Thursday, October 05, 2006
Mexico, October 5
(Image encountered on Sendero del Peje)
It turns out that in Tabasco, 55% admire Lopez Obrador vs. 26% for FeCal. Of the 34% of people who are taking into consideration his behavior in the post-electoral conflict, 54% would have voted for him. This is one more suggestion that vote corruption occurred.
The situation in Oaxaca remains very tense. The government is now claiming that the overflights are for meteorological studies. Better liars, please.
The Indians have refused to join negotiations, apparently because they feel they are underrepresented and that the talks don't deal with rural and indigenous problems. Since they represent a large part of the population that wants Ruiz Ortiz out as governor, the talks as they are won't resolve much.
The APPO and the teachers endangered the cohesiveness of the anti-URO campaign by staying, but walked out later. Lead government negotiator Carlos Abascal punted the issue over to the Senate. But El Universal had a recent headline saying that the APPO and teachers are back at the table.
From Nancy Davies of NarcoNews, we see that the two strands of disaffection-- rural/indigenous poverty issues and taxation without representation-- are coming together.
In the most recent development, leaders of opposition leader Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s national movement pledged to mobilize their followers around the issue and to go to Oaxaca as “human shields” in the event of a military intervention.
The talks with Abascal increasingly look like cover to let the government pretend that it's talking while it's actually building up for a reconquista. Davies says:
Over the weekend, three trailers arrived in Bahias de Huatulco, each one carrying three amphibious tanks which were placed in the naval base. According to La Jornada, this makes the biggest military operation the nation has seen since the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas in 1994.
Another concentration of forces on the coast arrived by ship to Salina Cruz, where troops disembarked by sea, air and land. Usually, according to reports, the Army keeps 10,000 troops in the state, and there are 4,000 police from the different state units. Now, La Jornada calculates there are as many as 20,000 military and police. The state’s population is about three and a half million.
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Stupid headline for the day from CNN radio news, Gary Baumgarten: Demonstrators againstpresident Bush in New York. WHY?
He left it to a mildly incoherent elderly demonstrator to tell him that Bush has a repealed a right dating back the better part of a thousand years, habeas corpus.
More blogs about politics.
