Guardian UK: Mexico is in free fall

[marmar]

Mexico is in free fall
With cartels taking over cities and killing all anti-drug officials, the country is crying out for help – but is unlikely to get it from the US

David Rieff
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 25 February 2009 22.00 GMT


Shortly before the US elections last November, then vice-presidential candidate Joe Biden was widely criticised for predicting that an Obama administration would almost certainly be tested by what he called a "generated" international crisis, in much the way that the Soviet Union "tested" John F Kennedy shortly after he assumed office. Biden did not point to a specific region of the world, but mentioned the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent and Russia as the likeliest sources of trouble for the new president.

Impolitic or not, Biden's anxieties seem to have informed several of the administration's early foreign policy decisions. These include his own extension of an olive branch to Russia at the recent Munich security conference, and Barack Obama's appointment of Richard Holbrooke as special envoy for Pakistan and Afghanistan – and of George Mitchell to a similar post for Israel-Palestine.

But, as pressing as the Middle East, south Asia, and Russia (as well as Iran and North Korea) are, another crisis far closer to home could create as much peril as a nuclear-armed Iran, an aggressively resurgent Russia, or even an Islamist-dominated Pakistan.

That crisis is located in Mexico, which is in free fall, its state institutions under threat as they have not been since at least the Cristero uprising of the late 1920s and possibly since the Mexican revolution of 1910. While the Obama administration is obviously aware of what is happening south of the Rio Grande, the threat simply does not command the attention that its gravity requires. ............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/25/mexico-drugs-trade

[Peace Patriot]

1. There would be no threat if Lopez-Obrado had been elected.

He almost was. He 'lost' by only 0.05%, in an election which many hold in suspicion, as a rightwing steal for corpo/fascist Felipe Calderon, with help from the Bushwhacks (in the midnight electronic tally), with the deal probably being that Calderon would privatize Mexico's constitutionally protected oil resource.

Calderon has not been able to keep up his end of the deal (if that's what it was). There is great resistance to privatizing the oil in Mexico. That is one reason for the unrest. Another, of course, is vast "neo-liberal"-induced poverty. And a third is the Bushwhack-funded, corrupt, failed, murderous "war on drugs."

If Lopez-Obrador had been allowed to take power--as probably should have happened--Mexico would be on its way to a more socialist government, such as we are seeing with the new leftist leadership in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina, Nicaragua and many other countries. The needs of the poor would be a priority. The government and the society would be moving in a positive direction. And even with great poverty still existing, people would feel hope and energy.

The same might be said for us. We lost 8 years to stolen elections. Now we have to face a difficult future with a trillion dollar deficit, and all our of institutions, and infrastructure, falling apart.

Venezuela and the other countries where democracy worked, and leftist governments were elected, will land on their feet. Venezuela, for instance, has $40 billion in international cash reserves, as a cushion against the Bushwhack Financial 9/11--due to good management by the Chavez government. And they help their neighbors.

Recently, when the Stanford bank in Venezuela began to fail, the Chavez government immediately seized it, to protect its customers. It really makes a difference, having a leader who would say, with FDR, "Organized money hates me--and I welcome their hatred!" A government that is on the side of the people--not on the side of the wealthy and multinational corporations. Obama is trying to be that here--for the people--but he has many restrictions on him (including the 'TRADE SECRET' voting machines). He may be able to bold enough to put things right.

In Mexico, Lopez-Obrador would have been. But absent that reform--that was so desperately needed--it's hard to tell what will happen.

[Peace Patriot]

2. This writer stresses the drug cartel war in Mexico, but doesn't seem to realize

how much the Bushwhack "war on drugs" did to promulgate the drug trade, and especially the weapons trafficking and violence associated with it. END the "war on drugs," and the drug cartels will go away.

[MasonJar]

3. Just like in 2000 and 2004 in USA, the last election in Mexico was stolen

probably with Bush's assistance.

[tama]

4. Sucked dry by US consumers and corporations

The megafield Cantarell has peaked and is in steep decline, in just few years Mexico will cease to be oil exporting country and state will go bankrupt, become a "failed state". Even worse, campesinos driven from their land by "development" and US subsidized agrobuziness into proletariat - not good, considering the possibility of famine.