Today's Stories

November 27 - 29, 2009

Carl Ginsburg
Planning for Poverty?

Joshua Frank
Coal Kills

David Macaray
Adventures in Polarization

November 26, 2009

Vijay Prashad
Mumbai in the Shadow of Kashmir

Greg Moses
We Remember the Popol Vuh

Jayne Lyn Stahl
How About a War on Poverty Instead?

Jeff Cohen
Get Ready for the Obama / GOP Alliance

John Blair
The Gasification of Indiana

Ann Robertson /
Bill Leumer
A Surge in Demands on Goverment for Jobs

Farzana Versey
The American East India Company

Sam Husseini
Moral Relativism at Fort Hood: Guilt, Therapy and the System

Tom Mountain
The Truth Behind the Turkey

Website of the Day
A Thanksgiving Prayer by William S. Burroughs

November 25, 2009

Dave Lindorff
The Bush-Blair Conspiracy on Iraq

Marjorie Cohn
The Case of Lynn Stewart

Belén Fernández
An Interview with Honduran Coup General Romeo Vásquez Velásquez

Ralph Nader
Weak-Kneed in China

Rannie Amiri
The Impending Release of Gilad Shalit: What Palestinians Deserve in Return

Missy Beattie
Finish the Job?

Rob Stone, MD Health Care Delusions: Better Than Nothing?

Norm Kent
In Praise of Adam Lambert

Binoy Kampmark Handing It to France: the Sporting Trial of Thierry Henry

Ron Ridenour
International Support for Sri Lanka

Website of the Day
The Credit Card Game

November 24, 2009

Mary Lynn Cramer
Health Care Reform and the Skinning of Seniors

Dean Baker
Too Big to Kill? The Vampire Banks Rise Again

George Ciccariello-Maher
Occupy Everything! Behind the Privatization of the UC, a Riot Squad of Police

Eric Walberg
Canada's Guantanamo

Andy Thayer
Lessons From a Lynching: the Murder of Jorge Steven Lopez-Mercado

David Macaray
The Delphi Incident: How the White-Collar Tribe Got Shafted

Laura Carlsen
The Perils of Plan Mexico

Gary Leupp
Obama as Hamlet

Adam Federman
Poisoning Dimock

William S. Lind Mission Creep: Counter-Insurgency in Salinas?

Website of the Day
Geography of the Recession

November 23, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
A Trial That Will Convict Us All

Jonathan Cook
Have Israeli Spies Infiltrated International Aiports?

Edward S. Herman / David Peterson
Vulliamy's Smears

Bouthaina Shaaban
What's New? It's Always Been Like This

Helen Redmond
Health Care's Historic Flop

Rannie Amiri
Saudi Arabia's Attack on Yemen

Dave Lindorff
Abortion and Health Care

Rev. William E. Alberts
The Self-Delusionary American Tragedy

Mike Whitney
Is American Casino the Best Picture of the Year?

Mark Weisbrot
Honduran Dictatorship is a Threat to Democracy in the Hemisphere

David Michael Green
The Placeholder Presidency of Obama

November 20-22, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
CounterPunch Diary
It's Show Trial Time!

Gareth Porter
New Light on the Qom Facility

Mike Whitney
The Great Stimulus Debate of '09: Crybabies need not apply

Fred Gardner
Mammography
Pushes Back

James J. Brittain
It's Really a War on the Poor
A War on Coca Nobody Believes

Jonathan Cook
Rabbi Followers 'Terror Cell in Parliament'

Alan Farago
Bulletin from the Dark Side: Florida's Republican Ultras

David Macaray
A Hindu Version of the UAW
Labor Strife in India

Binoy Kampmark
The Israeli Exception: Gilo and East Jerusalem

Ben Sonnenberg
Ashes and Diamonds
Retirement Norwegian Style

Ron Jacobs
Judge Roy Bean Takes Manhattan

David Yearsley
200,000 Testicles Offered Up to the Gods of Song

Brenda Norrell
A Border Runs Through Them:
The Struggles of the Tohono O'odham

Ron Ridenour
The Tamils and Equal Rights of Self Determination

November 19, 2009

Christopher Ketcham
The Dumbest Newspapers at the Center of the World

Shamus Cooke
A Fraudulent Jobs Summit

John V. Walsh
Impotent in China

Saul Landau
Dissidents Make Noise--Oops, News

Ralph Nader
Exiting Afghanistan

Nikolas Kozloff
Blackout in Brazil

Fred Gardner
Reputable MDs Buy NorCal Health Care

Charles R. Larson
Voices of the Silenced

John A. Murphy
Nader v. Dodd

Jayne Lyn Stahl
Obama's Gray World

November 18, 2009

Uri Avnery
A Religious Scoundrel

John Ross
Hot Oil!

Conn Hallinan
Strategic Towns: Why Gen. McChrystal's Plan Will Fail

Mike Whitney
Obama's China Junket

Ray McGovern
The Bogus Success of the Surge

Nelson P. Valdés
Cyber Cuba: Internet, Broadband and Foreign Policy

Ramzy Baroud
Globalization Unchecked

Ron Ridenour
Tamil Eelam: the Historic Right to Nationhood

November 17, 2009

Mike Whitney
Let's Get Fiscal

Jayne Lyn Stahl
Double Crossed: War Vets Deported

Brian M. Downing
Do They Subscribe to GQ at the Pentagon?

Jonathan Cook
Israel's Two-Tiered Justice System

Joanne Mariner
A First Look at the Military Commisions Act

Dean Baker
Obama's Nuclear Option on the Yuan

Martha Rosenberg
Pig Hell at Wal-Mart Supplier

Danny Weil
Fear in Nicaragua

David Macaray
Retail Sales as Combat

Laura Flanders
Buried Bonanza for Over-Builders

Walter Brasch
Rush to Judgment on Terror Trials

November 16, 2009

Alan Nasser
Obama's Flawed Case Against Single Payer

Jonathan Cook
Campus Watch Copy Cats

Mark Weisbrot
Obama, China and the Dollar

Carol Miller
We Need Health Care, Not Insurance

Gary Leupp
The Andolan in Kathmandu and the Revolution to Follow

Harry Clark
Justice Goldstone at Brandeis

Ray McGovern
Shining a Light on the Roots of Terrorism

Norman Solomon
California Democrats Urge Obama to Leave Afghanistan

Ron Ridenour
Genocide in Sri Lanka

Norm Kent
Doctors Light Up

Brenda Norrell
Torture Resisters Arrested at Fort Huachuca

November 13-15, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
A Man in a Hundred

Patrick Cockburn
Meet Our Afghan Ally: Stealing Money, Selling Heroin and Raping Boys

Tariq Ali
Short Cuts in Afghanistan

Douglas Lummis
Obama, Hatoyama and Okinawa

Vijay Prashad
Can the Major Speak?

Carl Ginsburg
Cornering the Market on Ambition

Manuel García, Jr.
The Purpose is Pork

Rannie Amiri
The Disastrous Presidency of Mahmoud Abbas

Mary Lynn Cramer
Death By Denial: the Militarization of Mental Health

Fred Gardner
Pot Doc Down

Dave Lindorff
Health Care Reform: DOA

Robert Jensen
How I Stopped Hating Thanksgiving and Learned to be Afraid

David Macaray
Wal-Mart Death Stampede Revisited

Corporate Crime Reporter
Exposing Timberland: Nike Foe Jeff Ballinger Zeros in on a New Target

Ron Jacobs
No More Star Spangled Eyes

David Model
NATO's Chimerical Enemy in Afghanistan

John V. Walsh
Godless China: What Obama Will Find

Jon Mitchell
Beggars' Belief

Stuart Easterling
Blaming the Narcos in Mexico

Dan Bacher
Big Oil Takes Over Marine "Protection" in California

Franklin Lamb
Lebanese Students Advise Obama on How to Get It Right

Farzana Versey
Moderns, Models and Martyrs

Charles R. Larson
War, Peace and Paramilitaries in Colombia

Saul Landau
The Coen Bros. Brutalize Job

David Yearsley
When the Cirque Meets the Beatles

Lorenzo Wolff
At the Side of the Frontman

Poets' Basement
Blaine, Rivas and Cox

November 12, 2009

Robert Weissman
Maniacal Deregulation

Franklin Spinney
The Afghan War Question

Nadia Hijab
After Fort Hood

Afshin Rattansi
Night Vision: Why US Sanctions on Syria Will Kill American Soldiers

Paul Craig Roberts
America's Dismal Future

Ralph Nader
Failing the People on Health Care

Belén Fernández
Tourists of the Honduran Counter-Revolution

Allan J. Lichtman
A National Peacemaker's Day

Dave Lindorff
President Peacenik's War

Jayne Lyn Stahl
Headline of the Year

November 11, 2009

Andrew Cockburn
The Crafting of a Loophole

Mike Whitney
A Small "d" Depression

Rev. Jesse Jackson
Where's the Jobs Stimulus?

Jeff Nygaard
Iranian Irrationality? Maybe Not

Stewart J. Lawrence
Honduran Regime Reneges on Political Deal

James Ridgeway
The End of the Little Red Cars: Memories of East Berlin

Eamonn McCann
Blood on Their Hands

Michael Ortiz Hill
Unbecoming War and Terrorism

Shepherd Bliss
From Oklahoma City to Fort Hood

Walter Brasch
"This is Jenna Bush Reporting ... "

November 10, 2009

Ellen Cantarow
Heroism in a Vanishing Landscape

Dean Baker
How to Raise $140 Billion a Year From Wall Street Banks

Rose Ann DeMoro
The Truth About the House Health Care Bill

Ramzy Baroud
Inch by Inch, House by House: How Israel Won the Settlement Battle...Again

Peter Lee
The Dalai Lama Sticks His Thumb in the Dragon's Eye

Dave Lindorff
Blaming the Workers

Roberto Rodriguez
Running Past PTSD (Or My Susto Profundo)

Winslow T. Wheeler
The Self-Dismembering F-35

Alan Farago
The Rising Tide

Joseph Grosso
The Legacy of Albert Parsons

November 9, 2009

Patrick Cockburn
Leave Afghanistan to the Afghans

Linn Washington
Fox Finds a New Black Boogeyman

Carl Ginsburg
To be Young and Unemployed Forever

Jeff Leys
War Funding, 2010

John A. Murphy
Can Lieberman Save Single Payer? Why Progressives Should Back a Filibuster

John Halle
Bard and the Lobby: Final Thoughts on the Kovel Affair

Bouthaina Shaaban
Clinton Dances With Netanyahu

James Ridgeway
Heath Care: Winning a Battle, Losing the War

Dave Lindorff
The Kafka Economy

David Macaray
The Philadelphia Transit Strike

Stephen Fleischman
The Tea Party System

Website of the Day
Cap-and-Trade: The Huge Mistake

November 6-8, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Too Fat to Fight

Mark Grueter
Inside the American University of Iraq

Paul Craig Roberts
The Evil Empire

Patrick Cockburn
Friendly Fire

Gareth Porter
Karzai's Cabinet of Warlords

Mike Whitney
The Battle of Seattle, 10 Years Later

James Bovard
How the Media Enables Government Lies

Dean Baker
Don't Touch the Banks!

Robert Lawless
Empires and the Sullying of Anthropology

Saul Landau
Afghanistan: a War Without Logic

Jayne Lyn Stahl
Black Ops and Fort Hood

Stephanie Westbrook
My Memories of Fort Hood

M. Shahid Alam
How Eurocentric Are You?

Marc Levy
Walking With Mr. Muhammad

Franklin Lamb
Obama's Mid-East Mess

Ron Jacobs
A New Map of Hell

David Ker Thomson
Afternoon With Tulip

John V. Whitbeck
Moment of Truth

Julien Mercille
Drugs and Afghanistan: the UN's Misleading Report

Rannie Amiri
Egypt's Next Unelected President?

John Ross
Legalize It!

David Michael Green
Can You Hear Us Now?

Carl Finamore
Strike One for Hotels in San Francisco

Farzana Versey
The Farce of Fatwas and Political Expediency

Missy Comley Beattie
No to Single Payer, Yes to Prayer?

Charles R. Larson
Business as Usual in India

David Yearsley
Anna Magdalena, Music and the Art of Dying

Kim Nicolini
"Paranormal Activity:" a DIY Horror Film

Poets' Basement
Three Poems by Devreaux Baker

November 5, 2009

Pam Martens
The Fire Sale of America

Vijay Prashad
The Great Heretic

Brian Gallagher
The Soldiers From Standard Oil: Harvard, ROTC and American Foreign Policy

Norman Solomon
The Next Phase in Health Care Apartheid

Nadia Hijab
The Battle for Palestinian Representation

Joseph Shansky
And the Winner in Honduras is ... the United States?

Andy Thayer
Questions and Answers From Maine

Tracy Rosenberg
Pacifica and the Barbarians Who Pay the Bills

Website of the Day
All Folked Up

November 4, 2009

Stan Cox
The Inflated Promise of Natural Gas

Andy Worthington From Gitmo to Palau: Who are the Uighurs?

Robert Weissman
The Medicare-for-All Moment

Susan Galleymore
Of Veterans and Volunteers

Ralph Nader
Hoh's Afghanistan Warning

Michael Leonardi
Italy's Secret Ships of Poison

Bitta Mistofi
Death to No One: Isolating and Taunting Iran Will Only Empower the Regime

Robert Bryce
From Lahore to Copenhagen

Martha Rosenberg
Is Your Doctor's Continuing Ed Funded by Drug Makers?

Dave Lindorff
Democrats Crash and Burn

Website of the Day
Single-Payer Backtrackers

November 3, 2009

Patrick Cockburn
The Delegitimization of Karzai

Mike Whitney
Why the Crisis Isn't Going Away

Franklin C. Spinney
Katrina and the Paralysis of Fear

Laura Carlsen
The Little Coup That Couldn't

Serge Halimi
Don't Blame the Internet

John Stanton
Social Decay in America

Sophia Weeks
A Guatemalan Lament

Dave Lindorff
Country Joe, Kenny Rogers and Obama

November 2, 2009

Steven Higgs
Autism Spikes, Toxins Suspected

Ishmael Reed
White in America: Behind the Scenes at CNN

David Macaray
UAW Members Vote Down Ford; and the Media Attacked the Union

Bouthaina Shaaban
Settler Colonialism: Return to the Middle Ages

David Michael Green
Coming to Get You

David Swanson
The Two Percent Robustness

Ellen Brown
Cutting Wall Street Out

Adam Federman
Trading the Watershed to Trash the Catskills

James McEnteer
Doppleganger Politics: Star Wars, Clone Wars

Stephen Fleischman
Foot in the Door: Capitalism and Health Care

Website of the Day
Secret California Park Giveaway

October 30 - Nov. 1, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
The Long Gaze of the State

Jeffrey St. Clair /
Joshua Frank
Facing Down the Machine: Mike Roselle Draws a Line

Carl Ginsburg
Living in the Shadow of Yankee Stadium

Mike Whitney
Obama Goes Wobbly Over More Stimulus

Joe Bageant
The Iron Cheer of Empire

Gareth Porter
Security By Warlords: the CIA's Afghan Payroll

Saul Landau
The Cuban Embargo

Anthony DiMaggio
Conspiracy, Inc.: Wild Tales From the Reactionary Right

Dave Lindorff
Happy Talk Amid the Wreckage: Stocks Up, Jobs Down

Rannie Amiri
The Spooks of Beirut

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
An Afghan Travelogue

Jayne Lyn Stahl
Who Will Reform the Health Care Reform?

Rev. William E. Alberts
God's Favorite Team (and Nation and Religion)

Alvaro Huerta
The Abominable Mr. Dobbs

Martha Rosenberg
Marketing Drugs to Psychoneurotics

Binoy Kampmark
Don't Give Us Your Wretched: Refugee Policy in OZ

Norm Kent
Not Just Zig-Zag Any More: Medical Marijuana Goes Mainstream

Charles R. Larson Roth's "The Humbling:" Nothing Like a Novel From an Old Pro

Ron Jacobs
One Man's Truth, Another Man's Lies

David Yearsley
Not Loud Enough by Half

Lorenzo Wolff
The Vulnerability of Lauryn Hill

Kim Nicolini
"Big Fan:" Football, Class and Sexuality in America

Poets' Basement
Davies, Heyen and Orloski

Website of the Weekend
Coal Country Music

October 29, 2009

Michael Neumann
Criticism of Israel: a Wonderful Hiding Place

Mike Whitney
Housing Rebound? Not So Fast

Gary Leupp
Matthew Hoh Speaks Truth to Power

Conn Hallinan
Roman Roads and Modern Emperors

Marshall Auerback
Obama's Bogus Populism: Pay Curbs and Bank Loans

Laura Flanders
Palin's Pet Doug Hoffman Has Taliban Ties

Eamonn McCann
The War Criminal Vote: Blair or Karadzic for EU President?

David Macaray
Strange Invaders: Can Ignorance and Arrogance Win Hearts and Minds?

Mark Weisbrot
When Small Countries Lead the Way

Stephen Soldz
Psychologist Complicity in Torture Challenged

Christopher Brauchli
Will the Pope Bring the Taliban Into His Flock?

Website of the Day
The USS Liberty Affair and the Problem of Truth in History

October 28, 2009

Moshe Adler
How to Reduce Unemployment, Rebuild the Middle Class and Free Ourselves From Wall Street

Dave Lindorff
America's Drug Crisis: Brought to You by the CIA

Frank Joseph Smecker
Agaisnt Prometheus: an Interview with Derrick Jensen on Science and Technology

Alexandra Early
What a "Jobless" Recovery Means for Young Workers

M. Shahid Alam
Israeli Exceptionalism

Vijay Prashad
Sahelian Blowback: What's Happening in Mali?

John Ross
Three Years Later, Brad Will is Still Dead

Franklin Lamb
A Rare Victory for Lebanon's Palestinians

Gregory Travis
The Dismal Science: Elinor Ostrom's Nobel

Susan Galleymore
Peace Cycle to Palestine

Website of the Day
Newspaper Decline, a Graphic Display

October 27, 2009

Mike Whitney
Black Tuesday and How We Got Out of It

Patrick Cockburn
Bombs Will Go Off in Baghdad, Whether the US is There or Not

Stewart J. Lawrence
Honduran Coup Myths Dispelled

Alan Farago
Power Plays in Florida: Rate Increases, Nukes and Deception

Ralph Nader
Obama: Form Letters and Business as Usual

Dave Lindorff
Pentagon Dirty Bombers: DU in America

Bouthaina Shaaban
The Danger of Towing the Line Behind Israel

Brian M. Downing Elections in Afghanistan, the Second Time Around

Iain Boal
How You Can Save Pacifica

Carl Finamore
Hotel Workers and the Law of Momentum

Jayne Lyn Stahl
Here Comes That Third Party: Palin and the Constitutionalists

Website of the Day
How Bank of America Charges for Perfect Credit

October 26, 2009

Bill Quigley /
Deborah Popowski
When Gitmo and Abu Ghraib Come Home

Paul Craig Roberts
Are You Ready for the Next Crisis?

Uri Avnery
A Tsunami Called Goldstone

Mike Whitney
Will the Dollar Remain the World's Reserve Currency in Five Years?

Michael Snedeker
The Execution of Cameron Willingham

Shamus Cooke
Obama's Dirty War on Immigrants

David Michael Green
Paranoia for Breakfast

Martha Rosenberg
Gagging Michael Pollan

Patrick Bond
Gridlock on the Way to Copenhagen

Binoy Kampmark
Heading for the Tiber

Website of the Day
Goldman Sachs Abandons Kittens

Weekend Edition
November 27 - 29, 2009

"1810! 1910! 2010!"

The Timeline for a New Mexican Revolution Comes Due

By JOHN ROSS

Mexico City

Fact: Every 100 years on the tenth year of the century, Mexico explodes in extravagant social upheaval.  In 1810, this distant neighbor nation declared its independence from the Spanish Crown, signaling monumental bloodletting - hundreds of thousands died, mostly people the color of the earth, fully 10 per cent of the census. 

In 1910, the Mexican revolution, the first massive uprising of the landless in the Americas, detonated in a geyser of blood and before it was done, a million were dead and a million more had been driven into permanent exile north of the border.

The 100-year timeline has triggered intense speculation about what's ahead for Mexico in 2010.

Whether the 100-year cycle is a measure of Mexico's political metabolism or merely an accident of numbers has scholars scurrying back to their history books.  Certainly objective conditions for insurrection are rife.  Mexico is wracked by the deepest economic contraction since the Great Depression; millions are out of work (one estimate calculates real unemployment as 40%), 72,000,000 out of 107,000,000 Mexicans live in and around the poverty line (three daily minimum wages), and income disparity is comparable to Africa.  The parties of the left,  right, and center are universally mistrusted and elections are tainted with fraud, canceling out a political solution to the ongoing crisis.

President Felipe Calderon who won high office in the fraud-tarred 2006 election is as unpopular as dictator Porfirio Diaz was a hundred years ago (Diaz himself repeatedly stole elections) and, like Diaz, he is spending billions to stage next year's Bicentennial celebration of the War of Liberation and the 100th birthday of the Mexican Revolution.  The Dictator's allocation of the nation's social budget to mark the first hundred years of Independence in 1910 trip-wired his downfall.

Yet memories of the enormous human tragedies that accompanied 1810 and 1910 passed on from one generation to the next tend to make Mexicans cautious about the "R" word and revolution in 2010 is dismissed by many radicals as mere wishful thinking.

The notion that 2010 would usher in a new revolutionary chapter in Mexico's complicated history was first advanced by the Zapatista Army of National Liberation's (EZLN) charismatic mouthpiece Subcomandante Marcos in the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle issued in June 2005.  The "Sexta" called for the writing of a new revolutionary Mexican constitution in 2010, a process to be accompanied by prolonged social struggle. 

To keep the pot boiling, the Zapatistas insisted upon the unity of all revolutionary forces and the creation of a mechanism - the Other Campaign or "La Otra" - that would develop and implement a plan of action.  Although "La Otra" was marginated by its own sectarianism and brusque polemics with the electoral left, the Zapatistas' Other Campaign continues to look towards 2010 as a revolutionary watershed.

At a meeting of "Otras" from eight states and the federal district this past March in Tampico, Tamaulipas, activists considered the prospects for renewed revolution in the coming year.  There was general consensus that 2010 constituted an historical opportunity that could not be passed up but some participants stepped back from proclaiming a new revolution.  Carlos Montemayor, the nation's top scholar of guerrilla movements, even declared the 2010 timeline to be a "trap" that the "mal gobierno" ("bad government") will capitalize on to infiltrate provocateurs into social movements and militarize the country.  Montemayor reminded the Otras and Otros that the War of Liberation and the Mexican Revolution only broke out in 1810 and 1910 and it was another decade before the killing had run its course with very mixed results for the "pueblo" ("people.")

By design or divine coincidence, Tampico is thought to be the birthplace of Zapatista spokesperson Subcomandante Marcos, born Rafael Sebastian Guillen Vicente, the son of a president of a local furniture store association.  Marcos himself did not put in an appearance at the Other Campaign conference and in fact has been missing in action throughout all of 2009 after showing his ski-masked face briefly last New Year's at the rebels' Festival of "Digna Rabia" ("Rage with Dignity") in Chiapas.  His elongated absence has led to suggestions that the pipe-chomping Zapatista Comandante is up to significant mischief.

In no other region of the country has the phantom of 2010 provoked more speculation than in Chiapas where the Zapatistas rose 16 years ago on January 1, 1994 in the very first hour of the North American Free Trade Agreement.  Governor Juan Sabines and his Secretary of Government Noe Castanon never weary of warning of "a social explosion" in the coming year.  Many like La Jornada's veteran Chiapas correspondent Hermann Bellinghausen see their dire pronouncements as paving the path for the increased criminalization of social protest that has marked the Calderon years and a pretext for further militarizing an already militarized state.

Following a wave of scare stories in the Chiapas press, this past November 20 - the 99th anniversary of the declaration of the Mexican revolution and a national holiday- 5000 Chiapas state police backed up by Mexican army troops patrolled roads throughout the Zapatista zone of influence in anticipation of renewed uprising.  None occurred.

Several recent hyper-publicized incidents provide a glimpse of the psychosis that grips Chiapas on the eve of 2010:

This September 30th, in the highland Tzotzil Indian hamlet of Yebchalum hard by Acteal where in December 1997 49 members of Las Abejas ("The Bees"), a group aligned with the EZLN, were massacred by paramilitaries trained and financed by the Mexican Army, federal agents arrested local gun seller Mariano Jimenez and recovered a small arsenal that included three AK-47s ("Cuernos de Chivo"), 17 handguns, and 47 fragmentation grenades. 

The recent release of 20 paramilitaries convicted of the 1997 killings has ratcheted up tensions in the highlands - Mexico's Supreme Court is preparing to release 30 more of the convicted killers, including four who confessed to perpetrating the massacre, due to judicial irregularities in their trials. Jimenez purportedly confessed to investigators that he was stockpiling weapons for the Abejas to defend themselves from the just-released killers.

The highly publicized "confession" was immediately denounced by the Bees, devout liberationist Catholics commited to non-violence who were created and fomented by San Cristobal de las Casas Bishop emeritus Don Samuel Ruiz.  Indeed, Jimenez's "confession" invoked a touch of déjà vu - back in 1994, Bishop Ruiz was the government's favorite villain, condemned as "Comandante Sammy", the real face behind the Zapatistas' ski-masks.

A second incident reflecting a reinvigorated media assault on the San Cristobal diocese which is now under new management (Don Samuel's successor Felipe Arizmendi is much more of a moderate) unfolded October 13th when federal troops raided a ranch near Frontera Comalapa on the Guatemalan border and confiscated 40 long guns, 300 grenades, and what the Federal Prosecutor's Office (PGR) described as a "tank."  Three men taken into custody were pictured as "guerrilleros" and claimed that they had been trained by one "Comandante Uerto" of the "Kaibiles", a dread unit of the Guatemalan Army that functions as a death squad - "Comandante Uerto", the suspected "guerilleros" revealed, had been recommended to them by "a catechist in the San Cristobal diocese" (sic.) 

Reports in the Chiapas press, one of the most venal and for-sale in the country, suggested that the three were members of either the OCEZ (Emiliano Zapata Campesinos Organization) or the OPEZ (Emiliano Zapata Proletarian Organization) depending on which mendacious journalistic vision the reader swallows. 

Chiapas daily newspapers like Cuarto Poder and other scandal sheets finger Diocesan priest Juan Hurtado Lopez in Altamirano in the Zapatista zone of influence, for calling for armed revolt in 2010 from his pulpit, an unfounded allegation that has been taken up by Governor Sabines.  Other priests and catechists have allegedly encouraged takeovers of public buildings and attacks on banks.  Cuarto Poder accuses the priest of Nueva Galicia of preaching revolution and reports that local merchants "are scared" that their stores will be sacked.  Ricardo Lagunes, a lawyer for the Diocesan Fray Bartolome de las Casas Human Rights Center founded by Bishop Ruiz was beaten by thugs in Jotola down in the hot lands, September 18th.

Adding fuel to this combustible ambiance was the September 29th arrest of veteran social activist Juan Manuel Hernandez, universally known as "Chema", a founder of the OCEZ and the House of the People ("Casa del Pueblo") in the central valleys around Venustiano Carranza.  Chema, a longtime lightning rod for that community's recovery of 14,000 hectares from local ranchers, is a fiery indigenous leader whose political leanings are said to tilt more to the Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR) than to the EZLN.  Cuarto Poder insinuates that Hernandez was plotting revolution in 2010 but subsequent Chiapas state police arrests of OCEZ militants on guns and drugs charges failed to turn up any guns or drugs. 

Nonetheless, officials accuse Chema and his associates of running a criminal enterprise behind the smoke screen of the OCEZ.  Repeatedly imprisoned during land struggles in Chiapas, Hernandez was flown out of state to a maximum security federal prison in the north of Mexico "for his own protection" (sic.) After months behind bars, the charges were dismissed and Chema was finally released November 20th.

Despite the hullabaloo in the local "prensa vendida", the EZLN has remained notoriously closemouthed about what it has up its sleeve in 2010.  No communiqués have been forthcoming from the missing Marcos and the Zapatista leadership group, the Clandestine Indigenous Revolutionary Committee (CCRI) has been silent.  So are the Juntas de Buen Gobierno or Good Government Commissions that have become civil Zapatismo's voice in recent seasons.  Even when the beleaguered Mexican Electricity Workers Union (SME) that once installed turbines and brought light to EZLN villages in the Lacandon jungle appealed for solidarity in its life and death struggle with the Calderon government, the Zapatistas remained mum. 

Enmeshed in bitter conflicts with other campesino groups over corn land the rebels recovered from ranchers after their January 1st 1994 uprising, the EZLN is under pressure on several fronts.  Governor Sabines's plans to build a super highway that will divide up Zapatista autonomous villages has also increased their vulnerability and the rebels may well consider that a second edition of 1994 in 2010 would be political suicide.  Still, Subcomandante Marcos has often characterized the Indians' impossible rebellion 16 years ago as "an act of suicide."

Given the odds, it is highly improbable that Chiapas will be the stage set for insurrection in 2010.  A more likely theater for revolution would be Oaxaca and Guerrero, two contiguous, desperately poor and highly indigenous states with rich histories of guerrilla uprisings.  The War of Liberation, whose bicentennial will be commemorated in 2010, blossomed in this hothouse geography and as recently as this spring, confrontations between the military and unidentified guerrilleros were reported in the Guerrero sierra where 40 years ago Lucio Cabanas and his Party of the Poor rose against the mal gobierno. 

The most prominent guerrilla formations in the region are the Popular Revolutionary Army which made its debut in 1996 with a series of murderous attacks on the military along Guerrero's Costa Grande and whose cadre are thought to be drawn from Cabanas's descendents (the EPR is now based in Oaxaca) and the ERPI or the Revolutionary Army of the Insurgent People, active in the Sierra and Costa Chica regions of Guerrero. Long incarcerated (ten years) ERPI founders Jacobo Silva and Gloria Arenas were recently released from prison and pledged allegiance to non-violent social struggle, aligning themselves with the Zapatistas' Other Campaign. 

The most active public face of the ERPI, "Comandante Ramiro" (Omar Guerrero Solis), was reportedly slain November 4 in the sierra of Guerrero during a dispute between ERPI factions and buried in a clandestine grave.  

Other actors in the mix include the Armed Forces of Popular Revolution (FARP), the Villista Army of the Revolutionary People (EVRP), the December 2nd Revolutionary Organization (OR-2nd), The Viva Villa Collective (CVV), the Justice Commando-June 28th (CJ-28), the Democratic Revolutionary Tendency (TDR), and the Triple Guerrilla National Indigenous Alliance (TAGIN.)

All of these groups have claimed at least one armed attack and their range extends to Veracruz, Puebla, Morelos, Mexico state, and the Federal District.  While most of these "focos" express a Marxist-Leninist orientation, a handful of anarchist cells take credit for at least ten bombings at Mexico City banks and auto showrooms in September - one of the cells celebrated the name of Praxides G. Guerrero, the first anarchist to fall in the Mexican Revolution.                    

Another region  where uprising could be on the agenda in 2010 is the north of Mexico.  The 1910 revolution, in fact, germinated in this mineral rich region of deserts and rugged mountains.  The "barbarians of the north" - Pancho Villa, Pascual Orozco, Venustiano Carranza, and Alvaro Obregon among others - advanced on the center of the country squaring off against each other as much as they waged war against Diaz and his successor Huerta, and taking turns seizing power. 

In the 1960s and '70s, urban guerrilla bands thrived in northern cities like Monterrey and Torreon, heisting banks and kidnapping industrialists.  Indeed, the roots of the EZLN are firmly planted in those two northern cities. The Zapatista Army of National Liberation grew out of the Monterrey-based Forces of National Liberation (FLN) whose original strategy contemplated the formation of the Zapatista Army in the south and the Villista Army of National Liberation in Chihuahua but the northern branch was not yet consolidated in 1994 when Chiapas grew ripe for rebellion.

The seven northern border states are the bloodiest battlefields in Felipe Calderon's ill-conceived war on Mexican-Colombian drug cartels and narco-commando attacks often resemble guerrilla actions.  The coalescence of radical forces and the drug gangs could create a climate propitious for revolutionary violence in 2010. 

Mexico's 1910 revolution was not confined to any one region.  Simultaneous rebellions sprouted up all over the landscape, the most celebrated of which was Emiliano Zapata's Liberating Army of the Southern Revolution based in tiny Morelos state just outside of Mexico City.  Similarly, one scenario for 2010 proposes coordinated risings in the cities and countryside throughout Mexico.   Does the Mexican left have the numbers and organization to pull off simultaneous insurrection?

Although Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the most popular left politician in the land, is wedded to the electoral option, his millions of followers all over the country are less so inclined and massive civil disobedience and even armed struggle against the "mal gobierno" could be on the horizon given economic conditions and the level of social frustration.

One subplot for 2010 projects indigenous rebels seizing sacred sites like Palenque and Teotihuacan this January 1st, the 16th anniversary of the Zapatista rebellion in Chiapas.  

Revolutionaries in 2010 will have weapons their forbearers in 1810 and 1910 who fought hand to hand on central Mexican battlefields like Celaya and Las Cruces never dreamed of.  The Internet is a great facilitator of logistics that revolutionizes revolution in the new millennium.  Obeying this logic, the Zapatistas have become computer savvy both as a tool for internal communication and for broadcasting their word to the outside world.

Mastery of the cybernetic arts could unlock a Pandora's box of sabotage, allowing hackers to access strategic infrastructure, shutting down electro-magnetic communications, paralyzing airports, and threatening the petroleum flow, Mexico's economic lifeblood.

So is a new revolution on Mexico's plate in 2010?  The Calderon government seems to be considering the possibility, beefing up its intelligence and armed response capabilities while distributing billions of pesos in "assistencial" aid like the Opportunities program to 26,000,000 Mexicans living in extreme poverty in a ploy to tamp down outbursts of revolutionary violence from "los de abajo" ("those at the bottom.") 

The September-October issue of El Insurgente, the EPR's theoretical journal, reminds readers that revolutions are a "coyuntura" (coming-together) of objective conditions such as economic collapse, repression, natural disaster, and the hunger of the people, and subjective forces - i.e. the revolutionaries themselves.  Revolutions only happen when revolutionary forces are ready to carry them out.  The EPR's conclusion: although objective conditions in 2010 are overripe for revolutionary upheaval, the objective forces lack cohesion and consolidation.  In other words, don’t count on a new Mexican Revolution in 2010.    

John Ross's El Monstruo - Dread & Redemption in Mexico City is now available at your local independent bookseller. Ross is plotting a monster book tour in 2010 - readers should direct possible venues to johnross@igc.org  

Ross will present "El Monstruo" this Monday November 30th at the University of California's Center for Latino Studies Research at 2547 Channing Way in Berkeley at 12 Noon.

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