Many Mexicans see oil as last frontier against US invasion

[Omaha Steve]

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iujxE9-S8UyoVLkED4UkAXmtbk7wD908FDC80

By JULIE WATSON – 2 days ago

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Even with oil prices at record highs, Mexico's state-run oil company is managing to lose money. But a presidential plan to fix Petroleos Mexicanos by inviting foreign help is stirring deep-seated emotions over sovereignty — and causing a paralysis that could doom America's third-largest oil supplier.

Leftist legislators have padlocked the doors of Congress, camping out in the chambers for two weeks in protest. Opponents on the right have attacked them in a national TV ad, invoking images of Adolf Hitler.

Everyone in Mexico — from top leaders to housewives — seems to be swept up in the fervor.

While President Felipe Calderon's administration calls the congressional lockdown an international embarrassment, Fernanda de Jesus Arriola gives up her afternoon soaps and takes her young children to march in Mexico City.

"Calderon is a right-winger who is going to take away our way of life," said Arriola, 35, pulling her 6-year-old daughter's pink Barbie suitcase as her family walked with hundreds of protesters. "It's the same as strangling us because foreign oil companies are exploiters who will enslave us."

Pemex is rapidly running out of the oil that provides more than one-third of Mexico's federal budget. Finding more will require drilling thousands of feet below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico — an exceedingly difficult challenge. Nearly everyone agrees that Pemex lacks the capacity to accomplish this without serious reforms.

FULL story at link.

[Kali]

1. $2.56/gallon ten days ago in Mexico

maybe they need to jack the price a bit to cover costs

[murray hill farm]

2. That is probably for a liter, not gallon.

makes a big diff when you adjust for the difference.

[Kali]

3. no it was something like 7.10 pesos per liter

I came home and calculated it.

Drove a LOADED 15 passenger van around Chihuahua for almost 2 weeks - was kind of surprised at the rather low gas bills! Always around 35 to 50 to fill it - at home it's more like 70 to over 100.

[Peace Patriot]

4. AP = Associated Pukes. Beware! Look for the hidden "ap" in the url.

They do things like repeat puke imagery portraying leftists as "Hitler," and search hundreds of thousands of protesters for one who complains about foreign oil companies while "pulling her 6-year-old daughter's pink Barbie suitcase."

Oh, they are bad dudes. Learn to spot the Bush/CIA psyops, and read between the lines. I've been monitoring them for some time on the South American left. Mindboggling pukism.

[Peace Patriot]

5. Upshot of the article is that the half of Mexico who support Lopez Obrador--

with a lockdown of Congress and tens of thousands filling the streets with protests--are unrealistic, somewhat crazed nationalists who are obstructing progress--progress being multinational global corporate predators showing dumb Mexicans how things are done. They quote ordinary people on the Lopez Obrador side and a Harvard "expert" and anonymous "analysts" on the multinational side. And here's a fine pukism:

"Mexico's Cantarell oil field — discovered in 1976 and one of the world's largest — is drying up. Pemex reported a 2007 net loss of US$1.48 billion (euro98 billion) this week, as its revenues are drained to fund schools, hospitals and public works." --AP (emphasis added)

"Drained"! "DRAINED"! All those draggy schools and hospitals DRAINING profits that could be giving global predator CEOs hundreds of millions in bonuses for laying off workers. Society is a DRAIN on profits!

Bush has gone to great lengths in South America to regain global corporate predator control of the Andes oil fields, including, recently, trying to start a war between Colombia and Ecuador/Venezuela, and supporting--and no doubt funding, arming and organizing--white separatists in Bolivia who want to split the gas/oil rich rural provinces off from the central government of Evo Morales--the first indigenous president of Bolivia--to deny benefit of those resources to the poor majority. The Bush Junta has spent $5.5 BILLION (our tax dollars) in military aid to Colombia, where they chainsaw union leaders and throw their body parts into mass graves, in order to retain this U.S.-friendly fascist enclave in the midst of a tidal wave of democracy and social justice that has swept leftists into power throughout the southern hemisphere, most recently, last Sunday, in Paraguay (of all places!), and in Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Chile, Nicaragua and Guatemala.

In many of these leftist democracies, the governments are "DRAINING" their revenues from resource extraction to bootstrap the poor majority--the best possible use of the resources. In Venezuela, for instance, which nationalized its oil long before the Chavez government, prior governments required only 10% of the revenues for Venezuela, and 90% to multinationals. The Chavez government has changed that formula to 60/40 in favor of Venezuela and its people ("schools, hospitals, public works")--a deal that Norway's Statoil, France's Total, British BP and even Chevron agreed to. (Only Exxon Mobil balked, and tried to strongarm Venezuela by seeking to freeze $12 billion in Venezuela's assets--an effort that Exxon Mobil just lost, in a London court.) Exploited people need strong, smart leftist leadership to fight these enormous battles with the global predators who seek to impoverish and enslave us all. And that's who they've elected, in leaders like Chavez, Rafael Correa in Ecuador, Evo Morales in Bolivia, and Cristina Fernandez in Argentina and others.

This is what Mexico needs--something the Associated Pukes will never tell you. They need STRONG, SMART LEFTIST leadership to NEGOTIATE with multinationals--not Bush-ass-kissing wimps like Calderon. Maybe Mexico does need multinational technology, but ON WHAT TERMS? That is the question. Calderon will just give it all away--their rights to their own resources, their revenues, their future--like rightwing governments in Venezuela and other countries did for decades and centuries. Make a few people rich and fuck the poor majority.

Notice the AP framing. Notice the black-holes in what they choose to report. Don't be sucked in to the Bushite/global corporate predator point of view.