palace in the frigid autumn wind with her companeras. Her long Adelita skirt had been stitched up for warm weather wear and her floppy straw hat kept blowing off in the stiff breeze. Later, we went out to La Blanca for café (without café.) "Its not over! We are not giving up!" Berta pounded her little fist against the Formica counter.

In the nine months since Felipe Calderon first introduced his scheme to privatize PEMEX, Berta Robledo has become a lay expert on how the Mexican legislative process screws the people. She was certainly not alone - tens of thousands of common citizens had worked together to demystify this mumbo jumbo and put their bodies on the line in an exemplary exercise in direct democracy.

Never before in Mexican legislative history had nurses and waitresses, teachers, actresses, street sweepers, union members, pensioners, housewives, intellectuals, students, street venders, farmers, and government workers gathered their energies to challenge the political class on its own terms. "We used to think that we couldn't understand these laws they pass to trick us," Berta beamed, waving her magnifying glass around. "Now we have learned that we have this power. They can't pull a fast one on us anymore."

John Ross can be reached at: johnross@igc.org or visit johnross-rebeljournalist.com      

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