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Today's Stories October 25, 2006 Jonathan Cook
October 24, 2006 John Walsh M. Shahid Alam Dr. Trudy Bond Michael Phillips Dave Lindorff David Phinney Laura Carlsen Pierre Tristam Marguerite
Rose Jimenez Website of
the Day
October 23, 2006 Saree Makdisi Joshua Frank Fred Gardner Ralph Nader Ron Jacobs Norman Solomon Richard Manning Neil Kitson William MacDougall Gilad Atzmon Werther Website of
the Day
October 20 / 22, 2006 Alexander Cockburn Gary Leupp Brian Cloughley Dave Zirin William Blum Christopher
Brauchli Winslow Wheeler Michael Donnelly Fred Gardner Susie Day Lucinda Marshall Fred Wilcox Alan Maass Lee Sustar Ariadna Theokopoulos Missy Beattie CP News Wire CP News Services Poets' Basement Website of
the Weekend
October 19, 2006 Elaine Cassel Col. Dan Smith Manuel Garcia, Jr. Josh Gryniewicz Amira Hass Eric Holt-Gimenez Jesse Hagopian Sam Husseini John Weisheit CP News Service Website of
the Day Art Gallery
of the Day
October 18, 2006 Joshua Frank Dr. Curran
Warf, MD Saul Landau Tom Barry Bruce Jackson Dave Lindorff Frederico Fuentes Michael Simmons Daryll E. Ray Kate Doyle Website of
the Day
Michael Neumann Manuel Garcia,
Jr. Stephen S.
Pearcy Sharon Smith Al Krebs David Underhill Daniel Wolff James Brooks Website of the Day
October 16, 2006 Gary Leupp Patrick Cockburn David Wilson Robert Fisk Robert Jensen Ingmar Lee
/ Krista Roessingh Mike Whitney Jake Whitney Sanho Tree Website of
the Day
Uri Avnery John Walsh Jean Bricmont Jennifer Van Bergen Ralph Nader Floyd Rudmin Mark Weisbrot Laura Carlsen Hani Shukrallah Dr. Susan Block John Chuckman Lucinda Marshall Don Monkerud Missy Comley
Beattie Ron Jacobs Website of
the Weekend
October 13, 2006 Jorge Mariscal Stephen Philion John Blair Col. Dan Smith Alastair Crooke / Mark Perry Stephen Fleischman Charles Perroud Anne E. Brodsky Website of the Day
October 12, 2006 Jonathan Cook Norman Solomon M. Shahid Alam Paul Craig
Roberts Meredith Schafer / Chris Kutalik Carl Gelderloos Alastair Crooke / Mark Perry Charles Sullivan William S. Lind CP News Service Website of
the Day
October 11, 2006 John Feffer Dave Lindorff Jackson Katz April Howard / Ben Dangl Michael Carmichael Ken Couesbouc Gregory Afghani Alexander Cockburn Website of
the Day
October 10, 2006 Paul Craig
Roberts Robert Robideau Joshua Frank Dave Lindorff Dave Zirin Heather Gray James Knotwell Missy Beattie Mike Whitney David Rosen Website of the Day
Robert Fisk Norman Solomon Ron Jacobs Gideon Levy Walter Brasch Mickey Z. John Holt Lucinda Marshall Saul Landau Website of the Day
October 7 /
8, 2006 Alexander Cockburn Peter Kwong Ralph Nader Mark Donham Dave Lindorff Peter Bosshard Ron Jacobs Lawrence R.
Velvel Fred Gardner David Green Jim B. Missy Beattie Michael Donnelly Jackson Thoreau Jon Hung CounterPunch
News Service Tom D'Antoni Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
Alison Weir Tiffany Ten
Eyck / Mark Brenner Corporate Crime Reporter Juan Antonio
Montecino Walden Bello Christopher
Brauchli Brynne Keith-Jennings Jonathan Cook Website of the Day
John Walsh Carol Norris Paul Craig Roberts Ricardo Alarcón James Abourezk Nicola Nasser Kirkpatrick Sale Uri Avnery Website of the Day
Elizabeth Terzakis Paul Wolf Sean Penn Dave Lindorff Diane Farsetta Sharon Smith Felice Pace Sara Roy Website of
the Day
Jennifer Van
Bergen Greg Moses Stan Cox Niranjan Ramakrishnan Evelyn Pringle Fred Wilhelms Michael Abelman Gary Leupp Website of the Day
October 2, 2006 Eric Hazan Mike Whitney Norman Solomon Assaf Kfoury Missy Beattie Arthur Neslen Paula J. Caplan Website of the Day
Sept. 30 /
0ct. 1, 2006 Paul Craig
Roberts Marjorie Cohn Ben Tripp Ron Jacobs Ralph Nader Mike Whitney Christopher Reed Seth Sandronsky Fred Gardner Mokhiber /
Weissman Michael Dickinson Alan Gregory Poets' Basement
September 29, 2006 Bruce Jackson Michael J.
Smith Emira Woods William S.
Lind David Swanson Jonathan Cook Website of the Day
Sen. Russ Feingold Ron Jacobs Mokhiber /
Weissman Lee Sustar Robert Jensen John Chuckman Evelyn Pringle Nicola Nasser Uri Avnery Website of the Day
Patrick Cockburn Camilo Mejia Ben Terrall Ridgeway /
Ng Joe Allen Andrew Wimmer Franklin C. Spinney Website of
the Day
Hani Shukrallah William Blum Niranjan Ramakrishnan Barbara Becnel Paul Rockwell Dave Lindorff Rich Gibson Anthony Papa Nate Mezmer Uri Avnery Website of the Day
Patrick Cockburn Jonathan Cook Joshua Frank Paul Craig
Roberts Robert Jensen Dave Lindorff Norman Solomon Dr. Charles
Jonkel Michael Dickinson Alexander Cockburn Website of
the Day
September 23
/ 24, 2006 Jonathan Cook Jeffrey St.
Clair Dr. Anon Tom Barry Carl G. Estabrook Laura Carlsen Todd Chretien Dr. Charles
Jonkel Debbie Nathan Fred Gardner Fred Wilhelms Seth Sandronsky Ralph Nader Rev. William
Alberts Jon Van Camp Heather Gray David Vest Jeffrey St.
Clair Poets' Basement Website of
the Weekend Video of the Weekend
September 22, 2006 Patrick Cockburn Michael Donnelly Ramzy Baroud Evo Morales Stanley Howard Sarah Leah
Whitson JoAnn Wypijewski Website of the Day
Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad Justin E. H.
Smith Mike Roselle Amira Hass Deborah Rich Mickey Z. Saul Landau Website of
the Day
Sharon Smith Christopher
Reed John Ross Joshua Frank Arthur Neslen Norman Solomon Michael Carmichael Evelyn Pringle Hugo Chavez Website of the Day
Patrick Cockburn Jeff Leys Brian M. Downing Col. Dan Smith Liaquat Ali
Khan Ron Jacobs Nik Barry-Shaw
/ Yves Engler Lucinda Marshall Saul Landau Photo of the Day Website of
the Day
Carl Boggs Uri Avnery Mike Stark / Jim Bullington Joshua Frank John Murphy Ramzy Baroud Dave Lindorff Bill Quigley Website of the Day
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October 25, 2006 Class and Race are Driving the Crisis in Mexico, Not Political PartiesUpheaval from the BottomBy JOHN ROSS The political cognoscenti on all sides of the border nonchalantly attribute the massive resistance of millions of Mexicans to the stealing of last July 2nd's presidential election from leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) by the ruling PAN party and its rightist candidate Felipe Calderon, to the shifting weights of the right, left, and center in a post-PRI world - whoever actually won the election July 2nd, the one-time ruling (71 years) Institutional Revolutionary Party finished dead last, carving out its own political tomb. But, in fact, this surge of resistance to the imposition of Calderon, much as the five month-long occupation of Oaxaca city by striking teachers and members of the autonomous Oaxaca Peoples' Assembly (APPO) in an effort to remove a despotic PRI governor and, to a lesser extent, the thrust of Subcomandante Marcos's Other Campaign, blows in from a different direction - up from the vast and restless bottom: the 73 million Mexicans (calculates social economist Julio Boltvitnik), most of them of darker skin pigmentation, who live in and around the poverty line, a quarter of them barely surviving in extreme poverty. The 2006 presidential ballot was about as close as this country has ever gotten to putting the bad gas of class and race war that seethes just beneath the stoic surface of society here, up for a vote. Lopez Obrador's candidacy galvanized Mexico's brown underclass and as the months passed, AMLO astutely articulated this fermentation, directing energies against Calderon who was perceived to represent the tiny white elite that claims ownership of this distant neighbor nation. Indeed, the right-winger used the implicit threat of upheaval from down below to mobilize his middle and upper class base. But the bottom is always wider than the top on Mexico's social pyramid and when the election was stolen. Lopez Obrador organized the largest political demonstrations in Mexican history. Tens of thousands of his supporters blockaded the capital's central thoroughfares for seven weeks. The massive civil resistance prevented outgoing president Vicente Fox from delivering his final State of the Union address and kept him away from Independence eve ceremonies in the great Zocalo plaza where Lopez Obrador's people were encamped. Yet AMLO's control over his
frustrated and tattered supporters - literally "los de abajo"
or those from down below - was always tenuous and often those
encamped in the streets during one of the hardest rainy seasons
on record, prevailed. In fact, although the independent left,
which joined forces with Lopez Obrador's three-party coalition
throughout the Despite the militancy of the massive resistance, unprecedented in modern political annals here, the post-electoral period was almost entirely free of violent confrontation, testimony to AMLO's commitment to peaceful civil resistance as inspired by Gandhi and Dr. King, and an uncharacteristic response from the most frustrated and ignored sectors on the social ladder. This upsurge from down below challenges both the political parties and the class they represent. AMLO's crusade left the three parties that sponsored his candidacy in the dust - his support was far greater from those who professed no party commitment than it was from his own home party, the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD.) As testified to by his eternal campaign slogan "For the Good of All but First the Poor", on the stump Lopez Obrador's goal was always to change the class equation rather than the aggrandizement of his party. Similarly, the taking of Oaxaca by radical teachers and the APPO which represents many of the 412 majority-indigenous municipalities in the state, represents this same thrust from down below masquerading as a confrontation between political parties. Governor Ulisis Ruiz, whose removal is at the core of the conflict, is a PRIista popularly considered to have achieved high office through wholesale vote fraud two years ago. Having resorted to police repression and paramilitary death squads to break the occupation of the state capital, he could be removed by presidential or legislative fiat for destabilizing Oaxaca. But Ruiz's backers, sensitive to their party's sinking fortunes that leaves it few options other than to seek détente with the PAN, threaten to torpedo a PRI-PAN pact that effectively hands control of the new congress to Calderon if and when he is inaugurated December 1st, should either the lame duck Fox or the PAN legislative bloc in the Senate vote to remove the Governor. If Ruiz were to be run out of office before December 1st, a new election that probably would be won by the PRD would have to be ordered. If he survives through the due date, the Governor will be able to appoint his own successor. But what appears to be just another Byzantine tug of war so endemic to Mexican party politics is really an expression of the same class and race wars that motored the great "planton" (encampment) up in Mexico City. Those at the bottom behind the barricades in Oaxaca's old quarter are poor and brown - the political class manipulating the tensions are white and wealthy. A recent march of Oaxaca protestors on the capital drew tens of thousands of AMLO's supporters, effectively joining the two struggles from down below. In several key aspects, both the upsurge in Oaxaca and Mexico City borrow precepts of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation's Other Campaign. From the outset of "La Otra". The EZLN's quixotic Subcomandante Marcos has urged sympathizers to "look down" to the people on the bottom rung - where AMLO was also assiduously toiling - rather than to "look up" to the political class. Imbued with a sense of Mexico's history, the Other Campaign proposes a new constitution - much as has Lopez Obrador. Subcomandante Marcos's pre-election attacks on Lopez Obrador, which so disaffected AMLO's people, zeroed in on the electoral process as being futile, a position that many of Lopez Obrador's supporters might now agree with. After being derailed by the brutal police attack on the militant farmers of San Salvador Atenco just outside Mexico City last May, and the post-electoral furor that temporarily rendered the Other Campaign irrelevant, "La Otra" is again on the move through the north of Mexico, the part of the original itinerary suspended after the attack on Atenco, and arrived in Tijuana last week where "Delegate Zero" (Marcos) met with Chicanos and U.S. Zapatista supporters. Increasingly since the election, which drove a wedge through the EZLN's Mexican support community, the Other Campaign's most vocal support has come from outside the country. To honor the Zapatistas' commitment not to abandon Atenco while 28 political prisoners captured May 4th remain imprisoned, seven top EZLN comandantes have traveled from Chiapas to take up residency in that farming town outside the capital. The "Red Alert" which isolated Zapatista autonomous communities in southeastern Chiapas has been relaxed. Why the thrust from down below has blossomed at this moment in the Mexican continuum is not yet crystal clear. Certainly, there is ample justification for social explosion. After 12 years, NAFTA-ization has all but annexed Mexico to Washington. Millions of farmers are forced to abandon their plots because of huge agricultural imports from the U.S. and head north where they run smack into Bush's Terror Wall. The Aztec nation has been franchised and branded by the transnationals into one immense strip mall. Real wages decline and the maquiladoras pull up stakes and head for lower-wage China. Impunity for narcos and political crooks reigns and more heads are whacked off in Acapulco than in Baghdad. The forests are beheaded and transgenic corn threatens native species. Thanks to fast food, childhood obesity and early onset diabetes are pandemic. Three quarters of the population has little social protection. But all this rot is the story that I have been writing for years. The question is why this thrust from the long-enduring bottom is surging right now? AMLO's candidacy became, as the proverb goes, the sack ("costal") in which those down at the bottom deposited their most cherished grievances and history is really an accumulation of such grievances. When critical mass is reached is really determined by national temperament. In the Mexican grammar perhaps the most active verb is "aguantar" or "to endure." Political and emotional metabolism moves slowly here, the "coraje" (righteous indignation) builds incrementally. The people plot payback behind the stoic mask that Octavio Paz made so much of and the Zapatistas wear today - until suddenly they erupt, sparked by a stolen election or a student massacre or some such egregious outrage. And when the shit does hit the fan, the political cognoscenti stroke their chins and try and pin the explosion on the struggle of the political parties for power. However Mexico gets spun out here in the big wide world beyond its borders, the surge from down below has a lot less to do with right, left and center then it does with the bad gas of class and race war seeping 24-7 up from the bottom of this lopsided society. John Ross's ZAPATISTAS!
Making Another World Possible--Chronicles of Resistance 2000-2006
will be published by Nation Books in October. Ross will travel
the left coast this fall with the new volume and a hot-off-the-press
chapbook of poetry Bomba!--all suggestions of venues will be
cheerfully entertained--write johnross@igc.org Ross will speak FROM THE
BOTTOM this Friday, Oct. 27th at New College, 777 Valencia St.
SF (7 PM). Ross's latest opuses - ZAPATISTAS! Making Another
World Possible - Chronicles of Resistance 2000-2006 and his explosive
new poetry chapbook BOMBA! - will be available for perusal by
the general public.
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from CounterPunch Books! The Case Against Israel By Michael Neumann  Grand Theft Pentagon: Tales of Greed and Profiteering in the War on Terror by Jeffrey St. Clair          Sick of sit-on-the-Fence speakers, tongue-tied and timid? CounterPunch Editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair are available to speak forcefully on ALL the burning issues, as are other CounterPunchers seasoned in stump oratory. Call CounterPunch Speakers Bureau, 1-800-840-3683. Or email beckyg@counterpunch.org.  The Occupation by Patrick Cockburn                        |
