Mexican police gas leftist lawmakers, protesters

[BrokenBeyondRepair]

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyid=2006-08-14T232233Z_01_N28358335_RTRUKOC_0_US-MEXICO-ELECTION.xml&src=rss

[Greeby]

1. Shame RATM ain't around when you need them

[Drum]

3. True dat!

[saigon68]

5. Too bad the population is disarmed

kind of like what schumer dino(NY) is up to.

[Joanne98]

2. Sounds like a facsist attack to me.

By Oliver Ellrodt

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexican riot police used tear gas and clubs to drive back leftist legislators and supporters protesting outside Congress on Monday in the first violent clash over a fiercely contested presidential election.

Several lawmakers from the left-wing party whose presidential candidate narrowly lost the July 2 election were slightly injured when police swept through their protest camp.

Demonstrators threw rocks back at the federal police lines. It was the first time the government has deployed police to break up protests that began days after the election and have until now been peaceful.


"They hit us all, they fired gas at us. I still haven't recovered from the tear gas," Elias Moreno, a senator of the Party of the Democratic Revolution, or PRD.

Supporters of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who claims the election was stolen by his conservative rival Felipe Calderon, have turned the center of Mexico City into a sea of tents and extended their protests to Congress on Monday.

Dozens of protesters put up tents on one side of the imposing concrete building. They are trying to surround Congress to stop President Vicente Fox from delivering his annual state of the nation speech there on September 1.

[Judi Lynn]

4. Now that the state has opened that door, it won't be closing any time soon

Looks as if they are announcing there's going to be a bloodbath if everyone doesn't give up and run away, and let the right-wing thieves steal this one, too.

Here's an article on the findings so far:

Mexico’s Partial Vote Recount Confirms Massive and Systematic Election Fraud
With Less than 9 Percent of Precincts Recounted, More than 126,000 Votes Are Found to Have Been Disappeared or Illegally Fabricated

~snip~
• In 3,074 precincts (29 percent of those recounted), 45,890 illegal votes, above the number of voters who cast ballots in each polling place, were found stuffed inside the ballot boxes (an average of 15 for each of these precincts, primarily in strongholds of the National Action Party, known as the PAN, of President Vicente Fox and his candidate, Felipe Calderón).
  
• In 4,368 precincts (41 percent of those recounted), 80,392 ballots of citizens who did vote are missing (an average of 18 votes in each of these precincts).
  
• , these 7,442 precincts contain about 70 percent of the ballots recounted. The total amount of ballots either stolen or forged adds up to 126,282 votes altered.
  
• If the recount results of these 10,679 precincts (8.2 percent of the nation’s 130,000 polling places) are projected nationwide, it would mean that more than 1.5 million votes were either stolen or stuffed in an election that the first official count claimed was won by Calderon by only 243,000 votes.
  
• Among the findings of this very limited partial recount are that in 3,079 precincts where the PAN party is strong and where, in many cases, the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) of candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador did not count with election night poll watchers, one or more of three things occurred: Either the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE, in its Spanish initials) illegally provided more ballots than there are voters in those precincts, or the PAN party stole those extra ballots, or ballots were forged.

“Taqueo and Saqueo”

These preliminary recounts demonstrate mainly two kinds of fraud: “taqueo,” or the stuffing of ballot boxes with false votes as if putting extra beans inside a taco, and “saqueo,” or “looting,” that is, the disappearance of legitimate ballots cast.
(snip/...)

http://www.narconews.com/Issue42/article2010.html

[gorbal]

7. He is trying hard for some reason, eh?

There is another article in a Cuban newspaper-

http://www.plenglish.com/article.asp?ID=%7B9E51672C-0102-4E47-8963-D4C29977B816%7D&language=EN
I don't know how truthful these newspapers are, but it explains the sudden crackdown.

Why is the regular news ignoring this?

[Judi Lynn]

14. There has to be a reason for the news blackout. We all have known

there's something going on there, but it's IMPOSSIBLE finding a word about it in any of our conventional corporate media sources.

That should tell one something.

If things were above board, they wouldn't be afraid to let us all in on the details. We're getting very familiar with the expectation we're being deliberately ignored by now. This isn't right. Clean governments don't hide the truth from their citizens.

[Say_What]

17. "15,000 citizens of Oaxaca beat back and chased 3,000 riot cops.."

Man, these people have heart!! US sheeple could learn from this.

From the article:

<clips>
...Presence of Malice

...Mexico’s television duopoly – Televisa and TV Azteca – have declined to report the irregularities that have surfaced as a result of the partial recount. The same goes for much – but not all – of the corporate media. The facts have instead broken the media blockade via Internet and organization, as well as the detailed reporting of the daily La Jornada in Mexico City, the daily Por Esto! in Yucatán (two of the nation’s four largest newspapers) and some other media. Add to this mediatic schizophrenia the factor that those who support Calderón and insist the election was clean are passive, lacking conviction, whereas those millions who believe an electoral fraud was committed are active, and in the streets, and it is evident that just as the Mexican State has lost legitimacy, the corporate (especially television) media have lost credibility and power to spin public opinion.

This morning, part of the protest encampment in downtown Mexico City, along Madero Street, was dismantled by its participants and thousands moved, en masse, to the entrance to the halls of the Federal Congress. Riot police blocked them from reaching the doors. There was some pushing and shoving, as the accompanying photos show, but demonstrators – who outnumbered police by a factor of thousands – by and large remained peaceful, still holding out a cubic-centimeter of hope that the Trife electoral tribunal will do the right thing and fix the fraud. But that patience is as thin as a razor, and as the clock counts down to the decision that the Trife must make by September 6, the electoral court and its seven judges now have the facts in hand, the evidence of systematic fraud that changed the results, which the partial recount has furnished.

The anti-fraud protestors have maintained a peaceful round-the-clock vigil outside the halls of Congress in the Mexico City neighborhood of San Lazaro for various weeks, in which many of the current senators and congress members from the PRD party have participated. At 2:15 this afternoon, elements of the Federal Preventive Police (PFP, in its Spanish initials, the same agency that invaded San Salvador Atenco in May) attacked the vigil encampment, according to this wire report from La Jornada. (The report states that six congressmen and women were wounded in the attack; El Universal reports the number of legislators wounded by police at 11.) When police forces attack and prevent duly elected senators and congress members from entering their own governing hall, the term for that is coup d’etat. It is an invitation to social revolution. The events of recent weeks and months in Mexico suggest that Vicente Fox and his attack troops would be wrong to presume that there are enough police in the country to hold back the turn of history that he is provoking from above.

Today marks two months since June 14, when 15,000 citizens of Oaxaca beat back and chased 3,000 riot cops from that city’s historic center, revealing the “new math” of Mexican protest movements. They have since taken the state TV station and more than 30 city halls, as well as having shut down the state government in their demand that repressive Governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz resign. Yet their numbers are a fraction of the masses that, in Mexico City and elsewhere, are resisting the electoral fraud. And added to the post-electoral conflict, more related to that in Oaxaca, is the unsettled account of 30 political prisoners arrested May 3 and 4 in San Salvador Atenco, the pending arrival there of indigenous comandantes from the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN, in its Spanish initials), and the quiet organizing being done from Mexico City and in other states by its Subcomandante Marcos and thousands of organizations and adherents to the Zapatista Other Campaign, which, outside the glare of the media and the electoral spectacle, organizes toward a national rebellion more ambitious than saving the vote of a single election, but, rather, seeking to topple an economic system. The Trife, if it imposes the fraud, will accelerate the Zapatista calendar as perhaps the greatest consequence.

[Acadia Blue]

8. Mexico has been Fascist for a very long long time. The rich and

and corporations own EVERYTHING and the workers and peasants are really seriously oppressed. Its the situation Karl Marx described. And this is what the Bush types want for the USA. They really want us to be just like Mexico where everyone is for sale because its so difficult to even earn enough money to buy food and have even the most pathetic shelter. You bet the pigs stole the election.

[redqueen]

11. Excellent post - dead on.

We can't let them do that here.

If they try that crap again, we absolutely must protest en masse. We can't let them get away with another stolen election.

[Vidar]

6. Shit!

[David__77]

9. The left better prepare for hard struggle.

They need the ability to defend themselves against the federal police. They should welcome the Zapatista movement and other patriotic forces to take part in a democratic movement.

[gorbal]

10. Interesting Countercurrent Article

The fraud uncovered so far showed the preliminary vote totals were manipulated to allow PAN candidate Felipe Calderon to be the winner. In addition, three million votes were never counted at first and only in hindsight were 2.5 million of them added to the totals. Further, 900,000 supposedly void, blank and annulled ballots were declared null, discarded and never included in the official totals; 700,000 additional votes disappeared from missing precincts; thousands of voters were denied their franchise in strong Obrador precincts; there was evidence of ballot stuffing; and in about one-third of the polling stations only winning party PAN observers were present allowing ample opportunity for vote manipulation as has happened routinely in a country known for its history of electoral unfairness and where political dirty tricks and hardball tactics may have been invented. It takes no stretch to know it was no different this time, and Lopez Obrador now demands this injustice be addressed and corrected.

http://www.countercurrents.org/mex-lendman150806.htm

I'm not hearing enough of what the electoral board have to say. Could people translate some articles we might not have read and post them on here?

[CollegeDUer]

12. They have the support of a politician who may've won the election

They are not alone and will continue to fight!

[gorbal]

13. More interesting links

Keep checking the Daily Kos daily roundup on this issue

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/8/15/112822/282

Also-Can someone translate these news broadcasts from youtube?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuho8zSw-2A

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfM3RA7OTxQ

And here is a great montage of images that really takes you into the protest.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zdin8aNqQyk

:)

[Judi Lynn]

15. New: Leftist protesters refuse to move encampments in Mexico City

POSTED AT 9:36 PM EDT ON 15/08/06

Leftist protesters refuse to move encampments in Mexico City
IOAN GRILLO

Associated Press

MEXICO CITY — Supporters of leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador pledged Tuesday to place conservative Felipe Calderon “under siege” if he is declared the winner of the disputed presidential elections.

Supporters of Mr. Calderon, who holds a slight advantage in official vote counts on the July 2 race, meanwhile accused Mr. Lopez Obrador of wanting to make blood flow in the conflict.

The heightened rhetoric came one day after the first violent incident in a month of protests police saw protesters clash with police outside the Congress building in Mexico City; the leftists plan another march on Congress on Sept. 1, and also plan to continue blockading some streets in Mexico City through Sept. 16, the date of the traditional Independence Day parade.

“He will be a president under siege ... he will not be able to operate outside his office,” Gerardo Fernandez, spokesman for Mr. Lopez Obrador's Democratic Revolution Party, said of Mr. Calderon.
(snip/...)

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060815.wmexiconew0815/BNStory/International/home

[Judi Lynn]

16. Outcry over Mexican elections falling on deaf ears

Outcry over Mexican elections falling on deaf ears
Mark Almond - The Guardian
Tuesday 15th August, 2006

A couple of years ago television, radio and print media in the west just couldn't get enough of 'people power'.

In quick succession, from Georgia's rose revolution in November 2003, via Ukraine's orange revolution a year later, to the tulip revolution in Kyrgyzstan and the cedar revolution in Lebanon, 24-hour news channels kept us up to date with democracy on a roll.

Triggered by allegations of election fraud, the dominoes toppled. The US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, was happy with the trend: 'They're doing it in many different corners of the world, places as varied as Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan and, on the other hand, Lebanon ... And so this is a hopeful time.'

But when a million Mexicans try to jump on the people-power bandwagon, crying foul about the July 2 presidential elections, when protesters stage a vigil in the centre of the capital that continues to this day, they meet a deafening silence in the global media. Despite Mexico's long tradition of electoral fraud and polls suggesting that Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador - a critic of the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) - was ahead, the media accepted the wafer-thin majority gained by the ruling party nominee, Harvard graduate Felipe Calderon.
(snip/...)

http://story.irishsun.com/p.x/ct/9/id/5cfcd1f178d45eba/cid/45d771c7290844e9/

[gorbal]

19. Great article, thanks:)

I remember how much press the Orange revolution received. Hours of in-depth GLOWING press that even eclipsed our own election issues in importance. Don't they understand why people don't trust them anymore? I kept screaming at the television "What about our stolen elections." Now I hardly hear a whisper about the millions in Mexico, some who even left women and children at home in case they have to "raise things up a level".

Here is todays Daily KOS Mexico roundup-

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/8/16/103051/917

[Say_What]

18. Random Readings: Documenting a media revolution

From Mexico's El Universal:

<clips>

... The shift in journalistic culture from, say, 1986 to 2006 is so pronounced that the inglorious past tends to fade from view, like a bad memory repressed. Today’s journalists go about their business as though the freedom to do so was always there, which is probably a good thing. Besides, a look around press conferences and newsrooms reveals that a good percentage of them came of age after the Great Transition was well under way. We are truly in a new media age.

“Newsrooms in Conflict” tells how we got from there to here. It reminds us that we’re still in the process of arriving, as the title indicates. It also jars casual (i.e. foreign) followers of the Mexican media scene out of some comfortable presumptions about the emergence of press freedom.

The too-pat summary is that a perfect dictatorship had imposed harsh censorship laws that shackled the press until free-market reforms liberated it. In truth, the ruling party could claim with a straight face that there was no official censorship and that in fact Mexican law guaranteed freedom of the press.

The docile nature of the press was part of a complicated and tacit cooperative arrangement between media owners and the ruling party that benefited both sides — though not, of course, the public. It was, as a mafia don might put it with the slightest of shrugs, just the way it’s done.

http://www2.eluniversal.com.mx/pls/impreso/noticia.html?id_nota=33822&tabla=articulos